XCI. TO SIR HORACE VERE.58 Which of thy names I take, not only bears Sung by a Horace, or a muse as free; Which thou art to thyself: whose fame was won In th'eye of Europe, where thy deeds were done, When on thy trumpet she did sound a blast, Whose relish to eternity shall last. I leave thy acts, which should I prosecute Throughout, might flattery seem; and to be mute To any one, were envy which would live As noble in great chiefs as they are rare, 58 One of the two grandsons, by his son Geffrey Vere, of John Vere, fifteenth Earl of Oxford. Fuller draws a contrast between the two brothers Francis and Horace, showing that the former was of a fiery spirit, rigid and undaunted courage, and that the latter had as much valor and more meekness, with so great a sense of piety that he first made his peace with God before he went out to war with man. "Had one seen him returning from a victory," says Fuller, "he would, by his silence, have suspected that he lost the day; and had he beheld him in a retreat, he would have collected him a conqueror, by the cheerfulness of his spirit." He was created Baron Vere of Tilbury, in 1625, the first baron of King Charles I.'s creation. The title became extinet at his death. — B. And best become the valiant man to wear, XCII. THE NEW CRY. Ere cherries ripe! 50 and strawberries! be gone, Ripe statesmen, ripe! They grow in every street; And grave as ripe, like mellow as their faces. places; Yet they have seen the maps, and bought 'em too, For twelve years yet to come, what each state lacks. They carry in their pockets Tacitus, And the Gazetti, or Gallo-Belgicus; And talk reserved, looked up, and full of fear; Nay, ask you how the day goes, in your ear. Keep a Star-chamber sentence close twelve days, And whisper what a proclamation says. 59 One of the common cries in the streets of London in the days of Elizabeth and James. The cry has obtained poetical immortality in the well-known lines of Herrick.-B. They meet in sixes, and at every mart Or Bill's, and there he buys the names of books. 61 And at the Pope and Spain slight faces make. XCIII. TO SIR JOHN RATCLIFFE.62 How like a column, Ratcliffe, left alone For the great mark of virtue, those being gone Who did, alike with thee, thy house upbear, 60 The first two were booksellers; the last was the famous Neapolitan Johannes Baptista Porta, who has a treatise extant in Latin, De furtivis literarum notis, vulgo de Ziferis, printed at Naples, 1563. He died in 1615. W. 61 The word in brackets is inserted by Gifford. 62 See Epigram xl. p. 22. Stand'st thou, to show the times what you all were! 63 Two bravely in the battle fell, and died, Thou, that art all their valor, all their spirit, tunes are Willing to expiate the fault in thee, 64 XCIV. TO LUCY, COUNTESS Of bedford, WITH Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are Whose poems would not wish to be your book? friends. Yet, satires, since the most of mankind be 63 In Ireland. — JONSON. 64 See Epigram lxxvi. p. 39. For none e'er took that pleasure in sin's sense, But, when they heard it taxed, took more offence. They, then, that living where the matter's bred, Dare for these poems yet both ask and read, And like them too, must needfully, though few, Be of the best; and 'mongst those best are you: Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are The Muses' evening, as their morning star. XCV. TO SIR HENRY SAVILE. If, my religion safe, I durst embrace I should believe the soul of Tacitus 65 In thee, most weighty Savile, lived to us: 65 The founder of the Professorship which bears his name at Oxford, and one of the most learned men of his age. His most remarkable labor was an edition of the works of Chrysostom, in eight folio volumes. Fuller tells us that French emissaries surreptitiously procured the sheets as they passed through the press, and sent them to Paris, where they were reprinted, with a Latin translation and considerable additions, immediately after the appearance of Sir Henry's elition in England, which at first they considerably outstripped in sale. Sir Henry was provost of Eton, where he died in 1621, with the reputation, says Aubrey, of having been so 66 severe a governor, that the scholars hated him for his austerity."- B. |