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"Choice nymph! the crown of chaste Diana's train,
Thou beauty's lily, set in heavenly earth;
Thy fairs unpattern'd all perfection stain:1
Sure Heaven with curious pencil at thy birth
In thy rare face her own full picture drew;
It is a strong verse here to write, but true,
Hyperboles in others, are but half thy due.

"Upon her forehead love his trophies fits,
A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying;
And in the midst himself all proudly sits,
Himself in awful majesty arraying:

Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow,

And ready shafts: deadly those weapons show: Yet sweet that death appear'd, lovely that deadly blow.2

FROM THE "MISCELLANIES."

AGAINST A RICH MAN DESPISING POVERTY.

If well thou view'st us with no squinted eye,
No partial judgment, thou wilt quickly rate
Thy wealth no richer than my poverty,
My want no poorer than thy rich estate:

Our ends and births alike; in this, as I,
Poor thou wert born, and poor again shalt die.

My little fills my little wishing mind,
Thou having more than much yet seekest more:
Who seeks, still wishes what he seeks to find;
Who wishes wants: and whoso wants is poor;
Then this must follow of necessity;
Poor are thy riches, rich my poverty.

*

*

Whatever man possesses, God has lent;
And to his audit liable is ever

*

To reckon how, and where, and when he spent ;
Then thus thou bragg'st thou art a great receiver.
Little my debt when little is my store,

The more thou hast, thy debt still grows the more.

But seeing God himself descended down,

To enrich the poor by his rich poverty;

His meat, his house, his grave, were not his own;
Yet all is his from all eternity:

Let me be like my head whom I adore!

Be thou great, wealthy-I still base and poor! 1 Thy incomparable beauties throw all perfection into the shade. * Compare Parthenia with Spencer's Belphabe.-See p. 62.

FROM CHRIST'S VICTORY AND TRIUMPH.

A HYMN.

Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet,
Which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace!
Cease not, wet eyes, His mercy to entreat!

To cry for vengeance sin doth never cease.

In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears;
Nor let his eye see sin but through my tears.

FROM "CHRIST'S VICTORY AND TRIUMPH."
THE DEMAND OF JUSTICE.

Upon two stony tables, spread before her,
She lean'd her bosom, more than stony hard,
There slept the impartial judge, and strict restorer
Of wrong, or right, with pain, or with reward
There hung the score1 of all our debts, the card

Where good, and bad, and life, and death, were painted:
Was never heart of mortal so untainted,

But when that scroll was read, with thousand terrors fainted.

Witness the thunder that mount Sinai heard,
When all the hill with fiery clouds did flame,
And wand'ring Israel, with the sight afear'd,
Blinded with seeing, durst not touch the same,
But like a wood of shaking leaves became.

On this dread Justice, she, the living law,
Bowing herself with a majestic awe,

All Heaven, to hear her speech, did into silence draw.

"Dread Lord of Spirits, well thou didst devise To fling the world's rude dunghill and the dross Of the old chaos, farthest from the skies

And thine own seat, that here the child of loss,

Of all the lower heaven the curse and cross,

That wretch, beast, captive, monster, man, might spend
(Proud of the mire, in which his soul is penn'd),

Clodded in lumps of clay, his weary life to end.

"His body, dust-where grew such cause of pride?
His soul, thy image :--what could he envy?
Himself, most happy, if he so would bide:
Now grown most wretched,-who can remedy?
He slew himself, himself the enemy.

That his own soul would her own murder wreak,2
If I were silent, Heaven and Earth would speak;

And if all fail'd, these stones would into clamours break.3

149

1 Reckoning; from the custom of chalking a line or score for each item of debt incurred. Allusions to this are innumerable-"Here's no scoring but upon the pate," says Falstaff in the battle of Shrewsbury, with a rueful remembrance of the less destructive scoring of tavern bills. 2 Insisted upon working her own murder. 3 Luke xix. 40.

"How many darts made furrows in his side,
When she, that out of his own side was made,
Gave feathers to their flight? where was the pride
Of their new knowledge? whither did it fade,
When, running from thy voice into the shade,

He fled thy sight, himself of light bereaved;
And for his shield a heavy armour weaved,
With which, vain man, he thought God's eyes to have
deceived?

"And well he might delude those eyes that see, And judge by colours; for whoever saw

A man of leaves, a reasonable tree?

But those that from this stock their life did draw,
Soon made their father godly,1 and by law

Proclaimed trees almighty: gods of wood,

Of stocks and stones, with crowns of laurel stood, Templed, and fed by fathers with their children's blood.

"The sparkling fanes, that burn in beaten gold,
And, like the stars of Heaven in midst of night,
Black Egypt, as her mirrors, doth behold,
Are but the dens where idol-snakes delight
Again to cover Satan from their sight:

Yet these are all their gods, to whom they vie
The crocodile, the cock, the rat, the fly,
Fit gods, indeed, for such men to be served by.

