and he does not reject the view that 'within (viz. the liver) love hath his habitation.' Having in five cantos exhausted man's physical phenomena, he proceeds to describe the complex nature and operations of the mind. Intellect is the prince of the Isle of Man, and he is furnished with eight counsellors -Fancy, Memory, the Common Sense, and five external senses. The human fortress thus garrisoned is assailed by the Vices, and a fierce contest ensues for the possession of the human soul. At length an angel interposes, and ensures victory to the Virtues the angel being King James I., on whom is heaped much fulsome adulation. From the above sketch of this odd poem, it will be apparent that its worth must rest, not upon the attractions of its plot, but upon the beauty of isolated passages and particular descriptions. Some of Phineas's seven-line stanzas have the flow and sweetness of Spenser's Faerie Queene, a few of them Spenser's charm; multitudes are marred by affectation, perversities, and the tedium of long-protracted allegory. Giles Fletcher published only one poem of any length-Christ's Victorie and Triumph. It appeared at Cambridge in 1610, and met with such indifferent success that a second edition was not called for till twenty years afterwards. There is a massive grandeur and earnestness about Christ's Victorie which strikes the imagination. The materials of the poem are better fused together and more harmoniously linked than those of the Purple Island; the unusual eight-line stanza contrasts with interspersed lyrics. Both of these brothers,' said Hallam, are deserving of much praise; they were endowed with minds eminently poetical, and not inferior in imagination to any of their contemporaries. But an injudicious taste, and an excessive fondness for a style which the public was rapidly abandoning, that of allegorical personification, prevented their powers from being effectively displayed.' Campbell's criticism is not antiquated : 'They were both the disciples of Spenser, and, with his diction gently modernised, retained much of his melody and luxuriant expression. Giles, inferior as he is to Spenser and Milton, might be figured, in his happiest moments, as a link of connection in our poetry between these congenial spirits, for he reminds us of both, and evidently gave hints to the latter in a poem on the same subject with Paradise Regained. These hints are indeed very plain and obvious. The appearance of Satan as an aged sire 'slowly footing' in the silent wilderness, the temptation of our Saviour in the 'goodly garden' and in the Bower of Vain Delight, are outlines which Milton adopted and filled up in his second epic, with a grace and power unknown to the Fletchers for whom may be claimed ingenuity of invention, copiousness of fancy, melodious numbers, and language at times rich, ornate, and highly poetical. If Spenser had not previously written his Bower of Bliss, Giles Fletcher's Bower of Vain Delight would have been unequalled in the poetry of that day; probably, like his master, Spenser, he drew from Tasso. The poems of both brothers are included in Dr Grosart's 'Fuller Worthies Library' (1868-69, four vols. being given to Phineas and one to Giles), and Giles's also in his 'Early English Poets' (1876). Decay of Human Greatness. From the Purple Island. By Phineas Fletcher. Fond man, that looks on earth for happinesse, And here long seeks what here is never found! For all our good we hold from heav'n by lease, With many forfeits and conditions bound; Nor can we pay the fine and rentage due: There now the hart fearlesse of greyhound feeds, There schrieching Satyres fill the people's emptie stears Or note of those great Monarchies we finde. And empty name in writ is left behinde : But when this second life and glory fades, And sinks at length in Time's obscurer shades, A second fall succeeds, and double death invades. That monstrous Beast, which nurst in Tiber's fenne Did all the world with hideous shape affray; That fill'd with costly spoil his gaping denne, And trode down all the rest to dust and clay : His batt'ring horns pull'd out by civil hands, And iron teeth lie scatter'd on the sands; Backt, bridled by a monk, with sev'n heads yokèd stands. And that black Vulture, which with deathfull wing O're-shadows half the earth, whose dismall sight Frighted the Muses from their native spring, Already stoops, and flagges with weary flight. Who then shall look for happines beneath; Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and And life it self's as flit as is the air we breathe? [death, fleeting (From Canto VII.) The symbolical Leo-pard is Alexander the Great; the monstress Beast is of course the Papacy; the black Vulture is the Turk Parthenia. From the Purple Island. With her her sister went, a warlike maid, Parthenia, all in steel and gilded arms; In needle's stead a mighty spear she sway'd, With which in bloudy fields and fierce alarms The boldest champion she down would bear, And like a thunderbolt wide passage tear, Flinging all to the earth with her enchanted spear. Her goodly armour seem'd a garden green, It self unto it self was onely mate; And underneath was writ, 'Such is chaste single state.' Thus hid in arms, she seem'd a goodly knight, And when she list lay down her armour bright, Upon her forehead Love his trophies fits, Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow, And ready shafts: