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Jonson, whose full of merit to rehearse
Too copious is to be confinde in verse;
Yet therein onely fittest to be knowne,
Could any write a line which he might owne,
One, so judicious; so well knowing; and
A man whose least worth is to understand;
One so exact in all he doth preferre,

To able censure; for the theater

Not Seneca transcends his worth of praise;
Who writes him well shall well deserve the bayes.
Well-languag'd Danyel: Brooke, whose polisht lines
Are fittest to accomplish high designes ;

Whose pen (it seemes) still young Apollo guides;
Worthy the forked hill for ever glides

Streames from thy braine so faire, that time shall see
Thee honor'd by thy verse, and it by thee.
And when thy temple's well deserving bayes
Might impe a pride in thee to reach thy praise,
As in a christall glasse, fill'd to the ring
With the cleare water of as cleare a spring,
A steady hand may very safely drop
Some quantitie of gold, yet o're the top
Not force the liquor run; although before
The glasse (of water) could containe no more:
Yet so all-worthy Brooke, though all men sound
With plummets of just praise thy skill profound,
Thou in thy verse those attributes canst take
And not apparent ostentation make,
That any second can thy vertues raise,
Striving as much to hide as merit praise.
Davies and Wither, by whose muse's power
A naturall day to me seemes but an houre,
And could I ever heare their learned layes,
Ages would turne to artificiall dayes."

He thus apologises for being led into frequent digressions we quote the passage, for the fertility and richness of its expressions, though employed in describing a landscape too much in the Dutch style for our tastes: the poet had been led away by his praises of the golden age and of women.

"O what a rapture have I gotten now!

That age of gold, this of the lovely browe,

Have drawne me from my song! I onward run
(Cleane from the end to which I first begun.)

But ye the heavenly creatures of the West,
In whom the vertues and the graces rest,
Pardon! that I have run astray so long,
And grow so tedious in so rude a song,
If you yourselves should come to adde one grace
Unto a pleasant grove or such like place,
Where, here, the curious cutting of a hedge,
There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge;
Here the fine setting of well shading trees,
The walkes there mounting up by small degrees,
The gravell and the greene so equall lye,

It, with the rest, drawes on your ling'ring eye:
Here the sweet smels that doe perfume the ayre,
Arising from the infinite
repayre

Of odoriferous buds, and hearbs of price

(As if it were another paradice)

So please the smelling sence, that you are faine
Where last you walk'd to turne and walke againe.
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floates:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing goe:
Here further downe an over-arched alley
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spye at end thereof a standing lake
Where some ingenious artist strives to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of lead
Through birds of earth most lively fashioned)
To counterfeit and mocke the Silvans all
In singing well their owne set madrigall.
This with no small delight retaynes your eare,
And makes you thinke none blest but who live there.
Then in another place the fruits that be

In gallant clusters decking each good tree
Invite your hand to crop them from the stem,
And liking one, taste every sort of them:
Then to the arbors walke, then to the bowres,
Thence to the walkes againe, thence to the flowres,
Then to the birds, and to the cleare spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sence:
Here one walkes oft, and yet anew begin❜th,
As if it were some hidden laborinth."

It is absolutely necessary, however, that we bring our extracts to a close, which we will do with the poet's spirited ad

dress to his native country: premising, that it is far from having
been in our power to select, as we at first intended, every good
passage
from these poems, to which we must refer our reader
if he is pleased with what we have already presented to him.
We fairly give him notice, that he must arm himself with no
ordinary share of patience; and in his search after mere poeti-
cal imagery or expression, expect not the way to be beguiled
with one particle of interest arising from the subject or story.
William Browne lived immediately after the reign of Elizabeth,
and thus speaks patriotically:

"Haile thou, my native soile! thou blessed plot,
Whose equall all the world affordeth not!
Shew me who can? so many christall rils
Such sweet-cloath'd vallies, or aspiring hils,

Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mynes,
Such rockes in whom the diamond fairely shines:
And if the earth can shew the like agen;
Yet will she faile in her sea-ruling men.
Time never can produce men to ore-take
The fames of Greenvil, Davies, Gilbert, Drake,
Or worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more
That by their powre made the Devonian shore
Mocke the proud Tagus; for whose richest spoyle
The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soyle
Banckrupt of store, knowing it would quit cost
By winning this though all the rest were lost."

