A dreadful thunder-clap at last he heard,

And brought three yards of velvet and three quarters,
The aged trees and plants well nigh, that rent, To make Venetians down below the garters.
Yet heard the nymphs and syrens afterward,

He, that precisely knew what was enough,
Birds, winds, and waters sing with sweet consent ; Soon slipt aside three quarters of the stuff ;
Whereat amazed, he stay'd and well prepar'd His man, espying it, said in derision,
For his defence, heedful and slow forth-went,

Master, remember how you saw the vision !
Nor in his way his passage ought withstood,

Peace, knave ! quoth he, I did not see one rag Except a quiet, still, transparent flood :

Of such a colour'd silk in all the flag.
On the green banks, which that fair stream inbound,

SIR HENRY WOTTON.
Flowers and odours sweetly smild and smell’d,
Which reaching out his stretched arms around,

SIR HENRY WOTTON, less famed as a poet than as All the large desert in his bosom held,

a political character in the reigns of Elizabeth and And through the grove one channel passage found ; James I., was born at Bocton Hall, the seat of his This in the wood, that in the forest dwellid :

ancestors, in Kent, in 1568. After receiving his Trees clad the streams, streams green those trees aye education at Winchester and Oxford, and travelling made,

for some years on the continent, he attached himser And so exchang'd their moisture and their shade.

SIR JOHN HARRINGTON,

The first translator of Ariosto into English was SIR John HARRINGTON, a courtier of the reign of Elizabeth, and also god-son of the queen. He was the son of John Harrington, Esq., the poet already noticed. Sir John wrote a collection of epigrams, and a Brief View of the Church, in which he reprobates the marriage of bishops. He is supposed to have died about the year 1612. The translation from Ariosto is poor and prosaic, but some of his epigrams are pointed.

Of Treason.
Treason doth never prosper ; what's the reason ?
For if it prosper none dare call it treason.

Of Fortune.
Fortune, men say, doth give too much to many,
But yet she never gave enough to any.

Against Writers that carp at other Men's Books.
The readers and the hearers like my books,
But yet some writers cannot them digest ;
But what care I ? for when I make a feast
I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.

Of a Precise Tailor.
A tailor, thought a man of upright dealing-
True, but for lying—honest, but for stealing,
Did fall one day extremely sick by chance,
And on the sudden was in wondrous trance ;
The fiends of hell mustering in fearful manner,
Of sundry colour'd silks display'd a banner
Which he had stolen, and wish'd, as they did tell,
That he might find it all one day in hell.
The man, atfrighted with this apparition,
Upon recovery grew a great precisian :
He bought a bible of the best translation,
And in his life he show'd great reformation ;
He walked mannerly, he talked meekly,
He heard three lectures and two sermons weekly ;
He vow'd to shun all company unruly,
And in his speech he used no oath but truly ;
And zealously to keep the Sabbath's rest,
His meat for that day on the eve was drest;
And lest the custom which he had to stcal
Might cause him sometimes to forget his zeal,
He gives his journeyman a special charge,
That if the stuff, allowance being large,
He found his fingers were to filch inclined,
Bid him to have the banner in his mind.
This done (I scant can tell the rest for laughter)
A captain of a ship came three days after,

Sir Henry Wotton. to the service of the Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, but had the sagacity to foresee the fate of that nobleman, and to elude its consequences by withdrawing in time from the kingdom. Having afterwards gained the friendship of King James, by communicating the secret of a conspiracy formed against him, while yet only king of Scotland, he was employed by that monarch, when he ascended the English throne, as ambassador to Venice. A versatile and lively mind qualified Sir Henry in an eminent degree for this situation, of the duties of which we have his own idea in the well-known punning expression, in which he defines an ambassador to be an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.' He ultimately took orders, to qualify himself to be provost of Eton, in which situation he died in 1639, in the seventy-second year of his age. His writings were published in 1651, under the title of Reliquia Wottonianæ ; and a memoir of his very curious life has been published by Izaak Walton.

To his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia.
You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light !

You common people of the skies !

What are you, when the sun shall rise !
You curious chanters of the wood,

That warble forth dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your voices understood

By your weak accents ! what's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise ?