deadly those weapons show; Yet sweet that death appear'd, lovely that deadly blow. . . . A bed of lilies flower upon her cheek, To deck his beauteous head in snowie tire ; Her rubie lips lock up from gazing sight And with rare musick charm the ravisht eares, Yet all the starres which deck this beauteous skie, As when a taper shines in glassie frame, The sparkling crystall burns in glitt'ring flame: So does that brightest Love brighten this lovely dame. (From Canto x.) Parthenia is defined by the poet as chastitie in the single,' as Agnia is chastitie in the married.' The Arabian bird, the phonix, was of course a virgin bird. The Sorceress of Vain Delight. The garden like a ladie faire was cut, The azure fields of heav'n wear 'sembled right In a large round, set with the flow'rs of light: The flowr's-de-luce, and the round sparks of deaw, dew That hung upon the azure leaves, did shew Like twinkling starrs, that sparkle in th' eav'ning blew. Upon a hillie banke her head shee cast, On which the bowre of Vaine-delight was built; And with greene filletts in their prettie calls them bound. What should I here depeint her lillie hand, Over the hedge depends the graping elme, The roofe thicke cloudes did paint, from which three boyes ewers, Three gaping mermaides with their eawrs did feed, vases The naked boyes unto the water's fall, And all about, embayèd in soft sleepe, Through this false Eden, to his leman's bowre, High over all Panglorie's blazing throne, By the smooth christall that, most like her glasse, In beauty and in frailtie did all others passe. A silver wande the sorceresse did sway, Such watry orbicles young boyes do blowe The painted bubble instantly doth fall. Here when she came, she 'gan for musique call, And sung this wooing song, to welcome Him withall: Love is the blossome whear thear blowes Every thing that lives or growes: Love the strong and weake doth yoke, Once a levie coat to wear, While in his leaves thear shrouded lay Sweete birds for love that sing and play: And of all love's joyfull flame I the bud and blossome am: Onely bend Thy knee to mee, Thy wooing shall Thy winning bee. See, see the flowers that belowe But now borne, and now they fade. Is gladly bruis'd to make me wine, Thy wooing shall Thy winning bee. Thus sought the dire Enchauntress in His minde Her guilefull bayt to have embosomèd; -- stanch leavy, leafy But He her charmes dispersed into winde, So with her sire to Hell shee took her flight, (The starting ayre flew from the damned spright,) Whear deeply both aggriev'd plunged themselves in night. But to their Lord, now musing in His thought, To sing a hymne of the celestiall Trine; All thought to passe, and each was past all thought divine. The birds' sweet notes, to sonnet out their joyes, Attemper'd to the layes angelicall; And to the birds the winds attune their noyse, That the whole valley rung with victorie. See how the Night comes stealing from the mountains high! Wear, whear, and thear stand throughout for 'were,' 'where, and 'there;' calls are cauls, caps; prim, privet; interail (entrill inside; Lyæus, Bacchus; orgialls, orgiastic hymns; bloody sper, &c., refers to one of the many legends about the Crucifixion. Sir John Beaumont (1582-1628) was the elder brother of the celebrated dramatist. Enjoy ing the family estate of Gracedieu, in Leicestershire, Sir John dedicated part of his leisure hours to the service of the Muses. He wrote, in neat enough heroic couplets, a somewhat unimpassioned poem on Bosworth Field. This is how he gives Richard's address to his troops on the eve of the decisive battle: My fellow-souldiers, though your swords If when I serv'd, I ever fled from foe, But if my father, when at first he try'd Know then, ye have but chang'd your gen'rall's name: In a poem to the memory of a friend are these excellent observations in verse: Why should vaine sorrow follow him with teares, Who shakes off burdens of declining yeeres? Whose thread exceeds the usuall bounds of life, And feeles no stroke of any fatall knife? The Destinies enjoyne their wheeles to run, Untill the length of his whole course be spun. No envious cloud obscures his struggling light, Which sets contented at the point of night; Yet this large time no greater profit brings, Then ev'ry little moment whence it springs, Unlesse imploy'd in workes deserving praise; Most weare out many yeeres, and live few dayes. Time flowes 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 comming and before our eyes, Let it but slide into th' eternall maine, No realmes, no world can purchase it againe : Remembrance onely makes the footsteps last, When winged Time, which fixt the prints, is pist. Samuel Purchas (1575?