effusions, in which they often ridiculed the heights of poetry they were
incapable of attaining. With such men the class of poets, which before
the civil war held but a secondary rank, began to rise in estimation.
Waller, Suckling, and Denham, began to assert a pre-eminence over Cowley
and Donne; the ladies, whose influence in the court of James and Charles
I. was hardly felt, and who were then obliged to be contented with such
pedantic worship as is contained in the "Mistress" of Cowley, and the
"Epithalamion" of Donne, began now, when their voices were listened to,
and their taste consulted, to determine that their poetical lovers
should address them in strains more musical, if not more intelligible.
What is most acceptable to the fair sex will always sway the mode of a
gay court; and the character of a smooth and easy sonneteer was soon
considered as an indispensable requisite to a man of wit and fashion,
terms which were then usually synonymous.

To those who still retained a partiality for that exercise of the fancy
and memory, afforded by the metaphysical poetry, the style of satire
then prevalent afforded opportunities of applying it. The same depth of
learning, the same extravagant ingenuity in combining the most remote
images, and in driving casual associations to the verge of absurdity,
almost all the remarkable features which characterised the poetry of
Cowley, may be successfully traced in the satire of Hudibras. The sublime
itself borders closely on the ludicrous; but the bombast and extravagant
cannot be divided from it. The turn of thought, and the peculiar kind of
mental exertion, corresponds in both styles of writing; and although
Butler pursued the ludicrous, and Cowley aimed at the surprising, the
leading features of their poetry only differ like those of the same face
convulsed with laughter, or arrested in astonishment The district of
metaphysical poetry was thus invaded by the satirists, who sought
weapons there to avenge the misfortunes and oppression which they had so