Edmund Waller, 1605-1687:  he was a cousin of John Hampden.  By great care and adroitness he seems to have trimmed between the two parties in the civil war, but was suspected by both.  His poetry was like himself, artificial and designed to please, but has little depth of sentiment.  Like other poets, he praised Cromwell in 1654 in A Panegyric, and welcomed Charles II. in 1660, upon His Majesty’s Happy Return.  His greatest benefaction to English poetry was in refining its language and harmonizing its versification.  He has all the conceits and strained wit of the metaphysical school.

Sir William Davenant, 1605-1668:  he was the son of a vintner, but sometimes claimed to be the natural son of Shakspeare, who was intimate with his father and mother.  An ardent Loyalist, he was imprisoned at the beginning of the civil war, but escaped to France.  He is best known by his heroic poem Gondibert, founded upon the reign of King Aribert of Lombardy, in the seventh century.  The French taste which he brought back from his exile, is shown in his own dramas, and in his efforts to restore the theatre at the Restoration.  His best plays are the Cruel Brother and The Law against Lovers.  He was knighted by Charles I., and succeeded Ben Jonson as poet laureate.  On his monument in Westminster Abbey are these words:  “O rare Sir William Davenant.”

Charles Cotton, 1630-1687:  he was a wit and a poet, and is best known as the friend of Izaak Walton.  He made an addition to Walton’s Complete Angler, which is found in all the later editions.  The companion of Walton in his fishing excursions on the river Dove, Cotton addressed many of his poems to his “Adopted Father.”  He made travesties upon Virgil and Lucian, which are characterized by great licentiousness; and wrote a gossiping and humorous Voyage to Ireland.

Henry Vaughan, 1614-1695:  he was called the Silurist, from his residence in Wales, the country of the Silures.  He is favorably known by the Silex Scintillans, or, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations.  With a rigid religious tone, he has all the attempt at rhetorical effect which mark the metaphysical school, but his language is harsher and more rugged.  He has more heart than most of his colleagues, and extracts of great terseness and beauty are still made from his poems.  He reproves the corruptions of the age, and while acknowledging an indebtedness, he gives us a clue to his inspiration:  “The first, that with any effectual success attempted a diversion of this foul and overflowing stream, was that blessed man, Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least.”