FROM THE LOVER'S MELANCHOLY.

For they were rivals, and their mistress, Harmony.
Some minutes thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird,

Whom art had never taught clefs, moods, or notes,
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study

Had busied many hours to perfect practice:

To end the controversy, in a rapture

Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick,

That there was curiosity and cunning,

Concord and discord, lines of differing method,

Meeting in one full centre of delight.

Amet. Now for the bird.

Men. The bird, ordain'd to be

Music's first martyr, strove to imitate

These several sounds; which when her warbling throat
Fail'd in, for grief down dropp'd she on his lute,

And brake her heart! It was the quaintest sadness,
To see the conqueror upon her hearse

To weep a funeral elegy of tears;

That, trust me, my Amethus, I could chide

Mine own unmanly weakness that made me
A fellow-mourner with him.

Amet. I believe thee.

Men. He looked upon the trophies of his art,

Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes, then sigh'd and cried,

66

Alas, poor creature! I will soon revenge

This cruelty upon the author of it;

Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,

Shall never more betray a harmless peace

To an untimely end." And in that sorrow,
As he was pashing1 it against a tree,

I suddenly stept in.2

163

GEORGE WITHER.

(1588-1667.)

WITHER was "the descendant of a family that had for many generations possessed the property of Manydowne in Hampshire" (Campbell). Being recalled from a short residence at Oxford University to hold the plough on his native acres, he felt an impulsive repugnance to this cramping of his genius." The vivacity of his satire in "Abuses Whipt and Stript" procured him a residence in the Marshalsea. The fate of Wither's life was to have the prison for his muse, He is a "weft and

1 Dashing.

2 This tale, from the Latin of Strada, is a favourite of the poets. It was beautifully translated by Crashaw, who entitles it "Music's Duel."

stray" in the whirlwind of parties of the middle of the seventeenth century. Favoured by James I.; a royalist in the beginning of the troubles of Charles I.; a military captain in the war against the Scotch Covenanters; a major-general of Cromwell; saved, by a jest of Denham's, from execution by the royalists during his roundhead career; a monitor of Cromwell; a large profiter from confiscated royalist estates; a congratulator of Richard Cromwell's accession; an angry remonstrator against the disgorging of his spoils after the Restoration; a prisoner for just remonstrances against the illegal manner in which he was deprived of his fortune; a penman not to be silenced by age or prison-fetters:-these features constitute the physiognomy of Wither's varied life. A vein of honesty, or at least earnestness in present conviction, seems to run through his inconsistencies. He died in misery and obscurity at the age of seventy-nine. His literary life extends over about forty years of that period. His writings are, or rather if collected would be, voluminous.

66

Wither's early pieces display the freshness and animation of truly poetical feeling; but," says Campbell, as he mixed with the turbulent times, his fancy grew muddy with the stream. His diction is remarkable for its purely English character. Wither has, like many of his contemporaries and predecessors, been comparatively lately excavated from the oblivion into which the caprice of national taste had thrown him. For an excellent estimate of this old poet see Charles Lamb's Essays.

-Alas! my Muse is slow:
For thy page1 she flags too low:
Yes, the more's her hapless fate,
Her short wings were clipt of late.2
And poor I, her fortune rueing,
Am myself put up a mewing
But if I my cage can rid,
I'll fly where I never did.

And though for her sake I'm crost,
Though my best hopes I have lost,

And knew she would make my trouble
Ten times more than ten times double,
I would love and keep her too,
Spite of all the world could do.

For, though, banish'd from my flocks,
And confined within these rocks,

1 The eclogue is inscribed to his "truly beloved and loving friend Mr. William Browne of the Inner Temple."

The "Shepherd's Hunting" was published while he was confined in the Marshalsea for the publication of "Abuses Whipt and Stript."

FROM THE SHEPHERD'S HUNTING.

Here I waste away the light,
And consume the sullen night,
She doth for my comfort stay,
And keeps many cares away.
Though I miss the flowery fields,

With those sweets the spring-tide yields;
Though I may not see those groves,

Where the shepherds chant their loves,
And the lasses more excel,

Than the sweet-voiced Philomel;

Though of all those pleasures past,
Nothing now remains at last,

But remembrance (poor relief),

That more makes than mends my grief;
She's my mind's companion still,

Maugre Envy's evil will;

(Whence she should be driven too,
Wer't in mortal's power to do.)

