To purge the mischiefs, that increase
And all good order mar:
For oft we see a wicked peace,
To be well changed for war.

SYREN.

Well, well, Ulysses, then I see

I shall not have thee here;
And therefore I will come to thee,
And take my fortune there.
I must be won that cannot win,
Yet lost were I not won :
For beauty hath created been
T'undo or be undone,

Morning in Warwickshire-Description of a Stag-hunt.

When Phoebus lifts his head out of the winter's wave,
No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave,
At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring,
But hunts-up to the morn the feathered sylvans sing:
And in the lower grove, as on the rising knoll,
Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole,
Those quiristers are percht, with many a speckled breast,
Then from her burnisht gate the goodly glitt'ring east
Gilds every lofty top, which late the humorous night
Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight;
On which the mirthful quires, with their clear open throats,
Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes,
That hills and valleys ring, and even the echoing air
Seems all composed of sounds, about them everywhere.
The throstle, with shrill sharps; as purposely he sung
T' awake the listless sun; or chiding, that so long
He was in coming forth, that should the thickets thrill;
The ouzel near at hand, that hath a golden bill,
As nature him had markt of purpose, t' let us see
That from all other birds his tunes should different be:
For, with their vocal sounds, they sing to pleasant May;
When in the lower brake, the nightingale hard by,
Upon his dulcet pipe the merle1 doth only play.
In such lamenting strains the joyful hours doth ply,
As though the other birds she to her tunes would draw.
And but that nature-by her all-constraining law-
Each bird to her own kind this season doth invite,
They else, alone to hear that charmer of the night-
The more to use their ears-their voices sure would

spare,

MICHAEL DRAYTON.

MICHAEL DRAYTON, born, it is supposed, at Atherstone, in Warwickshire, about the year 1563, at the age of ten was made page to a person of quality-a situation which was not at that time thought too humble for the sons of gentlemen. He is said, upon dubious authority, to have been for some time a student at Oxford. It is certain that, in early life, he was highly esteemed and strongly patronised by several persons of consequence, particularly by Sir Henry Goodere, Sir Walter Aston, and the Countess of Bedford: to the first he was indebted for great part of his education, and for recommending him to the countess; the second supported him for several years. In 1593, Drayton published a collection of his pastorals, and in 1598 gave to the world his more elaborate poems of The Barons' Wars and England's Heroical Epistles. On the accession of James I. in 1603, Drayton acted as esquire to Sir Walter Aston, in the ceremony of his installation as a Knight of the Bath. The poet expected some patronage from the new sovereign, but was disappointed. He published the first part of his most elaborate work, the Polyolbion, in 1612, and the second in 1622, the whole forming a poetical description of England, in thirty songs or books.

The Polyolbion is a work entirely unlike any other in English poetry, both in its subject and in the manner of its composition. It is full of topo-To graphical and antiquarian details, with innumerable allusions to remarkable events and persons, as connected with various localities; yet such is the genius of the author, so happily does he idealise almost everything he touches, and so lively is the flow of his verse, that we do not readily tire in perusing his vast mass of information. He seems to have followed Spenser in his personification of natural objects, such as hills, rivers, and woods. The information contained in the Polyolbion is in general so accurate, that it is quoted as an authority by Hearne and Wood.

In 1627, Drayton published a volume containing The Battle of Agincourt, The Court of Faerie, and other poems. Three years later appeared another volume, entitled The Muses Elysium, from which it appears that he had found a final shelter in the family of the Earl of Dorset. On his death in 1631, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument, containing an inscription in letters of gold, was raised to his memory by the wife of that nobleman, the justly celebrated Lady Anne Clifford, subsequently Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery.

That moduleth her tunes so admirably rare,
As man to set in parts at first had learned of her.
To Philomel the next, the linnet we prefer ;

And by that warbling bird, the woodlark place we then,
The yellow pate; which though she hurt the blooming
The red sparrow, the nope, the redbreast, and the wren.

tree,

Yet scarce hath any bird a finer pipe than she.
And of these chanting fowls, the goldfinch not behind,
That hath so many sorts descending from her kind.
The tydy for her notes as delicate as they,
The laughing hecco, then the counterfeiting jay.
The softer with the shrill-some hid among the leaves,
Some in the taller trees, some in the lower greaves-
Thus sing away the morn, until the mounting sun,
Through thick exhaled fogs his golden head hath run,
And through the twisted tops of our close covert creeps

kiss the gentle shade, this while that sweetly sleeps.
And near to these our thicks, the wild and frightful
herds,
Not hearing other noise but this of chattering birds,
Feed fairly on the lawns; both sorts of seasoned deer:
Here walk the stately red, the freckled fallow there:
The bucks and lusty stags, amongst the rascals strewed,
As sometime gallant spirits amongst the multitude.

