Power then maintained itself even by those arts

By which it grew-as justice, labour, love; Reserved sweetness did itself impart

Even unto slaves, yet kept itself above,
And by a meek descending to the least,
Envyless swayed and governed all the rest.

Order there equal was; Time courts ordained
To hear, to judge, to execute, and make
Few and good rules, for all griefs that complained;
Such care did princes of their people take
Before this art of power alloyed the truth;
So glorious of man's greatness is the youth!

What wonder was it, then, if those thrones found
Thanks as exorbitant as was their merit?
Wit to give highest tributes being bound,
And wound up by a princely ruling spirit,
To worship them for their gods after death,
Who in their life exceeded human faith.

PHINEAS AND GILES FLETCHER.

These brother-poets were sons of Dr Giles Fletcher, and cousins of Fletcher the dramatist; both were clergymen, whose lives afforded but little variety of incident. Phineas was born in 1584, educated at Eton and Cambridge, and became rector of Hilgay in Norfolk, where he died in 1650. Giles was younger than his brother; the date of his birth has not been ascertained, but is supposed to have been about 1588. He was rector of Alderton in Suffolk, where he died in 1623.

The works of PHINEAS FLETCHER consist of the Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, Piscatory Eclogues, and miscellaneous poems. The Purple Island was published in 1633, but written much earlier, as appears from some allusions in it to the Earl of Essex. The name of the poem conjures up images of poetical and romantic beauty, such as we may suppose a youthful admirer and follower of Spenser to have drawn. A perusal of the work, however, dispels this allusion. The Purple Island of Fletcher is no sunny spot 'amid the melancholy main,' but is an elaborate and anatomical description of the body and mind of man. He begins with the veins, arteries, bones, and muscles of the human frame, picturing them as hills, dales, streams, and rivers, and describing with great minuteness their different meanderings, elevations, and appearances. It is admitted that the poet was well skilled in anatomy, and the first part of his work is a sort of lecture fitted for the dissecting-room. Having in five cantos exhausted his physical phenomena, Fletcher proceeds to describe the complex nature and operations of the mind. Intellect is the prince of the Isle of Man, and he is furnished with eight counsellors-Fancy, Memory, the Common Sense, and five external senses. The human fortress, thus garrisoned, is assailed by the Vices, and a fierce contest ensues for the possession of the human soul. At length an angel interposes, and insures victory to the Virtues the angel being King James I., on whom the poet condescended to heap this fulsome adulation. From this sketch of Fletcher's poem, it will be apparent that its worth must rest, not upon plot, but upon isolated passages and particular descriptions. Some of his stanzas have all the easy flow and mellifluous sweetness of Spenser's Faery Queen; but others are marred by affectation and quaintness, and by the tediousness

inseparable from long-protracted allegory. His fancy was luxuriant, and, if better disciplined by taste and judgment, might have rivalled the softer scenes of Spenser.

GILES FLETCHER published only one poetical production of any length-a sacred poem, entitled Christ's Victory and Triumph. It appeared at Cambridge in 1610, and met with such indifferent success, that a second edition was not called for till twenty years afterwards. There is a massive grandeur and earnestness about Christ's Victory which strikes the imagination. The materials of the poem are better fused together, and more harmoniously linked in connection, than those of the Purple Ísland. Both of these brothers,' says Hallam, are deserving of much praise; they were endowed with minds eminently poetical, and not inferior in imagination to any of their contemporaries. But an injudicious taste, and an excessive fondness for a style which the public was rapidly abandoning, that of allegorical personification, prevented their powers from being effectively displayed.' According to 'Campbell: They were both the disciples of Spenser, and, with his diction gently modernised, retained much of his melody and luxuriant expression. Giles, inferior as he is to Spenser and Milton, might be figured, in his happiest moments, as a link of connection in our poetry between these congenial spirits, for he reminds us of both, and evidently gave hints to the latter in a poem on the same subject with Paradise Regained. These hints are indeed very plain and obvious. The appearance of Satan as an aged sire 'slowly footing' in the silent wilderness, the temptation of our Saviour in the 'goodly garden,' and in the Bower of Vain Delight, are outlines which Milton adopted and filled up in his second epic, with a classic grace and force of style unknown to the Fletchers. To the latter, however, belong the merit of original invention, copiousness of fancy, melodious numbers, and language at times rich, ornate, and highly poetical. If Spenser had not previously written his Bower of Bliss, Giles Fletcher's Bower of Vain Delight would have been unequalled in the poetry of that day; but probably, like his master, Spenser, he copied from Tasso.

