ROBERT SOUTHWELL. ROBERT SOUTHWELL is remarkable as a victim of the persecuting laws of the period. He was born in 1560, at St. Faiths, Norfolk, of Roman Catholic parents, who sent him, when very young, to be educated at the English College at Douay, in Flanders, and from thence to Rome, where, at sixteen years of age, he entered the society of the Jesuits. In 1584, he returned to his native country as a missionary, notwithstanding a law which threatened all members of his profession found in England with death. For eight years he appears to have ministered secretly but zealously to the scattered adherents of his creed; but, in 1592, he was apprehended at Uxenden, in Middlesex, and committed to a dungeon in the Tower. An imprisonment of three years, with ten inflictions of the rack, wore out his patience, and he entreated to be brought to trial. Cecil is said to have made the brutal remark, that if he was in so much haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire.' Being at this trial found guilty, upon his own confession, of being a Romish priest, he was condemned to death, and executed at Tyburn accordingly (February 21, 1595,) with all the horrible circumstances dictated by the old treasonlaws of England. Southwell's poetical works were edited by W. B. Turnbull, 1856. The prevailing tone of his poetry is that of religious resignation. His short pieces are the best. His two longest productions, 'St. Peter's Complaint' and Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears,' were written in prison. After experiencing great popularity in their own time, insomuch that eleven editions were printed between 1593 and 1600, the poems of Southwell fell, like other productions of the minor poets, into neglect. Some of his conceits are poetical in conception-for example: And He that high growth on cedars did bestow, We trample grass and prize the flowers of May, Before my face the picture hangs, Do think hereon, that I must die. I often look upon a face Most ugly, grisly, bare, and thin; I often view the hollow place Where eyes and nose had sometime I see the bones across that lie, I read the label underneath, That telleth me whereto I must; Continually at my bed's head A hearse doth hang, which doth me tell That I ere morning may be dead, Though now I feel myself full well; But yet. alus! for all this, I Have little mind that I must die! The gown which I am used to wear, My ancestors are turned to clay, And can I think to 'scape alone? If none can 'scape Death's dreadful dart; Then I to 'scape shall have no way: The Burning Babe. Ben Jonson, in his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, said Southwell had so written that piece of his, "The Burning Babe,' he (Jonson) would have been content to destroy many of his.' As I in hoary winter's night To view what fire was near, A pretty babe all burning bright, Who, scorched with excessive heat, Such floods of tears did shed, My faultless breast the furnace is The fuel, wounding thorns; And mercy blows the coals, 'or which, as now on fire I am, As though his floods should quench his So will I melt into a bath. flames, To wash them in my blood.' And swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind Times go by Turns. The lopped tree in time may grow again, The driest soil suck in some moistening shower; The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favours to the lowest ebb; Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web; Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring, The roughest storm a calm may soon allay. A chance may win that by mischance was lost; Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all. WILLIAM WARNER. · A rhyming history entitled Albion's England,' was published in 1869, by WILLIAM WARNER (1558-1609), an attorney of the Common Pleas. It was admired in its own day, and is said to have supplanted in popularity the Mirror for Magistrates.' The poem is written in the long fourteen-syllable verse, but is tedious and monotonous. A few lines will shew the style of the poem : The Life of a Shepherd. Then choose a shepherd; with the sun he doth his flock unfold. SAMUEL DANIEL. SAMUEL DANIEL, son of a music-master, was born in 1562, near Taunton, in Somersetshire, and seems to have been educated under the patronage of the Pembroke family. In 1579, he was entered a commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he chiefly devoted himself to the study of poetry and history; at the end of three years, he quitted the university, without taking a degree, and was appointed tutor to Anne Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Cumberland. After the death of Spenser, Daniel became what Mr. Campbell calls 'voluntary laureate' to the court, but he was soon superseded by Ben Jonson. In the reign of James, he was appointed Master of the Queen's Revels, and inspector of the plays to be represented by the juvenile performers. He was also preferred to be a gentleman-extraordinary and groom of the chamber to Queen Anne. He lived in a garden-house in Old Street, St. Luke's, where, according to Fuller, he would lie hid for some months together, the more retiredly to enjoy the company of the Muses, and then would appear in public to converse with his friends, whereof Dr. Cowell and Mr. Camden were principal.' Daniel is said also to have shared the friendship of Shakspeare, Marlowe, and Chapman. His character was irreproachable, and his society appears to have been much courted. 'Daniel,' says Coleridge, in a letter to Charles Lamb, caught and re-communicated the spirit of the great Countess of Pembroke, the glory of the north; he formed her mind, and her mind inspirited him. Gravely sober on all ordinary affairs, and not easily excited by any, yet there is one on which his blood boils-whenever he speaks of English valour exerted against a foreign enemy. Coleridge seems to have felt a great ad miration for the works and character of Daniel, and to have lost no opportunity of expressing it. Towards the close of his life, the poet retired to a farm he had at Beckington, in Somersetshire, where he died October 14, 1619 The works of Daniel fill two considerable volumes. They include sonnets, epistles, masques, and dramas; but his principal production is a History of the Civil Wars between York and Lancaster,' a poem in eight books, published in 1604. Musophilus, containing a General Defence of Learning,' is another elaborate and thoughtful work by Daniel His tragedies and masks fail in dramatic interest, and his epistles are perhaps the most pleasing and popular of his works. His style is remarkably pure, clear, and flowing, but wants animation. He has been called the well-languaged Daniel;' and certainly the copiousness, ease and smoothness of his language distinguish him from his contemporaries. He is quite modern in style. In taste and moral feeling he was also pre-eminent. Mr. Hallam thinks Da el wanted only greater confidence in his own power; but he was deficient in fire and energy. His thoughtful, equable verse flows on unintermittingly, and never offends; but it becomes tedious and uninteresting from its sameness, and the absence of what may be called salient points. His quiet graces and vein of moral reflection are, however, well worthy of study. His 'Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland' is a fine effusion of meditative thought. From the Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland. He that of such a height hath built his mind, And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, As neither hope nor fear can shake the frame Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong His settled peace, or to disturb the same: Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet As frailty doth: aud only great doth seem To little minds who do it so esteem. He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars, Where evermore the fortune that prevals Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill. He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold Who puts it in all colours, all attires. To serve his ends, and makes his courses hold. Nor is he moved with all the thunder-cracks Up in the present for the coming times, But of himself, and knows the worst can fall. Richard II. the Morning before his Murder in Pontefract Castle. Whether the soul receives intelligence, With profound sleep, and so doth warning send, However, so it is, the now sad king, The morning of that day which was his last, Out at a little grate his eyes he cast Upon those bordering hills and open plain, The more his own, and grieves his soul the more, "O happy man,' saith he, 'that lo I see, Nor change his state with him that sceptre wields "Thou sitt'st at home safe by thy quiet fire, |