A very
favorable representative of it is the admirable, eulogy on Shakspere
included in the first folio edition of Shakspere's works. In a few
instances, however, Jonson strikes the true lyric note delightfully. Every
one knows and sings his two stanzas 'To Celia'--'Drink to me only with
thine eyes,' which would still be famous without the exquisitely
appropriate music that has come down to us from Jonson's own time, and
which are no less beautiful because they consist largely of ideas culled
from the Greek philosopher Theophrastus. In all his poems, however, Jonson
aims consistently at the classical virtues of clearness, brevity,
proportion, finish, and elimination of all excess.
These latter qualities appear also in the lyrics which abound in the plays
of John Fletcher, and yet it cannot be said that Fletcher's sweet melody is
more classical than Elizabethan. His other distinctive quality is the tone
of somewhat artificial courtliness which was soon to mark the lyrics of the
other poets of the Cavalier party. An avowed disciple of Jonson and his
classicism and a greater poet than Fletcher is Robert Herrick, who, indeed,
after Shakspere and Milton, is the finest lyric poet of these two
centuries.
Herrick, the nephew of a wealthy goldsmith, seems, after a late graduation
from Cambridge, to have spent some years about the Court and in the band of
Jonson's 'sons.' Entering the Church when he was nearly forty, he received
the small country parish of Dean Prior in the southwest (Devonshire), which
he held for nearly twenty years, until 1647, when he was dispossessed by
the victorious Puritans.
Pages:
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226