a meeting of so many bodies that makes a church; if thy soul and body be met together, an humble preparation of the mind, and a reverent disposition of the body; if thy knees be bent to the earth, thy hands and eyes lifted up to heaven; if thy tongue pray and praise, and thine ears hearken to his answer; if all thy senses, and powers, and faculties, with one unanime purpose to worship thy God, thou art, to this intendment, a church, thou art a congregation; here are two or three met together in his name, and he is in the midst of them though thou be alone in thy chamber. The church of God should be built upon a rock, and yet Job had his church upon a dunghill; the church is to be placed upon the top of a hill, and yet the prophet Jeremy had his church in a miry dungeon; constancy and settledness belong to the church, and yet Jonah had his church in the whale's belly; the lion that roars and seeks whom he may devour, is an enemy to this church, and yet Daniel had his church in the lion's den; the waters of rest in the Psalms were a figure of the church, and yet the three children had their church in the fiery furnace; liberty and life appertain to the church, and yet Peter and Paul had their church in prison, and the thief had his church upon the cross. Every particular man is himself a temple of the Holy Ghost; yea, destroy his body by death and corruption in the grave, and yet here shall be a renewing, a re-edifying of all those temples, in the general resurrection; when we shall rise again, not only as so many Christians, but as so many Christian churches, to glorify the apostle and high-priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, in that eternal Sabbath. Every person, every place is fit to glorify God in.

We shall close our present remarks with a brief notice of the poet Corbet, Bishop of Oxford, and afterward of Norwich.

RICHARD CORBET was the son of a gardener, and was born at Ervill in Surrey, in 1582. He pursued his early studies at Westminster school, and thence passed, in 1598, to Christ-church College, Oxford, where he remained till he obtained his master's degree, immediately after which he took orders and soon became an eminent preacher. His wit and eloquence recommended him to the favor of James the First, by whom he was appointed one of his chaplains in ordinary, and in 1628, made dean of Christ-church. In 1629, Charles the First raised him to the see of Oxford, and in 1632, transferred him to that of Norwich. Corbet died on the twenty-eighth of July, 1638, and was buried in the Cathedral church at Norwich, where a freestone monument was erected to his memory.

Bishop Corbet's poems are comparatively few in number, and those best known are a Journey into France, the Farewell to the Fairies, and Lines to his son Vincent Corbet; the second and third of which follow:

FAREWELL TO THE FAIRIES.

Farewell rewards and fairies,

Good housewives now may say,

For now foul sluts in dairies

Do fare as well as they.

And, though they sweep their hearth no less

Than maids were wont to do,

Yet who of late, for cleanliness,

Finds sixpence in her shoe?

Lament, lament old Abbeys,

The fairies' lost command;

They did but change priests' babies,
But some have changed your land;
And all your children spring from thence
Are now grown Puritans;

Who live as changelings ever since,

For love of your domains.

At morning and at evening both,
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep or sloth

These pretty ladies had;

When Tom came home from labour,
Or Cis to milking rose,

Then merrily went their labour,

And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late Elizabeth,
And later, James came in,
They never danc'd on any heath
As when the time hath been.

By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession,
Their songs were Ave-Maries,
Their dances were procession
But now, alas! they are all dead,
Or gone beyond the seas;
Or farther for religion fled,
Or else they take their ease.

A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure,
And whoso kept not secretly

Their mirth, was punish'd sure:
It was a just and Christian deed,
To pinch such black and blue:
O how the commonwealth doth need
Such justices as you!

TO HIS SON.

What I shall leave thee none can tell,

But all shall say I wish thee well;

I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth,

Both bodily and ghostly health

Nor too much wealth, nor wit come to thee,

So much of either may undo thee.

I wish thee learning not for show,
Enough for to instruct and know;
Not such as gentlemen require
To prate at table or at fire.

I wish thee all thy mother's graces,
Thy father's fortunes and his places.

I wish thee friends, and one at court
Not to build on, but to support;
To keep thee not in doing many
Oppressions, but from suffering any.
I wish thee peace in all thy ways,
Nor lazy nor contentious days;
And when thy soul and body part,
As innocent as now thou art.

