vion
chiefly by his exquisite _Ballad upon a Wedding_. Thomas Carew and
Edmund Waller were poets of the same stamp--graceful and easy, but
shallow in feeling. Waller, who followed the court to Paris, was the
author of two songs, which are still favorites, _Go, Lovely Rose_, and
_On a Girdle_, and he first introduced the smooth correct manner of
writing in couplets, which Dryden and Pope carried to perfection.
Gallantry rather than love was the inspiration of these courtly
singers. In such verses as Carew's _Encouragements to a Lover_, and
George Wither's _The Manly Heart_--

"If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?"

we see the revolt against the high, passionate, Sidneian love of the
Elisabethan sonneteers, and the note of _persiflage_ that was to mark
the lyrical verse of the Restoration. But the poetry of the cavaliers
reached its high-water mark in one fiery-hearted song by the noble and
unfortunate James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, who invaded Scotland in
the interest of Charles II., and was taken prisoner and put to death at
Edinburgh in 1650.

"My dear and only love, I pray
That little world of thee
Be governed by no other sway
Than purest monarchy."

{150} In language borrowed from the politics of the time, he cautions
his mistress against _synods_ or _committees_ in her heart; swears to
make her glorious by his pen and famous by his sword; and with that
fine recklessness which distinguished the dashing troopers of Prince
Rupert, he adds, in words that have been often quoted,

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all."

John Milton, the greatest English poet except Shakspere, was born in
London in 1608. His father was a scrivener, an educated man, and a
musical composer of some merit. At his home Milton was surrounded with
all the influences of a refined and well ordered Puritan household of
the better class. He inherited his father's musical tastes, and during
the latter part of his life, he spent a part of every afternoon in
playing the organ. No poet has written more beautifully of music than
Milton. One of his sonnets was addressed to Henry Lawes, the composer,
who wrote the airs to the songs in _Comus_. Milton's education was
most careful and thorough. He spent seven years at Cambridge where,
from his personal beauty and fastidious habits, he was called "The lady