Blinded of light, and sick of being well, In tumult seek their peace, their heaven in hell." Of course Denham intended no reference to his friend's projects, of which he probably knew nothing; his mysterious allusions are doubtless to such double dealings as Hotham's conduct, with regard to the proposed capitulation of Hull. Our author's most extraordinary indiscretion, however, occurs at the close of the first edition, which ended with these lines: "Therefore their boundless power let Princes draw This was the very doctrine of the Neuters, and cannot have given Charles I. any satisfaction, if a copy of his servant's poem came into his hands as he sat down in a passion to the beleaguerment of Gloucester. The passage by which Cooper's Hill is best known, consists of four lines which I cannot resist the pleasure of now once more repeating. He says to the Thames, which he has been praising above Eridanus and Pactolus :— 46 "O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." These are marvellous lines; they are among the memories of our language; and if Sir John Denham had been habitually lifted on this graceful and pure level of eloquence, most later poets, at all events those of his own order, might have addressed to him the same adroit compliment. But there exists a mystery about these lines. In collating the first edition I was amazed to find them entirely absent, and they do not occur until the second edition of the poem, published in 1643. Their place is taken until then by a quaint and rather silly promise that the waters of Thames, in reward for their exemplary behaviour in the neighbourhood of Chertsey and Egham, "Shall visit Jove's abodes To shine amongst the stars, and bathe the Gods." Nor is the versification of the poem in any other instance so fine and regular as in the celebrated quatrain, which, for want of better information, we must continue to consider the most brilliant example of second thoughts in the English language. On the whole, there are few poems which have enjoyed so great and so sustained a reputation as Cooper's Hill, which so little respond to it in the eyes of a modern reader1. Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that its fame was sustained, and seek to discover the cause. Long after Cowley, Davenant, and their crew had sunk into neglect, Denham and Waller preserved their reputation unassailed. Prior asserts their importance, as the two pioneers of our poetry. Pope and Garth, who represented the extremity of critical acumen in an age which had begun to look without prejudice on the founders of its own fashions, spoke out clearly in praise of Denham. The Windsor Forest of the one and the Claremont of the other were direct imitations of Cooper's Hill, written no less than seventy years after its publication. "On Cooper's Hill," says Pope, moved to unusual enthusiasm, "On Cooper's Hill eternal wreaths shall grow While lasts the mountain, or while Thames shall flow." To comprehend all this, we must, in the first place, acknowledge the genuine force and sinew of 1 It would seem that Denham's ear was imperfect, though I confess I have not been able to convict him of that pravity in riming of which Johnson accused him. 2 Perhaps the latest tribute of unmitigated praise, is Somerville's, in the third book of The Chace, 1735:— "tread, with respectful awe, Windsor's green glades, where Denham, tuneful bard, Sublimely sweet." Denham's rugged poem. There is sound thought in it, carefully expressed, without adornment or choice of melody, in successive blows of the sledgehammer. After this sort of writing had once been conceived, it was comparatively easy to improve upon it, to give regularity to the stroke, grace and ease to the movement. The praise of having invented, or at least having been the first to employ in a sustained effort, a new form of English poetry must always insure Denham a niche in the history of our literature. In this same year, 1643, an event occurred which attracted little notice in those dreadful years. The Civil War had broken out, and in the west one by one the parliamentary towns were falling into the hands of the King's generals. But late in the summer one handsome and gallant young fellow, riding down the deep-leaved lanes that led from Dartmoor into the little ancient borough of Chagford, at the head of a troop of the King's horse, met a party of Roundheads at the entrance of the town, and was cut down and killed. This was Sidney Godolphin, the hope of a great house, a courtier, a scholar, and a poet as well as a brave soldier. We may search in vain for the Poems of Sidney Godolphin. Waller, who had been his friend and master in the art of verse, preserved a few of them, and others are to be picked up here and there by accident; but they never have been collected, in that day or in this. He died too young to win a place in literature, and he formed merely one more precious sacrifice laid on the vast altar of Charles I.'s stupid and obstinate pride. But if he had lived he would have won a name for himself. He was the first young man clearly to see what it was that Waller wished to do in modification of our national prosody, and his thin remains are singularly ripe and strangely free from all romantic influence. He had moved in the circle of Waller's friends at Lees and at Penshurst, and like Waller, he had written verses on the untimely death of the beautiful Lady Rich, Sacharissa's cousin. Here are some of these verses, which Elijah Fenton found and printed in 1729:— "Possess'd of all that nature could bestow, All we can wish to be, or reach to know: The most discerning thoughts; the calmest breast, |