You violets that first appear,

Wriotliesley, Earl of Southampton. “I know not,' By your pure purple mantles known,

says the modest poet, in his first dedication, how Like the proud virgins of the year,

I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to As if the spring were all your own!

your lor iship, nor how the world will censure me What are you, when the rose is blown? for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a So, when my mistress shall be seen

burthen; only, if your honour seem but pleased, I In form and beauty of her mind;

account myself highly praised, and vow to take adBy virtue first, then choice, a Queen!

vantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you Tell me, if she were not design'd

with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my Th' eclipse and glory of her kind ?

invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so

noble a godfather, and never after ear (till] so A Farewell to the Vanities of the World. barren a land.' The allusion to idle hours' seems Farewell, ye gilded follies, pleasing troubles ; to point to the author's profession of an actor, in Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles ! which capacity he had probably attracted the attenFame's but a hollow echo; gold pure clay;

tion of the Earl of Southampton; but it is not so Honour the darling but of one short day;

easy to understand how the Venus and Adonis was Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin;

the first heir of his invention,' unless we believe State but a golden prison to live in,

that it had been written in early life, or that his And torture free-born minds; embroider'd trains dramatic labours had then been confined to the Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins ; adaptation of old plays, not the writing of new ones, And blood allied to greatness, is alone

for the stage. There is a tradition, that the Earl of Inherited, not purchased, nor our own :

Southampton on one occasion presented Shakspeare Fame, honour, beauty, state, train, blond, and birth, with L.1000, to complete a purchase which he Are but the fading blossoms of the earth.

wished to make. The gift was munificent, but the

sum has probably been exaggerated. The Venus Welcome, pure thoughts, welcome, ye silent groves, and Adonis is a glowing and essentially dramatic These guests, these courts, my soul most dearly loves : version of the well-known mythological story, full Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing

of fine descriptive passages, but objectionable on the My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring: score of licentiousness. Warton has shown that it A prayer-book now shall be my looking-glass, gave offence, at the time of its publication, on acIn which I will adore sweet Virtue's face.

count of the excessive warmth of its colouring. The Here dwell no hateful looks, no palace cares,

Rape of Lucrece is less animated, and is perhaps an No broken vows dwell here, nor pale-faced fears : inferior poem, though, from the boldness of its figuThen here I'll sigh, and sigh my hot lore's folly, rative expressions, and its tone of dignified pathos And learn t' affect an holy melancholy ;

and reflection, it is more like the hasty sketch of a And if Contentment be a stranger then,

great poet. I'll ne'er look for it, but in heaven again.

The sonnets of Shakspeare were first printed in The Character of a Happy Life.

1609, by Thomas Thorpe, a bookseller and publisher

of the day, who prefixed to the volume the following How happy is he born and taught,

enigmatical dedication :- To the only begetter of That serveth not another's will;

these ensuing sonnets, Mr W. H., all happiness and Whose armour is his honest thought,

that eternity promised by our ever-living poet, And simple truth his utmost skill!

wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting Whose passions not his masters are,

forth, T. T.' The sonnets are 154 in number. They Whose soul is still prepared for death,

are, with the exception of twenty-eight, addressed Untied unto the worldly care

to some male object, whom the poet addresses in a Of public fame, or private breath ;

style of affection, love, and idolatry, remarkable, even Who envies none that chance doth raise,

in the reign of Elizabeth, for its extravagant and Or vice ; who never understood

enthusiastic character. Though printed continuHow deepest wounds are given by praise ;

ously, it is obvious that the sonnets were written at Nor rules of state, but rules of good :

different times, with long intervals between the Who hath his life from rumours freed,

dates of composition ; and we know that, previous to Whose conscience is his strong retreat ;

1598, Shakspeare had tried this species of composiWhose state can neither flatterers feed,

tion, for Meres in that year alludes to his “sugared Nor ruin make oppressors great ;

sonnets among his private friends. We almost wish,

with Mr Hallam, that Shakspeare had not written Who God doth late and early pray,

these sonnets, beautiful as many of them are in More of his grace than gifts to lend ;

language and imagery. They represent him in a And entertains the harmless day

character foreign to that in which we love to regard With a religious book or friend;

him, as modest, virtuous, self-confiding, and indeThis man is freed from servile bands

pendent. His excessive and elaborate praise of Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;

youthful beauty in a man seems derogatory to his Lord of himself, though not of lands;

genius, and savours of adulation; and when we find And having nothing, yet hath all.

him excuse this friend for robbing him of his mis. tress-a married female--and subjecting his noble

spirit to all the pangs of jealousy, of guilty love, and SHAK SPEARE.

blind misplaced attachment, it is painful and diffi. SHAKSPEARE, as a writer of miscellaneous poetry, cult to believe that all this weakness and fully can claims now to be noticed, and, with the exception of be associated with the name of Shakspeare, and still the Faery Queen, there are no poems of the reign more, that he should record it in verse which he beof Elizabeth equal to those productions to which lieved would descend to future agesthe great dramatist affixed his name.

