warfare with the enemies of his king and party. His poems relating to State affairs are coarse and profane, and are only saved from insincerity by his fine loathing of Puritans, Rebels and Scotchmen. His prose, as, for instance, in the Character of a London Diurnal,' is in the style of wit affected by Mercutio, and, like his verse, it is overcrowded with images.1 Rough and careless though his work is, it yet has many of the qualities of Hudibras.' But even when we come across phrases that are final, needles of wit in bundles of failures, these seem to be the offspring of accident, rather than of care. When he exclaims in 'The Rebel Scot':

'Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts!

How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts !'

we recognise the origin of that manner which was developed by Butler's patience and laborious persistency. But Cleveland, lacking the application which made Butler an artist in raillery, remained merely a witty roysterer, a clever amateur.

1620-1678. Lord Beaconsfield maintained that Lord Shelburne was one of the suppressed characters of history.2 If we admit that there are suppressed characters in literature, as in politics, Andrew Marvell may be called the Shelburne of English letters. In the days of Charles II. two men, Butler and Marvell, made satiric writing once more a powerful weapon. But the satires of the Puritan writer, though admired and feared in their day, have met with unjust oblivion. The liveliest droll of the age,' as Burnet3 calls him, a man of pleasing and festive wit, Marvell excelled in the use of that

1 Cleveland was also the author of 'The Rustick Rampant 'a long pamphlet on the Insurrection of Wat Tyler, full of obvious satiric references to the Civil Wars of his own day.

2 Cf. 'Sybil,' ch. iii.

3 Burnet's History of his Own Time.'

ironical banter in which Swift and Junius were his most apt pupils; but in him, for reasons not altogether unconnected, perhaps, with politics, the lyric poet has survived the satiric writer. He fought on the losing side.

'Fleckno,' his earliest satire, droll if unpolished, is a revolt against the Jesuits; and his later poems are all in the character of the Puritan, attacking, as became the friend and assistant of Milton, tyranny and wickedness in Church and State. The strength and dignity of his position as an incorruptible member of the Opposition in the corrupt and servile Parliament of Charles II. are reflected alike in his fearless poems and in his more perfect pamphlets.

In 1653 was produced 'The Character of Holland' -'that scarce deserves the name of land.' The irresponsible frivolity, the unpremeditated style, the ludicrous exaggerations of this piece remind us of the 'excellent wit' of Butler, of which he himself speaks so generously. But beneath these qualities there is also a feeling of true patriotism, which raises the tone above that of 'Hudibras.' His point of view, we feel, is not that of Cleveland, of Oldham, or, to say truth, of Dryden.

On the fall of Clarendon,2 Marvell, who, whilst aiming at the King's evil counsellors, always maintained his loyalty to the King, produced a long and weighty impeachment of those who led the King astray. His Last Instructions to a Painter' is modelled, indeed, upon the pieces by Denham and Waller, but is vastly superior to them, although the interest it arouses is now mainly historical. If the attack on the Duchess of York3 be something too fierce, the lines describing the King1 must be admitted to rise to a great height of solemn poetry, full of im

1 'The Rehearsal Transprosed.'
3 'Last Instructions,' ll. 49 et seq.

2 September, 1667. 4 Ibid., 11. 837-880.

pressive warning. This note is repeated in 'Britannia and Raleigh.' It required no little courage, be it remembered, to write thus of the King, or of Lauderdale as Marvell wrote of him in the 'Historical Poem.'1

Passing over 'The Dialogue between Two Horses,' which has been praised beyond its deserts, we come to his prose satires. In these he relies both on argument and ridicule. His play is light, lively, and effective. 'Mr. Smirke' is a very witty and learned piece of argumentative work, but inferior to 'The Rehearsal Transprosed.' Few dramas have given rise to so vast and so unceasing a succession of works, good and bad, as Buckingham's brilliant skit, 'The Rehearsal';2 and never, one may add, has a popular success been more skilfully turned to the account of an earnest pamphleteer.

