FOREIGN VICES DEPRECATED.

And, from these springs, strange inundations flow,
To drown the sea-marks of humanity,

With massacres, conspiracy, treason, woe,
By sects and schisms profaning Deity:

Besides, with furies, fiends, earth, air, and hell,
They fit, and teach confusion to rebel.

But, as there lives a true God in the heaven,
So is there true religion here on earth:
By nature? No, by grace; not got but given;
Inspir'd, not taught; from God a second birth';
God dwelleth near about us, even within,
Working the goodness, censuring the sin.

Such as we are to him, to us is he,
Without God there was no man ever good;
Divine the author and the matter be,

Where goodness must be wrought in flesh and blood:
Religion stands not in corrupted things,
But virtues that descend have heavenly wings.

73

SAMUEL DANIEL.

(1562-1619.)

DANIEL was the son of a music master, and was born near Taunton, in Somerset. He was educated at Oxford, and applied himself early to history and poetry. His merit procured him the patronage of the great, particularly of Mary, Countess of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sidney. He was a favourite also of Anne of Denmark, the Queen of James I. His largest work is "The History of the Civil Wars;" he wrote also a number of epistles, sonnets, and masques. The style of the "well-languaged Daniel" is pure and more modern in appearance than that of most writers of the times. "For his diction alone he would deserve to be studied, even though his works did not abound in passages of singular beauty."-Southey. He was an amiable and good man, and died in 1619, in virtuous and well-earned retirement.

Let their vile cunning, in their limits pent,
Remain among themselves that like it most,
And let the north, they count of colder blood,
Be held more gross, so it remain more good.

LXXXVII.

Let them have fairer cities, goodlier soils
And sweeter fields for beauty to the eye,
So long as they have these ungodly wiles,
Such detestable vile impiety.

And let us want their vines, their fruits the whiles,
So that we want not faith or honesty.

We care not for these pleasures; so we may
Have better hearts and stronger hands than they.

LXXXVIII.

Neptune, keep out from thy embraced isle
This foul contagion of iniquity!

Drown all corruptions, coming to defile
Our fair proceedings, ordered formally.
Keep us mere1 English; let not craft beguile
Honour and justice with strange subtlety.
Let us not think how that our good can frame
That ruined hath the authors of the same.

FROM THE EPISTLE TO THE COUNTESS OF CUMBERLAND.

He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!

And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil?
Where all the storms of passion mainly beat
On flesh and blood; where honour, power, renown,

Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;

Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.

Nor is he moved with all the thunder cracks3
Of tyrant's threats, or with the surly brow
Of Power, that proudly sits on others' crimes,
Charged with more crying sins than those he checks.
The storms of sad confusion, that may grow

Up in the present for the coming times,

1 Pure, uncontaminated.

2 Foreign. 3 Compare Hor. Odes III. 3.

PATRONAGE OF LEARNING.

Appal not him, that hath no side at all,
But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.

And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompassed; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceived; whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood and rises by distress;
And the inheritance of desolation leaves
To great-expecting hopes; he looks thereon,
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture1 in impiety.

75

THE NOBILITY EXHORTED TO THE PATRONAGE OF LEARNING.

You mighty lords, that with respected grace
Do at the stern of fair example stand,
And all the body of this populace

Guide with the turning of your hand;

Keep a right course; bear up from all disgrace;
Observe the point of glory to our land:

Hold up disgraced Knowledge from the ground;
Keep Virtue in request; give worth her due,
Let not Neglect with barbarous means confound
So fair a good, to bring in night a-new;

Be not, O be not accessary found

Unto her death, that must give life to you!2

Where will you have your virtuous name safe laid?—
In gorgeous tombs, in sacred cells secure?

Do you not see those prostrate heaps betray'd
Your fathers' bones, and could not keep them sure?
And will you trust deceitful stones fair laid,
And think they will be to your honour truer?

No, no; unsparing Time will proudly send
A warrant unto Wrath, that with one frown
Will all these mockeries of vain-glory rend,
And make them (as before) ungraced, unknown:
Poor idle honours, that can ill defend

Your memories, that cannot keep their own!

