J.B.Lippinr CYCLOPAEDIA ENGLISH POETRY SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH POETS: BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICES, ESSAY ON ENGLISH POETRY. BY THOMAS CAMPBELL, ESQ. A NEW EDITION, REVISED, WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1875. ADVERTISEMENT. WITH this, the Second Edition of these Specimens, their original Editor has had nothing to do, being prevented by other engagements from resuming the task of revising them. Various inaccuracies of the former edition have been removed in this, some silently, for it had been burdening the book with use- less matter to have retained them in the text, and pointed them out in a note, while others, that entangled a thought or gave weight to it, have been al- lowed to stand, but not without notes to stop the perpetuity of the error. With many of the now-discovered inaccuracies of the work in dates and mere minutiae, Mr. Campbell is not properly chargeable : some may be laid to the excursive nature of his task ; others to the imperfect information of those days compared with ours, for we cannot have lived two-and-twenty years without important additions to our literary facts. Mr. Campbell's excellent taste in the selection of these Specimens has never been disputed ; and of his Critical Disquisitions the best eulogy is in the fact that no work of any importance on our literary history has been written since they were published, without commendatory references to them ; in particular, that they have been corrected and appealed to by Lord Byron, applaudingly quoted by Sir Walter Scott, and frequently cited and referred to by Mr. Hallam. LIST OF AUTHORS GEOFFREY CHAUCER. JOHN GOWER. JOHN LYDGATE. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND ROBERT HEXRYSOXE. WILLIAM DUNBAR. SIR DAVID LYNDSAY. SIR THOMAS WYAT. HENRY HOWARD, EARL or STOUT. LORD VAUX. RICHARD EDWARDS. WILLIAM HUNNIS. THOMAS SACKVILLE, BAEOS BUCKHURST AND EARL 01 DOB8K>. GEORGE GASCOIGNB. JOHN HARRINGTON. SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. ROBERT GREENE. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. ROBERT SOUTHWELL. THOMAS WATSON. EDMUND SPENSER. UNCERTAIN AUTHORS. JOHN LYLY. GEORGE PEELE, ALEXANDER HUME. THOMAS NASH. EDWARD VERB, EAKL or Oxrom THOMAS STORER. JOSEPH HALL. WILLIAM WARNER. SIR JOHN HARRINGTON. FROM HENRY PERROTS BOOK OF EPIGRAMS. SIR THOMAS OVERBURY. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. SIR WALTER RALEIGH. JOSHUA SYLVESTER, SAMUEL DANIEL. GILES AM) PHINEAS FLETCHER. HENRY CONSTABLE. NICHOLAS BRETON. DR. THOMA^ LODGE. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. SIR JOHN DA VIES. THOMAS GOFFE. SIR FULKE GREVILLE. SIR JOHN BEAUMONT. SIR ROBERT AYTON. MICHAEL DRAYTON. EDWARD FAIRFAX. SAMUEL ROWLANDS. JOHN DONNE, DJ). THOMAS PICKE. GEORGE HERBERT. JOHN MARSTON. GEORGE CHAPMAN. THOMAS RANDOLPH. RICHARD CORBET. THOMAS MIDDLETON. RICHARD NICCOLS. CHARLES FITZGEFFREY. BEN JONSON. THOMAS CAREW. SIR HENRY WOTTON. WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EAAL Of &TEBLHIK. NATHANIEL FIELD. THOMAS DEKKER. JOHN WEBSTER. JOHN FORD. WILLIAM ROWLEY. PHTT.TP MASSINGER. SIR JOHN SUCKLING. SIDNEY GODOLPUIN. WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT. GEORGE SANDYS. ANONYMOUS. FRANCISs QUARLE3. WILLIAM BROWNE. THOMAS NABBES. THOMAS HEYWOOD. WILLIAM DRUMMOND. THOMAS MAY. RICHARD CRASHAW. WILLIAM HABINGTON. JOHN HALL. WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNX Til _ "^"l viii LIST OF AUTHORS. RICHARD LOVELACE. HENRY VAUGHAN. JAMES BRAMSTON. ANONYMOUS. JOHN DRYDEN. WILLIAM MESTON. KATHERINE PHILIPS. SIR CHARLES SEDLEY. THOMAS WARTON. WILLIAM HKMIXGE. JOHN POMFRET. THOMAS SOUTHBRNB. JAMES SHIRLEY. THOMAS BROWN. ROBERT BLAIR. ALEXANDER BROME. CHARLES SACK.VILLE, EARL OP JAMES THOMSON. ROBERT HERRICK. DORSET: ISAAC WATTS. ABRAHAM OOWLBY. GEORGE STEPNEY. AMBROSE PHILIPS. SIB RICHARD FANSHAWE. JOHN PHILIPS. LEONARD WELSTED. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. WILLIAM WALSH. AMHURST SELDEN. SIR JOHN DENHAM. ANONYMOUS. WILLIAM CRAWFURD. JOHN BULTEEL. ROBERT GOULD. AARON HILL. GEORGE WITHER. DR. WALTER POPE, WILLIAM HAMILTON. DR. HENRY KING. THOMAS PARNELL. GILBERT WEST. DR. ROBERT WILDE. NICHOLAS ROWE. WILLIAM COLLINS. SIR JOHN MENNIS AKD JAMES SAMUEL GARTH. COLLBY CIBBBR. SMITH. PETER ANTHONY MOTTEUX. EDWARD MOORE. JASPER MAYNE. JOSEPH ADDISON. JOHN DYER. RICHARD BRATHWAITB. MATTHEW PRIOR. ALLAN RAMSAY. JOHN MILTON. DR. GEORGE SEWELL. SIR CHARLES HANDBURY WIL ANDREW MARVELL SIR JOHN VANBRUGil. LIAMS. THOMAS STANLEY. WILLIAM CONCRETE. ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNB. JOHN WILMOT, EARL or ROCHES- ELIJAH FENTON. JOHN BYROM. TER. EDWARD WARD. WILLIAM SHENSTONB. SAMUEL BUTLER. JOHN GAY. HENRY CAREY. ISAAK WALTON. BARTON BOOTH. CHARLES CHURCHILL. WENTWORTH DILLON, EARL OF GEORGB GRANVILLE, LORD ROBERT DODSLEY. ROSCOIOION. LANSDOWNE. ROBERT LLOYD. THOMAS OTWAY MATTHEW GREEN. DAVID MALLET. ANONYMOUS. GEORGE LILLO. EDWARD YOUNG. N. HOOK. THOMAS TICKELL. JOHN BROWN. PHILIP AYRES. JAMES HAMMOND. MICHAEL BRUCE. EDMUND WALLER, CHARLES COTTON. JOHN OLDMIXON. JAMBS GRAINGER. DR. HENRY MORE. WILLIAM SOMERVILE. JOHN GILBERT COOPER. GEORGE ETHEREGB. RICHARD WEST. JAMBS MERRICK. THOMAS K I, ATM AN. JAMBS EYRE WEEKE8 WILLIAM FALOONEB. APURA BEHN. RICHARD SAVAGB. MARK AKENSIDB. NATHANIEL LEE. ALEXANDER POPB. THOMAS CHATTERTON. THOMAS SUADWELL. JONATHAN BWOT?. CHRISTOPHER SMART. LIST OF AUTHORS. THOMAS GB-AY. CUTHBERT SHAW. TOBIAS SMOLLETT. ANONYMOUS. JOHN CUNNINGHAM. GEORGE, LORD LYTTELTON. ROBERT FERGUSSON. THOMAS SCOTT. HIILIP DORMER STANHOPE, EARL or CHESTERFIELD. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. PAUL WHITEHEAD. WALTER HARTK. ANONYMOUS. EDWARD LOYIBOND. FRANCIS FAWKES. ANONYMOUa JOHN ARMSTRONG. JOHN RICHARDSON. JOHN LANGHORNB. THOMAS PENROSB. SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONH. SIR JOHN HENRY MOORE, BART. RICHARD JAGO. HENRY BROOKE. JOHN SCOTT. GEORGE ALEXANDER STE- VENS. DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. MRS. GREVILLE. WILLIAM WHITEHEAD. RICHARD GLOVER. JOHN HALL 8TEPHEN80N EDWARD THOMPSON. HENRY HBADLEY. THOMAS RUSSELL. JOHN LOGAN. ROBERT NUGENT, EAEL Nu GENT. WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE. NATHANIEL COTTON. TIMOTHY DWIGHT JAMES WHYTB. THOMAS WARTON. THOMAS BLACKLOCR. WILLIAM HAYWARD ROBERTS, SIR WILLIAM JONES. SAMUEL BISHOP. JOHN BAMPFYLDE. ROBERT BURNS. WILLIAM MASON. JOSEPH WARTON. WILLIAM COWPEB. ERASMUS DARWIN. JAMES BEATTIE. CHRUTOPHEB ANBTBT. CONTENTS. PA91 ESSAY ON ENGLISH POETRY. 1 GEOFFREY CHAUCER 65 The Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales". 69 JOHN GOWER 76 The Tale of the Coffers or Caskets, t 165 Sonnet from " Caelica" . . ^ KJJ SIR JOHN BEAUMONT ... 1 65 Richard before the Battle of Bosworth .. i6<| CONTENTS. XT PAGE MICHAEL DRAYTON 166 Mortimer, Earl of March, and the Queen, surprised bj Edward III. in Nottingham Castle (from "The Barons' Wars," Book VI.) 167 Nymphidia, the Court of Fairy 169 The Quest of Cynthia. 175 Ballad of Dowsabel 176 To his coy Love (from his Odes) 177 Sonnet to his Fair Idea 177 Description of Morning, Birds, and hunting the Deer (Poly-Olbion, Song XIII.) 177 EDWARD FAIRFAX 179 From his Translation of lasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Book XVIIL 179 SAMUEL ROWLANDS 181 Like Master, like Man (from "The Knave of Spades") 181 Tragedy of Smug the Smith (from "The Night Raven") 182 The Vicar (from his Epigrams) 182 Fools and Babes tell True (from "The Knave of Spades") 182 The married Scholar. 182 JOHN DONNE, D.D 182 The Break of Day 183 The Dream 183 On the Lord Harrington, t 370 On a Woman's Inconstancy (from the same) .. 370 The Church Builder (from Poems for the October Club, 1711) .. 371 CONTENTS. xxiu PAGE EGBERT GOULD 371 Song (from "The Violence of Love, or the Rival Sisters") 371 Song (from the same) 371 DR. WALTER POPE * 372 The Old Man's Wish 372 THOMAS PARNELL 372 A Fairy Tale. In the ancient English Style 373 The Book-worm 375 An Imitation of some French Verses 375 A Night-piece on Death 376 The Hermit. 377 Piety, or the Vision 379 Hymn to Contentment 380 NICHOLAS ROWE- 381 Lucilla conjuring Calista to conquer her Passion for Lothario (from " The Fair Penitent," Act II. Scene I.) 381 Sciolto, the Father of Calista, finds her watching the Dead Body of Lothario by Lamp- light, in a Room hung round with black (from the same, Act V. Scene L) 381 Colin's Complaint 383 SAMUEL GARTH 384 The Dispensary, Canto I. 384 PETER ANTHONY MOTTEUX 386 Song (from "Mars and Venus") 386 A Rondeleaux (in "The Mock Marriage" by Scott) 386 JOSEPH ADDISON 387 A Letter from Italy 387 An Ode 388 Paraphrase on Psalm XXIII 388 MATTHEW PRIOR 389 The Lady's Looking-glass. In Imitation of a Greek Idyll him 389 An Answer to Chloe 390 The Remedy worse than the Disease..... 390 Partial Fame 390 Song 390 An Epitaph 390 Protogenes and Apelles 391 The Cameleon 391 From "Alma, or the Progress of the Mind" (Canto II.) 392 DR. GEORGE SEWELL.^ 393 Verses said to be written by the Author on himself when he was in a Consumption 394 SIR JOHN VANBRUGH 394 Fable. Related by a Beau to Esop 394 WILLIAM CONGREVE 395 From the "Mourning Bride" 395 Song... 397 ELIJAH FENTON 397 An Ode to Lord Gower , 398 xxiv CONTENTS. PAGE EDWARD WARD 398 Song 399 JOHN GAY 399 Monday; or the Squabble 400 Thursday; or the Spell 401 Saturday; or the Flights , 402 The Birth of the Squire. In Imitation of the Pollio of Virgil 403 Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan 404 The Court of Death, a Fable 405 A Ballad (from " The What-d'ye-call-it") 405 BARTON BOOTH 406 Song 406 MATTHEW GREEN 408 From the "Spleen" 406 GEORGE GRANVILLE, LORD LAXSDOWNE 408 Song 408 GEORGE LILLO 409 From the "Fatal Curiosity" 410 THOMAS TICKELL 415 To the Earl of Warwick, on the Death of Mr. Addison 415 Colin and Lucy, a Ballad 416 JAMES HAMMOND 417 Elegy XIH 417 JOHN OLDMIXON 418 Song (from his " Poems on several Occasions, in Imitation of the Manner of Anacreon"). 418 On himself (from Anacreon,) 418 WILLIAM SOMERVILLE 419 Bacchus Triumphant, a Tale 419 RICHARD WEST 420 Ad Amicos 420 JAMES EYRE WEEKES 421 The Five Traitors, a Song (from Poems printed at Cork, 1743) 421 RICHARD SAVAGE 422 The Bastard 422 ALEXANDER POPE 423 The Dying Christian to his Soul 424 The Rape of the Lock, Canto I. 424 Canto II 425 Canto III. 426 ^^ Canto IV 428 Canto V 429 JONATHAN SWIFT .' 431 Baucis and Philemon. On the ever-lamented Loss of the two Yew Trees in the Parish of Chilthorne, Somerset, 1708 (imitated from the eighth Book of Ovid) 431 On Poetry. A Rhapsody, 1733 . 43^ CONTENTS. MM JAMES BRAMSTON J 437 The Man of Taste 437 WILLIAM MESTON 439 The Cobbler. An Irish Tale (from Mother Grim's Tales) 440 THOMAS SOUTHERNE 442 From the Tragedy of "The Fatal Marriage," Act IV. Scene II 442 Act V. Scene 1 444 Scene II 444 Song (in "Sir Anthony Love, or the Rambling Lady") 445 THOMAS WHARTON 446 Retirement An Ode 446 Verses written after seeing Windsor Castle 446 An American Love Ode (from the second Volume of Montaigne's Essays) 446 BOBERT BLAIR 44 From "The Grave" 447 JAMES THOMSON 449 The Castle of Indolence, Canto 1 450 To Fortune 457 Rule Britannia 457 AMBROSE PHILIPS 458 To the Earl of Dorset 458 A Hymn to Venus (from the Greek of Sappho) 458 A Fragment of Sappho 459 ISAAC WATTS 459 Few happy Matches 459 LEONARD WELSTED 460 From his "Summum Bonum" 460 AMHURST SELDEN 461 Love and Folly. Arraignment and Trial of Cupid 461 Canto II 465 From Canto IV 467 WILLIAM CRAWFURD 470 Tweedside 470 The Bush aboon Traquair 470 On Mrs. A. H. at a Concert 470 AARON HILL 471 Verses written by the Author when alone in an Inn at Southampton 471 Alexis; or Pope, 471 WILLIAM HAMILTON 472 From Contemplation, or the Triumph of Love 472 Song 473 GILBERT WEST 474 Allegorical description of Vertu (from the "Abuse of Travelling") 474 WILLIAM COLLINS 475 Ode to Evening 476 Ode on the popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, considered as the Subject of Poetry (inscribed to Mr. John Hume) 476 D 8 CONTENTS. MM COLLET GIBBER. .-. 479 Song. The Blind Boy 479 EDWARD MOORE 479 The Discovery. An Ode 479 The Happy Marriage 480 JOHN DYER 481 Grongar Hill . 481 ALLAN RAMSAY. 482 From "The Gentle Shepherd," Act I. Scene II 485 Song ~ 487 SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS 487 Ode. To a great Number of great Men, newly made 487 ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE 488 A PIPE OF TOBACCO, IN IMITATION OP six SEVERAL AUTHORS : Imitation I. Colley Gibber 488 Imitation II. Amb. Philips 489 Imitation III. James Thomson 489 Imitation IV. Dr. Young 489 Imitation V. Mr. Pope 490 Imitation VI. Dean Swift 490 JOHN BYROM 490 A Pastoral 490 WILLIAM SHENSTONE 491 The Schoolmistress (in Imitation of Spenser) 492 Elegy. Describing the Sorrow of an ingenuous Mind on the melancholy Event of a licentious Amour 496 From Rural Eelgance. An Ode to the Duchess of Somerset 497 Ode to Memory 497 HENRY CAREY 498 Sally in our Alley 498 CHARLES CHURCHILL 499 Introduction to "The Rosciad" 501 Character of a critical Fribble (from the same) 501 Characters of Quin, Tom Sheridan, and Garrick (from the same) 502 From "The Prophecy of Famine" 503 ROBERT DODSLEY 505 Song 505 Song. The Parting Kiss 506 ROBERT LLOYD 506 Chit-chat (an Imitation of Theocritus) 506 DAVID MALLET 608 William and Margaret. .. 509 Song 510 EDWARD YOUNG 5JO Introduction to the " Night Thoughts" Uncertainty of human Happiness Universality of human Misery __ 5j2 CONTENTS. zxrii MM Apology for the Seriousness of the Subject (from Night II.) 513 Madness of Men in Pursuit of Amusements (from the same) 514 Blessedness of the Son of Foresight (from the same) 514 Society necessary to Happiness (from the same) 514 Complaint for Narcissa (from Night III.) 514 Comparison of the Soul viewing the Prospects of Immortality to the Prisoner enlarged from a Dungeon (from Night IV.) 515 The Danger to Virtue of Infection from the World (from Night V.) 615 Insufficiency of Genius without Virtue (from Night VI.) 518 Description of the Man whose Thoughts are not of this World (from Night VIII.) 516 The Love of Praise (from Satire I.) 516 Propensity of Man to false and fantastic Joys (from Satire V.) 516 Characters of Women The Astronomical Lady (from the same) 517 The Languid Lady (from the same) 517 The Swearer (from the same) 517 The Wedded Wit (from the same) 517 JOHN BROWN 517 From the Tragedy of " Barbarossa" 518 From the same 519 Selim's Soliloquy before the Insurrection.. 519 MICHAEL BRUCE 520 From the "llegy on Spring" 520 From "Lochleven" 521 JAMES GRAINGER 521 Ode to Solitude 521 JOHN GILBERT COOPER 522 Song. 523 Song 523 JAMES MERRICK 523 The Wish 523 WILLIAM FALCONER 524 Character of the Officers (from "The Shipwreck") 525 Evening described Midnight the Ship weighing Anchor and departing from the Haven (from the same) 526 Distress of the Vessel Heaving of the Guns overboard (from the same) 528 Council of Officers. Albert's directions to prepare for the last Extremities (from the same) 528 The Vessel going to Pieces Death of Albert (from the same) 530 MARK AKENSIDE 531 From "The Pleasures of Imagination" (Book I.) 532 Final Cause of our Pleasure in Beauty (from the same) 534 Mental Beauty (from the same) 534 All the natural passions, Grief, Pity, and Indignation, partake of a pleasing sensation (from Book II.) 535 Enjoyments of Genius in collecting her Stores for Composition (from Book III.) 535 Conclusion (from the same) 636 Inscription for a Bust of Shakspeare 537 THOMAS CHATTERTON 537 Bristowe Trajjedie, or the Dethe of Syr Charles Bawdin 540 xiviii CONTENTS. PAOI CHRISTOPHER SMART 544 Soliloquy of the Princess Periwinkle (in the mock play of " A Trip to Cambridge, or the Grateful Fair") 545 Ode on an Eagle confined in a College Court 545 THOMAS GRAY 546 The Bard: a Pindaric Ode 547 The Alliance of Education and Government A Fragment. 548 On Vicissitude 549 The Tragedy of Agrippina. A Fragment 550 CUTHBERT SHAW 552 From "A Monody to the Memory of his Wife" 552 TOBIAS SMOLLETT 554 The Tears of Scotland 555 Ode to Leven Water. Ode to Independence 556 JOHN CUNNINGHAM 657 Content: a Pastoral. 557 May-Eve; or, Kate of Aberdeen 558 ANONYMOUS. Song (from the Shamrock, or Hibernian Crosses, Dublin, 1772) 558 Epigram on two Monopolists (from the same) 558 GEORGE, LORD LYTTELTON 559 From the "Monody" 559 Prologue to " Coriolanus" 560 ROBERT FERGUSON 560 The Farmer's Ingle 561 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, EARL OP CHESTERFIELD 662 On Nash's Picture at full Length between the Busts of Sir I. Newton and Mr. Pope, at Bath 562 THOMAS SCOTT 563 Government of the Mind (from Lyric Poems) 563 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 563 The Traveller 568 The Deserted Village 571 The Haunch of Venison 575 PAUL WHITEHEAD 576 Hunting Song 577 WALTER HARTE 577 Eulogius: or, the Charitable Mason 579 Contentment, Industry, and Acquiescence under the Divine Will : an Ode 581 ANONYMOUS. Verses copied from the Window of an obscure Lodging-house, in the Neigh- bourhood of London (from the Annual Register for 1774) 582 EDWARD LOVIBOND 533 The Tears of Old May-Day 533 Song to * * 534 FRANCIS FAWKES 584 The Brown Jug t> 534 CONTENTS. MM ANONYMOUS. The Old Bachelor. After the manner of Spenser 585 JOHN ARMSTRONG 586 Opening of the Poem in an Invocation to Hygeia (from " The Art of Preserving Health," Book I.) 588 Choice of a Rural Situation, and an Allegorical Picture of the Quartan Ague (from the same) 589 Recommendation of a high Situation on the Sea-coast (from the same) 589 Address to the Naiads (from Book II.) 590 RICHARDSON 590 Ode to a Singing Bird... 590 JOHN LANGHORNE 591 Prom "The Country Justice" 592 Gipsies (from the same) 594 From the same 594 A Case where Mercy should have mitigated Justice (from the same) 595 Owen of Carron 595 THOMAS PENROSE 601 The Helmets: a Fragment 601 The Field of Battle 602 SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE 602 The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse 602 SIR JOHN HENRY MOORE, BART 603 L'Amour Timide 603 Song 603 RICHARD JAGO , 604 Labour and Genius; or, the Mill-stream and the Cascade: a Fable 604 Absence 605 HENRY BROOKE 605 The Reptile and Insect World (from "Universal Beauty," Book V.) 606 JOHN SCOTT 608 Ode on hearing the Drum 609 Ode on Privateering 609 The Tempestuous Evening: an Ode 609 GEORGE ALEXANDER STEVENS 610 The Wine Vault 610 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 611 London 611 The Vanity of Human Wishes. 614 Drury-Lane Prologue 617 On the Death of Robert Levett. 618 MRS. GREVILLE 613 Prayer for Indifference 618 WILLIAM WHITEHEAD 619 Ilyssus meeting Creusa (from his Tragedy of "Creuwi") 522 Variety. A Tale for Married People 623 3 MX CONTENTS. PAGE RICHARD GLOVER 626 Opening of the Poem of " Leonidas" 628 From Book II 629 Prom Book VI 630 From Book VIIL 632 From Book IX 634 From Book XII 636 Admiral Hosier's Ghost. 636 JOHN HALL STEPHENSON 637 The Blackbird 637 To Miss 637 EDWARD THOMPSON 638 The Sailor's Farewell 638 Song 639 Song. 639 HENRY HEADLEY 639 From his "Invocation to Melancholy" 640 THOMAS RUSSELL 640 Sonnet To Valclusa 640 Sonnet Supposed to be written at Lemnos 641 JOHN LOGAN 641 Ode to the Cuckoo 641 The Lovers 642 ROBERT NUGENT, EARL NUGENT 643 Ode to William Pulteney, Esq 644 Ode to Mankind 644 WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE 646 From Syr Martyn 648 NATHANIEL COTTON.. 652 The Fireside 652 TIMOTHY DWIGHT .. 653 Death of Irad, and Lamentation over his Body (from his "Conquest of Canaan") 653 Prediction made by the Angel to Joshua of the future Discovery and Happiness of America, and of the Millennium (from the same) 654 JAMES WHYTE 655 Simile 655 THOMAS WARTON 655 Verses on Sir Joshua Reynolds's painted Window at New College, Oxford 657 Inscription in a Hermitage 658 The Hamlet , 659 The Suicide 659 The Crusade 660 The Grave of King Arthur. 661 Sonnet, written after seeing Wilton House 662 THOMAS BLACKLOCK 662 The Author's Picture 553 Ode to Aurora. On Melissa's Birth-day 664 CONTENTS. xxxi PAOI WILLIAM HAYWARD ROBERTS 664 From "Judah Restored" (Book I.) 664 From the same 6C6 From Book IV 663 From Book VI 668 SIR WILLIAM JONES 669 A Persian Song of Hafiz 673 An Ode. In Imitation of Alcseus. 673 SAMUEL BISHOP 674 To Mrs. Bishop 674 To the same 674 Epigram. Quod petis, hie est 674 Epigram. Splendeat ueu 675 Epigram. Quocunque modo rein 675 JOHN BAMPFYLDE 675 Sonnet 675 Sonnet. To the Redbreast 675 Sonnet. On a wet Summer 675 Sonnet. 676 EGBERT BURNS 676 The TwaDogs 680 Address to the Deil 682 To a Mountain Daisy 683 Tarn o' Shanter. 684 Song. "0 poortith cauld," Ac 685 To Mary in Heaven 686 Song. To Jessy 686 .Bruce to his men at Bannockburn. 686 Song. Mary Morison 686 Song. "Oh, were I on Parnassus Hill" 687 Song. "Had I a cave," Ac 687 WILLIAM MASON 687 Opening Scene of "Caractacus" 690 From the same 691 From the same 693 The Capture of Caractacus (from the same) 694 Epitaph on Mrs. Mason 695 An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers '696 JOSEPH WARTON 698 Ode to Fancy ... 700 The Dying Indian 701 To Music 701 WILLIAM COWPER 703 From "The Task" (Book I.) 710 Opening of the second Book of "The Task" 711 From Book IV 712 From Book VI 713 On the Loss of the Royal George 714 Yardley Oak 714 xxxii CONTENTS. PAGE To Mary 716 To Mrs. Anne Bodham 716 Lines on his Mother's Picture 716 ERASMUS DARWIN 717 Destruction of Cambyses' Army (from "The Botanic Garden," Canto II.) 718 Persuasion to Mothers to suckle their own Children (from Canto III.) 719 Midnight Conflagration Catastrophe of the Families of Woodmason and Molesworth (from the same) 719 The heroic Attachment of the Youth in Holland, who attended his Mistress in the Plague (from Canto IV.) . 720 JAMES BEATTIE 720 The Minstrel (Book I.) 722 CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY 727 From the New Bath Guide 728 APPENDIX > 731 IXDBX 739 ESSAY ON ENGLISH POETRY. PART I. THE influence of the Norman conquest upon the language of England was like that of a great inundation, which at first buries the face of the landscape under its waters, but which at last subsiding, leaves behind it the elements of new beauty and fertility. Its first-effect was to degrade the Anglo-Saxon tongue to the exclusive use of the inferior orders ; and by the transference of .estates, ecclesiastical benefices, and civil dignities, to Norman possessors, to give the French lan- guage, which had begun to prevail at court from the time of Edward the Confessor, a more complete predominance among the higher classes of society. The native gentry of England were either driven into jjxile, or depressed into a state of dependence on their conqueror, which habituated them to speak his language. On the other hand, we re- ceived from the Normans the first germs of romantic poetry ; and our language was ulti- mately indebted to them for a wealth and compass of expression which it probably would not have otherwise possessed. The Anglo-Saxon, however, was not lost, though it was superseded by French, and disappeared as the language of superior life and of public business. It is found written in prose, at the end of Stephen's reign, nearly * As the Saxon Chronicle relates the death of Stephen, it must have been written after that event ELMS, Early Eng. Poets, vol i. p. 60, and vol. iii. p. 404, Ed. 1801. What is commonly called the Saxon Chronicle is con- tinued to the death of Stephen, in 1154, and in the same language, though with pome loss of its purity. Besides the neglect of several grammatical rules, French words now and then obtrude themselves, but not very frequen tly, in the latter pages of this Chronicle. HALLAM, Lit. ffist. yol. i. p. 69. C. ( Introduction to Johnson's Dictionary. Nor can it be expected, from the nature of things gradually changing, that any time can be assigned when Saxon may be said to cease, and the English to commpnce .... Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen. a century after the Conquest; and the Saxon Chronicle, which thus exhibits it,* contains even a fragment of verse, professed to have been composed by an individual who had seen William the Conqueror. To fix upon any precise time when the national speech can be said to have ceased to be Saxon, and begun to be English, is pronounced by Dr. Johnson to be impossible.! It is undoubt- edly difficult, if it be possible, from the gra- dually progressive nature of language, as well as from the doubt, with regard to dates, which hangs over the small number of spe- cimens of the early tongue which we possess. Mr. Ellis fixes upon a period of about forty years, preceding the accession of Henry III., from 1180 to 1216, during which he conceives modern English to have been formed. % The opinions of Mr. Ellis, which are always de- livered with candour, and almost always founded on intelligent views, are not to be lightly treated; and I hope I shall not ap- pear to be either captious or inconsiderate in disputing them. But it seems to me, that he rather arbitrarily defines the number of years which he supposes to have elapsed in the formation of our language, when he as- signs forty years for that formation. He af- terwards speaks of the vulgar English having About the year 1150, the Saxon began to take a form in which the beginning of the present English may be plainly discovered : this change seems not to have been the effect of the Xorman conquest, for very few French words aro found to have bt-en introduced in the first hundred year* after it ; the language must therefore have been altered by causes like those which, notwithstanding the care of writers and societies instituted to obviate them, are even now daily making innovations in every living language. Jonxsox. C. { It is only justice to Mr. Ellis to give his date correctly. 1185. " We may fairly infer," Mr. Ellis writes, " that the Saxon language and literature began to be mixed with the Norman about 1185 ; and.that in 1216 the change may be considered as complete." 0. 1 ENGLISH POETRY. suddenly superseded the pure and legitimate Saxon.* Now, if the supposed period could be fixed with any degree of accuracy to thirty or forty years, one might waive the question whether a transmutation occupying so much time could, with propriety or otherwise, be called a sudden one ; but when we find that there are no sufficient data for fixing its boundaries even to fifty years, the idea of a sudden transition in the language becomes inadmissible. The mixture of our literature and language with the Norman, or, in other words, the formation of English, commenced, according to Mr. Ellis, in 1180 [5]. At that period, he calculates that Layarnon, the first translator from French into the native tongue, finished his version of Wace's " Brut." This trans- lation, however, he pronounces to be still un- mixed, though barbarous Saxon.f It is cer- tainly not very easy to conceive how the sudden and distinct formation of English can be said to have commenced with unmixed Saxon; but Mr. Ellis, possibly, meant the period of Layamon's work to be the date after, and not at which the change may be understood to have begun. Yet, while he pronounces Layamon's language unmixed Saxon, he considers it to be such a sort of * " The most striking peculiarity," says Mr. Ellis, " in the establishment of our vulgar English is, that it seems to have very suddenly superseded the pure and legitimate Saxon, from which its elements were principally derived, instead of becoming its successor, as generally has been supposed, by a slow and imperceptible process." Speci- mens of Early English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 404. Omclusion. f- Mr. Kllis (p. 73) says, "very barbarous Saxon." " So little," says Sir Walter Scott in his Review of Mr. Ellis's Specimens, "were the Saxon and Norman languages cal- culated to amalgamate, that though Layamon wrote in the reign of Henry II., his language is almost pure Saxon; and hence it is probable, that if the mixed lan- guage now called English at all existed, it was deemed as yet unfit for composition, and only used as a piebald jar- gon *V carrying on the indispensable intercourse betwixt the Anglo-Saxons and Normans. In process of time, however, the dialect so much despised made its way into the service of the poets, and seems to have superseded the use of the Saxon, although the French, being the court language, continued to maintain its ground till a later period." Mite. Pr. Works, vol. xvii. p. 8. C. t It seems reasonable to infer that Layamon's work was composed at or very near the period when the Saxons and Normans in this country began to unite into one nation, and to adopt a common language. EU.it, vol. i. p. 75. C. \ If Layamon's work was finished in 1180 [1185], the verses in the Saxon Chronicle, on the death of William the Conqueror, said to be written by one who had seen Saxon as required but the substitution of a few French for Saxon words to become Eng- lish.J Nothing more, in Mr. Ellis's opinion, was necessary to change the old into the new native tongue, and to produce an exact re- semblance between the Saxon of the twelfth century, and the English of the thirteenth; early in which century, according to Mr. Ellis, the new language was fully formed, or, as he afterwards more cautiously expresses him- self, was "in its far advanced state." The reader will please to recollect, that the two main circumstances in the change of Anglo- Saxon into English, are the adoption of French words, and the suppression of the in- flections of the Saxon noun and verb. Now, if Layamon's style exhibits a language need- ing only a few French words to be convert- ible into English, the Anglo-Saxon must have made some progress, before Layamon's time, to an English form. Whether that progress was made rapidly, or suddenly, we have not sufficient specimens of the language, anterior to Layamon, to determine. But that the change was not sudden but gradual, I con- ceive, is much more probably to be presumed.^ Layamon, however, whether we call him Saxon or English, certainly exhibits a dawn of English. And when did this dawn appear ? that monarch, cannot he considered as a specimen of the language immediately anterior to Layamon. But St. Godric is said to have died in 1170, and the verses ascribed to him might have been written at a time nearly preceding Layamon's work. Of St. Godric's verses a very few may be compared with a few of Layamon'g. ST. GODRIC. Sainte Marie Christie's bur ! Maiden's clenhud, Modere's flur ! Dillie mine pinnen, rix in mine mod, Bring me to winne with selfe God. In English. Saint Mary, Christ's bower Maiden's pu- rity, Motherhood's flower Destroy my sin, reign in my mood or mind Bring me to dwell with the very God. LATAMOJT. And of alle than folke The wuneden ther on folde, Wes thisses londes folk Leodene hendest itald ; And alswa the wimmen Wunliche on heow-.n. In English. And of all the folk tnat dwelt on earth was this land's folk the handsomest, (people told ;) and also the women handsome of hue. Here are four lines of St. Godric, in all probability earlier than Layamon's ; and yet does the English reader find Layamon at all more intelligible, or does he seem to make any thing like a sudden transition to English, as the poetical successor of St. Godric ? ENGLISH POETRY. 3 Mr. Ellis computes that it was in 1180 [5], placing it thus late, because Wace took a great many years to translate his " Brut" from Geoffrey of Monmouth; and because Layamon, who translated that " Brut," was probably twenty-five years engaged in the task.* But this is attempting to be precise in dates, where there is no ground for pre- cision. It is quite as easy to suppose that the English translator finished hiij work in ten as in twenty years ; so that the change from Saxon to English would commence in 1265 [1165?], and thus the forty years' ex- odus of our language, supposing it bounded to 1216, would extend to half a century. So difficult is it to fix any definite period for the commencing formation of English. It is easy to speak of a child being born at an ex- press time ; but the birth-epochs of languages are not to be registered with the same pre- cision and facility.! Again, as to the end of Mr. Ellis's period: it is inferred by him, that the formation of the language was either completed or far advanced in 1216, from the facility of rhyming displayed in Robert of Gloucester,^ and in pieces belonging to the middle of the thirteenth century, or perhaps to an earlier date. I own that, to me, this theorizing by conjecture seems like stepping in quicksand. Robert of Gloucester wrote in 1280 ; and surely his rhyming with fa- cility then, does not prove the English lan- guage to have been fully formed in 1216. * Ware finished his translation in 1155, after, Mr. Ellis supposes, thirty years' labour: l.ayamon. he assumes, was the same period, finishing it in 1185; - perhaps," he says, "the earliest date that can be assigned to it." Specimens of Early English Poetry, vol. i. pp. 75, 76. "Layamon's age," says Mr. Hallam, "is uncertain; it must have been after 1155, when the original poem was completed, and can hardly be placed below 1200. His language is accounted rather Anglo-Saxon than English." Lit. Hist. vol. i. p. 69. C. t Nothing can be more difficult, except by an arbitrary line, than to determine the commencement of the English language. \Vhcn we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce why it should pass for a sepa- rate language, rather than a motlification or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage. ;md say tlmt the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English l.-t. l>y contracting or otherwise modifying the pronun- ciation and orthography of words; 2dly, by omitting many inflections, especially of the nouns, and conse- quently making more use of articles and auxiliaries; 3dly, by the introduction of French derivatives; 4thly, by using less inversion and ellipsis, especially in poetry. Of these, the second alone I think can be considered as suf- fieient to describe a new form of language ; and this was brought about so gradually, that we are not relieved from much of our difficulty whether some compositions shall But we have pieces, it seems, which are sup- posed to have been written early in the thirteenth century. To give any support to Mr. Ellis's theory, such pieces must be proved to have been produced very early in the thirteenth century. Their coming to- wards the middle of it, and showing facility of rhyming at that late date, will prove little or nothing. But of these poetical fragments supposed to commence either with or early in the thirteenth century, our antiquaries afford us dates which, though often confidently pro- nounced, are really only conjectural; and in fixing those conjectural dates, they are by no moans agreed. Warton speaks of this and that article being certainly not later than the reign of Richard I.; but he takes no pains to authenticate what he affirms. He pronounces the love-song, " Blow, northern wind, blow, blow, blow !" to be as old as the year 1200. || Mr. Ellis puts it off only to about half a century later. Hickes places the " Land of Cokayne" just after the Con- quest. Mr. Warton would place it befwe the Conquest, if he were not deterred by the appearance of a few Norman words, and by the learned authority of Hickes.f Layamon would thus be superseded, as quite a modern. The truth is, respecting the "Land of Co- ka} r ne," that we are left in total astonishment at the circumstance of men, so well informed as Hickes and Warton, placing it either be- pass for the latest offspring of the mother; or the earliest fruits of the daughter's fertility. It is a proof of this dil- ficulty. that the best masters of our ancient language have lately introduced the word Semi-Saxon, which is to cover every thing from 1150 to 1250. HALLAM, Lit. Hist. vol. i. p. 57. C. J Robert of Gloucester, who is placed by the critics in the thirteenth century, seems to have used a kind of in- termediate diction, neither Saxon nor English : in his work, therefore, we see the transition exhibited. JOHX- so\. C. As Robert of Gloucester alludes to the canonization of St. Louis in 1297, it is obvious, however much he wrote before, he was writing after that event. Sre Sir F. Mad- den's Harriott, p. liii. C. || Warton says, "before or about," which is lax enough. Pi-tef't Warton, vol. i. p. 28. Ed. 1824. C. fl It is not of the ' Land of Cokayne" that Warton says this, but of a religious or moral ode, consisting of one hundred and ninety-one stanzas. Price's Warttnt, vol. 1. p. 7. Of the " Land of Cokayne" he has said that it is a satire, which clearly exemplifies the Saxon adul- t-rated by the Norman, and was evidently written soon after the Conquest at least soon after the reign of HcnryW II., p. 9. Mr. Price (p. 7) follows Mr. Campbell in the age he would attach to the verse quoted in the first section of Warton, which is, he says, very arbitrary and uncer tain. C. ENGLISH POETRY. fore or immediately after the Conquest, as its language is comparatively modern. It contains allusions to pinnacles in buildings, which -were not introduced till the reign of Henry III.* Mr. Ellis is not so rash as to place that production, which Hickes and Warton removed to near the Conquest, ear- lier than the thirteenth century ; and I be- lieve it may be placed even late in that century. In short, -where shall we fix upon the first poem that is decidedly English? and how shall we ascertain its date to a certainty within any moderate number of years? Instead of supposing the period of the formation of English to commence at 1180 [1185?], and to end at 1216, we might, without violence to any known fact, extend it back to several years earlier, and bring it down to a great many years later. In the fair idea of English we surely, in general, understand a considerable mixture of French words.f Now, whatever may have been done in the twelfth century, with regard to that change from Saxon to English which consists in the extinction of Saxon gram- matical inflections, it is plain that the other characteristic of English, viz. its Gallicism, was only beginning in the thirteenth cen- tury. The English language could not be said to be saturated with French, till the days of Chaucer; i. e. it did not, till his time, receive all the French words which it was capable of retaining. Mr. Ellis never- theless tells us that the vulgar English, not gradually, but suddenly, superseded the le- gitimate Saxon. When this sudden succes- sion precisely began, it seems to be as difficult to ascertain, as when it ended. The sudden transition, by Mr. Ellis's own theory, occupied about forty years ; and, to all ap- pearance, that term might be lengthened, with respect to its commencement and con- tinuance, to fourscore years at least. The Saxon language, we are told, had ceased to be poetically cultivated for some time previous to the Conquest. This might be the case with regard to lofty efforts of composition; but Ingulphus, the secretary of William the Conqueror, speaks of the popular ballads of the English, in praise of their heroes, which were sung about the * * So gays Gray to Mason, (Works by Mitford, vol. Hi. p. 305) ; but this is endeavouring to settle a point by a questionable date one uncertainty by nnotber. 0. f In comparing Robert of Gloucester with Layamon, a native of the same county, and a writer on the same streets; and William of Malmsbury, in the twelfth century, continues to make mention of them.| The pretensions of these ballads to the name of poetry we are unhappily, from the loss of them, unable to estimate. For a long time after the Conquest, the na- tive minstrelsy, though it probably was never altogether extinct, may be supposed to have sunk to the lowest ebb. No human pursuit is more sensible than poetry to na- tional pride or mortification; and a race of peasants, like the Saxons, struggling for bare subsistence, under all the dependence, and without the protection, of the feudal system, were in a state the most ungenial to feelings of poetical enthusiasm. For more than one century after the Conquest, as we are informed, an Englishman was a term of contempt. So much has time altered the associations attached to a name, which we should now employ as the first appeal to the pride or intrepidity of those who bear it. By degrees, however, the Norman and na- tive races began to coalesce, and their pa- triotism and political interests to be iden- tified. The crown and aristocracy having become, during their struggles, to a certain degree, candidates for the favour of the peo- ple, and rivals in affording them protection, free burghs and chartered corporations were increased, and commerce and social inter- course began to quicken. Mr. Ellis alludes to an Anglo-Norman jargon having been spoken in commercial intercourse, from which he conceives our synonymes to have been derived. That individuals, imperfectly understanding each other, might accidental- ly speak a broken jargon, may be easily conceived; but that such a lingua Franca was ever the distinct dialect, even of a mer- cantile class, Mr. Ellis proves neither by specimens nor historical evidence. The sy- nonymes in our language may certainly be accounted for by the gradual entrance of French words, without supposing an inter- mediate jargon. The national speech, it is true, received a vast influx of French words ; but it received them by degrees, and sub- dued them, as they came in, to its own idioms and grammar Yet, difficult as it may be to pronounce subject, it will appear that a great quantity of French had flowed into the language since the loss of Normandy. II.VLI.AM, Lit, Hist. vol. i. p. 61. C. J William of Malmsbury drw much of his informa- tion from those Saxon bal^adn. ENGLISH POETRY". precisely when Saxon can be said to have ceased and English to have begun, it must be supposed that the progress and improve- ment of the national speech was most con- siderable at those epochs which tended to restore the importance of the people. The hypothesis of a sudden transmutation of Saxon into English appears, on the whole, not to be distinctly made out. At the same time, some public events might be highly favourable to the progress and cultivation of the language. Of those events, the esta- blishment of municipal governments, and of elective magistrates in the towns, must have been very important, as they furnished ma- terials and incentives for daily discussion and popular eloquence. As property and security increased among the people, we may also suppose the native minstrelsy to have revived. The minstrels, or those who wrote for them, translated or imitated Norman ro- mances ; and in so doing, enriched the lan- guage with many new words, which they borrowed from the .originals, either from * Vide Tyrwhitt's Preface to the Canterbury Tales, where a distinct account is given of the grammatical changes exhibited in the rise and progress of English. f It is likely that the Normans would hare taught us the use of rhyme and their own metres, whether these had been known or not to the Anglo-Saxons before the Conquest But respecting Mr. Tyrwhitt's position, that we owe all our forms of verse, and the use of rhyme, en- tirely to the Normans, I trust the reader will pardon me for introducing a mere doubt on a subject which cannot bo interesting to many. With respect to rhyme, I might lay some stress on the authority of Mr. Turner, who, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, says that the Anglo- Saxon versification possessed occasional rhyme ; but as he admits that rhyme formed no part of its constituent character, for fear of assuming too much, let it be ad- mitted that we have no extant specimens of rhyme in our language before the Conquest. One stanza of a bal- lad shall indeed be mentioned, as an exception to this, which may be admitted or rejected, at the reader's plea- sure. In the mean time let it be recollected, that if we have not rhyme in the vernacular verse, we have exam- ples of it in the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon churchmen abundance of it in Bede's and Boniface's Latin verses. We meet also, in the same writers, with lines which re- flemble modern verse in their trochaic and iambic struc- ture, considering that structure not as classical but accentual metre. Take, for example, these verses : "Quando Christus Deus noster Natus est ex Virgine " which go precisely in the same cadence with such modern trocbaics as " Would you hear how once repining Great Eliza captive lay." And we have many such lines as these : " Ut floreas cum domino In sempiterno solio Qua Martyres in cuneo," Ac. which flow exactly like the lines in L 1 Allegro : want of corresponding terms in their own vocabulary, or from the words appearing to be more agreeable. Thus, in a general view, we may say that, amidst the early growth of her commerce, literature, and civilization, England acquired the new form of her lan- guage, which was destined to carry to the ends of the earth the blessings from which it sprung. In the formation of English from its Saxon and Norman materials, the genius of the native tongue might be said to prevail, as it subdued to Saxon grammar and construction the numerous French words which found their way into the language.* But it was otherwise with respect to our poetry in which, after the Conquest, the Norman Muse must be regarded as the earliest preceptress of our own. Mr. Tyrwhitt has even said, and his opinion seems to be generally adopt- ed, that we are indebted for the use of rhyme, and for all the forms of our versifi- cation, entirely to the Normans.f What- ever might be the case with regard to our "The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty. And pomp, and feast, and revelry. With masque, and antique pageantry." Those Latin lines are, in fact, a prototype of our own eight-syllable iambic. It is singular that rhyme and such metres as the above, which are generally supposed to have come into the other modern languages from the Latin rhymes of the church, should not have found their way from thence into the Anglo-Saxon vernacular verse. But they certainly did not, we shall be told ; for there is no appearance of them in the specimens of Anglo-Saxon verse, before the Conquest. Of such specimens, however, it is not pretended that we have any thing like a full or regular series. On the contrary, many Saxon ballads, which have been alluded to by Anglo-Norman writers as of considerable antiquity, have been lost with the very names of their composers. And from a few articles saved in such a wreck, can we pronounce confidently on the whole contents of the cargo? The following solitary stanza, however, has been preserved, from a ballad at- tributed to Canute the Great. " Merry sungen the Muneches binnen Ely, The Cnut Ching reUther by, Roweth Cnites noer the land, And here we thes Muniches sang." " Merry sang the Monks in Ely, When Canute King was sailing by : Row, ye knights, near the land, And let us hear these Monks' song." There is something very like rhyme in the Anglo-Saxon stanza. I have no doubt that Canute heard the monks singing Latin rhymes; and I have some suspicion that ha finished his Saxon ballad in rhyme also. Thomas of Ely, who knew the whole song, translates his specimen of it in Latin lines, which, whether by accident or design, rhyme to each other. The genius of the ancient Anglo- Saxon poetry, Mr. Turner observes, was obscure, peri- 4* ENGLISH POETRY. forms of versification, the chief employment of our earliest versifiers certainly was to transplant the fictions of the Norman school, and to naturalize them in our language. The most liberal patronage was afforded to Norman minstrelsy in England by the first kings of the new dynasty. This en- couragement, and the consequent cultivation of the northern dialect of French, gave it so much the superiority over the southern or troubadour dialect, that the French language, according to the acknowledgment of its best informed antiquaries, received from England and Normandy the first of its works which deserve to be cited. The Norman trouveurs, it is allowed, were more eminent narrative poets than the ProvenQal troubadours. No people had a better right to be the founders of chivalrous poetry than the Normans. They were the most energetic generation of modern men. Their leader, by the conquest of England in the eleventh century, conso- lidated the feudal system upon a broader basis than it ever had before possessed. Be- fore the end of the same century, Chivalry rose to its full growth as an institution, by the circumstance of martial zeal being en- listed under the banners of superstition. The crusades, though they certainly did not give birth to jousts and tournaments, must have imparted to them a new spirit and in- terest, as the preparatory images of a con- secrated warfare. And those spectacles constituted a source of description to the romancers, to which no exact counterpart is to be found in the heroic poetry of antiquity. But the growth of what may properly be called romantic poetry was not instantane- ous after the Conquest ; and it was not till " English Richard ploughed the deep," that the crusaders seem to have found a place among the heroes of romance. Till the mid- dle of the twelfth century, or possibly later, no work of professed fiction, or bearing any semblance to epic fable, can be traced in Norman verse nothing but songs, satires, chronicles, or didactic works, to all of which, however, the name of Romance, derived from the Roman descent of the French tongue, ph rustical, and elliptical : but, according to that writer's conjecture, a new and humble, but perspicuous style of ]ioetry was introduced at a later time, in the shape of the narrative ballad. In this plainer style we may conceive the possibility of rhyme having found a place : because the verse would stand in need of that ornament to dis- tinguish it from prose, more than in the elliptical and Inverted manner. With regard to our anapaestic mea- was applied in the early and wide accepta- tion of the word. To these succeeded the genuine Metrical Romance, which, though often rhapsodical and desultory, had still in- vention, ingenuity, and design, sufficient to distinguish it from the dry and dreary chronicle. The reign of French metrical romance may be chiefly assigned to the lat- ter part of the twelfth, and the whole of the thirteenth century ; that of English metrical romance, to the latter part of the thirteenth, and the whole of the fourteenth* century. Those ages of chivalrous song were, in the mean time, fraught with events which, while they undermined the feudal system, gradu- ally prepared the way for the decline of chivalry itself. Literature and science were commencing, and even in the improvement of the mechanical skill employed to heighten chivalrous or superstitious magnificence, the seeds of arts, industry, and plebeian inde- pendence were unconsciously sown. One invention, that of gunpowder, is eminently marked out as the cause of the extinction of Chivalry ; but even if that invention had not taken place, it may well be conjectured that the contrivance of other means of mis- sile destruction in war, and the improvement of tactics, would have narrowed that scope for the prominence of individual prowess which was necessary for the chivalrous cha- racter, and that the progress of civilization must have ultimately levelled its romantic consequence. But to anticipate the remote effects of such causes, if scarcely within the ken of philosophy, was still less within the reach of poetry. Chivalry was still in all its glory; and to the eye of the poet ap- peared as likely as ever to be immortal. The progress of civilization even ministered to its external importance. The early arts made chivalrous life, with all its pomp and ceremonies, more august and imposing, and more picturesque as a subject for descrip- tion. Literature, for a time, contributed to the same effect, by her jejune and fabulous efforts at history, in which the athletic wor- thies of classical story and of modern ro- mance were gravely connected by an ideal sure, or triple-time verse, Dr. Percy has shown that its ru- diments can be traced to Scaldic poetry. 1 1 is often found very distinct in Langlande ; and that species of verse, at least, I conceive, is not necessarily to be rt'ferr.d to a Norman origin. * The practice of translating French rhyn-mg romances into English verse, however, continued down to the reign of Henry VII. ENGLISH POETRY. genealogy.* Thus the dawn of human im- provement smiled on the fabric which it was ultimately to destroy, as the morning sun gilds and beautifies those masses of frost- work, which are to melt before its noonday heat. The elements of romantic fiction have been traced up to various sources; but neither the Scaldic, nor Saracenic, nor Armorican theory of its origin can sufficiently account for all its materials. Many of them are classical, and others derived from the Scrip- tures. The migrations ^f_Science are diffi- cult enough to be traced ; but Fiction travels on still lighter wings, and scatters the seeds of her wild flowers imperceptibly over the world, till they surprise us by springing up with similarity in regions the most remotely divided/)- There was a vague and unselect- ing love of the marvellous in romance, which sought for adventures, like its knights er- rant, in every quarter where they could be found; so that it is easier to admit of all the sources which are imputed to that species of fiction, than to limit our belief to any one of them.J Norman verse dwelt for a considerable time in the tedious historic style, before it Twriw, reached the shape of amusing fable ; Centurj. an( J W g g n( J ^e ear li es t efforts Of the Native Muse confined to translating Norman * Geoffrey of Monmouth's history, of which the modern opinion seems to be, that it was not a forgery, but de- rived from an Armorican original, and the pseudo-Tur- pin'g Life of Charlemagne, were the grand historical magazines of the romancers. [Ellis'g Met. Rnm. vol. i. p. 76.] Popular songs about Arthur and Charlemagne (or, as some will have it, Charles Martel), were probably the main sources of Turpin's forgery and of Geoffrey's Armoriran book. Even the proverbial mendacity of the pseuilo-Turpin must have been indebted for the leading bints to sonps that were extant respecting Charlemagne. The stream of fiction having thus spread itself in those grand prose reservoirs, afterwards flowed out from thence again in the shape of verse, with a force renewed by ac- cumulation. Once more, as if destined to alternations, romance, after the fourteenth century, returned to the shape of prose, and in many instances made and carried pretensions to the sober credibility of history. f It is common fairness to Mr. Campbell, to say that the late Mr. Price has cited this passage as one distin- guishable alike for its truth and its beauty, that esta- blishes the fact that popular fiction is in its nature traditive. Intrnd. to Wartm's Hist. p. 92. C. J Various theories have been proposed for the purpose of explaining the origin of romantic fiction. Percy con- tended for a Scandinavian, Warton for an Arabian, and Leyden for an Armorican birth, to which Ellis inclined; while some have supposed it to be of Provencal, and others of Norman invention. If every argument has not b.-en exhausted, every hypothesis has. But all their systems, as Sir Walter Scott rays, seem to be inaccurate, verse, while it still retained its uninviting form of the chronicle. The first of the Nor- man poets, from whom any versifier in the language is known to have translated, was Wace, a native of Jersey, born in the reign of Henry Il.g In the year 1155, Wace finished his "Brut d'Angleterre," which is a French version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of Great Britain, deduced from Bru- tus to Cadwallader, in 689. Layamon, a priest of Ernleye upon Severn, translated Wace's Metrical Chronicle into the verse of the popular tongue; and notwithstanding Mr. Ellis's date of 1180, [1185?] may be supposed, with equal probability, to have produced his work within ten or fifteen years after the middle of the twelfth century. || Layamon's translation may be considered as the earliest specimen of metre in the native language, posterior to the Conquest; except some lines in the Saxon Chronicle on the death of William I., and a few religious rhymes, which, according to Matthew Paris, the Blessed Virgin was pleased to dictate to St. Godric, the hermit, near Durham ; unless we add to these the specimen of Saxor poetry published in the Archaeologia by Mr. Conybeare, who supposes that compo- sition to be posterior to the Conquest, and to be the last expiring voice of the Saxon Muse.fl Of the dialect of Layamon, Mr. in so far as they have been adopted exclusively of each other, and of the general proposition, that fables of a nature similar to the Romances of Chivalry, modified ac- cording to manners and the state of society, must neces- sarily be invented in every part of the world, for the same reason that grass grows upon the surface of the soil in every climate and in every country. (3/>c. P. IF. vol. vi. p. 174.) "In reality," says Southey, "mythologi- cal and romantic tales are current among all savages ot whom we have any full account; for man has his intel- lectual as well as his bodily appetites, and these things are the food of his imagination and faith. They are found wherever there is language and discourse of reason, in other words, wherever there is man. And in similar stages of civilization, or states of society, the fictions of different people will bear a corresponding resemblance, notwithstanding the difference of time and scene. Pref. to Mart* D' Arthur. C. Ellis (p. 44) says. Henry I., whom he professes to have seen. Warton (p. 67) says he was educated at Caen, was canon of Bayeux. and chaplain to Henry II. C. I Two copies of Layamon's or Lazamon's Brut are in the British Museum, Cott. MSS. Calig. A ix. and Otho C 13. Warton and Price have only touched incidentally on Layamon, from Mr. Ellis and Mr. Campbell's showing, one of the most important authors in the English lan- guage. C. f Two specimens of the ancient state of the language, viz. the stmi/.as on old age, beginning " He may him .-or* adreden," and the quotation from the Ormulum. which Dr. Johnson placed, on the authority of Ilickes, m-irly 8 ENGLISH POETRF. Mitft >rd, in his Harmony of Languages, ob- serves, th it it has " all the appearance of a language thrown into confusion by the cir- cumstances of those who spoke it. It is truly neither Saxon nor English."* Mr. Ellis's opinion of its being simple Saxon has been already noticed. So little agreed are the most ingenious speculative men on the characteristics of style, which they shall entitle Saxon or English. We may, how- ever, on the whole, consider the style of Layamon to be as nearly the intermediate state of the old and new languages as can be found in any ancient specimen: some- thing like the new insect stirring its wings, before it has shaken off the aurelia state. But of this work, or of any specimen sup- posed to be written in the early part of the thirteenth century, displaying a sudden transition from Saxon to English, I am dis- posed to repeat my doubts. Without being over credulous about the antiquity of the Lives of the Saints, and the nth other fragments of the thirteenth j. cen t ur y, which Mr. Ellis places in chronological succession next to Layamon, we may allow that before the date of Robert of Gloucester, not only the legendary and devout style, but the amatory and satirical, had begun to be rudely cultivated in the language. It was customary, in that age, to make the minstrels sing devotional strains to the harp, on Sundays, for the edification of the people, instead of the verses on gayer subjects which were sung at public enter- tainments; a circumstance which, while it indicates the usual care of the Catholic church to make use of every hold over the popular mind, discovers also the fondness of the people for their poetry, and the attrac- tions which it had already begun to assume. Of the satirical style I have already alluded to one example in the " Land of Cokayne," un allegorical satire on the luxury of the church, couched under the description of an imaginary paradise, in which the nuns are after the Conquest, are considered by Mr. Tyrwhitt to be of a later date than Layauiou's translation. Their lan- guage is certainly more modern. * Mitford, p. 170. In the specimen of Layamon pub- lished by Mr. Ellis, not a Gallicism is to be found, nor eTen a Norman term : and so far from exhibiting any " appearance of a language thrown into confusion by the circumstances of those who spoke it," nearly every im- portant form of Anglo-Saxon grammar is rigidly adhered to; and so little was the language altered at this ad- vanced period of Norman influence, that a few slight represented as houris, and the black and gray monks as their paramours. This piece has humour, though not of the most deli- cate kind; and the language is easy and fluent, but it possesses nothing of style, sen- timent, or imagery, approaching to poetry. Another specimen of the pleasantry of the times is more valuable; because it exhibits the state of party feeling on real events, as well as the state of the language at a pre- cise time.f It is a ballad, entitled "Richard of Alemaigne," composed by one of the ad- herents of Simon de Montfort, earl of Lei- cester, after the defeat of the royal party at the battle of Lewes in 1264. In the year after that battle the royal cause was re- stored, and the earl of Warren and Sir Hugh Bigod returned from exile, and assisted in the king's victory. In this satirical ballad, those two personages are threatened with death, if they should ever fall into the hands of their enemies. Such a song and such threats must have been composed by Leicester's party in the moment of their triumph, and not after their defeat and dis- persion ; so that the date of the piece is as- certained by its contents.! This political satire leads me to mention another, which the industrious Ritson published,! and which, without violent anachronism, may be spoken of among the specimens of the thirteenth century; as it must have been composed within a few years after its close, and relates to events within its verge. It is a ballad on the execution of the Scottish patriots, Sir William Wallace and Sir Simon Eraser. The diction is as barbarous as we should expect from a song of triumph on such a subject. It relates the death and treatment of Wallace very minutely. The circum- stance of his being covered with a mock crown of laurel in Westminster Hall, which Stowe repeats, is there mentioned ; and that of his legs being fastened with iron fetters " under his horses wombe," is told with sa- vage exultation. The piece was probably variations might convert it into genuine Anglo-Saxon. PRICE, Warton, vol. i. p. 109. C. f " Though some make slight of Libels," says Selden, "yet you may see by them how the wind sits; as, take a straw, and throw it up into the air, you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not do by casting up a stone. More solid things do not show the complex- ion of the times, so well as ballads and libels." Table Talk. | See it in Percy's Reliquet, and in Wright's Pulitioal Songs of England, p. 69. C. 2 Riteon'a Ancient Songs. ENGLISH POETRY. indited in the very year of the political murders which it celebrates: certainly be- fore 1314, as it mentions the skulking of Robert Bruce, which, after the battle of Bannockburn, must have become a jest out of season.* A few love-songs of that early period have been preserved, which are not wholly desti- tute of beauty and feeling. Their expres- sion, indeed, is often quaint, and loaded with alliteration; yet it is impossible to look without a pleasing interest upon strains of tenderness which carry us back to so remote an age, and which disclose to us the softest emotions of the human mind, in times abounding with such opposite traits of his- torical recollection. Such a stanza as the following! would not disgrace the lyric poe- try of a refined age. For he For he For he For he For he lore I cark and care, love I droop and dare ; love my bliss is bare, all I wax wan. love in s[eep I slake.J love all night I wake; love mourning I make More than any man. In another pastoral strain, the lover says : When the nightingale singe's the woods waxen green; Leaf, and grasp, and blosme, springs in Averyl, I ween : And love is to my heart gone with one spear so keen, Night and day my blood it drinks my heart doth me teen. Robert, a monk of Gloucester, whose sur- name is unknown, is supposed to have finished his Rhyming Chronicle about the year 1280.$ He translated the Legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued the History of England down to the time of Edward I., in the beginning of whose reign he died. The topographical, as well as nar- rative, minuteness of his Chronicle, has made it a valuable authority to antiquaries ; and as such it was consulted by Selden, when he wrote his Notes to Drayton's " Polyol- bion." After observing some traits of hu- mour and sentiment, moderate as they may i be, in compositions as old as the middle of ! the thirteenth century, we might naturally j expect to find in Robert of Gloucester not indeed a decidedly poetical manner, but some approach to the animation of poetry. * Wright assigns it to 1306. Political Sotigs, p. 212. -- C. f It is here stripped of its antiquated spelling J I am deprived of sleep. g Ellis, vol. i. p. 97. It was evidently written after the year 1278, as the poet mentions King Arthur's sump* tuous tomb, erected in that year before the high altar of 2 But the Chronicle of this English Ennius, as he has been called, || whatever progress in the state of the language it may display, comes in reality nothing nearer the charac- ter of a work of imagination than Laya- rnon's version of Wace, which preceded it by a hundred years. One would not ima- gine, from Robert of Gloucester's style, that he belonged to a period when a single effu- sion of sentiment, or a trait of humour and vivacity, had appeared in the language. On the contrary, he seems to take us back to the nonage of poetry, when verse is em- ployed not to harmonize and beautify ex- pression, but merely to assist the memory. Were we to judge of Robert of Gloucester not as a chronicler, but as a candidate for the honours of fancy, we might be tempted to wonder at the frigidity with which he dwells, as the first possessor of such poetical ground, on the history of Lear, of Arthur, and Merlin; and with which he describes a scene so susceptible of poetical effect as the irruption of the first crusaders into Asia, preceded by the sword of fire which hung in the firmament, and guided them eastward in their path. But, in justice to the ancient versifier, we should remember, that he had still only a rude language to employ the speech of boors and burghers, which, though it might possess a few songs and satires, could afford him no models of heroic narra- tion. In such an age, the first occupant passes uninspired over subjects which might kindle the highest enthusiasm in the poet of a riper period ; as the savage treads uncon- sciously, in his deserts, over mines of incal- culable value, without sagacity to discover, or implements to explore them. In reality, his object was but to be historical. The higher orders of society still made use of French ; and scholars wrote in that lan- guage or in Latin. His Chronicle was there- fore recited to a class of his contemporaries to whom it must have been highly accept- able, as a history of their native country believed to be authentic, and composed in their native tongue. To the fabulous legends of antiquity he added a record of more re- Glastonbury church : and he declares himself a living wiinr.