y Donne, he is best at
panegyric, worst at burlesque and epigram. In "On a Gentlewoman's Silk
Hood" and some other pieces he may challenge comparison with the most
futile of the metaphysicals; but no one who has read his noble elegy on Sir
Bevil Grenvil, unequal as it is, will think lightly of Cartwright. Sir
Edward Sherburne was chiefly a translator in the fashionable style. His
original poems were those of a very inferior Carew (he even copies the name
Celia), but they are often pretty. Alexander Brome, of whom very little is
known, and who must not be confounded with the dramatist, was a lawyer and
a cavalier song-writer, who too frequently wrote mere doggerel; but on the
other hand, he sometimes did not, and when he escaped the evil influence,
as in the stanzas "Come, come, let us drink," "The Trooper," and not a few
others, he has the right anacreontic vein.

As for Charles Cotton, his "Virgil Travesty" is deader than Scarron's, and
deserves to be so. The famous lines which Lamb has made known to every one
in the essay on "New Year's Day" are the best thing he did. But there are
many excellent things scattered about his work, despite a strong taint of
the mere coarseness and nastiness which have been spoken of. And though he
was also much tainted with the hopeless indifference to prosody which
distinguished all these belated cavaliers, it is noteworthy that he was one
of the few Englishmen for centuries to adopt the strict French forms and
write rondeaux and the like. On the whole his poetical power has been a
little undervalued, while he was also dexterous in prose.

Thomas Stanley has been classed above as a translator because he would
probably have liked to have his scholarship thus brought into prominence.
It was, both in ancient and modern tongues, very considerable. His
_History of Philosophy_ was a classic for a very long time; and his edition
of AEschylus had the honour of revision within the nineteenth century by
Porson and by Butler. It is not certain that Bentley did not borrow from
him; and his versions of Anacreon, of various other Greek lyrists, of the
later Latins, and of modern writers in Spanish and Italian are most
remarkable. But he was also an original poet in the best Caroline style of
lyric; and his combination of family (for he was of the great Stanley
stock), learning, and genius gave him a high position with men of letters
of his day. Sidney Godolphin, who died very young fighting for the Ki