Of all the beasts which we for our venerial 2 name,
The hart among the rest, the hunter's noblest game:
Of which most princely chase sith none did e'er report,
Or by description touch, t' express that wondrous sport-
Yet might have well beseemed the ancients' nobler

songs

To our old Arden here, most fitly it belongs:
Yet shall she not invoke the muses to her aid;
But thee, Diana bright, a goddess and a maid:
In many a huge-grown wood, and many a shady grove,
Which oft hast borne thy bow, great huntress, used to

rove

At many a cruel beast, and with thy darts to pierce
The lion, panther, ounce, the bear, and tiger fierce;
And following thy fleet game, chase mighty forest's

queen,

With thy dishevelled nymphs attired in youthful green,

About the lawns hast scoured, and wastes both far and

near,

Brave huntress; but no beast shall prove thy quarries here;
Save those the best of chase, the tall and lusty red,
The stag for goodly shape, and stateliness of head,
Is fitt'st to hunt at force. For whom, when with his hounds
The labouring hunter tufts the thick unbarbed grounds,
Where harboured is the hart; there often from his feed
The dogs of him do find; or thorough skilful heed,
The huntsman by his slot,1 or breaking earth, perceives,
Or ent'ring of the thick by pressing of the greaves,
Where he had gone to lodge. Now when the hart doth
hear

The often-bellowing hounds to vent his secret lair,
He rousing rusheth out, and through the brakes doth
drive,

As though up by the roots the bushes he would rive.
And through the cumbrous thicks, as fearfully he makes,
He with his branched head the tender saplings shakes,
That sprinkling their moist pearl do seem for him to weep;
When after goes the cry, with yellings loud and deep,
That all the forest rings, and every neighbouring place:
And there is not a hound but falleth to the chase.
Rechating with his horn, which then the hunter cheers,
Whilst still the lusty stag his high-palmed head upbears,
His body shewing state, with unbent knees upright,
Expressing from all beasts, his courage in his flight,
But when th' approaching foes still following he perceives,
That he his speed must trust, his usual walk he leaves :
And o'er the champain flies; which when th' assembly
find,

How often he hath come to Nottingham disguised,
And cunningly escaped, being set to be surprised.
In this our spacious isle, I think there is not one,
But he hath heard some talk of him and Little John;
And to the end of time, the tales shall ne'er be done,
Of Scarlock, George-a-Green, and Much the miller's son,
Of Tuck the merry friar, which many a sermon made
In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade.
An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood,
Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good,
All clad in Lincoln green, with caps of red and blue,
His fellow's winded horn not one of them but knew,
When setting to their lips their little bugles shrill
The warbling echoes waked from every dale and hill:
Their baldricks set with studs, athwart their shoulders cast,
To which under their arms their sheafs were buckled fast,
A short sword at their belt, a buckler scarce a span,
Who struck below the knee, not counted then a man :
All made of Spanish yew, their bows were wondrous
strong;

Each follows, as his horse were footed with the wind.
But being them imbost, the noble stately deer,
When he hath gotten ground-the kennel cast arrear-
Doth beat the brooks and ponds for sweet refreshing soil;
That serving not, then proves if he his scent can foil,
And makes amongst the herds, and flocks of shag-wooled
sheep,

Them frighting from the guard of those who had their
keep.

|

But when as all his shifts his safety still denies,
Put quite out of his walk, the ways and fallows tries;
Whom when the ploughman meets, his teem he letteth
stand,

They not an arrow drew but was a cloth-yard long.
Of archery they had the very perfect craft,
With broad-arrow, or but, or prick, or roving shaft,
At marks full forty score, they used to prick, and rove,
Yet higher than the breast, for compass never strove ;
Yet at the farthest mark a foot could hardly win:
At long-butts, short, and hoyles, each one could cleave
the pin:

