(The starting air flew from the damned sprite), thrown into prison. He published various treatises, satires, and poems, during this period, though he was treated with great rigour. He was released, under bond for good behaviour, in 1663, and survived nearly four years afterwards, dying in London on the 2d of May 1667. Wither's fame as a poet is derived chiefly from his Where deeply both aggriev'd plunged themselves in early productions, written before he had imbibed the night. But to their Lord, now musing in his thought, A heavenly volley of light angels flew, And from his father him a banquet brought sectarian gloom of the Puritans, or become embroiled in the struggles of the civil war. A collection of his poems was published by himself in 1622, with the title, Mistress of Philarete; his Shepherds' Hunting, being certain Eclogues written during the time of the author's imprisonment in the Marshalsea, appeared in 1633. His Collection of Emblems, ancient and modern, Quickened with Me All thought to pass, and each was past all thought trical Illustrations, made their appearance in 1635. divine. The birds' sweet notes, to sonnet out their joys, And to the birds the winds attune their noise; That the whole valley rung with victory. GEORGE WITHER. GEORGE WITHER (1588-1667) was a voluminous author, in the midst of disasters and sufferings that would have damped the spirit of any but the most adventurous and untiring enthusiast. Some of his happiest strains were composed in prison: his limbs were incarcerated within stone walls and iron bars, but his fancy was among the hills and plains, with shepherds hunting, or loitering with Poesy, by rustling boughs and murmuring springs. There is a freshness and natural vivacity in the poetry of Wither, that render his early works a 'perpetual feast.' We cannot say that it is a feast where no crude surfeit reigns,' for he is often harsh, obscure, and affected; but he has an endless diversity of style and subjects, and true poetical feeling and expression. Wither was a native of Hampshire, and received his education at Magdalen College, Oxford. He first appeared as an author in the year 1613, when he published a satire, entitled Abuses Stript and Whipt. For this he was thrown into the Marshalsea, where he composed his fine poem, The Shepherds' Hunting. When the abuses satirised by the poet had accumulated and brought on the civil war, Wither took the popular side, and sold his paternal estate to raise a troop of horse for the parliament. He rose to the rank of a major, and in 1642 was made governor of Farnham Castle, afterwards held by Denham. Wither was accused of deserting his appointment, and the castle was ceded the same year to Sir William Waller. During the struggles of that period, the poet was made prisoner by the royalists, and stood in danger of capital punishment, when Denham interfered for his brother bard, alleging, that as long as Wither lived, he (Denham) would not be considered the worst poet in England. The joke was a good one, if it saved Wither's life; but George was not frightened from the perilous contentions of the times. He was afterwards one of Cromwell's majors general, and kept watch and ward over the royalists of Surrey. From the sequestrated estates of these gentlemen, Wither obtained a considerable fortune; but the Restoration came, and he was stript of all his possessions. He remonstrated loudly and angrily; his remonstrances were voted libels, and the unlucky poet was again His satirical and controversial works were numerous, but are now forgotten. Some authors of our own day (Mr Southey in particular) have helped to popularise Wither, by frequent quotation and eulogy; but Mr Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English Poets, was the first to point out that playful fancy, pure taste, and artless delicacy of sentiment, which distinguish the poetry of his early youth.' His poem on Christmas affords a lively picture of the manners of the times. His Address to Poetry, the sole yet cheering companion of his prison solitude, is worthy of the theme, and superior to most of the effusions of that period. The pleasure with which he recounts the various charms and the divine skill' of his Muse, that had derived nourishment and delight from the 'meanest objects' of external nature-a daisy, a bush, or a tree; and which, when these picturesque and beloved scenes of the country were denied him, could gladden even the vaults and shades of a prison, is one of the richest offerings that has yet been made to the pure and hallowed shrine of poesy. The superiority of intellectual pursuits over the gratifications of sense, and all the malice of fortune, has never been more touchingly or finely illustrated. [The Companionship of the Muse.] (From the Shepherds' Hunting.) With Detraction's breath and thee: As that sun doth oft exhale Gross conceits from muddy brains; "Twixt men's judgments and her light: 125 For, if I could match thy rhyme, And though for her sake I'm crost, That more makes than mends my grief: (Whence she would be driven, too, Than all Nature's beauties can By her help I also now Make this churlish place allow Some