Sylvester's translation of Dubartas appeared in 1598. Some of his original pieces have quaint titles, such as were then affected by many authors; for example: Lachrymæ Lachrymarum, or the Spirit of Teares distilled for the ontymely Death of the incomparable Prince Panaretus (Henry, son of King James I.), 1612; Tobacco Battered and the Pipes Shattered about their Eares, that idely Idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, or at least overlove so loathsome a Vanity, by a Volley of Holy Shot thundered from Mount Helicon, 1615.

BEN JONSON.

In 1616, BEN JONSON collected the plays he had then written, adding at the same time a book of epigrams and a number of poems, which he entitled The Forest and The Underwood. The whole were comprised in one folio volume, which Jonson dignified with the title of his Works, a circumstance which exposed him to the ridicule of some of his contemporaries. There is much delicacy of fancy, fine feeling, and sentiment in some of Jonson's lyrical and descriptive effusions. grafted a classic grace and musical expression on parts of his masks and interludes, which could hardly have been expected from his massive and ponderous hand. In some of his songs he equals Carew and Herrick in picturesque images, and in portraying the fascinations of love. A taste for nature is strongly displayed in his fine lines on Penshurst, that ancient seat of the Sidneys.

He

It

has been justly remarked by one of his critics, that Jonson's dramas 'do not lead us to value highly enough his admirable taste and feeling in poetry; and when we consider how many other intellectual excellences distinguished him-wit, observation, judgment, memory, learning-we must acknowledge that the inscription on his tomb, "O rare Ben Jonson !" is not more pithy than it is true.'

To Celia.-From The Forest.'

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise,

Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent'st it back to me;

Since when, it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.

The Sweet Neglect.-From 'The Silent Woman.

Still to be neat, still to be drest,

As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,

• An epigram addressed to him on the subject is as follows:
Pray tell us, Ben, where does the mystery lurk?
What others call a play, you call a work.

On behalf of Jonson an answer was returned, which seems to
glance at the labour which Jonson bestowed on all his productions:
The author's friend thus for the author says-
Ben's plays are works, while others' works are plays.

Good Life, Long Life.

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be,

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear.
A lily of a day

Is fairer far, in May,
Although it fall and die that night,
It was the plant and flower of light!
In small proportions we just beauties see:
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke.

Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death! ere thou hast slain another,
Learned, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. H. Wouldst thou hear what man can say In a little?-reader, stay.

Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbour give
To more virtue than doth live.

If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth;
The other, let it sleep with death:
Fitter where it died to tell,

Than that it lived at all. Farewell!

On My First Daughter.

Here lies, to each her parents' ruth,

Mary, the daughter of their youth:

Yet all Heaven's gifts being Heaven's due,

It makes the father less to rue.

At six months' end, she parted hence

With safety of her innocence;

Whose soul Heaven's queen-whose name she bears-
In comfort of her mother's tears,
"Hath placed among her virgin train :
Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth,
Which, cover lightly, gentle earth.

To Penshurst.*

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row
Of polished pillars or a roof of gold:
Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told;
Or stair, or courts; but stand'st an ancient pile,
And these grudged at are reverenced the while.
Thou joy'st in better marks of soil and air,
Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.
Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport;
Thy mount to which the Dryads do resort,
Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made
Beneath the broad beech, and the chestnut shade;
That taller tree which of a nut was set

At his great birth where all the Muses met.
There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names
Of many a silvan token with his flames.
And thence the ruddy Satyrs oft provoke
The lighter Fauns to reach thy Ladies' Oak.
Thy copse, too, named of Gamage, thou hast here,
That never fails, to serve thee, seasoned deer,
When thou wouldst feast or exercise thy friends.
The lower land that to the river bends,

Penshurst is situated in Kent, near Tunbridge, in a wide and rich valley. The gray walls and turrets of the old mansion, its high peaked and red roofs, and the new buildings of fresh stone, mingled with the ancient fabric, present a very striking and venerable aspect. It is a fitting abode for the noble Sidneys. The park contains trees of enormous growth, and others to which past events and characters have given an everlasting interest; as Sir Philip Sidney's Oak, Saccharissa's Walk, Gamage's Bower, &c. The ancient massy oak-tables remain; and from Jonson's description of the hospitality of the family, they must often have 'groaned with the weight of the feast.' Mr William Howitt has given an interesting account of Penshurst in his Visits to Remarkable Places, 1840.

Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed:
The middle ground thy mares and horses breed.
Each bank doth yield thee conies, and the tops
Fertile of wood. Ashore, and Sidney's copse,
To crown thy open table, doth provide
The purpled pheasant, with the speckled side:
The painted partridge lies in every field,
And, for thy mess, is willing to be killed.
And if the high-swoln Medway fail thy dish,
Thou hast thy ponds that pay thee tribute fish,
Fat, aged carps that run into thy net,
And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,
As loath the second draught or cast to stay,
Officiously, at first, themselves betray.
Bright eels that emulate them, and leap on land,
Before the fisher, or into his hand.

Thou hast thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours.

The early cherry with the later plum,

Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come:
The blushing apricot and woolly peach

Hang on thy walls that every child may reach.
And though thy walls be of the country stone,
They're reared with no man's ruin, no man's groan;
There's none that dwell about them wish them down;
But all come in, the farmer and the clown,
And no one empty handed, to salute

Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.
Some bring a capon, some a rural cake,

Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make
The better cheeses, bring them, or else send

By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend
This way to husbands; and whose baskets bear
An emblem of themselves, in plum or pear.

But what can this-more than express their love—
Add to thy free provisions, far above

The need of such? whose liberal board doth flow
With all that hospitality doth know!...
Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee
With other edifices, when they see

Those proud ambitious heaps, and nothing else,
May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.

To the Memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr William
Shakspeare, and what he hath left us.

To draw no envy, Shakspeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest ignorance on these would light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right :
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urges all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin: Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakspeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further off, to make thee room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,

I mean with great but disproportioned Muses:
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I will not seek

For names; but call forth thund'ring Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To live again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to shew,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury, to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,

Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,

As they were not of nature's family.
Yet must I not give nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat-
Such as thine are-and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;
For a good poet's made as well as born.

And such wert thou! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned and true-filed lines:

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,

As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.

Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay; I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and, with rage

Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage, Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night,

And despairs day, but for thy volume's light!

On the Portrait of Shakspeare.

Opposite the frontispiece to the first edition of his works, 1623.
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakspeare cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature, to outdo the life:
O could he but have drawn his wit,
As well in brass, as he hath hit

His face, the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass :
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture, but his book.*

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT.

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT (1582-1628) was the elder brother of the celebrated dramatist. Enjoy

This attestation of Ben Jonson to the first engraved portrait of Shakspeare, seems to prove its fidelity as a likeness. The portrait corresponds with the monumental effigy at Stratford, but both represent a heavy and somewhat inelegant figure. There is, however, a placid good-humour in the expression of the features, and much sweetness in the mouth and lips. The upper part of the head is bald, and the lofty forehead is conspicuous in both, as in the Chandos and other pictures. The general resemblance we have no doubt is correct, but considerable allowance must be made for the defective state of English art at this period.

ing the family estate of Grace Dieu, in Leicestershire, Sir John dedicated part of his leisure hours to the service of the Muses. He wrote a poem on Bosworth Field in the heroic couplet, which, though generally cold and unimpassioned, exhibits correct and forcible versification. As a specimen, we subjoin Richard's address to his troops on the eve of the decisive battle:

My fellow-soldiers! though your swords

Are sharp, and need not whetting by my words,
Yet call to mind the many glorious days
In which we treasured up immortal praise.
If, when I served, I ever fled from foe,
Fly ye from mine-let me be punished so!
But if my father, when at first he tried
How all his sons could shining blades abide,
Found me an eagle whose undazzled eyes
Affront the beams that from the steel arise;
And if I now in action teach the same,

Know, then, ye have but changed your general's name.
Be still yourselves! Ye fight against the dross
Of those who oft have run from you with loss.
How many Somersets (dissension's brands)
Have felt the force of our revengeful hands?
From whom this youth, as from a princely flood,
Derives his best but not untainted blood.
Have our assaults made Lancaster to droop?
And shall this Welshman with his ragged troop,
Subdue the Norman and the Saxon line,
That only Merlin may be thought divine?
See what a guide these fugitives have chose !
Who, bred among the French, our ancient foes,
Forgets the English language, and the ground,
And knows not what our drums and trumpets sound!

