Thus sate the olde man counselling the young; Wooing their sweetings with dilicious straynes. The exquisite picture of the Shepherd boy, piping as if he would never be old, is borrowed from the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, a beautiful prose pastoral which Browne must have read with enthusiasm. He is by no means a frequent plagiarist, for he had too much wealth in his own hand to be tempted by the wealth of others; but there are two or three other passages for which he is evidently indebted, perhaps quite unconsciously, to his contemporaries. In the following lines we are reminded of Shakespeare's well-known description (in As You Like It) of the boy creeping like a snail unwillingly to school. As children on a play-day leave the schooles, Rush to despoil some sweet thrush of her young; Glide to the schooles than they unto their master; But if Browne has occasionally caught a flash of light from the lamps of other men, he has the honour to be much more sinned against than sinning. I have already alluded to the hints he afforded to the great Milton, and will now lay before the reader a beautiful passage that evidently suggested to Dryden his nobly modulated lines at the commencement of his Theodore and Honoria, which I have cited, on a former occasion and in another place, as a fine specimen of imitative harmony. It may be as well to refresh the reader's memory with Dryden's verses. While listening to the murmuring leaves he stood More than a mile immersed within the wood; At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound A sudden horror seized his giddy head, And his ears tingled and his colour fled. — Dryden. These lines, admirable as they are, were suggested by the following, which exhibit the same fine variety of pause. Their sound must have haunted the ear of Dryden. Each river, every rill Sent up their vapours to attend her will. These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt earth and heaven, Mr. Campbell, in his "Specimens of the British Poets," has given a few passages from Browne. But while Campbell acknowledges that the poetry is not without beauty, he seems to sneer at those who have thought the fourth eclogue of Browne's "Shepherd's Pipe" the precursor of Milton's Lycidas. "A single simile" (he observes) "about a rose constitutes all the resem. blance!" This is not the case. The simile of the rose is as follows: [From Browne.] Looke as the sweet rose fairely buddeth forth Some white and curious hand inviting So stands my mournfull case, For had he been lesse good He yet (all uncorrupt) had kept the stocke [From Milton.] As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Such Lycidas thy loss to shepherd's ear. Here is not an absolute plagiarism, but there is evidently a borrowed suggestion—a kind of debt which a great poet is often found to owe even to his inferiors. But it is not this single passage alone which shows, that Milton's perusal of Browne's verses had left an impression on his ear and mind that influenced him in the composition of his Lycidas. Browne, in the introduction to his eclogue, explains that "the author bewails the death of one, whom he shadoweth forth under the name of Philarete;" and Milton in his pastoral monody also "bewails a friend" under a poetical name. The general plan, the occasion, the sentiments and the illustrations of both poems, are very similar-a similarity that is too close to be an accidental coincidence. That the passage about the rose is not the only one that seems to have given a hint to Milton, the following lines will convince any reader in the habit of tracing out poetical beauties to their first source, which is often too obscure and dim to strike a careless eye. Behold our flowery beds : The glowing violet, Browne. The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine. Milton. In the place of the words sad embroidery in the last line, Milton originally wrote (as is known from the various readings in his manuscript copy) sorrow's livery; which was perhaps a slight shade nearer to the imagery of Browne. Browne was born in Devonshire, and has made his native county-the garden of England-the scene of his Pastorals. I honor him for his boldness, his good sense, and his good taste, in breaking through the silly custom of carrying the British Muse to foreign regions, in search of beauties that are no where more easily found than in our own delightful land. SONNET. ON THE DEATH OF NEVER, oh! never, this sin-tainted earth, His words were bodied radiance, and his worth An angel's dower. There seemed nor gloom nor dearth Than flower or gem, or sun or moon or star, Or river-waves that dance in summer mirth. Hath joined the choir that hymn their God for ever! |