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CHAPTER IV.
ENGLISH POETRY.[1]
introductory — george chapman — the younger spenserians — protestant and bourgeois — the fletchers — browne and wither — quarles, more, beaumont, etc. — drummond and sir john beaumont — donne and jonson — characteristics and influence — caroline courtly poetry, religious and secular — herbert, vaughan, crashaw, and traherne — carew, lovelace, suckling, herrick — andrew marvell — milton's life and early poems
— poetry of the commonwealth — waller and denham — davenant and chamberlayne — cowley — milton's later poems — 'paradise lost' — 'paradise regained' — 'samson agonistes' — conclusion.
Spenser found no successor able to continue his work of naturalising the Italian romantic epic, that most Introduction. delightful product of the early Renaissance, into which he breathed the ethical temper of the Reformation—softened by Italian Platonism or neo-Platonism—as well as the spirit of intense
- ↑ General Histories.—It is hardly necessary to enumerate standard works like Saintsbury's Short History, &c., and Elizabethan Literature; Gosse's Seventeenth Century Studies, London, 1874; Modern English Literature, London, 1896; and Jacobean Poets, London, 1894. More recent are Courthope's History of English Poetry, vol. iii., London, 1903, to which I am much indebted though not always in agreement, and though the first sketch of my chapter had been
written before the volume appeared; Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. David Patrick, Edinburgh, 1901; Jusserand's Histoire Littéraire du Peuple Anglais, tom. ii., Paris, 1904; and Barrett Wendell's The Temper of Seventeenth-Century Literature, London, 1905. For lives and dates I have followed, generally, the Dictionary of National Biography.
Modern Editions.—Chapman's Works, London, 1875, vols. ii. and iii., with preface by Mr Swinburne, reprinted separately the same year. Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Sir John Beaumont, Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, and Marvell, were all edited by the late Dr Grosart for the privately published Fuller's Worthies Library, 1868, &c. Giles Fletcher, Herrick, and some others were issued in the same editor's Early English Poets, 1876, &c. Selections from Phineas Fletcher are contained in The Spenser of His Age, J. R. Tutin, Hull, 1905. Quarles, Dr Henry More, Dr Joseph Beaumont, were edited by Grosart in his Chertsey Worthies Library, also private. The Muses Library, London, 1893, reissued 1903, includes editions of Drummond, ed. Wm. C. Ward (who has traced many borrowings); Donne, ed. E. K. Chambers (the best text); Vaughan, ed. E. K. Chambers; Carew, ed. Arthur Vincent; Herrick, ed. Alfred Pollard; Marvell, ed. G. A. Aitkin; and Waller, ed. G. Thorn Drury. Herbert has been frequently republished. A good text of the Temple is that of Edgar C. S. Gibson in the Library of Devotion, London, 1899; Lovelace and Suckling were edited by W. C. Hazlitt in his Library of Old Authors, London, 1856, &c. Lovelace's Lucasta has been reproduced in the Unit Library, London, 1904, Habington's Castara was edited by C. A. Elton, Bristol, n.d. [1812], and by Edward Arber, English Reprints, 1869. Randolph was edited by W. C. Hazlitt, London, 1875. Cartwright and Davenant have not been republished complete since Chalmers' British Poets, London, 1810. Denham was republished with Waller, 1857. Chamberlayne's Pharonnida has just been reissued in Saintsbury's Caroline Poets, Oxford, 1905. Of Milton's poetical works, Masson's, London, 1890, is the last complete one with annotations. Mr Beeching's, Oxford, 1900, has reproduced the original spelling. Cowley and Crashaw have been edited by A. R. Waller in the Cambridge English Classics. Traherne's poems have been published from the MS. by Bertram Dobell, London, 1903.