1 A mercantile speculation.

The muse has too frequently had reason to remind negligent Mecænases that Achilles is indebted to Homer for immortality.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

(1564-1593.)

THE ripening of the drama from the rudeness of former ages is the great literary glory of the reigns of Elizabeth and James. We regret that our scanty limits preclude us from an extended series of extracts from the dramatic poets; who, if not for the uniform excellence of their writings, at least for individual passages displaying the highest abilities in their art, deserve to be in some measure rescued from the oblivion which has overshadowed them. Of all the precursors of Shakespeare, Marlowe seems to be allowed by universal consent the first rank in merit. Jonson's testimony to "Marlowe's mighty line" is familiar. He was the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury, and baptized February 26th 1564, so that there were only two months between his birth and that of Shakespeare. Marlowe was, therefore, more properly a contemporary than a precursor of Shakespeare. He was educated at King's School in Canterbury, and removed in 1581 to Bennet College, Cambridge. After graduating at Cambridge, he became an actor and writer for the stage. He was esteemed licentious in religious opinion, and some of his translations from Ovid were burnt by ecclesiastical authority. Warton, however, thinks that he owed his evil reputation to "the prejudiced and peevish puritans." He met with a tragical death in a low and disgraceful brawl, being stabbed by a serving-man named Archer, at Deptford.

His surviving works are three or four tragedies, and other poems. The power of Marlowe lies in the terrible. "There is," says Hazlitt, 66 a lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by anything but its own energies. His thoughts burn within him like a furnace of bickering flames; or throwing out black smoke and mists, that hide the dawn of genius, or like a poisonous mineral corrode the heart." His language is at times inflated, and scenes of low buffoonery are interspersed throughout his tragedies; but he was a great though irregular genius, and a master of tragic passion. Few things in dramatic literature equal the concluding scenes of Faustus and Edward II.

FAUSTUS' VISION OF HELEN OF GREECE.

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burn'd the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips suck forth my soul-see where it flies.
Come, Helen, give me my soul again;
Here will I dwell for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;

THE DEATH OF FAUSTUS.

More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms;

And none but thou shall be my paramour.

THE DEATH OF FAUSTUS.

Faustus Mephostophilis.1

Meph. Ah, Faustus, now thou hast no hope of heaven.
Faust. Oh, thou bewitching fiend! 'twas thy temptation
Hath robbed me of eternal happiness.

Meph. I do confess it, Faustus, and rejoice.

'Twas I, that when thou wert the way to heaven Damm'd up thy passage; when thou took'st the book To view the scriptures, then I turned the leaves

And led thine eye.

77

What, weep'st thou?-'tis too late. Despair!-Farewell.
Fools that will laugh on earth must weep in hell. [Exit.
Enter the Good and Bad Angels.

G. Ang. Oh, Faustus, if thou hadst given ear to me,
Innumerable joys had followed thee.

But thou didst love the world:

B. Ang.

Gave ear to me,

And now must taste hell-pains perpetually.

G. Ang. Oh, what will all thy riches, pleasures, pomps,

Avail thee now?

B. Ang.

To want in hell that had on earth such store.

Nothing but vex thee more;

[Exit.

G. Ang. Oh thou hast lost celestial happiness,
Pleasures unspeakable, bliss without end!

*

*

Hell is discovered.

B. Ang. Now, Faustus, let thine eyes with horror stare
Into that vast perpetual torture house:

*

*

*

*

Those, that are fed with sops of flaming fire,
Were gluttons, and loved only delicates,
And laughed to see the poor starve at their gates.
But yet all these are nothing; thou shalt see
Ten thousand tortures that more horrid be.
Faust. Oh, I have seen enough to torture me.

B. Ang. Nay, thou must feel them, taste the smart of all;
He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall.
And so I leave thee, Faustus.

[Exit.

1 The seducing spirit-See Goethe's Faust. Both the Mephistophelis and the Faust of Marlowe are very different from those of Goethe. Marlowe's Faust is a low sensual, selfish being, the reality and extremity of whose final misery are the sole motives of our pity.