tells us, Horace, Juvenal, and Persius. With the first he has little in common; he has none of his sobriety, none of his grace, none of his urbanity. To the influence of the third is to be attributed his most characteristic defect, obscurity, an obscurity which arises not from confusion or plethora of thought, but from affectation in expression, from archaic phraseology, from unfamiliar combinations, from recondite allusions, from elliptical apostrophes, and from abrupt transitions. To Juvenal his obligations were great indeed. He borrows his phrases, his turns, his rhetorical exaggerations, his trick of allusive and incidental satire, his reflections, his whole method of dealing with and delineating vice. But borrowing he assimilates. Hall's satire is distinguished by its vehemence and intrepidity. He has himself described the savage delight with which he applied himself to satirical composition, and every fervid page testifies the truth of his confession. He never seems to flag his energy and fertility of invective are inexhaustible. He has in his six books bared and lashed every vice in the long and dreary catalogue of human frailty; but the reader, soon surfeited, is glad to leave him to pursue his ungrateful task alone. Nor is Hall more attractive when painting the minor foibles of mankind; for his humour is hard, his touch heavy, and his wit saturnine. As a delineator of men and manners he will always be interesting. His Satires are a complete picture of English society at the end of the sixteenth century. His sketches are vivid and singularly realistic, for he has the rare art of being minute without being prolix, of crowding without confusing his canvas; and he united the faculty of keen observation to great natural insight. History is indeed almost as much beholden to him as satire. His style is, for the age at which his poems appeared, wonderful. Though marred by the defects to which we have referred, it is as a rule at once energetic and elegant, at once fluent and felicitous, at once terse and ornate. He carried the heroic couplet almost to perfection. His versification is indeed sometimes so voluble and vigorous, that we might, as Campbell well observed, imagine ourselves reading Dryden. To cull one or two examples :— Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store, And he that cares for most shall find no more.' 'Nay, let the Devil and St. Valentine Be gossips to those ribald rhymes of thine, He is the first of our authors to evince decided powers of epigrammatic expression, and to diversify the heroic couplet by the introduction of the triplet. It is much to be regretted that Hall's most vigorous and most successful writing is of such a character as makes it impossible to be presented to general readers in our day. The conclusion of the first satire of the fourth book, and of the fourth satire of the same book, are passages in question. In consulting the interests of propriety we are, we must add, not consulting the interests of Hall's fame as a satirist, though the shade of a Father of the Church will we trust forgive the injury. Besides these Satires he was the author of a few miscellaneous poems, chiefly of a religious and elegiac character, but they are not of much value. J. CHURTON COLLINS. THE GOLDEN AGE. [From Book iii. Satire 1.] Time was, and that was termed the time of gold, Could no unhusked acorn leave the tree But there was challenge made whose it might be. HOLLOW HOSPITALITY. [From Book iii. Sat. 3.] The courteous citizen bade me to his feast Come, will ye dine with me this holiday?' I yielded, though he hop'd I would say nay: ‘Alack, sir, I were loath—another day,— I should but trouble you ;-pardon me, if you may.' He gives me leave, and thanks too, in his heart. I went, then saw, and found the great expense; Oh, Cleopatrical! what wanteth there For curious cost, and wondrous choice of cheer? Pork, for the fat Boeotian, or the hare Th' Athenian's goat; quail, Iolaus' cheer; And chestnuts fair for Amarillis' tooth. Hadst thou such cheer? wert thou ever there before? For whom he means to make an often guest, One dish shall serve; and welcome make the rest. Superficial. 2 Plutarch, Moralia 668 a, calls Arcesilaus piλóẞoтpus. A COXCOMB. [From Book iii. Sat. 5.] Late travelling along in London way I him saluted in our lavish wise; He answers my untimely courtesies : His bonnet vailed, ere ever he could think He lights and runs and quickly hath him sped The sportful wind, to mock the headless man, And straight it to a deeper ditch hath blown ; I looked and laughed, and much I marvelled And me bethought, that when it first begon "Twas some shrewd autumn that so bared the bone. Or floor-strewed locks from off the Barber's shears? A DESERTED MANSION. [From Book v. Sat. 2.] Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound 2 A nickname for a false scalp. |