-'s of the remarkably dismal weather which dtetin guished the day upon which the battle of Kvnsham waf fought, in 1265. From these and other circumstances this piece appears to have been composed about the year 1280. WARTOX, vol. i. p 62. C. | By Tom Hearne, his very accurate editor. (X 10 ENGLISH POETRY. cent events, with some of which he was con- temporary. As a relater of events, he is tolerably succinct and perspicuous ; and wherever the fact is of any importance, he shows a watchful attention to keep the read- er's memory distinct with regard to chrono- logy, by making the date of the year rhyme to something prominent in the narration of the fact. Our first known versifier of the fourteenth century is Robert, commonly called De Fourteenth Brunne. He was born (according to femurj. n j g e( jit or Hearne) at Malton, in York- shire; lived for some time in the house of Sixhill, a Gilbertine monastery in Yorkshire ; and afterwards became a member of Brunne, or Browne, a priory of black canons in the same county. His real surname was Man- nyng; but the writers of history in those times (as Hearne observes) were generally the religious, and when they became cele- brated, they were designated by the names of the religious houses to which they be- longed. Thus, William of Malmsbury, Mat- thew of Westminster, and John of Glaston- bury, received these appellations from their respective monasteries.* De Brunne was, as far as we know, only a translator. His principal performance is a Rhyming Chron- icle of the History of England, in two parts, compiled from the works of Wace and Peter de Langtoft.f The declared object of his work is " Not for the lerid (learned) but for the lewed (the low). " For thoa that in this land wonn,* That the latyn no' Frankys* conn." He seems to reckon, however, if not on the attention of the " lerid," at least on that of a class above the "lewed," as he begins his address to " Lordynges that be now here." He declares also that his verse was con- structed simply, being intended neither for seggers (reciters), nor harpours (harpers). Yet it is clear from another passage, that he * Sir F. Madden supposes, and on very fair grounds, that Mannyng was born at Brunne. Havelol; p. xiv. C. t Peter de Langtoft was an Augustine canon of Brid- lington, in Yorkshire, of Norman origin, but born in England. He wrote an entire History of England in French rhymes, down to the end of the reign of Edward I. Robert de Brunne, in his Chronicle, follows Wace in the earlier part of his history, but translates the latter j part of it from Langtoft. J Virgil, when he carries us back to very ancient man- ners, in the picture of Dido's feast, appropriately makes I astronomy the first subject with which the bard lopas. *> entertains his audienca. intended his Chronicle to be sung, at least by parts, at public festivals. In the present day it would require considerable vocal powers to make so dry a recital of facts as that of De Brunne's work entertaining to an audience ; but it appears that he could offer one of the most ancient apologies of author- ship, namely, "the request of friends" for he says, " Men besoght me many a time To torn it hot in light rhyme." His Chronicle, it seems, was likely to be an acceptable work to social parties, assembled "For to haf solace and gamen/ In fellawship when they sit samen.s" In rude states of society, verse is attached to many subjects from which it is afterwards divorced by the progress of literature; and primitive poetry is found to be the organ not only of history, but of science,^ theo- logy, and of law itself. The ancient laws of the Athenians were sung at their public banquets. Even in modern times, and within the last century, the laws of Sweden were published in verse. De Brunne's versification, throughout the body of the work, is sometimes the entire Alexandrine, rhyming in couplets ; but for the most part it is only the half Alexandrine, with alternate rhymes. He thus affords a ballad metre, which seems to justify the conjecture of Hearne, that our most ancient ballads were only fragments of metrical histories. | By this time (for the date of De Brunne's Chronicle brings us down to the year 1339 1|) our popular ballads must have long added the redoubted names of Randal [Earl] of Chester, and Robin Hood, to their list of native subjects. Both of these wor- thies had died before the middle of the pre- ceding century, and, in the course of the next hundred years, their names became so popular in English song, that Langlande, in the fourteenth century, makes it part of Cithara crinitus lopas Personat aurata, docuitquse maximua Atlas; Hie canit errantem lunam, solisque labores. jEneid I. \ "The conjectures of Hearne," says Warton, (vol. i. p. 91), " were generally wrong." An opinion re-echoed in part by Ellis. Spec. vol. i. p. 117. C. | Robert De Brunne, it appears, from internal evi- dence, finished his Chronicle in May of that year, lift- SON'S ilinot. XII. He began it in 1303, as he tells us himself, in very or- dinary verse. C. o Those. * Live. c Nor. <* French. Know. / Game. g Together. ENGLISH POETRY. 11 the confession of a sluggard, that he was unable lo repeat his paternoster, though he knew plenty of rhymes about Randal of Chester and Robin Hood.* None of the extant ballads about Robin Hood are, how- ever, of any great antiquity. The style of Robert de Brunne is less marked by Saxonisms than that of Robert of Gloucester; and though he can scarcely be said to come nearer the character of a true poet than his predecessor, he is cer- tainly a smoother versifier, and evinces more facility in rhyming. It is amusing to find his editor, Hearne, so anxious to defend the moral memory of a writer, respecting whom not a circumstance is known, beyond the date of his works, and the names of the monasteries where he wore his cowl. From his willingness to favour the people with historic rhymes for their "fellawship and gamen," Hearne infers that he must have been of a jocular temper. It seems, how- ever, that the priory of Sixhill, where he lived for some time, was a house which con- sisted of women as well as men, a discovery which alarms the good antiquary for the fame of his author's personal purity. " Can we therefore think," continues Hearne, " that since he was of a jocular temper, he could be wholly free from vice, or that he should not sometimes express himself loosely to the sisters of that place ? This objection (he gravely continues) would have had some weight, had the priory of Sixhill been any way noted for luxury or lewdness; but whereas every member of it, both men and women, were very chaste, we ought by no means to suppose that Robert of Brunne behaved himself otherwise than became a good Christian, during his whole abode there." This conclusive reasoning, it may be hoped, will entirely set at rest any idle suspicions that may have crept into the reader's mind respecting the chastity of Ro- bert de Brunne. It may be added, that his writings betray not the least symptom of his having been either an Abelard among priests, or an Ovid among poets. Considerably before the date of Robert de Brunne's Chronicle, as we learn from De Brunno himself, the English minstrels, or those who wrote for them, had imitated from * Pierce Plowman's Visions, as quoted by Wurton, (vol. i. p. 92.) I.aii^lamle tells it of a friar, perhaps with truthful severity. C. the French many compositions more poetical than those historical canticles, namely, gen nuine romances. In most of those metrical stories, irregular and shapeless as they were, if we compare them with the symmetrical structure of epic fable, there was still some portion of interest, and a catastrophe brought about, after various obstacles and difficul- ties, by an agreeable surprise. The names of the writers of our early English romances have not, except in one or two instances, been even cpnjectured, nor have the dates of the majority of them been ascertained with 'any thing like precision. But in a general view, the era of English metrical romance may be said to have commenced to- wards the end of the thirteenth century. Warton, indeed, would place the commence- ment of our romance poetry considerably earlier; but Ritson challenges a proof of any English romance being known or mentioned before the close of Edward the First's reign, about which time, that is, the end of the thirteenth century, he conjectures that the romance of Hornchild may have been com- posed. It would be pleasing, if it were possible, to extend the claims of English genius in this department to any considera- ble number of original pieces. But English romance poetry, having grown out of that of France, seems never to have improved upon its original, or, rather, it may be al- lowed to have fallen beneath it. As to the originality of old English poems of this kind, we meet, in some of them, with heroes, whose Saxon names might lead us to sup- pose them indigenous fictions, which had not come into the language through a French medium. Several old Saxon ballads are al- luded to, as extant long after the Conquest, by the Anglo-Norman historians, who drew from them many facts and inferences; and there is no saying how many of these bal- lads might be recast into a romantic shape by the composers for the native minstrelsy. But, on the other hand, the Anglo-Normans appear to have been more inquisitive into Saxon legends than the Saxons themselves ; and their Muse was by no means so illiberal as to object to a hero, because he was not of their own generation. In point of fact, whatever may be alleged about the min- strels of the North Country, it is difficult, if it be possible, to find an English romance which contains no internal allusion to a 12 ENGLISH POETRY. Freuch prototype. Bitson very grudgingly allows, that three old stories may be called original English romances, until a Norman original shall be found for them;* while * Those are, " The Squire of Low Degree," " Sir Try- amour," and " Sir Eglamour." Respecting two of those, Mr. Ellis shows, that Kitson might have spared Himself the trouble of making any concession, as the antiquity of The Squire of Low Degree [Ritson, vol. iii. p. 145] re- mains to be proved, it being mentioned by no writer be- fore the sixteenth century, and not being known to be extant in any ancient MS. Sir Eglamour contains allu- sions to its Norman pedigree. The difficulty of finding an original South British ro- mance of this period, unborrowed from a Freuch Original, seems to remain undisputed : but Mr. Walter Scott, in his edition of "Sir Tristrem," has presented the public with an ancient Scottish romance, which, according to Mr. Scott's theory, would demonstrate the English lan- guage to have been cultivated earlier in Scotland than in England." In a different part of these Selections (p. 17), 1 have expressed myself in terms of more un- qualified assent to the supposition of Thomas of Ercel- doune having been an original romancer, than I should be inclined to use upon mature consideration Robert De Brunne certainly alludes to Sir Tristrem, as " the most famous of all gests" in his time.* He mentions Er- celdoune, its author, and another poet of the name of Kendale. Of Kendale, whether he was Scotch or Eng- lish, nothing seems to be known with certainty. With respect to Thomas of Erceldouue, or Thomas the Khymer, the Auchinleck MS. published by my illustrious friend, professes to be the work not of Erceldoune himself, but of some minstrel or reciter who had heard the story from Thomas. Its language is confessed to be that of the fourteenth century, anil the MS. is not pretended to be less than eighty years older than the supposed date of Thomas of Erceldoune's romance. Accordingly, what- ever Thomas the Rhymer's production might be, this Auchinleck MS. is not a transcript of it, but the trans- cript of the composition of some one, who heard the story from Thomas of Erceldoune. It is a specimen of Scottish poetry not in the thirteenth but the fourteenth century. How much of the matter or manner of Thomas the Rhymer was retained by his deputy reciter of the story, eighty years after the assumed date of Thomas's work, is a subject of mere conjecture. Still, however, the fame of Erceldoune and Tristrem remain attested by Robert De Brunne : and Mr. Scott's doctrine is, that Thomas the Khymer, having picked up the chief materials of his romantic history of Sir Tris- trem from British traditions surviving on the border, was not a translator from the French, but an original authority to the continental romancers. It is neverthe- less acknowledged, that the story of Sir Tristrem had been told in French, and was familiar to the romancers of that language, long before Thomas the RhynTer could have set about picking up British traditions on the bor- der, and in all probability before he was born. The'pos- sibility, therefore, of his having beard the story in Norman minstrelsy, is put beyond the reach of denial.* On the other band, Mr. Scott argues, that the Scottish bard must have been an authority to the continental romancers, from two circumstances. In the first place, there are two metrical fragments of French romance preserved in the library of Mr. Douce,<* which, according to Mr. Scott, tell the story of Sir Tristrem in a manner corresponding with the same tale as it is told by Thomas of Erceldoune, and in which a reference is made to the u ;thority of a Thomat. But the whole force of this ar- Mr. Tyrwhitt conceives, that we have not one English romance anterior to Chaucer, which is not borrowed from a French one. In the reign of Edward II., Adam Davie, gument evidently depends on the supposition of Mr. Douce's fragments being the work of one and the same " The strange appropriation of the Auchinleck poem as a Scottish production, when no single trace of the Scottish dialect is to be found throughout the whole ro- mance, which may not with equal truth be claimed as current in the north of England, while every marked peculiarity of the former is entirely wanting, can hardly require serious investigation. From this opinion the in- genious editor himself must long ago have been re- claimed. The singular doctrines relative to the rise and progress of the English language in North and South Britain may also be dismissed, as not immediately rele- vant. But when it is seriously affirmed, that the Eng- lish language was once spoken with greater purity in the Lowlands of Scotland, than in this country, we ' Sothrons' receive the communications with the same smile of in- credulity that we bestow upon the poetic dogma of the honest Frieslander : Buwter, breat en green tzies, Is guth Inglisch en guth Fries. Butter, bread, and green cheese, Is good English and good Friese." PRICE, Warton'f Hist. vol. i. p. 196. Ed. 1824. " As to the Essayist's assertion (Mr. Price's) that the language of Sir Tristrem has in it nothing distinctively Scottish this is a point on which the reader will, per- haps, consider the authority of Sir Walter Scott as suffi cient to countervail that of the most accomplished Eng- lish antiquary." LOCKHART, Advt. to Sir Tristreni, 1833. No one has yet satisfactorily accounted for the Eliza- bethian-like Inglis of Barbour and Blind Harry, or the Saxon Layamon-like Inglis of Oawain Douglas. Did Barbour, who wrote in 1375, write in advance of his age, and Douglas, who began and ended his " JEneid" in 1513-14, behind his age? Or did each represent the spoken language of the times they wrote in f For philo- logical and poetical inquiry this is matter of moment. But is there sufficient material for more than felicitous conjecture; and who is equal to the task? If Barbour wrote his " Bruce" as we have it, it is perhaps the most extraordinary poem in the English language. For the age of the first manuscript known, (1488), supposing it to have been then written, it is still, though not equally so, a wonder. Scott's view of the priority in cultivation of Inglis in Scotland over England is sanctioned by Ellis in the In- troduction (p. 127), to his Metrical Romances. C. * Over gestes it has the steem Over all that is or was, If men it sayd as made Thomas. C. e Sir Tristrem, like almost all our Romances, had a foreign origin its language alone is ours. Three copies in French, in Anglo-Norman, and in Greek, composed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and edited by Fran- cisque Michel, appeared in two vols. 8vo, at London in 1835. But Scott never stood out for Thomas's invention. "The tale," he says, ' lays claim to a much higher anti- quity." (P. 27. Ed. 1833.) To a British antiquity, how- ever. See also Scott's Essay on Romance, in Misc. Pros* Works, (vol. vi. p. 201,) where he contends that it was de- rived from Welsh traditions, though told by a Saxon poet. C. d Now, by Mr. Douce's Will, among the Bodleian books. C. ENGLISH POETRY. 13 vrho was marshal of Stratford-le-Bow, near London, wrote " Visions" in verse, which appear to be original; and the "Battle of Jerusalem," in which he turned into rhyme the contents of a French prose romance.* In the course of Adam Davie's account of the siege of Jerusalem, Pilate challenges our Lord to single combat. From the spe- cimens afforded by Warton, no very high idea can be formed of the genius of this poetical marshal. Warton anticipates the surprise of his reader, in finding the Eng- lish language improve so slowly, when we reach the verses of Davie. The historian of our poetry had, in a former section, treated of Robert de Brunne as a writer anterior to Davie ; but as the latter part of De Brunne's Chronicle was not finished till 1339, in the reign of Edward III., it would be surprising indeed if the language should seem to improve when we go back to the reign of Edward Il.f Davie's work may be placed in our poetical chronology, posterior to the first part of De Brunne's Chronicle, but anterior to the latter. Richard Rolle, another of our earliest versifiers, died in 1349 4 He was a hermit, author whereas they are not, to all appearance, by the same author. A single perusal will enable us to observe how remarkably they differ in style. They have no ap- pearance of being parts of the same story, one of them placing the court of King Mark at Tintagil, the other at London. Only one of the fragments refers to the au- thority of a Thomas, and the style of that one bears very strong marks of being French of the twelfth century, a date which would place it beyond the possibility of its referring to Thomas of Erceldoune.a The second of Mr. Scott's proofs of the originality of the Scottish Romance is. that Gotfried von Strasburg, in a German romance, written about the middle of the thirteenth century, refers to Thomas of Britania as bis original. Thomas of Bri- tania is, however, a vague word ; and among the Anglo- Norman poets there might be one named Thomas, who might have told a story which was confessedly told in many shapes in the French language, and which was known in France before the Rhymer could hrfVe flour- ished ; and to this Anglo-Norman Thomas, Gotfried might refer. Eichorn, the German editor, says, that Gotfried translated his romance from the Norman French. Mr. Scott, in his edition of Sir Tristrem, after conjecturing one date for the birth of Thomas the Rhymer, avowedly alters it for the sake of identifying the Rhymer with Gotfried's Thomas of Britania, and places his birth before the end of the twelfth century. This, he allows, would extend the Rhymer's life to upwards of ninety years, a pretty fair age for the Scottish Tiresias ; but if he sur- vived 1296, as Harry the Minstrel informs us, he must have lived to beyond an hundred.* * His other works were, the Legend of St. Alexius, from the Latin; Scripture Histories; and Fifteen Tokens before the Day of Judgment. The last two were para- phrases of Scripture. Mr. Ellis ultimately retracted his opinion, adopted from Warton, that he was the author of a romance entitled the " Life of Alexander." Printed in and led a secluded life, near the nunnery of Hampole, in Yorkshire. Seventeen of his devotional pieces are enumerated in Ritson's " Bibliographia Poetica." The penitential psalms and theological tracts of a hermit were not likely to enrich or improve the style of our poetry; and they are accord- ingly confessed, by those who have read them, to be very dull. His name challenges notice, only from the paucity of contempo- rary writers. Laurence Minot, although he is conjec- tured to have been a monk, had a Muse of a livelier temper ; and, for want of a better poet, he may, by courtesy, be called the Tyr- taeus of his age. His few poems which have reached us are, in fact, short narrative bal- lads on the victories obtained in the reign of Edward III., beginning with that of Hal- lidown Hill, and ending with the siege of Guisnes Castle. As his poem on the last of these events was evidently written re- cently after the exploit, the era of his poet- ical career may be laid between the years 1332 and 1352. Minot's works lay in ab- solute oblivion till late in the last century, in a MS. of the Cotton Collection, which was Weber's Collection. See Ems's Met. Rom. vol. i. p. 130. C. t In this the usual accuracy and candour of Mr. Campbell appear to have forsaken him, Warton's obser- vation is far from being a general one, and might have been interpreted to the exclusion of De Brunne. That such was Warton's intention is obvious, Ac. PRICE, Warton, vol. ii. p. 52. C. t Ellis, vol. L p. 146. Warton (vol. ii. p. 90) calls him Richard Hampole. C. This passage is quoted by the late learned Mr. Price in his Note to Sir Tristrem, appended to his edition of Warton's History. " In addition," says Price, " it may be observed that the language of this fragment, so far from vesting Thomas with the character of an original writer, affirms directly the reverse. It is clear that in the wri- ter's opinion the earliest and most authentic narrative of Tristrem's story was to be found in the work of Breri. From his relation later minstrels had chosen to deviate; but Thomas, who hnd also composed a romance upon the subject, not only accorded with Breri in the order of his events, *>ut entered into 'a justification of himself and his predecessor, by proving the inconsistency and absur- dity of these new-fangled variations. If, therefore, the romance of Thomas be in existence, it must contain this vindication; the poem in the Auchinleck MS. is entirely silent on the subject." C. There is now but one opinion of Scott's Sir Tristrem that it is not, as he would have it, the work of Thomas of Erceliiuune, but the work of some after bard, that had heard Thomas tell the story in other words, an imper- fect transcript of the Erceldoune copy. Thomas's own tale is something we may wish for, but we may despair of finding. That Kendale wrote Scott's Sir Tristrem i* the fair enough supposition of Mr. David Laing. Dtmbar vol. i. p. 38. C. 14 ENGLISH POETRY. supposed to be a transcript of the works of Chaucer. The name of Richard Chawfir having been accidentally scrawled on a spare leaf of the MS. (probably the name of its ancient possessor), the framer of the Cotton catalogue, very good-naturedly converted it into Geoffrey Chaucer. By this circum- stance Mr. Tyrwhitt, when seeking materials for his edition of the " Canterbury Tales," accidentally discovered an English versifier older than Chaucer himself. The style of Minot's ten military ballads is frequently alliterative, and has much of the northern dialect. He is an easy and lively versifier, though not, as Mr. G. Chalmers denominates him, either elegant or energetic.* In the course of the fourteenth century, our language seems to have been inundated with metrical romances, until the public taste had been palled by the mediocrity and monotony of the greater part of them. At least, if Chaucer's host in the " Canterbury Tales" be a fair representation of contem- porary opinion, they were held in no great reverence, to judge by the comparison which the vintner applies to the " drafty rhymings" of Sir Topaz.f The practice of translating French metrical romances into English did not, however, terminate in the fourteenth century. Nor must we form an indiscrimi- nate estimate of the ancient metrical ro- mances, either from Chaucer's implied con- tempt for them, nor from mine host of the Tabard's ungainly comparison with respect to one of them. The ridiculous style of Sir Topaz is not an image of them all. Some of them, far from being chargeable with im- pertinent and prolix description, are concise in narration, and paint, with rapid but dis- tinct sketches, the battles, the banquets, and the rites of worship of chivalrous life. Classical poetry has scarcely ever conveyed in shorter boundaries so many interesting and complicated events, as may be found in the good old romance of Le Bone Flosence. J Chaucer himself, when he strikes into the new or allegorical school of romance, has many passages more tedious and less affect- ing than the better parts of those simple old fablers. For in spite of their puerility in the excessive use of the marvellous, their * An edition of Minot's poems was one of Ritson's many contributions to the elucidation of early English language and literature. C. f- The Rime of Sir Tnpaz, which Chaucer introduces as a parody, undoubtedly, of the rhythmical romances of simplicity is often touching, and they have many scenes that would form adequate sub- jects for the best historical pencils. The reign of Edward III. was illustrious not for military achievements alone ; it was a period Avhen the English character dis-* played its first intellectual boldness. It is true that the history of the times presents a striking contrast between the light of in- telligence which began to open on men's minds, and the frightful evils which were still permitted to darken the face of society. In the scandalous avarice of the church, in the corruptions of the courts of judicature, and in the licentiousness of a nobility who countenanced disorders and robbery, we trace the unbanished remains of barbarism ; but, on the other hand, we may refer to this period for the genuine commencement of our literature, for the earliest diffusion of free inquiry, and for the first great movement of the national mind towards emancipation from spiritual tyranny. The abuses of reli- gion were, from their nature, the most powerfully calculated to arrest the public attention; and poetry was not deficient in contributing its influence to expose those abuses, both as subjects of ridicule and of serious indignation. Two poets of this pe- riod, with very different powers of genius, and probably addressing themselves to dif- ferent classes of society, made the corrup- tions of the clergy the objects of their satire taking satire not in its mean and personal acceptation, but understanding it as the moral warfare of indignation and ridicule against turpitude and absurdity. Those writers were Langlande and Chaucer, both of whom have been claimed as primitive re- formers by some of the zealous historians of the Reformation. At the idea of a full separation from the Catholic church, both Langlande and Chaucer would possibly have been struck with horror. The doctrine of predestination, which was a leading tenet of the first Protestants ; is not, I believe, avowed in any of Chaucer's writings, and it is expressly reprobated by Langlande. It is, nevertheless, very likely that their works contributed to promote the Reformation. Langlande, especially, who was an earlier the Hge, is interrupted by mine host Harry Bailly with the strongest and most energetic expressions of total and absolute contempt. SIR WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Pro* Works, vol. vi. p. 209. C. J Given iu Ritson's Old Metrical Romances. ENGLISH POETRY. 15 satirist and painter of manners than Chau- cer, is undaunted in reprobating the cor- ruptions of the papal government. He prays to Heaven to amend the Pope, whom he charges with pillaging the Church, interfer- ing unjustly with the king, and causing the blood of Christians to be wantonly shed; and it is a curious circumstance, that he pre- dicts the existence of a king, who, in his vengeance, would destroy the monasteries. The work entitled " Visions of William concerning Piers Plowman,"* and concern- ing the origin, progress, and perfection of the Christian life, which is the earliest known original poem, of any extent, in the English language, is ascribed to Robert Langlande [or Longlande] , a secular priest, born at Mortimer's Cleobury, in Shropshire, and educated at Oriel College, Oxford. That it was written by Langlande, I believe, can be traced to no higher authority than that of Bale, or of the printer Crowley ; but his name may stand for that of its author, until a better claimant shall be found. Those Visions, from their allusions to events evidently recent, can scarcely be sup- posed to have been finished later than the year 1362, almost thirty years before the ap- pearance of the Canterbury Tales.f It is not easy, even after Dr. Whitaker's laborious analysis of this work, to give any concise account of its contents. The gene- ral object is to expose, in allegory, the ex- isting abuses of society, and to inculcate the public and private duties both of the laity and clergy. An imaginary seer, afterwards described by the name of William, wander- ing among the bushes of the Malvern hills, is overtaken by sleep, and dreams that he beholds a magnificent tower, which turns out to be the tower or fortress of Truth, and a dungeon, which, we soon after learn, is the abode of Wrong. In a spacious plain in front of it, the whole race of mankind are employed in their respective pursuits ; such as husbandmen, merchants, minstrels with their audiences, begging friars, and itinerant venders of pardons, leading a dissolute life under the cloak of religion. The last of * The work is commonly entitled the "Visions of Piers Plowman," but incorrectly, for Piers is not the dreamer who sees the visions, but one of the characters who is beheld, and who represents the Christian life. t See Mr. Price's Note in IFarton, yol. ii. p. 101, and Appendix to the same volume. C. these are severely satirized. A transition is then made to the civil grievances of society; and the policy, not the duty, of submitting to bad princes, is illustrated by the parable of the Rats and Cats. In the second canto, True Religion descends, and demonstrates, with many precepts, how the conduct of in- dividuals, and the general management of society, may be amended. In the third and fourth canto, Mede or Bribery is exhibited, seeking a marriage with Falsehood, and at- tempting to make her way to the courts of justice, where it appears that she has many friends, both among the civil judges and ecclesiastics. The poem, after this, becomes more and more desultory. The author awakens more than once ; but, forgetting that he has told us so, continues to converse as freely as ever with the moral phantasma- goria of his dream. A long train of allego- rical personages, whom it would not be very amusing to enumerate, succeeds. In fact, notwithstanding Dr. Whitaker's discovery of a plan and unity in this work, I cannot help thinking with Warton, that it possesses neither ; at least, if it has any design, it i? the most vague and ill-constructed that ever entered into the brain of a waking dreamer. The appearance of the visionary personages is often sufficiently whimsical. The power of Grace, for instance, confers upon Piers Plowman, or "Christian Life," four stout oxen, to cultivate the field of Truth; these are, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the last of whom is described as the gentlest of the team. She afterwards assigns him the like number of stots or bullocks, to harrow what the evangelists had ploughed ; and this new horned team consists of saint or stot Ambrose, stot Austin, stot Gregory, and stot Jerome.J The verse of Langlande is alliterative, without rhyme, and of triple time. In mo- dern pronunciation it divides the ear be- tween an anapaestic and dactylic cadence; though some of the verses are reducible to no perceptible metre. Mr. Mitford, in his " Harmony of Languages," thinks that the more we accommodate the reading of it to J If some of the criticisms in this genial Essay prove rather startling to the zealous admirer of our early lite- rature, he will attribute them to the same cause which, during an age of romantic poetry, makes the effusions ot Mr. Campbell's Muse appear an echo of the chaste sim- plicity and measured energy of Attic song. PRICE, War- tan, vol. i. p. 107. C. 16 ENGLISH POETRY. ancient pronunciation, the more generally we shall find it run in an anapaestic mea- sure. His style, even making allowance for its antiquity, has a vulgar air, and seems to indicate a mind that would have been coarse, though strong, in any state of society. But, on the other hand, his work, with all its tiresome homilies, illustrations from school divinity, and uncouth phraseology, has some interesting features of originality. He em- ploys no borrowed materials ; he is the ear- liest of our writers in whom there is a tone of moral reflection; and his sentiments are those of bold and solid integrity. The zeal of truth was in him ; and his vehement man- ner sometimes rises to eloquence, when he denounces hypocrisy and imposture. The mind is struck with his rude voice, proclaim- ing independent and popular sentiments, from an age of slavery and superstition, and thundering a prediction in the ear of papacy, which was doomed to be literally fulfilled at the distance of nearly two hun- dred years. His allusions to contemporary life afford some ; amusing glimpses of its manners. There is room to suspect that Spenser was acquainted with his works ; and Milton, cither from accident or design, has the appearance of having had one of Lang- lande's passages in his mind, when he wrote the sublime description of the lazar-house, in " Paradise Lost."* Chaucer was probably known and distin- guished as a poet anterior to the appearance of Langlande's Visions. Indeed, if he had produced nothing else than his youthful poem, " The Court of Love," it was suffi- cient to indicate one destined to harmonize and refine the national strains. But it is likely, that before his thirty-fourth year, about which time Langlande's Visions may be supposed to have been finished, Chaucer had given several compositions to the public. The simple old narrative romance had be- come too familiar in Chaucer's time to invite him to its beaten track. The poverty of his native tongue obliged him to look round for subsidiary materials to his fancy, both in the Latin language, and in some modern foreign source that should not appear to be trite and exhausted. His age was, unfortu- nately, little conversant with the best Latin * B. xi. 1. 475, Ac. This coincidence is remarked by Mrs. Cooper, in her Muses' Library. ELLIS, TO!, i. p. 157 C. f The Consolation of Boethius was translated by Al- classics. Ovid, Claudian, and Statius, were the chief favourites in poetry, and Boethius in prose.f The allegorical style of the last of those authors seems to have given an early bias to the taste of Chaucer. In mo- dern poetry, his first and long continued predilection was attracted by the new and allegorical style of romance which had sprung up in France in the thirteenth cen- tury, under William de Lorris. We find him, accordingly, during a great part of hia poetical career, engaged among the dreams, emblems, flower-worshippings, and amatory parliaments of that visionary school. This, we may say, was a gymnasium of rather too light and playful exercise for so strong a genius ; and it must be owned, that his alle- gorical poetry is often puerile and prolix. Yet. even in this walk of fiction, we never entirely lose sight of that peculiar grace and gayety which distinguish the muse of Chau- cer; and no one who remembers his produc- tions of the " House of Fame," and " The Flower and the Leaf," will regret that he sported for a season in the field of allegory. Even his pieces of this description, the most fantastic in design and tedious in execution, are generally interspersed with fresh and joyous descriptions of external nature. In this new species of romance, we per- ceive the youthful muse of the language in love with mystical meanings and forms of fancy, more remote, if possible, from reality than those of the chivalrous fable itself; and we could sometimes wish her back from her emblematic castles to the more solid ones of the elder fable ; but still she moves in pur- suit of those shadows with an impulse of novelty, and an exuberance of spirit, that is not wholly without its attraction and de- light. Chaucer was afterwards happily drawn to the more natural style of Boccaccio, and from him he derived the hint of a subject, \ in which, besides his own original portraits of contemporary life, he could introduce stories of every description, from the most heroic to the most familiar. Gower, though he had been earlier distin- guished in French poetry, began later than Chaucer to cultivate his native tongue. His " Confessio Amantis," the only work by frert the Great and by Queen Elizabeth. No unfair proof of its extraordinary popularity may be derived from The Quair of King James I. It seems to have been a truly regal book. C. J The Canterbury Tales. 0. ENGLISH POETRY. IT which he is known as an English poet, did not appear till the sixteenth year of Richard II. lie must have been a highly accom- plished man for his time, and imbued with a studious and mild spirit of reflection. His French sonnets are marked by elegance and sensibility, and his English poetry contains a digest of all that constituted the know- ledge of his age. His contemporaries greatly esteemed him ; and the Scottish, as well as English writers of the subsequent period, speak of him with unqualified admiration. But though the placid and moral Gower might be a civilizing spirit among his con- temporaries, his character has none of the bold originality which stamps an influence on the literature of a country. He was not, like Chaucer, a patriarch in the family of ,iius, the scattered traits of whose resem- blance may be seen in such descendants as Shakspeare and Spenser.* The design of his " Confessio Amantis" is peculiarly ill- contrived. A lover, whose case has not a particle of interest, applies, according to the Catholic ritual, to a confessor, who, at the same time, whimsically enough, bears the additional character of a pagan priest of Venus. The holy father, it is true, speaks like a good Christian, and communicates more scandal about the intrigues of Venus than pagan author ever told. A pretext is afforded by the ceremony of confession, for the priest not only to initiate his pupil in the duties of a lover, but in a wide range of ethical and physical knowledge; and at the mention of every virtue and vice, a tale is introduced by way of illustration. Does the confessor wish to warn the lover against impertinent curiosity ? he introduces, apropos to that failing, the history of Actaeon, of peeping memory. The confessor inquires if he is addicted to a vain-glorious disposition ; because if he is, he can tell him a story about Nebuchadnezzar. Does he wish to hear of the virtue of conjugal patience? it is aptly inculcated by the anecdote respecting Socrates, who, when he received the con- tents of Xantippe's pail upon his head, re- plied to the provocation with only a witti- cism. Thus, with shrieving, narrations, and didactic speeches, the work is extended to thirty thousand lines, in the course of which the virtues and vices are all regularly alle- gorized. But in allegory Gower is cold and uninventive, and enumerates qualities when he should conjure up visible objects. On the whole, though copiously stored with facts and fables, he is unable either to make truth appear poetical, or to render fiction the graceful vehicle of truth. PART II. WARTON, with great beauty and justice, compares the appearance of Chaucer in our Fifteenth language to a premature day in an oenturj. English spring ; after which the gloom of winter returns, and the buds and blos- soms, which have been called for by a tran- sient sunshine, are nipped by frosts, and scattered by storms. The causes of the re- lapse of our poetry, after Chaucer, seem but too apparent in the annals of English his- tory, which during five reigns of the fif- teenth century continue to display but a tissue of conspiracies, proscriptions, and bloodshed. Inferior even to France in lite- rary progress, England displays in the fif- Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax. Spenser more than once insinuate that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, teenth century a still more mortifying con- trast with Italy. Italy too had her religious schisms and public distractions; but her arts and literature had always a sheltering place. They were even cherished by the rivalship of independent communities, and received encouragement from the opposite sources of commercial and ecclesiastical wealth. But we had no Nicholas the Fifth, nor house of Medicis. In England, the evils of civil war agitated society as one mass. There was no refuge from them no enclos- ure to fence in the field of improvement no mound to stem the torrent of public troubles. Before the death of Henry VI., and that he was begotten by him two hundred years af- ter his decease. DRTDE.V. Makme, vol. iv. p. 692. C- 18 ENGLISH POETRY. it is said that one-half of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom had perished in the field, or on the scaffold. Whilst in England the public spirit was thus brutalized, whilst the value and security of life were abridged, whilst the wealth of the rich was employed only in war, and the chance of patronage taken from the scholar; in Italy, princes and magistrates vied with each other in call- ing men of genius around them, as the brightest ornaments of their states and courts. The art of printing came to Italy to record the treasures of its literary attain- ments ; but when it came to England, with a very few exceptions, it could not be said, for the purpose of diffusing native literature, to be a necessary art. A circumstance, ad- ditionally hostile to the national genius, may certainly be traced in the executions for re- ligion, which sprung up as a horrible novelty in our country in the fifteenth century. The clergy were determined to indemnify them- selves for the exposures which they had met with in the preceding age, and the unhal- lowed compromise which Henry IV. made with them, in return for. supporting his ac- cession, armed them, in an evil hour, with the torch of persecution. In one point of improvement, namely, in the boldness of re- ligious inquiry, the North of Europe might already boast of being superior to the South, with all its learning, wealth, and elegant acquirements. The Scriptures had been opened by Wickliff, but they were again to become "a fountain sealed, and a spring shut up." Amidst the progress of letters in Italy, the fine arts threw enchantment around superstition; and the warm imagi- nation of the South was congenial with the nature of Catholic institutions. But the English mind had already shown, even amidst its comparative barbarism, a stern independent spirit of religion ; and from this single proud and elevated point of its cha- racter, it was now to be crushed and beaten down. Sometimes a baffled struggle against oppression is more depressing to the human faculties than continued submission. Our natural hatred of tyranny, and we may safely add, the general test of history and experience, would dispose us to believe religious persecution to be necessarily and essentially baneful to the elegant arts, no less than to the intellectual pursuits of man- kind. It is natural to think, that when pun- ishments are let loose upon men's opinions, they will spread a contagious alarm from the understanding to the imagination. They will make the heart grow close and insensi- ble to generous feelings, where it is unac- customed to express them freely; and the graces and gayety of fancy will be dejected and appalled. In an age of persecution, even the living study of his own species must be comparatively darkened to the poet. He looks round on the characters and coun tenances of his fellow-creatures ; and instead of the naturally cheerful and eccentric va- riety of their humours, he reads only a sul- len and oppressed uniformity. To the spirit of poetry we should conceive such a period to be an impassable Avernus, where she would drop her wings and expire. Un- doubtedly this inference will be found war- ranted by a general survey of the history of Genius. It is, at the same time, impossible to deny, that wit and poetry have in some instances flourished coeval with ferocious bigotry, on the same spot, and under the same government. The literary glory of Spain was posterior to the establishment of the Inquisition. The fancy of Cervantes sported in its neighbourhood, though he de- clared that he could have made his writings still more entertaining, if he had not dreaded the Holy Office. But the growth of Spanish genius, in spite of the co-existence of reli- gious tyranny, was fostered by uncommon and glorious advantages in the circum- stances of the nation. Spain (for we are comparing Spain in the sixteenth with Eng- land in the fifteenth century) was, at the period alluded to, great and proud in an em- pire, on which it was boasted that the sun never set. Her language was widely dif- fused. The wealth of America for a while animated all her arts. Robertson says, that the Spaniards discovered at that time an ex- tent of political knowledge, which the Eng- lish themselves did not attain for more than a century afterwards. Religious persecu- tions began in England, at a time when she was comparatively poor and barbarous ; yet after she had been awakened to so much in- telligence on the subject of religion, as to make one-half of the people indignantly im- patient of priestly tyranny. If we add to the political troubles of the age, the circum- stance of religious opinions being silenced and stifled by penal horrors, it will seec ENGLISH POETRY. more wonderful that the spark of literature was kept alive, than that it did not spread more widely. Yet the fifteenth century had its redeeming traits of refinement, the more wonderful for appearing in the midst of such unfavourable circumstances. It had a For- tescue, although he wandered in exile, un- protected by the constitution which he ex- plained and extolled in his writings. It had a noble patron and lover of letters in Tip- toft,* although he died by the hands of the executioner. It witnessed the founding of many colleges, in both of the universities, although they were still the haunts of scho- lastic quibbling; and it produced, in the venerable Pecock, one conscientious digni- tary of the church, who wished to have con- verted the Protestants by appeals to reason, though for so doing he had his books, and, if he had not recanted in good time, would have had his body also, committed to the flames. To these causes may be ascribed the backwardness of our poetry between the dates of Chaucer and Spenser. I speak of the chasm extending to, or nearly to Spen- ser; for, without undervaluing the elegant talents of Lord Surrey, I think we cannot consider the national genius as completely emancipated from oppressive circumstances, till the time of Elizabeth. There was indeed a commencement of our poetry under Henry VIII. It was a fine, but a feeble one. Eng- lish genius seems then to have come forth, but half assured that her day of emancipa- tion was at hand. There is something me- lancholy even in Lord Surrey's strains of gallantry. The succession of Henry VIII. gave stability to the government, and some degree of magnificence to the state of so- ciety. But tyranny was not yet at an end; and to judge, not by the gross buffoons, but by the few minds entitled to be called poeti- cal, which appear in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, we may say that the English Muse had still a diffident aspect and a faltering tone. * Earl of Worcester, f In his Bibliographia Poetica. J Vide p. 15 of these Selections. He translated largely from the French and Latin. His principal poems are, " The Kail of Princes," " the Siege of Thebes," and ' The Destruction of Troy." The first of these is from Lau- rent's French version of Boccaccio's book " De Casibus virorum et fpminarum illustrium." His "Siege of Thebes," which was intended as an additional Canterbury Tale, and in the introduction to which he feigns himself in company with "the host of the Tabard and the Pil- grims," if compiled from Guido Colonna, Statius, and There is a species of talent, however, which may continue to indite what is called poetry, without having its sensibilities deep- ly affected by the circumstances of society; and of luminaries of this description our fifteenth century was not destitute. Ritson has enumerated about seventy of them.f Of these, Occleve and Lydgate were the nearest successors to Chaucer. Occleve speaks of himself as Chaucer's scholar. He has, at least, the merit of expressing the sincerest enthusiasm for his master. But it is difficult to controvert, the character which has been generally assigned to him, that of a flat and feeble writer. Excepting the adoption of his story of Fortunatus, by William Browne, in his pastorals, and the modern republication of a few of his pieces, I know not of any public compliment which has ever been paid to his poetical me- mory. Lydgate is altogether the most respectable versifier of the fifteenth century. A list of two hundred and fifty of the productions ascribed to him (which is given in Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica) attests, at least, the fluency of his pen; and he seems to have ranged with the same facility through the gravest and the lightest subjects of compo- sition. Ballads, hymns, ludicrous stories, legends, romances, and allegories, were equally at his command. Verbose and dif- fuse as Dan John of Bury must be allowed to have been, he is not without occasional touches of pathos. The poet Gray was the first in modern times who did him the jus- tice to observe them.J His " Fall of Princes" may also deserve notice, in tracing back the thread of our national poetry, as it is more likely than any other English production to have suggested to Lord Sackville the idea of his " Mirror for Magistrates." The " Mir- ror for Magistrates" again gave hints to Spenser in allegory, and may also have pos- sibly suggested to Shakspeare the idea of his historical plays. Seneca. His " Destruction of Troy" is from the work of Guido Colonna, or from a French translation of it His " London Lickpenny" is curious, for the minute picture of the metropolis, which it exhibits, in the fifteenth cen- tury. A specimen of Lyd^ati-'s humour may be seen in his tale of "The Prioress and her Three Wooers." which Mr. Jamicson has given in his Popular Ballads and Songs," [vol. i. pp. 249 2(i6]. I had transcribed it from a manuscript in the British Museum, fHnrl. MS. 78].. thinking that it was not in print, but found that Mr Jamie-sou had anticipated me. 20 ENGLISH POETRY. I kno\v not if Hardynge,* who belonged to the reign of Edward IV., be worth men- tioning, as one of the obscure luminaries of this benighted age. He left a Chronicle of the History of England, which possesses an incidental interest from his having been himself a witness to some of the scenes which he records ; for he lived in the family of the Percys, and fought under the ban- ners of Hotspur; but from the style of his versified Chronicle, his head would appear to have been much better furnished for sus- taining the blows of the battle, than for contriving its poetical celebration. The Scottish poets of the fifteenth, and of a part of the sixteenth century, would End of th a ^ so J ust ly demand a place in any arwnth M.a history of our poetry that meant to beginning of > . j ,, . sixteenth be copious and minute : as the northern " makers," notwithstand- ing the difference of dialect, generally de- nominate their language " Inglis." Scotland produced an entire poetical version of the ^Eneid, before Lord Surrey had translated a single book of it ; indeed before there was an English version of any classic, excepting Boethius, if he can be called a classic. Virgil was only known in the English lan- guage through a romance on the Siege of Troy, published by Caxton, which, as Bishop Douglas observes, in the prologue to his Scottish ^Eneid, is no more like Virgil than the devil is like St. Austin. f Perhaps the resemblance may not even be so great. But the Scottish poets, after all that has been said of them, form nothing like a brilliant revival of poetry. They are, on the whole, superior indeed, in spirit and originality to their English cotemporaries, which is not saying much; but their style is, for the most part, cast, if possible, in a worse taste. The prevailing fault of English diction, in the fifteenth century, 4 is redundant ornament, and an affectation of anglicising Latin words. In this pedantry and use of " aureate terms," the Scottish versifiers went even be- * A kind of Robert of Gloucester redivivus. SIR WAL- TER SCOTT, Misc. Pr. Works, TO!, xvii. p. 13. C. t Warton, vol. iii. p. 112. Douglas is said to have writ- ten his translation in the short space of sixteen months, and to have finished it in 1513. This was before Surrey was barn. C. J To the reign of Henry VI. belongs Henry Lonelich, who plied the unpoeticil trade of a skinner, and who translated the French romance of St. Graal ; Thomas Chestre, who made a free and enlarged version of the Lai di- Lanral, of the French poetess Marie; and Robert yond their brethren of the south. Some exceptions to the remark, I am aware, may be found in Dunbar, who sometimes exhibits simplicity and lyrical terseness; but even his style has frequent deformities of quaint- ness, false ornament, and alliteration. The rest of them, when they meant to be most eloquent, tore up words from the Latin, which never took root in the language, like children making a mock garden with flow- ers and branches stuck in the ground, which speedily wither. From Lydgate down to Wyat and Surrey, there seem to be no southern writers deserv- ing attention, unless for the purposes of the antiquary, excepting Hawes, Barklay, and Skelton; and even their names might per- haps be omitted, without treason to the cause of taste.t Stephen Hawes,$ who was groom of the chamber to Henry VII., is said to have been accomplished in the literature of France and Italy, and to have travelled into those coun- tries. His most important production is the " Pastyme of Pleasure,"|| an allegorical ro- mance, the hero of which is Grandamour or Gallantry, and the heroine La Belle Pucelle, or Perfect Beauty. In this work the per- sonified characters have all the capricious- ness and vague moral meaning of the old French allegorical romance; but the pueril- ity of the school remains, while the zest of its novelty is gone. There is also in his foolish personage of Godfrey Gobelive, some- thing of the burlesque of the worst taste of Italian poetry. It is certainly verj 7 tiresome to follow Hawes's hero, Grandamour, through all his adventures, studying grammar, rhe- toric, and arithmetic, in the tower of Doc- trine; afterwards slaughtering giants, who have each two or three emblematic heads ; sacrificing to heathen gods ; then marrying according to the Catholic rites ; and, finally, relating his own death and burial, to which he is so obliging as to add his epitaph. Yet, as the story seems to be of Hawes's inven- Thornton, who versified the "Morte Arthur" in the al- literative measure of Langlande. j! A bad imitator of Lydgate, ten times more tedious than his original. Sis WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Pr. Works, vol. xvii. p. 13. C. [ He also wrote the " Temple of Glass," the substance of which is taken from Chaucer's " House of Fame." The Temple nf Glass is now, as Mr. Hallam observes, by general consent, restored to Lydgate. Lit. Hist. vol. i p. 432; and Price's Warton, vol. iii. pp.46, 47. C. ENGLISH POETRY. 21 tion, it ranks him above the mere chroniclers and translators of the age. Warton praises him for improving on the style of Lydgate.* His language may be somewhat more mo- dern, but in vigour or harmony, I am at a loss to perceive in it any superiority. The indulgent historian of our poetry has, how- ever, quoted one tine line from him, describ- ing the fiery breath of a dragon, which guarded the island of beauty: " The fire was great ; it made the island light." Every romantic poem in his own language is likely to have interested Spenser; and if there were many such glimpses of magnifi- cence in Hawes, we might suppose the au- thor of " The Fairy Queen" to have cher- ished his youthful genius by contemplating them; but his beauties are too few and faint to have afforded any inspiring example to Spenser. Alexander BarklHy was a priest of St. Mary Otterburne, in Devonshire, and died at a great age at Croydon, in the year 1552. His principal work was a free translation of Sebastian Brandt'sf " Navis Stultifera," en- larged with some satirical strictures of his own upon the manners of his English con- temporaries. His " Ship of Fools" has been as often quoted as most obsolete English poems ; but if it were not obsolete it would not be quoted. He also wrote Eclogues, which are curious as the earliest pieces of that kind in our language. From their title we might be led to expect some interesting delineations of English rural customs at that period. But Barklay intended to be a moralist, and not a painter of nature ; and the chief, though insipid moral which he inculcates is, that it is better to be a clown than a courtier. J The few scenes of country life which he exhibits for that purpose are singularly ill fitted to illustrate his doctrine, and present rustic existence under a mise- rable aspect, more resembling the caricature of Scotland in Churchill's " Prophecy of Famine," than any thing which we can imagine to have ever been the general con- dition of English peasants. The speakers, in * ffift. vol. iii. p. 54. " Hawes has added new graces to Lydgate's manner." C. t Sebastian Brandt was a civilian of Basil. J Barklay gives some sketches of manners; but they arn those of the town, not the country. Warton is parlial to his black-letter eclogues, because they contain allu- sions to the customs of the a<;e. They certainly inform us at what hourour ancestors usually dined, supped, and went to bed ; that they were loud of good eating; and one of his eclogues, lie littered among straw, for want of a fire to keep themselves warm ; and one of them expresses a wish that th milk for dinner may be curdled, to save them the consumption of bread. As the writer's object was not to make us pity but esteem the rustic lot, this picture of English poverty can only be accounted for by sup- posing it to have been drawn from partial observation, or the result of a bad taste, that naturally delighted in squalid subjects of description. Barklay, indeed, though he has some stanzas which might be quoted for their strength of thought and felicity of ex- pression, is, upon the whole, the least ambi- tious of all writers to adorn his conceptions of familiar life with either dignity or beauty. An amusing instance of this occurs in one of his moral apologues: Adam, he tells us in verse, was one day abroad at his work Eve was at the door of the house, with her children playing about her; some of them she was " kembing," says the poet, prefix- ing another participle not of the most deli- cate kind, to describe the usefulness of the comb. Her Maker having deigned to pay her a visit, she was ashamed to be found with so many ill-dressed children about her, and hastened to stow a number of them out of sight; some of them she concealed under hay and straw, others she put up the chim- ney, and one or two into a " tub of draff." Having produced, however, the best looking and best dressed of them, she was delighted to hear their Divine Visitor bless them, and destine some of them to be kings and em- perors, some dukes and barons, and others sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen. Unwilling that any of her family should forfeit bless- ings whilst they were going, she immediately drew out the remainder from their conceal- ment ; but when they came forth, they were so covered with dust and cobwebs, and had so many bits of chaff and straw sticking to their hair, that instead of receiving bene- dictions and promotion, they were doomed to vocations of toil and poverty, suitable to their dirty appearance. that it was advisable, in the poet's opinion, for any one who attempted to help himself to a favourite dish at their banquets to wear a gauntlet of mail. Quiu. the player who probably never had heard of Barklay. deli- vers! at a much later period a similar observation on city feasts : namely, that the candidate for a good dish of turtle ought never to be without a basket-hiltud knife and fork. ENGLISH POETRY. John Skelton, who was the rival and con- temporary of Barklay, was laureate to the University of Oxford, and tutor to the prince, afterwards Henry VIII. Erasmus must have been a bad judge of English poetry, or must have alluded only to the learning of Skelton, when in one of his letters he pro- nounces him " Britannicarum literarum lumen et decus." There is certainly a ve- hemence and vivacity in Skelton, which was worthy of being guided by a better taste; and the objects of his satire bespeak some degree of public spirit.* But his eccen- tricity in attempts at humour is at once vul- gar and flippant; and his style is almost a texture of slang phrases, patched with shreds of French and Latin. We are told, indeed, in a periodical work of the present day, that his manner is to be excused, be- cause it was assumed for " the nonce," and was suited to the taste of his contemporaries. But it is surely a poor apology for the satir- ist of any age, to say that he stooped to hu- mour its vilest taste, and could not ridicule vice and folly without degrading himself to buffoonery.f Upon the whole, we might regard the poetical feeling and genius of England as almost extinct at the end of the fifteenth century, if the beautiful ballad of the " Nut-brown Maid" were not to be re- ferred to that period. J It is said to have been translated from the German ; but even * He was the determined enemy of the mendicant friars and of Cardinal Wolsey. The courtiers of Henry VIII., whilst obliged to flatter a minister whom they de- tested, could not but be gratified with Skelton's boldness In singly daring to attack him. In his picture of Wolsey at the Council Board, he thus describes the imperious a ti uister: " in chamber of Stars All matters there he mars; Clapping his rod on the board, No man dare speak a word ; For he hath all the saying, Without any renaying. He rolleth in his Recdrds, He sayeth, How say ye, my lords, Is not my reason good f Good even, good Robin Hood. Some say yes, and some Sit still, as they were dumb." These lines are a remarkable anticipation"" of the very words in the fifteenth article of the charges preferred upiinst Wolsey by the Parliament of 1529. "That the said Lord Cardinal, sitting among the Lords and other of your majesty's most honourable council, used himself so, that if any man would show his mind according to his duty, he would so take him up with his accustomable words, that they were better to hold their peace than to p<-uk. tn that he would hear no more speak, but one or two great personages, so that he would have all the words considered as a translation, it meets us as a surprising flower amidst the winter-solstice of our poetry. The literary character of England was not established till near the end of the six- sutecnth teenth century, at the beginning of centu,j. ^at cen t ur y, immediately anterior to Lord Surrey, we find Barklay and SkeltoiL popular candidates for the foremost honours of English poetry. They are but poor names. Yet slowly as the improvement of our poetry seems to proceed in the early part of the sixteenth century, the circumstances which subsequently fostered the national genius to its maturity and magnitude, begin to be distinctly visible even before the year 1500. The accession of Henry VII., by fixing the monarchy and the prospect of its regular succession, forms a great era of com- mencing civilization. The art of printing, which had been introduced in a former pe- riod of discord, promised to diffuse its light in a steadier and calmer atmosphere. The great discoveries of navigation, by quicken- ing the intercourse of European nations, extended their influence to England. In the short portion of the fifteenth century during which printing was known in this country, the- press exhibits our literature at a lower ebb than even that of France ; but before that century was concluded, the tide of classical learning had fairly set in. Eng- himself, and consumed much time without a fair tale." His ridicule drew down the wrath of Wolsey, who or- dered him to be apprehended. But Skelton fled to the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, where he was pro- tected ; and died in the same year in which Wolsey'g prosecutors drew up the article of impeachment, so simi- lar to the satire of the poet. t I know Skelton only by the modern edition of his works, dated 1736. But from this stupid publication I can easily discover that he was no ordinary man. Why Warton and the writers of his school rail at him vehe- mently I know not; he was perhaps the liest scholar of his day, and displays on many occasions strong powers of description; and a vein of poetry that shines through all the rubbish which ignorance has spread over it. He flew at high game, and therefore occasionally called in the aid of vuljjar ribaldry to mask the direct attack of his satire. GIFFORD, Jongim. vol. viii. p. 77. The power, the strangeness, the volubility of his lan- guage, the intrepidity of his satire, and the perfect origi- nality of his manner, render Skelton one of the most extraordinary poets of any age or country. SOUTHET, Specimens and Quar. Rev. vol. xi. p. 485. Mr. Hallam is not so kind : but till Mr. Dye* gives us his long-promised edition of Skelton, we know the old rough, ready-witted writer very imperfectly. C. % Warton places it about the year 1500. It was in print in 1521, if not a little earlier. C. Neve's Cursory Remarks on the English Poets. ENGLISH POETRY. 