Lecture the Ninth.

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT-PHINEAS FLETCHER-GILES FLETCHER-THOMAS CAREW-
GEORGE WITHER WILLIAM BROWNE HENRY KING
GEORGE HERBERT-ROBERT HERRICK-JOSEPH HALL.

FRANCIS QUARLES

THE remaining English miscellaneous poets connected with the period which we are at present considering, though numerous, will not generally require notices so extended as those who have already passed in review before us. Of these poets, those who in the order of time first present themselves are, Beaumont, the Fletchers, Carew, Wither, Browne, King, and Quarles.

JOHN BEAUMONT was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont, and elder brother of the celebrated dramatic poet, Francis Beaumont. He was born at GraceDieu, in Leicestershire, in 1582, and admitted gentleman commoner of Broadgate Hall, Oxford, in 1596. After having passed three years at the university, he removed to one of the Inns of Court, London, but he soon relinquished the study of the law, and retired to the family estate in Leicestershire. In 1626, he was knighted by Charles the First, and died two years after, in the forty-seventh year of his age.

Sir John Beaumont wrote a number of pieces, the principal of which are Bosworth Field, and Lines to the Memory of Ferdinando Pulton. These poems are both in heroic verse--a measure which Beaumont wrote with great ease and correctness. 'Bosworth Field' is generally cold and unimpassioned, though there are in it occasional spirited passages; but the 'Lines to the Memory of Pulton' contain many passages of rare excellence, such as the following:

Why should vain sorrow follow him with tears,
Who shakes off burdens of declining years?
Whose thread exceeds the usual bounds of life,
And feels no stroke of any fatal knife?
The destinies enjoin their wheels to run,
Until the length of his whole course be spun.
No envious clouds obscure his struggling light,
Which sets contented at the point of night:

N

Yet this large time no greater profit brings,
Than every little moment whence it springs;
Unless employ'd in works deserving praise,
Must wear out many years and live few days.
Time flows from instants, and of these each one
Should be esteem'd as if it were alone

The shortest space, which we so lightly prize
When it is coming, and before our eyes:
Let it but slide into the eternal main,

No realms, no worlds, can purchase it again :
Remembrance only makes the footsteps last,

When winged time, which fixed the prints, is past.

To the above extract we feel constrained to add the following fine epitaph upon Sir John's son, Gervase Beaumont :

Can I, who have for others oft compiled

The songs of death, forget my sweetest child,
Which like a flow'r crush'd with a blast, is dead,
And ere full time hangs down his smiling head,
Expecting with clear hope to live anew,
Among the angels fed with heavenly dew?
We have this sign of joy, that many days,
While on the earth his struggling spirit stays,
The name of Jesus in his mouth contains
His only food, his sleep, his ease from pains.
O may that sound be rooted in my mind,
Of which in him such strong effect I find!
Dear Lord, receive my son, whose winning love
To me was like a friendship, far above
The course of nature, or his tender age;
Whose looks could all my better griefs assuage:
Let his pure soul-ordain'd seven years to be
In that frail body, which was part of me--
Remain my pledge in heaven, as sent to show
How to this port at every step I go.

PHINEAS and GILES FLETCHER were brothers, and were sons of the celebrated Doctor Giles Fletcher, who stood so high in the favor of Queen Elizabeth that she employed him on various important foreign embassies. Both these brothers were clergymen, and their lives, therefore, afford little variety of incident.

PHINEAS FLETCHER was born in 1584; and after passing through preparatory studies at Eton, he entered the university of Cambridge, whence being graduated, he took orders, and soon after settled at Kilgay, in Norfolk, where he passed his life in the quiet of the country. He died in 1650, in his sixty-seventh year.

The principal poems of Phineas Fletcher are, the Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, and Piscatory Eclogues. The name of the former poems suggests images of poetical and romantic beauty, such as we may suppose an admirer and follower of Spenser to have drawn ; but a perusal of the work