"The higher that the cedar tree under the heavens does grow, OF A CONTENTED MIND. "When all is done and said, in the end thus shall you find, "The body subject is to fickle Fortune's power, "Companion none is like unto the mind alone, For many have been harmed by speech, through thinking few or none: "Our wealth leaves us at death, our kinsmen at the grave, BETHINKING HIMSELF OF HIS END, WRITETH THUS. "When I behold my bier, my last and posting horse, Then say I, silly wretch, why dost thou put thy trust "Dost thou not see the young, the hardy, and the fair, "Dost thou not see how death through-smiteth with his lance, "Lo! here the summer flower, that sprung this other day, "Thy house shall be of clay, a clod under thy head; Until the blowing trump doth say to all and some, Rise up out of your grave, for now the Judge is come.'" If Lord Vaux's life was a gay one, it must be owned that his lines have, with wonderful success, shown "the counterfeit action" of the lugubrious, though we should hardly say with Puttenham, that he has done it "very lively and pleasantly." If his conversation was like his poetry, he must have played at Court the part of the Consul's Companion in the Roman triumph, and both Henry and his courtiers might have better profited by such lessons. We return to Tottel's Collection, from which we shall take a few further specimens, believing that the importance of this period, in giving a direction to the sentiments and a shape to the language of poetry among us, may excite interest even where it is diffi cult to bestow much praise. THEY OF THE MEAN ESTATE ARE HAPPIEST. "Among good things I prove and find "I heard a herdsman once compare "Did not the worms consume We find ourselves here again in the death's-head school of poetry, of which the last verse may have too rank an odour for the polite nostrils of modern days. We learn that among Tottel's contributors we should include the poet Churchyard, to whom, as far as the name goes, the most doleful of these ditties might be fittingly ascribed. Their funereal solemnity comes oddly from that courtly company to whom they are attributed. What a different collection would have proceeded from the courtly makers of other reigns! In compliment to the second writer of English blank verse we shall include among our extracts from Tottel, before closing them, some lines of Nicholas Grimoald, in commendation of Friendship. "Of all the heavenly gifts that mortal men commend, What trusty treasure in the world can countervail a friend; Broke have we seen the force of power, and honour suffer stain. When fickle fortune fails, this knot endureth still; Thy kin out of their kind may swerve, when friends owe thee good-will. What sweeter solace shall befal, than one to find, Upon whose breast thou may'st repose the secrets of thy mind? He waileth at thy wo; his tears with thine be shed; With thee doth he all joys enjoy, so lief a life is led. Behold thy friend, and of thyself the pattern see, One soul, a wonder shall it seem, in bodies twain to be: In absence, present; rich in want; in sickness sound: Yea, after death, alive mayst thou by thy sure friend be found." already have been inferred, rather too much of the cypress and yew to be a very delicious Eden; and its ivies and myrtles are not of a much livelier cast. We should say, indeed, that the lovesongs in it are rather duller than the dirges. We select a part of one piece, already printed by Percy and by Ellis, which seems to us to be well versified, and in the last verse to possess considerable stateliness both of style and sentiment. The author, whose initials are M. T., is not certainly known. "Man's flitting life finds surest stay Where sacred virtue beareth sway. "The sturdy rock for all his strength, By raging seas is rent in twain; The marble stone is pierced at length With little drops of drizzling rain. The ox doth yield unto the yoke, The steel obey'th the hammer stroke. "Yea, man himself, unto whose will All things are bounden to obey, For all his wit and worthy skill Doth fade at length, and fall away. There is no thing but time doth waste: The heavens, the earth consume at last. "But virtue sits triumphing still Upon the throne of glorious Fame; It deserves our approving notice that the poetical collections, of which we have now spoken, contain scarcely a word or thought which could bring a blush into the purest cheek either of those times or of our own. It would be difficult to find two compositions with any similarity of name and purpose, so amusingly con trasted with each other as the Georgics of Virgil and the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry of Thomas Tusser, Gentleman. In the one we see poetry in all its power and beauty employed to adorn and elevate the art which it professes to teach; harmony of numbers, dignity of diction, fertility of invention, tenderness of sentiment, sublimity of thought. In the other we see nothing of the Poet's skill except the simple device of easy rhythm and homely rhyme, intended rather to aid the memory than to delight the ear, every thing else being left on the level of the most pedestrian prose. Yet Tusser's verses were not without use in the formation of the English mind; and it may be said in his praise, that "sure the Eternal Master found the single talent well employed." The qualities of good sense, good morals, simplicity and sincerity, should never be without their reward. The mixed lessons which he inculcates of hospitality and thrift, sobriety and cheerfulness, attention to this world and care for the next, were well calculated to please the taste and confirm the virtues of the honest yeomen for whom they were designed, and might help, in humble minds, to prepare the way for higher sentiments and better poetry on similar themes. We shall venture to extract a few moral verses from one of the unconnected chapters of which his work is composed. We may remark in passing that, in the scansion of his lines, Tusser is considered to be remarkably correct according to the pronunciation of his day. His poem was originally published in 1557, but was considerably expanded in subsequent editions. He died a very old man in 1580. A DESCRIPTION OF LIFE AND RICHES. "The lands and the riches that here we possess "God maketh no writing that justly doth say "To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low, 20 66 From George Gascoigne, once so warmly admired, and then so thoroughly forgotten, whose unthrifty youth was redeemed by a sober manhood, and, as an eyewitness tells us, by a godly and charitable end," we could borrow several things which deserve praise, and might afford pleasure. His minor poems, all smoothly and easily written, have something of fancy, and much of good feeling. They show a gradual advance in taste and polish, as applied to popular poetry, on which those qualities seem better bestowed than on the cold raptures and forced fictions of Petrarcan love. Gascoigne's lullaby to his youthful passions is ingeniously conceived, though unequally executed. It flows with a somewhat sweet and slumberous melody. Take, for example, the first verse: "Sing lullaby, as women do, "But if thy sinful sluggish eye Will venture for to wink Before thy wading will may try How far thy soul may sink: Beware and wake, for else thy bed, Which soft and smooth is made, May heap more harm upon thy head Than blows of enemies' blade. Thus if this pain procure thine ease In bed as thou dost lie, (Wherewith they bring their babes to rest;) Perhaps it shall not God displease And lullaby can I sing too, As womanly as can the best. His Good-Morrow and Good-Night are both of them meritorious compositions, infected, indeed, with the vulgar disease of running an analogy for ever on all fours, whether it will or no; but probably not on that account the less popular with the million. Though averse to separate what their author intended for companions, we must, from considerations of space, confine ourselves to the quotation of one of these pieces, and shall give the preference to the "Good-Night," as encroaching least on the department of psalmody. Gascoigue, we may observe, died in the prime of life, in 1577. GASCOIGNE'S GOOD-NIGHT. "When thou hast spent the lingering day In pleasure and delight; Or after toil and weary way Unto thy pains or pleasures past Ere sleep close up thine eye too fast, "But search within thy secret thought To sing thus soberly. I see that sleep is lent me here As death at last shall eke appear As careless life, in quiet bed, Might cause my soul to die. "The stretching arms, the yawning breath Which I to bedward use, In shadows doth resemble The sundry shapes of death whose dart "My bed itself is like the grave, My sheets the winding-sheet, The hungry fleas which frisk so fresh, "The waking cock that early crows Puts in my mind the trump that blows And as I rise up lustily When sluggish sleep is past, |