"The fire, the wind, the sea, the Sun, and Moon,
The flitting air, and the swift wingéd hours,
And all the watchmen, that so nimbly run,
And sentinel about the walléd towers

Of the world's city, in their heavenly bowers;

And, lest their pleasant gods should want delight
Neptune spues out the lady Aphrodite,2

And but in Heaven proud Juno's peacocks3 scorn to light.

"The senseless earth, the serpent, dog, and cat;
And worse than all these, man, and worst of men,
Usurping Jove, and swelling Bacchus fat,

And drunk with the vine's purple blood; and then
The fiend himself they conjure from his den,

Because he only yet remain'd to be

Worse than the worst of men; they flee from thee, And wear his altar stones out with their pliant knee.

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1 Deified their ancestor.

Venus; the foam-born, so called from the fable that she rose from the sea near the island of Cythera.

The peacock was the bird of Juno; the cagle, of Jove; the dove of Venus.

FROM CHRIST'S VICTORY AND TRIUMPH. 151

"Who makes the sources of the silver fountains
From the flint's mouth, and rocky valleys slide,
Thickening the airy bowels of the mountains?
Who hath the wild herds of the forest tied
In their cold dens, making them hungry bide,'
Till man to rest be laid? can, beastly, he,

That should have most sense, only senseless be,
And all things else, beside himself, so aweful3 see?

"Were he not wilder than the savage beast,
Prouder than haughty hills, harder than rocks,
Colder than fountains from their springs released,
Lighter than air, blinder than senseless stocks,
More changing than the river's curling locks;

If reason would not, sense would soon reprove him,
And unto shame, if not to sorrow move him,

To see cold floods, wild beasts, dull stocks, hard stones out-love him.

"Under the weight of sin the earth did fall,
And swallow'd Dathan, and the raging wind,
And stormy sea, and gaping whale, did call
For Jonas and the air did bullets find,
And shot from heaven a stony show'r to grind

The five proud kings, that for their idols fought,

The Sun itself stood still to fight it out,

And fire from Heaven flew down, when sin to Heaven did shout.*

PHILIP MASSINGER.

(1584-1640.)

PHILIP, the son of Arthur Massinger, a gentleman in the service of the Earl of Pembroke, was born at Salisbury in 1584. After receiving his early training in Wiltshire, he went up to Oxford, where for a time he was kept at the charge of Lord Pembroke. He left the university at twenty-two, and repaired to London, where he devoted his life to the cause of the drama, and became a fellow-worker with Shakespeare, Johnson, and Fletcher. Although his plays attracted much attention, he appears to have lived in great poverty. Mental toil and poor living undermined his health. He was found dead in his house at Bankside. His body was attended by the comedians of London to the churchyard of St. Saviour's, where the interment is registered, "March 20, 1640;

1 Compare Job xxxviii. et seq. 2 Unintelligent like a beast.

4 "Dathan."-Num. xvi. 27-33.

still."-Josh. x. 11, 13. "Fire came

Aweful, reverential; full of the fear of God. "Stony shower."-Josh. x. II. "Sun stood down."-2 Kings xviii. 26-40.

buried Philip Massinger, a stranger." His chief works are "The Unnatural Combat," ," "The Duke of Milan," "The Great Duke of Florence," and "A New Way to Pay Old Debts." Less pathetic and less imaginative than most of the secondary dramatists, he is more melodious than them all. His comedies are deficient in humour, but contain many accurate and interesting sketches of life.

FROM "A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD Debts."

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Lovell. Are you not frighted with the imprecations
And curses of whole families, made wretched

By your sinister practices?

Over-reach. Yes, as rocks are,

When foaming billows split themselves against
Their flinty ribs; or as the moon is moved,

When wolves, with hunger pined, howl at her brightness,

I am of a stolid temper, and like these,

Steer on, a constant course, with mine own sword.

If called into the field, I can make that right,
Which fearful enemies murmured at as wrong.
Now, for these other piddling complaints
Breathed out in bitterness: as when they call me
Extortioner, tyrant, cormorant, or intruder
On my poor neighbour's right, or grand incloser
Of what was common, to my private use;
Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows' cries,
And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold,
I only think what 'tis to have my daughter

"Right Honourable ;" and 'tis a powerful charm
Makes me insensible of remorse, or pity,

Or the least sting of conscience.

Lovell. I admire

The toughness of your nature!

WILLIAM DRUMMOND.

(1585-1649.)

"DRUMMOND, the first Scotch poet who wrote well in English, was born at Hawthornden" (Southey), near Edinburgh. His father, Sir John Drummond, held a situation about the person of James VI. The poet in his youth studied law, but relinquishing that profession, he retired to a life of ease and literature on his beautiful patrimonial estate. His happiness was suddenly interrupted by the death of a lady to whom

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