The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
§ 1. The Caroline lyric
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The Caroline lyric, again, is a portion of the great renascence lyric which begins with Surrey and Wyatt, includes the great masters of Elizabethan song and, as Swinburne has finely said, “grows fuller if not brighter through a whole chain of constellations till it culminates in the crowning star of Herrick.” Yet, if the unity of English song from Tottel’s Miscellany to Hesperides is undeniable, it must be acknowledged that, as we pass from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, a certain change of form and temper is apparent. Many of the old melodies pass away, and are replaced by something new and different in character. The Petrarchian influence, which made itself felt, not only in the sonnet sequences, but, also, in the song-books and miscellany lyrics, of the Elizabethan age, loses much of its potency after the year 1600; its chivalrous and dreamy idealism ceases to charm, and there is a return to the greater directness and less ethereal temper of the classical lyric of Anacreon, Catullus and Horace.