and filled up in his second epic, with a classic grace and force of style unknown to the Fletchers. To the latter, however, belong the merit of original 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 if the poetry of that day; but probably, like his master, Spenser, he copied from Tasso.

Decay of Human Greatness.-From the Purpie Island.'

Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness,
And here long seeks what here is never found!
For all our good we hold from Heaven by lease,
With many forfeits and conditions bound;
Nor can we pay the fine, and rentage due:
Though now but writ, and sealed, and given anew,
Yet daily we it break, then daily must renew.

Why shouldst thou here look for perpetual good,
At every loss 'gainst Heaven's face repining?
Do but behold where glorious cities stood,
With gilded tops and silver turrets shining;
There now the hart, fearless of greyhound, feeds,
And loving pelican in fancy breeds;

There screeching satyrs fill the people's empty stedes; (1)

Where is the Assyrian lion's golden hide,

That all the cast once grasped in lordly paw?

Where that great Persian bear, whose swelling pride

The lion's self tore out with ravenous jaw?

Or he which, 'twixt a lion and a pard,

Through all the world with nimble pinions fared,

And to his greedy whelps his conquered kingdoms shared

Hardly the place of such antiquity,

Or note of these great monarchies we find :

Only a fading verbal memory,

And empty name in writ is left behind:

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, nursed in Tiber's fen,
Did all the world with hideous shape affray;

That filled with costly spoil his gaping den,
And trod down all the rest to dust and clay:
His battering horns, pulled out by civil hands
And iron teeth, lie scattered on the sands;

Backed, bridled by a monk, with seven heads yoked stands.

And that black vulture (2) which with deathful wing
O'ershadows half the earth, whose dismal sight
Frightened the Muses from their native spring,
Already stoops, and flags with weary flight:

Who then shall look for happiness beneath?

Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and death,
And life itself 's as flit as is the air we breathe.

Description of Parthenia, or Chastity.
With her, her sister went, a warlike maid,
Parthenia, all in steel and gilded arms;

In needle's stead, a mighty spear she swayed,
With which, in bloody 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 seemed a garden green,
Where thousand spotless lilies freshly blew;
And on her shield the lone bird might be seen,
Th' Arabian bird, shining in colours new;
Itself unto itself was only mate;

Ever the same, but new in newer date:

And underneath was writ, Such is chaste single state."

Thus hid in arms she seemed a goodly knight,

And fit for any warlike exercise:

But when she list lay down her armour bright,
And back resume her peaceful maiden's guise,
The fairest maid she was, that ever yet
Prisoned her locks within a golden net,

Or let them waving hang, with roses fair beset.

Choice nymph! the crown of chaste Diana's train,
Thou beauty's lily set in heavenly earth;
Thy fairs, unpatterned, all perfection stain:
Sure Heaven with curious pencil at thy birth
In thy rare face her own full picture drew:
It is a strong verse here to write, but true.
Hyperboles in others are but half thy due.

Upon her forehead Love his trophies fits,
A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying:
And in the midst himself full proudly sits,
Himself in awful majesty arraying:

Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow,

And ready shafts; deadly those weapons shew;

Yet sweet the death appeared, lovely that deadly blow. . .

A bed of lilies flower upon her cheek,

And in the midst was set a circling rose;

Whose sweet aspéct would force Narcissus seek

New liveries, and fresher colours choose

To deck his beauteous head in snowy 'tire;

But all in vain: for who can hope t' aspire

To such a fair, which none attain, but all admire?

Her ruby lips lock up from gazing sight
A troop of pearls, which march in goodly row:
But when she deigns those precious bones undight,
Soon heavenly notes from those divisions flow,
And with rare music charm the ravished ears,
Daunting bold thoughts, but cheering modest fears:
The spheres so only sing, so only charm the spheres.

Yet all these stars which deck this beauteous sky
By force of th' inward sun both shine and move;
Throned in her heart sits love's high majesty;

In highest majesty the highest love.

As when a taper shines in glassy frame,

The sparkling crystal burns in glittering flame,

So does that brightest love brighten this lovely dame.

The Sorceress of Vain Delight.-From Christ's Victory and
By Giles Fletcher.

The garden like a lady fair was cut,
That lay as if she slumbered in delight,

And to the open skies her eyes did shut;

The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flowers of light:
The flowers-de-luce, and the round sparks of dew
That hung upon their azure leaves, did shew

Like twinkling stars, that sparkle in the evening blue.

Upon a hilly bank her head she cast,

On which the bower of Vain Delight was built.
White and red roses for her face were placed,

And for her tresses marigolds were spilt;

Them broadly she displayed, like flaming gilt;
Till in the ocean the glad day was drowned:
Then up again her yellow locks she wound,

And with green fillets in their pretty cauls them bound.

What should I here depaint her lily hand,
Her veins of violets, her ermine breast,

Which there in orient colours living stand:

Or how her gown with silken leaves is dressed,

Or how her watchman, armed with boughy crest,
A wall of prim hid in his bushes bears
Shaking at every wind their leafy spears,

While she supinely sleeps, nor to be waked fears.

