Charles Webbe, whose life is usually dated approximately from 1650 to about 1680, occupies a small but intriguing place in the history of English Restoration poetry. He is remembered less through a substantial published body of work than through a handful of lyrics and, above all, through the persistent afterlife of one forceful poem of love and emotional extremity. The uncertainty surrounding even the spelling of hi…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Charles Webbe
Poet B
Richard Lovelace
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 76%
Poems 88%
Blended 81%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Richard Lovelace, born on 9 December 1617 and dead by 1657, occupies a distinctive place in English literary history as one of the finest poets associated with the Cavalier tradition. His name is inseparable from two of the most frequently quoted lyrics of the seventeenth century: “I could not love thee, Dear, so much, / Loved I not Honour more” and “Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.” Such mem…
In time
Charles Webbe
Richard Lovelace
1617
1680
They overlapped for 8 years (1650–1657).
When Charles Webbe was born, Richard Lovelace was about 33.
Charles Webbe was about 7 when Richard Lovelace died.
On the map
About 80 km separate Sidcup, London, England from Woolwich, Kent, England. Both have ground in England.
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Charles Webbe only
From the biographies
Charles Webbe: restoration poetry, more love or more disdain, against indifference, emotional extremity, thirty years' war, commonwealth and protectorate, charles ii, henry purcell. Richard Lovelace: cavalier tradition, charterhouse school, gloucester hall, to althea, from prison, to lucasta, going to the warres, sir william lovelace, george goring, royalist.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
1650
Battle of Dunbar
1651
Battle of Worcester
Charles Webbe
Richard Lovelace
Emotional landscapes
Charles Webbe: Longing, Despair, Sorrow. Richard Lovelace: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.