It was in a Church controversy that Marvell produced the elaborate essay, 'The Rehearsal Transprosed,' answering in a burlesque strain 'to shame by dint of wit' the extravagant doctrine of Dr. Parker, one of the most detestable of the Restoration Prelates. He would not commit such an absurdity as to be grave with a buffoon.' Swift justly praises this book, and Burnet tells us that 'from the King down to the tradesman it was read with great pleasure.' Anthony Wood speaks of the author as hugely well vers'd and experienced in the then but newly refined art of Sporting and Jeering Buffoonery.' Wit and raillery had, in fact, long been strangers in the land, and the Court hailed with delight any sign of their return. Nor has the pleasure to be derived therefrom evaporated. If, in

1 'Historical Poem,' ll. 114-125.

2 The forerunner of Fielding's 'Pasquin' and Sheridan's 'Critic' and' Rehearsal.'

3 Swift, ‘Tale of a Tub.’

this conflict, Marvell had no foeman worthy of his steel, yet was he attacking one in authority at the time; whilst, from a literary point of view, he has preserved from oblivion a lump of religious controversy by the plentiful salt of his light raillery or grave wit, sarcastic humour or brilliant repartee. Here alone perhaps he has, like all great satirists, triumphed over the ephemeral interest of the subject.

His satires have been described as obscene and filthy; but the grossness is of the things, and not of the writer. He was honestly performing the watchdog function of the satirist. The critic of such a Čourt could hardly fail to introduce gross expressions; but even where he is most brutal and indiscriminate and merciless-and Marvell can be all of these you feel that he is impelled by a lofty motive.

It was far otherwise with such poetical courtiers 1647-1680 as the Earl of Rochester and the Earl of Dorset. Violence without sincerity, and coarseness with little real wit, are the qualities of their writings. It takes a deal of salt to make scurrility sweet, and though Rochester does now and then show great strength of expression and considerable happiness of thought, yet his verses are too often halting, and his pen is too often dipped in dirt-merely for dirt's sake for us to admire his work.

His History of Insipids,' a lampoon published in 1676, is, indeed, a seemingly fearless, if unpolished, attack on Charles, not devoid of sly hits and crushing blows. But one can hardly credit with sincerity the satirist who tried to cure the King of his weaknesses, either by winning his mistresses from him, or severely lampooning him and them. Rochester imitated Boileau in his Satire against Mankind,' and, in The Trial of the Poets,' he adapted with

1662.

neatness and vigour Horace on Lucilius to a review of the poets of his own time. Considering his unceasing debauchery, however, it is hardly surprising that Rochester's great reputation for colloquial wit is not borne out by his writings.

Dorset's foul and violent lampoons, also, bear the character of the Court. He, too, has a schoolboy delight in using naughty words, which to our modern notions are simply offensive. Praised beyond measure by his contemporaries,1 by Rochester,2 by Dryden,3 and by Pope, he has now sunk into the obscurity he deserves.5

While Marvell and Wither stood forth as the critics of the Court, Butler, taking his cue from Cleveland, appeared as the champion of the cavaliers, and the literary persecutor of the Puritans. The first part of 'Hudibras' was published in 1662. The object of this poem is simple and definite— to render the party represented by the lay figure of Hudibras vile and ridiculous. The method is more or less that of the 'Satyre Ménippée,' which, beyond doubt, taught Butler the mystery of his noble trade.

The phrase on his monument in Westminster

1 'State Poems,' vol. i., p. 200.

2 Rochester calls him The best good man with the worstnatured Muse.'

3 Dryden instanced 'Your lordship in satire and Shakespeare in tragedy' as superior to the authors of antiquity.

4

'Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muses pride,

Patron of arts, and judge of nature, died.'-Pope. 5 The lines in 'An Essay upon Satire,' 255-265, though severe, are not too severe a criticism on this school of courtly satirists.

• Dryden, ‘Essay on the Origin and Progress of Satire': 'How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms. This is the mystery of that noble trade."