T'assail him with his goad: so with his hook in hand,
The shepherd him pursues, and to his dog doth hollo:
When, with tempestuous speed, the hounds and hunts-
men follow;

Until the noble deer, through toil bereaved of strength,
His long and sinewy legs then failing him at length,
The villages attempts, enraged, not giving way
To anything he meets now at his sad decay.
The cruel ravenous hounds and bloody hunters near,
This noblest beast of chase, that vainly doth but fear,
Some bank or quick-set finds; to which his haunch
opposed,

He turns upon his foes, that soon have him inclosed.
The churlish-throated hounds then holding him at bay,
And as their cruel fangs on his harsh skin they lay,
With his sharp-pointed head he dealeth deadly wounds.
The hunter, coming in to help his wearied hounds,
He desperately assails; until opprest by force,
He who the mourner is to his own dying corse,
Upon the ruthless earth his precious tears let fall 3
To forests that belongs.

Which Sherwood took to heart, and very much
disdained-

As one that had both long, and worthily maintained
The title of the greatest and bravest of her kind—
To fall so far below one wretchedly confined
Within a furlong's space, to her large skirts compared :
Wherefore she, as a nymph that neither feared nor cared
For ought to her might chance, by others' love or hate,
With resolution armed against the power of fate,
All self-praise set apart, determineth to sing
That lusty Robin Hood,1 who long time like a king
Within her compass lived, and when he list to range
For some rich booty set, or else his air to change,
To Sherwood still retired, his only standing court,
Whose praise the Forest thus doth pleasantly report:
"The merry pranks he played, would ask an age to tell,
And the adventures strange that Robin Hood befell,
When Mansfield many a time for Robin hath been laid,
How he hath cozened them, that him would have
betrayed;

Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood.

From the Twenty-eighth Song of the Polyolbion.

Amongst the neighbouring nymphs there was no other lays,

But those which seemed to sound of Charnwood, and her praise:

1 The track of the foot.

One of the measures in winding the horn.

3 The hart weepeth at his dying; his tears are held to be precious in medicine.

Their arrows finely paired, for timber, and for feather,
With birch and brazil pieced, to fly in any weather;
And shot they with the round, the square, or forked pile,
The loose gave such a twang, as might be heard a mile.
And of these archers brave, there was not any one
But he could kill a deer his swiftest speed upon,
Which they did boil and roast, in many a mighty wood,
Sharp hunger the fine sauce to their more kingly food.
Then taking them to rest, his merry men and he
Slept many a summer's night under the greenwood tree.
From wealthy abbots' chests, and churls' abundant store,
What oftentimes he took, he shared amongst the poor:
No lordly bishop came in lusty Robin's way,
To him before he went, but for his pass must pay :
The widow in distress he graciously relieved,
And remedied the wrongs of many a virgin grieved:
He from the husband's bed no married woman wan,
But to his mistress dear, his loved Marian,
Was ever constant known, which wheresoe'er she came,
Was sovereign of the woods, chief lady of the game:
Her clothes tucked to the knee, and dainty braided hair,
With bow and quiver armed, she wandered here and there

1 Robin Hood is first mentioned in English literature in Piers Plowman, about 1362. Wyntoun, the Scottish chronicler, refers to him about 1420. Nothing authentic is known of the popular hero. 'He was dear,' says Mr Furnivall, one of the editors of the Percy folio MS. 'to the English imagination as the representative of the forest life-the joyous tenant of the greenwood, the spirit not to be cribbed and cabined in towns and cities.'

"The sins and errors which I now repent,
Of my unbridled youth, O Father dear,
Remember not, but let thy mercy fall
And purge my faults and my offences all.'

Thus prayed he; with purple wings up-flew,
In golden weed, the morning's lusty queen,
Begilding with the radiant beams she threw,
His helm, the harness, and the mountain green :
Upon his breast and forehead gently blew
The air, that balm and nardus breathed unseen;
And o'er his head, let down from clearest skies,
A cloud of pure and precious dew there flies.

The heavenly dew was on his garments spread,
To which compared, his clothes pale ashes seem,
And sprinkled so that all that paleness fled,
And thence of purest white bright rays outstream :
So cheered are the flowers, late withered,
With the sweet comfort of the morning beam;
And so returned to youth, a serpent old
Adorns herself in new and native gold.

