The white my innocence displaying,

The red my martyrdom betraying.
The frowns that on your brow resided,
Have those roses thus divided;

Oh! let your smiles but clear the weather,

And then they both shall grow together.

The best production of Suckling is a ballad on a wedding, told by a countryman on his return from London; it is easy, flowing, and happy, and so full of rustic humor, that one might imagine a crowd of villagers listening with open mouths and half incredulous air to the wonders of the narrator. His Sessions of the Poets is a humorous little satire; and the poem To a Lady on her going out of England' (of which the following lines form the commencement) is very expressive and poetical:

I must confess, when I did part from you,

I could not force an artificial dew
Upon my cheeks, nor with a gilded phrase
Express how many hundred several ways
My heart was tortur'd, nor with arms across
In discontented garbs set forth my loss:
Such loud expressions many times do come
From lightest hearts, great griefs are always dumb;
The shallow rivers roar, the deep are still;

Numbers of painted words may shew much skill;
But little anguish and a cloudy face

Is oft put on, to serve both time and place.

The spirit of party and religious zeal which distressed the country during the troubled reign of the first Charles, as it operated on the manners, affected no less the literature of the period. Wit, brilliancy, and fancy

filled the court, and songs of compliment and gallantry were cherished by the loyalists. They honored whatever was elegant and refined in their day; and however lax in principle or wanting in morality, they loved those lighter arts which are the ornaments of society, and which, if they cannot improve its character, can at least gild its surface. The very conceits of the period flowed from a refinement of fashion, hollow indeed, but for the time attractive; and served as so many proofs of the genius of their admirers. Learning was not disregarded, but it threw off the guise of pedantry. New channels of information had long since been open to mankind; and a tone of easy elegance was established, alluring to all within the influence of its charms.

But there was a deeper and sterner feeling operating upon another class. A spirit of reflection had arisen in the community-the late reformation in religion had taught men to canvass subjects never before questioned— from the discussion of sacred they turned to political matters, and carried to them the zeal and dogmas of puritanism. They were generally unlearned but sincere : confounding abstract truths with prejudices, forgetting the circumstances by which they were surrounded, soured with opposition or neglect, they formed lofty but crude notions of their rights, and, contrasting them with their condition, they became restless and gloomy, severe and determined. The dogmatic spirit, which at first prompted, afterwards fostered this tone of mind, until it

F

swelled into enthusiasm; and its votaries became no less political than spiritual devotees.

The poetry of such a race must have been marked by its prevailing features: by imagination, when once aroused, bold and grasping; by striking and original thoughts; by language energetic and decisive; and over all their truths and errors, alike glaring and profound, by the glow of enthusiasm falling, not softly like sunlight through the tracery of stained windows, but streaming with the fresh vehemence of a summer noon, as it bursts over some rude pile of rocks, and throws a halo round their ruggedness.

It was from such a people, free from their worst prejudices, enlightened by their best spirit, with a zeal and imagination flushed by the genius of the times, that Milton arose. In power, beauty, and sublimity, he has been compared to Homer,-"Shakspeare alone excelled them both; but he went beyond all men, and stands in of human intellect, like the sun in the system,

the array

single and unapproachable."*

* Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, page 58.