That errors should abound in the text of Lovelace is the more
lamentable because he was apt to make a play of phrases that depend
upon the precision of a comma--nay, upon the precision of the voice
in reading. Lucasta Paying her Obsequies is a poem that makes a
kind of dainty confusion between the two vestals--the living and
the dead; they are "equal virgins," and you must assign the
pronouns carefully to either as you read. This, read twice, must
surely be placed amongst the loveliest of his lovely writings. It
is a joy to meet such a phrase as "her brave eyes."


TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON


This is a poem that takes the winds with an answering flight.
Should they be "birds" or "gods" that wanton in the air in the
first of these gallant stanzas? Bishop Percy shied at "gods," and
with admirable judgment suggested "birds," an amendment adopted by
the greater number of succeeding editors, until one or two wished
for the other phrase again, as an audacity fit for Lovelace. But
the Bishop's misgiving was after all justified by one of the Mss.
of the poem, in which the "gods" proved to be "birds" long before
he changed them. The reader may ask, what is there to choose
between birds so divine and gods so light? But to begin with
"gods" would be to make an anticlimax of the close. Lovelace led
from birds and fishes to winds, and from winds to angels.

"When linnet-like confined" is another modern reading. "When, like