to apologise for
it later) had a very happy knack of blending the warm amatory enthusiasm of
his time with sentiments of virtue and decency. There is in him absolutely
nothing loose or obscene, and yet he is entirely free from the
milk-and-water propriety which sometimes irritates the reader in such books
as Habington's _Castara_. Wither is never mawkish, though he is never
loose, and the swing of his verse at its best is only equalled by the rush
of thought and feeling which animates it. As it is perhaps necessary to
justify this high opinion, we may as well give the "Alresford Pool" above
noted. It is like Browne, but it is better than anything Browne ever did;
being like Browne, it is not unlike Keats; it is also singularly like Mr.
William Morris.

"For pleasant was that Pool; and near it, then,
Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen.
It was not overgrown with boisterous sedge,
Nor grew there rudely, then, along the edge
A bending willow, nor a prickly bush,
Nor broad-leafed flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush:
But here, well ordered, was a grove with bowers;
There, grassy plots, set round about with flowers.
Here, you might, through the water, see the land
Appear, strewed o'er with white or yellow sand.
Yon, deeper was it; and the wind, by whiffs,
Would make it rise, and wash the little cliffs;
On which, oft pluming, sate, unfrighted then
The gagling wild goose, and the snow-white swan,
With all those flocks of fowl, which, to this day
Upon those quiet waters breed and play."

When to this gift of description is added a frequent inspiration of pure
fancy, it is scarcely surprising that--

"Such a strain as might befit
Some brave Tuscan poet's wit,"

to borrow a couplet of his own, often adorns Wither's verse.

Two other poets of considerable interest and merit belong to this period,
who are rather Scotch than English, but who have usually been included in
histories of English literature--Drummond of Hawthornden, and Sir William
Alexander, Earl of Stirling. Both, but especially Drummond, exhibit equally
with their English contemporaries the influences which produced the
Elizabethan Jacobean poetry; and though I am not myself disposed to go
quite so far, the sonnets of Drummond have sometimes been ranked before all
others of the time except Shakespere's.

William Drummond was probably born at the beautiful seat whence he derived
his design