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A more than heavenly nymph I did behold,
Who glancing on me with her gracious eye,
So gave me leave her beauty to espy;

For sure no sense such sight can comprehend, Except her beams their fair reflexion lend.

Her beauty with Eternity began,
And only unto God was ever seen,

When Eden was possess'd with sinful man,
She came to him and gladly would have been
The long succeeding world's eternal Queen;
But they refused her, O heinous deed!
And from that garden banish'd was their seed.

Since when, at sundry times in sundry ways,
Atheism and blended Ignorance conspire,
How to obscure those holy burning rays,
And quench that zeal of heart-énflaming fire
That makes our souls to heavenly things aspire;
But all in vain, for, maugre all their might,
She never lost one sparkle of her light.

JOSEPH HALL.

BORN 1574.-DIED 1656.

BISHOP HALL, who for his ethical eloquence has been sometimes denominated the Christian Seneca, was also the first who gave our language an example of epistolary composition in prose. He wrote besides a satirical fiction, entitled Mundus alter et idem, in which, under pretence of describing the Terra Australis Incognita, he reversed the plan of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and characterized the vices of existing nations. Of our satirical poetry, taking satire in its moral and dignified sense, he claims, and may be allowed, to be the founder: for the ribaldry of Skelton, and the crude essays of the graver Wyatt, hardly entitle them to that appellation. Though he lived till beyond the middle of the seventeenth century, his satires were written before, and his Mundus alter et idem about, the year 1600: so that his antiquity, no less than his strength, gives him an important place in the formation of our literature 1.

In his Satires, which were published at the age of twenty-three, he discovered not only the early vi

1 His name is therefore placed in these Specimens with a variation from the general order, not according to the date of his death, but about the time of his appearance as a poet.

gour of his own genius, but the powers and pliability of his native tongue. Unfortunately, perhaps unconsciously, he caught, from studying Juvenal and Persius as his models, an elliptical manner and an antique allusion, which cast obscurity over his otherwise spirited and amusing traits of English manners; though the satirist himself was so far from anticipating this objection, that he formally apologises for "too much stooping to the low reach of the vulgar." But in many instances he redeems the antiquity of his allusions by their ingenious adaptation to modern manners; and this is but a small part of his praise; for in the point, and volubility, and vigour of Hall's numbers, we might frequently imagine ourselves perusing Dryden'. This may be exemplified in the harmony and picturesqueness of the following description of a magnificent, rural mansion, which the traveller approaches in the hopes of reaching the

The satire which I think contains the most vigorous and musical couplets of this old poet, is the first of Book 3d. beginning,

Time was, and that was term'd the time of gold,
When world and time were young, that now are old.

I preferred, however, the insertion of others as examples of his poetry, as they are more descriptive of English manners than the fanciful praises of the golden age, which that satire contains. It is flowing and fanciful, but conveys only the insipid moral of men decaying by the progress of civilization; a doctrine not unlike that which Gulliver found in the book of the old woman of Brobdignag, whose author lamented the tiny size of the modern Brobdignagdians compared with that of their ancestors.

VOL. I.

seat of ancient hospitality, but finds it deserted by its selfish owner.

Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound,
With double echoes, doth again rebound;
But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee,
Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see.
All dumb and silent, like the dead of night,
Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite;
The marble pavement hid with desert weed,
With house-leek, thistle, dock, and hemlock seed.

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Look to the tow'red chimnies, which should be
The wind-pipes of good hospitality,

Through which it breatheth to the open air,
Betokening life and liberal welfare,

Lo, there th' unthankful swallow takes her rest,
And fills the tunnel with her circled nest.

His satires are neither cramped by personal hostility, nor spun out to vague declamations on vice, but give us the form and pressure of the times exhibited in the faults of coeval literature, and in the foppery or sordid traits of prevailing manners. The age was undoubtedly fertile in eccentricity. His picture of its literature may at first view appear to be overcharged with severity, accustomed as we are to associate a general idea of excellence with the period of Elizabeth; but when Hall wrote there was not a great poet firmly established in the language

except Spenser, and on him he has bestowed ample applause. With regard to Shakspeare, the reader will observe a passage in the first satire, where the poet speaks of resigning the honours of heroic and tragic poetry to more inspired geniuses, and it is possible that the great dramatist may be here alluded to, as well as Spenser. But the allusion is indistinct, and not necessarily applicable to the bard of Avon, Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet, Richard 2d and 3d, have been traced in print to no earlier date than the year 1597, in which Hall's first series of satires appeared; and we have no sufficient proof of his previous fame as a dramatist having been so great as to leave Hall without excuse for omitting to pay him homage. But the sunrise of the drama with Shakspeare was not without abundance of attendant mists in the contemporary fustian of inferior playmakers, who are severely ridiculed by our satirist. In addition to this, our poetry was still haunted by the whining ghosts of the Mirror for Magistrates, while obscenity walked in barbarous nakedness, and the very genius of the language was threatened by revolutionary prosodists.

From the literature of the age Hall proceeds to its manners and prejudices, and among the latter derides the prevalent confidence in alchymy and astrology. To us this ridicule appears an ordinary effort of reason; but it was in him a common sense above the level of the times. If any proof were required to illustrate the slow departure of prejudices, it would be found in the fact of an astrologer being

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