WILLIAM BROWNE.

Bidding each bird chuse out his bough and sing.
The lofty treble sung the little wren;

Robin the meane, that best of all loves men;
The nightingale the tenor; and the thrush
The counter-tenor sweetly in a bush :
And that the musicke might be full in parts
Birds from the groves flew with right willing harts,
But (as it seem'd) they thought (as do the swaines
Which tune their pipes on sack'd Hibernias plaines)
There should some droaning part be, therefore will'd
Some bird to flie into a neighb'ring field,

In embassie unto the king of bees,

To aide his partners on the flowres and trees,
Who condiscending gladly flew along

To beare the base to his well-tuned song:

The crow was willing they should be beholding

For his deepe voyce, but, being hoarse with scolding,
He thus lends aide; upon an oake doth climbe,
And nodding with his head so keepeth time.

O true delight enharboring the brests

Of those sweet creatures with the plumy crests:

Had Nature unto man such simple'sse given,

He would, like birds, be farre more neere to heaven.

79

The following will remind some readers as not unlike the morning picture in the "L'Allegro" of Milton :

By this had Chanticlere, the village-cocke,
Bidden the good-wife for her maides to knocke,
And the swart plow-man for his breakfast staid,
That he might till those lands were fallow laid;
The hills and vallies here and there resound
With the re-ecchoes of the deepe-mouth'd hound;
Each shepheard's daughter with her cleanly paile
Was come a-field to milke the morning's meale;
And, ere the sunne had clymb'd the easterne hils,
To gild the mutt'ring bournes and pretty vils,
Before the lab'ring bee had left the hive,
And nimble fishes, which in rivers dive,
Began to leape, and catch the drowned flie,
I rose from rest, not infelicitie.

:

I shall now notice one or two of the leading religious poets of the time, and then direct the student's attention to the great example in whom they culminated-John Milton. Many important names have

been omitted in the foregoing brief notices, but the nature of the present work, as has been already stated, will not allow of a full enumeration of our best writers; nor, in fact, is such its aim. The object sought to be achieved is to point out to the self-improver a few of the greater stars in a firmament that is thickly studded, and leave him to acquire a more intimate knowledge of them by assiduous observation and study.

ments.

Quarles, Herrick, and Herbert are the three poets whom I shall place before the student. That there were many others need hardly be said. But the three just mentioned will amply meet our present requireFrancis Quarles' "Emblems," Robert Herrick's "Hesperides," and George Herbert's "Temple," are three works noticeable for the quaintnesses with which they are filled as much as for their divine poetic expression. The "Emblems" was a very popular book in its day—indeed the same may be said of it now in our rural districts-and is written with much fire and vigour, although there is a ruggedness and coarseness about it that will not please most readers. Herrick's "Hesperides" is full of elegant and delicate fancies, but it is much marred by licentious images and conceits characteristic of the period at which it was written. Many of the poems in it, too, are, as the title of the book-" Poems human and divine”—-implies, much more human than divine, being of an amatory cast. Herbert, a brother of the celebrated Lord Herbert of Cherbury, on the contrary, is free from some of the faults ascribed to the two preceding poets; the style of many of his pieces is flowing, lucid, and melodious. Herbert was very popular in the times of the first and second Charles.

JET us now pass on to the next great poetic landmark, John Milton (1608-74). Of Milton, of his general sweetness, his eloquence, purity, and sublimity, it would be impossible to speak too highly. No man, either after or before him, can, to any great extent, be considered his equal. Wordsworth, in giving poetic expression to the noble aspiration of Englishmen after freedom, says :—

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held;

and in this exaltation of our two great national poets he recognizes the individuality and sovereignty of each in his particular sphere. Far higher than Shakespeare in purity and holiness, far his superior in learning and the necessary acquirements of a great poet, Milton has no rival either in our own language or in any other. Perhaps Dante comes nearest to him. Like his own

G

Eve before her fall, Milton is all purity, sweetness, and love. His soul, full of grateful prayer, as an opening rose is of dew when the morning sun kisses it, turns towards God with the noblest and truest exhalations of reverence and love; and, without the sins of David, Milton shows the humble gratitude of the sacred psalmist. Christian in his worship, and learned in his prayer, he yet offers the unwavering faith of the child, and the undoubting trust of the saint. Thus, before he begins his divine poem, he prays for support :

And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou knowest ;

What in me is dark,
Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
That to the highth of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

Throughout all Milton's great work there is the same excelling purpose. He writes like a divine author, above all petty jealousies, all littlenesses, so full of humility, learning, and holiness, that even to be of his regiment, a private in the ranks where he was general, should exalt a man. His minor poems are of so true a cast that almost every line of them, of the "Allegro" and "Penseroso," is quoted as a household word. Never does he stoop to, or palter with, his public or with his own fame. His sonnets have the grand swell and diapason of a fine organ; his love of goodness and manly independence, and his true greatness of mind, are so visible through every thing he touches—even in his controversial pamphlets and angry "Defence of the English People," in prose-that, if we admitted men of rank into the republic of letters, Milton would be

PARADISE REGAINED.

83

the highest nobleman. The student cannot do better, if he wishes to gain some slight glimmering of the true office and dignity of letters, than study Milton's sub

lime poetry.

Extracts from Milton are so plentiful that I turn for novelty to the description of "the mother of arts and eloquence," from "Paradise Regained" :—

Behold

Where on the Ægean shore a city stands
Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,--
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades;
See there the olive grove of Academe,

Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls

His whispering stream: within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages,—his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next :

There shalt thou hear and learn the sacred power
Of harmony in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
Æolian charms and Dorian Lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,-
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own:
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing :
Thence to the famous orators repair,

Those ancients whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

To sage philosophy next lend thine ear