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See also: English poet, was See also: born at See also: Woolwich in 1618
.
He was a See also: scion of a Kentish See also: family, and inherited a tradition of military distinction, maintained by successive generations from the See also: time of See also: Edward III
.
His See also: father, See also: Sir See also: William
See also: Lovelace, had served in the Low Countries, received the honour of See also: knighthood from See also: James I., and was killed at Grolle in 1628
.
His
See also: brother, See also: Francis Lovelace, the " Colonel Francis " of Lucasta, served on the See also: side of See also: Charles I., and de-fended Caermarthen in 1644
.
His
See also: mother's family was legal; her grandfather had been chief baron of the See also: exchequer
.
See also: Richard was educated at the See also: Charterhouse and at See also: Gloucester See also: Hall,
See also: Oxford, where he matriculated in 1634
.
Through the See also: request of one of the See also: queen's ladies on the royal visit to Oxford he was made M.A., though only in his second See also: year at the university
.
Lovelace's fame has been kept alive by a few songs and the See also: romance of his career, and his poems are commonly spoken of as careless improvisations, and merely the amusements of an active soldier
.
But the unhappy course of his See also: life gave him more leisure for verse-making than opportunity of soldiering
.
Before the outbreak of the See also: civil war in 1642 his only active service was in the bloodless expedition which ended in the Pacification of See also: Berwick in 164o
.
On the conclusion of See also: peace he entered into possession of the family estates at Bethersden, See also: Canterbury, Chart and Halden in Kent
.
By that time he was one of the most distinguished of the See also: company of courtly poets gathered round Queen Henrietta, who were influenced as a school by contemporary French writers of vers de societe
.
He wrote a See also: comedy, The See also: Scholar, when he was sixteen, and a tragedy, The -Soldier, when he was twenty-one
.
From what he says of See also: Fletcher, it would seem that this dramatist was his See also: model, but only the prologue and See also: epilogue to his comedy have been preserved
.
When the rupture between See also: king and parliament took place, Lovelace was committed to the
See also: Gatehouse at See also: Westminster for presenting to the See also: Commons in 1642 a petition from Kentish royalists in the king's favour
.
It was then that he wrote his most famous See also: song, " To Althea from Prison." He was liberated, says See also: Wood, on See also: bail of £40,000 (more probably £4000), and throughout the civil war was a prisoner on parole, with this security in the hands of his enemies
.
He contrived, however, to render considerable service to the king's cause
.
He provided his two See also: brothers with See also: money to raise men for the Royalist army, and befriended many of the king's adherents
.
He was especially generous to scholars and musicians, and among his associates in See also: London were See also: Henry Lawes and
See also: John Gamble, the Cottons, Sir
See also: Peter See also: Lely, Andrew Marvell and probably Sir John Suckling
.
He joined the king at Oxford in 1645, and after the surrender of the city in 1646 he raised a regiment for the service of the French king
.
He was wounded at the siege of See also: Dunkirk, and with his brother See also: Dudley, who had acted as captain in his brother's command, returned to See also: England in 1648
.
It is not known whether the brothers took any See also: part in the disturbances in Kent of that year, but both were imprisoned at Petre See also: House in Alders-See also: gate
.
During this second imprisonment he collected and revised for the See also: press a See also: volume of occasional poems, many if not most of which had previously appeared in various publications
.
The volume was published in 1649 under the title of Lucasta, his poetical name—contracted from Lux Casta—for a lady rashly identified by Wood as See also: Lucy Sacheverell, who, it is said, married another during his See also: absence in See also: France, on a report that he had died of his wounds at Dunkirk
.
The last ten years of Lovelace's life were passed in obscurity . His See also: fortune had been exhausted in the king's See also: interest, and he is said to have been supported by the generosity of See also: friends
.
He died in 1658 " in a cellar in Long-See also: acre," according to See also: Aubrey, who, however, possibly exaggerates his poverty
.
A volume of Lovelace's Posthume Poems was published in 1659 by his brother Dudley
.
They are of inferior merit to his own collection
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The See also: world has done no injustice to Lovelace in neglecting all but a few of his modest offerings to literature
.
But critics often do him injustice in dismissing him as a gay See also: cavalier, who dashed off his verses hastily and cared little what became of them
.
It is a See also: mistake to class him with Suckling; he has neither Suckling's easy See also: grace nor his reckless spontaneity
.
We have only to compare the version of any of his poems in Lucasta with the See also: form in which it originally appeared to see how fastidious was his revision
.
In many places it takes time to decipher his meaning
.
The expression is often elliptical, the syntax inverted and tortuous, the train of thought intricate and discontinuous
.
These faults—they are not of course to be found in his two or three popular lyrics, " Going to the See also: Wars," " To Althea from Prison," " The See also: Scrutiny "—are, however, as in the See also: case of his poetical master, See also: Donne, the faults not of haste but of over-elaboration
.
His thoughts are not the first thoughts of an See also: improvisatore, but -thoughts ten or twenty stages removed from the first, and they are generally as closely packed as they are far-fetched
.
His poems were edited by W
.
C
.
See also: Hazlitt in 1864
.
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