Charles Sedley, who, for two hundred years, has been preserved from oblivion by a little wanton verse about Phillis, full of such good-natured contentment and disbelief that we grow young and cheerful again in contemplating it. Should any long-suffering reader desire to taste the sweets of sudden contrast and of sharp reaction, let him turn from the strenuous, analytic, half-caustic, and wholly discomforting love-poem of the nineteenth century—Mr. Browning's word-picture of "A Pretty Woman," for example—back to those swinging and jocund lines where Phillis,
"Faithless as the winds or seas,"
smiles furtively upon her suitor, whose clear-sightedness avails him nothing, and who plays the game merrily to the end:—
"She deceiving,
I believing,
What need lovers wish for more?"
We who read are very far from wishing for anything more. With the Ettrick Shepherd, we are fain to remember that old tunes, and old songs, and well-worn fancies are best fitted for so simple and so ancient a theme:—
