and suggests that _Lucasta_ is in danger because in 1642 its author had been imprisoned by order of the House of Commons for presenting a petition from Kent which prayed for the restoration of the Book of Common Prayer. This danger is, however, overcome by the ladies, who rise in arms to defend their favourite poet. "But when the beauteous Ladies came to know That their dear Lovelace was endangered so, Lovelace that thaw'd the most congealed breast, He who lov'd best and them defended best, They all in mutiny, though yet undrest, Sally'd." One of them challenged Marvell as to whether he had not been of the poet's traducers, but he answered No! "O No, mistake not, I reply'd, for I In your defence or in his cause would die. But he, secure of glory and of time, Above their envy or my aid doth climb. Him, bravest men and fairest nymphs approve, His book in them finds Judgment, with you, Love." Lovelace did not live to see the Restoration, but died in a mean lodging near Shoe Lane in April 1658, and was buried in St. Bridget's Church. Let us indulge the hope that the friends who occupied so many of the introductory pages of Lovelace's _Lucasta_ occasionally enlivened the solitude and relieved the distress of the poet whose praises they had once sung with so much vigour. As Marvell was undoubtedly a friendly man, and one who loved to be alone with his friends, and had never any house of his own to keep up, living for the most part in hired lodgings, it would be unkind to doubt that he at least did not forget Lovelace in his poverty and depression of spirit. In 1649 thirty-three poets combined to weep over the early grave of the Lord Henry Hastings, the eldest son of the sixth Earl of Huntingdon, who died of the smallpox in the twentieth year of his age. Not even this plentiful discharge of poets' tears should rob the young nobleman of his claim to be regarded as a fine example of the great learning, accomplishments, and high spirits of the age. We can still produce the thirty-three poets, but what young nobleman is there who can boast such erudition as had rewarded the scorned delights and the laborious days of this Lord Hastings? We have at least the satisfaction of knowing that did such a one exist he probably would not die of the smallpox. Among the poets who wept on this occasion were Herrick, Sir John Denham, Andrew Marvell, and John Dryden, then a Westminster schoolboy, whose description of the smallpox is as bad as the disease. Marvell's verses begin very prettily and soon introduce a characteristic touch:-- "Go, stand betwixt the Morning and the Flowers, And ere they fall arrest the early showers, Hastings is dead; and we disconsolate With early tears must mourn his early fate."