Sir John Beaumont wrote the heroic couplet with great ease and correctness. In a poem to the memory of Ferdinando Pulton, Esq. are the following excellent verses:

Why should vain sorrow follow him with tears,
Who shakes off burdens of declining years?
Whose thread exceeds the usual bounds of life,
And feels no stroke of any fatal knife?
The destinies enjoin their wheels to run,
Until the length of his whole course be spun.
No envious clouds obscure his struggling light,
Which sets contented at the point of night:
Yet this large time no greater profit brings,
Than every little moment whence it springs;
Unless employed in works deserving praise,
Must wear out many years and live few days.
Time flows from instants, and of these each one
Should be esteemed as if it were alone.
The shortest space, which we so lightly prize
When it is coming, and before our eyes,
Let it but slide into the eternal main,
No realms, no worlds, can purchase it again :
Remembrance only makes the footsteps last,
When winged time, which fixed the prints, is past.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT (1586–1616), whose name is most conspicuous as a dramatist, in union with that of Fletcher, wrote a small number of miscellaneous pieces, which his brother published after his death. Some of these youthful effusions are witty and amusing; others possess a lyrical sweetness; and a few are grave and moralising. The most celebrated is the letter to Ben Jonson, which was originally published at the end of the play Nice Valour, with the following title: 'Mr Francis Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson, written before

he and Master Fletcher came to London, with two of the precedent Comedies then not finished, which deferred their merry-meetings at the Mermaid.' Notwithstanding the admiration of Beaumont for 'Rare Ben,' he copied Shakspeare in the style of his dramas. Fletcher, however, was still more Shakspearian than his associate. Hazlitt says finely of the premature death of Beaumont and his more poetical friend: The bees were said to have come and built their hive in the mouth of Plato when a child; and the fable might be transferred to the sweeter accents of Beaumont and Fletcher. Beaumont died at the age of fiveand-twenty [thirty]. One of these writers makes Bellario, the page, say to Philaster, who threatens to take his life :

'Tis not a life,

'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.

But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing reputation, cut off like a flower in its summer pride, or like "the lily on its stalk green," which makes us repine at fortune, and almost at nature, that seem to set so little store by their greatest favourites. The life of poets is, or ought to be-judging of it from the light it lends to ours-a golden dream, full of brightness and sweetness, lapt in Elysium; and it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid vision, by which they are attended in their path of glory, fade like a vapour, and their sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the sand of common mortals has run out. Fletcher, too, was prematurely cut off by the plague.' *

From Letter to Ben Jonson.

The sun-which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know, they see, however absent-is
Here, our best haymaker-forgive me this;
It is our country's style-in this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine.
Oh, we have water mixed with claret lees,
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies
Than beer, good only for the sonnet's strain,
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain,
So mixed, that, given to the thirstiest one,
'Twill not prove alms, unless he have the stone.
I think, with one draught man's invention fades :
Two cups had quite spoiled Homer's Iliades.
'Tis liquor that will find out Sutcliff's wit,

Lie where he will, and make him write worse yet;
Filled with such moisture in most grievous qualms,
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms;
And so must I do this: And yet I think

It is a potion sent us down to drink,
By special Providence, keeps us from fights,
Makes us not laugh when we make legs to knights.
'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,
A medicine to obey our magistrates:

For we do live more free than you; no hate,
No envy at one another's happy state,
Moves us; we are all equal: every whit
Of land that God gives men here is their wit,
If we consider fully; for our best

And gravest men will with their main house jest
Scarce please you; we want subtilty to do
The city tricks, lie, hate, and flatter too.
Here are none that can bear a painted show,
Strike when you wink, and then lament the blow;
Who, like mills, set the right way for to grind,
Can make their gains alike with every wind;

Only some fellows with the subtlest pate,
Amongst us, may perchance equivocate
At selling of a horse, and that's the most.
Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best,
With the best gamesters. What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,

As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life: then when there had been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past; wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly

Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise.

On the Tombs in Westminster. Mortality, behold and fear; What a change of flesh is here! Think how many royal bones Sleep within this heap of stones! Here they lie, had realms and lands, Who now want strength to stir their hands; Where, from their pulpits sealed with dust, They preach, ‘In greatness is no trust!' Here's an acre sown indeed With the richest, royalest seed, That the earth did e'er suck in Since the first man died for sin. Here the bones of birth have cried, 'Though gods they were, as men they died.' Here are wands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruined sides of kings. Here's a world of pomp and state Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

An Epitaph.

