morning a flea that had feasted during the night on his wife and
himself, he was overcome by its poetic possibilities, and wrote:


"This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed and temple is;
Tho' parents frown, and you, we're met
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet."


To strain after conceits, to strive for quaintness of thought and
expression, was the striking characteristic of all the poets of the
generation, to whom Dr. Johnson gave the title Metaphysical, and who are
now known as the Marinists. There were Quarles, with his Dutch
_Emblems_; Vaughan, Sandys, Crashaw, and pure-souled George Herbert,
with his _Temple_. There were Carew, with the _Rapture_; Wither and his
"Shall I wasting in despair"; the two dashing Cavaliers Suckling and
Lovelace, the latter the only man who ever received an M.A. for his
personal beauty. There was Herrick, the dispossessed Devonshire rector,
with _Hesperides_ and _Noble Numbers_, freer than were the others from
the beauty-marring conceits of the time. There, too, were to be found
the gallant love-maker Waller, Cowley, the queen's secretary during her
exile, and Marvell, Milton's assistant Secretary of State. But these
three men were to pledge allegiance to a new sovereignty in English
verse.

In the civil strife, Waller had at first sided with Parliament, had
later engaged in a plot against it, and after a year's imprisonment was
exiled to France. At this time the Academy, organized to introduce form
and method in the French language and literature, held full sway.