By Muses nine, and Graces more than three,
Lie clos'd within the compass of this grave.

Thus Death all earthly glories doth confound,
Lo! how much worth a little dust doth bound.

Drummond's Poems, p. 198,

Edit. 1656, Svo.

AN

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF PHILARETE,

MR. THOMAS MANWOOD, THE AUTHOR'S FRIEND, AND SON OF SIR PETER MANWOOD, KNT.

UNDER an aged oak was Willy laid,

Willy, the lad who whilome made the rocks
To ring with joy whilst on his pipe he play'd,
And from their masters wooed the neighb'ring flocks;
But now, o'ercome with dolors deep

That nigh his heart-strings rent,
Ne car'd he for his silly sheep,

Ne car'd for merriment.

But chang'd his wonted walks

For uncouth paths unknown,

Where none but trees might hear his plaints,

And echo rue his moan.

*Sylvester inscribes a Hymn "to the worthy friend of worthiness, Sir Peter Manwood, Knight of the Honourable Order of the Bath." The father probably of Browne's friend. P. 561, fol. edit.

Autumn it was, when droop'd the sweetest flowers,
And rivers (swoln with pride) o'erlook'd the banks,
Poor grew the day of summer's golden hours,
And void of sap stood Ida's cedar-ranks,
The pleasant meadows sadly lay

In chill and cooling sweats,

By rising fountains, or as they
Fear'd winter's wasteful threats.
Against the broad-spread oak

Each wind in fury bears;
Yet fell their leaves not half so fast
As did the shepherd's tears*.

* Against the broad-spread oak

Each wind in fury bears;

Yet fell their leaves not half so fast

means.

As did the shepherd's tears.] In mere unimpassioned description, similes which are derived from foreign and remote objects are frequently used with success; for at the same time that they afford the writer an opportunity of showing his knowledge, they enrich and add a variety to poetry, that it might not have attained by any other Yet in pathetic situations, when they immediately arise from the subject itself, or some collateral branch of it, they convey the most direct and unequivocal illustration, with a conciseness and expression truly admirable. But how frequent is the practice, even with our best writers, in situations the most pathetic, and in narratives the most urgent and interesting, coolly to take leave of their subject, for the sake of introducing a comparison of perhaps ten or twelve lines! The consequence is, that our former sympathy is thoroughly destroyed, and after toiling through the lines in question, we are left to recal our attention, associate our distracted ideas, and recover the lost tone of our feelings at our leisure, which is by this time, most probably, totally out of our power. In such cases, a simile taken from the ground of the piece (if I may be allowed the expression), by confining our attention wholly to the subject, and by giving us what we want, without obliging us to wander in quest of it, would, in three words, almost have completely answered the end of the poet. I will subjoin an instance or two of this comprehensive kind of illustration. Mallet thus describes the father of Edwin:

The father too, a sordid man,
Who love nor pity knew,
Was all unfeeling as the clod

From whence his riches grew.

Edw. and Emma.

As was his seat so was his gentle heart,
Meek and dejected, but his thoughts as high
As those aye-wand'ring lights, who both impart
Their beams on us, and heaven still beautify.
Sad was his look (O heavy fate!

That swain should be so sad,
Whose merry notes the forlorn mate
With greatest pleasure clad)
Broke was his tuneful pipe

That charm'd the crystal floods*:
And thus his grief took airy wings,
And flew about the woods.

Day, thou art too officious in thy place,
And Night too sparing of a wished stay;
Ye wand'ring lamps, O be ye fix'd a space!
Some other hemisphere grace with your ray.
Great Phoebus! Daphne is not here,
Nor Hyacinthus fair;

Phoebe! Endymion and thy dear
Hath long since cleft the air.

Above all others, perhaps Collins affords one of the most beautiful specimens, in lines that few have read without emotion. Zara exclaims:

'Farewell the youth whom sighs could not detain,
Whom Zara's breaking heart implor'd in vain!

Yet as thou go'st may ev'ry blast arise

Weak and unfelt as these rejected sighs!

Safe o'er the wild, no perils may'st thou see,

No griefs endure, nor weep, false youth, like me.'

* Broke was his tuneful pipe

Eclogue II.

That charm'd the crystal floods.] Thus Milton, in the finest vein

of poetry:

Thyrsis! whose artful strains have oft delay'd
The huddling brook to hear his madrigal.

Comus, 494

But

ye have surely seen

(Whom we in sorrow miss)

A swain whom Phoebe thought her love,
And Titan deemed his.

But he is gone; then inwards turn your light,
Behold him there; here never shall you more
O'erhang this sad plain with eternal night!
Or change the gaudy green she whilome wore
To fenny black. Hyperion great
To ashy paleness turn her!

Green well befits a lover's heat,

But black beseems a mourner.

Yet neither this thou can'st,

Nor see his second birth,

His brightness blinds thine eye more now,
Than thine did his on earth.

Let not a shepherd on our hapless plains
Tune notes of glee, as used were of yore:
For Philarete is dead, let mirthful strains
With Philarete cease for evermore!

And if a fellow swain do live

A niggard of his tears;
The shepherdesses all will give,
To store him, part of theirs.
Or I would lend him some,

But that the store I have
Will all be spent before I pay
The debt I owe his grave.

O what is left can make me leave to moan!
Or what remains but doth increase it more?

Look on his sheep; alas! their master's gone.
Look on the place where we two heretofore

With locked arms have vow'd our love,

(Our love, which time shall see
In shepherds' songs for ever move,
And grace their harmony).
It solitary seems.

Behold our flow'ry beds;
Their beauties fade, and violets

For sorrow hang their heads*.

'Tis not a cypress bough, a count'nance sad,
A mourning garment, wailing elegy,

A standing hearse in sable vesture clad,
A tomb built to his name's eternity.

Although the shepherds all should strive
By yearly obsequies,

And vow to keep thy fame alive

In spite of destinies,

That can suppress my grief;
All these, and more, may be,
Yet all in vain to recompense
My greatest loss of thee.

and violets

For sorrow hang their heads.] Milton, instead of representing the vegetable creation as affected at the death of his friend, with su perior judgment calls for the several flowers

To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.

Among which he mentions

The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, &c.

L. 145.

Milton is fanciful, yet affecting; Browne puerile and disgusting.