Decay of Human Greatness.
From the Purple Island.

Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness,
And here long seeks what here is never found!
For all our good we hold from Heaven by lease,
With many forfeits and conditions bound;
Nor can we pay the fine, and rentage due:
Though now but writ, and sealed, and given anew,
Yet daily we it break, then daily must renew.
Why shouldst thou here look for perpetual good,
At every loss 'gainst Heaven's face repining?
Do but behold where glorious cities stood,
With gilded tops and silver turrets shining;
There now the hart, fearless of greyhound, feeds,
And loving pelican in fancy breeds;
There screeching satyrs fill the people's empty stedes.1

Where is the Assyrian lion's golden hide,
That all the east once grasped in lordly paw?
Where that great Persian bear, whose swelling pride
The lion's self tore out with ravenous jaw?

1 Places.

Or he which, 'twixt a lion and a pard,
Through all the world with nimble pinions fared,
And to his greedy whelps his conquered kingdoms
shared.

Hardly the place of such antiquity,

Or note of these great monarchies we find:

Only a fading verbal memory,

And empty name in writ is left behind :

But when this second life and glory fades,

And sinks at length in time's obscurer shades,

A second fall succeeds, and double death invades.

That monstrous beast, which, nursed in Tiber's fen,
Did all the world with hideous shape affray;
That filled with costly spoil his gaping den,
And trod down all the rest to dust and clay:
His battering horns, pulled out by civil hands
And iron teeth, lie scattered on the sands;

Backed, bridled by a monk, with seven heads yoked stands.

And that black vulture1 which with deathful wing
O'ershadows half the earth, whose dismal sight
Frightened the Muses from their native spring,
Already stoops, and flags with weary flight:
Who then shall look for happiness beneath?

Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and death,

And life itself 's as flit as is the air we breathe.

Description of Parthenia, or Chastity. With her, her sister went, a warlike maid, Parthenia, all in steel and gilded arms; In needle's stead, a mighty spear she swayed, With which, in bloody fields and fierce alarms, The boldest champion she down would bear, And like a thunderbolt wide passage tear, Flinging all to the earth with her enchanted spear.

Her goodly armour seemed a garden green,
Where thousand spotless lilies freshly blew ;
And on her shield the lone bird might be seen,
Th' Arabian bird, shining in colours new;
Itself unto itself was only mate;

Ever the same, but new in newer date :

And underneath was writ, 'Such is chaste single state.'

Thus hid in arms she seemed a goodly knight,
And fit for any warlike exercise :

But when she list lay down her armour bright,
And back resume her peaceful maiden's guise,
The fairest maid she was, that ever yet
Prisoned her locks within a golden net,
Or let them waving hang, with roses fair beset.

Choice nymph! the crown of chaste Diana's train,
Thou beauty's lily, set in heavenly earth;
Thy fairs, unpatterned, all perfection stain:
Sure Heaven with curious pencil at thy birth
In thy rare face her own full picture drew:
It is a strong verse here to write, but true,
Hyperboles in others are but half thy due.

Upon her forehead Love his trophies fits,
A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying:
And in the midst himself full proudly sits,
Himself in awful majesty arraying:
Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow,
And ready shafts; deadly those weapons shew;

Yet sweet the death appeared, lovely that deadly blow....

1 The Turk.

A bed of lilies flower upon her cheek,
And in the midst was set a circling rose;
Whose sweet aspéct would force Narcissus seek
New liveries, and fresher colours choose
To deck his beauteous head in snowy 'tire;
But all in vain: for who can hope t' aspire
To such a fair, which none attain, but all admire?