23 land had received Erasmus, and had pro- duced Sir Thomas More. The English poetry of the last of these great men is in- deed of trifling consequence, in comparison with the general impulse which his other writings must have given to the age in which he lived. But every thing that excites the dormant intellect of a nation must be re- garded^ as contributing to its future poetry. It is possible, that in thus adverting to the diffusion of knowledge (especially classical knowledge) which preceded our golden age of originality, we may be challenged by the question, how much the greatest of all our poets was indebted to learning. We are apt to compare such geniuses as Shakspeare to comets in the moral universe, which baffle all calculations as to the causes which ac- celerate or retard their appearance, or from which we can predict their return. But those phenomena of poetical inspiration are, in fact, still dependent on the laws and light of the system which they visit. Poets may be indebted to the learning and philosophy of their age, without being themselves men of erudition, or philosophers. When the fine spirit of truth has gone abroad, it passes insensibly from mind to mind, inde- pendent of its direct transmission from books; and it comes hom.e in a more wel- come shape to the poet, when caught from his social intercourse with his species, than from solitary study. Shakspeare's genius was certainly indebted to the intelligence and moral principles which existed in his age, and to that intelligence and to those * Namely, in the year 1535. The decline of Aristotle's authority, and that of scholastic divinity, though to a certain degree connected, are not, however, to be identi- fied. What were called the doctrines of Aristotle by the schoolmen, were a mass of metaphysics established In his name, first by Arabic commentators, and afterwards by Catholic doctors : among the latter of whom, many expounded the philosophy of the Stagyrite without un- derstanding a word of the original language in which his doctrines were written. Some Platonic opinions had also mixed with the metaphysics of the schoolmen. Aristotle was nevertheless their main authority ; though it is pro- bable that, if he had come to life, he would not have fathered much of the philosophy which rested on his name. Some of the reformers threw off scholastic divi- nity and Aristotle's authority at once ; but others, while they abjured the schoolmen, adhered to the Peripatetic gystx-m. In fact, until the revival of letters, Aristotle could not be said, with regard to the modern world, to be either fully known by his own works, or fairly tried by his own merits. Though ultimately overthrown by Ba- con, his writings and his name, in the age immediately preceding Bacon, had ceased to be a mere stalking-horse to the schoolmen, and he was found to contain heresies which the Catholic metaphysicians had little suspected. moral principles, the revival of classical literature undoubtedly contributed. So also did the revival of pulpit eloquence, and the restoration of the Scriptures to the people in their native tongue. The dethronement of scholastic philosophy, and of the supposed infallibility of Aristotle's authority, an au- thority at one time almost paramount to that of the Scriptures themselves, was another good connected with the Reformation; for though the logic of Aristotle long continued to be formally taught, scholastic theology was no longer sheltered beneath his name. Bible divinity superseded the glosses of the schoolmen, and the writings of Duns Scotus were consigned at Oxford to proclaimed con- tempt.* The reign of true philosophy was not indeed arrived, and the Reformation it- self produced events tending to retard that progress of literature and intelligence, which had sprung up under its first auspices. Still, with partial interruptions, the culture of classical literature proceeded in the six- teenth century ; and, amidst that culture, it is difficult to conceive that a system of Greek philosophy more poetical than Aristotle's, was without its influence on the English spirit namely, that of Plato. That Eng- land possessed a distinct school of Platonic philosophy in the sixteenth century, cannot, I believe, be affirmed,! but we hear of the Platonic studies of Sir Philip Sydney; and traits of Platonism are sometimes beauti- fully visible in the poetry of Surrey and of Spenser.J The Italian Muse communi- cated a tinge of that spirit to our poetry, f Enfield mentions no English school of Platonism before the time of Gale and Cudworth. Hallam is equally silent. C. J In one of Spenser's hymns on Love and Beauty, he breathes this Platonic doctrine. " Every spirit, as it is most pure And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight; For of the soul the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make." So, also, Surrey to his fair Geraldine. "The golden gift that Nature did thee give, To fasten friends, and feed them at thy will With form and favour, taught me to believe How thou art made to show her greatest skill." This last thought was probably suggested by the line* in Petrarch, which express a doctrine of the Platonic school, respecting the idea or origin of beauty. " In qual part* del ciel', in quale idea Era 1'esempio onde Natura tolse Quel bel viso leggiadro, in che ella vrlse Mostrar quaggiu, quantd lassl potea." 24 ENGLISH POETRY. which must have been farther excited in the ininds of poetical scholars by the influence of Grecian literature. Kurd indeed ob- serves, that the Platonic doctrines had a deep influence on the sentiments and cha- racter of Spenser's age. They certainly form a very poetical creed of philosophy. The Aristotelian system was a vast me- chanical labyrinth, which the human facul- ties were chilled, fatigued, and darkened by exploring. Plato, at least, expands the ima- gination, for he was a great poet ; and if he had put in practice the law respecting poets, which he prescribed to his ideal republic, he must have begun by banishing himself. The Reformation, though ultimately bene- ficial to literature, like all abrupt changes in society, brought its evil with its good. Its establishment under Edward VI. made the English too fanatical and polemical to attend to the finer objects of taste. Its commence- ment under Henry VIII., however promis- ing at first, was too soon rendered frightful, by bearing the stamp of a tyrant's charac- ter, who, instead of opening the temple of religious peace, established a Janus-faced persecution against both the old and new opinions. On the other hand, Henry's power, opulence, and ostentation, gave some en- couragement to the arts. He himself, mon- ster as he was, affected to be a poet. His masques and pageants assembled the beauty and nobility of the land, and prompted a gallant spirit of courtesy. The cultivation of musical talents among his courtiers fos- tered our early lyrical poetry. Our inter- course with Italy was renewed from more enlightened motives than superstition; and under the influence of Lord Surrey, Italian poetry became once more, as it had been in the days of Chaucer, a source of refinement and regeneration to our own. I am not in- * Our father Chaucer hath used the same liberty in feet and measures that the Latinists do use : and whoso- ever do peruse and well consider his works, he shall find that although his lines are not always of one self-same number of syllables, yet being read by one that hath understanding, the longest verse, and that which hath most syllables, will fall (to the ear) correspondent unto that which hath in it fewest syllables, shall be found yet to consist of words that have such natural sound, as may seem equal in length to a verse which hath many more syllables of lighter accent*. GASCOIQNE. But if some English*- woorde, herein seem sweet, Let Chaucer's name exalted be therefore ; Tf any verse, doe passe on plesant feet, The praise thereof redownd to Petrark's lore. GASCOIONE, The Grief of Joy. deed disposed to consider the influence of Lord Surrey's works upon our language in the very extensive and important light in which it is viewed by Dr. Nott. I am doubt- ful if that learned editor has converted many readers to his opinion, that Lord Surrey was the first who gave us metrical instead of rhythmical versification; for, with just allowance for ancient pronunciation, the heroic measure of Chaucer will be found in general not only to be metrically correct, but to possess considerable harmony.* Sur- rey was not the inventor of our metrical versification ; nor had his genius the potent voice and the magic spell which rouse all the dormant energies of a language. In certain walks of composition, though not in the highest, viz. in the ode, elegy, and epitaph, he set a chaste and delicate example ; but he was cut off too early in life, and cultivated poetry too slightly, to carry the pure stream of his style into the broad and bold chan- nels of inventive fiction. Much undoubtedly he did, in giving sweetness to our numbers, and in substituting for the rude tautology of a former age a style of soft and brilliant ornament, of selected expression, and of verbal arrangement, which often winds into graceful novelties ; though sometimes a little objectionable from its involution. Our lan- guage was also indebted to him for the in troduction of blank verse. It may be noticed at the same time that blank verse, if it had continued to be written as Surrey wrote it, would have had a cadence too uniform and cautious to be a happy vehicle for the dra- matic expression of the passions. Grimoald, the second poet who used it after Lord Sur- rey, gave it a little more variety of pauses ; but it was not till it had been tried as a measure by several composers, that it ac- quired a bold and flexible modulation.f It is a disputed question whether Chaucer's verses be rhythmical or metrical. I believe them to have been written rhythmically, upon the same principle on which Coleridge composed his Christabel that the number of beats or accentuated syllables in every line should be the same, although the number of syllables themselves might vary. Verse so composed will often be strictly metrical ; and because Chaucer's is frequently so. the ar- gument has been raised that it is always so if it be read properly, according to the intention of the author. SOUTHEY, Coicper, vol. ii. p. 117. C. Surrey is not a great poet, but he was an influen- tial one ; we owe to him the introduction of the Sonnet into our language, and the first taste for the Italian poets. C. ENGLISH POETRY. 25 The genius of Sir Thomas Wyat was re- fined and' elevated like that of his noble friend and contemporary; but his poetry is more sententious and sombrous, and in his lyrical effusions he studied terseness rather than suavity. Besides these two interest- ing men, Sir Francis Bryan, the friend of Wyat, George Viscount Rochford, the bro- ther of Anna Boleyne, and Thomas Lord Vaux, were poetical courtiers of Henry VIII. To the second of these Ritson assigns, though but by conjecture, one of the most beautiful and plaintive strains of our elder poetry, " Death, rock me on sleep." In TotelPs Collection, the earliest poetical mis- cellany in our language, two pieces have been ascribed to the same nobleman, the one entitled " The Assault of Cupid," the other beginning, " I loath that I did love," which have been frequently reprinted in modern times. A poem of uncommon merit in the same collection, which is entitled " The restless Btate of a Lover," and which commences with these lines, "The Sun, when he hath spread his rays, And show'd his face ten thousand ways," has been ascribed by Dr. Nott to Lord Sur- rey, but not on decisive evidence. In the reign of Edward VI. the effects of the Reformation became visible in our poe- try, by blending religious with poetical en- thusiasm, or rather by substituting the one for the other. The national muse became puritanical, and was not improved by the change. Then nourished Sternhold and Hopkins, who, with the best intentions and the worst taste, degraded the spirit of He- brew psalmody by flat and homely phrase- ology ; and mistaking vulgarity for simpli- city, turned into bathos what they found sublime. Such was the love of versifying holy writ at that period, that the Acts of the * To the reign of Edward VI. and Mary may be referred two or three contributors to the " Paradise of Dainty Devices" [1576], who, though their lives extended into the reign of Elizabeth, may exemplify the state of poetical language before her accession. Among these may be placed Edwards, author of the pleasing little piece, " Amantium ire amoris integratio est," and II minis, au- thor of the following song. [See p. 34, and Hallam, vol. ii. p. 303.] "When first mine eyes did view and mark Thy beauty fair for to behold, And when mine ears 'gan first to hark The pleasant words that thou me told, I would as then I had been free, from ears to hear, and eyes to see. 4 Apostles were rhymed, and set to music by Christopher Tye.* Lord Sackville's name is the next of any importance in our poetry that occurs after Lord Surrey's. The opinion of Sir Egerton Brydges, with respect to the date of the first appearance of Lord Sackville's " Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates," would place that production, in strictness of chronology, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. As an edition of the " Mirror," however, ap- peared in 1559, supposing Lord Sackville not to have assisted in that edition, the first shape of the work must have been cast and composed in the reign of Mary. From the date of Lord Sackville's birth,f it is also apparent, that although he flourished under Elizabeth, and lived even to direct the coun- cils of James, his prime of life must have been spent, and his poetical character formed, in the most disastrous period of the sixteenth century, a period when we may suppose the cloud that was passing over the public mind to have cast a gloom on the complexion of its literary taste. During five years of his life, from twenty-five to thirty, the time when sensibility and reflec- tion meet most strongly, Lord Sackville wit- nessed the horrors of Queen Mary's reign; and I conceive that it is not fanciful to trace in his poetry the tone of an unhappy age. His plan for " The Mirror of Magistrates" is a mass of darkness and despondency. He proposed to make the figure of Sorrow introduce us in Hell to every unfortunate great character of English history. The poet, like Dante, takes us to the gates of Hell ; but he does not, like the Italian pget, bring us back again. It is true that those doleful legends were long continued, during a brighter period ; but this was only done by an inferior order of poets, and was owing to their admiration of Sackville. Dismal as And when in mind I did consent To follow thus my fancy's will, And when my heart did first relent To taste such bait myself to spill, I would my heart had been as thine Or else thy heart as soft as mine. flatterer false ! thou traitor born, What mischief more might thou devise, Than thy dear friend to have in scorn, And him to wound in sundry wise ; Which still a friend pretends to be, And art not so by proof I see ? Fie, fie upon such treachery." t 1536, if not ft little earlier. 0. C 26 ENGLISH POETRY. his allegories may be, his genius certainly displays in them considerable power. But better times were at hand. In the reign of Elizabeth, the English mind put forth its energies in every direction, exalted by a purer religion, and enlarged by new views of truth. This was an age of loyalty, ad- venture, and generous emulation. The chivalrous character was softened by intel- lectual pursuits, while the genius of chivalry itself still lingered, as if unwilling to de- part, and paid his last homage to a warlike and female reign. A degree of romantic fancy remained, in the manners and super- stitions of the people; and allegory might be said to parade the streets in their public pageants and festivities. Quaint and pe- dantic as those allegorical exhibitions might often be, they were nevertheless more ex- pressive of erudition, ingenuity, and moral meaning than they had been in former times. The philosophy of the highest minds still partook of a visionary character. A poetical spirit infused itself into the prac- tical heroism of the age ; and some of the worthies of that period seem less like ordi- nary men than like beings called forth out of fiction, and arrayed in the brightness of her dreams. They had " high thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy."* The life of Sir Philip Sydney was poetry put into action. The result of activity and curiosity in the public mind was to complete the revival of classical literature, to increase the importa- tion of foreign books, and to multiply trans- lations, from which poetry supplied herself with abundant subjects and materials, and in the use of which she showed a frank and fearless energy, that criticism and satire had not yet acquired power to overawe. Ro- mance came back to us from the southern languages, clothed in new luxury by the warm imagination of the south. The growth of poetry under such circumstances might * An expression used by Sir P. Sydney. f Of Shakspeare's career a part only belongs to Eliza- beth's reign, and of Jonson's a still smaller. J The traaedy of Gorboduc, by Sackville and Norton, was represented in 1561-62. Spenser's Pastorals were published in 1579 ; and the three first books of The Fairy Queen in 1590. \ Ben Jonson applied his remark to Spenser's Pastorals. Malone was very ra,h in his correction : " Spenser, in affecting the ancients," says Jonson, "writ no language; yet I would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil ^ead Ennius." ( Works, ix. 215.) Jonson's remark is a indeed be expected to be as irregular as it was profuse. The field was open 1 to daring absurdity, as well as to genuine inspiration ; and accordingly there is no period in which the extremes of good and bad writing are so abundant. Stanihurst, for instance, carried the violence of nonsense to a pitch of which there is no preceding example. Even late in the reign of Elizabeth, Gabriel Harvey was aided and abetted by several men of genius in his conspiracy to subvert the ver- sification of the language ; and Lyly gained over the court, for a time, to employ his cor- rupt jargon called Euphuism. Even Put- tenham, a grave and candid critic, leaves an indication of crude and puerile taste, when, in a laborious treatise on poetry, he directs the composer how to make verses beautiful to the eye, by writing them " in the shapes of eggs, turbots, fuzees, and lozenges." Among the numerous poets belonging ex- clusively to Elizabeth's reign.f Spenser stands without a class and without a rival. To proceed from the poets already mentioned to Spenser, is certainly to pass over a con- siderable number of years, which are im- portant, especially from their including the dates of those early attempts in the regular drama which preceded the appearance of Shakspeare.J I shall, therefore, turn back again to that period, after having done ho- mage to the name of Spenser. He brought to the subject of " The Fairy Queen," a new and enlarged structure of stanza, elaborate and intricate, but well con- trived for sustaining the attention of the ear, and concluding with a majestic ca- dence. In the other poets of Spenser's age we chiefly admire their language, when it seems casually to advance into modern po- lish and succintness. But the antiquity of Spenser's style has a peculiar charm. The mistaken opinion that Ben Jonson censured the antiquity of the diction in the " Fairy Queen,"| h* 8 been corrected by Mr. Malone, general censure, not confined to the Shepherd's Calendar alone. " Some," he says in another place, " seek Chaucer- isms with us, which were better expunged and banished." (Works, ix. 220.) Here we conceive is another direct al- lusion to Spenser. If Spenser's language is the language of his age, who among his contemporaries is equa'ly obsolete in phrase- ology ? The letters of the times have none of his words borrowed of antiquity, nor has the printed prose, the poetry contradistinguished from the drama, or the drama, which is always the language of the day. His anti- quated words were his choice, not his necessity. Has ENGLISH POETRY. 27 who pronounces it to be exactly that of his contemporaries. His authority is weighty ; still, however, without reviving the exploded error respecting Jonson's censure, one might imagine the difference of Spenser's style from that of Shakspeare's, whom he so shortly preceded, to indicate that his gothic subject and story made him lean towards words of the elder time. At all events, much of his expression is now become anti- quated; though it is beautiful in its anti- quity, and like the moss and ivy on some majestic building, covers the fabric of his language with romantic and venerable as- sociations. His command of imagery is wide, easy, and luxuriant. He threw the soul of har- mony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and magnificently de- scriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been since. It must certainly be owned that in descrip- tion he exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which characterize the very greatest poets; but we shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of vi- sionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colours of language, than in this Rubens of English poetry. His fancy teems exuberantly in minuteness of Drayton, or Daniel, or Peele, Marlowe, or Shakspeare the obscure words found constantly recurring in Spenser? " Let others," says Daniel (the well-languuged Daniel, as Coleridge calls him) " Let others sing of knights and paladines, In aged accents and untimely words, I sing of Delia in the language of those who are about her and of her day." Davenant is express on the point, and speaks of Spenser's new grafts of old withered words and exploded expressions. Surely the writers of his own age are better authorities than Malone, who read ver- bally, not spiritually, and. emptying a commonplace book of obsolete words, called upon us to see in separate ex- amples what collectively did not then exist. It is easy to find many of Spenser's Chawxritms in his contempora- ries, but they do not crowd and characterize their writ- ings ; they tincture, but they do not colour ; they are there, but not for ever there. Bolton, who wrote in 1 622 of language and style, speaks .to this point in his Hypercritica. He is recommending authors for imitation and study ' Those authors among us. whose English hath in my conceit most propriety, and is nearest to the phrase of court, and to the speech used among the noble, and among the better sort In London : the two sovereign scats, and as it were Parliament tri- bunals, to try the question in." " In verse there are," he says, i; to furnish an English Historian with copy and tongue, Ed. Spt'iisi-r's Hymns. I cannot advise the al- lowance of other of his Poems, us for praotick English, no more than I can do Jeff. Chaucer, Lydgate. IVirrw Plowman, or Laureat Skelton. It was laid as a fault to circumstance, like a fertile soil sending bloom and verdure through the utmost ex- tremities of the foliage which it nourishes. On a comprehensive view of the whole work, we certainly miss the charm of strength, symmetry, and rapid or interesting progress ; for, though the plan which the poet designed is not completed, it is easy to see that no additional cantos could have rendered it less perplexed.* But still there is a richness in his materials, even where their coherence is loose, and their disposition confused. The clouds of his allegory may seem to spread into shapeless forms, but they are still the clouds of a glowing atmosphere. Though his story grows desultory, the sweetness and grace of his manner still abide by him. He is like a speaker whose tones continue to be pleasing, though he may speak too long; or like a painter who makes us forget the de- fect of his design, by the magic of his co- louring. We always rise from perusing him with melody in the mind's ear, and with pictures of romantic beauty impressed on the imagination.! For these attractions " The Fairy Queen" will ever continue to be resorted to by the poetical student. It is not, however, very popularly read, and sel- dom perhaps from beginning to end, even by those who can fully appreciate its beauties. the charge of Sallust, that he used some old outworn words, stolen out of Cato his Books de Originibus. And for an Historian in our tongue to AFFECT the like out of those our Poets would be accounted a foul oversight. That therefore must not be." Gray has a letter to prove that the language of the age is never the language of poetry. M'as Spenser behind or Shakspeare in advance ? Stage language must neces- sarily be the language of the time ; and Shakspeare gives us words pure and neat, yet plain and customary the style that Ben Jonson loved, the eldest of the present and the newest of the past while Spenser fell back on Chaucer as the Well of English undefilde, as he was pleased to express it. (See WANTON'S Essay on Spenser, vol. i, and HALLAM, Lit. Hist. vol. ii. p. 328.) "The language of Spenser," says Uallam, ''like that of Shakspeare, is an instrument manufactured for the sake of the work it was to perform." C. * Mr. Campbell has given a character of Spenser, not so enthusiastic as that to which I have alluded, but so discriminating, and in general sound, that I shall take the liberty of extracting It from bis Specimens of the British Poets. HALLAM. Lit. Hist. vol. ii. p. 334. C. t Spenser's allegorical story resembles, methinks, a continuance of extraordinary dreams. SIR W. luvi- HA!*T. After my reading a canto of Spenser two or three days ago, to an old lady betwran seventy and eighty, she said that I had been showing her a collection of pictures Sb* said very right. POPE to Spence. C. ENGLISH POETRY. This cannot be ascribed merely to its pre- senting a few words which are now obso- lete; nor can it be owing, as has been sometimes alleged, to the tedium inseparable from protracted allegory. Allegorical fable may be made entertaining. With every dis- advantage of dress and language, the hum- ble John Bunyan has made this species of writing very amusing. The reader may possibly smile at the names of Spenser and Bunyan being brought forward for a moment in comparison ; but it is chiefly because the humbler allegorist is so poor in language that his power of inte- resting the curiosity is entitled to admira- tion. We are told by critics that the passions may be allegorized, but that Holi- ness, Justice, and other such thin abstrac- tions of the mind, are too unsubstantial machinery for a poet ; yet we all know how well the author of the Pilgrim's Progress (and he was a poet, though he wrote in prose) has managed such abstractions as Mercy and Fortitude. In his artless hands, those attributes cease to be abstractions, and become our most intimate friends. Had Spenser, with all the wealth and graces of his fancy, given his story a more implicit and animated form, I cannot believe that there was any thing in the nature of his machinery to set bounds to his power of enchantment. Yet, delicious as his poetry is, his story, considered as a romance, is obscure, intricate, and monotonous. He translated .entire cantos from Tasso, but adopted the wild and irregular manner of Ariosto. The difference is, that Spenser appears, like a civilized being, slow and sometimes half forlorn, in exploring an un- inhabited country, while Ariosto traverses the regions of romance like a hardy native of its pathless wilds. Hurd and others, who forbid us to judge of " The Fairy Queen" by the test of classical unity, and who com- pare it to a gothic church, or a gothic gar- den, tell us what is little to the purpose. They cannot persuade us that the story is not too intricate and too diffuse. The thread of the narrative is so entangled, that the poet saw the necessity for explaining the design of his poem in prose, in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh; and the perspicuity of a poetical design which requires such an ex- planation may, with no great severity, be pronounced a contradiction in terms. It is degrading to poetry, we shall perhaps be told, to attach importance to the mere story which it relates. Certainly the poet is not a great one Avhose only charm is the manage- ment of his fable ; but where there is a fa- ble, it should be perspicuous. There is one peculiarity in " The Fairy Queen," which, though not a deeply pervad- ing defect, I cannot help considering as an incidental blemish; namely, that the alle- gory is doubled and crossed with compli- mentary allusions to living or recent per- sonages, and that the agents are partly historical and partly allegorical. In some instances the characters have a threefold allusion. Gloriana is at once an emblem of true glory, an empress of fairy-land, and her majesty Queen Elizabeth. Envy is a personified passion, and also a witch, and, with no very charitable insinuation, a type of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. The knight in dangerous distress is Henry IV. of France ; and the knight of magnifi- cence, Prince Arthur, the son of Uther Pendragon, an ancient British hero, is the bulwark of the Protestant cause in the Netherlands. Such distraction of allegory cannot well be said to make a fair experi- ment of its power. The poet may cover his moral meaning under a single and transpa- rent veil of fiction ; but he has no right to inuflie it up in foldings which hide the form and symmetry of truth. Upon the whole, if I may presume to measure the imperfections of so great and venerable a genius, I think we may say that, if his popularity be less than universal and complete, it is not so much owing to his obsolete language, nor to degeneracy of modern taste, nor to his choice of allegory as a subject, as to the want of that consoli- dating and crowning strength, which alone can establish works of fiction in the favour of all readers and of all ages. This want of strength, it is but justice to say, is either solely or chiefly apparent when we examine the entire structure of his poem, or so large a portion of it as to feel that it does not im- pel or sustain our curiosity in proportion to its length. To the beauty of insulated pas- sages who can be blind ? The sublime de- scription of " Him who with the Night durst ride" " The House of Riches," " The Canto of Jealousy," "The Masque of Cupid," and other parts, too many to enumerate, are so ENGLISH POETRY. 29 splendid, that after reading them, we feel it for the moment invidious to ask if they are symmetrically united into a whole. Suc- ceeding generations have acknowledged the pathos and richness of his strains, and the new contour and enlarged dimensions of grace which he gave to English poetry. He is the poetical father of a Milton and a Thomson. Gray habitually read him when he wished to frame his thoughts for compo- sition ; and there are few eminent poets in the language who have not been essentially indebted to him. " Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Kepair, and in their urns draw golden light." The publication of " The Fairy Queen," and the commencement of Shakspeare's dra- matic career, may be noticed as contempo- rary events; for by no supposition can Shakspeare's appearance as a dramatist be traced higher than 1589,* and that of Spen- ser's great poem was in the year 1590. I turn back from that date to an earlier pe- riod, when the first lineaments of our regu- lar drama began to show themselves. Before Elizabeth's reign we had no dra- matic authors more important than Bale and Heywood the Epigrammatist. Bale, before the titles of tragedy and comedy were well distinguished, had written comedies on such subjects as the Resurrection of Lazarus, and the Passion and Sepulture of our Lord. He was, in fact, the last of the race of mystery- writers. Both Bale and Heywood died about the middle of the sixteenth century, but flourished (if such a word can be applied to them) as early as the reign of Henry VIII. * It is clear that before 1591, or even 1592, Shakspeare had no celebrity as a writer of plays ; he must, therefore, have been valuable to the theatre chiefly as an actor; and if this was the case, namely, that he speedily trode the stage with some respectability, Mr. Rowe's tradition that be was at first admitted in a mean capacity must be taken with a bushel of doubt. CAMPBELL, Lift, of Shak- tpeare, 8vo, 1838, p. xxii. C. ( The Mysteries Mr. Collier would have called Mirade- Playt, and the Moralities, Morals or Moral-Plays. C. J Warton also mentions Kastell, the brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, who was a printer; but who is believed by the historian of our poetry to have been also an au- thor, and tn have made the moralities in some degree the vehicle of science and philosophy. He published [about 1519] a new Interlude on The Nature of the Four Ele- ments, in which The Tracts of America lately discovered and the manners of the natives are described. fSee Collier's Annals, vol. ii. p. 319.] \ Sackville became a statesman, and forsook the plea- sant paths of poetry ; nor does he appear to have encou- raged it in others; for in an age rife with poetical Until the time of Elizabeth, the public was contented with mysteries, moralities, or in- terludes, too humble to deserve the name of comedy. The first of these, the mysteries, originated almost as early as the Conquest, in shows given by the church to the people. The moralities,! which were chiefly allego- rical, probably arose about the middle of the fifteenth century, and the interludes fee- cam e prevalent during the reign of Henry VIII.J Lord Sackville's Gorboduc, first repre- sented in 1561-62, and Still's Gammer Gur- ton's Needle, about 1566, were the earliest, though faint, drafts of our regular tragedy and comedy.^ They did not, however, im- mediately supersede the taste for the allego- rical moralities. Sackville even introduced dumb show in his tragedy to explain the piece, and he was not the last of the old dramatists who did so. One might conceive the explanation of allegory by real person- ages to be a natural complaisance to an audience ; but there is something peculiarly ingenious in making allegory explain reality, and the dumb interpret for those who could speak. In reviewing the rise of the drama, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and Sackville's Gorboduc, form convenient resting-places for the memory ; but it may be doubted if their superiority over the mysteries and moralities be half so great as their real dis- tance from an affecting tragedy, or an exhi- larating comedy. The main incident in Gammer Gurton's Needle is the loss of a needle in a man's small-clothes. || Gorboduc has no interesting plot or impassioned dia- commendations, he seems to have drawn but one solitary sonnet, and that attached to a book where praises were made cheap '-The Faerie Queene." He died, anil re- ceived a funeral sermon from Abbot, but no tears of re- gret from theMiises; he who should have been a second Pembroke or Southampton. Still took to the church and became a bishop but not before the creator of our comi-dy had written a supplicatory letter that, for acting at Cambridge, a Latin play should be preferred to an English one. C. | Speaking of Gammer Gurton, Scott writes, "It is a piece of low humour; the whole jest turning upon the loss and the recovery of the needle with which Gammer Gurton was to repair the breeches of her man Hodpe; but in point of manners, it is a great curiosity, as the carlo, tuptllex of our ancestors Is scarcely anywhere so well described." "The unity," he continues, "of time, place, and action, are observed through the play, with an accuracy of which France might be jealous." And adds, alluding to Gorboduc, "It is remarkable, that the earliest English tragedy and comedy are both works of conside ruble merit; that each partakes of the distinct charactet 02 30 ENGLISH POETRY. logue; but it dignified the stage with moral reflection and stately measure. It first in- troduced blank verse instead of ballad rhymes in the drama. Gascoigne gave a farther popularity to blank verse by his paraphrase of Joeasta, from Euripides, which appeared in 1566. The same author's " Supposes," translated from Ariosto, was our earliest prose comedy. Its dialogue is easy and spirited. Edward's Palamon and Arcite was acted in the same year, to the great admiration of Queen Elizabeth, who called the author into her presence, and complimented him on having justly drawn the character of a genuine lover. Ten tragedies of Seneca were translated into English verse at different times, and by different authors, before the year 1581. One of these translators was Alexander Neyvile, afterwards secretary to Archbishop Parker, whose CEdipus came out as early as 1563 ; and though he was but a youth of nineteen, his style has considerable beauty. The fol- lowing lines, which open the first act, may serve as a specimen : " The nignt is gone, and dreadful day begins at length t' appear, And Phoebus, all bedimm'd with clouds, himself aloft doth rear; And, gliding forth, with deadly hue and doleful blaze in skies, Doth bear great terror and dismay to the beholder's eyes. Now shall the houses void be seen, with plague devoured quite, And slaughter which the night hath made shall day bring forth to light. Doth any man in princely thrones rejoice ? brittle joy I How many ills, how fair a face, and yet how much annoy In thee doth lurk, and hidden lies what heaps of endless strife ! They judge amiss, that deem the Prince to have the happy life." In 1568 was produced the tragedy of ' Tancred and Sigismunda," by Robert Wil- mot, and four other students of the Inner Temple. It is reprinted in Reed's plays; but that reprint is taken not from the first edition, but from one greatly polished and amended in 1592.* Considered as a piece of its class; that the tragedy is without intermixture of comedy; the comedy without any intermixture of tra- gedy." Misc. Prose Works, vol. vi. p. 333. C. * Newly revivtd, and polished according to the de- corum of these days. That is, as Mr. Collier supposes, by the removal of the rhymes to a blank verse fashion. C. t In the title-page it is denominated "A lamentable Tragedy, mixed full of pleasant Mirth.'' I The Taiperlanes and Tamer-oh.-ims of the late age had nothing in them but thescenical strutting, and furi- coming within the verge of Shakspeare's age, it ceases to be wonderful. Immediately subsequent to these writers we meet with several obscure and uninteresting dramatic names, among which is that of Whetstone, the author of " Promos and Cassandra," [1578], in which piece there is a partial an- ticipation of the plot of Shakspeare's Mea- sure for Measure. Another is that of Preston, whose tragedy of Cambysesf is alluded to by Shakspeare, when Falstaff calls for a cup of sack, that he may weep " in King Cambyses' vein."J There is, in- deed, matter for weeping in this tragedy; for, in the course of it, an elderly gentleman is flayed alive. To make the skinning more pathetic, his own son is witness to it, and exclaims, " What child is he of Nature's mould could bide the same to see, His father fleaed in this wise? how it grieveth me !" It may comfort the reader to know that this theatric decortication was meant to be alle- gorical ; and we may believe that it was per- formed with no degree of stage illusion that could deeply affect the spectator.^ In the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, we come to a period when the in- creasing demand for theatrical entertain- ments produced play-writers by profession. The earliest of these appears to have been George Peele, who was the city poet and con- ductor of the civil pageants. His "Arraign- ment of Paris" came out in 1584. Nash calls him an Atlas in poetry. Unless we make allowance for his antiquity, the expres- sion will appear hyperbolical ; but, with that allowance, we may justly cherish the me- mory of Peele as the oldest genuine dramatic poet of our language. His " David and Bethsabe" is the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dra- matic poetry. His fancy is rich and his feeling tender, and his conceptions of dra- matic character have no inconsiderable mix- ture of solid veracity and ideal beaut}*. ous vociferation, to warrant them to the ignorant gapers. BEN Joxsox (Giff^rd^ vol. ix. p. 180.) I suspect that Shakspeare confounded King Cambyxei with King Darius. FalstafFs solemn fustian bears not the slightest resemblance, either in metre or in matter, to the vein of King Cambyses. Kyng Daryus, whose doleful strain is here burlesqued, was a pithif andplesaunt Enterhide, printed about the middle of the sixteenth century. GIFFORD. Note on Jonson's Poetaster, Warki, vol. ii. p. 455. C. g The stage direction excites a smile. Flea him with a false skin. C. ENGLISH POETRY. There is no such sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in our blank verse anterior to Shakspeare.* David's character the traits both of his guilt and sensibility his passion for Bethsabe his art in in- flaming the military ambition of Urias, and his grief for Absalom, are delineated with no vulgar skill. The luxuriant image of Bethsabe is introduced by these lines: Come, gentle Zephyr, trick'd with those perfumes That erst in Eden sweeten'd Adam's love, And stroke my bosom with thy gentle fan : This shade, sun-proof, is yet no proof for thee. Thy body, smoother than this waveless spring, And purer than the substance of the same, Can creep through that bis lances cannot pierce. Thou and thy sister, soft and sacred Air, Goddess of life, and governess of health, Keeps every fountain fresh, and arbour sweet. No brazen gate her passage can refuse, Nor bushy thicket bar thy subtle breath : Then deck thee with thy loose delightsome robes, And on thy wings bring delicate perfumes, To play the wanton with us through the leaves. David. What tunes, what words, what looks, what wonders pierce My soul, incensed with a sudden fire ? What tree, what shade, what spring, what paradise, Enjoys the beauty of so fair a dame ? Fair Eva, placed in perfect happiness, Lending her praise-notes to the liberal heavens, Strook with the accents of archangels' tunes, Wrought not more pleasure to her husband's thoughts, Than this fair woman's words and notes to mine. May that sweet plain, that bears her pleasant weight, Be still enamell'd with diseolour'd flowers! Ttat precious fount bear sand of purest gold ; Ai d, for the pebble, let the silver streams Pli.y upon rubies, sapphires, chrysolites; The brims let be embraced with golden curls Of moss, that sleeps with sound the waters make ; F< r joy to feed the fount with their recourse Let all the grass that beautifies her bower Bear manna every morn instead of dew. Joab thus describes the glory of David: Beauteous and bright is he among the tribes; As when the sun, attired in glistering robe, Comes dancing from his oriental gate, And, bridegroom-like, hurls through the gloomy air His radiant beams : such doth King David show, Crown'd with the honour of his enemies' town, Shining in riches like the firmament, The starry vault that overhangs the earth ; So looketh David, King of Israel. * Mr. Dyce, in his edition of Peele, has quoted this passage from Mr. Campbell, "a critic," he styles him, "who is by no means subject to the pardonable weak- ness of discovering beauties in every writer of the olden time." p. xxxviii. It is quoted too by Mr. Hallam, (Lit. Hist. vol. ii. p. 378), who concurs with Mr. Collier in thinking these oofn- pliments excessive. C. f An interesting subject of inquiry in Shakspearc's literary history, is the state of our dramatic poetry when he began to alter and originate English plays. Before his time mere mysteries and miracle plays, in which Adam and Eve appeared naked, in which the devil dis- At the conclusion of the tragedy, when David gives way to his grief for Absalom, he is roused with great dignity and energy by the speech of Joab. When informed by Joab of the death of his son, David ex- claims : David. Thou man of blood ! thou sepulchre of death ' Whose marble lireast entombs my bowels quick, Did I not charge thee, nay, entreat thy hand, Even for my sake, to spare my Absalom ? And hast thou now, in spite of David's health, And scorn to do my heart some happiness, Given him the sword, and spilt his purple soul ? Joab. What ! irks it David, that he victor breathes, That Juda. and the fields of Israel Should cleanse their faces from their children's blood? What I art thou weary of thy royal rule ? Is Israel's throne a serpent in thine eyes, And he that set thee there, so far from thanks, That thou must curse his servant for his sake ? Hast thou not said, that, as the morning light, The cloudless morning, so should be thine house, And not as flowers, by the brightest rain, Which grow up quickly, and as quickly fade? Hast thou not said, the wicked are as thorns, That cannot be preserved with the hand ; And that the man shall touch them must be arm'd With coats of iron, and garments made of steel, Or with the shaft of a defenced spear ? And art thou angry he is now cut off, That led the guiltless swarming to their deaths, And was more wicked than an host of men ? Advance thee from thy melancholy den, And deck thy body with thy blissful robes, Or, by the Lord that sways the Heaven, I swear, I'll lead thine armies to another king, Shall cheer them for their princely chivalry ; And not sit daunted, frowning in the dark, When his fair looks, with oil and wine refresh'd, Should dart into their bosoms gladsome beams, And fill their stomachs with triumphant feasts ; That, when elsewhere stern War shall sound his trump, And call another battle to the field, Fame still may bring thy valiant soldiers home, And for their service happily confess She wanted worthy trumps to sound their prowess; Take thou this course, and live; Refuse, and die, Lyly, Peele, Greene, Kyd, Nash, Lodge, and Marlowe, were the other writers for our early stage, a part of whose career preceded that of Shakspeare.f Lyly. whose dramatic language is prose, has traits of genius which we should not expect from his generally de- praved taste, and he has several graceful played his horns and tail, and in which Noah's wife boxed the patriarch's ears before entering the ark, had fallen comparatively into disuse, after a popularity of four cen- turies : and, in the course of the sixteenth century, the clergy were forbllden by orders from Rome to perform in them. Meanwhile " Moralities," which had made their appearance about the middle of the fifteenth cen- tury, were also hastening their retreat, as well as those pageants and masques in honour of royalty, which nevertheless aided the introduction of the drama. But we owe our first regular dramas to the universities, the inns of court, and public seminaries. The scholars ot these establishments engaged in free translations of clas- 32 ENGLISH POETRY. interspersions of " sweet lyric song." But his manner, on the whole, is stilted. "Brave Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,"* of whos " mighty muse" Ben Jonson him- self speaks reverentially, had powers of no ordinary class, and even ventured a few steps into the pathless sublime. But his pathos is dreary, and the terrors of his Muse remind us more of Minerva's gorgon than her countenance. The first sober and cold school of tragedy, which began with Lord Sackville's Gorboduc, was succeeded by one of headlong extravagance. Kyd's bombast was proverbial in his own day. With him the genius of tragedy might be said to have run mad; and, if we may judge of one work, the joint production of Greene and Lodge, to have hardly recovered her wits in the company of those authors. The piece to which I allude is entitled "A Looking- glass for London" [1594]. There, the Tam- burlane of K} r d is fairly rivalled in rant and blasphemy by the hero Rasni, King of Nineveh, who boasts " Great Jewry's God, that foil'd stout Benhadad, Could not rebate the strength that Rasni brought ; For be he God in Heaven, yet viceroys know Rasni is God on earth, and none but be." sieal dramatists, though with so little taste, that Seneca was one of their favourites. They caught the coldness of that model, however, without the feeblest trace of his slender graces ; they looked at the ancients without un- derstanding them; and they brought to their plots nei- ther unity, design, nor affecting interest. There is a general similarity among all the plays that preceded Shakspeare in their ill-conceived plots, in the bombast and dulness of tragedy, and in the vulgar buffoonery of comedy. Of our great poet's immediate predecessors, the most distinguished were Lyly, Peele, Greene, Kyd, Nash, Lodge, and Marlowe. Lyly was not entirely devoid of poetry, for we have some pleasing lyrical versos by him ; but in the drama he is cold, mythological, and conceited, and he even polluted for a time the juvenile age of our literature with his abominable Euphuism. Peele has left some melodious and fanciful passages in his " David and Bethsabe." Greene is not unjustly praised for his comedy ' Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay." Kyd's " Span- ish Tragedy" was at first admired, but, subsequently, quoted only for its samples of the mock sublime. Nash wrote no poetry except for the stage ; but he is a poor dramatic poet though his prose satires are remarkably powerful. Lodge was not much happier on the stage than Nash; his prose works are not very valuable; but he wrote one satire in verse of considerable merit, and various graceful little lyrics. Marlowe was the only great man among Shakspeare's precursors ; his concep- tions were strong and original ; his intellect grasped his subject as a whole : no doubt be dislocated the thews of his language by overstrained effort* at the show of strength, but he delineated character with a degree of truth unknown to his predecessors: his "Edward the Second" is pathetic; and his "Faustus" has real gran- , In the course of. the play, the .imperial swaggerer marries his own sister, who is quite as consequential a character as him- self; but finding her struck dead by light- ning, he deigns to espouse her lady-in- waiting, and is finally converted after his wedding, by Jonah, who soon afterwards arrives at Nineveh. It would be perhaps unfair, however, to assume this tragedy as a fair test of the dramatic talents of either Greene or Lodge. Ritson recommended the dramas of Greene as well worthy of being collected. The taste of that antiquary was not exquisite, but his knowledge may en- title his opinion to consideration.! Among these precursors of Shakspeare we may trace, in Peele and Marlowe, a pleasing dawn of the drama, though it was by no means a dawn corresponding to so bright a sunrise as the appearance of his mighty genius. He created our romantic drama, or if the assertion is to be qualified, it requires but a small qualification .% There were, undoubtedly, prior occupants of the dramatic ground in our language ; but they appear only like unprosperous settlers on the patches and skirts of a wilderness, deur. If Marlowe had lived, Shakspeare might have had something like a competitor. CAMPBELL, Life of Shak- speare, p. xxiii. C. * Drayton. C. t His Dramas and Poems were printed together in 1831, by Mr. Dyce. " In richness of fancy, Greene," says Mr. Dyce, "is inferior to Peele; and with the exception of his amusing comedy Friar Sacnn and Friar Bungay, there is, perhaps, but little to admire in his dramatic prod uctions." C. J Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age, I found not, but created first the stage, And if I drain'd no Greek or Latin store, 'Twas that my own abundance gave DIP more. DRTDEN of Shakspeare. The English stage might be considered equally without rule and without model when Shakspeare arose. The effect of the genius of an individual upon the taste of a nation is mighty ; but that genius, in its turn, is formed according to the opinions prevalent at the period when it comes into existence. Such was the case with Sbakspeare. Had he received an education more extensive, and pos- sessed a taste refined by the classical models, it is probable that he also, in admiration of the ancient drama, might have mistaken the form for the essence, and subscribed to those rules which had produced such masterpieces of art. Fortunately for the full exertion of a genius, as comprehensive and versatile as intense and powerful, Shakspeare had no access to any models of which the commanding merit might have controlled and limited his own exertions. He followed the path which a nameless crowd of obscure writers had trodden before him ; but he moved in it with the grace and majestic step of a being of a superior order: and vindicated for ever the British theatre from a pedantic restriction to classical rule. ENGLISH POETRY. 33 which he converted into a garden. He is, therefore, never compared with his native predecessors. Criticism goes back for names worthy of being put in competition with his, to the first great masters of dramatic invention ; and even in the points of dissi- milarity between them and him, discovers some of the highest indications of his genius. Compared with the classical composers of antiquity, he is to our conceptions nearer the character of a universal poet; more ac- quainted with man in the real world, and more terrific and bewitching in the preter- natural. He expanded the magic circle of the drama beyond the limits that belonged to it in antiquity; made it embrace more time and locality ; filled it with larger busi- ness and action with vicissitudes of gay and serious emotion, which classical taste had kept divided with characters which developed humanity in stronger lights and subtler movements and with a language more wildly, more playfully diversified by fancy and passion, than was ever spoken on any stage. Like Nature herself, he presents alternations of the gay and the tragic ; and his mutability, like the suspense and pre- cariousness of real existence, often deepens the force of our impressions. He converted imitation into illusion. To say that, magi- cian as he was, he was not faultless, is only to recall the flat and stale truism, that every thing human is imperfect. But how to esti- mate his imperfections!* To praise him is easy In facili causa cuivis licet esse diserto But to make a special, full, and accurate- Nothing went before Shakspeare which in any respect was fit to fix and stamp the character of a national Drama ; and certainly no one will succeed him capable of establishing, by mere authority, a form more restricted than that which Shakspeare used. SIR WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Pr. Works, vol. iii. p. 336. Shakspeare began his literary career by alterations and adaptations of former dramas and copyright pieces to more popular and poetical purposes. He seems to hare extended his desire for emendation to the works of living writers; and, taught by nature, to have done for the writings of University Men what Pope did (with equal offence) for the rhymes and lines of Wychcrley. It was the common practice of his age to call in the pen of a living writer to aid with additions the Muse of a fellow- dramatist. He soon, however, learned to depend on his own myriad-minded genius, on his own thousand- tongued soul. C. * He (Shakspeare) was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most com- prehensive soul. AH the Images of nature were still pre- sent to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have 6 estimate of his imperfections would require a delicate and comprehensive discrimination, and an authority which are almost as seldom united in one man as the powers of Shak- speare himself. He is the poet of the world. The magnitude of his genius puts it beyond all private opinion to set defined limits to the admiration which is due to it. We know, upon the whole, that the sum of blemishes to be deducted from his merits is not great.f and we should scarcely be thankful to one who should be anxious to make it. No other poet triumphs so anomalously over eccen- tricities and peculiarities in composition which would appear blemishes in others ; so that his blemishes and beauties have an af- finity which we are jealous of trusting any hand with the task of separating. We dread the interference of criticism with a fascina- tion so often inexplicable by critical laws, and justly apprehend that any man in standing between us and Shakspeare may show for pretended spots upon his disk only the shadows of his own opacity. Still it is not a part even of that enthu- siastic creed, to believe that he has no exces- sive mixture of the tragic and comic, no blemishes of language in the elliptical throng and impatient pressure of his images, no irregularities of plot and action, which another Shakspeare would avoid, if "nature had not broken the mould in which she made him," or if he should come back into the world to blend experience with inspira- tion.J The bare name of the dramatic unities is wanted learning, give him the greater commendation : he was naturally learned ; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature ; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike ; were be so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid ; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, bis serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when great occa- sion is presented to him ; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi. DRYDE*. C. t If Shakspeare's embroideries were burnt down, there would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot. DRYDEN, Malrme, vol. ii. p. 295. C. J Of the learning of Shakspeare, Mr. Campbell says elsewhere : "There is not a doubt that he lighted up hi* glorious fancy at the lamp of classical mythology: Hyperion's curls the front of Jove himself An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury, New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill 34 ENGLISH POETRY. apt to excite revolting ideas of pedantry, arts of poetry, and French criticism. With none of these do I wish to annoy the reader. I conceive that it may be said of those uni- ties as of fire and water, that they are good servants but bad masters. In perfect rigour they were never imposed by the Greeks, and they would be still heavier shackles if they were closely riveted on our own drama. It would be worse than useless to confine dra- matic action literally and immovably to one spot, or its imaginary time to the time in which it is represented. On the other hand, dramatic time and place cannot surely admit of indefinite expansion. It would be better, for the sake of illusion and probability,* to change the scene from Windsor to London, than from London to Pekin ; it would look more like reality if a messenger, who went and returned in the course of the play, told us of having performed a journey of ten or twenty, rather than of a thousand miles; and if the spectator had neither that nor any other circumstance to make him ask how so much could be performed in so short a time. In an abstract view of dramatic art, its principles must appear to lie nearer to unity than to the opposite extreme of disunion, in our conceptions of time and place. Giving up the law of unity in its literal rigour, there is still a latitude of its application which may preserve proportion and har- mony in the drama.f The brilliant and able Schlegel has traced the principles of what he denominates the romantic, in opposition to the classical drama ; and conceives that Shakspeare's theatre, when tried by those principles, will be found not to have violated any of the unities, if they are largely and liberally un- Who can read these lines without perceiving that Shak- gpeare had imbibed a deeper feeling of the beauty of Pagan mythology than a thousand pedants could have imbibed in their whole lives?" Life of Shakspeare, p. xvi. C. * Dr. Johnson has said, with regard to local unity in the drama, that we can as easily imagine ourselves in one place as another. So we can, at the beginning of a play ; but having taken our imaginary station with the poet in one country, I do not believe with Dr. Johnson, that we change into a different one with perfect facility to the imagination. Lay the first act in Europe, and we surely do not naturally expect to find the second in America. + For some admirable remarks on dramatic unities, Fee Scott's Essay on the Drama (Misc. Pr. Works, vol. vi. pp. 298 321.) Dr. Johnson has numerous obligations to derstood. I have no doubt that Mr. Schle- gel's criticism will be found to have proved this point in a considerable number of the works of our mighty poet. There are traits, however, in Shakspeare, which, I must own, appear to my humble judgment incapable of being illustrated by any system or prin- ciples of art. I do not allude to his histo- rical plays, which, expressly from being historical, may be called a privileged class. But in those of purer fiction, it strikes me that there are licenses conceded indeed to imagination's " chartered libertine," but anomalous with regard to any thing which can be recognised as principles in dramatic art. When Perdita, for instance, grows from the cradle to the marriage altar in the course of the play, I can perceive no unity in the design of the piece, and take refuge in the supposition of Shakspeare's genius triumphing and trampling over art. Yet Mr. Schlegel, as far as I have observed, makes no exception to this breach of tem- poral unity; nor, in proving Shakspeare a regular artist on a mighty scale, does he deign in notice this circumstance, even as the ultima Thule of his license.^ If a man contends that dramatic laws are all idle restrictions, I can understand him ; or if he says that Perdita's growth on the stage is a trespass on art, but that Shakspeare's fasci- nation over and over again redeems it, I can both understand and agree with him. But when I am left to infer that all this is right on romantic principles, I confess that those principles become too romantic for my con- ception. If Perdita may be born and mar- ried on the stage, why may not Webster's Duchess of Malfi lie-in between the acts, and produce a fine family of tragic chil- dren ? Her grace actually does so in Web- an excellent paper of Farquhar's ; a fact not generally enough known. C. J Milis. How comes it that in some one play we see so many seas, countries, and kingdoms, passed over with such admirable dexterity ? Gn-datu*. 0, that but shows how well the authors can travel in their vocation, and outrun the apprehension of their auditory. Every Man out of kis Humour. This was said in 1599, and at The Globe, when Shak- speare, that very year, perhaps the performance before, had crossed the seas in his chorus from England to France, and from France to England, with admirable dexterity. Jonson wrote to recommend his own unities, and to instruct his audience; not, as the Shakspeare commentators would have us believe, toabuse Shakspeare, if not in his own house, in the very theatre in which he was a large sharer, and unquestionably the main-stay. ENGLISH POETRY. 35 ster's drama, and he is a poet of some genius, though it is not quite so sufficient as Shak- epeare's, to give a " sweet oblivious antidote" to such " perilous stuff." It is not, however, either in favour of Shakspeare's or of Webster's genius that we shall be called on to make allowance, if we justify in the drama the lapse of such a number of years as may change the apparent identity of an individual. If romantic unity is to be so largely interpreted, the old Spanish dramas, where youths grow graybeards upon the stage, the mysteries and moralities, and pro- ductions teeming with the wildest anachron- ism, might all come in with their grave or laughable claims to romantic legitimacy. Nam sic Et Laberi mimos ut pulcbra poemata mirer. HOR. On a general view, I conceive it may be said, that Shakspeare nobly and legitimately enlarged the boundaries of time and place in the drama; but in extreme cases, I would rather agree with Cumberland, to waive all mention of his name in speaking of dramatic laws, than accept those licenses for art which are not art, and designate irregularity by the name of order. There were other poets who started nearly coeval with Ben Jonson in the attempt to give a classical form to our drama. Daniel, for instance, brought out his tragedy of Cleopatra in 1594; but his elegant genius wanted the strength requisite for great dra- matic efforts. Still more unequal to the task was the Earl of Sterline, who published hia cold " monarchic ^tragedies," in 1604. The triumph of founding English classical come- dy belonged exclusively to Jonson. In his tragedies it is remarkable that he freely dispenses with the unities, though in those tragedies he brings classical antiquity in the most distinct and learnedly authenticated traits before our eyes. The vindication of his great poetic memory forms an agreeable contrast in modern criticism with the bold bad things which used to be said of him in * " Tf the ancients," says Headley, " were to reclaim their own, Jonson would not have a rajr to cover his na- kedness:" a remark that called a taunting reply from Gifford in one of his most bitter moods. Dryden has beautifully said of Jonson, that you may track him everywhere in the snow of the ancients. C. t Namely, the song of Night, in the masque of " The Vision of Delight." "Break, Phant'sie, from thy cave of cloud." p. 117. His lyrical poetry forms, perhaps, the most delightful a former period ; as when Young compared him to a blind Samson, who pulled down the ruins of antiquity on his head and buried his genius beneath them.* Hurd, though he inveighed against the too abstract conception of his characters, pronouncing them rather personified humours than natu- ral beings, did him, nevertheless, the justice to quote one short and lovely passage from one of his masques, and the beauty of that passage probably turned the attention of many readers to his then neglected compo- sitions.! It is indeed but one of the many beauties which justify all that has been said of Jonson's lyrical powers. In that fanciful region of the drama (the Masque) he stands as pre-eminent as in comedy ; or if he can be said to be rivalled, it is only by Milton. And our surprise at the wildness and sweet- ness of his fancy in one walk of composition is increased by the stern and rigid (some- times rugged) air of truth which he pre- serves in the other. In the regular drama he certainly holds up no romantic mirror to nature. His object was to exhibit human characters at once strongly comic and se- verely and instructively true ; to nourish the understanding, while he feasted the sense of ridicule. He is more anxious for verisi- militude than even for comic effect. He understood the humours and peculiarities of his species scientifically, and brought them forward in their greatest contrasts and subtlest modifications. If Shakspeare care^ lessly scattered illusion, Jonson skilfully prepared it. This is speaking of Jonson in his happiest manner. There is a great deal of harsh and sour fruit in his miscellaneous poetry. It is acknowledged that in the drama he frequently overlabours his delinea- tion of character, and wastes it tediously upon uninteresting humours and peculiari-. ties. He is a moral painter, who delights overmuch to show his knowledge of moral anatomy. Beyond the pale of his three great dramas, " The Fox," " The Epicene, part of his poetical character. In songs and masques, and interludes, his fancy has a wildness and a sweetness that we should not expect from the severity of his dra- matic taste. It cannot be said, indeed, that he is always free from metaphysical conceit, hut his lan.miagi- is weighty with thought, and polished with elegance. Upon the whole, his merits, after every fair deduction, leavo him in possession of a high niche in our literature, an^l entitle him to be ranked (next to Shakspeare) as th* most important benefactor of our early Jrama. CAMl" BELL, articfc Jonson, in Brewtter't Encydnpaedia.C. 86 ENGLISH POETRY. or Silent Woman," and " The Alchemist," it would not be difficult to find many strik- ing exceptions to that love of truth and probability, which, in a general view, may be regarded as one of his best characteris- tics. Even within that pale, namely, in his masterly character of Volpone, one is struck with what, if it be not an absolute breach, is at least a very bold stretch, of probability. It is true that Volpone is altogether a being daringly conceived; and those who think that art spoiled the originality of Jonson, may well rectify their opinion by consider- ing the force of imagination which it re- quired to concentrate the traits of such a character as "The Fox;" not to speak of his Mosca, who is the phoenix of all para- sites. Volpone himself is not like the com- mon misers of comedy, a mere money-loving dotard a hard, shrivelled old mummy, with no other spice than his avarice to preserve him ; he is a happy villain, a jolly misan- thrope a little god in his own selfishness, and Mosca is his priest and prophet. Vigor- ous and healthy, though past the prime of life, he hugs himself in his arch humour, his successful knavery and imposture, his sensuality and his wealth, with an unhal- lowed relish of selfish existence. His passion for wealth seems not to be so great as his delight in gulling the human " vul- tures and gorecrows" who flock round him at the imagined approach of his dissolution ; the speculators who put their gold, as they conceive, into his dying gripe, to be returned to them a thousand-fold in his will. Yet still, after this exquisite rogue has stood his trial in a sweat of agony at the scnitineum, and blest his stars at having narrowly escaped being put to the torture, there is something (one would think) a little too strong for probability, in that mischievous mirth and love of tormenting his own dupes, which bring him, by his own folly, a second time within the fangs of justice. " The Fox" and " The Alchemist" seem to have divided Jonson's admirers as to which of them may be considered his masterpiece. In confessing my partiality to the prose comedy of " The Silent Woman," consi- * The plot of The Fnx is admirably conceived : and that of The Alchemist, though faulty in the conclusion, is nearly equal to it. In the two comedies of Every Man in his Humour, and Every Man mil of his Humour, the plot deserves much less praise, and is deficient at once in 'nterest and unity of action ; but in that of The Silent dered merely as a comedy, I am by no means forgetful of the rich eloquence which poetry imparts to the two others. But " The Epi- cene," in my humble apprehension, exhibits Jonson's humour in the most exhilarating perfection.