Over the hedge depends the graping elm,
Whose greener head, empurpled in wine,
Seemed to wonder at his bloody helm,
And half suspect the bunches of the vine,
Lest they, perhaps, his wit should undermine;
For well he knew such fruit he never bore:
But her weak arms embraced him the more,

And she with ruby grapes laughed at her paramour. . . .

The roof thick clouds did paint, from which three boys,
Three gaping mermaids with their ewers did feed,
Whose breasts let fall the stream, with sleepy noise,
To lions' mouths, from whence it leaped with speed,
And in the rosy laver seemed to bleed;

The naked boys under the water's fall

Their stony nightingales had taught to call,
When Zephyr breathed into their watery interall.

And all about, embayed in soft sleep,

A herd of charmed beasts aground were spread,
Which the fair witch in golden chains did keep,
And in them willing bondage fettered:

Once men they lived, but now the men were dead,
And turned to beasts; so fabled Homer old,
That Circe with her potion, charmed in gold,

Used mauly souls in beastly bodies to immould.

Through this false Eden, to his leman's bower-
Whom thousand souls devoutly idolise-
Our first destroyer led our Saviour;

There in the lower room, in solemn wise,
They danced a round, and poured their sacrifice
To plump Lyæus, and among the rest,
The jolly priest, in ivy garlands drest,

Chanted wild orgials, in honour of the feast. . . .
High over all, Panglorie's blazing throne,
In her bright turret, all of crystal wrought,
Like Phoebus' lamp, in midst of heaven, shone:
Whose starry top, with pride infernal fraught,
Self-arching columns to uphold were tauglit,
In which her image still reflected was

By the smooth crystal, that, most like her glass,
In beauty and in frailty did all others pass.

A silver wand the screeress did sway,

And, for a crown of gold, her hair she wore;
Only a garland of rose-buds did play

About her locks, and in her hand she bore

A hollow globe of glass, that long before
She full of emptiness had bladdered,
And all the world therein depictured:

Whose colours, like the rainbow, ever vanished.

Such watery orbicles young boys do blow
Out from their soapy shells, and much admire
The swimming world, which tenderly they row
With easy breath till it be raised higher;
But if they chance but roughly once aspire,
The painted bubble instantly doth fall.

Here when she came she 'gan for music call.

And sung this wooing song to welcome him withal:

Love is the blossom where there blows
Everything that hives or grows:

Love doth make the heavens to move,
And the sun doth burn in love;

Love the strong and weak doth yoke,
And makes the ivy climb the oak;
Under whose shadows lions wild,
Softened by love, grow tame and mild:
Love no medicine can appease;
He burns the fishes in the seas;

Not all the skill his wounds can stench,
Not all the sea his fire can quench:
Love did make the bloody spear

Once a leafy coat to wear,

While in his leaves there shrouded lay

Sweet birds, for love, that sing and play:
And of all love's joyful flame

I the bud and blossom am.

Only bend thy knee to me,

Thy wooing shall thy winning be.

'See, see! the flowers that below

Now as fresh as morning blow,

And of all the virgin rose,

That as bright Aurora shews:
How they all unleaved le

Losing tacir virginity;

Like unto a summer shade,

But now born and now they fade.
Everything doth pass away;
There is danger in delay;

Come, come, gather then the rose;
Gather it, or it you lose.

All the sands of Tagus' shore
Into my bosom casts his ore:
All the valley's swimming corn
To my house is yearly borne;
Every grape of every vine

Is gladly bruised to make me wine;
While ten thousand kings as proud
To carry up my train have bowed,
And a world of ladies send me
In my chambers to attend me;
All the stars in heaven that shine,
And ten thousand more, are mine:
Only bend thy knee to me,

Thy wooing shall thy winning be.'

Thus sought the dire enchantress in his mind
Her guileful bait to have embosomed:
But he her charms dispersed into wind,
And her of insolence admonished,

And all her optic glasses shattered.

So with her sire to hell she took her flight-

The starting air flew from the damned sprite-

Where deeply both aggrieved plunged themselves in night.

But to their Lord, now musing in his thought,

A heavenly volley of light angels flew,

And from his Father him a banquet brought

Through the fine element, for well they knew,
After his Lenten fast, he hungry grew:

And as he fed, the holy choirs combine

To sing a hymn of the celestial Trine;

All thought to pass, and each was past all thought divine.

The birds' sweet notes, to sonnet out their joys,

Attempered to the lays angelical;

And to the birds the winds attune their noise;
And to the winds the waters hoarsely call,

And echo back again revoiced all;

That the whole valley rung with victory.

But now our Lord to rest doth homewards fly:

See how the night comes stealing from the mountains high.

WILLIAM BROWNE.

WILLIAM BROWNE (1590-1645) was a pastoral and descriptive poet, who, like Phineas and Giles Fletcher, adopted Spenser for his model. He was a native of Tavistock, in Devonshire, and the beautiful scenery of his native county seems to have inspired his early strains. His descriptions are vivid and true to nature. Browne was tutor to the Earl of Carnarvon, and on the death of the latter at the battle of Newbury in 1643, he received the patronage and lived in the family of the Earl of Pembroke. In this situation he realised a competency, and according to Wood, purchased an estate. He died at O tery-St.Mary (the birthplace of Coleridge) in 1615. Browne's works consist