Here she lies, whose spotless fame
Invites a stone to learn her name:
The rigid Spartan that denied
An epitaph to all that died,
Unless for war, in charity
Would here vouchsafe an elegy.
She died a wife, but yet her mind,
Beyond virginity refined,

From lawless fire remained as free

As now from heat her ashes be.
Keep well this pawn, thou marble chest ;
Till it be called for, let it rest;
For while this jewel here is set,
The grave is like a cabinet.

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

SIR HENRY WOTTON-less famed as a poet than as a political character in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.—was born at Bocton Hall, the seat of his ancestors, in Kent, in 1568. After receiving his education at Winchester and Oxford, and travelling for some years on the continent, he attached himself to the service of the Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, but had the sagacity to foresee the fate of that nobleman, and to elude its consequences by withdrawing in time from the kingdom. Having afterwards gained the friendship of King James, by communicating the secret of a conspiracy formed against him, while yet only king of Scotland, he was employed by

that monarch, when he ascended the English throne, as ambassador to Venice. A versatile and lively mind qualified Sir Henry in an eminent degree for this situation, of the duties of which we have his own idea in the well-known punning expression, in which he defines an ambassador to be an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.' He ultimately took orders, to qualify himself to be provost of Eton College, in which situation he died in 1639, in the seventy-second year of his age. While resident abroad, he embodied the result of his inquiries into political affairs in a work called The State of Christendom; or a most Exact and Curious Discovery of many Secret Passages and Hidden Mysteries of the Times. This, however, was not printed till after his death. In 1624, while provost of Eton, he published Elements of Architecture, then the best work on that subject. His writings were published in 1651, under the title of Reliquiæ Wottoniana; and a memoir of his very curious life has been published by Izaak Walton. The latest editor of Wotton's poems (Mr Hannah) states that none of Sir Henry's pieces have been traced to an earlier date than 1602, but when very young, he wrote a tragedy, called Tancredo. He was a scholar and patron of men of letters rather than an author, and his enthusiastic praise of Milton's Comus-a copy of which the poet had sent to him-reflects credit on his taste. Not less characteristic is his advice to Milton, when he went to Italy, to 'keep his thoughts close, and his countenance loose;' an axiom which Sir Henry had learned from an old courtier, but which Milton was of all men the least likely to put in practice. Sir Henry appears to have been an easy, amiable man, an angler, and an 'undervaluer of money,' as Walton-who boasts of having fished and conversed with him-relates. His poems are marked by a fine vein of feeling and happy expression.

The Character of a Happy Life (1614). How happy is he born and taught, That serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Untied unto the world by care

Of public fame, or private breath :

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good:

Who hath his life from rumours freed; Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make oppressors great:

Who God doth late and early pray,
More of His grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend :

This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;

Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all.

To his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia (1620).
You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies,
What are you, when the moon shall rise?

You curious chanters of the wood,
That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents! what's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known, Like the proud virgins of the year, As if the spring were all your own! What are you, when the rose is blown?

So, when my mistress shall be seen

In form and beauty of her mind; By virtue first, then choice, a Queen! Tell me, if she were not designed Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

LORD BROOKE.

FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE (1554-1628), was a thoughtful, sententious author both in prose and verse, though nearly all his productions were unpublished till after his death. He lived in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. In the government of Elizabeth he was Treasurer of Marine Causes; and in that of James, Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Privy-councillor. He was raised to the peerage by King James in the year 1620. Lord Brooke was in 1628 stabbed to death by an old servant, who had found he was not mentioned in his master's will; the man, struck with remorse, then slew himself. Lord Brooke's tomb may still be seen in the church at Warwick, with the emphatic inscription written by himself: Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, friend to Sir Philip Sidney.' The poems of Lord Brooke consist of Treatises on Monarchy, Religion, and Humane Learning, two tragedies, 110 sonnets, &c. He also wrote a Life of Sir Philip Sidney, with whom, he said, he had lived and known from a child, 'yet never knew him other than a man.' The whole works of Lord Brooke have been collected, edited, and printed in four volumes (1871) by the Rev. A. B. Grosart. A few stanzas from the Treatise on Monarchy will shew the grave style of the noble author's verse:

The Prehistoric Age.

There was a time, before the times of Story,
When nature reigned instead of laws or arts,
And mortal gods with men made up the glory
Of one republic by united hearts.
Earth was the common seat, their conversation
In saving love, and ours in adoration.

For in those golden days, with Nature's chains
Both king and people seemed conjoined in one;
Both nursed alike with mutual feeding veins,
Transcendency of either side unknown;
Princes with men using no other arts
But by good dealing to obtain good hearts.