* With due admiration for "The Alchemist," I cannot help thinking the jar 5 - gon of the chemical jugglers, though it displays the learning of the author, to be tediously profuse. " The Fox" rises to something higher than comic effect. It is morally impressive. It detains us at parti- cular points in serious terror and suspense. But " The Epicene" is purely facetious. I know not, indeed, why we should laugh more at the sufferings of Morose than at those of the sensualist, Sir Epicure Mam- mon, who deserves his miseries much better than the rueful and pitiable Morose. Yet so it is, that, though the feelings of pathos and ridicule seem so widely different, a cer- tain tincture of the pitiable makes comic distress more irresistible. Poor Morose suf- fers what the fancy of Dante could not have surpassed in description, if he had sketched out a ludicrous Purgatory. A lover of quiet a man exquisitely impatient of rude sounds and loquacity, who lived in a retired street who barricadoed his doors with mat- resses to prevent disturbance to his ears, and who married a wife because he could with difficulty prevail upon her to speak to him has hardly tied the fatal knot when his house is tempested by female eloquence, and the marriage of him who had pensioned the city-wakes to keep away from his neigh- bourhood, is celebrated by a concert of trumpets. He repairs to a court of justice to get his marriage, if possible, dissolved, but is driven back in despair by the intole- rable noise of the court. For this marriage how exquisitely we are prepared by the scene of courtship ! When Morose ques- tions his intended bride about her likings and habits of life, she plays her part so hypocritically, that he seems for a moment impatient of her reserve, and with the most ludicrous cross-feelings wishes her to speak more loudly, that he may have a proof of her taciturnity from her own lips ; but, re- Woman, nothing can exceed the art with which the cir- cumstance upon which the conclusion turns is, until the very last scene, concealed from the knowledge of th reader, while he is tempted to suppose it constantly within his reach. SIB WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Prose Works, Tol. vi. p. 341. C. ENGLISH POETRY. 37 collecting himself, he gives way to the rap- turous satisfaction of having found a silent woman, and exclaims to Cutbeard, " Go thy ways and get me a clergyman presently, with a soft, low voice, to marry us, and pray him he will not be impertinent, but brief as he can." The art of Jonson was not confined to the cold observation of the unities of place and time, but appears in the whole adaptation of his incidents and characters to the sup- port of each other. Beneath his learning arid art he moves with an activity which may be compared to the strength of a man who can leap and bound under the heaviest armour.* The works of Jonson bring us into the seventeenth century; and early in that cen- tury, our language, besides the great names already mentioned, contains many other poets whose works may be read with a plea- sure independent of the interest which we take in their antiquity. Drayton and Daniel, though the most op- posite in the cast of their genius, are pre- eminent in the second poetical class of their age, for their common merit of clear and harmonious diction. Drayton is prone to Ovidian conceits, but he plays with them so gayly, that they almost seem to become him as if natural. His feeling is neither deep, nor is the happiness of his fancy of long continuance, but its short April gleams are very beautiful. His Legend of the Duke of Buckingham opens with a fine descrip- tion. Unfortunately, his descriptions in long poems are, like many fine mornings, suc- ceeded by a cloudy day. " The lark, that holds observance to the sun, Quaver'd her clear notes in the quiet air, And on the river's murmuring base did run, Whilst the pleased heavens her fairest livery wear ; The place such pleasure gently did prepare, The flowers my smell, the flood my taste to steep, And the much softness lulled me asleep. When, in a vision, as it secjn'd to me, Triumphal music from the flood arose." .... Of the grand beauties of poetry he has none ; but of the sparklhig lightness of his best manner an example may be given in * He (Jonson) was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and be borrowed boldly from them : there is scarce a poet or historian among the Ro- man authors of those times whom ho has not translated in Sojanus and Catiline. But he has done his robberies so openly that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch, and what the following stanzas, from his sketch of the Poet's Elysium. A Paradise on earth is found, Though far from vulgar sight, Which with those pleasures doth abound, That it Elysium hight The winter here a summer is, No waste is made by time : Nor doth the autumn ever miss The blossoms of the prime Those cliffs whose craggy sides are clad With trees of sundry suits, Which make continual summer glad, E'en bending with their fruits Some ripening, ready some to fall, Some blossom'd, some to bloom, Like gorgeous hangings on the wall Of some rich princely room There, in perpetual summer shade, Apollo's prophets sit, Among the flowers that never fade, But flourish like their wit; To whom the nymphs, upon their lyres, Tune many a curious lay, And, with their most melodious quires, Hake short the longest day. Daniel is " somewhat &rflat," as one of his contemporaries said of him,f but he had more sensibility than Drayton, and his moral reflection rises to higher dignity. The lyri- cal poetry of Elizabeth's age runs often into pastoral insipidity and fantastic careless- ness, though there may be found in some of the pieces of Sir Philip Sydney, Lodge, Marlowe, and Breton, not only a sweet, wild spirit, but an exquisite finish of expression. Of these combined beauties Marlowe's song, " Come live with me, and be my love," is an example. The " Soul's Errand," by whom- soever it was written, is a burst of genuine poetry.J I know not how that short pro- duction has ever affected other readers, but it carries to my imagination an appeal which I cannot easily account for from a few sim- ple rhymes. It places the last and inex- pressibly awful hour of existence before my view, and sounds like a sentence of vanity on the things of this world, pronounced by would be theft in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represented old Home to us in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies wr had seen less of it than in him. DKYHKN. C. f- Bolton, in his Hypercritica, 1622. C. t Vide these Selections, p. 110. D 38 ENGLISH POETRY. a dying man, whose eye glares on eternity, and whose voice is raised by strength from another world.* Raleigh, also (according to Puttenham), had a " lofty and passionate" vein. It is difficult, however, to authenti- cate his poetical relics. Of the numerous sonnetteers of that time (keeping Shak- speare and Spenser apart), Druinmond and Daniel are certainly the best. Hall was the master satirist of the age; obscure and quaint at times, but full of nerve and pic- turesque illustration. No contemporary satirist has given equal grace and dignity to moral censure. Very unequal to him in style, though often as original in thought, and as graphic in exhibiting manners, is Donne, some of whose satires have been modernized by Pope.f Corbet has left some humorous pieces of raillery on the Puri- tans. Wither, all fierce and fanatic on the opposite side, has nothing more to recom- mend him in invective, than the sincerity of that zeal for God's house, which ate him up. Marston, better known in the drama than in satire, was characterized by his contemporaries for his ruffian style. He has more will than skill in invective. " He puts in his blows with love," as the pugilists say of a hard but artless fighter; a degrading image, but on that account not the less ap- plicable to a coarse satirist. Donne was the " best good-natured man, with the worst-natured Muse." A romantic and uxorious lover, he addresses the object of his real tenderness with ideas that out- rage decorum. He begins his own epitha- lamium with a most indelicate invocation to his bride. His ruggedness and whim are almost proverbially known. J Yet there is a beauty of thought which at intervals rises from his chaotic imagination, like the form of Venus smiling on the waters. Giles and Phineas Fletcher possessed harmony and fancy. The simple Warner has left, in his " Argentile and Curan," perhaps the finest pastoral episode in our language. Browne * I not the Soul's Errand the same poem with the fcoul's Kuril, which 5s always ascribed to Richard Ed- wards? If so, why has it been insertear the threat Of an uncertain Godhead, only great Through self-awed zeal put on the glist'ning pall Of immortality. MORNING. Arise betimes, while th' opal-colour'd morn In golden pomp doth May-day's door adorn. The " opal-colour'd morn" is a beautiful expression, that I do not remember any other poet to have ever used. The school of poets, which is commonly called the metaphysical, began in the reign of Elizabeth with Donne ; but the term of metaphysical poetry would apply with much more justice to the quatrains of Sir John Davies, and those of Sir Fulke Greville, writers who, at a later period, found imi- tators in Sir Thomas Overbury and Sir Wil- liam Davenant.* Davies's poem on the Im- mortality of the Soul, entitled " Nosce teip- sum," will convey a much more favourable idea of metaphysical poetry than the wit- tiest effusions of Donne and his followers. Davies carried abstract reasoning into verse with an acuteness and felicity which have seldom been equalled. He reasons, un- doubtedly, with too much labour, formality, and subtlety, to afford uniform poetical pleasure. The generality of his stanzas ex- hibit hard arguments interwoven with the pliant materials of fancy, so closely, that we may compare them to a texture of cloth and metallic threads, which is cold and stiff, while it is splendidly curious. There is this difference, however, between Davies and the commonly styled metaphysical poets, that he argues like a hard thinker, and Uiey, for the most part, like madmen. If we conquer the drier parts of Davies's poem, and bestow a little attention on thoughts which were meant, not to gratify the indolence, but to challenge the activity of the mind, we shall find in the entire es- say fresh beauties at every perusal: for in the happier parts we come to logical truths [* This has been re-echoed by Mr. Hallam in his His- tory. Johnson has been unjustly blamed for the name applied to Donne and his followers of metaphysical poets, but it was given to this school before Johnson so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. The judgment and fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poem seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction. Such were some of the first and inferior luminaries of that brilliant era of our poetry, which, perhaps, in general terms, may be said to cover about the last quarter of the sixteenth, and the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and which, though commonly called the age of Elizabeth, com- prehends many writers belonging to the reign of her successor. The romantic spirit, the generally unshackled style, and the fresh and fertile genius of that period, are not to be called in question. On the other hand, there are defects in the poetical character of the age, which, though they may disappear or be of little account amidst the excellencies of its greatest writers, are glaringly conspicuous in the works of their minor contemporaries. In prolonged nar- rative and description the writers of that age are peculiarly deficient in that charm, which is analogous to "keeping" in pictures. Their warm and cold colours are generally without the gradations which should make them harmonize. They fall precipitately from good to bad thoughts, from strength to imbecility. Certainly they are profuse in the detail of natural circumstances, and in the utterance of natural feelings. For this we love them, and we should love them still more if they knew where to stop in de- scription and sentiment. But they give out the dregs of their mind without reserve, till their fairest conceptions are overwhelmed by a rabble of mean associations. At no period is the mass of vulgar mediocrity in poetry marked by more formal gallantry, by grosser adulation, or by coarser satire. Our amatory strains in the time of Charles the Second may be more dissolute, but those of Elizabeth's age often abound in studious and prolix licentiousness. Nor are exam- ples of this solemn and sedate impurity to be found only in the minor poets: our reve- rence for Shakspeare himself need not make wrote, by Dryden and by Pope. However, as Mr. Southey has said, "If it were easy to find a better name, so much deference is due to Johnson, that his should ta still adhered to." C.] ENGLISH POETRY. 43 it necessary to disguise that he willingly adopted that style in his youth, when he wrote his Venus and Adonis.* The fashion of the present day is to soli- cit public esteem not only for the best and better, but for the humblest and meanest writers of the age of Elizabeth. It is a bad book which has not something good in it; and even some of the worst writers of that period have their twinkling beauties. In one point of view, the research among such obscure authors is undoubtedly useful. It tends to throw incidental lights on the great old poets, and on the manners, biography, and language of the country. So far all is well but as a matter of taste, it is apt to produce illusion and disappointment. Men like to make the most of the slightest beauty which they can discover in an obsolete versifier ; and they quote perhaps the soli- tary good thought which is to be found in such a writer, omitting any mention of the dreary passages which surround it. Of course it becomes a lamentable reflection, that so valuable an old poet should have been forgotten. When the reader however repairs to him, he finds that there are only one or two grains of gold in all the sands of this imaginary Pactolus. But the dis- play of neglected authors has not been even [* Shakspeare's sonnets are addressed to a youth of both sexes, to some hermaphrodite or Stella of his own fancy, and Barnfeild is guilty of eulogizing a youth in thc> language of love in its most womanly signification. Had Shakspeare published these now over-rated produc- tions of liis muse, (of which no one throughout is posi- tively excellent,) this unnatural association had never existed, but several of his tugared sonnets among his private friends, when copyrights were not acknowledged or made the subject of law, falling into the hands of T. T., a liookseller, the said T. T., whose name was Tho- mas Thorpe, printed them with a hieroglyphicil 'iwrip- tion, that i the puzzle of commentator, critic and reader. It deserves transcription : To the Only tegetter of these ensuing Sonnets Mr. W. H. all Happiness and that Eternity promised by our ever-living Poet wishi-t ;i the well-wishing Adventurer in setting forth. T. T. confined to glimmering beauties ; it has been extended to the reprinting of large and heavy masses of dulness. Most wretched works have been praised in this enthusiasm for the obsolete ; even the dullest works of the meanest contributors to the " Mirror for Magistrates."! It seems to be taken for granted, that the inspiration of the good old times descended to the very lowest dregs of its versifiers; whereas the bad writers of Elizabeth's age are only more stiff and artificial than those of the preceding, and more prolix than those of the succeeding period. Yet there are men, who, to all appear- ance, would wish to revive such authors not for the mere use of the antiquary, to whom every volume may be useful, but as standards of manner, and objects of gene- ral admiration. Books, it is said, take up little room. In the library this may be the case; but it is not so in the minds and time of those who peruse them. Happily, in- deed, the task of pressing indifferent au- thors on the public attention is a fruitless one. They may be dug up from oblivion, but life cannot be put into their reputations. " Can these bones live ?" Nature will have her course, and dull books will be forgotten, in spite of bibliographers. Who was Mr. W. H. ? A host of learned and unlearned, with Mr. Hallam of their number, would have us to be- lieve William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke; which we shall credit when an instance i< adduced of a peer of nine years' standing described, dedicated to, or shadowed as Mr. This or That by mere initials. Mr. W. II. was well enough known in his own day ; what is enigmatical to us was no obscurity then. T. T. had not dared to ad- dress the Earl of Pembroke as Mr. W. H. The same Mr. W. H. is said to have been " the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets :" but in what signifi- cation is the word used! An instance is given front Dpkker, where its purport is tn procure. Was Mr. W. H. the procurer the person by whose means T. T. had been able to print them? a character akin to the mysterious man who brought the letter of Pope to the piratical Curll; or is he the individual to whom they are ad- dressed? But all is conjecture; one thing however is evident, that if T. T. meant that Mr. W. H. was addressed throughout by the poet, he had never read the Sonnets, for the last twenty-eiitht are to a woman. C.] [t The Mirror for Magistrates was one of Haslewood'n reprints a heavy man, with no kind or degree of good taste. CJ ENGLISH POETRY. PART III. THE pedantic character of James I. has been frequently represented as the cause of degeneracy in English taste and genius. It must be allowed that James was an indif- ferent author ; and that neither the manners of his court nor the measures of his reign were calculated to excite romantic virtues in his subjects. But the opinion of his character having influenced the poetical spirit of the age unfavourably is not borne out by facts. He was friendly to the stage and to its best writers : he patronized Ben Jonson, and is said to have written a com- plimentary letter to Shakspeare with his own hand.* We may smile at the idea of James's praise being bestowed as an honour upon Shakspeare; the importance of the compliment, however, is not to be estimated by our present opinion of the monarch, but by the excessive reverence with which roy- alty was at that time invested in men's opinions. James's reign was rich in poeti- cal names, some of which have been already enumerated. We may be reminded, indeed, that those poets had been educated under Elizabeth, and that their genius bore the high impress of her heroic times; but the same observation will also oblige us to re- collect that Elizabeth's age had its traits of depraved fashion, (witness its Euphuism,!) and that the first examples of the worst taste which ever infected our poetry were given in her days, and not in those of her successor. Donne, (for instance,) the pa- triarch of the metaphysical generation, was thirty years of age at the date of James's accession; a time at which his taste and ftyle were sufficiently formed to acquit his learned sovereign of all blame in having corrupted them. Indeed, if we were to make the memories of our kings accountable for the poetical faults of their respective reigns, we might reproach Charles I., among whose * This anecdote is given by Oldyg on the authority of the Duke of Buckingham, who [is said to have] had it from Sir William Davenant. [The cause assigned, an obscure allusion in Macbeth, is a very lame and unlikely one. Shakspeare's plays were in the greatest esteem with Kintr Juneg : of the fatrteen plavg acted at Court faults bad taste is certainly not to be reck- oned, with the chief disgrace of our meta- physical poetry; since that school never attained its unnatural perfection so com- pletely as in the luxuriant ingenuity of Cowley's fancy, and the knotted deformity of Cleveland's. For a short time after the suppression of the theatres, till the time of Milton, the metaphysical poets are forced upon our attention for want of better ob- jects. But during James's reign there is no such scarcity of good writers as to oblige us to dwell on the school of elaborate conceit. Phineas Fletcher has been sometimes named as an instance of the vitiated taste which prevailed at this period. He, however, though musical and fanciful, is not to be admitted as a representative of the poetical character of those times, which included Jonson, Beaumont and John Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, and Shirley. Shakspeare was no more; but there were dramatic authors of great and diversified ability. The ro- mantic school of the drama continued to be more popular than the classical, though in the latter Ben Jonson lived to see imitators of his own manner, whom he was not ashamed to adopt as his poetical heirs. Of these Cartwright and Randolph were the most eminent. The originality of Cart- wright's plots is always acknowledged ; and Jonson used to say of him, " My son Cart- wright writes all like a man." Massinger is distinguished for the har- mony and dignity of his dramatic eloquence. Many of his plots, it is true, are liable to heavy exceptions. The fiends and angels of his Virgin Martyr are unmanageable tragic machinery; and the incestuous pas- sion of his Ancient Admiral excites our horror. The poet of love is driven to a frightful expedient, when he gives it the terrors of a maniac passion breaking down between the 1st of November, 1604, and the 31st of Octo- ber, 1605, eight were Shakspeare's, the remaining six were divided among Ben Jonson, Heywood, and Chapman. C.} . t An affected jargon of style, which was fashionable for some time at the court of Elizabeth, and so called from the work of Lyly entitled Euphuts. ENGLISH POETRY. 45 the most sacred pale of instinct and con- sanguinity. The ancient admiral is in love with his own daughter. Such a being, if we fancy him to exist, strikes us as no ob- ject of moral warning, but as a man under the influence of insanity. In a general view, nevertheless, Massinger has more art and judgment in the serious drama than any of the other successors of Shakspeare. His incidents are less entangled than those of Fletcher, and the scene of his action is more clearly throwr open for the free evo- lution of character Fletcher strikes the imagination with more vivacity, but more irregularly, and amidst embarrassing posi- tions of his own choosing. Massinger puts forth his strength more collectively. Flet- cher has more action and character in his drama, and leaves a greater variety of im- pressions upon the mind. His fancy is more volatile and surprising, but then he often blends disappointment with our surprise, and parts with the consistency of his cha- racters even to the occasionally apparent loss of their identity. This is not the case with Massinger. It is true that Massinger excels more in description and declamation than in the forcible utterance of the heart, and in giving character the warm colouring of passion. Still, not to speak of his one distinguished hero* in comedy, he has de- lineated several tragic characters with strong and interesting traits. They are chiefly proud spirits. Poor himself, and struggling under the rich man's contumely, we may conceive it to have been the solace of his neglected existence to picture worth and magnanimity breaking through exter- nal disadvantages, and making their way to love and admiration. Hence his fine con- ceptions of Paris, the actor, exciting by the splendid endowments of his nature the jea- lousy of the tyrant of the world ; and Don John and Pisander, habited as slaves, woo- ing and winning their princely mistresses. He delighted to show heroic virtue stripped of all adventitious circumstances, and tried, like a gem, by its shining through darkness. His Duke of Milan is particularly admira- ble for the blended interest which the poet excites by the opposite weaknesses and magnanimity of the same character. Sforza, Duke of Milan, newly married and uxorious- Sir Giles Overreach. ly attached to the haughty Marcelia, a wo- man of exquisite attractions, makes her a.n object of secret but deadly enmity at his court, by the extravagant homage which he requires to be paid to her, and the prece- dence which he enjoins even his own mother and sisters to yield her. As Chief of Milan, he is attached to the fortunes of Francis I. The sudden tidings of the approach of Charles V., in the campaign which termi- nated with the battle of Pavia, soon after- wards spread dismay through his court and capital Sforza, though valiant and self- collected in all that regards the warrior or politician, is hurried away by his immode- rate passion for Marcelia; and being obliged to leave her behind, but unable to bear the thoughts of her surviving him, obtains the promise of a confidant to destroy her, should his own death appear inevitable. He re- turns to his capital in safety. Marcelia, having discovered the secret order, receives him with coldness. His jealousy is in- flamed; and her perception of that jealousy alienates the haughty object of his affec- tion, when she is on the point of reconcile- ment. The fever of Sforza' s diseased heart is powerfully described, passing from the extreme of dotage to revenge, and return- ing again from thence to the bitterest re- pentance and prostration, when he has struck at the life which he most loved, and has made, when it is too late, the discovery of her innocence. Massinger always en- forces this moral in love ; he punishes dis- trust, and attaches our esteem to the unbounded confidence of the passion. But while Sforza thus exhibits a warning against morbidly-selfish sensibility, he is made to appear, without violating probability, in all other respects a firm, frank, and prepossess- ing character. When his misfortunes are rendered desperate by the battle of Pavia, and when he is brought into the presence of Charles V., the intrepidity with which he pleads his cause disarms the resentment of his conqueror; and the eloquence of the poet makes us expect that it should do so. Instead of palliating his zeal for the lost cause of Francis, he thus pleads I come not. Emperor, to invade thy mercy By fawning on thy fortune, nor bring with me Excuses or denials ; I profess, And with a good man's confidence, even this That T am in thy power, I was thine enemy, Thy deadly and vow'd enemy ; one that wish'd 46 ENGLISH POETRY. Confusion to thy person and estates, And with my utmost power and deepest counsels, Had they been truly follow'd, further'd it Nor will I now, although my neck were under The hangman's axe, with one poor syllable Confess but that I honour'd the French king More than thyself and all men. After describing his obligations to Fran- cis, he says He was indeed to me as my good angel, To guard me from all danger. I dare speak, Nay must and will, his praise now in as high And loud a key as when he was thy equal. The benefits he sow'd in me met not Unthankful ground If then to he grateful For benefits received, or not to leave A friend in his necessities, be a crime Amongst you Spaniards, Sforza brings his head To pay the forfeit. Nor come I as a slave, Pinion 'd and fetter'd, in a squalid weed, Falling before thy feet, kneeling and howling For a forestall'd remission that were poor, And would but shame thy victory, for conquest Over base foes is a captivity, And not a triumph. I ne'er fear'd to die More than I wish'd to live. When I had reach'd My ends in being a Duke, I wore these robes, This crown upon my head, and to my side This sword was girt; and, witness truth, that now Tis in another's power, when I shall part With life and them together, I'm the same My veins then did not swell with pride, nor now Shrink they for fear. If the vehement passions were not Mas- singer's happiest element, he expresses fixed principle with an air of authority. To make us feel the elevation of genuine pride was the master-key which he knew how to touch in human sympathy; and his skill in it must have been derived from deep expe- rience in his own bosom.* The theatre of Beaumont and Fletcher contains all manner of good and evil. The respective shares of those dramatic part- ners, in the works collectively published with their names, have been stated in a di [* Although incalculably superior to his contempora- rif. Pbakspeare had successful imitators; and the art of Jonson was not unrivalled. MasMnger appears to have studied the works of both, with the intention of uniting their excellences. He knew the strength of plot ; and although his plays are altogether irregular, yet he well understood the advantage of a strong and defined inte- rest : and in unravelling the intricacy of his intrigues, he often displays the management of a master. Sm WALTF.R SCOTT, Mite. Prose Wirkt, vol. vi. p. 342. C.] ft Ravenseroft, the filthiest writer for the stage in the reign of the second Charles, is not more obscene than Beaumont and Fletcher. Yet Earle, who was in the church and a bishop witha!, praises their plays for their purity ; and Fxwelace likens the nakedness of their lan- guage to Cupid dressed in Diana's linen. The outspoken nature of their writings is in the very character of their age, for Charles I. would address the ladies of his court ferent part of this volume. Fletcher's share in them is by far the largest; and he is chargeable with the greatest number of faults, although at the same time his genius was more airy, prolific, and fanciful. There are such extremes of grossness and magni- ficence in their drama, so much sweetness and beauty interspersed with views of na- ture either falsely romantic, or vulgar be- yond reality; there is so much to animate and amuse us, and yet so much that we would willingly overlook, that I cannot help comparing the contrasted impressions which they make, to those which we receive from visiting some great and ancient city, pic- turesquely but irregularly built, glittering with spires and surrounded with gardens, but exhibiting in many quarters the lanes and hovels of wretchedness. They have scenes of wealthy and high life which re- mind us of courts and palaces frequented by elegant females and high-spirited gal- lants, Avhilst their noble old martial charac- ters, with Caractacus in the midst of them, may inspire us with the same sort of regard which we pay to the rough-hewn magnifi cence of an ancient fortress. Unhappily, the same simile, without being hunted down, will apply but too faithfully to the nuisances of their drama. Their lan- guage is often basely profligate. Shak- speare's and Jonson's indelicacies are but casual blots ; whilst theirs are sometimes essential colours of their painting, and ex- tend, in one or two instances, to entire and offensive scenes. This fault has deservedly injured their reputation; and, saving a very slight allowance for the fashion and taste of their age, admits of no sort of apology.f Their drama, nevertheless, is a very wide in a style that would meet with no toleration now. Pro- priety of speech and conduct one does not look for at the Restoration. All was license then : Love was liberty, and nature law. Plays were beheld by ladies in masks, who blushed un- seen at situations, language, and allusions of the most obscene description. Something of this continued to a later time. Ramsay dedicates his Tea Table Miscellany to the ladies and lassies of Britain, and boasts that his hook is without a word or an allusion to redden the brow of offended beauty. Yet the book abounds in naked vulgarities and songs of studied obscenity. The novels of the once immaculate Richardson, that ladies talked and quoted into deserved celebrity, few ladies now own to their perusal, and no clergymen be found to re- commend, as of old, to their flock from the pulpit. While the letters of the maids of honour about the court ENGLISH POETRY. 47 one, and " has ample room and verge enough"* to permit the attention to wander from these, and to fix on more inviting pe- culiarities as on the great variety of their fables and personages, their spirited dia- logue, their wit, pathos, and humour. Thickly sown as their blemishes are, their merit will bear great deductions, and still remain great. We never can forget such beautiful characters as their Cellide, their Aspatia, and Bellario, or such humorous ones as their La Writ and Cacafogo. Awake they will always keep us, whether to quar- rel or to be pleased with them. Their in- vention is fruitful; its beings are on the whole an active and sanguine generation ; and their scenes are crowded to fulness with the warmth, agitation, and interest of life. In thus speaking of them together, it may be necessary to allude to the general and traditionary understanding, that Beau- mont was the graver and more judicious genius of the two. Yet the plays in which he may be supposed to have assisted Flet- cher are by no means remarkable either for harmonious adjustment of parts, or scrupu- lous adherence to probability. In their " Laws of Candy," the winding up of the plot is accomplished by a young girl com- manding a whole bench of senators to de- of the first and second Georges the Howes, the Bel- lendens, and Lepells are rife with the very dirt of our language. The cleanest are in the Suffolk Pa- pers ; and there, as the prorerb goes, a spade is called a spade: Themselves they studied ; as they felt they writ. C.] [ Dryden. C.] t The most amusingly absurd perhaps of all Fletcher's bad plays is The Island Princess. One mi^ht absolutely take it for a burlesque on the heroic drama, If its reli- gious conclusion did not show the author to be in earn- est. Quisara, princess of the island of Tidore, where the Portuguese have a fort, offers her hand in marriage to any champion who shall deliver her brother, a captive of the governor of Ternata. Kuy Dias, her Portuguese lover, is shy of the adventure; but another lover, Ar- musia, hires a boat, with a few followers, which he hides on landing at Tidore, among the reeds of the invaded island. He then disguises himself as a merchant, hires a cellar, like the Popish conspirators, and in the most credible manner blows up a considerable portion of a large town, rescues the king, slaughters all oppose, and re-embarks in bis yawl from among the reeds. On his return he finds the lovely Quisara loth to fulfil her pro- mise, from her being still somewhat attached to Ruy Dias. The base Ruy Dias sends his nephew, Piniero, to The Island Princess, with a project of assassinating Ar- musia; but Piniero, who is a merry fellow, thinks it bet- ter to prevent his uncle's crime, and to make love for himself. Before his introduction to the Princess, how- ever, he meets with her aunt Quisana, to whom he talks scend from their judgment-seats, in virtue of an ancient law of the state which she discovers ; and they obey her with the most polite alacrity. " Cupid's Revenge" is as- signed to them conjointly, and is one of the very weakest of their worst class of pieces. On the other hand, Fletcher produced his " Rule a Wife and Have a Wife," after Beaumont's death, so that he was able, when he chose, to write with skill as well as spirit. Of that skill, however, he is often so sparing as to leave his characters subject to the most whimsical metamorphoses. Some- times they repent, like methodists, by in- stantaneous conversion. At other times they shift from good to bad, so as to leave us in doubt what they were meant for. In the tragedy of " Valentinian" we have a fine old soldier, Maximus, who sustains our affection through four acts, but in the fifth we are suddenly called upon to hate him, on being informed, by his own confession, that he is very wicked, and that all his past virtue has been but a trick on our credulity. The imagination, in this case, is disposed to take part with the creature of the poet'? brain against the poet himself, and to think that he maltreats and calumniates his own offspring unnaturally .f But for these faults abundance of ribaldry and dauble entftidre, and so capti- vates the aged woman, that she exclaims to her attend- ant, " Pray thee let him talk still, for methinks he talks handsomely I" With the young lady he is equally suc- cessful, offers to murder anybody she pleases, and gains her affections so far that she kisses him. The poor vir- tuous Armusia. in the mean time, determines to see his false Princess, makes his way to her chamber, and in spite of her reproaches and her late kiss to Piniero, at last makes a new impression on her heart. The dear Island Princess is in love a third time, in the third act. In the fourth act, the king of Tidore, lately delivered by Armusia, plots against the Christians; he is accompanied by a Moorish priest, who is no other than the governor of Ternata, disguised in a false wig and beard; but his Tidorian majesty recollects his old enemy so imperfectly as to be completely deceived. This conspiracy alarms the Portuguese; the cowardly Ruy Dias all at once grows brave and generous; Quisara joins the Christians, and for the sake of Armusia and her new faith offers to be burnt alive. Nothing remains but to open the eyes of her brother, the king of Tidore. This is accomplished by the merry Piniero laying hold of the masqued gover- nor's beard, which comes away without the assistance of a barber. The monarch exclaims that he cannot speak fcr astonishment, and every thing concludes agreeably. The Island Princess is not unlike some of the romantic dramas of Dryden's time; but the later play-writers superadded a style of outrageous rant and turgid ima- gery. [Such is the plot, nor is the dialogue better. Still Armusia is a fine fellow, and Piniero a merry one, while Quisara, who loves a ranter, transfers her affection* with 48 ENGLISH POETRY. Fletcher makes good atonement, and has many affecting scenes. We must still in- deed say scenes; for, except in " The Faith- ful Shepherdess," which, unlike his usual manner, is very lulling, where shall we find him uniform ? If " The Double Marriage" could be cleared of some revolting passages, the part of Juliana would not be unworthy of the powers of the finest tragic actress. Juliana is a high attempt to portray the saint and heroine blended in female charac- ter. When her husband Virolet's conspiracy against Ferrand of Naples is discovered, she endures and braves for his sake the most dreadful cruelties of the tyrant. Virolet flies from his country, obliged to leave her behind him; and falling at sea into the hands of the pirate Duke of Sesse, saves himself and his associates from death, by consenting to marry the daughter of the pirate (Martia), who falls in love and elopes with him from her father's ship. As they carry off with them the son of Ferrand, who had been a prisoner of the Duke of Sesse, Virolet secures his peace being made at Naples ; but when he has again to meet Juliana, he finds that he has purchased life too dearly. When the ferocious Martia, seeing his repentance, revenges herself by plotting his destruction, and when his di- vorced Juliana, forgetting her injuries, flies to warn and to save him, their interview has no common degree of interest. Juliana is perhaps rather a fine idol of the imagination than a probable type of nature ; but poetry which " conforms the shows of things to the desires of the soul,"* has a right to the highest possible virtues of human character. And there have been women who have prized a husband's life above their own, and his honour above his life, and who have united the tenderness of their sex to heroic intrepidity. Such is Juliana, who thus ex- horts the wavering fortitude of Virolet on the ey.e of his conspiracy. Virnlet. Unless our hands were cannon To batter down his walls, our weak breath mines To blow his forts up, or our curses lightning, Our power is like to yours, and we, like you, Weep our misfortunes She replies Walls of brass resist not A noble undertaking nor can vice marvellous celerity. Piniero is evidently more her match than Armusia, whom she marries, but not before he hag won her waiting-woman to admit him to her bed-chamber, Raise any bulwark to make good a place Where virtue seeks to enter. The joint dramas of Beaumont and Flet- cher, entitled " Philaster" and "The Maid's Tragedy," exhibit other captivating female portraits. The difficulty of giving at once truth, strength, and delicacy to female re- pentance for the loss of honour, is finely accomplished in Evadne. The stage has perhaps few scenes more affecting than that in which she obtains forgiveness of Amin- tor, on terms which interest us in his com- passion, without compromising his honour. In the same tragedy,f the plaintive image of the forsaken Aspatia has an indescri- bably sweet spirit and romantic expression. Her fancy takes part with her heart, and gives its sorrow a visionary gracefulness. When she finds her maid Antiphila working a picture of Ariadne, she tells her to copy the likeness from herself, from " the lost Aspatia." Atp. But where's the lady ? Ant. There, madam. Asp. Fie, you nave miss'd it here, Antiphila; These colours are not dull and pale enough, To show a soul so full of misery As this sad lady's was. Do it by me . Do it again by me, the lost Aspatia, And you shall find all true. Put me on the wild island. I stand upon the sea-beach now, and think Mine arms thus, and my hair blown by the wind Wild as that desert, and let all about me Be teachers of my story Strive to make me look Like Sorrow's monument, and the trees about me, Let them be dry and leafless ; let the rocks Groan with continual surges, and behind me Make all a desolation. See, sec, wenches, A miserable life of this poor picture. The resemblance of this poetical picture to Guide's Bacchus and Ariadne has been noticed by Mr. Seward in the preface to his edition of Beaumont and Fletcher. " In both representations the extended arms of the mourner, her hair blown by the wind, the barren roughness of the rocks around her, and the broken trunks of leafless trees, make her figure appear like Sorrow's monu- ment." Their masculine characters in tragedy are generally much less interesting than their females. Some exceptions may be found to this remark; particularly in the British chief Caractacus and his interesting nephew, the boy Hengo. With all the faults of th where Quisara scolds him with all the anxious importu- nity of desire. C.] * Expression of Lord Bacon's, f The Maid's Tragedy. ENGLISH POETRY. 49 tragedy of Bonduca, its British subject and its native heroes attach our hearts. We follow Caractacus to battle and captivity with a proud satisfaction in his virtue. The stubbornness of the old soldier is finely tem- pered by his wise, just, and candid respect for his enemies the Romans, and by his tender affection for his princely ward. He never gives way to sorrow till he looks on the dead body of his nephew, Hengo, when he thus exclaims Farewell the hopes of Britain I Farewell thou royal graft for ever ! Time and Death, Ve have done your worst. Fortune, now see, now proudly Pluck off thy veil, and view thy triumph. fair flower, How lovely yet thy ruins show how sweetly Ev'n Death embraces thee ! The peace of heaven, The fellowship of all great souls, go with thee 1 The character must be well supported which yields a sensation of triumph in the act of surrendering to victorious enemies. Carac- tacus does not need to tell us, that when a brave man has done his duty, he cannot be humbled by fortune but he makes us feel it in his behaviour. The few brief and sim- ple sentences which he utters in submitting to the Romans, together with their respect- ful behaviour to him, give a sublime com- posure to his appearance in the closing scene. Dryden praises the gentlemen of Beau- mont and Fletcher in comedy as the true men of fashion of " the times." It was necessary that Dryden should call them the men of fashion of the times, for they are [* Beaumont and Fletcher seemed to have followed Shakspeare's mode of composition, rather than Jonson's. They may, indeed, be rather said to have taken for their model the boundless license of the Spanish stage, from which many of their pieces are expressly and avowedly derived. The acts of their plays are so detached from each other, in substance and consistency, that the plot can scarce be said to hang together at all, or to have, in any sense of the word, a beginning, progress, and con- clusion. It seems as if the play began because the cur- tain rose, and ended because it fell. SIR WALTER SCOTT, llisc. Prose Work*, vol. vi. p. 343. Beaumont and Fletcher's plots are wholly inartificial; they only o*re to pitch a character into a position to make him or her talk; you must swallow all their grow improbabilities, and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the dialogue. COLERIDGE, Table Talk, p. 200. Shakspeare borrowed his plots, Jonson invented his ; while Beaumont and Fletcher disregarded a story, and relied on dialogue and situation. What they sought, they achieved. You could not publish tales from their plays, but scenes and incidents of truth and beauty with- out number. Where had they stood, with plots like fihakspeare? Not above Shakspeare, certainly, but above Ben Jonson, not as now assuredly below, though the next 7 not in the highest sense of the word gentle- men. Shirley's comic characters have much more of the conversation and polite man- ners, which we should suppose to belong tc superior life in all ages and countries. The genteel characters of Fletcher form a nar- rower class, and exhibit a more particular image of their times and country. But their comic personages, after all, are a spirited race. In one province of the face- tious drama they set the earliest example ; witness their humorous mock-heroic come- dy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle.* The memory of Ford has been deservedly revived as one of the ornaments of our an- cient drama ; though he has no great body of poetry, and has interested us in no other passion except that of love ; but in that he displays a peculiar depth and delicacy of romantic feeling, f Webster has a gloomy force of imagination, not unmixed with the beautiful and pathetic. But it is " beauty in the lap of horror:" he caricatures the shapes of terror, and his Pegasus is like a nightmare. Middleton,t Marston, Thomas Hey wood, Decker, and Chapman, also pre- sent subordinate claims to remembrance in that fertile period of the drama. Shirley was the last of our good old dra- matists. When his works shall be given to the public, they will undoubtedly enrich our popular literature. \ His language sparkles with the most exquisite images. Keeping some occasional pruriences apart, the fault of his age rather than of himself, What Tom Jones is among our novels, The. Fox and Tht Mchemist are among our dramas. C.] [f Mr. Campbell observes, that Ford interests us in no other passion than that of love ; " in which he displays a peculiar depth and delicacy of romantic feeling." Com- paratively speaking, this may be admitted ; but in justice to the poet, it should be added that he was not insensible to the power of friendship, and in more than one of hia dramas has delineated it with a master hand. Had the critic forgotten the noble Dalyell ? the generous and de- voted Malfato? Mr. Campbell, however, terms him "one of the ornaments of our ancient drama." GIFFORU, fbrd, p. xl. C.] I Middleton's hags, in the tragi-comedy of The Witch, were conjectured by Mr. Steevens to have given the hint to Shakspeare of his witches in Macbeth. It has been repeatedly remarked, however, that the resemblance scarcely extends beyond a few forms of incantation. The hags of Middletou are merely mischievous old women, those of Shakspeare influence the elements of nature and the destinies of man. [g They have been since published In six volumes o tavo, the plays with notes by Qifford, the poem* and memoirs by Mr. Dyce. C.] I 50 ENGLISH POETRY. he speaks the most polished and refined dialect of the stage; and even some of his over-heightened scenes of voluptuousness are meant, though with a very mistaken judgment, to inculcate morality.* I con- sider his genius, indeed, as rather brilliant and elegant than strong or lofty. His tra- gedies are defective in fire, grandeur, and passion; and we must select his comedies, to have any favourable idea of his humour. His finest poetry comes forth in situations rather more familiar than tragedy and more grave than comedy, which I should call sentimental comedy, if the name were not associated with ideas of modern insipidity. That he was capable, however, of pure and excellent comedy will be felt by those who have yet in reserve the amusement of read- ing his Gamester, Hyde-park, and Lady of Pleasure. In the first and last of these there is a subtle ingenuity in producing comic effect and surprise, which might be termed Attic, if it did not surpass any thing that is left us in Athenian comedy. I shall leave to others the more special enumeration of his faults, only observing, that the airy touches of his expression, the delicacy of his sentiments, and the beauty of his similes, are often found where the poet survives the dramatist, and where he has not power to transfuse life and strong individuality through the numerous charac- ters of his voluminous drama. His style, to use a line of his own, is " studded like a frosty night with stars;" and a severe critic might say, that the stars often shine when the atmosphere is rather too frosty. In other words, there is more beauty of fancy than strength of feeling in his works. From this remark, however, a defender of his fame might justly appeal to exceptions in many of his pieces. From a general impression of his works I should not paint his Muse with the haughty form and fea- tures oi" inspiration, but with a countenance, in its happy moments, arch, lovely, and interesting both in smiles and in tears ; crowned with flowers, and not unindebted to ornament, but wearing the drapery and * The scene in Shirley's Love's Cruelty, for example, between Hippolito and the object of his admiration, Act 4, scene i., and another in The Grateful Servant, between Belinda and Lodwiek. Several more might be mentioned. [f Mr. Campbell has been too kind to Shirley, whose merits are exaggerated by the length and frequency of big quotations from him. The reader who will turn to chaplet with a claim to them from natural beauty. Of his style I subjoin one or two more examples, lest I may not have done justice to him in that respect in the body of the work.f FROM " THE GRATEFUL SERVANT." CLEO.VA INFORMED BT THE PAGE BULGING OF FOSCARI, WHOM SHE BAD THOUGHT DEAD, BEING STILL ALIVE. Cleona. The day breaks glorious to my darken'd thoughts. He lives, he lives yet! cease, ye amorous fears, More to perplex me. Prithee speak, sweet youth : How fares my lord ? Upon my virgin heart I'll build a flaming altar, to offer up A thankful sacrifice for his return To life and me. Speak, and increase my comforts. Is he in perfect health ? Dulcino. Not perfect, madam, Until you bless him with the knowledge of Your constancy. Clem. get thee wings and fly then: Tell him my love doth burn like vestal fire, Which with his memory, richer than all spices, Dispersed odours round about my soul, And did refresh it, when 'twas dull and sad, With thinking of his absence Yet stay, Thou goest away too soon ; where is he ? speak. Dvl. He gave me no commission for that, lady; He will soon save that question by his presence. Cleon. Time has no feathers he walks now on crutches. Relate his gestures when he gave thee this. What other words ? Did mirth smile on his brow ? I would not, for the wealth of this great world, He should suspect my faith. What said he, prithee ? Did. He said what a warm lover, when desire Makes eloquent, could speak be said you were Both star and pilot. Cleon. The sun's loved flower, that shuts his yellow curtain When he declineth, opens it again At his fair rising : with my parting lord I closed all my delight till his approach It shall not spread itself. FROM THE SAME. FOSCARI, IN HIS MELANCHOLY, ANNOUNCING TO FATHER VALENT10 HIS RESOLUTION TO BECOME A MONK. fbscari. There is a sun, ten times more glorious Than that which rises in the east, attracts me To feed upon his sweet beams, and become A bird of Paradise, a religious man, To rise from earth, and no more to turn back But for a burial. Valentin. My lord, the truth is, like your coat of arm*, Richest when plainest. I do fear the world Hath tired you, and you seek a cell to rest in ; As birds that wing it o'er the sea seek ships Till they get breath, and then they fly away. Shirley's six volumes, and seek there for a succession of such passages as Mr. Campbell has here given, for happi- ness of plot, dialogue, and language, is certain only of disappointment. In endeavouring to atone for the in- justice of one age. another is apt to overleap the mark, and to err as far in the other way. Shirley shines in extract in passages not in plays, or even in scenes. CJ ENGLISH POETRY. 51 FROM "THE TRAITOR." THE DCKE OF FLORENCE TO HIS MURDERER, LORENZO. * * * For thee, inhuman murderer, expect My blood shall fly to heaven, and there inflamed, Hang a prodigious meteor all thy life: And when, by some as bloody hand as thine, Thy soul is ebbing forth, it shall descend, In flaming drops, upon tbee. O! I faint ! Thou flattering world, farewell. Let princes gather My dust into a glass, and learn to spend Their hour of state that's all they have for when That's out, Time never turns the glass again. FROM THE SAME. * When our souls shall leave this dwelling, The. glory of one fair and virtuous action Is ibove all the scutcheons on our tomb, Or silken banners over us. FROM THE COMEDY OF "THE BROTHERS." FERNANDO DESCRIBING BIS MISTRESS TO FRANCISCO. Fern. You have, then, a mistress, And thrive upon her favours but thou art My brother; I'll deliver thee a secret: I was at St. Sebastian's, last Sunday, At vespers. Fran. Is it a secret that you went to church? You need not blush to tell't your ghostly father. Fern. I prithee leave thy impertinence : there I saw So sweet a face, so harmless, so intent Upon her prayers; it frosted my devotion To gaze upon her, till by degrees I took Her fair idea, through my covetous eyes, Into my heart, and know not how to ease It since of the impression. Her eye did seem to labour with a tear, Which suddenly took birth, but over weigh 'd With Its own swelling, dropp'd upon her bosom, Which, by reflection of her light, appear'd As nature meant her sorrow for an ornament. After, her looks grew cheerful, and I saw A smile shoot graceful upward from her eyes, As if they had gain'd a victory over grief; And with it many beams twisted themselves, Upon whose golden threads the angels walk To and again from heaven.* [* The citation of this beautiful passage by Dr. Farmer in his Etsay on the Learning of Shal, speare. 17fi6. may be regarded as one of the earliest attempts to rescue the works of Shirley from the long oblivion to which they had been consigned. DTCE'S Shirley, vol. i. p. xi.] [t In Mac Flecknoe. " The critical derisions of Dryden," says Dyce, "however unjust, had no slight influence on the public mind."] [JThat Dryden at any time undervalued Otway, we have no very positive proof a coffee-house criticism re- tailed, though the retailer was Otway himself, at second- band. The play that Dryden is said to have spoken pe- The contempt which Dryden expresses for Shirley f might surprise us, if it were not recollected that he lived in a degenerate age of dramatic taste, And that his critical sen- tences were neither infallible nor immutable. He at one time undervalued Otway, though he lived to alter his opinion.J The civil wars put an end to this dynasty of our dramatic poets. Their immediate suc- cessors or contemporaries, belonging to the reign of Charles I., marty of whom resumed their lyres after the interregnum, may, in a general view, be divided into the classical and metaphysical schools. The former class, containing Denham, Waller, and Carew, upon the whole cultivated smooth and distinct me- lody of numbers, correctness of imagery, and polished elegance of expression. The latter, in which Herrick and Cowley stood at the head of Donne's metaphysical followers, were generally loose or rugged in their versifica- tion, and preposterous in their metaphors. But this distinction can only be drawn in very general terms; for Cowley, the prince of the metaphysicians, has bursts of natural feeling and just thoughts in the midst of his absur- dities. And Herrick, who is equally whim- sical, has left some little gems of highly- finished composition. On the other hand, the correct Waller is sometimes mataphysical ; and ridiculous hyperboles are to be found in the elegant style of Carew. The characters of Denham, Waller, and Cowley have been often described. Had Cowley written nothing but his prose, it would have stamped him a man of genius, and an improver of our language. Of his poetry, Rochester indecorously said, that " not being of God, it could not stand."g Had the word naturebeen substituted, it would have equally conveyed the intended meaning, but still that meaning would not have been strictly just. || There is much in Cowley that will stand. He teems, in many places, with the imagery, the feeling, the grace and gayety of a poet. No- tulantly and disparagingly about, was Don Caring. The Orphan and Venice Presrrrtd were of a lafar date, and justified Dryden's firm conviction, that Otway possessed the art of expressing the passions and emotions of the mind as thoroughly as any of the ancients or moderns. Dim Girlos gives no promise of The Orphan, or of Venice Preterrrd.] [JTold on the authority of Dryde.u. (Jlidone, vol. iv p. 612.) Yet Unmet. Joseph Warton, and Johnson speak of Cowley as Rochester's favourite author.] Nature is but a name for an effect.] Whose cause U Uod. COWPER, The Talk, B. vi.] ENGLISH POETRY. thing but a severer judgment was wanting to collect the scattered lights of his fancy. His unnatural flights arose less from affecta- tion than self-deception. He cherished false thoughts as men often associate with false friends, not from insensibility to the differ- ence between truth and falsehood, but from being too indolent to examine the difference. Herrick, if we were to fix our eyes on a small portion of his works, might be pronounced a writer of delightful Anacreontic spirit. He has passages where the thoughts seem to dance into numbers from his very heart, and where he frolics like a being made up of melody and pleasure ; as when he sings Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a flying; And this same flower that blooms to-day, To-morrow will be dying. In the same spirit are his verses to Anthea, concluding Thou art my life, my love, my heart. The very eyes of me; And hast command of every part, To live and die for thee. But his beauties are so deeply involved in surrounding coarseness and extravagance, as to constitute not a tenth part of his poetry ; or rather it may be safely affirmed, that of 1400 pages of verse which he has left, not a hundred are worth reading. In Milton there may be traced obligations to several minor English poets ; but his ge- nius had too great a supremacy to belong to any school. Though he acknowledged a filial reverence for Spenser as a poet, he left no Gothic irregular tracery in the design of his own great work, but gave a classical harmony of parts to its stupendous pile. It thus re- sembles a dome, the vastness of which is at first sight concealed by its symmetry, but which expands more and more to the eye while it is contemplated. His early poetry seems to have neither disturbed nor corrected the oad taste of his age. Comus came into the world unacknowledged by its author, and Lycidas appeared at first only with his ini- [* Comus, 1637 Lycidas, 1638.] [fl673.] [J Pen note B. at the end of the volume.] [g There ig a solemnity of sentiment, as well as majesty rif numbers, in the exordium of this noble poem, which \a the works of the ancient* has no example We cannot read this exordium without, perceiving that the author possesses more fire than he ."hows. There is a sup- tials.* These and other exquisite pieces, com* posed in the happiest years of his life, at his father's country-house at Horton, were col- lectively published, with his name affixed to them, in 1645 ; but that precious volume which included L' Allegro and II Penseroso, did not come to a second edition, till it was republished by himself at the distance of eight-and-twenty years.f Almost a century elapsed before his minor works obtained their proper fame. Handel's music is said, by Dr. Warton, to have drawn the first at- tention to them ; but they must have been admired before Handel set them to music ; for he was assuredly not the first to discover their beauty. But of Milton's poetry being above the comprehension of his age, we should have a sufficient proof, if we had no other, in the grave remark of Lord Claren- don, that Cowley had, in his time, " taken a flight above all men in poetry. Even when " Paradise Lost" appeared, though it was not neglected, it attracted no crowd of imitators and made no visible change in the poetical practice of the age.J He stood alone and aloof above his times, the bard of immortal subjects, and, as far as there is perpetuity in language, of immortal fame. The very choice of those subjects bespoke a contempt for any species of excellence that was attain- able by other men. There is something that overawes the mind in conceiving his long deliberated selection of that theme his at- tempting it when his eyes were shut upon the face of nature his dependence, we might almost say, on supernatural inspiration, and in the calm air of strength with which he opens "Paradise Lost," beginning a mighty performance without the appearance of an effort.^ Taking the subject all in all, his powers could nowhere else have enjoyed the same scope. It was only from the height of this great argument that he could look back upon eternity past, and forward upon eter- nity to come ; that he could survey the abyss of infernal darkness, open visions of Para- dise, or ascend to heaven and breathe em- pyreal air. Still the subject had precipitous pressed force in it, the effect of judgment. His judgment controls his genius, and his genius reminds us (to use his own beautiful similitude) of A proud steed rein'd, Champing his iron curb. He addresses himself to the performance of great things, but makes no great exertion in doing it; a sure symptom of uncommon vigour. COWPER, Commentary.] ENGLISH POETRY. 53 difficulties. It obliged him to relinquish the warm, multifarious interests of human life. For these indeed he could substitute holier things ; but a more insuperable objection to the theme was, that it involved the repre- sentation of a war between the Almighty and his created beings. To the vicissitudes of such a warfare it was impossible to make us attach the same fluctuations of hope and fear, the same curiosity, suspense, and sympathy, which we feel amidst the battles of the Iliad, and which make every brave young spirit long to be in the midst of them. Milton has certainly triumphed over one difficulty of his subject, the paucity and the loneliness of its human agents ; for no one in contemplating the garden of Eden would wish to exchange it for a more populous world. His earthly pair could only be re- presented, during their innocence, as beings of simple enjoyment and negative virtue, with no other passions than the fear of heaven and the love of each other. Yet from these materials what a picture has he drawn of their homage to the Deity, their mutual affection, and the horrors of their alienation! By concentrating all exquisite ideas of external nature in the representa- tion of their abode by conveying an in- spired impression of their spirits and forms, while they first shone under the fresh light of creative heaven by these powers of de- scription, he links our first parents, in har- monious subordination, to the angelic na- tures he supports them in the balance of poetical importance with their divine coad- jutors and enemies, and makes them appear at once worthy of the friendship and envy of gods. In the angelic warfare of the poem, Mil- ton has done whatever human genius could accomplish. But, although Satan speaks of having "put to proof his (Maker's) high supremacy, in dubious battle, on the plains of heaven," the expression, though finely characteristic of his blasphemous pride, does not prevent us from feeling that the battle cannot for a moment be dubious. Whilst the powers of description and language are [* Book ri. 1. 712. The bmo and ttonrd of the Almighty re copied from the Psalms vii. and xlv.] ft In this line we seem to hear a thunder suited both to the scene and the occasion, incomparably more awful than any ever heard on earth. The thundfr of Milton is not hurled from the band, like Homer's, but discharged taxed and exhausted to portray the combat, it is impossible not to feel, with regard to the blessed spirits, a profound and reposing security that they have neither great dangers to fear nor reverses to suffer. At the same time it must be said that, although in the ac- tual contact of the armies the inequality of the strife becomes strongly visible to the imagination, and makes it a contest more of noise than terror ; yet, while positive action is suspended, there is a warlike grandeur in the poem, which is nowhere to be paralleled. When Milton's genius dares to invest the Almighty himself with arms, " his bow and thunder," the astonished mind admits the image with a momentary credence.* It is otherwise when we are involved in the cir- cumstantial details of the campaign. We have then leisure to anticipate its only pos- sible issue, and can feel no alarm for any temporary check that may be given to those who fight under the banners of Omnipotence. The warlike part of Paradise Lost was in- separable from its subject. Whether it could have been differently managed, is a problem which our reverence for Milton will scarcely permit us to state. I feel that reverence too strongly to suggest even the possibility that Milton could have improved his poem by having thrown his angelic warfare into more remote perspective ; but it seems to me to be most sublime when it is least distinctly brought home to the imagination. What an awful effect has the dim and undefined con- ception of the conflict, which we gather from the opening of the first book ! There the veil of mystery is left undrawn between us and a subject which the powers of descrip- tion were inadequate to exhibit. The mi- nisters of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled the thunders had ceased " To bellow through the vast and boundless deep," fur. Lost, Book i.v. 177. (in that line what an image of sound and space is conveyed!)