As an amatory poet, he is far superior to Waller: he had equal smoothness and fancy, and much more variety, tenderness, and earnestness; if his love was less ambitiously, and even less honourably placed, it was, at least, more deep seated, and far more fervent. The real name of the lady he has celebrated under the poetical appellation of Celia, is not known--it is only certain that she was no "fabled fair,"--and that his love was repaid with falsehood. Hard fate! to have been once possessed As victor of a heart, Achieved with labour and unrest, And then forced to depart! From the irregular habits of Carew, it is possible he might have set the example of inconstancy; and yet this is but a poor excuse for _her_. Carew spent his life in the Court of Charles the First, who admired and loved him for his wit and amiable manners, though he reproved his _libertinage_. In the midst of that dissipation, which has polluted some of his poems, he was full of high poetic feeling, and a truly generous lover: for even while he wooes his fair one in the most soul-moving terms of flowery adulation and tender entreaty, he puts her on her guard against his own arts, and thus sweetly pleads against himself; Rather let the lover pine, Than his pale cheek should assign A perpetual blush to thine! And his admiration of female chastity is elsewhere frequently, as well as forcibly, expressed.--With all his elegance and tenderness, Carew is never feeble; and in his laments there is nothing whining or unmanly. After lavishing at the feet of his mistress the most passionate devotion, and the most exquisite flattery, hear him rebuke her pride with all the spirit of an offended poet! Know, Celia! since thou art so proud, 'Twas I that gave thee thy renown; Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd Of common beauties, lived unknown, Had not my verse exhaled thy name, And with it impt the wings of fame. That killing power is none of thine, I gave it to thy voice and eyes, Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine. Thou art my star--shin'st in my skies; Then dart not from thy borrowed sphere Light'ning on him, who fixed thee there. The identity of his Celia is now lost in a name,--and she deserves it: perhaps had she appreciated the love she inspired, and been true to that she professed, she might have won her elegant lover back to virtue, and wreathed her fame with his for ever. Disappointed in the object of his idolatry, Carew plunged madly into pleasure, and thus hastened his end. He died, as Clarendon tells us, with "deep remorse for his past excesses, and every manifestation of Christianity his best friends could desire."