The third of these volumes contains the Shepherd's Pipe and the Inner Temple Masque, with other smaller poems of Browne, and some complimentary eclogues by his friends Brooke and Davies, addressed to him on the publication of the Shepherd's Pipe. The whole of this latter poem is written in a puling and waterish vein,' except a few passages, which may claim the merit of musical versification, and nearly the whole of the fourth eclogue, which is of a higher mood. is the author's elegy on the death of his friend, Mr. Thomas Manwood, whom he terms Philarete; from which it is supposed that Milton conceived the idea of celebrating the memory of Mr. Edward King in a pastoral form, under the name of Lycidas. The action, if it may be so called, of the two poems, is not unlike, and there are one or two similar sentiments: farther than this it would be absurd to push the comparison. The poem of Milton is the production of a mighty genius, such as "sage poets, taught by the heavenly muse, story'd of old in high immortal verse: "while all the merit the Philarete can claim is, that it is composed in a strain of natural sorrow, expressed in a

gentle and equable flow of melodious verse. Some of the stanzas are tame and weak, and others disfigured by conceit-but, in nearly all those we shall quote, he may have been supposed to have begun "wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy, to meditate his rural minstrelsy."

"Under an aged oke was Willy laid,

Willy, the lad who whilome made the rockes
To ring with joy, whilst on his pipe he plaid,

And from their masters woo'd the neighb'ring flocks:
But now o're-come with dolors deepe

That nie his heart-strings rent:
Ne car'd he for his silly sheepe,

Ne car'd for merriment.

But chang'd his wonted walkes

For uncouth paths unknowne,

Where none but trees might hear his plaints,
And eccho rue his mone.

Autumne it was, when droopt the sweetest floures,

And rivers, swolne with pride, ore-look'd the banks,
Poore grew the day of Summer's golden houres,
And void of sap stood Ida's cedar-rankes,

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Against the broad-spread oke,

Each wind in furie beares:

Yet fell their leaves not halfe so fast
As did the shepheard's teares.

As was his seate, so was his gentle heart,

Meeke and dejected, but his thoughts as hie
As those aye-wand'ring lights, who both impart
Their beames on us, and heaven still beautifie.
Sad was his looke,

Broke was his tuneful pipe

That charm'd the christall floods.
And thus his griefe took airie wings
And flew about the woods.

O what is left can make me leave to mone!
Or what remains but doth increase it more?
Looke on his sheepe: alas! their master's gone.
Looke on the place where we two heretofore
With locked armes have vow'd our love,

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It solitarie seemes.

Behold our flowrie beds;

Their beauties fade, and violets
For sorrow hang their heads.

'Tis not a cypresse bough, a count'nance sad,
A mourning garment, wailing elegie,
A standing herse in sable vesture clad,
A toombe built to his name's eternitie,
Although the shepheards all should strive
By yearly obsequies,

And vow to keepe thy fame alive
In spight of destinies,

That can suppresse my griefe:
All these and more may be,
Yet all in vaine to recompence
My greatest losse of thee.

Cypresse may fade, the countenance be changed,
A garment rot, an elegie forgotten,

A herse 'mongst irreligious rites be ranged,

A tombe pluckt down, or els through age be rotten: All things th' unpartial hand of fate

Can rase out with a thought:

These have a sev'ral fixed date,
Which ended, turne to nought.

Yet shall my truest cause

Of sorrow firmly stay,

When these effects the wings of time

Shall fanne and sweepe away.

Looke as a sweet rose fairely budding forth

Bewrayes her beauties to th' enamour'd morne, Untill some keene blast from the envious north, Killes the sweet bud that was but newly borne, Or else her rarest smels delighting

Make her herselfe betray,

Some white and curious hand inviting

So stands

To plucke her thence away.

my mournfull case,

For had he been lesse good,

He yet (uncorrupt) had kept the stocke

Whereon he fairely stood.

In deepest passions of my griefe-swolne breast (Sweet soule!) this onely comfort seizeth me,

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