-1626), born at Thaxted, in Essex; studied at St John's, Cambridge; held successively two livings in Essex; and from 1614 till his death was rector of St Martin's in Ludgate. In 1613 he published a volume called Purchas his Pilgrimage; or Relations of the World, and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered from the Creation unto this Present. A second work was Purchas his Pilgrim, Microcosmus or the History of Man, Relating the Wonders of his Generation, Vanities in his Degeneration, Necessity of his Regeneration (1619). Hakluyt's papers having fallen into his hands, he issued in 1625 his best-known work, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes: containing a History of the World, in Sea Voyages and Land Travels by Englishmen and others (4 vols. folio, 1625). The fourth edition of the Pilgrimage usually accompanies the Pilgrimes as if a fifth volume, although a quite distinct work. Purchas himself thus describes the two books: These brethren holding much resemblance in name, nature, and feature, yet differ in both the object and the subject. This [the Pilgrimage] being mine own in matter, though borrowed, and in form of words and method; whereas my Pilgrimes are the authors themselves, acting their own parts in their own words, only furnished by me with such necessaries as that stage further required, and ordered according to my rules.' If we may judge by a comparison of his work with such of the 'relations' as have not perished, Purchas was neither painstaking nor conscientious as an editor; many of his stories seem to be meagre abstracts of his originals; and his tales are notable rather for a certain old-world quaintness than for any exceptional literary gift. The theological disquisitions with which he interlards his narratives are at times rather amusing than edifying. Vol i. of the Pilgrimes contains voyages and travels of ancient kings, patriarchs, apostles, and philosophers; voyages of circumnavigators of the globe; and voyages along the coasts of Africa to the East Indies, Japan, China, the Philippine Islands, and the Persian and Arabian Gulfs; Vol. ii., voyages and relations of Africa, Ethiopia, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, and other parts of Asia ; Vol. iii., Tartary, China, Russia, North-west America, and the Polar Regions; Vol. iv., America and the West Indies; Vol. v. contains the Pilgrimage, which is substantially a theological and geographical history of Asia, Africa, and America. The editor of Churchill's Collection (supposed to have been John Locke) says of Purchas, that 'he has imitated Hakluyt too much, swelling his work into five volumes in folio;' yet, he adds, ‘the whole collection is very valuable, as having preserved many considerable voyages that might otherwise have perished. But, like Hakluyt, he has thrown in all that came to hand, to fill up so many volumes, and is excessive full of his own notions, and of mean quibbling and playing upon words; yet for such as can make choice of the best, the collection is very valuable.' a The Pilgrimage is also in large measure cento from the stories of travellers and older authors, sometimes boiled down and restated in Purchas's own words. Thus the thirteenth chapter of Book IV. is expressly based on the travellers Plano Carpini, Rubruquis, and (especially) Marco Polo, as well as on less satisfactory authoritiesthe thirteenth-century chronicler Matthew Paris, the thirteenth-century encyclopædist Vincentius Bellovacensis, and Sir John Mandeville! The famous paragraph in it which dominated Coleridge's daydream, and took visionary shape in his Kubla Khan, is shortened from Marco Polo's account (Book I. chap. Ixi.) of the great Khan's summer palace at Kai-ping-fu, north of Pekin, which the Chinese called Shang-tu (i.e. 'upper court'). Marco makes the word Chandu, Odoric Sandu, Ramusio Xandu, and Purchas Xamdu. What follows about the Tebet and Kasimur, the Bacsi and Sensin, is merely abstracted from Marco. Coleridge's 'Alph' is not in Purchas or his authorities, and may be the classical Alpheus which disappears in caverns of limestone and comes to light again more than once. The Abora of the poem is no doubt the 'admirable hill Amara' on which Purchas waxes eloquent in his seventh book-the name still seen in Amhara, the central province of Abyssinia, and in Amharic, the name of the modern Abyssinian language. In the following extract he is speaking of the manners and customs of the Tartars: Their wives are exceeding chaste and observant : " and though they bee many, yet can Rachel and Leah, yea ten or twentie of them, agree with a marvellous union, intent unto their houshold and other businesse, whereby they are gainefull and not chargeable to their Husbands. When they marry, the Husband covenanteth with the Father of the Maide, who having given him power to take her wheresoever hee shall finde her, hee seeketh her among some of her friends, where shee hath then of purpose hidden her selfe, and by a kinde of force carrieth her away. They marry with any except their owne Mother and Sister. Their Widdowes seldome marry, because of their service to their former Husbands in another world, except the sonne marrie his fathers wives, or the brother his brothers, because they can there in the next world bee content to resigne them to their former Husbands againe. The women buy, sell, and provide all necessaries into the house, the men intending nothing but their Armes, Hunting, and Hawking. If one hath buried a Male child, and another a Female, the Parents contract a marriage betwixt those two, and painting in papers, Servants, Horses, Clothes, and Houshold, and making writings for the confirmation of the Dower, burne these things in the fire, by the smoake whereof they (in their smokie conceits) imagine all these things to be carried and confirmed to their children in the other world: and the Parents of the two dead parties claime kindred each of other as if they indeed had married their children while they lived. In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be removed from place to place. Here hee doth abide in