things that may sweeten gladness, The dull loneness, the black shade, Therefore, thou best earthly bliss, Let my life no longer be Than I am in love with thee, Though our wise ones call thee madness, If I love not thy madd'st fits What make knaves and fools of them. Sonnet upon a Stolen Kiss. Now gentle sleep hath closed up those eyes The Steadfast Shepherd. Hence away, thou Syren, leave me, Pish! unclasp these wanton arms; Sugar'd words can ne'er deceive me, (Though thou prove a thousand charms). Fie, fie, forbear; No common snare Can ever my affection chain : Are all bestowed on me in vain. Neither shall that snowy breast, Thy beauty's ray To some more-soon enamour'd swain: Those common wiles, Of sighs and smiles, Are all bestowed on me in vain. I have elsewhere vow'd a duty; My spirit loathes Where gaudy clothes And feigned oaths may love obtain: Whose look swears no, Which on every breast are worn; That may pluck the virgin roses From their never-touched thorn? I can go rest On her sweet breast, That is the pride of Cynthia's train; Is all bestow'd on me in vain. He's a fool, that basely dallies Where each peasant mates with him : Shall I haunt the thronged vallies, Whilst there's noble hills to climb ? Are scar'd with frowns, I know the best can but disdain : Be all bestow'd on me in vain. I do scorn to vow a duty, Where each lustful lad may woo; So now is come our joyful'st feast; Each room with ivy leaves is drest, Now all our neighbours' chimneys smoke, Now every lad is wond'rous trim, Young men and maids, and girls and boys, Rank misers now do sparing shun; Their hall of music soundeth; And dogs thence with whole shoulders run, Ned Squash hath fetcht his bands from pawn, Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn Will have both clothes and dainty fare, Now poor men to the justices With capons make their errants; They plague them with their warrants: The poor, that else were undone ; And therefore let's be merry. For nuts and apples scrambling. The wenches with their wassail bowls Our kitchen boy hath broke his box, Now kings and queens poor sheepcotes have, The honest now may play the knave, To make our mirth the fuller: Bear witness we are merry WILLIAM BROWNE. name of Philarete in a pastoral poem; and Milton is supposed to have copied his plan in Lycidas. There is also a faint similarity in some of the sentiments and images. Browne has a very fine illustration of a rose: Look, as a sweet rose fairly budding forth Betrays her beauties to th' enamour'd morn, Until some keen blast from the envious north Kills the sweet bud that was but newly born; Or else her rarest smells, delighting, Make herself betray Some white and curious hand, inviting [A Descriptive Sketch.] WILLIAM BROWNE (1590-1645) was a pastoral and descriptive poet, who, like Phineas and Giles Fletcher, adopted Spenser for his model. He was a native of Tavistock, in Devonshire, and the beautiful scenery of his native county seems to have inspired his early strains. His descriptions are vivid and true to nature. Browne was tutor to the Earl of Carnarvon, and on the death of the latter at the battle of Newbury in 1643, he received the patronage and lived in the family of the Earl of Pembroke. In this situation he realised a competency, and, according to Wood, purchased an estate. He died at Ottery-St-Mary (the birth-place of Coleridge) in 1645. Browne's works consist of Britannia's Pastorals, the first part of which was published in 1613, the second part in 1616. He wrote, also, a pastoral O what a rapture have I gotten now! poem of inferior merit, entitled, The Shepherd's Pipe. That age of gold, this of the lovely brow, In 1620, a masque by Browne was produced at Have drawn me from my song! I onward run court, called The Inner Temple Masque; but it was (Clean from the end to which I first begun), not printed till a hundred and twenty years after But ye, the heavenly creatures of the West, the author's death, transcribed from a manuscript In whom the virtues and the graces rest, in the Bodleian Library. As all the poems of Pardon! that I have run astray so long, Browne were produced before he was thirty years of And grow so tedious in so rude a song. age, and the best when he was little more than If you yourselves should come to add one grace twenty, we need not be surprised at their containing Unto a pleasant grove or such like place, marks of juvenility, and frequent traces of resem- Where, here, the curious cutting of a hedge, blance to previous poets, especially Spenser, whom There in a pond, the trimming of the sedge; he warmly admired. His pastorals obtained the Here the fine setting of well-shaded trees, approbation of Selden, Drayton, Wither, and Ben The walks there mounting up by small degrees, Jonson. Britannia's Pastorals are written in the The gravel and the green so equal lie, heroic couplet, and contain much beautiful descrip- It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye: tive poetry. Browne had great facility of expression, Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air, and an intimate acquaintance with the phenomena Arising from the infinite repair of inanimate nature, and