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ONE of the most popular works of the reign of James, was SYLVESTER's translation of The Divine Weeks of Du Bartas. The first part was published in 1598, but the folio edition appeared in 1621, recommended by eulogistic verses, by Daniel, Ben Jonson, Hall, and others. Jonson afterwards told Drummond, "that he wrote his verses before it, ere he understood to confer." But he need not have retracted his praise on the score of Sylvester's unfaithful translation; for the principal merit of the work consists in the occasional beauty and originality of some of the epithets and images.

Du Bartas was highly esteemed in England. Sir John Melvil mentions him in his memoirs:-"The Ambassadours were not well embarked when M. Du Bartas arrived here to visit the King's majesty, who, he heard, had him in great esteem for his rare poesy, set forth in the French tongue." In five or six years the editions of Du Bartas' poems exceeded thirty, and yet his name has now passed into a proverb in France to express la barbarie et le mauvais gout de style. Goëthe has truly observed that the just appreciation of what is pleasing with reference to the country, to the period, and the moral state of a people, constitutes taste properly so called, and instances Du Bartas, who has received in Germany the appellation of King of the French poets.

Wood says that Sylvester was an accomplished scholar. In addition to his versions from Du Bartas and Pibrac, whom Montaigne called bon M. de Pibrac, and whose Quatrains have been rendered into all languages, he made some translations from the Latin of Fracastorius, the learned friend of Cardinal Bembo*.

Bishop Hall seems to have entertained a very favourable opinion of Sylvester's religious poetry. In alluding in his Epistles to his own

He died at Middleburgh, in Holland, after a life of adversity, on the 28th of September, 1618, in the 55th year of his age. "By what circumstances he was induced to quit his native country," says Mr. Chalmers, "we have not discovered." From Cole's MS. collections we learn that he was Secretary to the Company of Merchants in Middleburgh, in 1617, and it was probably with a view of obtaining this situation that he left England*. Poor Sylvester had few inducements to remain in his own country; his poetical talents only procured him fame and flattery, and on this diet, like many of his brethren, he found it very difficult to subsist.

Mr. Dunster, in his considerations on Milton's early reading, has very ingeniously, and in many instances successfully, endeavoured to prove the obligations of the writer of Paradise Lost to the poems of Sylvester. Sylvester undoubtedly enriched our language with some picturesque epithets. His characteristics of the sweetnumbered Homer, the clear-styled Herodotus, and the choicetermed Petrarch, are not more gracefully poetic than critically correct. The melody and richness of some of his pictures of nature entitled him to the appellation bestowed by his contemporaries, of the "silver-tongued." The rose-crowned Zephyrus, and the saffron-coloured bed of Aurora, are worthy of Theocritus or Anacreon. Perhaps the whole range of our poetry does not present a more exquisite descriptive couplet than the following:

Arise betimes, while th' opal-coloured morn
In golden pomp doth May-day's door adorn.

metrical versions from the Psalms, after praising the "two rare spirits of the Sidneys," he observes, "our worthy friend, Mr. J. Sylvester, hath showed me how happily he hath sometimes turned from his Bartas to the sweet singer of Israel."

* In Brit. Mus., No. 5880, p. 89. Cole ascertained this circumstance from the list of subscribers to Minshicus' Dictionary, in 1617.

DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

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IN 1623 appeared the perfect edition of DRUMMOND'S Flowers of Sion, or Spiritual Poems. Drummond, of Hawthornden, is endeared to our remembrance by his loyalty, his learning, and his poetry. The unhappy termination of the life of King Charles, to whom he was devotedly attached, is thought to have hastened his own dissolution. Mr. Gifford has very severely commented upon what he calls Drummond's hypocrisy towards his friend, Ben Jonson; but it should be recollected, that the journal in which the objectionable remarks were entered, was strictly private, and never intended by the author to have seen the light. But if Drummond's opinion of Jonson's character was incorrect, Jonson's estimation of his friend's poetical talents was equally illfounded. If Drummond's verses "smelled" of the "schooles," they were generally the schools of nature *. Not one of his contemporaries had a heart more susceptible of her music, or looked out upon her beauty less frequently through the "spectacles of books." His petition to his Lute appears to have been answered, and she often discoursed to him with the sweetness of that pastoral tone when she dwelt with her "green mother, in some shady grove†.”

The following specimen is not selected for its superior excellence, but on account of its being less frequently quoted than others. It breathes a high and moral dignity, and is remarkable for the ingenuity with which the original metaphor is preserved :—

Of this fair volume which we World do call,

If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care

Of Him who it corrects, and did it frame,

Jonson said, that Drummond's verses "smelled too much of the schooles."

+ See the sonnet to his Lute.

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DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

We clear might read the art and wisdom rare;
Find out his power which wildest arts doth tame,
His providence extending every where,
His justice which proud rebels doth not spare,
In every page, no period of the same:

But sillie we, like foolish children, rest

Well pleased with coloured vellum, leaves of gold;
Fair dangling ribbons, leaving what is best,

Of the great Writer's sense ne'er taking hold.

Or if by chance we stay our minds on aught,
It is some picture on the margin wrought.

To some of my readers the pleasant spot where Drummond passed so many happy and innocent days may be known. Hawthornden is situated on the North Esk, about half a mile below Roslyn Castle. The house stands upon the summit of a precipice overhanging the sides of the river, and immediately beneath it are several curious caverns. In a small detached cave Drummond is said to have composed many of his poems. The Cypress Grove is also the title of a very eloquent essay, probably written in the same solitude *.

*Scenes in Scotland, with historical illustrations and biographical anecdotes, by J. Leighton. I have seen with pleasure the announcement of an edition of the poems of Drummond, with a biographical memoir by Mr. Peter Cunningham, the son of the poet. His name is, at least, an augury of good.

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GEORGE WITHER.

It has been the fashion among critics and readers of poetry to regard Wither only as a fanatical rhymer and an intemperate puritan; yet, during the longest and brightest period of his life, he was neither. A puritan, indeed, in its true signification, he never was. It has been well observed, that no man was ever written down except by himself. Wither's political follies had, during his later years, been gradually erasing from the public remembrance the sweetness of his early poetry; and the wit and festivity accompanying the Restoration, tended still more to depress his fame. The accomplished Rochester and his companions held the popular mind in a more silken bondage. From the criticism and taste of this season Wither could not hope either for favour or justice. The virulence of party feelings obscured the judgment even of the antiquary Wood; he saw in Locke a prating fellow, and in Milton a villanous incendiary. That Wood, in another place, rendered homage to the singer of Paradise Lost, only proves that the partisan was lost for a while in the admirer of that immortal composition. In days when Milton was only a blind old man, Wither had no right to complain that his poems 'were accounted mere scribbles, and the fancies of a conceited and confident mind." Heylin had long before called him an old puritan satirist; and Butler, in his Hudibras, made him the drunken companion of the voluminous Prynne, and the despicable Vicars. Philips, in the Theatrum Poetarum, added his mite of contumely; and Dryden, Swift, and Pope, did not forget to follow his example. Swift, indeed, while sneering at Wither,

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