WILLIAM WARNER. [WILLIAM WARNER was born in Oxfordshire about the middle of the sixteenth century, and died on the 9th of March, 1609, at Amwell. His chief work is Albion's England, 1586. It was at first prohibited, for reasons unknown, but afterwards became very popular. He perhaps translated the Menaechmi of Plautus 1595; and certainly wrote a prose collection of moralized stories, entitled Syrinx, 1597.] Warner's chief and only poetical work is Albion's England, a curious medley of partly traditional history, with interludes of the fabliau kind. By some accident it has, since the author's death, secured an audience, not indeed wide, but much wider than that enjoyed by the work of contemporaries of far greater power. The pastoral episode of Argentile and Curan hit the taste of the eighteenth century, and Chalmers reprinted the whole poem in his Poets, very injudiciously following Ellis in dividing the fourteen-syllable lines into eights and sixes. In this form much of it irresistibly reminds the reader of Johnson's injurious parody of that metre: but in the original editions it appears to much greater advantage. The ascending and descending slope of the long lines is often managed with a good deal of art; and as the following extract, giving the speeches of Harold and William before Hastings, will show, there is sometimes dignity in the sentiments and vigour in their expression. The author is too prone to adopt classical constructions, especially absolute cases, which often throw obscurity over his meaning. Warner is not, as he has been called, a 'good, honest, plain writer of moral rules and precepts'; nor is his work, as another authority asserts, 'written in Alexandrines.' But though he will not bear comparison with the better, even of the second-rate Elizabethans, such as Watson, Barnes, and Constable, much less with his fellow historians Drayton and Daniel, the singularity of the plan of his book, and some vigorous touches here and there, raise him above the mass. There is, moreover, one thing in his work which is of considerable literary interest. Unlike almost all his contemporaries, he is hardly at all ‘Italianate.' The Italian influence, which for a full century coloured English poetry, is scarcely discernible in him, and he is thus an interesting example of an English poet with hardly any foreign strain in him except, as has been said, a certain tinge of classical study. G. SAINTSBURY. BEFORE THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. [From Albion's England, Bk. iv. Cap. 22.] 'See, valiant war-friends yonder be the first, the last, and all But through the well or ill support of subjects good or bad. My foes with wondering eyes shall see I over-prize my death. 'To live upon, or lie within, this is my ground or grave, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. [WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born at Stratford on Avon in April 1564; there also he died, April 23rd (old style), 1616. The following are the titles of his poems, with the dates of publication: Venus and Adonis, 1593; The Rape of Lucrece, 1594; The Passionate Pilgrim (a miscellany which includes only a few pieces by Shakespeare), 1599; The Phoenix and the Turtle (printed with pieces on the same subject by other poets of the time, at the end of Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint), 1601; Sonnets, 1609; A Lover's Complaint (in the same volume with the Sonnets), 1609.] Shakespeare's genius was not one of those which ripen overearly. At thirty he was hardly past his years of apprenticeship as a dramatic craftsman ; in comedy he was experimenting in various directions; in historical tragedy he submitted to the influence of his great fellow, Christopher Marlowe, who had risen to eminent stature while Shakespeare was still in his growing years; in pure tragedy he was feeling after a way of his own which should ennoble terror by its union with tenderness and beauty. It was at this time that his first essay as a non-dramatic poet was made. At what precise date the Venus and Adonis was written we cannot be certain; but no good reason appears for supposing that Shakespeare brought it up with him from Stratford, or indeed that it was written earlier than the year 1592. The first heir of my invention'-so its author describes the poem; but, in accordance with the feeling of his own day, he would naturally set aside his plays, none of which he had printed or thought of printing, as indeed mere plays-not works, not any part of literature proper,-while the Venus and Adonis, which was to give him rank among the poets of his time, he would regard as the first legitimate child of his imagination. Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton -young, clever, gallant, generous-had already honoured the rising dramatist with his notice, and to him Shakespeare dedicated 'his unpolished lines,' promising to take advantage of all idle hours |