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It is a fact of the long sifting and kneading to which time subjects the material of its perfect things. One could not get a better example of what I mean than Lovelace's song To Lucasta, Going to the Wars, without which no anthology of English verse could possibly be published.
There is the felt want. Here is the remedy; not warranted absolutely painless, but salutary, and tending to the amelioration of the species. So we have only to enlist the agents, and send a few advertisements to the papers. My first editions must go. Farewell Kilmarnock edition of Burns, and Colonel Lovelace, his Lucasta, and Tamerlane by Mr. Poe, and the rest.
For Gavin was one of the inarticulate poets of earth, a mute, inglorious Lovelace, with a heart burdened with unsung lines to his Lucasta on going to the wars. They had come to one of their prolonged seasons of silence, when Christina discovered that they were strolling slowly behind Old Johnnie McKenzie, Bruce's father, and Mr.
Lovelace's Lucasta, a volume of love lyrics, is generally on a higher plane than Suckling's work; and a few of the poems like "To Lucasta," and "To Althea, from Prison," deserve the secure place they have won. Shakespeare and Milton are the two figures that tower conspicuously above the goodly fellowship of men who have made our literature famous.
"Our Faith and troth All time and space controls, Above the highest sphere we meet, Unseen, unknown, and greet as angels greet." How comes it that in the fierce fighting days the soldiers were so tuneful, and such scholars? In the first edition of Lovelace's "Lucasta" there is a flock of recommendatory verses, English, Latin, even Greek, by the gallant Colonel's mess-mates and comrades.
For presenting "the Kentish petition" in favour of the King, he was imprisoned in 1642, when he wrote his famous song, When Love with unconfinéd wings. After his release he served in the French army, and was wounded at Dunkirk. Returning, he was again imprisoned, 1648, and produced his Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, etc.
The old French copper-plate engravings and the best English mezzo-tints are so valuable because good impressions are necessarily so rare. One more piece of advice. It is a constant source of regret, an eyesore. Here have I Lovelace's "Lucasta," 1649, without the engraving. It is deplorable, but I never had a chance of another "Lucasta." This is not a case of invenies aliam.
For we count it a distinction in English poetry that upon this theme the changes have been rung so finely and to such exquisite effect. But much of the fineness of love poetry is to be distinguished from the fineness of the emotion of love. Lovelace declares to his Lucasta: True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield.
Then I turn about my chair So that I can dimly see Into the dark corners where Lies my modest library. I have not the rare Lucasta, London, 1649; I'm a lean-pursed poetaster, Or the book had long been mine.... And the muse of Lycidas, Lost in meditation deep, Give the cut to Hudibras, Unaware the knave's asleep....
Soon I, too, fell to singing in my tuneless voice, and I answered his "My lodging is on the cold ground" with some Scots ballad or a song of Davie Lindsay. I remember how sweetly he sang Colonel Lovelace's ode to Lucasta, writ when going to the wars: "True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield."
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