the characteristic features Of odoriferous buds, and herbs of price, of the English landscape. Why he has failed in (As if it were another paradise), maintaining his ground among his contemporaries, So please the smelling sense, that you are fain must be attributed to the want of vigour and con- Where last you walk'd to turn and walk again. densation in his works, and the almost total absence There the small birds with their harmonious notes of human interest. His shepherds and shepherdesses Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats: have nearly as little character as the silly sheep' For in her face a many dimples show, they tend; whilst pure description, that takes the And often skips as it did dancing go: place of sense,' can never permanently interest any Here further down an over-arched alley large number of readers. So completely had some That from a hill goes winding in a valley, of the poems of Browne vanished from the public You spy at end thereof a standing lake, view and recollection, that, had it not been for a Where some ingenious artist strives to make single copy of them possessed by the Rev. Thomas The water (brought in turning pipes of lead Warton, and which that poetical student and anti-Through birds of earth most lively fashioned) quary lent to be transcribed, it is supposed there would have remained little of those works which their author fondly hoped would Keep his name enroll'd past his that shines Warton cites the following lines of Browne, as con- By this had chanticleer, the viilage cock, To counterfeit and mock the sylvans all [Evening.] As in an evening, when the gentle air I oft have sat on Thames' sweet bank, to hear Browne celebrated the death of a friend under the With some sweet relish was forgot before: I would have been content if he would play, Yet, lest mine own delight might injure you, [Night.] The sable mantle of the silent night [Pastoral Employments.] But since her stay was long: for fear the sun Some, tales of love their love-sick fellows told; FRANCIS QUARLES. The writings of FRANCIS QUARLES (1592-1644) are more like those of a divine, or contemplative recluse, than of a busy man of the world, who held various public situations, and died at the age of fifty-two. Quarles was a native of Essex, educated at Cambridge, and afterwards a student of Lincoln's Inn. He was successively cup-bearer to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, secretary to Archbishop Usher, and chronologer to the city of London. He espoused the cause of Charles I., and was so harassed by the opposite party, who injured his property, and plundered him of his books and rare manuscripts, that his death was attributed to the affliction and ill health caused by these disasters. Notwithstanding his loyalty, the works of Quarles have a tinge of Puritanism and ascetic piety that might have mollified the rage of his persecutors. His poems consist of various pieces-Job Militant, Sion's Elegies, The History of Queen Esther, Argalus and Parthenia, The Morning Muse, The Feast of Worms, and The Divine Emblems. The latter were published in 1645, and were so popular, that Phillips, Milton's nephew, styles Quarles the darling of our plebeian judgments.' The eulogium still holds good to some extent, for the Divine Emblems, with their quaint and grotesque illustrations, are still found in the cottages of our peasants. After the Restoration, when everything sacred and serious was either neglected or made the subject of ribald jests, Quarles seems to have been entirely lost to the public. Even Pope, who, had he read him, must have relished his lively fancy and poetical expression, notices only his bathos and absurdity. The better and more tolerant taste of modern times has admitted the divine emblemist into the 'laurelled fraternity of poets,' where, That, for his lass, sought fruits, most sweet, most ripe. if he does not occupy a conspicuous place, he is at Here (from the rest), a lovely shepherd's boy [The Syren's Song.] (From the Inner Temple Masque.') Steer hither, steer your winged pines, Here lie undiscover'd mines A prey to passengers; Nor any to oppose you save our lips; Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more. For swelling waves our panting breasts, The compass, love shall hourly sing, We will not miss To tell each point he nameth with a kiss. least sure of his due measure of homage and attention. Emblems, or the union of the graphic and poetic arts, to inculcate lessons of morality and religion, had been tried with success by Peacham and Wither. Quarles, however, made Herman Hugo, a Jesuit, his model, and from the 'Pia Desideria' of this author, copied a great part of his prints and mottoes. His style is that of his age-studded with conceits, often extravagant in conception, and presenting the most outré and ridiculous combinations. There is strength, however, amidst his contortions, and true wit mixed up with the false. His epigrammatic point, uniting wit and devotion, has been considered the precursor of Young's Night Thoughts. Stanzas. As when a lady, walking Flora's bower, The Shortness of Life. And what's a life?-a weary pilgrimage, 9 |