part, of going inside and getting married.

Perhaps we should not expect _vers de societe_ from the Crusaders, who
were not peaceable, and who were very earnest indeed, in love or war. But
as soon as you get a Court, and Court life, in France, even though the
times were warlike, then ladies are lauded in artful strains, and the
lyre is struck _leviore plectro_. Charles d'Orleans, that captive and
captivating prince, wrote thousands of _rondeaux_; even before his time a
gallant company of gentlemen composed the _Livre des Cent Ballades_, one
hundred _ballades_, practically unreadable by modern men. Then came
Clement Marot, with his gay and rather empty fluency, and Ronsard, with
his mythological compliments, his sonnets, decked with roses, and led
like lambs to the altar of Helen or Cassandra. A few, here and there, of
his pieces are lighter, more pleasant, and, in a quiet way, immortal,
such as the verses to his "fair flower of Anjou," a beauty of fifteen. So
they ran on, in France, till Voiture's time, and Sarrazin's with his
merry _ballade_ of an elopement, and Corneille's proud and graceful
stanzas to Marquise de Gorla.

But verses in the English tongue are more worthy of our attention. Mr.
Locker begins his collection of them, _Lyra Elegantiarum_ (no longer a
very rare book in England), as far back as Skelton's age, and as Thomas
Wyat's, and Sidney's; but those things, the lighter lyrics of that day,
are rather songs than poems, and probably were all meant to be sung to
the virginals by our musical ancestors.

"Drink to me only with thine eyes," says the great Ben Jonson, or sings
it rather. The words, that he versified out of the Greek prose of
Philostratus, cannot be thought of without the tune. It is the same with
Carew's "He that loves a rosy cheek," or with "Roses, their sharp spines
being gone." The lighter poetry of Carew's day is all powdered with gold
dust, like the court ladies' hair, and is crowned and diapered with
roses, and heavy with fabulous scents from the Arabian phoenix's nest.
Little Cupids flutter and twitter here and there among the boughs, as in
that feast of Adonis which Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria, or as in
Eisen's vignettes for Dorat's _Baisers_:

"Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love did Heaven prepare
These powders to enrich your hair."

It would be affectation, Gifted, if _you_ rhymed in that fashion for the
lad