The lovely whiteness of his changed weed
The prince perceived well and long admired;
Toward the forest marched he on with speed,
Resolved, as such adventures great required:
Thither he came, whence, shrinking back for dread
Of that strange desert's sight, the first retired;
But not to him fearful or loathsome made
That forest was, but sweet with pleasant shade.

Forward he passed, and in the grove before,
He heard a sound, that strange, sweet, pleasing was;
There rolled a crystal brook with gentle roar,
There sighed the winds, as through the leaves they pass;
There sang the swan, and singing died, alas!
There lute, harp, cittern, human voice he heard,
And all these sounds one sound right well declared,

A dreadful thunder-clap at last he heard,
The aged trees and plants well-nigh that rent,
Yet heard the nymphs and syrens afterward,
Birds, winds, and waters sing with sweet consent;
Whereat amazed, he stayed and well prepared
For his defence, heedful and slow forth-went,
Nor in his way his passage ought withstood,
Except a quiet, still, transparent flood:

On the green banks, which that fair stream inbound,
Flowers and odours sweetly smiled and smelled,
Which reaching out his stretched arms around,
All the large desert in his bosom held,

And through the grove one channel passage found;
This in the wood, that in the forest dwelled:
Trees clad the streams, streams green those trees aye

made,
And so exchanged their moisture and their shade.

Of Treason.
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Of Fortune.

Fortune, men say, doth give too much to many,
But yet she never gave enough to any.

Against Writers that Carp at other Men's Books.
The readers and the hearers like my books,
But yet some writers cannot them digest;
But what care I? for when I make a feast,
I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.

Of a Precise Tailor.

A tailor, thought a man of upright dealing-
True, but for lying-honest, but for stealing,
Did fall one day extremely sick by chance,
And on the sudden was in wondrous trance;
The fiends of hell mustering in fearful manner,
Of sundry coloured silks displayed a banner
Which he had stolen, and wished, as they did tell,
That he might find it all one day in hell.
The man, affrighted with this apparition,
Upon recovery grew a great precisian :
He bought a Bible of the best translation,
And in his life he shewed great reformation;
He walked mannerly, he talked meekly,
He heard three lectures and two sermons weekly;
He vowed to shun all company unruly,
And in his speech he used no oath but 'truly ;'
And zealously to keep the Sabbath's rest,
His meat for that day on the eve was drest;
And lest the custom which he had to steal
Might cause him sometimes to forget his zeal,
He gives his journeyman a special charge,
That if the stuff, allowance being large,
He found his fingers were to filch inclined,
Bid him to have the banner in his mind.
This done—I scant can tell the rest for laughter—
A captain of a ship came three days after,

And brought three yards of velvet and three-quarters,
To make Venetians down below the garters.
He, that precisely knew what was enough,
Soon slipt aside three-quarters of the stuff;
His man, espying it, said in derision:
'Master, remember how you saw the vision!'
'Peace, knave!' quoth he; 'I did not see one rag
Of such a coloured silk in all the flag.'

SHAKSPEARE.

SIR JOHN HARRINGTON.

SHAKSPEARE, as a poet, claims to be noticed here. The incidents of his life will be related in the account of the dramatists. With the exception of the Faery Queen, there are no poems of the reign of Elizabeth equal to those productions to which the great dramatist affixed his name. In 1593, when the poet was in his twenty-ninth year, appeared his Venus and Adonis, and in the followThe first translator of Ariosto into English was ing year his Rape of Lucrece, both dedicated to SIR JOHN HARRINGTON, a courtier of the reign of know not,' says the modest poet, in his first dediHenry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Elizabeth, and also godson of the queen. He was the son of John Harrington, the poet already cation, how I shall offend in dedicating my noticed. Sir John wrote a collection of epigrams, world will censure me for choosing so strong a unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the and a Brief View of the Church, in which he reprobates the marriage of bishops. He is sup-honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly prop to support so weak a burden; only, if your posed to have been born about the year 1561; praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle died 1612. The translation from Ariosto is poor hours, till I have honoured you with some graver and prosaic, but some of his epigrams are pointed.labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove

deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear [till] so barren a land.' The allusion to idle hours' seems to point to the author's profession of an actor, in which capacity

