FROM THE LOVER'S MELANCHOLY. For they were rivals, and their mistress, Harmony. Whom art had never taught clefs, moods, or notes, Had busied many hours to perfect practice: To end the controversy, in a rapture Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly, That there was curiosity and cunning, Concord and discord, lines of differing method, Meeting in one full centre of delight. Amet. Now for the bird. Men. The bird, ordain'd to be Music's first martyr, strove to imitate These several sounds; which when her warbling throat And brake her heart! It was the quaintest sadness, To weep a funeral elegy of tears; That, trust me, my Amethus, I could chide Amet. I believe thee. Men. He looked upon the trophies of his art, This cruelty upon the author of it; Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, To an untimely end." And in that sorrow, I suddenly stept in.2 163 GEORGE WITHER. (1588-1667.) WITHER was "the descendant of a family that had for many generations possessed the property of Manydowne in Hampshire" (Campbell). Being recalled from a short residence at Oxford University to hold the plough on his native acres, he felt an impulsive repugnance to this cramping of his genius." The vivacity of his satire in "Abuses Whipt and Stript" procured him a residence in the Marshalsea. The fate of Wither's life was to have the prison for his muse, He is a "weft and 66 1 Dashing. 2 This tale, from the Latin of Strada, is a favourite of the poets. It was beautifully translated by Crashaw, who entitles it "Music's Duel." stray" in the whirlwind of parties of the middle of the seventeenth century. Favoured by James I.; a royalist in the beginning of the troubles of Charles I.; a military captain in the war against the Scotch Covenanters; a major-general of Cromwell; saved, by a jest of Denham's, from execution by the royalists during his roundhead career; a monitor of Cromwell; a large profiter from confiscated royalist estates; a congratulator of Richard Cromwell's accession; an angry remonstrator against the disgorging of his spoils after the Restoration; a prisoner for just remonstrances against the illegal manner in which he was deprived of his fortune; a penman not to be silenced by age or prison-fetters :-these features constitute the physiognomy of Wither's varied life. A vein of honesty, or at least earnestness in present conviction, seems to run through his inconsistencies. He died in misery and obscurity at the age of seventy-nine. His literary life extends over about forty years of that period. His writings are, or rather if collected would be, voluminous. Wither's early pieces display the freshness and animation of truly poetical feeling; "but," says Campbell, "as he mixed with the turbu lent times, his fancy grew muddy with the stream." His diction is remarkable for its purely English character. Wither has, like many of his contemporaries and predecessors, been comparatively lately excavated from the oblivion into which the caprice of national taste had thrown him. For an excellent estimate of this old poet see Charles Lamb's Essays. -Alas! my Muse is slow: And though for her sake I'm crost, Ten times more than ten times double, Spite of all the world could do. For, though, banish'd from my flocks, 1 The eclogue is inscribed to his "truly beloved and loving friend Mr. William Browne of the Inner Temple." 2 The "Shepherd's Hunting" was published while he was confined in the Marshalsea for the publication of "Abuses Whipt and Stript." FROM THE SHEPHERD'S HUNTING. Here I waste away the light, With those sweets the spring-tide yields; Where the shepherds chant their loves, Than the sweet-voiced Philomel ; But remembrance (poor relief), That more makes than mends my grief; Maugre Envy's evil will; (Whence she should be driven too, She doth tell me where to borrow Or a shady bush or tree, By her help, I also now, Make this churlish place allow Some things that may sweeten gladness, In the very gall of sadness. The dull loneness, the black shade, That those hanging vaults have made ; The strange music of the waves, Beating on these hollow caves; 165 1 Wordsworth is fond of expressing this result of the poetical temperament. In describing the hardness of "Peter Bell's" mind, he gives as one of the proofs of it A primrose by the river's brim, This black den which rocks emboss, She hath taught me by her might, Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee; That to nought but earth are born, Than I am in love with thee. Though our wise ones call it madness, If I love not thy madd'st fits And though some too seeming holy Thou dost teach me to contemn What makes knaves and fools of them.1 FROM "A DIRGE." Farewell, Sweet groves to you! You hills that highest dwell, And all your humble vales adieu ! You wanton brooks and solitary rocks, My dear companions all, and you my tender flocks! Farewell, my pipe! and all those pleasing songs whose moving strains Sighs, tears, and every sad annoy, That erst did with me dwell, 1 Compare this whole passage with Ovid, Tristia, IV. 110. 2 The shape of this stanza, of a "rhomboidal dirge," as Ellis terms it, is an ex ample of the affectation of moulding poems into the forms of objects. EPITAPH ON DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 167 THOMAS CAREW. (1589-1639.) CAREW, the gay courtier poet of Charles I., is one of the best types of the style of light voluptuous poetry which ripened into such mischievous luxuriance in the reign of Charles II. He is of the metaphysical school of Donne, with something of his earnestness and heart, and with infinitely more of elegance and grace. His poems are all occasional and short, with the exception of the masque, “Coelum Britannicum," written at the request of Charles I. Among the poets," says Campbell, “who have walked the same limited path, he is pre-eminently beautiful, and deservedly ranks among the earliest of those who gave a cultivated grace to our lyrical strains." Carew was descended from a Gloucestershire family; his life was a career of gaiety and license, but he seems to have been respected and beloved by all who knew him. Clarendon writes of him-" His glory was, that after fifty years of his life spent with less severity or exactness than they ought to have been, he died with the greatest remorse for that cense, and with the greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could desire." EPITAPH ON THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.1 Reader, when these dumb stones have told Did strength with shape and grace enrich; Of flowing gestures, speech, and eyes; 1 George Villiers, the favourite of James I. and Charles I. by the Irishman Felton, in revenge for some alleged injustice. He was assassinated |