THE spirit of the seventeenth century Cavaliers has been made familiar to us by historians and romancers, but it did not find very adequate expression in contemporary verse. There are two perfect songs by Lovelace, “To Althea from Prison” and “To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars.” But if we look into collections like Charles Mackay’s “Songs of the Cavaliers,” we are disappointed. These consist mainly of political campaign songs little removed from doggerel, satires by Butler and Cleveland, and rollicking ballad choruses by Alexander Brome, Sir Roger L’Estrange, Sir Richard Fanshawe, who was Prince Rupert’s secretary; or haply by that gallant royalist gentleman, Arthur Lord Capel, executed, though a prisoner of war, after the surrender of Colchester. You may remember Milton’s sonnet “To the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of Colchester.” These were the marks of a Cavalier ballad: to abuse the Roundheads, to be convivial and profane, to profess a reckless daring in fight, devotion to the ladies, and loyalty to church and king. The gay courage of the Cavalier contrasted itself with the grim and stubborn valor of the Roundhead. The bitterest drop in the cup of the defeated kingsmen was that they were beaten by their social inferiors, by muckers and religious fanatics who cropped their hair, wore narrow bands instead of lace collars, and droned long prayers through their noses; people like the butcher Harrison and the leather-seller, Praise-God Barebones, and the brewers, cobblers, grocers and like mechanical trades who figured as the preachers in Cromwell’s New Model army. The usual commonplaces of anti-Puritan satire, the alleged greed and hypocrisy of the despised but victorious faction, their ridiculous solemnity, their illiteracy, contentiousness, superstition, and hatred of all liberal arts, are duly set forth in such pieces as “The Anarchie,” “The Geneva Ballad,” and “Hey then, up go we.” The most popular of all these was the famous song, “When the King enjoys his own again,” which Ritson indeed calls—but surely with much exaggeration—the most famous song of any time or country. And though today we see Whitehall With cobwebs hung around the wall, Yet Heaven shall make amends for all When the King enjoys his own again.