he had probably attracted the attention of the Earl of an actor, and all bear the impress of strong of Southampton; but it is not so easy to under-passion and deep sincerity. A feeling of premastand how the Venus and Adonis was the 'first ture age seems to have crept on Shakspeare:

heir of his invention,' unless we believe that it had been written in early life, or that his dramatic labours had then been confined to the adaptation of old plays, not the writing of new ones, for the stage. There is a tradition, that the Earl of Southampton on one occasion presented Shakspeare with 1000, to complete a purchase which he wished to make. The gift was munificent, but the sum has assuredly been exaggerated. The Venus and Adonis is a glowing and essentially dramatic version of the well-known mythological story, full of fine descriptive passages, but objectionable on the score of licentiousness. Warton has shewn that it gave offence, at the time of its publication, on account of the excessive warmth of its colouring. The Rape of Lucrece is less animated, and is perhaps an inferior poem, though, from the boldness of its figurative expressions, and its tone of dignified pathos and reflection, it is more like the hasty sketch of a great poet. The first of Shakspeare's classical poems was the most popular. A second edition was published in 1594, a third in 1596, a fourth in 1600, and a fifth in 1602. The Lucrece only reached a second edition in four years (1598), and a third in 1600.

Not marble, not the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black Night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

The sonnets of Shakspeare were first printed in 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, a bookseller and publisher of the day, who prefixed to the volume the following enigmatical dedication: 'To the only The composition of these mysterious producbegetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr W. H., all tions evinces Shakspeare's great facility in versihappiness and that eternity promised by our ever-fication of a difficult order, and they display more living poet, wisheth the well-wishing adventurer intense feeling and passion than either of his in setting forth, T. T. The sonnets are 154 in classical poems. They have the conceits and number. They are, with the exception of twenty- quaint turns of expression then common, particueight, addressed to some male object, whom the larly in the sonnet; but they rise to far higher poet addresses in a style of affection, love, and flights of genuine poetry than will be found in any idolatry, remarkable, even in the reign of Eliza- other poet of the day, and they contain many beth, for its extravagant and enthusiastic char- traces of Shakspeare's philosophical and reflective acter. Though printed continuously, it is obvious spirit. that the sonnets were written at different times, with long intervals between the dates of composition; and we know that, previous to 1598, Shakspeare had tried this species of composition, for Meres in that year alludes to his 'sugared sonnets among his private friends! We almost wish, with Mr Hallam, that Shakspeare had not written these sonnets, beautiful as many of them are in language and imagery. They represent him in a character foreign to that in which we love to regard him as modest, virtuous, self-confiding, and independent. His excessive and elaborate praise of youthful beauty in a man seems derogatory to his genius, and savours of adulation; and when we find him excuse this friend for robbing him of his mistress—a married female-and subjecting his noble spirit to all the pangs of jealousy, of guilty love, and blind misplaced attachment, it is painful and difficult to believe that all this weakness and folly can be associated with the name of Shakspeare, and still more that he should record it in verse which he believed would descend to future ages:

Some of the sonnets may be written in a feigned character, and merely dramatic in expression; but in others, the poet alludes to his profession

He laments his errors with deep and penitential sorrow, summoning up things past 'to the sessions of sweet silent thought,' and exhibiting the depths of a spirit solitary in the very vastness of its sympathies.' The W. H.' alluded to by Thorpe has been conjectured to be William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, who, as appears from the dedication of the folio of 1623, was one of Shakspeare's patrons. This conjecture has

received the assent of Mr Hallam and others. Another theory is, that Henry Wriothesley (or H. W. the initials being reversed) was the object of Shakspeare's idolatry.

The Horse of Adonis.

Look, when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportioned steed,
His art with Nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed :
So did his horse excel a common one
In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.

Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide :
Look, what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares;
Anon he starts at stirring of a feather:
To bid the wind a base1 he now prepares,
And whe'r he run, or fly, they know not whether;
For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,
Fanning the hairs, who wave like feathered wings.

Venus's Prophecy after the Death of Adonis.
Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy,
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend;
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;

1 To bid the wind a base-that is, to challenge the wind to con

tend with him in speed: base-prison-base, or prison-bars, was a rustic game, consisting chiefly in running.