Many of the poems are patriotic battle-pieces; some present the shepherd in the usual fashion as consumed by the ardor of his love, being wishing and pining, sighing and weeping. That seeming extravagance of passion--that talk of flames and darts--was not entirely conventional: "How charming Phillis is, how fair! O that she were as willing To ease my wounded heart of care, And make her eyes less killing!" It was not only exaggeration. I am quite certain that men and women were far less self-governed formerly than now: when, for instance, they were in love, they were much more in love than now. The passion possessed them and transported them and inflamed them. Their pangs of jealousy tore them to pieces; they must get their mistress or they will go mad. Nay, it is only of late--say during the last hundred years--that we have learned to restrain passions of any kind. Love, jealousy, envy, hatred, were far fiercer emotions under the Second Charles--nay, even under the Second George--than they are with us. Anger was far more common. It does not seem as if men and women, especially of the lower classes, ever attempted in the least to restrain their passions. To be sure they could at once have it out in a fight--a thing which excuses wrath. To inquire into the causes of the universal softening of manners would take us too far. But we may note as a certain fact that passions are more restrained and not so overwhelming: that love is milder, wrath more governed, and that manners are softened for us.