[The Sorceress of Vain Delight.] The garden like a lady fair was cut, The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right On which the bower of Vain Delight was built. And with green fillets in their pretty cauls them bound. What should I here depaint her lily hand, Over the hedge depends the graping elm, The roof thick clouds did paint, from which three boys, And all about, embayed in soft sleep, A herd of charmed beasts aground were spread, Once men they liv'd, but now the men were dead, Through this false Eden, to his leman's bower, High over all, Panglorie's blazing throne, A silver wand the sorceress did sway, Such watery orbicles young boys do blow 'Love is the blossom where there blows He burns the fishes in the seas; Not all the skill his wounds can stench,1 While in his leaves there shrouded lay I the bud and blossom am. Only bend thy knee to me, Thy wooing shall thy winning be. 'See, see, the flowers that below Is gladly bruis'd to make me wine; 1 Staunch. Thus sought the dire enchantress in his mind And all her optic glasses shattered. So with her sire to hell she took her flight (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 "Twixt men's judgments and her light: 11* 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, She could more infuse in me, 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, She hath taught me by her might Sonnet upon a Stolen Kiss. Now gentle sleep hath closed up those eyes The Stedfast 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. 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; Where gaudy clothes Whose look swears no, Which on every breast are worn; So now is come our joyful'st feast; Though some churls at our mirth repine, Now all our neighbours' chimneys smoke, And evermore be merry. Now every lad is wond'rous trim, Young men and maids, and girls and boys, Rank misers now do sparing shun; Ned Squash hath fetcht his bands from pawn, Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn Now poor men to the justices With capons make their errants; They plague them with their warrants: For nuts and apples scrambling. The wenches with their wassail bowls The wild mare in is bringing. 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.] O what a rapture have I gotten now! 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 poem of inferior merit, entitled, The Shepherd's Pipe. 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 not printed till a hundred and twenty years after But ye, the heavenly creatures of the West, (Clean from the end to which I first begun), 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 village 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 My friend with his sweet touch to charm mine ear: When he hath play'd (as well he can) some strain, That likes me, straight I ask the same again, And he, as gladly granting, strikes it o'er Browne celebrated the death of a friend under the With some sweet relish was forgot before: |