! and our terrific con- ception of the past is deepened by its indis tinctness.J In optics there are some phe nomena which are beautifully deceptive at like an arrow : as if jealous for the honour of a true Ood, the poet disdained to arm him like the God of the hea- then. COWPER.] [J Of all the articles of which the dreadful scenery of Milton's hell consists. Scripture furnished him only with a lake of fire and brimstone. Yet, thus slerderly assisted 04 ENGLISH POETRY. a certain distance, but which lose their illu- sive charm on the slightest approach to them that changes the light and position in which they are viewed. Something like this takes place in the phenomena of fancy. The ar- ray of the fallen angels in hell the unfurl- ing of the standard of Satan and the march of his troops "In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders" Book i. 1. 550 ; all this human pomp and circumstance of war is magic and overwhelming illusion. The imagination is taken by surprise. But the noblest efforts of language are tried with very unequal effect to interest us, in the im- mediate and close view of the battle itself in the sixth book ; and the martial demons, who charmed us in the shades of hell, lose some portion of their sublimity when their artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven. If we call diction the garb of thought, Milton, in his style, may be said to wear the costume of sovereignty. The idioms even of foreign languages contributed to adorn it. He was the most learned of poets ; yet his learning interferes not with his substantial English purity.* His simplicity is unim- paired by glowing ornament, like the bush in the sacred flame, which burnt, but " was not consumed." In delineating the blessed spirits, Milton has exhausted all the conceivable variety that could be given to pictures of unshaded sanctity ; but it is chiefly in those of the fallen angels that his excellence is conspicu- ous above every thing ancient or modern. Tasso had, indeed, portrayed an infernal council, and had given the hint to our poet of ascribing the origin of pagan worship to those reprobate spirits. But how poor and squalid in comparison of the Miltonic Pan- demonium are the Scyllas, the Cyclopses, and the Chimeras of the Infernal Council of the Jerusalem ! Tasso's conclave of fiends is a den of ugly, incongruous monsters. O come etrane, o come orribil forme ! Quant e negli occhi lor terror, e morte! what a world of wo has he constructed, proved in this single instance, the most creative that ever poet owned. COWPER. The slender materials for Comus and Paradise Regained are alike wonderful, and attest the truth of Cowper's remark.] Stampano alcuni il suol di ferine ormo, E'n fronte umana han chiome d' angui attorte; E lor s'aggira dietro immensa loda, Che quasi sferza si ripiega, e snoda. Qui mille immonde Arpie vedresti, e mille Centauri, e Sflngi, e pallide Gorgoni, Molt.' e molte latrar voraoi Scille E fischiar Idre, e sibilar Pitoni, E vomitar Chimere atre fuville E Polifemi orrendi, e Gerioni, La Gerusalemme, Canto IV. The powers of Milton's hell are godlike shapes and forms. Their appearance dwarfs every other poetical conception, when we turn our dilated eyes from contemplating them. It is not their external attributes alone which expand the imagination, but their souls, which are as colossal as their stature their " thoughts that wander through eternity" the pride that burns amid the ruins of their divine natures and their ge- nius, that feels with the ardour and debates with the eloquence of heaven. The subject of Paradise Lost was the origin of evil an era in existence an event more than all others dividing past from future time an isthmus in the ocean of eternity. The theme was in its nature connected with every thing important in the circumstances of human history ; and amid these circum- stances, Milton saw that the fables of pa- ganism were too important and poetical to be omitted. As a Christian, he was entitled wholly to neglect them ; but as a poet, he chose to treat them, not as dreams of the human mind, but as the delusions of infernal existences. Thus anticipating a beautiful propriety for all classical allusions, thus con- necting and reconciling the co-existence of fable and of truth, and thus identifying the fallen angels with the deities of " gay reli- gions, full of pomp and gold," he yoked the; heathen mythology in triumph to his sub^ ject, and clothed himself in the spoils of su- perstition. One eminent production of wit, namely, Hudibras, may be said to have sprung out of the Restoration, or at least out of the con- tempt of fanaticism, which had its triumph in that event; otherwise, the return of royalty [* Our most learned poets were classed hy Joseph War- ton, a very competent judge, in the following order : 1. Milton; 2 Jonson; 3 Gray; 4 Akenside. Milton and Gray were of Cambridge, Ben Johnson was a very short time there, not long enough however to catch much of the learning of the place ; but Akenside was of no college it is believed self-taught.] ENGLISH POETRY. 55 contributed as little to improve the taste as the morality of the public. The drama de- generated, owing, as we are generally told, to the influence of French literature, although some infection from the Spanish stage might also be taken into the account. Sir William Davenant, who presided over the first revival of the theatre, was a man of cold and didactic spirit ; he created an era in the machinery, costume, and ornaments of the stage, but he was only fitted to be its mechanical benefac- tor. Dryden, who could do even bad things with a good grace, confirmed the taste for rhyming and ran ting tragedy. Two beautiful plays of Otway formed an exception to this degeneracy ; but Otway was cut off in the spring-tide of his genius, and his early death was, according to every appearance, a heavy loss to our drama. It has been alleged, in- deed, in the present day, thatOtway's imagi- nation showed no prognostics of great future achievements ; but when I remember Venice Preserved, and The Orphan, as the works of a man of thirty, I can treat this opinion no otherwise than to dismiss it as an idle asser- tion.* 'Baa*' ovtips. During the last thirty years of the seven- teenth century, Dryden was seldom long absent from the view of the public, and he alternately swayed and humoured its pre- [* The talents of Otway, in bis scenes of passionate affection, rival at least, and sometimes excel, those of Shakspeare. More tears have been shed, probahly, for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia, than for those of Juliet and Desdemona. SIB WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Prote Works, vol. vi. p. 356.] [t_Shakspeare died at fifty-two. The average probabi- lity of life If twenty years beyond that aL'i 1 . (ui'l the pro- bable endurance of the human faculties in their vigour is not a great deal shorter. _Chaueer wrote his best poetry after he was sixty ; Dryden, when ho was seventy. Cowper was also late in his poetical maturity; and Young never wrote any thing that could be called poetry till he was a sexagenarian. Sophocles wrote his " (Edipus Coloneus" certainly beyond the age of eighty. But the pride of England, it may be said, died in the prime of life. CAMPBELL, Sha.kspea.rt, 8vo, 1833, p. Ixv.] [J Cowley and Sylvester, he tells us, were the darling writers of his youth; and that Davenant introduced him to the folio of Shakspeare's plays. He lived long enough to dethrone Sylvester, to lessen his esteem for Cowley, and increase his predilection for Shakspeare; his taste was bettering to the last but it was long in arriving to maturity. Like Sir Walter Scott, he was nearer forty than thirty before he had distinguished himself an age at which both Burns and Byron were in their graves.] [{ I think Dryden's translations from Boccace are the teat, at least the most poetical, of big poems. But ai a dilections. Whatever may be said of his ac- commodating and fluctuating theories of criticism, his perseverance in training and disciplining his own faculties is entitled to much admiration. He strengthened his mind by action, and fertilized it by production. In his old age he renewed his youth like the eagle; or rather his genius acquired stronger wings than it had ever spread. He rose and fell, it is true, in the course of his poetical career ; but upon the whole, it was a career of improvement to the very last.f Even in the drama, which was not his natural pro- vince, his good sense came at last so far in aid of his deficient sensibility, that he gave up his system of rhyming tragedy, and adopt- ed Shakspeare (in theory at least) for his model. In poetry not belonging to the drama, he was at first an admirer of Cowley, then of Davenant; and ultimately he acquired a manner above the peculiarities of either. J The Odes and Fables of his latest volume surpass whatever he had formerly written. $ He was satirized and abused as well as ex- tolled by his contemporaries ; but his genius was neither to be discouraged by the seve- rity, nor spoiled by the favour of criticism. It flourished alike in the sunshine and the storm, and its fruits improved as they mul- tiplied in profusion. When we view him out of the walk of purely original composition, it is not a paradox, that, though he is one poet, he is no great favourite of mine. I admire his talents and genius highly, but his is not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in Dryden that are essentially poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear. It may seem strange that I do not add to this, great command of language : that be certainly has, and of such language too as it is desirable that a poet should possess, or rather that he should not be without. But it is not language that is, in the highest sense of the word, poetical, being neither of the imagination nor of the passions; I mean the amiable, the ennobling, or the intense passions. I do not mean to say that there ig nothing of this in Dryden, but as little I think as is pos- sible, considering how much he has written. You will easily understand my meaning, when I refer to his versi- fication of Palamon and Arcite, as contrasted with the language of Chaucer. Dryden had neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of moral dignity. Whenever his language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly upon un- pleasing subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crime* of classes of men or of individuals. That his cannot be the language of imagination must have necessarily fol- lowed from this. that there is not a single image from nature in the whole body of his works : and in his trans- lation from Virgil, wherever Virgil can be fairly said tc have his ryt upon his object, Dryden always spoils the passage. His love is nothing but sensuality and appetite, he had no other notion of the passion. WORDSWORTH LockarCt Life of Scott, vol. U. p. 28? loyxil 56 ENGLISH POETRY. of the greatest artists in language, and perhaps the greatest of English translators, he nevertheless attempted one task in which his failure is at least as conspicuous as his success. But that task was the translation of Virgil. And it is not lenity, but absolute justice, that requires us to make a very large and liberal allowance for whatever deficien- cies he may show in transfusing into a lan- guage less harmonious and flexible than the Latin, the sense of that poet, who in the his- tory of the world, has had no rival in beauty of expression. Dryden renovates Chaucer's thoughts,* and fills up Boccaccio's narrative outline with many improving touches : and though paraphrase suited his free spirit bet- ter than translation, yet even in versions of Horace and Juvenal he seizes the classical character of Latin poetry with a boldness and dexterity which are all his own. But it was easier for him to emulate the strength of Juvenal than the serene majesty of Virgil. His translation of Virgil is certainly an in- adequate representation of the Roman poet. It is often bold and graceful, and generally idiomatic and easy. But though the spirit of the original is not lost, it is sadly and un- equally diffused. Nor is it only in the magic of words, in the exquisite structure and rich economy of expression, that Dryden (as we might expect) falls beneath Virgil, but we too often feel the inequality of his vital sen- sibility as a poet. Too frequently, when the Roman classic touches the heart, or imbodies to our fancy those noble images to which nothing could be added, and from which nothing can be taken away, we are sensible of the distance between Dryden's talent and Virgil's inspiration. One passage out of many, the representation of Jupiter, in the first book of the Georgics, may show this difference. GEORGICS, lib. i. 1.328. Ipse Pater, media nimborum in nocte, corusca Fulmina molitur dextra : quo maxima motu Terra tremit, fngere ferae, et mortalia corda Per Rentes humilis stravit pavor [* True it is, however, that Chaucer evaporated in his hands and that he did greater justice to himself than to bis original that his Tales are rather imitations or adaptations than renovations or translations that he missed his pathos and description. With Boccaccio he succeeded better prose he turned into poetry but what was poetry at the first gained from him no additional graces.] The father of the Gods his glory shrouds, Involved in tempests and a night of clouds, And from the middle darkness flashing out, By fits he deals his fiery bolts about. Earth feels the motion of her angry God, Her entrails tremble, and her mountains nod, And flying beasts in forests seek abode : Deep horror seizes every human breast, Their pride is humbled and their fear confessed. Virgil's three lines and a half might challenge the most sublime pencil of Italy to the same subject. His words are no sooner read than, with the rapidity of light, they collect a pic- ture before the mind which stands confessed in all its parts. There is no interval between the objects as they are presented to our per- ception. At one and the same moment we behold the form, the uplifted arm, and daz- zling thunderbolts of Jove, amidst a night of clouds; the earth trembling, and the wild beasts scudding for shelter -fngere they have vanished while the poet describes them, and we feel that mortal hearts are laid prostrate with fear, throughout the nation. Dryden, in the translation, has done his best, and some of his lines roll on with spirit and dignity, but the whole description is a pro- cess rather than a picture the instantane- ous effect, the electric unity of the original, is lost. Jupiter has leisure to deal out his fiery bolts by fits, while the entrails of the earth shake and her mountains nod, and the flying beasts have time to look out very quietly for lodgings in the forest. The weakness of the two last lines, which stand for the weighty words, " Mortalia cm-da per gentes humilis stravit pavor," need not be pointed out. I cannot quote this passage without recur- ring to the recollection, already suggested, that it was Virgil with whom the English translator had to contend. Dryden's ad- mirers might undoubtedly quote many pas- sages much more in his favour; and one passage occurs to me as a striking example of his felicity. In the following lines (with the exception of one) we recognise a great poet, and can scarcely acknowledge that he is translating a greater.f [f He who sits down to Dryden's translation of Virfril. with the original text spread before him, will be at no loss to point out many passages that are faulty, many indifferently understood, many imperfectly translated, some in which dignity is lost, others in which tombast is substituted in its stead. But the unabated vigour and spirit of the version more than overbalance these and all its other deficiencies. A sedulous scholar might often ENGLISH POETRY. 67 .ENEID, lib. xii. 1. 331. Quails spud gelidi cum flumina concitus Hebrl Sanguineus Mavors clipeo intonat* atque furentes Bella mnvens immittit equos, illi a-quore aperto Ante Notes Zepbyrumque volant, gemit ultimapul.su Thraca pedum, circumque atnc Formidinis ora, Ira, insidiseque, Dei comitatus aguntur Thus on the banks of Hebrus' freezing flood, The god of battles, in his angry mood, Clashing his sword against his brazen shield, I/eta loose the reins, and scours along the field : Before the win I his fiery coursers fly, Groans the sad earth, resounds the rattling sky; Wrath, terror, treason, tumult, and despair, Dire faces and deform'd, surround the car, Friends of the god, and followers of the war. If it were asked how far Dryden can strict- ly be called an inventive poet, his drama cer- tainly would not furnish many instances of characters strongly designed ; though his Spanish Friar is by no means an insipid personage in comedy. The contrivance, in The Hind and Panther, of beasts disputing about religion, if it were his own, would do little honour to his ingenuity. The idea, in Absalom and Achitophel, of couching modern characters under Scripture names, was adopted from one of the Puritan writers ; approach more nearly to the dead letter of Virgil, and give an exact, distinct, sober-minded idea of the mean- Ing and scope of particular passages. Trapp, Pitt, and others hare done so. But the essential spirit of poetry is so volatile, that it escapes during such an operation, like the life of the poor criminal, whom the ancient anatomist Is said to have dissected alive, in order to ascertain the seat of the soul. The carcass, indeed, is presented to the English reader, but the animating vigour is no more. Sin WALTER SCOTT. Lift, of Dryden.} * Intmujt.l follow Wakefleld's edition of Virgil in preference to others, which have "increpat." [f The plan of Absalom and Achitophel was not new to the public. A Catholic poet had, in 1679, paraphrased the scriptural story of Naboth's Vineyard, and applied it to the condemnation of Lord Stafford on account of the Popish Plot. This poem is written in the style of a scrip- tural allusion; the names and situations of personages In the holy text being applied to those contemporaries to whom the author assigned a place in his piece. Neither was the obvious application of the story of Absalom and Achitophel to the persons of Monmouth and Shaftesbnry first made by our poet. A prose paraphrase, published in 1680, bad already been composed upon this allusion. But the vigour of the satire, the happy adaptation, not only of the incidents, but of the very names, to the in- dividuals characterized, gave Dryden's poem the full effect of novelty. SIR WALTER SCOTT, Mite. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 208 ] [J The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius seems to have been the power of reasoning, and of ex- pressing the result in appropriate language The best of Dryden's performances in the more pure and chaste styto of tragedy are unquestionably Don Sebastian and All for Lnve. Of these, the former is in the poet's vervbest manner; exhibiting dramatic persons, consist- ing of such bold and impetuous characters as he delighted 8 yet there is so much ingenuity evinced in supporting the parallel, and so admirable a gallery of portraits displayed in the work, as to render that circumstance insignificant with regard to its originality.! Nor, though his Fables are borrowed, can we regard him with much less esteem than if he had been their inventor. He is a writer of manly and elastic character. His strong judgment gave force as well as direction to a flexible fancy ; and his harmony is generally the echo of solid thoughts.^ But he was not gifted with intense or lofty sensibility ; on the contrary, the grosser any idea is, the happier he seems to expatiate upon it. The transports of the heart, and the deep and varied delineations of the passions, are strangers to his poetry. He could describe character in the abstract, but could not imbody it in the drama, for he entered into character more from clear perception than fervid sympathy. This great high-priest of all the Nine was not a confessor to the finer secrets of the human breast. Had the subject of Eloisa fallen into his hands, he would have left but a coarse draught of her passion.g to draw, well-contrasted, forcibly marked, and engaged in an interesting succession of events. To many tempers, the scene between Sebastian and Do rax must appear one of the most moving that ever adorned the British stage. .... The satirical powers of Dryden were of the highest order. He drawn his arrow to the head, and dismisses it straight upon his object of aim The occasional poetry of Dryden is marked strongly by masculine cha- racter. The epistles vary with the subject; and are light, humorous and satirical, or grave, argumentative, and philosophical, as the case required Few of his elegiac effusions seem prompted by sincere sorrow. That to Oldhain may be an exception ; but even there he rather strives to do honour to the talents of his departed friend, than to pour out lamentations for his loss No author, excepting Pope, has done so much to endenizen the eminent poets of antiquity. SIR WALTER SCOTT, Life of Dryden.} [g Writing of Pope's Eloisa, Lord Byron says, "The licentiousness of the story was not Pope's it was a fact. All that it bad of gross he has softened; all that it bad of indelicate he has purified ; all that it had of passionate he has beautified; all that it had of holy he has hal- lowed. Mr. Campbell has admirably marked this, iu a few words. (I quote from memory,) In drawing the dis- tinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing out where Dryden. was wanting. ' I fear,' says he, ' that had the subject of Eloisa fallen into his (Dryden's) hands, that he would have given as but a coarse draught of her passion.' " This is very generally admitted "The love of the senses," writes Sir Walter Scott " he (Dryden) has in many places expressed in as forcible and dignified colour- ing as the subject could admit; but of a more moral and sentimental passion he seems to have had little idea, since he frequently substitutes in its place the absurd, un- natural, and fictitious refinement* of romance. In short, 58 ENGLISH POETRY. Dryden died in the last year of the seven- teenth century. In the intervening period between his death and the meridian of Pope's reputation, we may be kept in good humour with the archness of Prior and the wit of Swift. Parnell was the most elegant rhymist of Pope's early contemporaries; and Howe, if he did not bring back the full fire of the drama, at least preserved its vestal spark from being wholly extin- guished. There are exclusionists in taste, who think that they cannot speak with suf- ficient disparagement of the English poets of the first part of the eighteenth century ; and they are armed with a noble provocative to English contempt, when they have it to eay, that those poets belong to a French school. Indeed, Dryden himself is generally included in that school; though more ge- nuine English is to be found in no man's pages. But in poetry " there are many man- sions." I am free to confess, that I can pass from the elder writers, and still find a charm in the correct and equable sweetness of Parnell. Conscious that his diction has not the freedom and volubility of the better strains of the elder time, I cannot but re- mark his exemption from the quaintness and false metaphor which so often disfigure the style of the preceding age; nor deny my respect to the select choice of his ex- pression, the clearness and keeping of his imagery, and the pensive dignity of his moral feeling. Pope gave our heroic couplet its strictest melody and tersest expression. D'uu mot mis en sa place il enseigne le pouvoir. If his contemporaries forgot other poets in his love is always indecorous nakedness, or sheathed in the stiff panoply of chivalry. The most pathetic verses which Dryden has composed are unquestionably con- tained in his Epistle to Congreve, where he recommends his laurels, in such moving terms, to the care of his surviving friend. The quarrel and reconciliation of Se- bastian and Dorax are also full of the noblest emotion. In both cases, however, the interest is excited by means of masculine and exalted passion, not of those which ariss from the more delicate sensibilities of our nature." It is upon this pasiage that Mr. Lockhart remarks : "The reader who wishes to see the most remarkable in- stances of Dryden's deficiency in tht pathetic, is requested to compare him with Chaucer in the death-bed scene of Palawan and Arcite." Scott's Mite. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 409. " What had been is unknown what is appears." "Remember Dryden," Gray writes to Seattle, "and be nliud to all his faults."] admiring him, let him not be robbed of his just fame on pretence that a part of it was superfluous. The public ear was long fa- tigued with repetitions of his manner ; but if we place ourselves in the situation of those to whom his brilliancy, succinctness, and animation were wholly new, we cannot wonder at their being captivated to the fondest admiration. In order to do justice to Pope, we should forget his imitators, if that were possible ; but it is easier to re- member than to forget by an effort to ac- quire associations than to shake them off. Every one may recollect how often the most beautiful air has palled upon his ear and grown insipid from being played or sung by vulgar musicians. It is the same thing with regard to Pope's versification.* That his peculiar rhythm and manner are the very best in the whole range of our poetry need not be asserted. He has a gracefully peculiar manner, though it is not calculated to be an universal one ; and where, indeed, shall we find the style of poetry that could be pronounced an exclusive model for every composer ? His pauses here have little va- riety, and his phrases are too much weighed in the balance of antithesis. But let ua look to the spirit that points his antithesis, and to the rapid precision of his thoughts, and we shall forgive him for being too anti- thetic and sententious. Pope's works have been twice given to the world by editors who cannot be taxed with the slightest editorial partiality towards his fame. The last of these is the Rev. Mr. Bowles.f in speaking of whom I beg leave most distinctly to disclaim the slightest in- tention of undervaluing his acknowledged [* No two great writers ever wrote blank verse with pauses and cadences the same. Shakspeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Maasinger, and Ford had a dramatic blank verse of their own. Milton's manner of verse it his own ; so is Thomson's, Akenside's, Cowper's, Southey'g, Wordsworth's. With our couplet verse it is the same. Denham and Waller are unlike Dryden. Prior is differ- ent again. Pope's strictness and terseness are his own. Who is Goldsmith like, or Falconer, or Rogers, or Camp- bell himself? Inferior writers imitate men of geuius strike out a path for themselves their numbers are all their own, like their thoughts.] [t Mr. Campbell wrote this in 1819 ; and in 1824 the late Mr. Roscoe gave another edition of Pope, but not the edition that is wanted. Mr. Bowles was one of Joseph Warton's Winchester wonders ; and the taste he imbibed there for the romantic school of poetry was strengthened and confirmed by his removal to Tri- nity College, Oxford, when Tom Warton was master there.] ENGLISH POETRY. merit as a poet, however freely and fully I may dissent from his critical estimate of the genius of Pope. Mr. Bowles, in forming this estimate, lays great stress upon the argument, that Pope's images are drawn from art more than from nature. That Pope was neither so insensible to the beau- ties of nature, nor so indistinct in describ- ing them as to forfeit the character of a genuine poet, is what I mean to urge, with- out exaggerating his picturesqueness. But before speaking of that quality in his writ- ings, I would beg leave to observe, in the first place, that the faculty by which a poet luminously describes objects of art is essen- tially the same faculty which enables him to be a faithful describer of simple nature; in the second place, that nature and art are to a greater degree relative terms in poetical description than is generally recollected ; and, thirdly, that artificial objects and man- ners are of so much importance in fiction, as to make the exquisite description of them no less characteristic of genius than the de- scription of simple physical appearances. The poet is " creation's heir." He deepens our social interest in existence. It is surely by the liveliness of the interest which he excites in existence, and not by the class of subjects which he chooses, that we most fairly appreciate the genius or the life of life which is in him. It is no irreverence * But are his descriptions of works of art more poetical than bis descriptions of the great feelings of nature! BOWLES'S Invariable Principles, p. 15.] [f His ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him oast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders, like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, on her spotty globe. His spear, to equal which the tallest pines, Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were hut a wand. Par. Lott, b. 1. It is evident that Satan's spear is not compared to the mast of some great ammiral, though bis shield is to the moon as seen through the glass of Galileo. Milton's ori- ginal, (Cowley,) whose images from art are of constant occurrence, draws his description of Ooliah's spear from Norwegian hills: His spear the trunk was of a lofty tree Which Nature meant some tall ship's mast should be. The poetry of the whole passage in Milton is in the images and names from nature, not from art. "It is Fesolfi and Valdarno that are poetical," says Mr. Bowles, " not the telescope." There is a spell, let us add, in the very names of Fesolfi and Valdarno. Milton's object in likening the shield of Satan to the to the external charms of nature to say, that they are not more important to a poet's study than the manners and affections of his species. Nature is the poet's goddess ; but by nature, no one rightly understands her mere inanimate face however charm- ing it may be or the simple landscape- painting of trees, clouds, precipices, and flowers. Why then try Pope, or any other poet, exclusively by his powers of describ- ing inanimate phenomena? Nature, in the wide and proper sense of the word, means life in all its circumstances nature moral as well as external. As the subject of inspired fiction, nature includes artificial forms and manners. Richardson is no less a painter of nature than Homer. Homer himself is a minute describer of works of art;* and Milton is full of imagery derived from it. Satan's spear is compared to the pine that makes " the mast of some great ammiral," and his shield is like the moon, but like the moon artificially seen through the glass of the Tuscan artist.f The " spirit- stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner, and all quality, pride, pomp, and cir- cumstance of glorious war,"J are all artifi- cial images. When Shakspeare groups into one view the most sublime objects of the universe, he fixes first on "the cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples."^ Those who have ever witnessed moon, as seen through the glass of the Tuscan artist, was to give the clearest possible impression of the thing alluded to. "It is by no means necessary," says Cowper, "that a simile should be more magnificent than the subject; it is enough that it gives us a clearer and more distinct perception of it than we could have had with- out it. Were it the indispensable duty of a simile to elevate as well as to illustrate, what must be done with many of Homer's? When he compares the Grecian troops, pouring themselves forth from camp and fleet in the plain of Troy, to bees issuing from a hollow rock or the body of Patroclus in dispute between the two armies to an ox-hide larded and stretched by th currier we must condemn him utterly, as guilty of degrading his subject when he should exalt it. But the exaltation of his subject was no part of Homer's concern on these occasions; he intended nothing more than the clearest possible impression of it on the minds of his hearers." Wrrrks, by Snuthty, vol. xv.p. 321. When Johnson, in his life of Gray, laid it down as a rule that an epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art, an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature, he had forgotten Homer, and the custom of all our poets.] [t Othello, Act iii. Scene 3.] [| T/it Tempett Act iv. Scene I. One of the finest pas- sages in Shakspeare is where he describes Foi'.une as wheclright would: Out, out, them strumpet Fortunr ! All you god*. 60 ENGLISH POETRY. the spectacle of the launching of a ship of the line, will perhaps forgive me for adding this to the examples of the sublime objects of artificial life. Of that spectacle I can never forget the impression, and of having witnessed it reflected from the faces of ten thousand spectators. They seem yet before me I sympathize with their deep and silent expectation, and with their final burst of enthusiasm. It was not a vulgar joy, but an affecting national solemnity. When the vast bulwark sprang from her cradle, the calm water on which she swung majesti- cally round, gave the imagination a contrast of the stormy element on which she was soon to ride. All the days of battle and the nights of danger which she had to en- counter, all the ends of the earth which she had to visit, and all that she had to do and to suffer for her country, rose in awful pre- sentiment before the mind; and when the heart gave her a benediction, it was like one pronounced on a living being.* Pope, while he is a great moral writer, though not elaborately picturesque, is by no means deficient as a painter of interesting external objects. No one will say that he In general synod, take away her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends. Hamlet, Act ii. Scene 2.] [* In the controversy which these Specimens gave rise to, Mr. Bowles contended for this ' Whether poetry be more immediately indebted to what is sublime or beauti- ful in the works of Nature or the works of Art?" and taking Nature to himself, he argued that Mr. Campbell's thip had greater obligations to nature than to art for its poetic excellencies. "It was indebted to Nature," he writes, '-for the winds that filled the sails; for the sun- Bhine that touched them with light; for the waves on which it so triumphantly rode: for the associated ideas of the distant regions of the earth it was to visit; the tempests it was to encounter; and for being, as it were, endued with existence a thing of life." "Mr. Bowles asserts," says Lord Byron, "that Camp- bell's ' Ship of the Line' derives all its poetry not from art but from nature. 'Take away the waves, the winds, the sun, Ac. &c..one will become a stripe of blue bunting, anil the other a piece of coarse canvas on three tall poles.' Very true; take awayf(rtf txavii yivtrai re\vris Strep, ovrs TTav rix^l ftr] (pvffiv KtKTtinivit. Without Art Nature, can nen r In; perfect, ati wit/tout Nature Art can claim no being. In a poet no kind of knowledge is to be overlooked to a poet nothing can be useless.] [t Ah ! what avail his glossy varying dyes, His purple crest, and searlet^ircled eyes The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, His painted wings, and breast that flami'S with gold? Windsor fbrest. This is like Whitbread's Phoenix, which Sheridan averred that he had described ' like a poulterer; it was green and yellow, and red and blue : he did not let us off for a single feather." Bynm'f Works, vol. vi. p. 372. When Pope epithetizes the Kennett, the Loddon, the Mole, and the Wey, he is very happy; and he is equally so when he poetizes the fish.] ENGLISH POETRY. 6i have crossed the recollection of some of our brave adventurers in the polar enterprise. So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost, Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast; Pale suns, unfelt at distance, roll away, And on the impassive ice the lightnings play ; Eternal snows the growing mass supply, Till the bright mountains prop th' incumbent sky; As Atlas flx'd, each hoary pile appears, The gathered winter of a thousand years. I am well aware that neither these nor si- milar instances will come up to Mr. Bowles's idea of that talent for the picturesque which he deems essential to poetry.* " The true poet," says that writer, " should have an eye attentive to and familiar with every change of season, every variation of light and shade of nature, every rock, every tree, and every leaf in her secret places. He who has not an eye to observe these, and who cannot with "a glance distinguish every hue in her variety, must be so far deficient in one of the essential qualities of a poet." Every rock, every leaf, every diversity of hue in [* It is remarkable that, excepting the Nocturnal Reverie of Lady Winchelsea. and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period between the publication of Paradise Lost and the Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature ; and scarcely presents a familiar one. from which it can be inferred that the eye of the poet bad been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagina- tion. To what a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had sunk, is evident from the style in which Dryden has executed a description of night In one of his tragedies, and Pope his translation of the celebrated moonlight scene in the Illiad. A blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him. might easily depict these appearances with more truth. Dryden's lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless : those of Pope, though he had Homer to guide him, are throughout false and contradictory. The verses of Dryden, once highly cele- brated, are forgotten; those of Pope still retain "their hold upon public estimation," nay, there is not a passage of descriptive poetry, which at this day finds so many and such ardent admirers. WORDSWORTH, Supp. to the Pi-ef. Here is the passage in Drydeu Mr. Wordsworth alludes to: All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead; The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head ; The little birds in dreams their songs repeat, And sleeping flowers beneath the night-dew sweat: Even lust and envy sleep; yet love denies Rest to my soul, and slumber to my eyes. T/ie Indian Emperor. And here the moonlight scene in Homer, as rendered by Pope and by Cowper: As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night! O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ; nature's variety ! Assuredly this botanizing perspicacity might be essential to a Dutch flower-painter; but Sophocles displays no such skill, and yet he is a genuine, a great and affecting poet. Even in describing the desert island of Philoctetes, there is no mi- nute observation of nature's hues in secret places. Throughout the Greek tragedians there is nothing to show them more at- tentive observers of inanimate objects than other men.f Pope's discrimination lay in the lights and shades of human manners, which are at least as interesting as those of rocks and leaves. In moral eloquence he is for ever densus et instans sibi. The mind of a poet employed in concentrating such lines as these descriptive of creative power, which " Builds life on death, on change duration founds, And bids th' eternal wheels to know their rounds," might well be excused for not descending to the minutely picturesque. The vindictive personality of his satire is a fault of the Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed And tip with silver every mountain's head; Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies: The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light. POPE. As when around the clear bright moon, the stars Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hush'd, The groves, the mountain tops, the headland height* Stand all apparent, not a vapour streaks The boundless blue, but ether opened wide All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd. COWPBR. The scraps of external nature in Lee, Ottray, and Garth are no whit better than Dryden's. Swift gave some true touches of artificial nature in his City Sltmof.r, and Morn- ing in Town, but it was left to Thomson and Dyer to recall us to country life. Mr. Soutbey has given no bad comment on the passage from Pope we have quoted above : " Here," says Southey, " are the planets rolling round the moon ; here is the pole gilt and glowing with stars; here are trees made yellow, and mountains tipt with silver by the moonlight; and here is the whole sky in a flood of glory ; appearances not to be found either in Homer or in nature,; finally, these gilt and glowing fhies. at the very time when they are thus pouring forth a flood of glory, are represented as a blue vault! The astronomy in these lines would not appear more extraordinary to Dr. Herschell than the imagery to every person who has observed a moonlight scene." Qiiar. Rev. vol. xii. p. 87.] [f With Shakspearw it is otherwise* his inanimate na- ture is unsurpassed for truthfulness and distinct poetical fxsrsonation. Description in Shakspeare is a shadow re- j ceived by the ear, and perceived by the ey.] 62 ENGLISH POETRY. man, and not of the poet. But his wit is not all his charm. He glows with passion in the Epistle of Eloisa, and displays a lofty feeling, much above that of the satirist and the man of the world, in his Prologue to Cato, and his Epistle to Lord Oxford.* I know not how to designate the possessor of [* Mr. Campbell might have added bin noble conclusion to The. Dnnciad, which is written in the highest vein of poetry, and exhibits a genius that wanted direction, oppor- tunity, or inclination, rather than cultivation or increase of strength.] [f Mr. Bowles's position is this, that Pope saw rural or field nature through what Dryden expressively calls the spectacles of books: that he did not see it for himself; as Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Milton saw it, as it was seen by Thomson and Cowper that his country nature is by reflection, cold, un warming, and dead-coloured that he did not make what Addison calls additions to nature, as every great poet has done that Dr Blacklock's descriptive nature is as good, who was blind from his birth that flad.-s that graze tiie tender green in Pope graze andit'ly in true descriptive writers aud that his Para- dise had been a succession of alleys, platforms, and quin- cunxes a Ilagley or a Stowe, not an Eden, as Milton has made it. All this is true enough, hut its importance has been overrated. Pope is still a greater poet, though he did not dwell long in the mazes of fancy, but stooped, as he expresses it, to truth, and moralized his song that he made sense, or wit, or intellectuality hold the place of mere description, and gave us peopled pictures rather than landscapes with people. True it is too that imagina- tion (a nobler kind of fancy) is the first great quality of a poet that when it is found united to all the lesser qualities required, it forms what Cowley calls poetry and tanctily. Mr. Campbell has properly extended the offices of poetry, and written a defence of Pope, which will exist as long as Eloisa's Letter, or any poem of its great writer. Gray, whose scattered touches of external nature are exquisitely true, has laid it down as a rule that descrip- tion, the most graceful ornament of poetry as he calls it, should never form the bulk or subject of a poem : Pope, who was not very happy in his strokes from landscape nature that where it forms the body of a poem, it is as absurd as a feast made up of sauces ; while Swift, who knew nothing of trees and streams, and lawns and meads, objected to Thomson's philosophical poem that it was all description and nothing was doing, whereas Milton engaged men in actions of the highest importance. To try poetry by the sister art, in painting we see that % mere landscape U of lss value than a landscape with such gifts but by the name of a genuine poetf qualem vix repperit unum Millibus in multis hominum consultus Apollo. AUSONIUS. Of the poets in succession to Pope I have spoken in their respective biographies. figures and a story, that is, where the art of both, in re- presenting nature, is the same. An historical landscape, like the subject of Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, where high acts are performed in alliance with in- animate nature, seems to meet the ideas of Pope, of Swift, and of Gray. "Selection," says Fuseli, falsely, " is the in- vention of a landscape-painter." To diversify and animate his poems, Thomson had re- course to episodes of human interest. The first Shipwreck was devoid of story, it was all description ; as Falconer left it, there was an action to heighten and relieve the nature, that made description the secondary object of the poem. Had not the notes to this Essay already run to a dis- proportionate length, we had been tempted to extract what Crabbe says in defence of Pope, and that portion of poetry he himself excelled in; to have quoted Lord Byron's exaggerated praises, and Mr. Southey's depre- ciatory notice of the same writer. We must find room, however, for Mr. Bowles's short character from his Final Appeal, observing generally on this subject, that in lower- ing the rank of the poetry that Pope sustains, too much stress has been laid upon Horace's exclusion of himself from the name of a poet on the score of his Epistles and Satires, which was a becoming modesty too literally un- derstood. When a man lowers himself, there are always some ready to take him at his own valuation. ' As a poet,'" says Mr. Bowles. " I sought not todepreciate, but discriminate, and assign to him his proper rank and station in his art among English poets; below Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton, in the highest order of imagination or impassioned poetry ; but above Dryden, Lucretius, and Horace, in moral and satirical. Inferior to Dryden in lyric sublimity : equal to him in painting characters from real life, (such as are so powerfully delineated in Absalom and Achitophel ;) but superior to him in passion for what ever equalled, or ever will approach, in its kind, the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard ? In consequence of the exquisite pathos of this epistle, I have assigned Pope a poetical rank far above Ovid. I have placed him above Horace, in consequence of the perfect finish of bis satires and moral poems; but in descriptive poetry, such as Windsor Forest, beneath Cowper or Thomson." final Appeal, 1825, p. 55.] SPECIMENS THE BRITISH POETS. CHAUCER. [Bom, 1328. Died, October 25, 1400. J GEOFFREY CHAUCER, according to his own ac- count, was born in London, and the year 1328 is generally assigned as the date of his birth. The name is Norman, and, according to Francis Thynne, the antiquary, is one of those, on the roll of Battle Abbey, which came in with William the Conqueror.* It is uncertain at which of the universities he studied. Warton and others, who allege that it was at Oxford, adduce no proof of their assertion ; and the signature of Philogenet of Cambridge, which the poet himself assumes in one of his early pieces, as it was fictitious in the name, might be equally so in the place; although it leaves it rather to be conjectured that the latter university had the honour of his education. The precise time at which he first attracted the notice of his munificent patrons, Edward III. aiid John of Gaunt, cannot be ascertained ; but if his poem, entitled The Dreme, be rightly sup- posed to be an epithalamium on the nuptials of the latter prince with Blanche, heiress of Lan- caster, he must have enjoyed the court patronage in his thirty-first year. The same poem contains an allusion to the poet's own attachment to a lady at court, whom he afterwards married. She was maid of honour to Philippa, queen of Edward III., and a younger sister of Catherine Swinford,t who was first the mistress, and ultimately the wife of John of Gaunt. By this connection Chaucer acquired the pow- erful support of the Lancastrian family; and during his life his fortune fluctuated with theirs. * Vide Thynne's animadversions on Speght's edition of Chaucer, in the Rev. J. H. TodJ's Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, p. 18. Thynne calls in question Speght's supposition of Chaucer being the son of a vintner, which Mr. Godwin, in his life of Chaucer, has adopted. Respect- ing the arms of the poet, Thynne (who was a herald) farther remarks to Speght, you set down that some heralds are of opinion that he did not descend from any great house, whiche they gather by his armes : it is a slender conjec- ture ; for as honourable bowses and of as great antiquytye have borne as mean armes as Chaucer, and yet Chaucer's armes are not so mean eyther for colour, chardge, or par- ticion, as some will make them.'' If indeed the fact of Chaucer's residence in the Temple could be proved, in- stead of resting on mure rumour, it would be tolerable evidence of his high birth and fortune ; for only young men of that description were anciently admitted to the inns of court. But unfortunately for the claims of the Inner Temple to the honour of Chaucer's residence, Mr. Thynne declares "it most certain*; to be gathered by cyr- cuinstances of recordes, that the lawyers were not of the Temple till the latter parte of the reygne of Kdw. Ill,, at which tyme Chaucer was a grave mauue, holden in greate credyt, and employed in embassye." t Catherine was the widow of Sir John Swinford, and daughter of Payne de Rouet, king at arms to the province of Guienne. It appears from other evidence, however, that Chaucer's wife's name was Philippa Pykard. Mr. Tyrwhitt explains the circumstance of the sisters having different names, by supposing that the father and his eldest daugh- ter Catherine might bear the name of De Kouet, from tome estate in their possession ; while the family name Tradition has assigned to him a lodge, near the royal abode of Woodstock, by the park gate, where it is probable that he composed some of his early works ; and there are passages in these which strikingly coincide with the scenery of his supposed habitation. There is also reason to pre- sume that he accompanied his warlike monarch to France in the year 1359 ; and from the record of his evidence in a military court, which has been lately discovered, we find that he gave testimony to a fact which he witnessed in that kingdom in the capacity of a soldier. J But the expedition of that year, which ended in the peace of Br6tigne, gave little opportunity of seeing military service ; and he certainly never resumed the profession of arms. In the year 1367 he received from Edward III. a pension of twenty marks per annum, a sum which in those times might probably be equiva- lent to two or three hundred pounds at the pre- sent day. In the patent for this annuity he is styled by the king valettus noster. The name valeltus was given to young men of the highest quality before they were knighted, though not as a badge of service. Chaucer, however, at the date of this pension, was not a young man, being then in his thirty-ninth year. He did not acquire the title of scutifer, or esquire, till five years after, when he was appointed joint envoy to Genoa with Sir James Pronan and Sir John de Man. It has been conjectured, that after finishing the business of this mission he paid a reverential visit to Petrarch, who was that year at Padua. Pykard was retained by the younger daughter Philippa, who was Chaucer's wife. J Chaucer was made prisoner at the siege of Retters, in France, in 1359, as appears from bis deposition in the fa- mous controversy between Lord Scrope and Sir Robert Gros- venor upon the right to bear the shield ' azure a bend or,' which had been assumed by Grosvenor, and which after a long suit he was obliged to discontinue. The roll of the depositions is in the Tower, and was printed in 1832, by Sir N. Harris Nicolas (2 vols. folio.) See also, Quarterly Review, No. cxi. C. 3 Mr. Tyrwhitt is upon thp whole inclined to doubt of this poetical meeting ; and De Sade, who, in his Memoires pour la Vie de Petrarque, conceived he should be able to prove that it took place, did not live to fulfil his promise. The circumstance which, taken collaterally with the fact of Chaucer's appointment to go to Italy, has been consi- dered as giving the strongest probability to the English poet's having visited Petrarch, is that Chaucer makes one of the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales declare, that he learned his story from the worthy clerk of Padua. The story is that of Patient Grisilde : which, in fact, originally belonged to Boccaccio, and was' only translated into Latin by Petrarch. It is not easy to explain, as Mr. Tyrwhitt remarks, why Chaucer should have proclaimed his obli gation to Petrarch, while he really owed it to Boccaccio. According to Mr. Godwin, it was to have an occasion of boasting of his friendship with the Italian laureat. But why does he not boast of it in his own person ? He maketi the clerk of Oxford declare that he had his story from the clerk of Padua; but he does not say that he had it him- self from that quarter. Mr. Godwin, however, believe* F2 65 66 CHAUCER. The fact, however, of an interview, so pleasing to the imagination, rests upon no certain evi- dence ; nor are there even satisfactory proofs that he ever went on his Italian embassy. His genius and connections seem to have kept him in prosperity during the whole of Edward III.'s reign, and during the period of John of Gaunt's influence in the succeeding one. From Edward he had a grant of a pitcher of wine a day, in 1374, and was made comptroller of the small customs of wool and of the small customs of wine in the port of London. In the next year the king granted him the wardship of Sir Simon Staplegate's heir, for which he received .104. The following year he received some forfeited wool, to the value of 71, 4s. 6J, sums probably equal in effective value to twenty times their modern denomination. In the last year of Ed- ward he was appointed joint envoy to France with Sir Guichard Dangle and Sir Richard Stan, or Sturrey, to treat of a marriage between Richard Prince of Wales and the daughter of the French king. His circumstances during this middle part of his life must have been honourable and opu- lent ; and they enabled him, as he tells us in his Testament of Love, to maintain a plentiful hos- pitality ; but the picture of his fortunes was sadly reversed by the decline of John of Gaunt's in- fluence at the court of Richard II., but more im- mediately by the poet's connection with an ob- noxious political party in the city. This faction, whose resistance to an arbitrary court was dig- nified with the name of a rebellion, was headed by John of Northampton, or Comberton, who in religious tenets was connected with the followers of Wickliffe, and in political interests with the Duke of Lancaster ; a connection which accounts for Chaucer having been implicated in the busi- ness. His pension, it is true, was renewed under Richard; and an additional allowance of twenty marks per annum was made to him in lieu of his daily pitcher of wine. He was also continued in his office of comptroller, and allowed to exe- cute it by deputy, at a time when there is every reason to believe that he must have been in exile. It is certain, however, that he was compelled to fly from the kingdom on account of his political connections ; and retired first to Hainault, then to France, and finally to Zealand. He returned to England, but was arrested and committed to prison. The coincidence of the time of his se- verest usage with that of the Duke of Glouces- ter's power, has led to a fair supposition that that usurper was personally a greater enemy to the poet than King Richard himself, whose disposi- tion towards him might have been softened by the good offices of Anne of Bohemia, a princess never mentioned by Chaucer but in terms of the warmest panegyric. that he shadows forth himself under the character of the lean scholar. This is surely improbable ; when the poet in another place describes himself as round and jolly, whiie the poor Oxford scholar is lank and meagre. If Chaucer really was corpulent, it was indeed giving but a hadow of himself to paint this figure as very lean : but While he was abroad, his circumstances had been impoverished by his liberality to some of his fellow fugitives ; and his effects at home had been cruelly embezzled by those intrusted with their management, who endeavoured, as he tells us, to make him perish for absolute want. In 1388, while yet a prisoner, he was obliged to dispose of his two pensions, which were all the resources now left to him by his persecutors. As the price of his release from imprisonment, he was obliged to make a confession respecting the late conspiracy. It is not known what he revealed ; cer- tainly nothing to the prejudice of John of Gaunt, since that prince continued to be his friend. To his acknowledged partisans, who had be- trayed and tried to starve him during his banish- ment, he owed no fidelity. It is true, that ex- torted evidence is one of the last ransoms which a noble mind would wish to pay for liberty ; but before we blame Chaucer for making any con- fession, we should consider how fan- and easy the lessons of uncapitulating fortitude may appear on the outside of a prison, and yet how hard it may be to read them by the light of a dungeon. As far as dates can be guessed at, in so obscure a transaction, his liberation took place after Richard had shaken off the domineering party of Glou- cester, and had begun to act for himself. Chau- cer's political errors and he considered his share in the late conspiracy as errors of judgment, though not of intention had been committed while Richard was a minor, and the acknowledgment of them might seem less humiliating when made to the monarch himself, than to an usurping fac- tion ruling in his name. He was charged too, by his loyalty, to make certain disclosures im- portant to the peace of the kingdom ; and his duty as a subject, independent of personal con- siderations, might well be put in competition with ties to associates already broken by their treachery.* While in prison, he began a prose work en- titled The Testament of Love, in order to beguile the tedium of a confinement, which made every hour, he says, appear to him a hundred winters ; and he seems to have published it to allay the obloquy attendant on his misfortunes, as an ex- planation of his past conduct. It is an allegory, in imitation of Boethius's Consolations of Philo- sophy ; an universal favourite in the early litera- ture of Europe. Never was an obscure affair conveyed in a more obscure apology ; yet amidst the gloom of allegory and lamentation, the vanity of the poet sufficiently breaks out. It is the goddess of Love who visits him in his confine- ment, and accosts him as her own immortal bard. He descants to her on his own misfortunes, on the politics of London, and on his devotion to the Lady Marguerite, or pearl, whom he found in a why should he give himself a double existence, and de- scribe both the jolly substance and the meagre shadow ? * " For my trothe and my conscience," he says in his Testament of Love, " bene witnesse to me bothe, that this knowing sothe have I saide for troathe of my leigiauncs by which I was charged on my kinges behalfe." CHAUCER. 67 mussel shell, and who turns out at last to mean the spiritual comfort of the Church.* In 1389 the Duke of Lancaster returned from Spain, and he had once more a steady protector. In that year he was appointed clerk of the works at Westminster, and in the following year clerk of those at Windsor, with a salary of 36 per annum. His resignation of those offices, which it does not appear he held for more than twenty months, brings us to the sixty-fourth year of his age, when he retired to the country, most probably to Woodstock, and there composed his immortal Canterbury Tales, amidst the scenes which had inspired his youthful genius. In 1394 a pension of 20 a year was granted to him, and in the last year of Richard's reign he had a grant of a yearly tun of wine; we may suppose in lieu of the daily pitcher, which had been stopped during his misfortunes. Tradition assigns to our poet a residence in his old age at Donnington Castle, near Newbury, in Berkshire; to which he must have moved in 1397, if he ever possessed that mansion: but Mr. Grose, who affirms that he purchased Donnington Castle in that year, has neglected to show the documents of such a purchase. One of the most curious particulars in the latter part of his life is the patent of protection granted to Chaucer in the year 1398, which his former inaccurate bio- graphers had placed in the second year of Richard, till Mr. Tyrwhitt corrected the mistaken date. The deed has been generally supposed to refer to the poet's creditors ; as it purports, however, to protect him contra cemulos sues, the expression has led Mr. Godwin to question its having any relation to his debtors and creditors. It is true that rivals or competitors are not the most obvious designation for the creditors of a great poet ; but still, as the law delights in fictions, and as the writ for securing a debtor exhibits at this day such figurative personages as John Doe and Kichard Roe, the form of protection might in those times have been equally metaphorical ; nor, as a legal metonymy, are the terms rival and competitor by any means inexpressive of that interesting relation which subsists between the dun and the fugitive ; a relation which in all ages has excited the warmest emulation, and the promptest ingenuity of the human mind. Within a year and a half from the date of this protection, Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, ascended ihe throne of England by the title of Henry IV. It is creditable to the memory of that prince, * Mr. To, ll has given, in his Illustrations, some poems supposed to lie written by Chaucer during his imprison- ment; in which, in the same allegorical manner, under the praises of Spring, he appears to implore the u.-sUt- ance of Vere, Karl of Oxford, the principal favourite of Kichard II. t Dryden has accused Chaucer of introducing Galli- cisms into the English language: not aware that French was the language of the Court of England not long before Chaucer's time, and that, far from introducing French phrases into the English tongue, the ancient bard was successfully active in introducing the Kn^lish as a fashion- able dialect, instead of the French, which had. before his time, been the only language of polite literature in Eng- that, however basely he abandoned so many of his father's friends, he did not suffer the poetical ornament of the age to be depressed by the revo- lution. Chaucer's annuity and pipe of wine were continued under the new reign, and an additional pension of forty marks a year was con- ferred upon him. But the poet did not long en- joy this accession to his fortune. He died in London, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1400, and was interred in the south cross aisle of Westminster Abbey. The monument to his memory was erected a century and a half after his decease, by a warm admirer of his genius, Nicholas Brigham, a gentleman of Oxford. It stands at the north end of a recess formed by four obtuse foliated arches, and is a plain altar with three quatrefoils and the same number of shields. Chaucer, in his Treatise of the Astrolabe, men- tions his son Lewis, for whom it was composed in 1391, and who was at that time ten years of age. Whether Sir Thomas Chaucer, who was Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of Henry IV. was another and elder son of the poet, as many of his biographers have supposed, is a point which has not been distinctly ascertained. Mr. Tyrwhitt has successfully vindicated Chau- cer from the charge brought against him by Ver- stegan and Skinner, of having adulterated English by vast importations of French words and phrases. If Chaucer had indeed naturalized a multitude of French words by his authority, he might be re- garded as a bold innovator, yet the language would have still been indebted to him for en- riching it But such revolutions in languages are not wrought by individuals ; and the style of Chaucer will bear a fair comparison with that of his contemporaries, Gower, Wickliffe, and Man- deville. That the polite English of that period should have been highly impregnated with French is little to be wondered at, considering that Eng- lish was a new language at court, where French had of late been exclusively used, and must have still been habitual.f English must, indeed, have been known at court when Chaucer began his poetical career, for he would not have addressed his patrons in a language entirely plebeian ; but that it had not been long esteemed of sufficient dignity for a courtly muse appears from Gower's continuing to write French verses, till the ex- ample of his great contemporary taught him to polish his native tongue.J The same intelligent writer, Mr. Tyrwhitt, while he vindicates Chaucer from the imputation land. SIR WALTER SCOTT'S Misc. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 4'2(i. C. J Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, p. 26, observes, that authors, both historical and poetical. in the century after the decease of these poets in usually coupling their names, place Gower before Chaucer meoely as a tribute to his seniority. But though Gower might be an older man than Chaucer, and possibly earlier known as a writer, yet unless it cnn be proved that he publi>h>-tl English poetry before his Confe.-sio Amantis. of which there appears to be no evidence. Chaucer must still Haiia precedency as the earlier English poet. The Confessio Amantis was published in the sixteenth year of Kichard 11. 