the moneths of Iune, Iuly, and August, on the eight and twentieth day whereof, hee departeth thence to another place to doe sacrifice on this manner: He hath a Heard or Drove of Horses and Mares, about ten thousand, as white as snow; of the milke whereof none may taste, except hee bee of the bloud of Cingis Can. Yea, the Tartars doe these beasts great reverence, nor dare any crosse their way, or goe before them. According to the direction of his Astrologers or Magicians, he on the eight and twentieth of August aforesaid, spendeth and poureth forth with his owne hands the milke of these Mares in the ayre and on the earth, to give drinke to the Spirits and Idols which they worship, that they may preserve the men, women, beasts, birds, corne, and other things growing on the earth. : These Astrologers, or Necromancers, are in their Art marvellous. When the skie is cloudy and threatneth raine, they will ascend the roofe of the Palace of the Grand Can, and cause the raine and tempests to fall round about, without touching the said Palace. These which thus doe are called Tebeth and Chesmir, two sorts of Idolaters, which delude the people with opinion of their sanctitie, imputing these workes to their dissembled holinesse and for this cause they goe in filthy and beastly manner, not caring who seeth them, with dirt on their faces, never washing nor combing themselves. And if any bee condemned to death, they take, dresse, and eate him which they doe not if any die naturally. They are also called Bachsi, that is, of such a Religion or . Order; as if one should say a Frier- Preacher, or Minor, and are exceedingly expert in their divellish Art. They cause that the Bottles in the Hall of the Great Can doe fill the Bowles of their owne accord, which also without mans helpe passe ten paces through the ayre, into the hands of the said Can; and when he hath drunke, in like sort returne to their place. These Baschi sometimes resort unto the Officers, and threaten plagues or other misfortune from their Idols, which to prevent they desire so many Muttons with black heads, and so many pounds of Incense and Lignum Aloes, to performe their due sacrifices. Which they accordingly receive and offer on their Feast-day, sprinkling Broth before their Idois. There be of these, great Monasteries, which seeme like a small Citie, in some whereof are two thousand Monkes, which shave their heads and beards, and weare a religious habite, and hallow their Idols Feasts with great solemnitie of Hymnes and Lights. Some of these may bee married. Other there are, called Sensim, an Order which observeth great abstinence and strictnesse of life, in all their life eating nothing but Bran, which they put in hot water, and let it stand till all the white of the meale bee taken away, and then eate it being this washed. These worship the Fire, and are condemned of the other fore Heretikes, because they worship not their Idols, and will not marry in any case. They are shaven, and weare hempen-garments of black or bright yellow, and although they were Silke, yet would they not alter the colour. They sleepe on great Mats, and live the austerest life in the world. Purchas in praise of the sea is more eloquent than his wont : Concerning the commodities of the Sea, as the world generally, so the little models of the world, the Ilands (whereof this of Great Britaine is iustly acknowledge the most excellent of the world, sometime accounted another world) have great cause to celebrate and acknowledge the same. It is a Wall of Defence about our shoares; Great Purveyour of the Worlds commodities to our use; Conveyour of the surquedry and excesses of Rivers; Uniter (by traffique) of Nations which it selfe severeth; an Open Field for pastimes of peace; a Pitched Field in time of warre, disdaining single personall Combates, and onley receiving whole Cities and Castles, encompassed with walls of Wood; which it setteth together with deadly hatred and dreadfullest force of the Elements, the Fierie thunders, Airie blasts, Watrie billowes, rockes, shelves and bottomes of the Earth, all conspiring to build heere a house for Death, which by fight or flight on land is more easily avoyded (and how did it scorne the Invincible title of the Spanish Fleet in 88. and effect thus much on our behalfe against them?) The Sea yeeldeth Fish for dyet, Pearles and other Jewels for ornament, Varietie of creatures for use and admiration, Refuge to the distressed, compendious Way to the Passingers, and Portage to the Merchart, Customes to the Prince, Springs to the Earth, Clouds to the Skie, matter of Contemplation to the minde, of Action to the bodie: Once, it yeeldeth all parts of the World to each part, and maketh the World (as this Treatise in part sheweth) knowne to it selfe. Superst tion hath had her Sea-prophets which have found out other Sea-profits, as for the purging of sinnes: and the Roman Divines caused Hermaphrodites to be carried to the Sea for expiation, the Persian Magi thought it pollution to spit or doe other naturall necessities therein. But of these in divers places. George Sandys (1578-1644), the seventh son of the Archbishop of York, was born at Bishopthorpe, and studied at St Mary Hall, Oxford. He undertook a long journey, of which he published an account in 1615, entitled A Relation of a Journey begun an. Dom. 1610: Foure Bookes, containing a Description of the Turkish Empire, of Egn |