She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow;
Makes the desolatest place
To her presence be a grace;
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss,
Her divine skill taught me this,
That from every thing I saw,
I could some invention draw,
And raise pleasure to her height,
Through the meanest object's sight;
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustling.
By a daisy, whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed,

Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me,

Than all Nature's beauties can1
In some other wiser man.

By her help, I also now,

Make this churlish place allow

Some things that may sweeten gladness,

In the very gall of sadness.

The dull loneness, the black shade,

That those hanging vaults have made;

The strange music of the waves,

Beating on these hollow caves;

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1 Wordsworth is fond of expressing this result of the poetical temperament. In describing the hardness of "Peter Bell's" mind, he gives as one of the proofs of it

A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.

This black den which rocks emboss,
Overgrown with eldest moss;
The rude portals that give light,
More to terror than delight;
This my chamber of neglect,
Wall'd about with disrespect;
From all these, and this dull air,
A fit object for despair,

She hath taught me by her might,
To draw comfort and delight.
Therefore thou best earthly bliss,
I will cherish thee for this.
Poesie, thou sweet'st content
That ere Heaven to mortals lent,
Though they as a trifle leave thee,

Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee;
Though thou be to them a scorn,

That to nought but earth are born,
Let my life no longer be

Than I am in love with thee.

Though our wise ones call it madness,
Let me never taste of sadness,
If I love not thy madd'st fits
Above all their greatest wits.

And though some too seeming holy
Do account thy raptures folly,

Thou dost teach me to contemn

What makes knaves and fools of them.1

FROM "A DIRGE."

Farewell,

Sweet groves to you!

You hills that highest dwell,

And all your humble vales adieu !

You wanton brooks and solitary rocks,

My dear companions all, and you my tender flocks!

Farewell, my pipe! and all those pleasing songs whose moving strains
Delighted once the fairest nymphs that dance upon the plains.
You discontents, whose deep and over-deadly smart
Have without pity broke the truest heart,

Sighs, tears, and every sad annoy,

That erst did with me dwell,

And others joy,
Farewell!2

1 Compare this whole passage with Ovid, Tristia, IV. 110.

2 The shape of this stanza, of a "rhomboidal dirge," as Ellis terms it, is an ex

ample of the affectation of moulding poems into the forms of objects.

EPITAPH ON DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 167

THOMAS CAREW.

(1589-1639.)

CAREW, the gay courtier poet of Charles I., is one of the best types of the style of light voluptuous poetry which ripened into such mischievous luxuriance in the reign of Charles II. He is of the metaphysical school of Donne, with something of his earnestness and heart, and with infinitely more of elegance and grace. His poems are all occasional and short, with the exception of the masque, "Coelum Britannicum," written at the request of Charles I. Among the poets," says Campbell, “who have walked the same limited path, he is pre-eminently beautiful, and deservedly ranks among the earliest of those who gave a cultivated grace to our lyrical strains."

Carew was descended from a Gloucestershire family; his life was a career of gaiety and license, but he seems to have been respected and beloved by all who knew him. Clarendon writes of him-" His glory was, that after fifty years of his life spent with less severity or exactness than they ought to have been, he died with the greatest remorse for that cense, and with the greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could desire."

EPITAPH ON THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.1

Reader, when these dumb stones have told
In borrowed speech what guest they hold,
Thou shalt confess the vain pursuit
Of human glory yields no fruit
But an untimely grave. If fate
Could constant happiness create,
Her ministers, fortune and worth,

Had here that miracle brought forth :
They fix'd this child of honour where
No room was left for hope or fear
Of more or less: so high, so great,
His growth was, yet so safe his seat:
Safe in the circle of his friends;
Safe in his loyal heart and ends;
Safe in his native valiant spirit;
By favour safe, and safe by merit ;
Safe by the stamp of Nature, which

Did strength with shape and grace enrich ;
Safe in the cheerful courtesies

Of flowing gestures, speech, and eyes;
Safe in his bounties, which were more
Proportion'd to his mind than store :
Yet though for virtue he becomes
Involved himself in borrow'd sums,

1 George Villiers, the favourite of James I. and Charles I. by the Irishman Felton, in revenge for some alleged injustice.

He was assassinated