's reign, at which time Chaucer bad written all hi* poem* except the Cunt Thury Tales. CHAUCER. of leaving English more full of French than he found it, considers it impossible to ascertain, with any degree of certainty, the exact changes which he produced upon the national style, as we have neither a regular series of authors preceding him, nor authentic copies of their works, nor assurance that they were held as standards by their con- temporaries. In spite of this difficulty, Mr. Ellis ventures to consider Chaucer as distinguished from his predecessors by his fondness for an Italian inflexion of words, and by his imitating the characteristics of the poetry of that nation. He has a double claim to rank as the founder of English poetry, from having been the first to make it the vehicle of spirited representations of life and native manners, and from having been the first great architect of our versification, in giving our language the ten syllable, or heroic measure, which though it may sometimes be found among the lines of more ancient versifiers, evidently comes in only by accident. This mea- sure occurs in the earliest poem that is attributed to him,* The Court of Love, a title borrowed from the fantastic institutions of that name, where points of casuistry in the tender passion were debated and decided by persons of both sexes. It is a dream, in which the poet fancies himself taken to the Temple of Love, introduced to a mistress, and sworn to observe the statutes of the amatory god. As the earliest work of Chaucer, it interestingly exhibits the successful effort of his youthful hand in erecting a new and stately fabric of English numbers. As a piece of fancy, it is grotesque and meagre ; but the lines often flow with great harmony. His story of Troilus and Cresseide was the de- light of Sir Philip Sydney ; and perhaps, excepting the Canterbury Tales, was, down to the time of Queen Elizabeth, the most popular poem in the English language. It is a story of vast length and almost desolate simplicity, and abounds in all those glorious anacronisms which were then, and so long after, permitted to romantic poetry : such as making the son of King Priam read the The- bais of Statius, and the gentlemen of Troy con- verse about the devil, justs and tournaments, bishops, parliaments, and scholastic divinity. The languor of the story is, however, relieved by many touches of pathetic beauty. The con- fession of Cresseide in the scene of felicity, when the poet compares her to the "new abashed nightingale, that stinteth first ere she beginneth sing," is a fine passage, deservedly noticed by Warton. The grief of Troilus after the departure of Cresseide is strongly portrayed in Troilus's feoliloquy in his bed. Where is mine owne ladie, lief, and dere ? Where is her white brest where is it where? Where been her armes, and her iyen clere, That yesterday this time with me were? Now may I wepe alone with many a teare, And graspc about I may ; but in this place, Save a pillowe, I find nought to embrace. Written, as some lines in the piece import, at the age of nineteen. The sensations of Troilus, on coming to the house of his faithless Cresseide, when, instead of finding her returned, he beholds the barred doors and shut windows, giving tokens of her absence, as well as his precipitate departure from the dis- tracting scene, are equally well described. Therwith whan he was ware, and gran behold How shet* was every window of the place. As frost him thought his herte gan to cold, For which, with changed deedly pale face, Withouten worde, he for by gan to pace, And. as God would, he gau so faste ride, That no man his continuance espied. Then said he thus : paleis desolate, house of houses, whilom best yhight, paleis empty and disconsolate, thou lanterne of which queintf is the light, paleis whilom day, that now art night; Wei oughtest thou to fall and I to die, SensJ she is went, that wont was us to gie.ji The two best of Chaucer's allegories, The Flower and the Leaf, and the House of Fame, have been fortunately perpetuated in our lan- guage ; the former by Dryden, the latter by Pope. The Flower and the Leaf is an exquisite piece of fairy fancy. With a moral that is just suffi- cient to apologize for a dream, and yet which sits so lightly on the story as not to abridge its most visionary parts, there is, in the whole scenery and objects of the poem, an air of wonder and sweetness ; an easy and surprising transition that is truly magical. Pope had not so enchanting a subject in the House of Fame ; yet, with defer- ence to Warton, that critic has done Pope in- justice in assimilating his imitations of Chaucer to the modern ornaments in Westminster Abbey, which impair the solemn effect of the ancient building. The many absurd and fantastic par- ticulars in Chaucer's House of Fame will not suffer us to compare it, as a structure in poetry, with so noble a pile as Westminster Abbey in architecture. Much of Chaucer's fantastic matter has been judiciously omitted by Pope, who at the same time has clothed the best ideas of the old poem in spirited numbers and expression. Chau- cer supposes himself to be snatched up to heaven by a large eagle, who addresses him in the name of St. James and the Virgin Mary, and, in order to quiet the poet's fears of being carried up to Jupiter, like another Ganymede, or turned into a star like Orion, tells him, that Jove wishes him to sing of other subjects than love and "blind Cupido," and has therefore ordered, that Dan Chaucer should be brought to behold the House of Fame. In Pope, the philosophy of fame comes with much more propriety from the poet himself, than from the beak of a talkative eagle. It was not until his green old age that Chaucer put forth, in the Canterbury Tales, the full variety of his genius, and the pathos and romance, as well as the playfulness of fiction. In the serious part of those tales he is, in general, more deeply indebted to preceding materials than in the comic stories, which he raised upon slight hints to the air and spirit of originals. The design of the * Shut, f Extinguished. J Since. J To make joyous. CHAUCER. 69 whole work is after Boccaccio's Decamerone ; but exceedingly improved. The Italian novelist's ladies and gentlemen who have retired from the city of Florence, on account of the plague, and who agree to pass their time in telling stories, have neither interest nor variety in their indivi- dual characters; the time assigned to their con- gress is arbitrary, and it evidently breaks up because the author's stores are exhausted. Chau- cer's design, on the other hand, though it is left unfinished, has definite boundaries, and incidents to keep alive our curiosity, independent of the tales themselves. At the same time, while the action of the poem is an event too simple to di- vert the attention altogether from the pilgrims' stories, the pilgrimage itself is an occasion suffi- ciently important to draw together almost all the varieties of existing society, from the knight to the artisan, who, agreeably to the old simple manners, assemble in the same room of the hos- telerie. The enumeration of those characters in the Prologue forms a scene, full, without con- fusion; and the object of their journey gives a fortuitous air to the grouping of individuals who collectively represent the age and state of society in which they live. It may be added, that if any age or state of society be more favourable than another to the uses of the poet, that in which Chaucer lived must have been peculiarly pic- turesque; an age in which the differences of rank and profession were so strongly distin- guished, and in which the broken masses of society gave out then- deepest shadows and strongest colouring by the morning light of civili- zation. An unobtrusive but sufficient contrast is supported between the characters, as between the demure prioress and the genial wife of Bath, the rude and boisterous miller and the polished knight, &c. &c. Although the object of the journey is religious, it casts no gloom over the meeting; and we know that our Catholic ancestors are justly represented in a state of high good-humour, on the road to such solemnities. The sociality of the pilgrims is, on the whole, agreeably sustained; but in a journey of thirty persons, it would not have been adhering to pro- bability to have made the harmony quite unin- terrupted. Accordingly the bad-humour which breaks out between the lean friar and the cherub- faced sompnour, while it accords with the hosti- lity known to have subsisted between those two professions, gives a diverting zest to the satirical stories which the hypocrite and the libertine level at each other. Chaucer's forte is description; much of his moral reflection is superfluous ; none of his cha- racteristic painting. His men and women are not mere ladies and gentlemen, like those who furnish apologies for Boccaccio's stories. They rise before us minutely traced, profusely varied, and strongly discriminated. Their features and casual manners seem to have an amusing con- gruity with their moral characters. He notices minute circumstances as if by chance ; but every touch has its effect to our conception so distinctly, that we seem to live and travel with his person ages throughout the journey. What an intimate scene of English life in the fourteenth century do we enjoy in those tales, beyond what history displays by glimpses, through the stormy atmosphere of her scenes, or the anti- quary can discover by the cold light of his re- searches ! Our ancestors are restored to us, not as phantoms from the field of battle, or the scaffold, but in the full enjoyment of their social existence. After four hundred years have closed over the mirthful features which formed the living originals of the poet's descriptions, his pages impress the fancy with the momentary credence that they are still alive ; as if Time had rebuilt his ruins, and were reacting the lost scenes of existence THE PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES. WHANN that April with his shoures sole The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, 6 And bathed every veine in swiche" licour, Of whiche vertue engendred is the flour ; Whan Zephirus eke with his sole brethe Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,<* And s male foules maken melodie, That slepen alle night with open eye, So priketh hem' nature in hir/ corages ;* Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, And palmares for to seken strange strondes, To serve* halweys* coutheJ in sondry londes ; And specially, from every shires ende Of Englelond, to Canterbury they wende,* The holy blisful martyr for to seke, That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.' Befelle, that, in that seson on a day, In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury with devoute corage, At night was come into that hostelrie Wei nine and twenty in a compagnie Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle*" In felawship, and pilgrimes were they alle, That toward Canterbury wolden" ride. The chambres and the stables weren wide, And wel we weren esed atte beste. And shortly, whan the sonne was gon to reste, So hadde I spoken with hem everich on, That I was of hir felawship anon, And made forword erly for to rise, To take oure way ther as I you devise. But natheles, while I have time and space, Or that I forther in this tale pace, a Sweet. * Root.' Such. <* Run.* Them./ Their.- g Inclination. * To ke-p. ' Holidays. } Known. * Qo ' Sick. m Fallen. Would. o Every one. 70 CHAUCER. Me thinketh it accordant to reson, To tellen you alle the condition Of eche of hem, so as it seemed me, And whiche they weren, and of what degre ; And eke in what araie that they were inne : And at a knight than wol I firste beginne. A KXIGHT ther was, and that a worthy man That fro the time that he firste began To riden out, he loved Chevalrie, Trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie. Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,P And therto hadde he ridden, no man ferre,? As wel in Cristendom as in Hethenesse, And ever honoured for his worthinesse. At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne. Ful often time he hadde the bord r begonne' Aboven alle nations in Pruce, In Lettowe hadde he reysed' and in Ruce, No cristen man so ofte of his degre. In Gernade at the siege eke hadde he be Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie. At Leyes was he, and at Satalie, Whan they were wonne; and in the Crete see At many a noble armee hadde he be. At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene, And foughten for our faith at Tramissene In listes thries, and ay slain his fo. This ilke worthy knight hadde ben also Sometime with the Lord of Palatie, Agen another hethen in Turkic : And evermore he hadde a sovereine pris." And though that he was worthy he was wise, And of his port as meke as is a mayde. He never yet no vilanie ne sayde In alle his lif, unto no manere wight. He was a veray parfit gentil knight. But for to tellen you of his araie, His hors was good, but he ne was not gaie. Of fustian he wered a gipon," Alle besmotred" 1 with his habergeon,* For he was late ycome fro his viage, And wente for to don his pilgrimage. With him ther was his sone a yonge Squier, A lover and a lusty bacheler, With lockes crullv as they were laide in presse. Of twenty yere of age he was I gesse. Of his stature he was of even lengthe, And wonderly deliver,* and grete of strengthe. And he hadde be somtime in chevachie," In Flaundres, in Artois, and in Picardie, And borne him wel, as of so litel space, In hope to stonden in his ladies grace. Embrouded 4 was he, as it were a mede Alle ful of fresshe flourcs, white and rede. Singing he was, or floyting^ alle the day, He was as fresshe as is the moneth of May. Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide. Well coude he sitte on hors, and fayre ride. He coude songes make, and wel endite, Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write. p War. 1 Farther. r Been placed at the head of the table. Travelled. Praise. Wore a short < cassock. "Smutted. *Coatof mail. vCurled. z Nimble. I Horse skirmishing. & Embroidered. Playing the f ti nt.. flute So hote he loved, that by nightertale d He slep no more than doth the nightingale. Curteis he was, lowly, and servisable, And carf 4 before his fader at the table. A Yeman hadde he, and servantes no mo At that time, for him luste/ to ride so ; And he was cladde in cote and hode of grene. A shefe of peacock arwes bright and kene Under his belt he bare ful thriftily. Well coude he dresse his takel? yemanly : His arwesc drouped not with fetheres low. And in his hond he bare a mighty bowe. A not-hed 1 hadde he, with a broune visage. Of wood-craft coude' he wel alle the usage. Upon his arme he bare a gaie bracer,* And by his side a swerd and a bokeler, And on that other side a gaie daggere, Harneised wel, and sharpe as point of spere: A Cristofre on his brest of silver shene. An home he bare, the baudrik was of grene, A forster was he sothely as I gesse. Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was full simple and coy ; Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy ; And she was cleped' Madame Eglentine. Ful wel she sange the service divine, Entuned in hire nose ful swetely ; And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly," 1 After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe. At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle ; She lette no morsel from her lippes fall, Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe. Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe, Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest. In curtesie was sette ful moche hire lest." Hire over lippe wiped she so clene, That in hire cuppe was no ferthing sene Of grese, whan she dronken hadde hire draught. Ful semely after her mete she raughtJ" And sikerly she was of grete disport, And ful plesant, and amiable of port, And peinedv hire to contrefeten r chere Of court, and ben estatelich of manere, And to ben holden digne' of reverence. But for to speken of hire conscience, She was so charitable and so pitoiis, She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde, Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde With rested flesh, and milk, and wastel brede. But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, Or if men smote it with a yerde' smert," And all was conscience and tendre herte. Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was ; Hire nose tretis;" hire eyen grey as glas; Hire mouth ful smale, and therto soft and red ; But sikerly she hadde a fayre forehed. It was almost a spanne brode I trowe; For hardily she was not undergrowe.'" u Smartly, adv. Straight. Of low stature. CHAUCER. 71 Ful fetise* was hire clock, as I was ware. Of smale corall aboute hire arm she bare A pair of bedes, gauded all with grene ; And theron heng a broche of gold ful shene, On whiche was first ywritten a crouned A, And after, Jlmnr vincit omnia. Another Nonne also with hire hadde she, That was hire chapelleine, and Preestes thre. A Monk ther was, a fayre for the maistne, An outrider, that loved venerie ;y A manly man, to ben an abbot able. Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable : And whan he rode, men might his bridel here Gingeling in a whistling wind as clere, And eke as loude, as doth the chapell belle, Ther as this lord was keeper of the celle. The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit, Because that it was olde and somdele streit, This ilke monk lette olde thinges pace, And held after the newe worlde the trace. He yave* not of the text a pulled hen, That saith, that hunters ben not holy men ; Ne that a monk, whan he is rekkeles,* Is like to a fish that is waterles ; This is to say, a monk out of his cloistre. This ilke text held he not worth an oistre. And I say his opinion was good. What shulde he studio, and make himselven wood* Upon a book in cloistre alway to pore, Or swinken 6 with his hondes, and laboiire, As Austin bit 1 d how shal the world be served 1 Let Austin have his swink to him reserved. Therfore he was a prickasoure* a right: Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight: Of pricking and of hunting for the hare Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare. I saw his sieves purf iled/ at the hond With gris/ and that the finest of the lond. And for to fasten his hood under his chinne, He hadde of gold ywrought a curious pinne ; A love-knotte in the greter end ther was. His hed was balled, and shone as any glas, And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint He was a lord ful fat and in good point. His eyen stepe,* and rolling in his hed, That stemed as a forneis of led. His botes souple, his hors in gret estat ; Now certainly he was a fayre prelat He was not pale as a forpined gost A fat swan loved he best of any rost His palfrey was as broune as is a bery. A Frere ther was, a wanton and a mery, A Limitour, a ful solempne man. In all the ordres foure is none that can* So muche of daliance and fayre langage. He hadde ymade ful many a mariage Of yonge wimmen, at his owen cost. Until his ordre he was a noble post. Ful wel beloved, and familier was he With frankeleins over all in his contree, * Neat y Hunting.* Gave. a Mr. Twyrhitt supposes, that this should be righelle*, i. e. out of thf rules by which the monk* W;TB bound. & Mad. Toil. d Biddeth. * Hard rider./ Wrought on the edge. f A fine kind of fur. A Deep in the head. Knew. j And eke with worthy wimmen of the toun : For he had power of confession, As saide himselfe, more than a curat, For of his ordre he was liceneiat. Ful swetely herde he confession, And plesant was his absolution. He was an esy man to give penance, Ther as he wiste to han-' a good pitance : For unto a poure* ordre for to give Is signe that a man is wel yshrive. 1 For if he gave, he dorste" 1 make avant, He wiste that a man was repentant. For many a man so hard is of his herte, He may not wepe although him sore smerte. Therfore in stede of weping and praieres, Men mote give silver to the poure freres. His tippet was ay farsed" ful of knives, And pinnes, for to given fayre wives. And certainly he hadde a mery note. Wel coude he singe and plaien on a rote." Of yeddingesP he bare utterly the pris. His nekke was white as the flour de lis Therto he strong was as a champioun, And knew wel the tavernes in every toun, And every hosteler and gay tapstere, Better than a lazar or a beggere, For unto swiche a worthy man as he Accordeth nought, as by his faculte, To haven? with sike lazars acquaintance. "It is not honest, it may not avance, As for to delen with no swiche pouraille, 1 " But all with riche, and sellers of vitaille. And over all, ther as profit shuld arise, Curteis he was, and lowly of servise. Ther n' as no man no wher so vertuous. He was the beste begger in all his hous : And gave a certain ferme* for the grant, Non of his bretheren came in his haunt. For though a widewe hadde but a shoo, (So plesant was his t' principw) Yet wold he have a ferthing or he went. His pourchas' was wel better than his rent. And rage he coude as it hadde ben a whelp, In lovedayes," ther could he mochel help. For ther was he nat like a cloisterere, With thredbare cope, as is a poure scolere, But he was like a maister or a pope. Of double worsted was his semicope,' That round was as a belle out of the presse. Somwhat he lisped for his wantonnesse, To make his English swete upon his tonge; And in his harping, whan that he hadde songe. His eyen twinkeled in his hed aright, As don the sterres in a frosty night. This worthy limitour was cleped Huberd. A Marchant was ther with a forked berd, In mottelee, and highe on hors he sat, And on his hed a Flaundrish bever hat His botcs elapsed fayre and fetisly. His resons spake he ful solempnely, ' Have. * Poor. J Shriven. Durst make a boast. Stuffed. o A stringed instrument. V Story-telling. Have.' Poor people. Farm. < Purchase." Daysap l>nim<>il tor the amicable settlement of differences. Half-cloak. 72 CHAUCER. Soiming alway the encrese of his winning. He wold the see were kept for any thing 10 Betwixen Middelburgh and Orewell. Wei coud he in eschanges* sheldesv selle. This worthy man ful wel his wit besette ; Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette, So stedefastly didde he his governance, With his bargeines, and with his chevisance 1 Forsothe he was a worthy man withalle, But soth to sayn, I n'ot how men him calle. A Clerk ther was of Oxenforde also, That unto logike hadde long ygo. As lene was his hors as is a rake, And he was not right fat, I undertake ; But loked holwe," and therto soberly. Ful thredbare was his overest courtepy,* For he hadde geten him yet no benefice, Ne was nought worldly to have an office. For him was lever 6 han at his beddes bed A twenty bokes, clothed in black and red, Of Aristotle, and his philosophic, Than robes riche, or fidel, or sautrie. But all be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre, But all that he might of his frendes hente, 1 * On bokes and on lerning he it spente, And besily gan for the soules praie Of hem, that yave him wherwith to scolaie/ Of studie toke he moste cure and hede. Not a word spake he more than was nede ; And that was said hi forme and reverence, And short and quike, and ful of high sentence. Souning in moral vertue was his speche, And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche. A Sergeant of the Lawe ware/ and wise, That often hadde yben at the paruis,? Ther was also, ful riche of excellence. Discrete he was, and of gret reverence : He semed swiche, his wordes were so wise, Justice he was ful often in assise, By patent, and by pleine commissioun ; For his science, and for his high renoun, Of fees and robes had he many on. So grete a pourchasour was nowher non. All was fee simple to him in effect, His pourchasing might not ben in suspect.* Nowher so besy a man as he ther n'as, And yet he semed besier than he was. In termes hadde he cas* and domes alle, That fro the time of king Will, weren falle. Therto he coude endite, and make a thing, Ther coude no wight pinched et his writing. And every statute coude he plaine by rote. He rode but homely in a medlee* cote,' v Kept, or guarded. The old subsidy of tonnage and poundage was given to the king 'pour la saufgarde et custodie del mer.' (Tyrwkitt.) * Exchanges. V Crowns. * An agreement for borrowing money. Hollow. * Uppermost cloak of coarse cloth. ' He would rather have. <* Get. ' Study./ Wary. s The paruis, or portico before a church a place frequented by lawyers. The place of the lawyers' paruis in London is assigned to different places by different antiquaries. (Tt/nvhilt.) * Suspicion. Cases and decisions. j >io one could find a flaw in his writings.* I Coat of mixed stuff. m A girdle. With small stripes. o A freeholder of considerable estate. Girt with a seint" 1 of silk, with barres" smale ; Of his array tell I no lenger tale. A Frankelein" was in this compagnie ; White was his herd, as is the dayesie. Of his complexion he was sanguin. Wel loved he by the morwe^ a sop ie win.* To liven in delit was ever his wone, For he was Epicures owen sone, That held opinion, that plein delit Was veraily felicite parfite. An housholder, and that a grete was he ; Seint Julian' he was in his contree. His brede, his ale, was alway after on ; A better envyned' man was no wher non. Withouten bake mete never was his hous, Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous, It snewed' in his hous of mete and drinke, Of alle deintees that men coud of thinke, After the sondry sesons of the yere, So changed he his mete and his soupere. Ful many a fat partrich hadde he hi mewe," And many a breme, and many a luce in stewe. Wo was hie coke, but if his sauce were Poinant and sharpe, and redy all his gere. His table dormant" in his halle alway Stode redy covered alle the longe day. At sessions ther was he lord and sure. Ful often time he was knight of the shire. An anelace" 1 and a gipciere* all of silk, Hen at his girdel, white as morwev milk. A shereve hadde he ben, and a countour.' Was no wher swiche a worthy vavasour. An Haberdasher, and a Carpenter, A Webbe,* a Deyer, and a Tapiser, 6 Were alle yclothed hi o livere, rf Of a solempne and grete fraternite. Ful freshe and newe hii* gere ypikid/ was. Hir knives were ychaped not with bras, But all with silver wrought ful clene and wel, Hir girdeles and hir pouches every del.* Wel semed eche of hem a fayre burgeis,* To sitten hi a gild halle, on the deis.* Everich, for the wisdom that he can, Was shapeliclv for to ben an alderman. For catel hadden they ynough and rent, And eke hir wives would it well assent : And elles* certainly they were to blame. It is ful fayre to ben ycleped niadame, And for to gon to vigiles all before, And have a mantel reallich' ybore." 1 A Coke they hadden with hem for the nones," To boile the chikenes and the marie bones, And poudre" marchant, tart and galingale^ 1 Wel coude he knowe a draught of London ale. p Morning. Wine. r The saint of hospitality. Stored with wine. t It suewed, that is, there was great abundance. u Secret. t> Fixed ready. Knife. t Purse. y Morning. z Mr. Tyrwhitt conjectures, but merely offers it as a conjecture, that the contour was foreman of the hundred court. Vavasour. Of this term Mr. T. is doubtful of the meaning. ' A weaver. c A maker of tapestry. d Livery. '/Their gear was spruce. s Every way. * Burgher. > The deis; a part of the hall that was floored and set apart for a place of respect. (Tyrwhitt.) 3 Fit. * Klse. ' Koyally. Supported. For the pur- pose. o The meauiug not ascertained. r Sweet cyperu*. CHAUCER. 73 He coulde roste, and sethe, and broile, and frie, Maken men trewes,? and wel bake a pie. But gret harm was it, as it thoughte me, That on his shinne a mormal r hadde he. For blanc manger that made he with the best. A Shipman was ther, woned* fer by West : For ought I wote, he was of Dertemouth. He rode upon a rouncie/ as he couthe, All in a goune of falding to the knee. A dagger hanging by a las" hadde hee About his nckke under his arm adoun. The hole sommer hadde made his hewe al broun. And certainly he was a good felaw. Ful many a draught of win he hadde draw From B urdeux ward, while that the chapman slepe. Of nice conscience toke he no kepe. If that he faught, and hadde the higher hand, By water he sent hem home to every land. But of his craft to reken well his tides, His stremes and his strandes him besides, His herberwe," his mone, w and his lodemanage, z Ther was none swiche, from Hull unto Cartage. Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake : With many a tempest hadde his herd be shake. He knew wel alle the havens, as they were, Fro Gotland, to the Cape de finistere, And every creke in Bretagne and in Spaine : His barge ycleped was the Magdelaine. With us ther was a Doctour of Phisike, In all this world ne was ther non him like To speke of phisike, and of surgerie : For he was grounded in astronomic. He kept his patient a ful gret del In houres by his magike naturel. Wel coude he fortunen* the ascendent* Of his images for his patient. He knew the cause of every maladie, Were it of cold, or hole, or moist, or drie, And wher engendred, and of what humour, He was a veray prafite practisour. The cause yknowe, and of his harm the rote, Anon he gave to the sike man his bote. 4 Ful redy hadde he his apothecaries To send him dragges," and his lettuaries,"* For eche of hem made other for to winne ; Hir friendship na's not newe to beginne. Wel knew he the old Esculapius, And Dioscorides, and eke Rufiis ; Old Hippocras, Hali, and Gallien, Serapion, Rasis, and Avicen ; Averrois, Damascene, and Constantin; Bernard, and Gatisden, and Gilbertin. Of his diete mesurable was he, For it was of no superfluitee, But of gret nourishing, and digestible. His studie was but little on the Bible. In sanguin" and in perse/ he clad was alle Lined with taffata, and with sendalle.* And yet he was but esy of dispence :* He kepte that he wan' in the pestilence. 9 A dish of rich broth, in which the meat was stamped and the substance strained. * A panpreue. Lived. Hack-horsy. u Lace. Place of the Sun. to Moon. Pilotship. Make fortunate.* The ascendant. o Root. * Remedy. ' Drugs. d Electuaries. Blood-red colour. 10 For golde in phisike is a cordial ; Therfore he loved gold in special. A good Wif was ther of beside Bathe, But she was som del defe, and that was scathed Of cloth making she hadde swiche an haunt, She passed hem of Ipres, and of Gaunt. In all the parish wif ne was ther non, That to the offring before hire shulde gon, And if ther did, certain so wroth was she, That she was out of alle charitee. Hire coverchiefs weren ful fine of ground ; I dorste swere, they weyeden* a pound ; That on the Sonday were upon hire hede. Hire hosen weren of fine scarlet rede, Ful streite yteyed,' and shoon ful moist and newe. Bold was hire face, and fayre and rede of hew. She was a worthy woman all hire live, Housbondes at the chirche dore had she had five, Withouten other compagnie in youthe. But therof nedeth not to speke as nouthe. 1 " And thries hadde she ben at Jerusaleme, She hadde passed many a strange streme. At Rome she hadde ben, and at Boloine, In Galice at Seint James, and at Coloine. She coude" moche of wandering by the way. Gat-tothed was she, sothly for to say. Upon an ambler esily she sat, Ywimpled wel, and on hire hede an hat, As brode as is a bokeler, or a targe. A fote-mantel about hire hippes large, And on hire fete a pair of sporres sharpe. In felawship wel coude she laughe and carpef Of remedies of love she knew parchance, For of that arte she coude the olde dance. A good man there was of religioun, That was a poure Persone? of a toun : But riche he was of holy thought and werk. He was also a lerned man, a clerk, That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche. His parishens devoutly wolde he teche. Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, And in adversite ful patient : And swiche he was ypreved r often sithes. 1 Ful loth were him to cursen for his tithes, But rather wolde he yeven' out of doute, Unto his poure parishens aboute, Of his offring, and eke of his substance. He coude in litel thing have suffisance. Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder, But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder, In sikenesse and in mischief to visite The ferrest in his parish, moche and lite," Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf. This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf." That first he wrought and afterward he taught. Out of the gospel he the wordes caught, And this figure he added yet thereto, That if golde ruste, what shuld iren do ? For if a preest be foule, on whom we trust, No wonder is a lewed man to rust : /Sky-coloured, or bluish gray. ffThin silk.* Expense. < Gained, (tot. ) Misfortune. * Weighi-d. ' Tied. m Now; adv. Knew. o A riding petticoat. P Talk. Parson. r Proved. Times. Give. The nearest and most distant of the parishioners. Gave. G CHAUCER. And shame it is, if that a preest take kepe, To see a shitten shepherd, and clene shepe : Wei ought a preest ensainple for to yeve, By his clenenesse how his shepe shuld live. He sette not his benefice to hire, And lette his shepe accombred hi the mire, And ran unto London, unto Seint Poules, To seeken him a chanterie for soules, Or with a brotherhede to be withold : But dwelt at home, and kepte wel his fold, So that the wolf ne made it not miscarie. He was a shepherd, and no mercenarie. And though he holy were, and vertuous, He was to sinful men not dispitous, IV e of his speche dangerous ne digne, But in his teching discrete and benigne. To drawen folk to heven, with fairenesse, By good ensample, was his besinesse : But it were any persone obstinat, What so he were of highe, or low estat, Him wolde he snibben*" sharply for the nones. A better preest I trowe that nowher* non is He waited after no pompe ne reverence, Ne maked him no spiced? conscience, But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught, but first he folwed it himselve. With him ther was a Plowman, was his brother. That hadde ylaid of dong z ful many a fother. A trewe swinker, and a good was he, Living in pees, 4 and parfite charitee. God loved he beste with alle his herte At alle times, were it gain as smerte, e And than his neighebour right as himselve. He wolde thresh, and therto dike, and delve, For Cristes sake, for every poure wight, Withouten hire, if it lay in his might. His tithes paied he ful fayre and wel Bothe of his propre swinke, and his catel. In a tabard he rode upon a mere. There was also a reve, and a millere, A sompnour, d and a pardoner* also, A manciple,/ and myself, ther ne'ere no mo. The Miller was a stout carl for the nones, Ful bigge he was of braun, and eke of bones ; That proved wel, for over all ther he came, At wrastling he wold here away the ram.* He was short shuldered brode, a thikke gnarre,* Ther n'as no dore, that he n'olde heve of barre, Or breke it at a renning* with his hede. His herd as any so we or fox was rede, And therto brode, as though it were a spade. Upon the cop; right of his nose he hade A wert, and theron stode a tufte of heres, Rede as the bristles of a sowes eres. His nose-thirles* blacke were and wide. A swerd and bokeler bare he by his side. His mouth as wide was as a forneis. He was a jangler,' and a goliardeis," Snub, reprove.* No where.* Nice, in an affected dense. * Dung. " Load. * Peace. e Pain. * A somp- nour, an officer employed to summon delinquents in eccle- siastical court*, now called an apparitor. (Tynohitt.) A pardoner, a seller of pardons or indulgences. / A manci- ple, an officer who has the care of furnishing victuals for an inn of court. r The prize.* A hard knot in a tree. And that was most of sinne, and harlotries. Wel coude he stelen corne, and tollen thries. And yet he had a thomb" of gold parde, A white cote and a blew hode wered he. A baggepipe wel coude he blowe and soune, And therwithall he brought us out of toune. A gentil Manciple* was ther of a temple, Of which achatours* mighten take ensemple For to ben wise in bying of vitaille. For whether that he paide, or toke by taille, Algate he waited so in his achate/ That he was ay before in good estate. Now is not that of God a ful fayre grace, That swiche a lewed mannes wit shal pace The wisdom of an hepe of lered men 1 Of maisters had he mo than thries ten, That were of lawe expert and curious : Of which ther was a dosein in that hous, Worthy to ben stewardes of rent and lond Of any lord that is in Englelond, To makn him live by his propre good, In honour detteles,' but if he were wood, Or live as scarsly, as him list desire ; And able for to helpen all a shire In any cas that mighte fallen or happe : And yet this manciple sette hir aller cappe.' The Reve was a slendre colerike man, His berd was shave as neighe as ever he can. His here was by his eres round yshorne. His top was docked like a preest beforne. Ful longe were his legges, and ful lene, Ylike a staff, there was no calf ysene. Wel coude he kepe a garner and a binne : Ther was non auditour coude on him winne. Wel wiste he by the drought, and by the ram, The yelding" of his seed, and of his grain. His lordes shepe, his nete," and his deirie, His swine, his hors, his store, and his pultrie, Were holly in his reves 10 governing, And by his covenant yave he rekening, Sin that his lord was twenty yere of age ; Ther coude no man bring him in arerage. Ther n'as baillif, ne herde, ne other bine, That he ne knew his sleight and his covine :* They were adradde of him, as of the deth. His wonning was ful fayre upon an heth, With grene trees yshadewed was his place. He coude better than his lord pourchace. Ful ryche he was ystored privily. His lord wel coude he plesen subtilly, To yeve and lene him of his owen good, And have a thank, and yet a cote and hood. In youthe he lerned hadde a good mistere.* He was a wel good wright, a carpentere. This reve sat upon a right good slot,* That was all pomelee grey, and highte Scot A long surcote of perse upon he hade, And by his side he bare a rusty blade. A running. j Top. * Nostrils. ' Prater. m Buf foon. n o He was as honest as other millers, though he had, according to the proverb, like every mill'-r, a thumb of gold. r Vide note/above. ? Purchasers. r pur- chase.' Free from debt. ' Made a fool of them all. * Yielding. * Cows. **> Steward. * Secret contrivances. y Trade, occupation. * Horse, beast. Dappled. CHAUCER. 75 Of Norfolk was this reve, of which I tell, Beside a toun, men clepen Baldeswell. Tucked he was, as is a frere, aboute, And ever he rode the hindrcst of the route. A Sompnour was ther with us in that place, That had a fire-red cherubinnes* face, For sausefleme c he was, with eyen narwe.* As hole he was, and likerous as a sparwe, With scalled browes blake, and pilled berd: Of his visage children were sore aferd. Ther n'as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston, Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non, Ne oinement that wolde dense or bite, That him might helpen of his whelkes* white, Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes. Wei loved he garlike, onions, and lekes. And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood. Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood. And whan that he wel dronken had the win, Than wold he speken no word but Latin. A fewe termes coude he, two or three, That he had lerned out of som decree ; No wonder is, he herd it all the day. And eke ye knowen wel, how that a jay Can clepen watte, as wel as can the pope. But who so wolde in other thing him grope, Than hadde he spent all his philosophic, Ay, Quest io quid juris, wolde he crie. He was a gentil harlot/ and a kind ; A better felaw shulde a man not find. He wolde suffre for a quart of wine, A good felaw to have his concubine A twelve month, and excuse him at the full. Ful prively a finch eke coude he pull. And if he found owhere a good felawe, He wolde techen him to have non awe In swiche a cas of the archedekenes curse ; But if a mannes soule were in his purse; For in his purse he shulde ypunished be. Purse is the archdekens kelle, said he. But wel I wote, he lied right in dede : Of cursing ought eche gilty man him drede. For curse wol sle right as assoiling saveth, And also ware him of a significavil. In danger hadde he at his owen gise The yonge girles of the diocise, And knew hir conseil, and was of hir rede.*' A gerlond hadde he sette upon his hede, As gret as it were for an alestake:* A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake. With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere' Of RouncevalV his trend and his compere, That streit was comen from the court of Rome. Ful loude he sang, Come hither, love, to me. * Cherub's face. c Red pimpled face. <* Narrow, cli Spots. / The name harlot was anciently given to men as well as women, and without any bad signification. u When the word harlot," says Qiffbrd, " became (like knave) a term rf reproach, it was appropriated solely to males: in Jon- son's days it was applied indiscriminately to both sexes; though without any determinate import : and it was not till long afterward* that it ;is restricted to females, and to the sense which it now bears. To derive harlot from Arlotte, the mistress of the Duke of Normandy, is ridicu- lous" (BEN JO.NSON, vol. iii. p. 312.) "The word harlot t," This sompnour bare to him a stiff burdoun,* W T as never trompe of half so gret a soun. This pardoner had here as yelwe* as wax, But smoth it heng, as doth a strike of flax : By uncos'* heng his lokkes that he hadde, And therwith he his shulders overspradde. Ful thinne it lay, by culpons" on and on, But hode, for jolite, ne wered he non, For it was trussed up in his wallet. Him thought he rode al of the newe get, Dishevele, sauf his cappe, he rode all bare. Swiche glaring eyen hadde he, as an hare. A vernicle hadde he sewed ubon his cappe. His wallet lay beforne him in his lappe, Bret-ful of pardon come from Rome al hote. A vois he hadde, as smale as hath a gote. No berd hadde he, ne never non shulde have. As smothe it was as it were newe shave ; I trowe he were a gelding or a mare. But of his craft, fro Berwike unto Ware, Ne was ther swiche an other pardonere. For in his male? he hadde a pilwebere,? Which, as he saide, was Our Ladies veil : He saide, he hadde a gobbef of the seyl' Thatte seint Peter had, whan that he went Upon the see, till Jesu Crist him hent.' He had a crois of laton" ful of stones, And hi a glas he hadde pigges bones. But with these relikes, whanne that he fond A poure persone dwelling up on lond, Upon a day he gat him more moneie Than that the persone gat in monethes tweie. And thus with fained flattering and japes, He made the persone, and the peple, his apes u But trewely to tellen atte last, He was in chirche a noble ecclesiast Wel coude he rede a lesson or a stone, But alderbest* he sang an offertorie :V For wel he wiste, whan that song was songe, He muste preche, and wel afile* his tonge, To winne silver, as he right wel coude : Therefore he sang the merrier and loude. SIMILE. And as the newe-abashed nightingale, That stinteth first whan she beginneth sing, Whan that she heareth any herdes tale, Or in the hedges any wight stirring, And after sicker doth her voice outring ; Right so Creseide whan her dred stent Opened her hart and told him her intent. Jonson told Drummond. "was taken from Arlotte, who was the mother of William the Conqueror; a Rogue from the Latine, Krro, by putting a G to V (ARCH. SCOT. vol. iv. p. 100.) This supposition of Jonson's baa been discovered since Qiffbrd wrote. C. g Advised. An alehouse sign. 'Vide note () in pre- ceding page. j Supposed by Stevens to be Kunceval Hall, in Oxford. * Sang the bass.* Yellow. "> Ounces. n Shreds. o Brimful. v Budget. (Covering of a pillow. T Morsi-1. Sail. 'Assisted, took.* A mix.-d metal of th colour of brass. v Tricks. w Dupes. * Best. y Part ci the mass. = Polish. JOHN GOWER. [Born about 1325. Died about 1409.] LITTLE is known of Gower's personal history. The proud tradition in the Marquis of Stafford's family," says Mr. Todd, " has been, and still is, that he was of Stitenham; and who would nut consider the dignity of his genealogy aug- mented, by enrolling among its worthies the moral Cower 1 ?" His effigies in the church of St. Mary Overies is often inaccurately described as having a garland of ivy and roses on the head. It is, in fact, a chaplet of roses, such as, Thynne says, was an- ciently worn by knights ; a circumstance which is favourable to the suspicion that has been sug- gested, of his having been of the rank of knight- hood. If Thynne's assertion, respecting the time of the lawyers first entering the temple be cor- rect, it will be difficult to reconcile it with the tradition of Gower's having been a student there in his youth. By Chaucer's manner of addressing Gower, the latter appears to have been the elder. He was attached to Thomas of Woodstock, as Chau- cer was to John of Gaunt. The two poets ap- pear to have been at one time cordial friends, but ultimately to have quarrelled. Gower tells us himself that he was blind in his old age. From his will it appears that he was living in 1408. His bequests to several churches and hospitals, and his legacy to his wife of 10(H., of all his valuable goods, and of the rents arising from his manors of Southwell in the county of Nottingham, and of Multon in the county of Suffolk, undeniably prove that he was rich. One of his three great works, the Speculum Meditantis, a poem in French, is erroneously de- scribed by Mr. Godwin and others as treating of conjugal fidelity. In an account of its contents in a MS. in Trinity College, Cambridge, we are told that its principal subject is the repentance of a sinner. The Vox Clamantis, in Latin, relates to the insurrection of the commons, in the reign of Richard II. The Confessio Amantis, in Eng- lish, is a dialogue between a lover and his con- fessor, who is a priest of Venus, and who explains, by apposite stories, and philosophical illustrations all the evil affections of the heart which impede, or counteract the progress and success of the ten- der passion. His writings exhibit all the crude erudition and science of his age ; a knowledge sufficient to have been the fuel of genius, if Gower had possessed its fire. THE TALE OF THE COFFERS OR CASKETS, &c., IN THE FIFTH BOOK OF THB "CONFESSIO AMANTIS." IN a cronique thus I rede : Aboute a king, as must nede, Ther was of knyghtes and squiers Gret route, and eke of officers : Some of long time him hadden served, And thoughten that they haue deserved, Avancement, and gone withoute : And some also ben of the route, That comen but a while agon, And they advanced were anon. These olde men upon this thing, So as they durst, ageyne the king Among hernself compleignen ofte : But there is nothing said so softe, That it ne comith out at laste : The king it wiste, and als so faste, As he which was of high prudence : He shope therefore an evidence Of hem" that pleignen in the cas To knowe in whose defalte it was : And all within his owne entent, That non ma wiste what it ment. Anon he let two cofres make, Of one semblance, and of one make, In Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer by the RCT. J. . Todd. & Themselves. Them. 76 So lien.,"* that no lif thilke throwe. That one may fro that other knowe : They were into his chamber brought, But no man wot why they be wrought, And natheles the king hath bede That they be set in privy stede, As he that was of wisdom slih, When he therto his time sih, e All prively that none it wiste, His owne hondes that one chiste Of fin gold, and of fin perie,/ The which out of his tresorie Was take, anon he fild full ; The other cofre of straw and mull* With stones meynd* he fild also : Thus be they full bothe two. So that erliche 1 upon a day He had within, 'where he lay, Ther should be tofore his bed A bord up set and faire spred : And than he let the cofres fetteJ Upon the bord, and did hem sette. He knewe the names well of tho,* The whiche agein him grutched so, <* Like. Saw./ Jewels, or precious stones. bish. * Mingled. Early. j Fetched. * Those Rub- JOHN GOWER. 77 Both of his chambre, and of his halle, Anon and sent for hem alle ; And seide to hem in this wise. There shall no man his hap despise : I wot well ye have longe served, And god wot what ye have deserved ; But if it is along on me Of that ye unavanced be, Or elles if it belong on yow, The sothe shall be proved now : To stoppe with your evil word, Lo ! here two cofres on the bord ; Chese which you list of bothe two; And witeth well that one of tho Is with tresor so full begon, That if he happe therupon Ye shall be riche men for ever : Now chese' and take which you is lever, But be well ware ere that ye take, For of that one I undertake Ther is no maner good therein, Wherof ye mighten profit winne. Now goth m together of one assent, And taketh your avisement ; For but I you this day avance, It slant upon your owne chance, Al only in defalte of grace ; So shall be shewed in this place Upon you all well afyn, n That no defalte shal be myn. They knelen all, and with one vois The king they thonken of this chois . And after that they up arise, And gon aside and hem avise, And at laste they accorde (Wherof her" tale to recorde To what issue they be falle) A knyght shall speke for him alle : He kneleth doun unto the king, And seith that they upon this thing, Or for to winne, or for to lese,* Ben all avised for to chese. Tho? toke this knyght a yerd r on honde, And goth there as the cofres stonde, And with assent of everychone* He leith his yerde upon one, And seith' the king how thilke same They chese in reguerdon" by name, And preith him that they might it have. The king, which wolde his honor save, Whan he had heard the common vois, Hath granted hem her owne chois, And toke hem therupon the keie ; But for he wolde it were seie" What good they have as they suppose, He bad anon the cofre unclose, Which was fulfild with straw and stones : Thus be they served all at ones. This king than in the same stede, Anon that other cofre undede, W'here as they sihen gret richesse, Wei more than they couthen gesse. Lo ! seith the king, now may ye see I Choose. m Go. n At last. o Their. f> Lose. Then. -* A rod. Every one. Sayeth to the king. That ther is no defalte in me ; Forthy w my self I wol acquite. And bereth he your owne wite* Of thatv fortune hath you refused. Thus was this wise king excused : And they lefte off her evil speche, And mercy of her king beseche. OP THE GRATIFICATION WHICH THE LOVER'S PASSION RKCEIVE8 FROM THE SENSE OF HEAR. ING. IN THE SIXTH BOOK. RIGHT as mine eye with his loke Is to myn herte a lusty cooke Of loves foode delicate ; Right so myn eare in his estate, Wher as myn eye may nought serve Can wel myn hertes thonk 2 deserve ; And feden him, fro day to day, With such deynties as he may. For thus it is that, over all Wher as I come in speciall, I may heare of my lady price : I heare one say that she is wise ; Another saith that she is good ; And, some men sain, of worthy blood That she is come ; and is also So fair that no wher is none so : And some men praise hir goodly chere. Thus every thing that I may heare, Which souneth to my lady goode, Is to myn eare a lusty foode. And eke myn eare hath, over this, A deyntie feste whan so is That I may heare hirselve speke ; For than anon my fast I breke On suche wordes as she saith, That ful of trouth and ful of faith They ben, and of so good disport, That to myn eare great comfort They don, as they that ben delices For all the meates, and all the spices, That any Lombard couthe make, Ne be so lusty for to take, Ne so far forth restauratif, (I say as for myn owne lif,) As ben the wordes of hir mouth. For as the windes of the South Ben most of alle debonaire; So, whan her list to speke faire, The vertue of hir goodly speche Is verily myn hertes leche. And if it so befalle among, That she carol upon a song, Whan I it hear, I am so fedd, That I am fro miself so ledd As though I were in Paradis ; For, certes, as to myn avis, Whan I heare of her voice the steven. Me thinketh it is a blisse of heven. And eke in other wise also, As their reward. Seen. " Therefore. Blame jf i. e. that which. * Thank. Praise. O 2 JOHN LTDGATE. Full ofte time it falleth so, Myn e'are with a good pitance Is fedd of reding of romance Of Ydoine and of Amadas, That whilom weren in my cas ; And eke of other many a score, That loveden* long ere I was bore.' For whan I of her loves rede, Myn e'are with the tale I fede, And with the lust of her histoire Sometime I draw into memoire, How sorrow may not ever last ; And so hope cometh in at last. A Loved. e Born. JOHN LYDGATE. [Born, 1375. Died, 1461.] WAS born at a place of that name in Suffolk, about the year 1375. His translation (taken through the medium of Laurence's version) of Boccaccio's Fall of Princes, was begun while Henry VI. was in France, where that king never was, but when he went to be crowned at Paris, in 1432. Lydgate was then above threescore. He was a monk of the Benedictine order, at St. Edmund's Bury, and in 1423 was elected prior of Hatfield Brodhook, but the following year had license to return to his convent again. His con- dition, one would imagine, should have supplied him with the necessaries of life, yet he more than once complains to his patron, Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, of his wants ; and he shows distinctly in one passage, that he did not dislike a little more wine than his convent allowed him. He was full thirty years of age when Chaucer died, whom he calls his master, and who probably was so in a literal sense. His Fall of Princes is rather a paraphrase than a translation of his original. He disclaims the idea of writing " a stile briefe and compendious." A great story he compares to a great oak, which is not to be attacked with a single stroke, but by " a long proresse." Gray has pointed out beauties in this writer which had eluded the research, or the taste, of former critics. " I pretend not," says Gray, " to set him on a level with Chaucer, but be cer- tainly comes the nearest to him of any contem- porary writer I am acquainted with. His choice of expression and the smoothness of his verse far surpass both Gower and Occleve. He wanted not art in raising the more tender emotions of the mind." Of these he gives several examples. The finest of these, perhaps, is the following pas- sage, descriptive of maternal agony and tender- CANACE, CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HER FATHER -EOLUS, SENDS TO HER GUILTY BROTHER MACAREUS THE LAST TESTIMONY OF HER UNHAPPY PASSION. BOOK I. FOLIO 39. OUT of her swoone when she did abbraide, Knowing no mean but death in her distresse, To her brother full piteouslie she said, " Cause of my sorowe, roote of my heavinesse, That whilom were the sourse of my gladnesse, When both our joyes by wille were so disposed, Under one key our hearts to be enclosed This is mine end, I may it not astarte ; brother mine, there is no more to saye ; Lowly beseeching with mine whole heart For to remember specially, I praye, If it befall my littel sonne to dye, That thou mayst after some mind on us have, Suffer us both be buried in one grave. 1 hold him strictly twene my armes twein, Thou and Nature laide on me this charge ; He, guiltlesse, muste with me suffer paine, And, sith thou art at freedom and at large, Let kindnesse oure love not so discharge, But have a minde, wherever that thou be, Once on a day upon my child and me. On thee and me dependeth the trespace Touching our guilt and our great oflence, But, welaway ! most angelik of face ~ur childe, young in his pure innocence, Shall agayn right suffer death's violence, Tender of limbes, God wote, full guiltelesse The goodly faire, that lieth here speechless. A mouth he has, but wordis hath he none ; Cannot complaine alas ! for none outrage : Nor grutcheth not, but lies here all alone Still as a lainbe, most meke of his visage. What heart of stele could do to him damage, Or suffer him dye, beholding the manere And looke benigne of his twein eyen clere. . . . Writing her letter, awhapped all in drede, In her right hand her pen ygan to quake, And a sharp sword to make her hearte blede, In her left hand her father hath her take, And most her sorrowe was for her childes sake. Upon whose face in her barme sleepynge Full many a tere she wept in complayning. After all this so as she stoode and quoke, Her child beholding mid of her peines smart, Without abode the sharpe sword she tooke And rove herselfe even to the hearte ; Her childe fell down, which mighte not astcrt, Having no help to succour him nor save, But in her blood theselfe began to bathe. SCOTTISH POETRY. THE origin of the Lowland Scottish language has been a fruitful subject of controversy. Like the English, it is of Gothic materials ; and, at a certain distance of time from the Norman con- quest, is found to contain, as well as its sister dialect of the South, a considerable mixture of French. According to one theory, those Gothic elements of Scotch existed in the Lowlands, an- terior to the Anglo-Saxon settlements in England, among the Picts, a Scandinavian race : the sub- sequent mixture of French words arose from the French connections of Scotland, and the settle- ment of Normans among her people ; and thus, by the Pictish and Saxon dialects meeting, and an infusion of French being afterwards super- added, the Scottish language arose, independent of modern English, though necessarily similar, from the similarity of its materials. According to another theory, the Picts were not Goths, but Cambro-British, a Celtic race, like the Western Scots who subdued and blended with the Picts, under Kenneth Mac Alpine. Of the same Celtic race were also the Britons of Strathclyde, and the ancient people of Galloway. In Galloway, though the Saxons overran that peninsula, they are affirmed to have left but little of their blood, and little of their language. In the ninth century, Galloway was new-peopled by the Irish Cruithne, and at the end of the eleventh century was uni- versally inhabited by a Gaelic people. At this latter period, the common language of all Scot- land, with the exception of Lothian, and a corner of Caithness, was the Gaelic ; and in the twelfth century commenced the progress of the English language into Scotland Proper :* so that Scotch is only migrated English. In support of the opposite system, an assertor, better known than trusted, namely Pinkerton, has maintained, that " there is not a shadow of proof that the Gaelic language was ever at all spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland." Yet the author of Caledonia has given not mere shadows of proof, but very strong grounds, for concluding that, in the first place, to the north of the Forth and Clyde, with the exception of Scandinavian settle- ments admitted to have been made in Orkney, Caithness, a strip of Sutherland, and partially in the Hebrides, a Gothic dialect was unknown in ancient Scotland. Amidst the arguments to this effect deduced from the topography of (the sup- posed Gothic) Pictland, in which, Mr. Chalmers affirms, that not a Saxon name is to be found older than the twelfth century ; and amidst the evidences accumulated from the laws, religion, * Lothian, now containing the Scottish metropolis, was, after several fluctuation!) of possession, annexed to the territory of Scotland in 1020 ; but eTen in the time of antiquities, and manners of North Britain, one recorded fact appears sufficiently striking. When the assembled clergy of Scotland met Malcolm Caenmore and Queen Margaret, the Saxon prin- cess was unable to understand then- language. Her husband, who had learnt English, was obliged to be their interpreter. All the clergy of Pictland, we are told, were at that time Irish ; but among a people with a Gaelic king, and a Gaelic clergy, is it conceivable that the Gaelic language should not have been commonly spoken 1 With regard to Galloway, or south-western Scotland, the paucity of Saxon names in that peninsula (keeping apart pure or modern Eng- lish ones) are pronounced, by Mr. G. Chalmers, to show the establishments of the Saxons to have been few and temporary, and then: language to have been thinly scattered, in comparison with the Celtic. As we turn to the south-east of Scot- land, it is inferred from topography, that the Sax- ons of Lothian never permanently settled to the westward of the Avon ; while the numerous Cel- tic names which reach as far as the Tweed, evince that the Gaelic language not only prevailed in proper Scotland, but overflowed her boundaries, and, like her arms, made inroads on the Saxon soil. Mr. Ellis, in discussing this subject, seems to have been startled by the difficulty of supposing the language of England to have superseded the native Gaelic in Scotland, solely in consequence of Saxon migrations to the north, in the reign of Malcolm Caenmore. Malcolm undoubtedly mar- ried a Saxon princess, who brought to Scotland her relations and domestics. Many Saxons also fled into Scotland from the violences of the Nor- man conquest. Malcolm gave them an asylum, and during his incursions into Cumberland and Northumberland, carried off so many young cap- tives, that English persons were to be seen in every house and village of his dominions, in the reign of David I. But, on the death of Malcolm, the Saxon followers, both of Edgar Atheling and Margaret, were driven away by the enmity of the Gaelic people. Those expelled Saxons must have been the gentry, while the captives, since they were seen in a subsequent age, must have been retained, as being servile, or vileyns. The fact of the expulsion of Margaret and Edgar Atheling's followers, is recorded in the Saxon Chronicle. It speaks pretty clearly for the general Gaelicism of the Scotch at that period ; and it also prepares us for what is afterwards so fully illustrated by the author of Caledonia, viz. that it was the new David I. is spoken of as not a part of Scotland. David addresses his faithful subjects of all Scotland and ol Lotliian." 80 SCOTTISH POETRY. dynasty of Scottish kings, after Malcolm Caen- more, that gave a more diffusive course to the peopling of proper Scotland, by Saxon, by Anglo- Norman, and by Flemish colonists. In the suc- cessive charters of Edgar, Alexander, and David I. we scarcely see any other witnesses than Saxons, who enjoyed under those monarchs all power, and acquired vast possessions in every district of Scot- land, settling with their followers in entire hamlets. If this English origin of Scotch be correct, it sufficiently accounts for the Scottish poets, in the fifteenth century, speaking of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, as their masters and models of style, and extolling them as the improvers of a language to which they prefix the word " our," as if it be- longed in common to Scots and English, and even sometimes denominating their own language Eng- lish. Yet, in whatever light we are to regard Low- land Scotch, whether merely as northern English, or as having a mingled Gothic origin from the Pictish and Anglo-Saxon, its claims to poetical antiquity are respectable. The extreme antiquity of the elegy on Alexander III. on which Mr. Ellis rests so much importance, is indeed disputed ; but Sir Tristrem exhibits an original romance, com- posed on the north of the Tweed, at a time when there is no proof that southern English contained any work of that species of fiction, that was not translated from the French. In the fourteenth century, Barbour celebrated the greatest royal hero of his country, (Bruce), in a versified ro- mance that is not uninteresting. The next age is prolific in the names of distinguished Scottish " Makers" Henry the Minstrel, said to have been blind from his birth, rehearsed the exploits of Wallace in strains of fierce though vulgar fire. J ames I. of Scotland ; Henrysone, the au- thor of Robene and Makyne, the first known pas- toral, and one of the best, in a dialect rich with the favours of the pastoral muse ; Douglas, the translator of Virgil ; Dunbar, Mersar, and others, gave a poetical lustre to Scotland, in the fifteenth century, and fill up a space in the annals of British poetry, after the date of Chaucer and Lyd- gate, that is otherwise nearly barren. James I. had an elegant and tender vein, and the ludicrous pieces ascribed to him possess considerable comic humour. Douglas's descriptions of natural scenery are extolled by T. Warton, who has given ample and interpreted specimens of them % in his History of English Poetry. He was certainly a fond painter of nature : but his imagery is redundant and tediously profuse. His chief original work is the elaborate and quaint allegory of King Hart.* It is full of alliteration, a trick which the Scottish poets might have learnt to avoid from he' " rose of rhetours" (as they call him) Chau- cer ; but in which they rival the anapsestics of Langland. Dunbar is a poet of a higher order. His tale * In wiich the human heart is personified as a Sove- ceign in MR castle, guarded by the five Senses, made captive hy Dame 1'leasaunce. a neighbouring potentate, hut finally brought back from thraldom by Ago and Experience. of the Friars of Berwick is quite in the spirit of Chaucer. His Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins through Hell, though it would be absurd to com- pare it with the beauty and refinement of the cele- brated Ode on the Passions, has yet an animated picturesqueness not unlike that of Collins. The effect of both pieces shows how much more potent allegorical figures become by being made to fleet suddenly before the imagination, than by being detained in its view by prolonged descrip- tion. Dunbar conjures up the personified Sins, as Collins does the Passions, to rise, to strike, and disappear. They " come like shadows, so de- part." In the works of those northern makers of the fifteenth century ,f there is a gay spirit, and an in- dication of jovial manners, which forms a contrast to the covenanting national character of subse- quent times. The frequent coarseness of this poetical gayety, it would indeed be more easy than agreeable to prove by quotations ; and if we could forget how very gross the humour of Chaucer sometimes is, we might, on a general comparison of the Scotch with the English poets, extol the comparative delicacy of English taste ; for Skel- ton himself, though more burlesque than Sir David Lyndsay in style, is less outrageously indecorous in matter. At a period when James IV. was breaking lances in the lists of chivalry, and when the court and court poets of Scotland might be supposed to have possessed ideas of decency, if not of refinement, Dunbar at that period addresses the queen, on the occasion of having danced in her majesty's chamber, with jokes which a beggar^ wench of the present day would probably con- sider as an offence to her delicacy. Sir David Lyndsay was a courtier, a foreign am- bassador, and the intimate companion of a prince ; for he attended James V. from the first to the last day of that monarch's life. From his rank in society, we might suppose, that he had purposely laid aside the style of a gentleman, and clothed the satirical moralties, which he levelled against popery, in language suited to the taste of the vul- gar ; if it were easy to conceive the taste of the vulgar to have been, at that period, grosser than that of their superiors. Yet while Lyndsay's sa- tire, in tearing up the depravities of a corrupted church, seems to be polluted with the scandal on which it preys, it is impossible to peruse his writ- ings without confessing the importance of his character to the country in which he lived, and to the cause which he was born to serve. In his tale of Squyre Meldrum we lose sight of the re- former. It is a little romance, very amusing as a draught of Scottish chivalrous manners, appa- rently drawn from the life, and blending a spor- tive and familiar with an heroic and amatory in- terest. Nor is its broad, careless diction, perhaps, an unfavourable relief to the romantic spirit of the adventures which it portrays. f The writings of pome of those Scottish poets belong to the sixteenth century : but from the date of their birth* they are placed under the fifteenth. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND. [Born, 1394. Died, Feb. 1436-7.] JAMES I. of Scotland was born in the year 1394, and became heir-apparent to the Scottish crown by the death of his brother, Prince David. Taken prisoner at sea by the English, at ten years of age, he received some compensation for his cruel detention by an excellent education. It appears that he accompanied Henry V. into France, and there distinguished himself by his skill and bravery. On his return to his native country he endeavoured, during too short a reign, to strengthen the rights of the crown and people against a tyrannical aris- tocracy. He was the first who convoked commis- sioners from the shires, in place of the numerous lesser barons, and he endeavoured to create a house of commons in Scotland, by separating the repre- sentatives of the people from the peers; but his nobility foresaw the effects of his scheme, and too successfully resisted it. After clearing the low- lands of Scotland from feudal oppression, he visited the highlands, and crushed several refractory chief- tains. Some instances of his justice are recorded, which rather resemble the cruelty of the times in which he lived, than his own personal character ; but in such times justice herself wears a horrible aspect. One Macdonald, a petty chieftain of the north, displeased with a widow on his estate for threatening to appeal to the king, had ordered her feet to be shod with iron plates nailed to the soles ; and then insultingly told her that she was thus armed against the rough roads. The widow, however, found means to send her story to James, who seized the savage, with twelve of his asso- ciates, whom he shod with iron, in a similar man- ner, and having exposed them for several days in Edinburgh, gave them over to the executioner. While a prisoner in Windsor Castle, James had seen and admired the beautiful Lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. Few royal attachments have been so romantic and so happy. His poem entitled the Quair,* in which he pathetically laments his captivity, was devoted to the celebration of this lady ; whom he ob- tained at last in marriage, together with his liberty, as Henry conceived that his union with the grand- daughter of the Duke of Lancaster might bind the Scottish monarch to the interests of England. James perished by assassination, in the forty- second year of his age, leaving behind him the example of a patriot king, and of a man of genius universally accomplished. THE KINO THUS DESCRIBES THE APPEARANCE OP HIS MISTRESS, WHEN HE FIRST SAW FROM A WINDOW OF HIS PRISON AT WINDSOR. FROM CANTO II. OF THE QCAIR.f THE longe dayes and the nightes eke, I would bewail my fortune in this wise, For which, again distress comfort to seek, My custom was, on raornes, for to rise Early as day : O happy exercise ! By thee came I to joy out of torment ; But now to purpose of my first intent. XI. Bewailing in my chamber, thus alone, Despaired of all joy and remedy, For-tired of my thought, and woe begone ; And to the window gan I walk in hye,* To see the world and folk that went forby ; As for the time (though I of mirthis food Might have no more) to look it did me good. XII. Now was there made fast by the touris wall A garden fair ; and in the corners set Ane herbere c green ; with wandis long and small Railed about and so with trecis set Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet, That life was none [a] walking there forby That might within scarce any wight espy. . . . * Quair is the old Scotch word for a book. 1 In Oeorgf Chalmers' reprint of the Quair (8vo, 1824), there is no division into cantos. C. Against. >> Haste.* Her bary, or garden of simples. 11 And on the smalle greene twistis sat The little sweete nightingale, and sung, So loud and clear the hymnis consecrate Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among/ 1 That all the gardens and the wallis rung Right of their song ; and on the couple next Of their sweet harmony, and lo the text. xv. Worshippe, O ye that lovers bene, this May ! For of your bliss the calends are begun ; And sing with us, " Away ! winter away ! Come summer come, the sweet season and sun ; Awake for shame that have your heavens won ; And amorously lift up your heades all Thank love that list you to his mercy call." . . XXI. And therewith cast I down mine eye again, Where as I saw walking under the tower, Ful secretly new comyn to her pleyne,' The fairest and the frest younge flower That ever I saw (methought) before that hour For which sudden abate/ anon astertf The blood of all my body to my heart. . . . <* Promiscuously. Sport. In Chalmers it Is: new omnyn her to pleyne, which he explains 'coming forth to petition." (C.)f An unexpected accident. Chalmers t*jl " depression of mind." (C.) t Started back. ol 82 ROBERT HENRYSONE. XXVII. Of her array the form gif* I shall write, Toward her golden hair, and rich attire, In fret wise couched with pearlis white, And greate balas* lemyng* as the fire ; With many an emeraut and faire sapphire, And on her head a chaplet fresh of hue, Of plumys parted red, and white, and blue. . . . XXIX. About her neck, white as the fyre amaille,' A goodly chain of small orfevyrie,*" Whereby there hang a ruby without fail Like to ane heart yshapen verily, That as a spark of lowe" so wantonly Seemed burnyng upon her white throat ; Now gif there was good perde God it wrote. * If. Rubies.* Burning. I Mr. Ellis conjectures that this is an error for fair entail, i. e. enamel. And for to walk that freshe Maye's morrow. An hook she had upon her tissue white, That goodlier had not been seen toforrow," As I suppose, and girt she was a lyteP Thus halfling? loose for haste ; to such delight It was to see her youth in goodlihead, That for rudeness to speak thereof I dread. XXXI. Iri her was youth, beauty with humble port, Bounty, richess, and womanly feature : (God better wote than my pen can report) Wisdom, largess estate and cunning sure, . . In word, in deed, in shape and countenance, That nature might no more her childe avance. Goldsmith's work.- 1 Half. ' Fire. o Heretofore. P A little. ROBERT HENRYSONE. [Born, 1425. Died, 1495.] NOTHING is known of the life of Henrysone, but that he was a schoolmaster at Dunfermline. Lord Hailes supposes his office to have been pre- ceptor of youth in the Benedictine convent of that place. Besides a continuation of Chaucer's Troilus and Cresseide, he wrote a number of fables, of which MS. copies are preserved in the Scotch Advocates' Library. ROBENE AND MAKYNE. A BALLAD. ROBENE sat on gud grene hill, r Keipand a flock of fie :' Mirry Makyne said him till,' Robene thou rew on me : u I half the luvit, lowd and still" This yieris two or thre ; My dule in dern bot gif thou dill,* Doubtless bot dreid I die.v H. He. Robene answerit, be the rude,* Nathing of lufe I knaw ; Bot keipis my scheip undir yone wud, 6 Lo quhair they raik on raw." Quhat has marrit the in thy mude,* Makyne to me thow schaw ! Or what is luve, or to be lu'ed,/ Fain wald I leir that law.* in. She. At luvis leu- gif thow will leir,* Take thair an A, B, C,< Be kind, courtas, and fair of feir,/ Wyse, hardy, and fre.* I. r Robene sat on a good green bill. Keeping a flock of cattle. ' Merry Makyne said to him. Robene, take pity on me. I hare loved thee openly and secretly. *" These years two or three. * My sorrow, in secret, un- less thou share. Undoubtedly I shall die. II. * Robene answered, by the rood." Nothing of love I know. i But keep my sheep under yon wood. e Lo where they range in a row. <* What has marred thee in thy mood. Makyne, show tbou to me. / Or what is love or to be loved. f Fain would I learn that law (of love). III. At the lore of love if thou wilt learn. Take there an A. B. C. ; Be kind, courteous, and fair of aspect Se that no danger do the deir, 1 Quhat dule in dern thow drie," 1 Preiss the with pane at all poweir," Be patient, and previe. IV. He. Robene answerit her agane,? I wait not quhat is luve, But I half marvell, in certaine, r Quhat makis the this wanrufe.* The weddir is fair, and I am fane, 1 My scheip gois haill aboif," An we wald play us in this plane" They wald us baith reproif." v. She. Robene take tent unto my tale, x And wirk all as I reid,v And thow sail haif my hart all haile Eik and my maidenheid. Sen God sendis bute for baill, And for murning remeid, 4 I dern with the, but gif I daiK, Doubtless I am bot dead. d or feature. * Wise, hardy, and free. -I See thai no dM-gw daunt thee. " Whatever sorrow iu secret thow suflerest. n Exert thyself with pains to thy utmost power. Be patient and privy. IV. P Robene answered her again. ? I wot not what is love. * But I (have) wonder, certainly. What makes thee thus melancholy. ' The weather is fair, and I am glad. My sheep go healthful above (or in the uplands). If we should play in this plain. They would re- prove us both. V. * Robene, take heed unto my tale. y And do all as I advise. * And thou shall have my heart entirely/ ROBERT HENRYSONE. 83 He. Makyne, to morne this ilka tyde, 6 And ye will meit me heir / Peradventure my scheip may gang besyde,* Quhill we half liggit full neir,* Both maugre haif I, an I byde, Fra they begin to steir, Quhat lyis on hairt I will nocht hyd, Makyne then mak gud cheir. VII. She. Robene thou reivis me roif* and rest,'' I luve but the alone^ He. Makyne adew ! the sone gois west,* The day is neirhand gone.' She. Robene, in dule I am so drest, 1 * That luve will be my bone." He. Ga luve, Makyne, quhair evir thou list, For leman I lue none.*" vm. She. Robene, I stand in sic a style,' I sicht, and that full sair. r He. Makyne, I haif bene heir this quhile,' At hame God gif I wair.' She. My hinny Robene, talk ane quhyle : u Gif thou wilt do na main" He. Makyne, sum other man begyle ; w or hamewart I will fair.* IX. Robene on his wayis went,* As licht as leif of tre :* Makyne murnit in her intent, And trow'd him nevir to se, fc Robene brayd attour the bent, e Than Makyne cryit on hie, 1 * Now ma thow sing, for I am schent,' Quhat alls lufe with me/ x. Makyne went hame withouttin faill,* Full werry after couth weip,* Since God sends good for evil. & And for mourning con- solation. e I am now in secret with thee, but if I sepa- rate. <* Doubtless I shall die (broken-hearted). VI. Makyne. to-morrow this very time. / If ye will meet here. f Perhaps my sheep may go aside. Until we have lain near. VII. Robene, thou robbest my quiet and rest i I but thee alone.* Makyne, adieu, the sun goes west. ' The day is nearly pone. m Robene, in sorrow I am so beset. That love will be my bane. o Go love, Makyne, where thou wilt. f For sweetheart I love none. VIII. Robene, I am in such a state. * I sigh, and that full sore. Makyne, I have been here some time. ' At home God grant I were. My sweet Robene, talk a while. If thou wilt do no more. v> Makyne, some other man beguile. * For homeward 1 will fare. IX. y Robene on his way went. * As light as leaf of tree. a Makyne mourned in her thoughts. & And thought him never to see. e Robene went over the hill. d Then Makyne cried on high. Now you may sing, I am de- stroyed. / What ails, love, with me? X. f Makyne went home without fail.* Fullg after * Pinkerton absurdly makes this word row*; it is roif in the Bannatyne MS. t The line -'Than Robene in a full fairdaill." may either mean that he assembled his sheep in a fair full number, or in a fair piece of low ground ; the former is the more probable meaning. J Spend, if it be not a corruption of the text, is ap- parently the imperfect of a verb; but I cannot find in any Than Robene in a full fair daill.f Assemblit all his scheip. Be that sum parte of Makyne'a ail,' Ourthrow his hairt cowd creip/ He followit hir fast thair till assaill.* And till hir tuke gude keep.' XI. He. Abyd, abyd, thou fair Makyne,*" A word for any thing ; n For all my luve it shall be thine, 6 Withouttin departing.' 1 All thy hairt for till have myne,' Is all my cuvating, 1 " My scheip, to morne, quhyle houris nyne* Will need of no kepin'g.' xn. For of my pane thow made it play," And all in vain I spend,J As thow hes done, sa sail I say,' Murne on, I think to mend. 10 He. Makyne the howp of all my heill,* My hairt on the is sett ;v And evir mair to the be leill,* Quhile I may leif, but lett. Never to faill, as utheris faill,* Quhat grace that evir I get. e She. Robene, with the I will not deill,* Adew ! for thus we mett.* Makyne went hame blythe aneuche,/ Attoure the holtis hair -f Robene murnit, and Makyne leuch,* Scho sang, he sichit sair.' And so left him baith wo and wreuch^ In dolour and in cair,* Kepand his hird under a heuch,' Amang the holtis hair." 1 she would weep. < By that (time) some of Makyne's sorrow. j Crept through his heart.* He followed fast tfl lay hold of her. ' And held good watch of her. XI. " Abide, abide, thou fair Makyne. A word for any thing's (sake). o For all my love shall be thine. p Without departing. 1 To have thy heart all mine. ' Is all that I covet ' My sheep to-morrow, till nine. t Will need no keeping. XII. For you made game of my pain. I shall say like you. Mourn on, I think to do better (than be in love). XV. * Makyne, the hope of all my health. 9 My heart is on thee set. * And (I) shall ever more be true to thee While I may live, without ceasing.* Never to fail as others fail. c Whatever favour I obtain. <* Robene, with thee I will not deal. Adieu! for thus we met XVI. / Makyne went home blythe enough. f Over the hoary woodlands.l( A Robene mouro'd, and Makyua laughed. ' She sang, he sighed sore. i And so left him woful and overcome. k In dolour and care. ' Keeping his herd under a cliff. " Among the hoary hillocks.f glossary, or even in Dr. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary, the verh to which it may he trao-d so as to make sense. I suppose the meaning is " there was a time when I vainly made love to thee." 3 The word vofrry I am unable to explain. f ride Jamieson's Dictionary, roc. HAIR. If The words holtis hair have been differently explained WILLIAM DUNBAR. [Born 1460? Died 1520?] THE little that is known of Dunbar has been gleaned from the complaints in his own poetry, and from the abuse of his contemporary Kennedy, which is chiefly directed against his poverty. From the colophon of one of his poems, dated at Oxford, it has been suggested, as a conjecture, that he studied at that university.* By his own account, he travelled through France and Eng- land as a novice of the Franciscan order ; and, in that capacity, confesses that he was guilty of sins, probably professional frauds, from the stain of which the holy water could not cleanse him. On his return to Scotland he commemorated the nuptials of James IV. with Margaret Tudor, in his poem of the Thistle and Rose ; but we find that James turned a deaf ear to his remonstrances for a benefice, and that the queen exerted her in- fluence in his behalf ineffectually .f Yet, from the verses on his dancing in the queen's chamber, it appears that he was received at court on fa- miliar terms. THE DAUNCE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS THROUGH HELL. OF Februar the fiftene nycht, Full lang befoir the dayis licht,* I lay intill 6 a trance ; And then I saw baith<* Hevin and Hell ; Methocht amang the fiendis" fell, Mahoun gart cry ane Dance/ Of shrewis that were never shrevin,* Against the feast of Fasternis evin,* To mak their observance :* He bad gallands ga graith a gyis^ And cast up gamountis in the skies,* As varlotis dois in France. . . . ii. Heillie harlottis on hawtane wyis,' Come in with mony sindrie gyis,*" Bot yet leuch never Mahoun," Quhill priestis come in with bair schevin nekks, Then all the feynds lewche and made gekks.P Black-Belly and Bawsy-Broun.? . . . in. Let's see, quoth he, now quha begins : r With that the fowll Sevin Deidly Sins,' Begowth to leip at anis.' And first of all in dance was Pryd, I. < The fifteenth night.* Before the day-light. c I lay in a trance. & And then I saw both heaven and hell. * Methought aninns; the fell fiends. /The devil made pro- claim a dance. S Of sinners that were never shriven. The evening preceding Lent. < To make their ob- servance. } He bade (his) gallants to prepare a masque. * And cast up dances in th skies. II. ' Holy harlots in haughty guise. m Came in with many sundry masks. n But yet Satan never laughed. * While priests came with their bare shaven necks. t Then all the fiends laughed and made signs of derision. 1 Names of spirits. III. * Let's see, quoth he, now who begins. With that the foul seven deadly sins. t Began to leap at once. * With hair combed back (and) bonnet to one side. * Dunbar in 1477 was entered among the Determinantes, or Bachelors of Arts, at Salvator's College, St. Andrew's, and in 1479 he took his degree there of Master of Arts. (See l.ainir's Dunbar, vol. i. p. 9. That he studied at Ox- ford at any time is highly improbable. C. h In 1500 he rceived a yearly pension of ten pounds 84 With hair wyld bak, and bonet on side," Like to mak vaistie wainis ;" And round about him, as a quheill," Hang all in rumpilis to the heill, z His kethat for the nanis.v Mony proud trompour with him trippit, 1 Throw skaldan fyre ay as they skippit,* They girnd with hyddous granis. 6 IV. Then Ire cam in with sturt and strife,* His hand was ay upon his knyfe, He brandeist lyk a heir ; Bostaris, braggaris, and barganeris,' 1 After him passit into pairis, e All bodin in feir of weir/ In jakkis scryppis and bonnettis of steil,* Thair legges were chenyiet to the heill,* Frawart was thair affelr, Sum upon uder with brands beft,/ Some jaggit uthers to the heft* With knyves that scherp coud scheir. 1 v. Next in the dance followit Invy, m Fild full of feid and fellony," Hid malice and dispyte, o Likely to make wasteful wants. w Like a wheel. x Hung all the rumples to the heel. y His cassock for the nonce. * Many a proud impostor with him tripped. a Through scalding fire as they skipt. ' They grinned with hideous groans. IV. c Then Ire came with trouble and strife.'' Boasters, braggarts, and bullies. t After him passed in pairs. /All arrayed in feature of war. g In coats of armour and bonnets of steel. * Their le^rs were chained to the heel. (Probably it means covered with iron nel-wnrk). Froward was their aspect. i Some struck upon others with brands. * Some stuck others to the hilt. I With knives that sharply could mangle. V. Followed Envy. Filled full of quarrel and felony. from king James, " to be pait to him for al the dais of his life, or quhil he be promovit be our Souerane Lord to a benefice of xl li. or aboue." The pension was raised to xx li. in 1507, and to Ixxx li. in 1510, the latter to be paid till such time as he should receive a benefice of one hun- dred pounds or upwards. C. WILLIAM DUNBAR. 86 For privy hatrent that tratour trymlit ; Him followit mony freik dissymliy With fenyiet wordis quhyte. And flattereris into menis faces,' And backbyteris in secreit placis* To ley that had delyte,' And rownaris of false lesingis ;" Allace, that courtis of noble kingis* Of thamc can nevir be quyte.* Next him in Dance cam Cuvatyce,* Rute of all evill and grund of vyce,v That nevir cowd be content, Catyvis, wrechis, and ockeraris, 1 Hud-pykis, hurdars, and gadderaris," All with that warlo went. 4 Out of thair throttis they shot on udder* Het moltin gold, methocht, a fudder, d As fyre flaucht inaist fervent ;' Ay as they tumit thame of schot,/ Feynds fild them new up to the thrott With gold of allkin prent.* Syne Sweimess at the second bidding* Com lyk a sow out of a midding,' Full slepy wes his grunyie.-' Mony sweir bumbard belly-huddroun,* Mony slute daw and slepy duddroun,' Him servit ay with sounyie. He drew thame furth intill a chenyie," And Belial with a brydill rennyie. Ever lascht thame on the lunyie.? In Dance they war so slaw of feit, They gaif them in the fyre a heit, r And maid theme quicker of counyie.' Than Lichery, that lathly cores,' Came berand lyk a bagit horse," And Idleness did him leid ;" For privy hatred that traitor trembled. p Him followed many a dissembling renegado. 1 With feigned words fair, or white. ' And flatterers to men's faces. And backbiters in secret places. ' To lie that had de- light. And spreaders of false lies. t> Alas that courts of noble kings. to Of them can never be rid. VI. x Covetousness. y Root of all evil and ground of Tice. z Caitiffs, wretcht-s, and usurers. Misers, hoard- ers, and gatherers. & All with that barlfich nr male fiend went. c Out of iheir throats they shot ou (each) other. <* Hot molten gold, me thought, a vast quantity. Like fire flakes most fervid. / Aye as they emptied themselves of shot. f Wilh gol.l of all kind of coin. VII. * Then Sloth at a second bidding. ' Came like a sow from a dunghill. j Full sleepy was his grunt.* Many a lazy glutton. I Many a drowsy sleepy sluggard. m Him served with care. n lie drew them forth in a chain. And Belial with a bridle- rein. P Ever lashed them on the back. 1 In dance they were so slow of feet. t They gave them in the fire a heat. And made them quicker of ap- prehension. VIII. < Then Lechery, that loathsome body. u Rearing Thau- wes with him ane ugly sort"' And mony stinkand fowll tram&rt That had in sin bene deid. x Quhen they wer enterit in the Daunce,* They wer full strange of countenance, Lyk tortchis byrnand reid. 1 .... Than the fowll monstir Glutteny, Of wame unsasiable and gredy, To Dance he did him dress ;* Hun followit mony fowll drunckhart e With can and collep, cop and quart,* In surfeit and excess. Full mony a waistless wally drag,* With waimis unwieldable did furth drag,/ In creisch that did incress ;? Drynk, ay they cryit, with mony a gaip, The Feynds gaif thame het leid to laip,* Their leveray wes na less.' .... Na menstrals playit to thame For glmen thair wer haldin out,* By day and eke by nicht,' Except a menstrall that slew a man \ Swa till his heretage he wan" And enterit be brief of richt. .... Than cryd Mahoun for a Heleand Padyane/ Syn ran a Feynd to fetch Mac Fadyane,* Far north wart in a nuke, r Be he the Correnoch had done schout,* Ersche-men so gadderit him about* In hell grit rume they tuke : Thae termegantis, with tag and tatter, Full lowd in Ersche begowd to clatter, And rowp like revin and ruke." The devil sa devit was with thair yell,' That in the depest pot of hell He smurit thame with smuke. 10 like a stallion. And Idleness did him lead. w There was with him an ugly sort. z That had been dead in sin. When they were entered in the dance. f Like torche* burning red. IX. a Of womb insatiable and greedy. 1> To dance then addressed himself. c Him followed many afoul drunkard. t Different names of drinking vessels. Full many a waistless sot /With bellies unwieldable did drag furth. I In grease that did increase. * The fiends gave them hot lead to lap. Their love of drinking was not the less. X. i No minstrels without doubt. * For gleemen there were kept out. I By day and by night. " Except a min- strel that slew a man. n So till he won his inheritance. o And entered by letter of right. XI. P Then cried Satan for a highland paireant. '/ The name of some highland laird. "I suppose." says Lord Hailes, '-this name was chosen by the poet as one of the harshest that occurred to him." * Far northward in a nook. By the time that he bad raised the Correnoch or cry of help. ( Highlanders so gathered about him. And croaked like ravens and rooks. The devil was go deaf- ened with their yell. * He smothered them with smoke SIR DAVID LYNDSAY. [Born, 1490 ? Died, 1557.] DAVID LYNDSAY, according to the conjecture of his latest editor,* was born in 1490. He was educated at St. Andrews, and leaving that uni- versity, probably about the age of nineteen, be- came the page and companion of James V. during the prince's childhood : not his tutor, as has been sometimes, inaccurately stated. When the young king burst from the faction which had oppressed himself and his people, Lyndsay published his Dream, a poem on the miseries which Scotland had suffered during the minority. In 1530, the king appointed him Lyon King-at-Arms, and a grant of knighthood, as usual, accompanied the office. In that capacity he went several times abroad, and was one of those who were sent to demand a princess of the Imperial line for the Scottish sovereign. James having, however, changed his mind to a connection with France, and having at length fixed his choice on the Prin- cess Magdalene, Lyndsay was sent to attend upon her to Scotland ; but her death happening six weeks after her arrival, occasioned another poem from our author, entitled the " Deploracion." On the arrival of Mary of Guise, to supply her place, he superintended the ceremony of her triumphant entry into Edinburgh; and, blending the fancy of a poet with the godliness of a reformer, he so constructed the pageant, that a lady like an angel, who came out of an artificial cloud, exhorted her majesty to serve God, obey her husband, and keep her body pure, according to God's command- ments. On the 14th of December, 1542, Lyndsay wit- nessed the decease of James V., at his palace of Falkland, after a connection between them which had subsisted since the earliest days of the prince. If the death of James (as some of his biographers have asserted) occasioned our poet's banishment from court, it is certain that his retirement was not of long continuance ; since he was sent, in 1543, by the Regent of Scotland, as Lyon King, to the Emperor of Germany. Before this period the principles of the Reformed religion had begun to take a general root in the minds of his coun- trymen ; and Lyndsay, who had already written a drama in the style of the old moralities, with a view to ridicule the corruptions of the popish clergy, returned from the Continent to devote his pen and his personal influence to the cause of the new faith. In the parliaments which met at Edinburgh and Linlithgow, in 154445 and 46, he represented the county of Cupar in Fife ; and in 1547, he is recorded among the champions of the Reformation, who counselled the ordination of John Knox. The death of Cardinal Beaton drew from him a poem on the subject, entitled, a Tragedy, (the term tragedy was not then confined to the drama,) in which he has been charged with drawing toge- ther all the worst things that could be said of the murdered prelate. It is incumbent, however, on those who blame him for so doing, to prove that those worst things were, not atrocious. Beaton's principal failing was a disposition to burn with fire those who opposed his ambition, or who dif- fered from his creed ; and if Lyndsay was malig- nant in exposing one tyrant, what a libeller must Tacitus be accounted ! His last embassy was to Denmark, in order to negotiate for a free trade with Scotland, and to solicit ships to protect the Scottish coasts against the English. It was not till after returning from this business that he published Squyre Meld rum, the last, and the liveliest of his works. DESCRIPTION OF SQUYRE MELDRUM. HE was bot" twintie yen-is 6 of age, Quehen c he began his vassalage : Proportional weill, of mid stature : Feirie d and wicht" and micht endure Ovirset/ with travell both nicht and day, Richt hardie baith in ernist and play : Blyith in countenance, richt fair of face, And stude* weill ay in his ladies grace : For he was wondir amiabill, And in all deides honourabill ; And ay his honour did advance, In Ingland first and syne* in France ; Mr. G. Chalmers. a But. * Y?ars. c When. <* Courageous.* Active.- / Could endure excessive fatigue. f Stood. A Then. 86 And thare his manheid did assail Under the kingis great admirall, ' Quhen the greit navy of Scotland Passit to the sea againis Ingland. HIS GALLANTRY TO AH IRISH DAMSEL. And as they passit be Ireland coist* The admirall gart land his oist;^ And set Craigfergus into fyre, And saifit nouther barne nor byre :* It was greit pitie for to heir,' Of the pepill the bail-full cheir ; i Coast. i Host, army.- ple. Cowhouse. I Hear. Peo SIR DAVID LYNDSAY. 87 And how the landfolk were spuilyeit, Fair women under fute were fuilyeit." But this young Squyer bauld and wicht Savit all women quhair? he micht ; All priestis and freyeris he did save ; Till at the last he did persave Behind ane gardin amiabill, r Ane woman's voce' richt lamentabill ; And on that voce he followit fast, 'Till he did see her at the last, Spuilyeit,' nakit" as scho" was born ; Twa men of weir" were hir beforne,* Quhilkv were richt cruel men and kene, Partand* the spuilyie thame between. Ane fairer woman nor sho wes 8 . He had not sene in onie* place. Befoir 6 him on her kneis scho fell, Sayand, " for him that heryeif* hell, Help me sweit sir, I am ane maid ;" Than softlie to the men he said, I pray yow give againe hir sark,' And tak to yow all uther wark. Hir kirtill was of scarlot reid,/ Of gold ane garland of hir heid, Uecoritff with enamelyne : Belt and brochis of silver fyne. Of yellow taftais* wes hir sark, Begaryit all with browderit wark, Richt craftilie with gold and silk. Than, said the ladie, quhyte' as milk, Except my sark nothing I crave, Let thame go hence with all the lave. Quod they to hir be Sanct Fillane Of this ye get nathing agane. Than, said the squyer courteslie, Gude friendis I pray you hartfullie, Gif ye be worthie men of weir, Restoir> to hir agane hir geir ; Or be greit God that all has wrocht,* That spuilyie sail be full dere bocht. 1 Quod" 1 they to him we th6 defy, And drew their swordis hastily, And straik at him with sa greit ire, That from his harness flew the fyre : With duntis sa derfly" on him dang,? That he was never in sic ane thrang :' Bot he him manfullie defendit, Ane with ane bolt on thame he bendit. .... And when he saw thay wer baith slane. He to that ladie past agane : Quhare scho stude nakit on the bent/ And said, tak your abuzlement.' And scho him thankit full humillie, And put hir claithis on speedilie. Than kissit he that ladie fair, And tuik' his leif of hir but mair." Be that the taburne and trumpet blew, And every man to shipburd drew " Spoilt. o Abused. P Where. q Perceive.* Beauti- ful.* Voice. Spoiled. Naked. She. War. * Before. y Who. z Parting. Than she wag. & Any. - Before. <* Means for him, viz. Christ, who conquered or plundered hell. ' Shift/ Red. f Adorned. * Mr. Chalmers omits explaining this word in his glossary to Lyadfny. [The meaning is plain enough: her sark or shirt was of yrllow taffeta. C.} i White. j Restore. Wrought I Bought m Quoth. Strokes. MELDRCM'S DUEL WITH THE ENGLISH CHAMPION TALBABT Then clariouns and trumpets blew, And weiriours" many hither drew ; On eviry side come" 1 mony man To behald wha the battel wan. The field was in the meadow green, Quhare everie man micht weil be seen ; The heraldis put tham sa in order That na man past within the border, Nor preissit r to com within the green, Bot heraldis and the campiouns keen ; The order and the circumstance Wer lang to put in remembrance. Quhen thir twa nobill men of weir Wer weill accouterit in their geir, And in thair handis strong burdounis,l Than trumpettis blew and clariounis, And heraldis cryit hie on hicht, Now let thame go God shaw* the richt. Than trumpettis blew triumphantly, And thay twa campiouns eagerlie, They spurrit their hors with speir on breist Pertly to prier* their pith they preist. 6 That round rink-room was at utterance, Bot Talbart's hors with ane mischance He outterit,** and to run was laith f Quharof Talbart was wonder wraith./ The Squyer furth his rinkf he ran, Commendit weill with every man, And him discharge! of his speir Honestile, like ane man of weir The trenchour* of the Squyreis speir Stak still into Sir Talbart's geir ; Than everie man into that steid* Did all beleve that he was dede. The Squyer lap richt haistillie From his coursourJ deliverlie, And to Sir Talbart made support, And humillie* did him comfort. When Talbart saw into his schield Ane otter in ane silver field, This race, said he, I sair may rew. For I see weill my dreame was true ; Methocht yon otter gart' me bleid, And buir"* me backwart from my sted ; But heir I vow to God soverane, That I sail never just" agane. And sweitlie to the Squiyre said, Thou knawis the cunning? that we made, Quhilkv of us twa suld tyne r the field, He suld baith hors and armour yield Till him' that wan, quhairfore I will My hors and harness geve th till. Then said the Squyer, courteouslie, Brother, I thank you hartfullie ; Of you, forsooth, nothing I crave, For I have gotten that I would have. o Strongly. f Drove. q Throng, trouble. r Grass, or field. Dress, clothing. * Took his leave. Without more ailo. Warriors. Came. * Pressed. y Spears. Show. Prove. & Tried. <= Course-room. "* Swerved, from the course. Loth. / Wroth.* Course. * Head of the gpear. * In that situation.* Courser.* Hum- bly. I Made. m Bore. Joust. o Thou knowest. P Agreement or understanding. Which, ' Lose. To him. 88 SIR DAVID LYNDSAT. 8QCTRE MELDRUM, AFTER MANT FOREIGN EXPLOITS, COMES HOME AND HAS THE FOLLOWING LOVE-ADVENTURE. Out throw the land then sprang the fame, That Squyer Meldrum was come hame. Quhen they heard tell how he debaitit,' With every man he was sa treitet," That quhen he travellit throw the land, They bankettit" him fra hand to hand With greit solace, till, at the last, Dut throw Stratherne the Squyer past. And as it did approach the nicht, Of ane castell he gat ane sicht, Beside ane montane in ane vale, And then eftir his greit travaill He purposit him to repoise 1 Quhare ilk man did of him rejois. Of this triumphant pleasand place Ane lustie ladyy was maistre's, Quhais 2 lord was dead schort time befoir, Quhairthrow her dolour wes the inoir; Bot yit scho tuik some comforting, To heir the plesant dulce talking Of this young Squiyer, of his chance, And how it fortunit him in France. This Squyer and the ladie gent Did wesche, and then to supper went : During that nicht there was nocht ellis* But for to heir of his novellis.* Ene'as, quhen he fled from Troy, Did not Quene Dido greiter joy : . . . . The wonderis that he did rehers, Were langsum for to put in vers, Of quhilk this lady did rejois : They drank and syne* went to repois, He found his chalmer" well arrayit With dornik/ work on bord displayit : Of venison he had his waill, Gude aquavitae, wyne, and aill, With nobill confeittis, bran, and geill* And swa the Squyer fuir' richt weill. Sa to heir niair of his narration, The ladie cam to his collation, Sayand he was richt welcum hame, Grand-mercie, then, quod he, Madame ! They past the time with ches and tabill, For he to everie game was abill. Than unto bed drew everie wicht ; To chalmer went this ladie bricht ; The quilk this Squyer did convoy, Syne till his bed he went with joy. That nicht he sleepitJ never ane wink, But still did on the ladie think. Cupido, with his fyrie dart, t Fought. Entertained.* Feasted. Toil. Re- pose. y Handsome, pleasant. z Whose. Neat, pretty. i Else. c News. * Then.* Chamber./ Napery. * Choice.* Jelly.* Tared. j Slept. Did piers him sa throwout the hart, Sa all that nicht he did but murnit Sum tyme sat up, and sum tyme turnit Sichand,* with mony gant and grane, To fair Venus makand his mane, Sayand,' fair ladie, what may this mene, I was ane free man lait m yestreen, And now ane cative bound and thrall, For ane that I think flowr of all. I pray to God sen scho knew my mynd, How for hir saik I am sa pynd : Wald God I had been yit in France, Or I had hapnit sic mischance ; To be subject or serviture Till ane quhilk takes of me na cure. This ladie ludgit" nearhand by, And hard the Squyer prively, With dreidful hart makand his mane, With monie careful gant and grane ; Hir hart fulfillit with pitie, Thocht scho wald half of him mercie, And said, howbeit I suld be slane, He sail have lufe for lufe agayne : Wald God I micht, with my honour, Have him to be my paramour. This was the merrie tyme of May, Quhen this fair ladie, freshe and gay, Start up to take the hailsum' air, With pantouns' on her feit ane pair, Airlie into ane cleir morning, Befoir fair Phoebus' uprysing : Kirtill alone, withouten clok, And saw the Squyers door unlok. She slippit in or evir he wist, And feynitlie r past till ane kist, And with hir keys oppenit the lokkis, And made' hir to take furth ane boxe, Bot that was not hir errand thare : With that this lustie young Squyar Saw this ladie so pleasantile Com to his chalmer quyetlie, In kirtill of fyne damais brown, Hir golden tresses hingand' doun ; Hir pappis were hard, round, and quhyte, Quhoine to behold was greit deleit ; Lyke the quhyte lillie was her lyre ; u Hir hair wes like the reid gold weir ; Her schankis quhyte, withouten hois," Quhareat the Squyar did rejois, And said, then, now vailye quod vailye,** Upon the ladie thow mak ane sailye. Hir courtlyke kirtill was unlaist, And sone into his armis hir braist * Sighing. I Saying. "> Late. * Lodged. o Groan. f Wholesome. Slippers. * Feigningly. Pretended. * Hanging. Throat. Hose, stockings. Happen what may. SIR THOMAS WYAT, [Bora, 1503. Died, Oct. 1542.] CALLED the Elder, to distinguish him from his son, who suffered in the reign of Queen Mary, was born at Allington Castle, in Kent, in 1503, and was educated at Cambridge. He married early in life, and was si ill earlier distinguished at the court of Henry VIII. with whom his interest and favour were so great as to be proverbial. His person was majestic and beautiful, his visage (ac- cording to Surrey's interesting description) was " stern and mild :" he sung and played the lute with remarkable sweetness, spoke foreign lan- guages with grace and fluency, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of wit. At the death of Wol- sey he could not be more than nineteen ; yet he is said to have contributed to that minister's down- fall by a humorous story, and to have promoted the reformation by a seasonable jest At the coronation of Anne Boleyn he officiated for his father as ewerer, and possibly witnessed the cere- mony not with the most festive emotions, as there is reason to suspect that he was secretly attached to the royal bride. When the tragic end of that princess was approaching, one of the calumnies circulated against her was that Sir Thomas Wyat had confessed having had an illicit intimacy with her. The scandal was certainly false ; but that it arose from a tender partiality really believed to exist between them seems to be no overstrained conjecture. His poetical mistress's name is Anna : and in one of his sonnets he complains of being obliged to desist from the pursuit of a beloved ob- ject, on account of its being the king's. The pe- rusal of his poetry was one of the unfortunate queen's last consolations in prison. A tradition of Wyat's attachment to her was long preserved in his family. She retained his sister to the last about her person ; and as she was about to lay her head on the block, gave her weeping attendant a small prayer-book, as a token of remembrance, with a smile of which the sweetness was not effaced by the horrors of approaching death. Wyat's favour at court, however, continued un- diminished ; and notwithstanding a quarrel with the Duke of Suffolk, which occasioned his being committed to the Tower, he was, immediately on his liberation, appointed to a command under the Duke of Norfolk, in the army that was to act against the rebels. He was also knighted, and, in the following year, made high-sheriff of Kent. When the Emperor Charles the Fifth, after the death of Anne Boleyn, apparently forgetting the disgrace of his aunt in the sacrifice of her successor, showed a more conciliatory disposition towards England, Wyat was, in 1537, selected to go as ambassador to the Spanish court. His situation there was rendered exceedingly diffi- cult, by the mutual insincerity of the negotiat- ing powr's, and by his religion, which exposed 12 him to prejudice, and even at one time to dang i; from the Inquisition. He had to invest Henry's bullying remonstrances with the graces of mo- derate diplomacy, and to keep terms with a bigoted court while he questioned the Pope's supremacy. In spite of those obstacles, the dignity and dis- cernment of Wyat gave him such weight in ne- gotiation, that he succeeded in expelling from Spain his master's most dreaded enemy, Cardinal Pole, who was so ill received at Madrid that the haughty legate quitted it with indignation. The records of his different embassies exhibit not only personal activity in following the Emperor Charles to his most important interviews with Francis, but sagacity in foreseeing consequences, and in giving advice to his own sovereign. Neither the dark policy, nor the immovable countenance of Charles, eluded his penetration. When the Emperor, on the death of Lady Jane Seymour, offered the King of England the Duchess of Milan hi mar- riage, Henry's avidity caught at the offer of her duchy, and Heynes and Bonner were sent out to Spain as special commissioners on the business ; but it fell off, as Wyat had predicted, from the Spanish monarch's insincerity. Bonner, who had done no good to the English mission, and who had felt himself lowered at the Spanish court by the superior ascendancy of Wyat, on his return home sought to indemnify himself for the mortification, by calumniating his late colleague. In order to answer those calum- nies, Wyat was obliged to obtain his recall from Spain ; and Bonner's charges, on being investi- gated, fell to the ground. Bnit the Emperor's journey through France having raised another crisis of expectation, Wyat was sent out once more to watch the motions of Charles, and to fathom his designs. At Blois he had an inter- view with Francis, and another with the Empe- ror, whose friendship for the king of France he pronounced, from all that he observed, to be insin- cere. " He is constrained (said the English am- bassador) to come to a show of friendship, mean- ing to make him a mockery when he has done." When events are made familiar to us by history, we are perhaps disposed to undervalue the wis- dom that foretold them ; but this much is clear, that if Charles's rival had been as wise as Sir Thomas Wyat, the Emperor would not have made a mockery of Francis. Wyat's advice to his own sovereign at this period was to support the Duke of Cleves, and to ingratiate himself with the German protestant princes. His zeal was praised : but the advice, though sanctioned by Cromwell, was not followed by Henry. Warned probably, at last, of the approach.!)^ downfall of Cromwell, he obtained his final refill from Spain. On his return, Bonner had sufficient interest to H2 90 SIR THOMAS WYAT. get him committed to the Tower, where he was harshly treated and unfairly tried, but was never- theless most honourably acquitted; and Henry, satisfied of his innocence, made him considerable donations of land. Leland informs us, that about this time he had the command of a ship of war. The sea service was not then, as it is now, a dis- tinct profession. Much of his time, however, after his return to England, must be supposed, from his writings, to have been spent at his paternal seat of Allington, in study and rural amusements. From that plea- sant retreat he was summoned, in the autumn of 1542, by order of the king, to meet the Spanish ambassador, who had landed at Falmouth, and to conduct him from thence to London. In his zeal to perform this duty he accidentally overheated himself with riding, and was seized, at Sherborne with a malignant fever, which carried him off, after a few days' illness, in his thirty-ninth year. ODE. THE LOVER COMPLAINETH THE DNKINDNESS OF HIS LOVE. MY lute, awake ! perform the last Labour that thou and I shall waste, And end that I have now begun ; For when this song is sung and past, My lute be still, for I have done. As to be heard where ear is none, As lead to grave in marble stone, My song may pierce her heart as soon : Should we then sing, or sigh, or moan 1 No, no, my lute ! for I have done. The rocks do not so cruelly Repulse the waves continually, As she my suit and affection ; So that I am past remedy ; Whereby my lute and I have done. Proud of the spoil that thou hast got Of simple hearts, thorough Love's shot, By whom, unkind ! thou hast them won ; Think not he hath his bow forgot, Although my lute and I have done. Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain, That mak'st but game of earnest payne. Think not alone under the sun, Unquit the cause thy lovers plaine, Although my lute and I have done. May chance thee lye withred and old, In winter nights that are so cold, Playning in vain unto the moon ; Thy wishes then dare not be told : Care then who list ! for I have done. And then may chaunce thee to repent The time that thou hast lost and spent, To cause thy lovers sigh and swoon ; Then shall thou know beauty but lent, And wish and want, as I have done. Now cease, my lute ! this is the last Labour that thou and I shall waste, And ended is that I begun ; Now is this song both sung and past ; My lute ! be still, for I have done. FROM HIS SONGS AND EPIGRAMS. A DESCRIPTION OF SUCH A ONE AS HE WOULD LOVE. A FACE that should content me wondrous well, Should not be fair, but lovely to behold With gladsome cheer, all grief for to expell ; With sober looks so would I that it should Speak without words, such words as none can tell ; The tress also should be of crisped gold. With wit and these, might chance I might be tied, And knit again with knot that should not slide. FROM THE SAME. OF HIS RETURN FROM SPAIN. TAGUS, farewell ! that westward with thy streams Turns up the grains of gold already tried ; For I, with spur and sail, go seek the Thames, Gainward the sun that showeth her wealthy pride; And to the town which Brutus sought by dreams, Like bended moon, doth lend her lusty side. My king, my country, I seek for whom I live, Of mighty Jove the winds for this me give. FROM HIS ODES. AN EARNEST SUIT TO HIS UXKIXD MISTRESS NOT TO FORSAKE HIM. AND wilt thou leave me thus ? Say nay ! say nay ! for shame ! To save thee from the blame Of all my grief and grame. And wilt thou leave me thus 1 Say nay ! say nay ! And wilt thou leave me thus ! That hath loved thee so long ? In wealth and woe among : And is thy heart so strong As for to leave me thus ] Say nay ! say nay ! And wilt thou leave me thus 1 That hath given thee my heart, Never for to depart, Neither for pain nor smart, And wilt thou leave me thus ? Say nay ! say nay ! HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY. 91 And wilt thou leave me thus 1 And have no more pity Of him that loveth thee ; Alas ! thy cruelty ! And wilt thou leave me thus 1 Say nay ! say nay ! 1IE LAMEXTETH THAT HE HAD EVER CAUSE TO DOUBT HIS LADY'S FAITH. DEEM as ye list upon good cause, I may or think of this or that ; But what or why myself best knows, Whereby I think and fear not. But thereunto I may well think The doubtful sentence of this clause ; I would it were not as I think ; I would I thought it were not. For if I thought it were not so, Though it were so, it grieved me not ; Unto my thought it were as tho I hearkened though I hear not. At that I see I cannot wink, Nor from my thought so let it go : I would it were not as I think ; I would I thought it were not. Lo ! how my thought might make me free, Of that perchance it needs not : Perchance none doubt the dread I see ; I shrink at that I bear not. But in my heart this word shall sink, Until the proof may better be : ,, I would it were not as I think ; I would I thought it were not If it be not, show no cause why I should so think, then care I not ; For I shall so myself apply To be that I appear not. That is, as one that shall not shrink To be your own until I die ; And if that be not as I think, Likewise to think it is not. TO HIS MISTRESS. FORGET not yet the tried intent Of such a truth as I have meant ; My great travail so gladly spent, Forget not yet ! Forget not yet when first began The weary life, ye know since whan, The suit, the service, none tell can ; Forget not yet ! Forget not yet the great assays, The cruel wrong, the scornful ways, The painful patience in delays, Forget not yet ! Forget not ! Oh ! forget not this, How long ago hath been, and is The mind that never meant amiss, Forget not yet ! Forget not then thine own approved, The which so long hath thee so lovwl, Whose steadfast faith yet never moved, Forget not this ! HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY. [Born, 1516. Died, 1547.] WALPOLE, Ellis, and Warton, gravely inform us that Lord Surrey contributed to the victory of Flodden, a victory which was gained before Lord Surrey was born. The mistakes of such writers may teach charity to criticism. Dr. Nott, who has cleared away much fable and anachronism from the noble poet's biography, supposes that he was born in or about the year 1516, and that he was educated at Cambridge, of which university he was afterwards elected high steward. At the early age of sixteen he was contracted in marriage to the Lady Frances Vere, daughter to John Earl of Oxford. The Duke of Richmond was after- wards affianced to Surrey's sister. It was custo- mary, in those times, to delay, frequently for years, the consummations of such juvenile matches ; and the writer of Lord Surrey's life, already men- tioned, gives reasons for supposing that the poet's residence at Windsor, and his intimate friendship with Richmond, so tenderly recorded in his verses, took place, not in their absolute childhood, as has been generally imagined, but immediately after their being contracted to their respective brides. If this was the case, the poet's allusion to The secret groves which oft we made resound Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise. may be charitably understood as only recording the aspirations of their conjugal impatience. Surrey's marriage was consummated in 1535. In the subsequent year he sat with his father, as Earl Marshal, on the trial of his kinswoman Anne Boleyn. Of the impression which that event made upon his mind, there is no trace to be found either in his poetry, or in tradition. His grief for the amiable Richmond, whom he lost soon afte', is more satisfactorily testified. It is about this period that the fiction of Nash, unfaithfully mis- applied as reality by Anthony Wood,* and from him copied, by mistake, by Walpole and Warton, sends the poet on his romantic tour to Italy, as the knight-errant of the fair Geraldine. There is no proof, however, that Surrey was ever in * iN ash's History of Jack Wilton. 92 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY. Italy. At the period of his imagined errantry, his icpeated appearance at the court of England can be ascertained; and Geraldine, if she was a daughter of the Earl of Kildare, was then only a child of seven years old.* That Surrey entertained romantic sentiments for the fair Geraldine, seems, however, to admit of little doubt ; and that too at a period of her youth which makes his homage rather surprising. The fashion of the age sanctioned such courtships, under the liberal interpretation of their being platonic. Both Sir P. Sydney and the Chevalier Bayard avowed attachments of this exalted nature to married ladies, whose reputations were never sullied, even when the mistress wept openly at parting from her admirer. Of the nature of Sur- rey's attachment we may conjecture what we please, but can have no certain test even in his verses, which might convey either much more or much less than he felt ; and how shall we search in the graves of men for the shades and limits of passions that elude our living observation 1 Towards the close of 1540, Surrey embarked in public business. A rupture with France being anticipated, he was sent over to that kingdom, with Lord Russell and the Earl of Southampton, to see that every thing was in a proper state of de- fence within the English pale. He had previ- ously been knighted; and had jousted in honour of Anne of Cleves, upon her marriage with Henry. The commission did not detain him long in France. He returned to England before Christmas, having acquitted himself entirely to the king's satisfaction. In the next year, 1541, we may suppose him to have been occupied in his literary pursuits per- haps in his translation of Virgil. England was then at peace both at home and abroad, and in no other subsequent year of Surrey's life could his active service have allowed him leisure. In 1542 he received the order of the Garter, and followed his father in the expedition of that year into Scot- land, where he acquired his first military experi- ence. Amidst these early distinctions it is some- what mortifying to find him, about this period, twice committed to the Fleet prison ; on one occasion on account of a private quarrel, on another for eating meat on Lent, and for breaking the windows of the citizens of London with stones from his cross- bow. This was a strange misdemeanour indeed, for a hero and a man of letters. His apology, perhaps as curious as the fact itself, turns the ac- tion only into quixotic absurdity. His motive, he said, was religious. He saw the citizens sunk in papal corruption of manners, and he wished to break in upon their guilty secrecy by a sudden chastisement, that should remind them of Divine retribution ! The war with France called him into more honourable activity. In the first campaign he * If concurring proofs did not so strongly point out his poetical mistress Geraldine to be the daughter of the Earl of Kildare, we might well suspect, from the date of Surrey's attachment, that the object of his praises must have been gome other person. Geraldine, when he declared his d*-. votion to her, was only thirteen years of age. She was taken iu her childhood under the protection of the court, joined the army under Sir John Wallop, at the siege of Landrecy ; and in the second and larger expedition he went as marshal of the army of which his father commanded the vanguard. The siege of Montreuil was allotted to the Duke of Norfolk and his gallant son ; but their operations were impeded by the want of money, ammunition, and artillery, supplies most probably detained from reaching them by the influence of the Earl of Hertford, who had long regarded both Surrey and his father with a jealous eye. In these disastrous circumstances Surrey seconded the duke's efforts with zeal and ability. On one expedition he was out two days and two nights, spread destruction among the resources of the enemy, and returned to the camp with a load of supplies, and without the loss of a single man. In a bold attempt to storm the town he succeeded so far as to make a lodgment in one of the gates ; but was danger- ously wounded, and owed his life to the devoted bravery of his attendant Clere, who received a hurt in rescuing him, of which he died a month after. On the report of the Dauphin of France's approach with 60,000 men, the English made an able retreat, of which Surrey conducted the move- ments as marshal of the camp. He returned with his father to England, but must have made only a short stay at home, as we find him soon after fighting a spirited action in the neighbourhood of Boulogne, in which he chased back the French as far as Montreuil. The follow- ing year he commanded the vanguard of the army of Boulogne, and finally solicited and obtained the government of that place. It was then nearly de- fenceless ; the breaches unrepaired, the fortifica- tions in decay, and the enemy, with superior num- bers, established so near as to be able to command the harbour, and to fire upon the lower town. Under such disadvantages, Surrey entered on his command, and drew up and sent home a plan of alterations in the works, which was approved of by the king, and ordered to be acted upon. Nor were his efforts merely defensive. On one occa- sion he led his men into the enemy's country as far as Samerau-Bois, which he destroyed, and re- turned in safety with considerable booty. After- wards, hearing that the French intended to revic- tual their camp at Outreau, he compelled them to abandon their object, pursued them as far as Hardilot, and was only prevented from gaining a complete victory through the want of cavalry. But his plan for the defence of Boulogne, which, by his own extant memorial, is said to evince great military skill, was marred by the issue of one unfor- tunate sally. In order to prevent the French from revictualling a fortress that menaced the safety of Boulogne, he found it necessary, with his slender forces, to risk another attack at St. Etienne. His cavalry first charged and routed those of the and attended the Princess Mary. At the age of fifteen she married Sir Anthony Wood, a man of sixty, arid after his death accepted the Earl of Lincoln. From Surrey's verses we find that she slighted his adJresses, after having for some time encouraged them: and from hjs conduct it appears that he hurried into war and public business in order to forget her indifference. HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY. 93 French : the foot, which he commanded in person, next advanced, and the first line, consisting chiefly of gentlemen armed with corselets, behaved gal- lantly, but the second line, in coming to the push of the pike, were seized with a sudden panic, and fled back to Boulogne, in spite of all the efforts of their commander to rally them. Within a few months after this affair he was recalled to Eng- land, and Hertford went out to France as the king's lieutenant-general. It does not appear, however, that the loss of this action was the pretext for his recall, or the direct cause of the king's vengeance, by which he was subsequently destined to fall. If the fac- tion of Hertford, that was intriguing against him at home, ever succeeded in fretting the king's hu- mour against him, by turning his misfortune into a topic of blame, Henry's irritation must have passed away, as we find Surrey recalled, with promises of being replaced in his command (a promise, however, which was basely falsified), and again appearing at court in an honourable station. But the event of his recall (though it does not seem to have been marked by tokens of royal dis- pleasure) certainly contributed indirectly to his ruin, by goading his proud temper to farther hos- tilities with Hertford. Surrey, on his return to England, spoke of his enemy with indignation and menaces, and imprudently expressed his hopes of being revenged in a succeeding reign. His words were reported, probably with exaggeration, to the king, and occasioned his being sent, for some time, as a prisoner to Windsor. He was liberated, however, from thence, and again made his appearance at court, unsuspicious of his im- pending ruin. It is difficult to trace any personal motives that could impel Henry to wish for his destruction. He could not be jealous of his intentions to marry the Princess Mary that fable is disproved by the discovery of Surrey's widow having survived him. Nor is it likely that the king dreaded him as an enemy to the Reformation, as there is every rea- son to believe that he was a Protestant. The natural cruelty of Henry seems to have been but an instrument in the designing hands of Hertford, whose ambition, fear, and jealousy, prompted him to seek the destruction of Norfolk and his son. His measures were unhappily aided by the vindic- tive resentment of the Duchess of Norfolk against her husband, from whom she had been long se- parated, and by the still more unaccountable and unnatural hatred of the Duchess of Richmond against her own brother. Surrey was arrested on the 12th of December, 1546, and committed to the Tower. The depositions of witnesses against him, whose collective testimony did not substan- tiate even a legal offence, were transmitted to the king's judges at Norwich, and a verdict was re- turned, in consequence of which he was indicted for high treason. We are not told the full parti- culars of his defence, but are only generally in formed that it was acute and spirited. With re- spect to the main accusation, of his bearing the arms of the Confessor, he proved that he had tiio authority of the heralds in so doing, and that lie had worn them himself in the king's presence, as his ancestors had worn them in the presence of former kings. Notwithstanding his manifest in- nocence, the jury was base enough to find him guilty. The chancellor pronounced sentence of death upon him ; and in the flower of his age, in his thirty-first year, this noble soldier and accom- plished poet was beheaded on Tower-hill. PRISONED IN WINDSOR, HE RECOUXTETH HIS PLEASURE THERE PASSED. So cruel prison how could betide, alas ! As proud Windsor 1 Where I in lust and joy, With a king's son, my childish years did pass, In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy; Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour. The large green courts,where we were wont to rove, With eyes upcast unto the maiden's tower, And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love. The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue, The dances short, long tales of great delight ; With words and looks that tigers could but rue, When each of us did plead the other's right. The palm play, where desported* for the game, With dazed eyes oft we, by gleams of love, Have miss'd the hall, and got sight of our dame, To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above. The gravel I'd ground, with sleeves tied on the helm, On foaming horse with swords and friendly hearts ; With cheer as though one should another whelm, Where we have fought, and chased oft with darts. With silver drops the meads yet spread for ruth ; In active games of nimhleness and strength, Tennis-court. Stript Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth, Our tender limbs that yet shot up in length. The secret groves, which oft we made resound Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise ; Recording oft what grace each one had found, What hope of speed, what dread of long delays. The wild forest, the clothed holts with green ; With reins avail'd, c and swift ybreathed horse, With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between, Where we did chase the fearful hart of force. The void walls eke that harbour'd us each night : Wherewith, alas ! revive within my breast The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight ; The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest ; The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust ; The wanton talk, the divers change of play ; The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just, Wherewith we past the winter nights away. And with this thought the blood forsakes the face , The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue : The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas ! Upsupped have, thus I my plaint renew : Shortened. 94 LORD VAUX. O place of bliss ! renewer of my woes ! Give me account, where is my noble fere ?<* Whom in thy walls thou didst each night enclose ; To other lief : but unto me most dear. Echo, alas ! that doth my sorrow rue, Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint. Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew, In prison pine, with bondage and restraint: And with remembrance of the greater grief, To banish the less, I find my chief relief. DESCRIPTION OF SPRING. THE soote/ season, that bud and bloom forth brings, With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale, The nightingale with feathers new she sings ; The turtle to her make^ hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs. The hart hath hung his old head on the pale ; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings ; The fishes fleet with new repaired scale ; The adder all her slough away she flings ; d Companion.* Beloved. /Sweet. I Mate. The swift swallow pursueth the flies small ; The busy bee her honey now she mings ;* Winter is worn that was the flower's bale.