In a nunnery will I shroud mee Far from any companye: But ere my prayers have an end, be sure of this, Thus farewell, most gallant captain! Farewell too my heart's content! Count not Spanish ladies wanton, Though to thee my love was bent: Joy and true prosperity goe still with thee! "The like fall ever to thy share, most fair ladie." 91 95 XXIV. Argentile and Curan Is extracted from an ancient historical poem in thirteen books, entitled Albion's England, by William Warner: "An author (says a former editor) only unhappy in the choice of his subject, and measure of his verse. His poem is an epitome of the British history, and written with great learning, sense, and spirit; in some places fine to an extraordinary degree, as I think will eminently appear in the ensuing episode [of Argentile and Curan,]a tale full of beautiful incidents in the romantic taste, extremely affecting, rich in ornament, wonderfully various in style; and in short, one of the most beautiful pastorals I ever met with."-[Muses' Library, 1738, 8vo.] To his merit nothing can be objected, unless perhaps an affected quaintness in some of his expressions, and an indelicacy in some of his pastoral images. Warner is said, by A. Wood', to have been a Warwickshire man, and to have been educated in Oxford, at Magdalene-hall: as also in the latter part of his life to have been retained in the service of Henry Cary, Lord Hunsdon, to whom he dedicates his poem. However that may have been, new light is thrown upon his history, and the time and manner of his death are now ascertained by the following extract from the parish register-book of Amwell, in Hertfordshire, which was obligingly communicated to the editor by Mr. Hoole, the very ingenious translator of Tasso, &c. [1608-1609.] "Master William Warner, a man of good yeares and of honest reputation; by his profession an Atturnye of the Common Pleas ; author of Albions England, diynge suddenly in the night in his bedde, without any former complaynt or sicknesse, on thursday night beeinge the 9th daye of March, was buried the satturday following, and lyeth in the church at the corner under the stone of Walter Ffader." Though now Warner is so seldom mentioned, his contemporaries ranked him on a level with Spenser, and called them the Homer and Virgil of their age 2. But Warner rather resembled Ovid, whose Metamorphoses he seems to have taken for his model, having deduced a perpetual poem from the deluge down to the era of Elizabeth, full of lively digressions and entertaining episodes. And though he is sometimes harsh, affected, and obscure, he often displays a most charming and pathetic simplicity: as where he describes Eleanor's harsh treatment of Rosamond : With that she dasht her on the lippes So dyed double red : Hard was the heart that gave the blow, Soft were those lippes that bled. The edition of Albion's England here followed, was printed in 4to, 1602; said in the title-page to have been “first penned and published by William Warner, and now revised and newly enlarged by the same author." The story of Argentile and Curan is, I believe, the poet's own invention; it is not mentioned in any of our chronicles. It was, however, so much admired, that not many years after he published it, came out a larger poem on the same subject in stanzas of six lines, entitled "The most pleasant and delightful historie of Curan a prince of Danske, and the fayre princesse Argentile, daughter and heyre to Adelbright, sometime king of Northumberland, &c. by William Webster, London, 1617," in 8 sheets, 4to. An indifferent paraphrase of the following poem. This episode of Warner's has also been altered into the common ballad of 'the two young Princes on Salisbury Plain," which is chiefly composed of Warner's lines, with a few contractions and interpolations, but all greatly for the worse. See the collection of Historical Ballads, 1727, 3 vols. 12mo. Though here subdivided into stanzas, Warner's metre is the old-fashioned Alexandrine of fourteen syllables. The reader therefore must not expect to find the close of the stanzas consulted in the pauses. THE Bruton's 'being' departed hence Where diversly in divers broyles The Saxons lost and wonne. 5 King Edel and king Adelbright In Diria jointly raigne; In loyal concorde during life These kingly friends remaine. When Adelbright should leave his life, 10 To Edel thus he sayes; By those same bondes of happie love, That held us friends alwaies; By our by-parted crowne, of which ; The moyetie is mine By God, to whom my soule must passe, And so in time may thine; 15 20 25 |