In 1593,

Not marble, not the gilded monuments when the poet was in his twenty-ninth year, ap- Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme. peared his Venus and Adonis, and in the following some of the sonnets may be written in a feigned year his Rape of Lucrece, both dedicated to Henry character, and merely dramatic in expression; but

.

in others, the poet alludes to his profession of an For through his mane and tail the high wind sings, actor, and all bear the impress of strong passion and Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings. deep sincerity. A feeling of premature age seems to have crept on Shakspeare

[Venus's Prophecy after the Death of Adonis.] That time of year thou may'st in me behold

Since thou art dead, lo ! here I prophesy,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend ;
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sung. Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end,
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,

Ne'er settled equally, but high or low :
As after sun-set fadeth in the west,

That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe. Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud, In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

Bud and be blasted in a breathing while, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile. Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

The strongest body shall it make most weak, This thou perceivist, which makes thy love more strong, Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak To love that well which thou must leave ere long. It shall be sparing, and too full of riot, He laments his errors with deep and penitential Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures ; sorrow, summoning up things past to the sessions The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet, of sweet silent thought,' and exhibiting the depths Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures ; of a spirit 'solitary in the very vastness of its sym- Make the young old, the old become a child.

It shall be raging mad, and silly mild, pathies.' The.W. H.' alluded to by Thorpe, the publisher, has been recently conjectured to be It shall suspect, where is no cause of fear ; William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, who It shall not fear, where it should most mistrust; (as appears from the dedication of the first folio of It shall be merciful, and too severe, 1623) was one of Shakspeare's patrons. This con- And most deceiving when it seems most just : jecture has received the assent of Mr Hallam and Perverse it shall be, when it seems most toward, others; and the author of an ingenious work on the Put fear to valour, courage to the coward. sonnets, Mr C. Armitage Brown, has supported It shall be cause of war, and dire events, it with much plausibility. Herbert was in his And set dissension 'twixt the son and sire : eighteenth year, when Meres first notices the son. Subject and servile to all discontents, nets in 1598; he was learned, of literary taste, and As dry combustious matter is to fire. gallant character, but of licentious life. The son- Sith in his prime, death doth my love destroy, nets convey the idea that the person to whom they They that love best, their love shall not enjoy. were addressed was of high rank, as well as personal beauty and accomplishments. We know of only one objection to this theory—the improbability that the

(Selections from Shakspeare's Sonnets.] publisher would address William Herbert, then Earl When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, of Pembroke, and a Knight of the Garter, as •Mr I all alone beweep my outcast state, W. H.' Herbert succeeded his father in the earl- | And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, dom in 1601, while the sonnets, as published by And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Thorpe, bear the date, as already stated, of 1609. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

The composition of these mysterious productions Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess’d, evinces Shakspeare's great facility in versification Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, of a difficult order, and they display more intense With what I most enjoy contented least ; feeling and passion than either of his classical Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, poems. They have the conceits and quaint turns of Haply I think on thee—and then my state expression, then common, particularly in the sonnet; (Like to the lark at break of day arising but they rise to far higher flights of genuine poetry From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate ; than will be found in any other poet of the day, and For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings, they contain many traces of his philosophical and That then I scorn to change my state with kings. reflective spirit.

Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there, (The Horse of Adonis.)

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Look, when a painter would surpass the life,

Made old offences of affections new. In limning out a well-proportion'd steed,

Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth His art with Nature's workmanship at strife,

Askance and strangely; but, by all above, As if the dead the living should exceed :

These blenches gave my heart another youth, So did this horse excel a common one

And worst essays prov'd thee my best of love. In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.

Now all is done, save what shall have no end : Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Mine appetite I never more will grind Broad brcast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, On newer proof, to try an older friend, High crest, short ears, strait legs, and passing strong, A God in love, to whom I am confined. Thin manc, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, Look what a horse should have, he did not lack, E’en to thy pure and most most loving breast. Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

O for my sake do thou with fortune chide, Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares; The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, Anon he starts at stirring of a feather.

That did not better for my life provide, To bid the wind a basel he now prepares,

Than public means, which public manners breeds. And whe'r he run, or fly, they know not whether. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, I to bid the wind a base: i.e. to challenge the wind to con

And almost thence my nature is subdued tond with him in speed: base--prison-base, or prison-bars, was

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. A rustic game, consisting chiefly in running.

Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd ;