behind her fan; or else in the opposite extreme, like a bergère in a French ballet, stuck over with sentimental common-places and artificial flowers.

Of

This, in general terms, was the progress of the lyric muse, from the poets of Queen Elizabeth's days down to the wits of Queen Anne's. course, there are modifications and exceptions, which will suggest themselves to the poetical reader; but it does not enter into the plan of this sketch to treat matters thus critically and profoundly. To return then to the days of Charles the First.

It must be confessed that the union of Italian sentiment and imagination with French vivacity and gallantry, was, in the commencement, exceedingly graceful, before all poetry was lost in wit, and gallantry sunk into licentiousness.

Carew, one of the first who distinguished himself in this style, has been most unaccountably eclipsed by the reputation of Waller, and deserved

B 2

better than to have had his name hitched into

line between Sprat and Sedley;

Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more.

As an amatory poet, he is far superior to Waller he had equal smoothness and fancy, and much more variety, tenderness, and earnestness; if his love was less ambitiously, and even less honourably placed, it was, at least, more deep seated, and far more fervent. The real name of the lady he has celebrated under the poetical appellation of Celia, is not known—it is only certain that she was no "fabled fair,”—and that his love was repaid with falsehood.

Hard fate! to have been once possessed

As victor of a heart,

Achieved with labour and unrest,

And then forced to depart!

From the irregular habits of Carew, it is possible he might have set the example of inconstancy; and yet this is but a poor excuse for her.

* Pope.

Carew spent his life in the Court of Charles the First, who admired and loved him for his wit and amiable manners, though he reproved his libertinage. In the midst of that dissipation, which has polluted some of his poems, he was full of high poetic feeling, and a truly generous lover for even while he wooes his fair one in the most soul-moving terms of flowery adulation and tender entreaty, he puts her on her guard against his own arts, and thus sweetly pleads against himself;

Rather let the lover pine,

Than his pale cheek should assign
A perpetual blush to thine!

And his admiration of female chastity is elsewhere frequently, as well as forcibly, expressed.With all his elegance and tenderness, Carew is never feeble; and in his laments there is nothing whining or unmanly. After lavishing at the feet of his mistress the most passionate devotion, and the most exquisite flattery, hear him rebuke her pride with all the spirit of an offended poet!

Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine.

Thou art my star-shin'st in my skies;
Then dart not from thy borrowed sphere
Light'ning on him, who fixed thee there.

The identity of his Celia is now lost in a name, -and she deserves it: perhaps had she appreciated the love she inspired, and been true to that she professed, she might have won her elegant lover back to virtue, and wreathed her fame with his for ever. Disappointed in the object of his idolatry, Carew plunged madly into pleasure, and thus hastened his end. He died, as Clarendon tells us, with "deep remorse for his past excesses, and every manifestation of Christianity his best friends could desire."

Besides his Celia, Carew has celebrated several other ladies of the Court, and particularly Lady Mary Villars; the Countess of Anglesea; Lady Carlisle, the theme of all the poets of her age, and her lovely daughter, Lady Anne Hay, on whom he wrote an elegy, which begins with some lines never surpassed in harmony and tenderness.

I heard the virgin's sigh! I saw the sleek
And polish'd courtier channel his fresh cheek
With real tears; the new betrothed maid
Smil'd not that day; the graver senate laid
Their business by; of all the courtly throng

Grief seal'd the heart, and silence bound the tongue !

We will not bathe thy corpse with a forc'd tear,

Nor shall thy train borrow the blacks they wear;

Such vulgar spice and gums embalm not thee,
That art the theme of Truth, not Poetry.

Here Carew has fallen into the vulgar error, that poetry and fiction are synonymous.

Lady Anne Wentworth,* daughter of the first

* The only daughter of this Lady Anne Wentworth, married Sir W. Noel, and was the ancestress of Lady Byron, the widow of the poet.