4 For not knowing that I sue to serve 5 I rather choose to want relief 6 Silence in love betrays more woe Than words, though ne'er so witty; 7 Then wrong not, dearest to my heart, He smarteth most who hides his smart, A VISION UPON 'THE FAIRY QUEEN.' Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay, At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept; LOVE ADMITS NO RIVAL. 1 Shall I, like a hermit, dwell, What care I how fair she be? 2 Were her tresses angel gold, To convert them to a braid, 3 Were her hand as rich a prize 4 No; she must be perfect snow, In effect as well as show; Warming but as snow-balls do, Not like fire, by burning too; But when she by change hath got Farewell her, whate'er she be! JOSHUA SYLVESTER. JOSHUA SYLVESTER is the next in the list of our imperfectlyknown, but real poets. Very little is known of his history. He was a merchant-adventurer, and died at Middleburg, aged fiftyfive, in 1618. He is said to have applied, in 1597, for the office of secretary to a trading company in Stade, and to have been, on this occasion, patronised by the Earl of Essex. He was at one time attached to the English Court as a pensioner of Prince Henry. He is said to have been driven abroad by the severity of his satires. He seems to have had a sweet flow of conversational eloquence, and hence was called 'The Silvertongued.' He was an eminent linguist, and wrote his dedications in various languages. He published a large volume of poems, very unequal in their value, and inserted in it 'The Soul's Errand,' with interpolations, as we have seen, which prove it not to be his own. His great work is the translation of the Divine Weeks and Works' of the French poet, Du Bartas, which is a marvellous medley of flatness and force-of childish weakness and soaring genius-with more seed poetry in it than any poem we remember, except 'Festus,' the chaos of a hundred poetic worlds. There can be little doubt that Milton was familiar with this work in boyhood, and many remarkable coincidences have been pointed out between it and 'Paradise Lost.' Sylvester was a Puritan, and his publisher, Humphrey Lownes, who lived in the same street with Milton's father, belonged to the same sect; and, as Campbell remarks, it is easily to be conceived that Milton often repaired to the shop of Lownes, and there met with the pious didactic poem.' The work, therefore, some specimens of which we subjoin, is inter esting, both in itself, and as having been the prima stamina of the great masterpiece of English poetry. TO RELIGION. 1 Religion, O thou life of life, How worldlings, that profane thee rife, And people for their false delights! 2 Under thy sacred name, all over, The proud their pride, the false their fraud, The impudent, their impudence. 3 Ambition under thee aspires, Sloth under thee her ease assumes, Lux under thee all overflows, 4 Religion, erst so venerable, What art thou now but made a fable, Sacred Religion, where art thou? 5 Not in the church with Simony, Nor in the court with Machiavel, Nor in the city with deceits, Nor in the country with debates; For what hath Heaven to do with Hell? ON MAN'S RESEMBLANCE TO GOD. (FROM DU BARTAS.) O complete creature! who the starry spheres For soon as ever he had framed thee, 1 'Peizest:' weighest. |