Late in life Herrick published his one book, _Hesperides and Noble Numbers_ (1648). The latter half contains his religious poems, and one has only to read there the remarkable "Litany" to see how the religious terror that finds expression in Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_ could master even the most careless of Cavalier singers. SUCKLING AND LOVELACE. Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) was one of the most brilliant wits of the court of Charles I, who wrote poetry as he exercised a horse or fought a duel, because it was considered a gentleman's accomplishment in those days. His poems, "struck from his wild life like sparks from his rapier," are utterly trivial, and, even in his best known "Ballad Upon a Wedding," rarely rise above mere doggerel. It is only the romance of his life--his rich, brilliant, careless youth, and his poverty and suicide in Paris, whither he fled because of his devotion to the Stuarts--that keeps his name alive in our literature. In his life and poetry Sir Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) offers a remarkable parallel to Suckling, and the two are often classed together as perfect representatives of the followers of King Charles. Lovelace's _Lucasta_, a volume of love lyrics, is generally on a higher plane than Suckling's work; and a few of the poems like "To Lucasta," and "To Althea, from Prison," deserve the secure place they have won. In the latter occur the oft-quoted lines: Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty. JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea-- Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free; So didst thou travel on life's common way In cheerful godliness: and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. (From Wordsworth's "Sonnet on Milton") Shakespeare and Milton are the two figures that tower conspicuously above the goodly fellowship of men who have made our literature famous. Each is representative of the age that produced him, and together they form a suggestive commentary upon the two forces that rule our humanity,--the force of impulse and the force of a fixed purpose. Shakespeare is the poet of impulse, of the loves, hates, fears, jealousies, and ambitions that swayed the men of his age. Milton is the poet of steadfast will and purpose, who moves like a god amid the fears and hopes and changing impulses of the world, regarding them as trivial and momentary things that can never swerve a great soul from its course.