* And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. HOW EACH THING, SAVE THE LOVER IN SPRING, REVIVETH TO PLEASURE. WHEN Windsor walls sustain'd my wearied arm My hand my chin, to ease my restless head; The pleasant plot revested green with warm ; The blossom'd boughs with lusty ver yspread ; The flower'd meads, the wedded birds so late Mine eyes discover ; and to my mind resort The jolly woes, the hateless short debate, The rakehell* life that longs to love's disport. Wherewith, alas ! the heavy charge of care Heap'd in my breast, breaks forth against my will In smoky sighs that overcast the air. My vapour'd eye such dreary tears distil, The tender green they quicken where they fall ; And I half bend to throw me down withal. Mingles. ' Destruction. Careless. Rakil, or rakle, seems synonymous with reckless. LORD VAUX. [Died, 1560?] IT is now universally admitted that Lord Vaux, the poet, was not Nicholas the first peer, but Thomas, the second baron of that name. He was one of those who attended Cardinal Wolsey on his embassy to Francis the First. He received the order of the B.ath at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, and was for some time Captain of the island of Jersey. A considerable number of his pieces are found in the Paradise of Dainty De- vices. Mr. Park* has noticed a passage in the prose prologue to Sackville's Introduction to the Mirror for Magistrates, that Lord Vaux had un- dertaken to complete the history of king Edward's two sons who were murdered in the Tower, but that it does not appear he ever executed his in- tention. UPON HIS WHITE HAIRS. FROM THE AGED LOVER'S RENUNCIATION OF LOVE. THESE hairs of age are messengers Which bid me fast repent and pray ; They be of death the harbingers, That doth prepare and dress the way : Wherefore I joy that you may see Upon my head such hairs to be. They be the lines that lead the length How far my race was for to run ; They say my youth is fled with strength, And how old age is well begun; The which I feel, and you may see Such lines upon my head to be. They be the strings of sober sound, Whose music is harmonical ; Their tunes declare a time from ground I came, and how thereto I shall : Wherefore I love that you may see Upon my head such hairs to be. God grant to those that white hairs have, No worse them take than I have meant ; That after they be laid in grave, Their souls may joy their lives well spent. God grant, likewise, that you may see Upon my head such hairs to be. * In his edition of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors. RICHARD EDWARDS [Born, 1523. Died, 1566.] WAS a principal contributor to the Paradise of Dainty devices, and one of our earliest dramatic authors He wrote two comedies, one entitled Damon and Pythias, the other Palamon and Arcite, ooth of which were acted before Queen Elizabeth. Besides his regular dramas, he appears to have contrived masques, and to have written verses for pageants; and is described as having been the first fiddle, the most fashionable sonneteer, and the most facetious mimic of the court. In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign he was one of the gentlemen of her chapel, and master of the children there, having the character of an excellent musician. His pleasing little poem.the Amantiwn Ira, has been so often reprinted, that, for the sake of variety, I have selected another specimen of his simplicity. HE REQCESTETH SOME FRIENDLY COMFORT, AFFIRMING HIS CONSTANCY. THE mountains high, whose lofty tops do meet the haughty sky ; The craggy rock, that to the sea free passage doth deny; The aged oak, that doth resist the force of blus- tring blast ; The pleasant herb, that everywhere a pleasant smell doth cast ; The lion's force, whose courage stout declares a prince-like might ; The eagle, that for worthiness is born of kings in fight Then these, I say, and thousands more, by tract of time decay, And, like to time, do quite consume, and fade from form to clay ; But my true heart and service vow'd shall last time out of mind, And still remain as thine by doom, as Cupid hath assigned ; My faith, lo here ! I vow to thee, my troth thou know'st too well; My goods, my friends, my life, is thine; what need I more to tell 1 I am not mine, but thine ; I vow thy bests I will obey, And serve thee as a servant ought, in pleasing if I may ; And sith I have no flying wings, to serve thee as I wish, Ne fins to cut the silver streams, as doth the gliding fish ; Wherefore leave now forgetfulness, and send again to me, And strain thy azure veins to write, that I may greeting see. And thus farewell ! more dear to me than chiefest friend I have, Whose love in heart I mind to shrine, till Death his fee do crave. WILLIAM HUNNIS WAS a gentleman of Edward the Sixth's Chapel, and afterwards master of the boys of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel. He translated the Psalms, and was author of a "Hive of Honey," a " Handful of Honeysuckle," and other godly works. He died in 1568. Hunnis was also a writer of Interludes. See COLLIER'S Annals of the Stage, vol. i. p. 235. THE LOVE THAT IS REQUITED WITH DISDAIN. IN search of things that secret are my mated muse began, What it might be molested most the head and mind of man ; The bending brow of prince's face, to wrath that doth attend, Or want of parents, wife, or child, or loss of faith- ful friend ; The roaring of the cannon shot, that makes the piece to shake, Or terror, such as mighty Jove from heaven above can make : All these, in fine, may not compare, experience so doth prove, Unto the torments, sharp and strange, of such as be in love. Love looks aloft, and laughs to scorn all such as griefs annoy, The more extreme their passions be, the greater is his joy ; Thus Love, as victor of the field, triumphs above the rest, And joys to see his subjects lie with living death in breast ; But dire Disdain lets drive a shaft, and galls this bragging fool, He plucks his plumes, unbends his bow. and sets him new to school ; Whereby this boy that bragged late, as conqueroi over all, Now yields himself unto Disdain, his vassal and his thrall. THOMAS SACKVILLE, BARON BUCKHURST, AND EARL OF DORSET, [Born, 1538. Died, April 19, 16(8.] WAS the son of Sir Richard Sackville, and was born at Withyam, in Sussex, in 1536. He was educated at both universities, and enjoyed an early reputation in Latin as well as in English poetry. While a student of the Inner Temple, he wrote his tragedy of Gorboduc, which was played by the young students, as a part of a Christmas en- tertainment, and afterwards before Queen Eliza- beth at Whitehall, in 1561. In a subsequent edi- tion of this piece it was entitled the tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex. He is said to have been as- sisted in the composition of it by Thomas Norton ; but to what extent does not appear. T. Warton disputes the fact of his being at all indebted to Norton. The merit of the piece does not render the question of much importance. This tragedy and his contribution of the Induction and Legend of the Duke of Buckingham to the " Mirror for Magistrates,"* compose the poetical history of Sackville's life. The rest of it was political. He had been elected to parliament at the age of thirty. Six years afterwards, in the same year that his Induction and Legend of Buckingham were pub- lished, he went abroad on his travels, and was, for some reason that is not mentioned, confined, for a time, as a prisoner at Rome ; but he returned home, on the death of his father, in 1566, and was soon after promoted to the title of Baron Buckhurst. Having entered at first with rather too much pro- digality on the enjoyment of his patrimony, he is said to have been reclaimed by the indignity of being kept in waiting by an alderman, from whom he was borrowing money, and to have made a re- solution of economy, from which he never de- parted. The queen employed him, in the four- teenth year of her reign, in an embassy to Charles IX. of France. In 1587 he went as ambassador to the United Provinces, upon their complaint against the Earl of Leicester ; but, though he per- formed his trust with integrity, the favourite had sufficient influence to get him recalled ; and on his return, he was ordered to confinement in his own house, for nine or ten months. On Leices- ter's death, however, he was immediately rein- stated in royal favour, and was made knight of the garter, and chancellor of Oxford. On the death of Burleigh he became lord high-treasurer of England. At Queen Elizabeth's demise he was one of the privy councillors on whom the administration of the kingdom devolved, and he concurred in proclaiming King James. The new sovereign confirmed him in the office of high- treasurer by a patent for life, and on all occasions consulted him with confidence. In March, 1604, he was created Earl of Dorset. He died suddenly [1608] at the council table, in consequence of a dropsy on the brain. Few ministers, as Lord Oxford remarks, have left behind them so un- blemished a character. His family considered his memory so invulnerable, that when some partial aspersions were thrown upon it, after his death, they disdained to answer them. He carried taste and elegance even into his formal political func- tions, and for his eloquence was styled the bell of the Star Chamber. As a poet, his attempt to unite allegory with heroic narrative, and his giv- ing our language its earliest regular tragedy, evince the views and enterprise of no ordinary mind; but, though the induction to the Mirror for Magistrates displays some potent sketches, it bears the complexion of a saturnine genius, and resembles a bold and gloomy landscape on which the sun never shines. As to Gorboduc, it is a piece of monotonous recitals, and cold and heavy accumulation of incidents. As an imitation of classical tragedy it is peculiarly unfortunate, in being without even the unities of place and time, to circumscribe its dulness. FROM SACKVILLE'S INDUCTION TO THE COMPLAINT OF HENRY, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. THE wrathful Winter, 'preaching on apace, With blust'ring blasts had all ybared the treen, And old Saturnus, with his frosty face, With chilling cold had pierced the tender green ; The mantles rent wherein enwrapped been The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown, The tapets torn, and every tree down blown. * The " Mirror for Magistrates" was intended to cele- brate the chief unfortunate personages in English history, in a series of poetical legends spoken by the characters themselves, with epilogues interspersed to connect the stories, in imitation of Boccaccio's Fall of Princes, which had been translated by Lydgate. The historian of Eng- lish poetry ascribes the plan of this work to Sackville, and Fee.uis to have supposed that his Induction and legend of Ilenry Duke of Buckingham appeared in the first edition : but Sir E. Brydges has shown that it was not until the 96 The soil that erst so seemly was to seen, Was all despoiled of her beauty's hue ; [Queen And soote" fresh flowers, therewith the Summer's Had clad the earth, now Boreas blasts down blew ; And small fowls, flocking, in their song did rue The Winter's wrath,wherewith each thing defaced In woeful wise bewail'd the Summer past. second edition of the Mirror for Magistrates that Sackville's contribution was published, viz. in 1563. Baldwin and Ferrers were the authors of the first edition, in 1559. Hifr gins, Phayer, Churchyard, and a crowd of inferior versi- fiers, contributed successive legends, not confining them- selves to English history, but treating the reader with the lamentations of Geta and Caracalla. Brennus. &c. Ac. till the improvement of the drama superseded those dreary monologues, by giving heroic history a more engaging air. Sweet THOMAS SACKVILLE. 97 Hawthorn had lost his motley livery, The naked twigs were shivering all for cold, And dropping down the tears abundantly ; Each thing, methought, with weeping eye me told The cruel season, bidding me withhold Myself within ; for I was gotten out Into the fields, whereas I walk'd about. When lo, the Night with misty mantles spread, Gan dark the day, and dim the azure skies ; And Venus in her message Hermes sped To bloody Mars, to wile him not to rise, While she herself approach'd in speedy wise : And Virgo hiding her disdainful breast, With Thetis now .had laid her down to rest. . . . And pale Cynthea, with her borrow'd light, Beginning to supply her brother's place, Was past the noon steed six degrees in sight, When sparkling stars amid the Heaven's face, With twinkling light shone on the Earth apace, That while they brought about the Nightcs chair, The dark had dimm'd the day ere I was ware. And sorrowing I to see the Summer flowers, The lively green, the lusty leas forlorn ; The sturdy trees so shatter'd with the showers, The fields so fade that flourish'd so beforne ; It taught me well all earthly things be borne To die the death, for nought long time may last ; The Summer's beauty yields to Winter's blast. Then looking upward to the Heaven's learns, With Nighte's stars thick powder'd everywhere, Which erst so glisten'd with the golden streams, That cheerful Phoebus spread down from his sphere, Beholding dark oppressing day so near; The sudden sight reduced to my mind The sundry changes that in earth we find. That musing on this worldly wealth in thought, Which comes and goes more faster than we see The fleckering flame that with the fire is wrought, My busy mind presented unto me Such fall of Peers as in this realm had be, 4 That oft I wish'd some would their woes descrive, To warn the rest whom fortune left alive. And strait forth-stalking with redoubled pace, For that I saw the Night draw on so fast, In black all clad, there fell before my face A piteous wight, whom Woe had all forewaste, Forth from her eyen the chrystal tears out brast, And sighing sore, her hands she wrung and fold, Tare all her hair, that ruth was to behold. Her body small, forewither'd and forespent, As is the stalk that Summer's drought oppress'd ; Her wealked face with woeful tears besprent, Her colour pale, and as it seem'd her best ; In woe and plaint reposed was her rest ; And as the stone that drops of water wears, So dented was her cheek with fall of tears Sackville's contribution to "The Mirror for Magistrates," is the only part of it that in tolerable. 1 1 is observable that liis plan differs materially from that of the other contri- butors. He lay* the scene, like Dante, in Hell, and makes bis characters relate their history at the gates of El vsium, 13 SORROW THEN ADDRESSES THE POET. For forth she paced in her fearful tale : " Come, come," quoth she, " and see what I shall show; Come, hear the plaining and the bitter bale Of worthy men by Fortune overthrow : Come thou, and see them rewing all in row, They were but shades that erst in mind thou roll'd, Come, come with me, thine eyes shall them behold." And with these words, as I upraised stood, And 'gaa to follow her that strait forth paced, Ere I was ware, into a desart wood We now were come, where,hand in hand embraced, She led the way, and through the thick so traced, As, but I had been guided by her might, It was no way for any mortal wight. . . . ALLEGORICAL PERSONAGES DESCRIBED IN HELL. And first within the porch and jaws of Hell Sat deep Remorse of Conscience, all besprent With tears ; and to herself oft would she tell Her wretchedness, and cursing never stent* To sob and sigh ; but ever thus lament With thoughtful care, as she that all in vain Would wear and waste continually in pain. Her eyes unstedfast, rolling here and there, Whirl'd on each place, as place that vengeance brought, So was her mind continually in fear, Toss'd and tormented by the tedious thought Of those detested crimes which she had wrought : With dreadful cheer and looks thrown to the sky, Wishing for death, and yet she could not die. Next saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook, With foot uncertain profTer'd here and there ; Benumm'd of speech, and with a ghastly look, Search'd every place, all pale and dead for fear, His cap upborn with staring of his hair, Stoyn'd 1 * and amazed at his shade for dread, And fearing greater dangers than was need. And next within the entry of this lake Sat fell Revenge, gnashing her teeth for ire, Devising means how she may vengeance take, Never in rest till she have her desire ; But frets within so far forth with the fire Of wreaking flames, that now determines she To die by death, or venged by death to be. When fell Revenge, with bloody foul pretence, Had show'd herself, as next in order set, With trembling limbs we softly parted thence, Till in our eyes another sight we met, When from my heart a sigh forthwith I fet, Rewing, alas ! upon the woeful plight Of Misery, that next appear'd in sight His face was lean and some-deal pined away, And eke his handes consumed to the bone, But what his body was I cannot say ; For on his carcass raiment had he none, under the guidance of Sorrow ; while the authors of th other legends are generally contented with simply dream- ing of the unfortunate personages, and, by going to sleop, offer a powerful inducement to follow their example. * Been. c Stopped.' Astonished. Fetched. GEORGE GASCOIGNE. Save clouts and patches, pieced one by one ; With staff in hand, and scrip on shoulders cast, His chief defence against the winter's blast. His food, for most, was wild fruits of the tree ; Unless sometime some crumbs fell to his share, Which in his wallet long, God wot, kept he, As on the which full daintily would he fare. His drink the running stream, his cup the bare Of his palm closed, his bed the hard cold ground ; To this poor life was Misery ybound. Whose wretched state, when he had well beheld With tender ruth on him and on his feres/ In thoughtful cares forth then our pace we held, And, by and by, another shape appears, Of greedy Care, still brushing up the breres/ His knuckles knob'd, his flesh deep dented in, With tawed hands and hard ytanned skin. The morrow gray no sooner had begun To spread his light, even peeping in our eyes, When he is up and to his work yrun ; And let the night's black misty mantles rise, And with foul dark never so much disguise The fair bright day, yet ceaseth he no while, But hath his candles to prolong his toil. By him lay heavy Sleep, the cousin of Death, Flat on the ground, and still as any stone, / Companions. f Briars. A very corps, save yielding forth a breath ; Small keep took he whom Fortune frowned on, Or whom she lifted up into the throne Of high renown : but as a living death, So dead, alive, of life he drew the breath. The body's rest, the quiet of the heart, The travail's ease, the still night's fere was he ; And of our life in earth the better part, Reever of sight, and yet in whom we see Things oft that tide,* and oft that never be ; Without respect esteeming equally King Croesus' pomp, and Irus' poverty. And next in order sad Old Age we found, His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind ; With drooping cheer still poring on the ground, As on the place where Nature him assign'd To rest, when that the sisters had entwined His vital thread, and ended with their knife The fleeting course of fast declining life. Crook'd-back'd he was,tooth-shaken and bleareyed, Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four ; With old lame bones that rattled by his side, His scalp all pill'd,' and he with eld forlore, His wither' d fist still knocking at Death's door ; Trembling and driv'ling as he draws his breath, For brief, the shape and messenger of Death. A Happen. Bare. GEORGE GASCOIGNE [Bom, 1536. Died, 1577.] WAS born in 1536,* of an ancient family in Essex, was bred at Cambridge, and entered at Gray's-Inn ; but being disinherited by his father for extravagance, he repaired to Holland, and obtained a commission under the Prince of Orange. A quarrel with his colonel retarded his promotion in that service ; and a circumstance occurred which had nearly cost him his life. A lady at the Hague (the town being then in the enemy's possession) sent him a letter, which was intercepted in the camp, and a report against his loyalty was made by those who had seized it. Gascoigne immediately laid the affair before the Prince, who saw through the design of his ac- cusers, and gave him a passport for visiting his female friend. At the siege of Middleburgh he displayed so much bravery, that the Prince re- warded him with 300 gilders above his pay ; but he was soon after made prisoner by the Spaniards, and having spent four months in captivity, re- turned to England, and resided generally at Walthamstow. In 1575 he accompanied Queen Elizabeth in one of her stately progresses, and wrote for her amusement a mask, entitled the Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth Castle. He is generally said to have died at Stamford, in 1578 ; but the registers of that place have been searched in vain for his name, by the writer of an article in the Censura Literariajt who has corrected some mistakes in former accounts of him. It is not probable, however, that he lived long after 1576, as, from a manuscript in the British Mu- seum, it appears that, in that year, he complains of his infirmities, and nothing afterwards came from his pen. Gascoigne was one of the earliest contribu- tors to our drama. He wrote The Supposes, a comedy, translated from Ariosto, and Jocasta, a tragedy from Euripides, with some other pieces.J DE PBOFUNDIS. FROM depth of dole, wherein my soul doth dwell, From heavy heart, which harbours in my breast, * Mr. Ellis conjectures that he was born much earlier. t Cens. Lit vol. i. p. 100. Gascoigne died at Stamford on the 7th of October, 1577 See COLLIER'S Annals, vol. i. p. 192. From troubled sprite, which seldom taketh rest, From hope of heaven, from dread of darksome hell, [J One of his principal works is The Fruits of War: it was suggested by his personal adventures and observa- tions. His verse is smooth, flowing, and unaffected. One of his best pieces is De Profundis, which I have added to Mr. Campbell's selections. G.J GEORGE GASCOIGNE. 99 O gracious God, to thee I cry and yell : My God, my Lord, my lovely Lord, alone To thee I call, to thee I make my moan. And thou, good God, vouchsafe in grace to take This woful plaint Wherein I faint; Oh ! hear me, then, for thy great mercy's sake. Oh ! bend thine ears attentively to hear, Oh ! turn thine eyes, behold me how I wail ! Oh ! hearken. Lord, give ear for mine avail, Oh ! mark in mind the burdens that I bear ; See how I sink in sorrows everywhere. Behold and see what dolors I endure, Give ear and mark what plaints I put in ure ; Bend willing ears ; and pity therewithal My willing voice, Which hath no choice But evermore upon thy name to call. If thou, good Lord, shouldst take thy rod in hand, If thou regard what sins are daily done, If thou take hold where we our works begun, If thou decree in judgment for to stand, And be extreme to see our 'scuses* scanned ; If thou take note of every thing amiss, And write in rolls how frail our nature is, glorious God, King, Prince of power ! What mortal wight May thus have light To feel thy power, if thou have list to lower 1 But thou art good, and hast of mercy store, Thou not delight'st to see a sinner fall, Thou hearkenest first, before we come to call, Thine ears are set wide open evermore, Before we knock thou comest to the door ; Thou art more prest to hear a sinner cry Than he is quick to climb to thee on high. Thy mighty name be praised then alway, Let faith and fear True witness bear, How fast they stand which on thy mercy stay. 1 look for thee, my lovely Lord, therefore For thee I wait, for thee I tarry still, Mine eyes do long to gaze on thee my fill, For thee I watch, for thee I pry and pore, My soul for thee attendeth evermore. My soul doth thirst to take of thee a taste, My soul desires with thee for to be placed. And to thy words, which can no man deceive, Mine only trust, My love and lust, In confidence continually shall cleave, Before the break or dawning of the day, Before the light be seen in lofty skies, Before the sun appear in pleasant wise, Before the watch, (before the watch, I say,) Before the ward that waits therefore alway, My soul, my sense, my secret thought, my sprite, My will, my wish, my joy, and my delight, Unto the Lord, that sits in heaven on high, Us. KXCUTS. With hasty wing From me doth fling, And striveth still unto the Lord to fly. O Israel ! O household of the Lord ! O Abraham's sons ! O brood of blessed seed ! chosen sheep, that love the Lord indeed ! O hungry hearts ! feed still upon his word, And put your trust in Him with one accord. For He hath mercy evermore at hand, His fountains flow, his springs do never stand ; And plenteously He loveth to redeem Such sinners all As on Him call, And faithfully his mercies most esteem. He will redeem our deadly, drooping state, He will bring home the sheep that go astray, He will help them that hope in Him alway, He will appease our discord and debate, He will soon save, though we repent us late. He will be ours, if we continue his, He will bring bale" to joy and perfect bliss ; He will redeem the flock of his elect From all that is Or was amiss Since Abraham's heirs did first his laws reject ARRAIGNMENT OF A LOVER. AT Beauty's bar as I did stand, When False Suspert accused me, George, quoth the Judge, hold up thy hand, Thou art arraign'd of Flattery ; Tell, therefore, how wilt thou be tried, Whose judgment thou wilt here abide 7 My lord, quod I, this lady here, Whom I esteem above the rest, Doth know my guilt, if any were ; * Wherefore her doom doth please me best. Let her be judge and juror both, To try me guiltless by mine oath. Quoth Beauty, No, it fitteth not x A prince herself to judge the cause ; Will is our justice, well ye wot, Appointed to discuss our laws ; If you will guiltless seem to go, God and your country quit you so. Then Craft the crier call'd a quest, Of whom was Falsehood foremost fere ; A pack of pickthanks were the rest, Which came false witness for to bear ; The jury such, the judge unjust, Sentence was said, I should be truss'd." Jealous the gaoler bound me fast, To hear the verdict of the bill ; George, quoth the judge, now thou art cast, Thou must go hence to Heavy Hill, And there be hang'd all but the head ; God rest thy soul when thou art dead ! - Misery. 100 JOHN HARRINGTON. Down fell I then upon my knee, All flat before dame Beauty's face, And cried, Good Lady, pardon me ! Who here appeal unto your grace ; You know if I have been untrue, It was in too much praising you. And though this Judge doth make such haste To shed with shame my guiltless blood, Yet let your pity first be placed To save the man that meant you good ; So shall you show yourself a Queen, And I may be your servant seen. Quoth Beauty, Well ; because I guess What thou dost mean henceforth to be ; Although thy faults deserve no less Than Justice here hath judged thee ; Wilt thou be bound to stint all strife, And be true prisoner all thy life 1 Yea, madam, quoth I, that I shall ; Lo, Faith and Truth my sureties: Why then, quoth she, come when I call, I ask no better warrantise. Thus am I Jleauly's bounden thrall, At her command when she doth call. THE VANITY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. THEY course the glass, and let it take no rest; They pass and spy, who gazeth on their face ; They darkly ask whose beauty seemeth best ; They hark and mark who marketh most their grace ; They stay their steps, and stalk a stately pace ; They jealous are of every sight they see ; They strive to seem, but never care to be. . . . What grudge and grief our joys may then sup- press, To see our hairs, which yellow were as gold, Now gray as glass ; to feel and find them less ; To scrape the bald skull which was wont to hild Our lovely locks with curling sticks controul'd ; To look in glass, and spy Sir Wrinkle's chair Set fast on fronts which erst were sleek and fair. . . . VANITY OF YOUTH. OF lusty youth then lustily to treat, It is the very May-moon of delight ; When boldest bloods are full of wilful heat. And joy to think how long they have to fight In fancy's field, before their life take flight ; Since he which latest did the game begin, Doth longest hope to linger still therein. . . . SWIFTNESS OF TIME. THE heavens on high perpetually do move ; By minutes meal the hour doth steal away, By hours the days, by days the months remove, And then by months the years as fast decay ; Yea, Virgil's verse and Tully's truth do say, That Time flieth, and never claps her wings ; But rides on clouds, and forward still she flings. FROM GASCOIGNE'S GRIEF OF JOY, An unpublished Poem in the British Museum. THERE is a grief in every kind of joy, That is my theme, and that I mean to prove ; And who were he which would not drink annoy, To taste thereby the lightest dram of love 1 . . . . JOHN HARRINGTON. [Born, 1534. Died, 1582.] JOHN HARRINGTON, the father of the translator of Ariosto, was imprisoned by Queen Mary for his suspected attachment to Queen Elizabeth, by whom he was afterwards rewarded with a grant of lands. Nothing that the younger Harrington has written seems to be worth preserving; but the few specimens of his father's poetry which are found in the Nugse Antiquse may excite a regret that he did not write more. His love verses have an elegance and terseness, more mo- dern, by an hundred years, than those of his con- temporaries. VERSES ON A MOST STONY-HEARTED MAIDEN WHO DID SORELY BEGUILE THE NOBLE KNIGHT, MY TRUE FRIEND. J. H. MSS, 1564. From the Nugas Antiquw. WHY didst thou raise such woeful wail, And waste in briny tears thy days'? 'Cause she that wont to flout and rail, At last gave proof of woman's ways ; She did, in sooth, display the heart That might have wrought thee greater smart, 11. Why, thank her then, not weep or moan ; Let others guard their careless heart, And praise the day that thus made known The faithless hold on woman's art ; Their lips can gloze and gain such root, That gentle youth hath hope of fruit. in. But, ere the blossom fair doth rise, To shoot its sweetness o'er the taste, Creepeth disdain in canker-wise, And chilling scorn the fruit doth blast There is no hope of all our toil ; There is no fruit from such a soil. IT. Give o'er thy plaint, the danger's o'er ; Sho might have poison'd all thy life; SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 101 Such wayward mind had bred thee more Of sorrow had she proved thy wife : Leave her to meet all hopeless meed, And bless thyself that so art freed. v. No youth shall sue such one to win, Unmark'd by all the shining fair, Save for her pride and scorn, such sin As heart of love can never bear ; Like leafless plant in blasted shade, So liveth she a barren maid. SONNET MADE ON ISABELLA MARKHAM, WHEN I FIRST THOUGHT HER PAIR, AS SHE STOOD AT THE PRIJf- CESS'8 WINDOW, IN GOODLY ATTIRE, AND TALKED TO DIVERS IN THE COURT-YARD. WHENCE comes my love 1 heart, disclose ; It was from cheeks that shamed the rose, From lips that spoil the ruby's praise, From eyes that mock the diamond's blaze : Whence comes my woe 1 as freely own ; Ah me ! 'twas from a heart like stone. The blushing cheek speaks modest mind, The lips befitting words most kind, The eye does tempt to love's desire, And seems to say "'tis Cupid's fire;" Yet all so fair but speak my moan, Sith nought doth say the heart of stone. Why thus, my love, so kind, bespeak Sweet eye, sweet lip, sweet blushing cheek- Yet not a heart to save my pain ; O Venus, take thy gifts again ; Make not so fair to cause our moan, Or make a heart that's like our own. From the Nugae Antiquae. where the original Manuscript is said to be dated 1564 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. [Born, 1554. Died, 1686.] WITHOUT enduring Lord Orford's cold-blooded depreciation of this hero, it must be owned that his writings fall short of his traditional glory ; nor were his actions of the very highest importance to his country. Still there is no necessity for sup- posing the impression which he made upon his contemporaries to have been either illusive or exag- gerated. Traits of character will distinguish great men, independently of their pens or their swords. The contemporaries of Sydney knew the man : and foreigners, no less than his own countrymen, seem to have felt, from his personal influence and con- versation, an homage for him, that could only be paid to a commanding intellect guiding the prin- ciples of a noble heart. The variety of his ambi- tion, perhaps, unfavourably divided the force of his genius ; feeling that he could take different paths to reputation, he did not confine himself to one, but was successively occupied in the punc- tilious duties of a courtier, the studies and pur- suits of a scholar and traveller, and hi the life of a soldier, of which the chivalrous accomplish- ments could not be learnt without diligence and fatigue. All his excellence in those pursuits, and all the celebrity that would have placed him among * the competitors for a crown, was gained in a life of thirty-two years. His sagacity and independ- ence are recorded in the advice which he gave to his own sovereign. In the quarrel with Lord Oxford,* he opposed the rights of an English com- moner to the prejudices of aristocracy and of roy- alty itself. At home he was the patron of litera- ture. All England wore mourning for his death. Perhaps the well-known anecdote of his generosity to the dying soldier speaks more powerfully to the heart than the whole volumes of elegies, in He- brew, Greek, and Latin, that were published at his death by the universities. Mr. Ellis has exhausted the best specimens of his poetry. I have only offered a few short ones. SONNETS. COME sleep, sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe ; The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, TV indifferent judge between the high and low. With shield of proof shield me from out the prease" Of those fierce darts despair doth at me throw: make in me those civil wars to cease, 1 will good tribute pay if thou do so. Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light, A rosy garland and a weary head ; And if these things, as being thine by right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see. I'ress, or crowd. IN martial sports I had my cunning tried, And yet to break more staves did me address, While with the people's shouts, I must confess, Youth, luck, and praise, e'en fill'd my veins .with pride ; When Cupid having me his slave descried In Mars's livery, prancing in the press, " What now, Sir Fool !" said he, " I would no less ; Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied. Who hard by made a window send forth light ; My heart then quaked,then dazzled were mine eyes; One hand forgot to rule, the other to fight ; Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. My foe came on and beat the air for me, Till that her blush taught me my shame to see. * Vide the biographical notice of Lord Oxford. 12 102 ROBERT GREENE. HAPPY Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 1 saw myself, with many a smiling line Upon thy cheerful face, joy's livery wear, While those fair planets on thy streams did shine ; The boat for joy could not to dance forbear ; While wanton winds, with beauties so divine Ravish'd, staid not till in her golden hair They did themselves, oh sweetest prison ! twine ; And fain those Eol's youth there would their stay Have made, but forced by Nature still to fly, First did with puffing kiss those locks display : She, so dishevell'd, blush'd : from window I, With sight thereof, cried out, O fair disgrace, Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place. WITH howsad steps,OMoon,thou climb'st the skies How silently, and with how wan a face ! What ! may it be, that even in heavenly place That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries 7 Sure, if that long with love acquainted eyes Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; I read it in thy looks, thy languished grace ; To me that feel the like thy state descries. Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, Is constant love deeru'd there but want of wit 7 Are beauties there as proud as here they be 7 Do they above love to be loved, and yet Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess 7 Do they call virtue there ungratefulness 7 ROBERT GREENE [Born, 1560. Died, 1592.] WAS born at Norwich about 1560, was educated at Cambridge, travelled in Spain and Italyf&nd on his return held, for about a year, the vicarage of Tollesbury, in Essex. The rest of his life seems to have been spent in London, with no other sup- port than his pen, and in the society of men of more wit than worldly prudence. He is said to have died about 1592,* from a surfeit occasioned by pickled herrings and Rhenish wine. Greene has acknowledged, with great contrition, some of the follies of his life; but the charge of profligacy which has been so mercilessly laid on his memory < must be taken with great abatement, as it was chiefly dictated by his bitterest enemy, Gabriel Harvey, who is said to have trampled on his dead body when laid in the grave. The story, it may be hoped, for the credit of human nature, is un- true ; but it shows to what a pitch the malignity of Harvey was supposed to be capable of being excited. Greene is accused of having deserted an amiable wife ; but his traducers rather incon- sistently reproach him also with the necessity of writing for her maintenance. A list of his writings, amounting to forty-five separate productions, is given in the Censura Literaria, including five plays, several amatory romances, and other pamphlets, of quaint titles and rambling contents. The writer of that article has vindicated the personal memory of Greene with proper feeling, but he seems to overrate the importance that could have ever been attached to him as a writer. In proof of the once great popularity of Greene's writings, a passage is quoted from Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, where it is said that Saviolina uses as choice figures as any in the Arcadia, and Carlo subjoins, " or in Greene's works, whence she may steal with more security." This allusion to the facility of stealing without detection from an author surely argues the reverse of his being popular and well known.f Greene's style is in truth most whimsical and grotesque. He lived before there was a good model of familiar prose ; and his wit, like a stream that is too weak to force | a channel for itself, is lost in rhapsody and dif- fuseness. DORASTUS AH, were she pitiful as she is fair, Or but as mild as she is. seeming so, Then were my hopes greater than my despair, Then all the world were Heaven, nothing woe. Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand, That seems to melt e'en with the mildest touch, Then knew I where to seat rne in a land, Under the wide Heavens, but yet not such. So as she shows, she seems the budding rose, Yet sweeter far than is an earthly flower ; Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows ; Compass'dsheis with thorns and canker'd flower if Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn. She would be gather'd, though she grew on thorn. Ah, when she sings, all music else be still. For none must be compared to her note ; Ne'er breathed such glee from Philomela's bill, Nor from the morning singer's swelling throat. I* Reduced to utter beggary.and abandoned bythe friends of his festive hourn.Or.-eue died in Londou, on Sept. 3, 1592. Soe hi* Dramatic Works, by Dyne, London, 1831. Q.] ON FAWNIA. And when she riseth from her blissful bed, She comforts all the world, as doth the sun. JEALOUSY. FROM TULLY'S LOVE. WHEN gods had framed the sweets of woman's face, And lockt men's looks within her golden hair, That Phoebus blush'd to see her matchless grace, And heavenly gods on earth did make repair, To quip fair Venus' overweening pride, Love's happy thoughts to jealousy were tied. Then grew a wrinkle on fair Venus' brow, The amber sweet of love is turn'd to gall ! Gloomy was Heaven ; bright Phoebus did avow He would be coy, and would not love at all ; Swearing no greater mischief could be wroug ht, Than love united to a jealous thought. ft See Gilford's Ben Jonson, vol. ii. p. 71. CJ t Qy- power or stoure. Dyce, vol. ii. p. 242.] CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. [Born, 1563. Died, My 1593.] [CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, the son ofashoema- ker, at Canterbury, was born in February, 1563-4,] took a bachelor's degree at Cambridge, [in 1683,] and came to London, where he was a contempo- rary player and dramatic writer with Shakspeare. Had he lived longer to profit by the example of Shakspeare, it is not straining conjecture to suppose, that the strong misguided energy of Marlowe would have been kindled and refined to excellence by the rivalship ; but his death, at the age of thirty, is alike to be lamented for its disgracefulness and prematurity, his own sword being forced upon him, in a quarrel at a brothel.* Six tragedies, however, and his numerous translations from the classics, evince that if his life was profligate, it was not idle. The bishops ordered his transla- tions of Ovid's Love Elegies to be burnt in public for their licentiousness. If all the licentious poems of that period had been included in the martyrdom, Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis would have hardly escaped the flames. In Marlowe's tragedy of "Lust's Dominion" there is a scene of singular coincidence with an event that was two hundred years after exhibited in the same country, namely Spain. A Spanish queen, instigated by an usurper, falsely proclaims her own son to be a bastard. Prince Philip is a bastard born; give me leave to blush at mine own shame : But I for love to you love to fair Spain, Chuse rather to rip up a queen's disgrace, Than, by concealing it, to set the crown Upon a bustard's head. Lust's Don. Sc. iv. Act 3. Compare this avowal with the confession which Bonaparte either obtained, or pretended to have obtained, from the mother of Ferdinand VII., in 1808, and one might almost imagine that he had consulted Marlowe's tragedy. THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE. COMB live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove, That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. And I will make thee beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies : A cap of flowers, and a kirtle, Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle. [* Marlowe closed his life of gross impiety and careless debauchery, at Deptford, where, in the register of the hurch of St. Nicholas, may still be read the entry, "Chris- topher Marlow, slaine by ffrancis Archer, the 1 of June, A gown made of the finest wool, Which from our pretty lambs we pull ; Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold. A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs ; And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me, and be my love. The shepherd swains shall dance and sing, For they delight each May morning. If these delights thy mind may move, Come live with me, and be my love. 1593." See for the circumstances of his death, and a very interesting biographical and critical notice of Marlowe and his works. Mr. Dyce's edition, 3 vols. 8vo, London, Pick- ering, I860. Q.] ROBERT SOUTHWELL [Born, 1560. Died, 1595.] Is said to have been descended from an ancient and respectable family in Norfolk, and being sent abroad for his education, became a Jesuit at Rome. He was appointed prefect of studies there in 1585, and, not long after, was sent as a missionary into England. His chief residence was with Anne, Countess of Arundel, who died in the Tower of London. Southwell was apprehended in July, 1592, and carried before Queen Elizabeth's agents, who endeavoured to extort from him some dis- closure of secret conspiracies against the govern- ment ; but he was cautious at his examination, and declined answering a number of ensnaring questions. Upon which, being sent to prison, he remained near three years in strict confinement, was repeatedly put to the rack, and, as he himself affirmed, underwent very severe tortures no less than ten times. He owned that he was a priest and a Jesuit, that he came into England to preach the Catholic religion, and was prepared to lay down his life in the cause. On the 20th of Feb- ruary, 1595, he was brought to his trial at the King's Bench, was condemned to die, and was exe- cuted the next day, at Tyburn. His writings, of which a numerous list is given in the sixty-seventh volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, togethoi with the preceding sketch of his life, were pro- bably at one time popular among the Catholics. 104 THOMAS WATSON. In a small collection of his pieces there are two specimens of his prose compositions, entitled ' Mary Magdalene's Tears," and the " Triumph over Death," which contain some eloquent sen- tences. Nor is it possible to read the volume without lamenting that its author should have been either the instrument of bigotry, or the ob- ject of persecution. LOVE'S SERVILE LOT. LOVE mistress is of many minds, Yet few know whom they serve ; They reckon least how little hope Then' service doth deserve. The will she robbeth from the wit, The sense from reason's lore ; She is delightful in the rind, Corrupted in the core. . . . May never was the month of love ; For May is full of flowers ; But rather April, wet by kind ; For love is full of showers. With soothing words inthralled souls She chains in servile bands ! Her eye in silence hath a speech Which eye best understands. Her little sweet hath many sours, Short hap, immortal harms : Her loving looks are murdering darts, Her songs bewitching charms. Like winter rose, and summer ice, Her joys are still untimely ; Before her hope, behind remorse, Fair first, in fine unseemly. Plough not the seas, sow not the sands, Leave off" your idle pain ; Seek other mistress for your minds, Love's service is in vain. LOOK HOME. RETIRED thoughts enjoy their own delights, As beauty doth in self-beholding eye : Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights, A brief wherein all miracles summed lie ; Of fairest forms, and sweetest shapes the store, Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more. The mind a creature is, yet can create, To nature's patterns adding higher skill Of finest works ; wit better could the state, If force of wit had equal power of will. Devise of man working hath no end ; What thought can think, another thought can mend. Man's soul of endless beauties image is, Drawn by the work of endless skill and might: This skilful might gave many sparks of bliss, And, to discern this bliss, a native light, To frame God's image as his worth required , His might, his skill, his word and will con- spired. All that he had, his image should present ; All that it should present, he could afford ; To that he could afford his will was bent ; His will wa followed with performing word. Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest, He should, he could, he would, he did the best. WAS a native of London, and studied the com- mon law, but from the variety of his productions (Vide Theatrum Poetarum, p. 213) would seem THOMAS WATSON [Born, I860. Died about 1592.] to have devoted himself to lighter studies. Mr. Steevens has certainly overrated his sonnets in preferring them to Shakspeare's.* THE NYMPHS TO THEIR MAY QUEEN. From England's Helicon. WITH fragrant flowers we strew the way, And make this our chief holiday : For though this clime was blest of yore, Yet was it never proud before. beauteous queen of second Troy, Accept of our unfeigned joy. Now the air is sweeter than sweet balm, And satyrs dance about the palm ; Now earth with verdure newly dight, Gives perfect signs of her delight : O beauteous queen ! Now birds record new harmony, And trees do whistle melody : And every thing that nature breeds Doth clad itself in pleasant weeds. The word Sonnet, in its laxest sense, means a small onpj ->t verses; in its true and accepted sense, a poem of SONNET. ACTION lost, in middle of his sport, Both shape and life for looking but awry : Diana was afraid he would report What secrets he had seen in passing by. To tell the truth, the self-same hurt have I, By viewing her for whom I daily die ; I leese my wonted shape, in that my mind Doth suffer wreck upon the stony rock Of her disdain, who, contrary to kind, Does bear a breast more hard than any stock ; And former form of limbs is changed quite By cares in love, and want of due delight. I leave my life, in that each secret thought Which I conceive through wanton fond regard, Doth make me say that life availeth nought, Where service cannot have a due reward. I dare not name the nymph that works my smart, Though love hath graven her name within my heart. fourteen lines, written in heroic verse, with alternate and couplet rhymes. Watson's sonnets are all of eighteen lines. EDMUND SPENSER, [Bon, 1553. Died, 1598-9.] DESCENDED from the ancient and honourable family of Spenser, was born in London, in East Smithfield, by the Tower, probably about the year 1553. He studied at the university of Cam- bridge, where it appears, from his correspondence, that he formed an intimate friendship with the learned, but pedantic, Gabriel Harvey.* Spen- ser, with Sir P. Sydney, was, for a time, a con- vert to Harvey's Utopian scheme for changing the measures of English poetry into those of the Greeks and Romans. Spenser even wrote trimeter iambicsf suffi- ciently bad to countenance the English hexame- ters of his friend ; but the Muse would not suffer such a votary to be lost in the pursuit after chi- meras, and recalled him to her natural strains. From Cambridge Spenser went to reside with some relations in the north of England, and, in this retirement, conceived a passion for a mistress, whom he has celebrated under the name of Rosa- lind. It appears, however, that she trifled with his affection, and preferred a rival. Harvey, or Hobinol (by so uncouth a name did the shepherd of hexameter memory, the learned Harvey, deign to be called in Spenser's eclogues), with better judgment than he had shown in poeti- cal matters, advised Spenser to leave his rustic obscurity, and introduced him to Sir Philip Syd- ney, who recommended him to his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. The poet was invited to the family seat of Sydney at Penshurst, in Kent, where he is supposed to have assisted the Platonic studies of his gallant and congenial friend. To him he de- dicated his " Shepheard's Calendar." Sydney did not bestow unqualified praise on those eclogues ; he allowed that they contained much poetry, but condemned the antique rusticity of the language. It was of these eclogues, and not of the Fairy Queen (as has been frequently misstated), that Ben Jonson said, that the author in affecting the ancients had written no language at all.J They gained, however, so many admirers, as to pass through five editions in Spenser's lifetime ; and though Dove, a contemporary scholar, who trans- lated them into Latin, speaks of the author being unknown, yet when Abraham Fraunce, in 1583, published his " Lawyer's Logicke," he illustrated his rules by quotations from the Shepheard's Ca- lendar. Pope, Dryden and Warton have extolled those eclogues, and Sir William Jones has placed Spen- ser and Gay as the only genuine descendants of * For an account of Harvey, the reader may consult Wood's Athen. Oxon. vol. i. Font! col. 1:28. t A short example of Spenser's lambicum Trimetrmn will Buffice, from a copy of verses in one of his own lotteri to Harvey. Unhappy verse 1 the witness of my unhappy state, 14 Theocritus and Virgil in pastoral poetry. Thia decision may be questioned. Favourable as the circumstances of England have been to the de- velopment of her genius in all the higher walks of poetry, they have not been propitious to the humbler pastoral muse. Her trades and manu- factures, the very blessings of her wealth and in- dustry, threw the indolent shepherd's life to a dis- tance from her cities and capital, where poets, with all their love of the country, are generally found ; and impressed on the face of the country, and on its rustic manners, a gladsome, but not romantic appearance. In Scotland, on the contrary, the scenery, rural economy of the country, and the songs of the peasantry, sung, " at the watching of the fold," presented Ramsay with a much nearer image of pastoral life, and he accordingly painted it with the fresh feeling and enjoyment of nature. Had Sir William Jones understood the dialect of that poet, I am convinced that he would not have awarded the pastoral crown to any other author. Ramsay's shepherds are distinct, intelligible beings, neither vulgar, like the caricatures of Gay, nor fantastic, like those of Fletcher. They afford such a view of national peasantry as we should wish to acquire by travelling among them ; and form a draft entirely devoted to rural manners, which for truth, and beauty, and extent, has no parallel in the richer language of England. Shakspeare's pastoral scenes are only subsidiary to the main interest of the plays where they are introduced. Milton's are rather pageants of fancy than pic- tures of real life. The shepherds of Spenser's Calendar are parsons in disguise, who converse about heathen divinities and points of Christian theology. Palinode defends the luxuries of the Catholic clergy, and Piers extols the purity of Archbishop Grindal ; concluding with the story of a fox, who came to the house of a goat, in the character of a pedlar, and obtained admittance by pretending to be a sheep. This may be bur- lesquing -Ksop, but certainly is not imitating Theocritus. There are fine thoughts and images in the Calendar, but, on the whole, the obscurity of those pastorals is rather their covering than their principal defect. In 1580, Arthur Lord Grey, of Wilton, went as lord-lieutenant to Ireland, and Spenser accompa- nied him as his secretary ; we may suppose by the recommendation of the Earl of Leicester. Lord Grey was recalled from his Irish govern- Make thyself fluttering wings of thy fast Hying Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be Whether lying restless in heavy bd, or else Sitting so cheerless at the cheerful board, or else Playing alone, careless on her heavenly virginals. [J Ben Jousuu's Works, by Gilford, vol. ix. p. '215. C.J 105 106 EDMUND SPENSER. ment in 1582, and Spenser returned with him to England, where, by the interest of Grey, Leices- ter, and Sydney, he obtained a grant from Queen Elizabeth of 3028 acres in the county of Cork, out of the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond. This was the last act of kindness which Sydney had a share in conferring on him : he died in the same year, furnishing an almost solitary instance of virtue passing through life uncalumniated. Whether Sydney was meant or not, under the character of Prince Arthur in the Fairy Queen, we cannot conceive the poet, in describing heroic excellence, to have had the image of Sir Philip Sydney long absent from his mind. By the terms of the royal grant, Spenser was obliged to return to Ireland, in order to cultivate the lands assigned to him. His residence at Kil- colman, an ancient castle of the Earls of Des- mond, is described by one* who had seen its ruins, as situated on the north side of a fine lake, in the midst of a vast plain, which was terminated to the east by the Waterford mountains, on the north by the Ballyhowra hills, and by the Nagle and Kerry mountains on the south and east. It com- manded a view of above half the breadth of Ireland, and must have been, when the adjacent uplands were wooded, a most romantic and pleasant situa- tion. The river Mulla, which Spenser has so often celebrated, ran through his grounds. In this retreat he was visited by Sir Walter Raleigh, at that time a captain in the queen's army. His visit occasioned the first resolution of Spenser to prepare the first books of the Fairy Queen for immediate publication. Spenser has commemo- rated this interview, and the inspiring influence of Raleigh's praise, under the figurative descrip- tion of two shepherds tuning their pipes, beneath the alders of the Mulla / a fiction with which the mind, perhaps, will be much less satisfied, rfian by recalling the scene as it really existed. When we conceive Spenser reciting his composi- tions to Raleigh, in a scene so beautifully appro- priate, the mind casts a pleasing retrospect over that influence which the enterprise of the disco- verer of Virginia, and the genius of the author of the Fairy Queen, have respectively produced on the fortune and language of England. The fancy might even be pardoned for a momentary superstition, that the Genius of their country ho- vered, unseen, over their meeting, casting her first look of regard on the poet that was destined to inspire her future Milton, and the other on the maritime hero, who paved the way for colonizing distant regions of the earth, where the language of England was to be spoken, and the poetry of Spenser to be admired. Raleigh, whom the poet accompanied to England, introduced him to Queen Elizabeth. Her majesty, hi 1590-1, conferred on him a pension of 50/. a year. In the patent for his pension he is not styled the laureat, but his contemporaries have frequently addressed him by * Smith's History of Cork, quoted by Todd. t Viz. 1. The Ruing of Time. 2. The Tears of the Muses. 3. Virgil's Gnat. 4. Proscpopoia, or Mother Hubbard's that title. Mr. Malone's discovery of the patent for this pension refutes the idle story of Burleigh's preventing the royal bounty being bestowed upon the poet, by asking if so much money was to be given for a song ; as well as that of Spenser's pro- curing it at last by the doggrel verses^ I was promised, on a time, To have reason for my rhyme, &c. Yet there are passages in the Fairy Queen which unequivocally refer to Burleigh with severity. The coldness of that statesman to Spenser most probably arose from the poet's attachment to Lord Leicester and Lord Essex, who were each suc- cessively at the head of a party opposed to the Lord Chancellor. After the publication of the Fairy Queen, he returned to Ireland, and, during his absence, the fame which he had acquired by that poem (of which the first edition, however, contained only the first three books) induced his publisher to compile and reprint his smaller pieces.f He appears to have again visited Lon- don about the end of 1591, as his next publica- tion, the Elegy on Douglas Howard, daughter of Henry Lord Howard, is dated January 15912. From this period there is a long interval in the history of Spenser, which was probably passed in Ireland, but of which we have no account. He married, it is conjectured, in the year 1594, when he was past forty ; and it appears from his Epithalamium, that the nuptials were celebrated at Cork. In 1596, the second part of the Fairy Queen appeared, accompanied by a new edition of the first. Of the remaining six books, which would have completed the poet's design, only frag- ments have been brought to light ; and there is little reason to presume that they were regularly furnished. Yet Mr. Todd has proved that the contemporaries of Spenser believed much of his valuable poetry to have been lost, in the destruc- tion of his house in Ireland. In the same year, 1596, he presented to the queen his " View of the State of Ireland," which remained in manuscript, till it was published by Sir James Ware, in 1 633. Curiosity turns natu- rally to the prose work of so old and eminent a poet, which exhibits him in the three-fold charac- ter of a writer delineating an interesting country from his own observation, of a scholar tracing back its remotest history, and of a politician investigat- ing the causes of its calamities. The antiquities of Ireland have been since more successfully ex- plored ; though on that subject Spenser is still a respectable authority. The great value of the book is the authentic and curious picture of na- tional manners and circumstances which it exhi- bits ; and its style is as nervous as the matter is copious and amusing. A remarkable proposal, in his plan for the management of Ireland, is the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon system of Borseholders. His political views are strongly coercive, and consist of little more than station- Tale. 5. The Ruins of Rome, by Bellay. 6. Muiopotmos, or the Tale of the Butterfly. 7. Visions of the World's Vanitie. 8. Bellay's Visions. 9. Petrarch's Visions EDMUND SPENSER. 107 ing proper garrisons, and abolishing ancient cus- toms : and we find him declaiming bitterly against the Irish minstrels, and seriously dwelling on. the loose mantles, and glibs, or long hair, of the va- grant poor, as important causes of moral depra- vity. But we ought not try the plans of Spenser by modern circumstances, nor his temper by the liberality of more enlightened times. It was a great point to commence earnest discussion on such a subject. From a note in one of the oldest copies of this treatise, it appears that Spenser was at that time clerk to the council of the province of Ulster. In 1597, our poet returned to Ireland, and in the following year was destined to an ho- nourable situation, being recommended by her majesty to be chosen sheriff for Cork. But in the subsequent month of that year, Tyrone's rebel- lion broke out, and occasioned his immediate flight, with his family, from Kilcolman. In the contu- sion attending this calamitous departure, one of his children was left behind, and perished in the conflagration of his house, when it was destroyed by the Irish insurgents. Spenser returned to Eng- land with a heart broken by distress, and died at London on the 16th of January, 1598-9. He was buried, according to his own desire, near the tomb of Chaucer; and -the most celebrated poets of the time (Shakspeare was probably of the num- ber), followed his hearse and threw tributary verses into his grave. . Mr. Todd, the learned editor of his works, has proved it to be highly improbable that he could have died, as has been sometimes said, in absolute want. For he had still his pension and many friends, among whom Essex provided nobly for his funeral. Yet that he died broken-hearted and comparatively poor, is but too much to be feared, from the testimony of his contemporaries, Cam- den and Jonson. A reverse of fortune might crush his spirit without his being reduced to abso- lute indigence, especially with the horrible recollec- tion of the manner in which his child had perished. FAIRY QUEEN, BOOK I., CANTO III. UNA FOLLOWED BY THE LION. Forsaken Truth long seeks her love, And makes the Lin mild ; Mars blind Devotion's mart, and fell* In hand of lecher wild NOUGHT is there under Heaven's wide hollowness, That moves more dear compassion of mind, Than beauty brought t'unworthy wretchedness, Through envy's snares,or fortune's freaks unkind. I, whether lately through her brightness blind, Or through allegiance and fast feiilty, Which I do owe unto all womankind, Feel my heart pierced with so great agony, When such I see, that all for pity I could die. And now it is impassioned so deep, For fairest Una's sake, of whom I sing, That my frail eyes these lines with tears do steep, To think how she through guileful handelling, Though true as touch, though daughter of a king, Though fair as ever living wight was fair, Though nor in word nor deed ill meriting, Is from her knight divorced in despair, And her due love's derived to that vile witch's share. Yet she, most faithful lady, all this while Forsaken, woeful, solitary maid, Far from all people's preace, as in exile, In wilderness and wasteful deserts stray'd, To seek her knight, who, subtily betray'd Through that late vision, which the enchanter wrought, Had her abandon'd : she, of nought afraid, Through woods and wasteness wide him daily sought ; Yet wished tidings none of him unto her brought. One day, nigh weary of the irksome way, From her unhasty beast she did alight; And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay In secret shadow, far from all men's sight ; From her fair head her fillet she undight, And laid her stole aside : her angel's face, As the great eye of heaven, shined bright, And made a sunshine in a shady place ; Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace. It fortuned, out of the thickest wood, A ramping lion rushed suddenly, Hunting full greedy after savage blood ; Soon as the royal virgin he did spy, With gaping mouth at her ran greedily, To have at once devour'd her tender corse ; But to the prey when as he drew more nigh, His bloody rage assuaged with remorse, And, with the sight amazed, forgot his furious force. Instead thereof he kiss'd her weary feet, And lick'd her lily hands with fawning tongue, As he her wronged innocence did weet. how can beauty master the most strong, And simple truth subdue avenging wrong ! Whose yielded pride and proud submission. Still dreading death, when she had marked long, Her heart 'gan melt in great compassion, And drizzling tears did shed for pure affection. " The lion, lord of every beast in field," Quoth she, " his princely puissance doth abate, And mighty proud to humble weak does yield, Forgetful of the hungry rage which late Him prick'd, in pity of my sad estate : But he, my lion, and my noble lord, How does he find in cruel heart to hate Her that him loved, and ever most adored, As the God of my life ] why hath he me abhorr'd ]" Redounding tears did choke th' end of her plaint, Which softly echoed from the neighbour wood ; And, sad to see her sorrowful constraint, The kingly beast upon her gazing stood ; With pity calm'd, down fell his angry mood. At last, in close heart shutting up her pain, Arose the virgin, born of heavenly blood, And to her snowy palfrey got again, To seek her strayed champion, if she might attain 108 EDMUND SPENSER. The lion would not leave her desolate, But with her went along, as a strong guard Of her chaste person, and a faithful mate Of her sad troubles, and misfortunes hard. Still, when she slept, he kept both watch and ward ; And, when she waked, he waited diligent, With humble service to her will prepared : From her fair eyes he took comnaandement, And ever by her looks conceived, her intent BOOK I., CANTO V. TOE FAITHFUL KNIGHT HAVING KILLED THE SARACEN SANSFOY, DUESS* THE WITCH MAKES A JOURNEY TO THE INFERNAL HEGIOSS TO RECOVER THE BODY OF HER INFIDEL CHAMPION. So wept Duessa until eventide, That shining lamps in love's high house were light; Then forth she rose, no longer would abide, But comes unto the place where th' heathen knight, In slumb'ring swoon'd, nigh void of vital sp'rit, Lay cover'd with enchanted cloud all day ; Whom, when she found, as she him left in plight, To wail his woeful case she would not stay, But to the eastern coast of Heaven makes speedy way. Where grisly Night, with visage deadly sad, That Phoebus' cheerful face durst never view, And in a foul black pitchy mantle clad, She finds forthcoming from her darksome mew, Where she all day did hide her hated hue. Before the door her iron chariot stood, Already harnessed for journey new ; And coal-black steeds, yborn of hellish brood, That on their rusty bits did champ as they were wood." So well they sped, that they be come at length Unto the place whereas the Paynim lay, Devoid of outward sense and native strength, Cover'd with charmed cloud, from view of day And sight of men, since his late luckless fray. His cruel wounds with cruddy blood congeal'd, They binden up so wisely as they may, And handled softy till they can be heal'.d : So lay him in her chari't, close in Night conceal'd. And all the while she stood upon the ground, The wakeful dogs did never cease to bay, As giving warning of th' unwonted sound, With which her iron wheels did them affray, And her dark grisly look them much dismay ; The messenger of death, the ghastly owl, With dreary shrieks did also her bewray ; And hungry wolves continually did howl At her abhorred face, so filthy and so foul. By that same way the direful dames do drive Their mournful chariot, fill'd with rusty blood, And down to Pluto's house are come bilive ; b Which passing through, on every side them stood The trembling ghosts, with sad amazed mood, Chattering their iron teeth, and staring wide With stony eyes ; and all the hellish brood Of fiends infernal flock'd on every side [ride. T gaze on earthly wight, that with the Night durst Quickly. BOOK II, CANTO VI. A HARDER lesson to learn continence In joyous pleasure than in grievous pain ; For sweetness doth allure the weaker sense So strongly, that uneathes it can refrain From that which feeble nature covets fain ; But grief and wrath, that be her enemies And foes of life, she better can restrain : Yet Virtue vaunts in both her victories, And Guyon in them all shows goodly masteries. When bold Cymochles travelling to find, With cruel purpose bent to wreak on him The wrath which Atin kindled in his mind, Came to a river, by whose utmost brim Waiting to pass, he saw whereas did swim Along the shore, as swift as glance of eye, A little gondelay, bedecked trim With boughs and arbours woven cunningly. That like a little forest seemed outwardly ; And therein sate a lady fresh and fair, Making sweet solace to herself alone ; Sometimes she sung as loud as lark in air, Sometimes she laugh'd, that nigh her breath was Yet was there not with her else any one, [gone, That to her might move cause of merriment ; Matter of mirth enough, though there were none, She could devise, and thousand ways invent To feel her foolish humour and vainjollunent. Which when far off, Cymochles heard and saw, He loudly call'd to such as were aboard The little bark, unto the shore to draw, And him to ferry over that deep ford : The merry mariner unto his word Soon heark'ned, and her pain ted boat straightway Turn'd to the shore, where that same warlike lord She in received ; but Atin by no way She would admit, albe the knight her much did pray. Eftsoons her shallow ship away did slide, More swift than swallow sheers the liquid sky, W'ithouten oar or pilot it to guide, Or winged canvas with the wind to fly : Only she turn'd a pin, and by and by It cut away upon the yielding wave ; Ne cared she her course for to apply, For it was taught the way which she would have, And both from rocks and flats itself could wisely save. And all the way the wanton damsel found New mirth her passenger to entertain ; For she in pleasant purpose did abound, And greatly joyed, merry tales to feign, Of which a store-house did with her remain, Yet seemed nothing well they her became ; For all her words she drown'd with laughter vain, And wanted grace in utt'ring of the same, That turned all her pleasaunce to a scoffing game. And other whiles vain toys she would devise As her fantastic wit did most delight : Sometimes her head she fondly would aguize With gaudy garlands, or fresh flowrets dight About her neck, or rings of rushes plight : EDMUND SPENSER. 109 Sometimes to do him laugh, she would assay To laugh at shaking of the leaves light, Or to behold the water work and play About her little frigate, therein making way. Her light behaviour and loose dalliance Gave wondrous great contentment to the knight, That of his way he had no sovenaunce, Nor care of vow'd revenge and cruel fight, But to weak wench did yield his martial might : So easy was to quench his flamed mind With one sweet drop of sensual delight ; So easy is t' appease the stormy wind Of malice in the calm of pleasant womankind. Diverse discourses in their way they spent ; 'Mongst which Cymochles of her questioned Both what she was, and what the usage meant, Which in her cot she daily practised ] "Vain man !" said she, " that wouldst be reckoned A stranger in thy home, and ignorant Of Phcedria (for so my name is read) Of Phcedria, thine own fellow-servant : For thou to serve Acrasia thyself dost vaunt. "In this wide inland sea, that hight by name The Idle Lake, my wand'ring ship I row, That knows her port, and thither sails by aim, Ne care ne fear I how the wind do blow, Or whether swift I wend or whether slow : Both slow and swift alike do serve my turn : Ne swelling Neptune, ne loud-thund'ring Jove, Can change my cheer, or make me ever mourn ; My little boat can safely pass this perilous bourne." Whiles thus she talk'd, and whiles thus she toy'd, They were far past the passage which he spake, And come unto an island waste and void, That floated in the midst of that great lake ; There her small gondelay her port did make, And that gay pair issuing on the shore Disburthen'd her : their way they forward take Into the land that lay them fair before, Whose pleasaunce she him shew'd, and plentiful great store. It was a chosen plot of fertile land, Amongst wide waves set like a little nest, As if it had by Nature's cunning hand Been choicely picked out from all the rest, And laid forth for ensample of the best : No dainty flower or herb that grows on ground, Nor arboret with painted blossoms drest, And smelling sweet, but there it might be found To bud out fair, and her sweet smells throw all around. No tree, whose branches did not bravely spring ; No branch, whereon a fine bird did not sit ; No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetly sing ; No song, but did contain a lovely dit. Trees, branches, birds, and songs, were framed fit F