Her ruby lips lock up from gazing sight
A troop of pearls, which march in goodly row:
But when she deigns those precious bones undight,
Soon heavenly notes from those divisions flow,
And with rare music charm the ravished ears,
Daunting bold thoughts, but cheering modest fears:
The spheres so only sing, so only charm the spheres.

Yet all these stars which deck this beauteous sky
By force of th' inward sun both shine and move;
Throned in her heart sits love's high majesty;
In highest majesty the highest love.

As when a taper shines in glassy frame,
The sparkling crystal burns in glittering flame,
So does that brightest love brighten this lovely dame.

The Sorceress of Vain Delight.

From Christ's Victory and Triumph. By Giles Fletcher.
The garden like a lady fair was cut,

That lay as if she slumbered in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut;

The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flowers of light:
The flowers-de-luce, and the round sparks of dew
That hung upon their azure leaves, did shew
Like twinkling stars, that sparkle in the evening blue.

Upon a hilly bank her head she cast,
On which the bower of Vain Delight was built.
White and red roses for her face were placed,
And for her tresses marigolds were spilt:
Them broadly she displayed, like flaming gilt,
Till in the ocean the glad day was drowned:
Then up again her yellow locks she wound,

And with green fillets in their pretty cauls them bound.

What should I here depaint her lily hand,
Her veins of violets, her ermine breast,
Which there in orient colours living stand:
Or how her gown with silken leaves is dressed,
Or how her watchman, armed with boughy crest,
A wall of prim hid in his bushes bears
Shaking at every wind their leafy spears,
While she supinely sleeps, nor to be waked fears.

Over the hedge depends the graping elm,
Whose greener head, empurpuled in wine,
Seemed to wonder at his bloody helm,
And half suspect the bunches of the vine,
Lest they, perhaps, his wit should undermine;
For well he knew such fruit he never bore:
But her weak arms embraced him the more,
And she with ruby grapes laughed at her paramour....

The roof thick clouds did paint, from which three boys,
Three gaping mermaids with their ewers did feed,
Whose breasts let fall the stream, with sleepy noise,
To lions' mouths, from whence it leaped with speed,
And in the rosy laver seemed to bleed;

The naked boys unto the water's fall
Their stony nightingales had taught to call,
When Zephyr breathed into their watery interall.

And all about, embayed in soft sleep,

A herd of charmed beasts aground were spread,
Which the fair witch in golden chains did keep,
And them in willing bondage fettered:

Once men they lived, but now the men were dead,
And turned to beasts; so fabled Homer old,
That Circe with her potion, charmed in gold,
Used manly souls in beastly bodies to immould.

Through this false Eden, to his leman's bower-
Whom thousand souls devoutly idolise-
Our first destroyer led our Saviour;
There in the lower room, in solemn wise,
They danced a round, and poured their sacrifice
To plump Lyæus, and among the rest,
The jolly priest, in ivy garlands drest,
Chanted wild orgials, in honour of the feast.

...

High over all, Panglorie's blazing throne,
In her bright turret, all of crystal wrought,
Like Phoebus' lamp, in midst of heaven, shone:
Whose starry top, with pride infernal fraught,
Self-arching columns to uphold were taught,
In which her image still reflected was

By the smooth crystal, that, most like her glass,
In beauty and in frailty did all others pass.

A silver wand the sorceress did sway,
And, for a crown of gold, her hair she wore;
Only a garland of rose-buds did play
About her locks, and in her hand she bore
A hollow globe of glass, that long before
She full of emptiness had bladdered,
And all the world therein depictured:

Whose colours, like the rainbow, ever vanished.

Such watery orbicles young boys do blow
Out from their soapy shells, and much admire
The swimming world, which tenderly they row
With easy breath till it be raised higher;
But if they chance but roughly once aspire,
The painted bubble instantly doth fall.
Here when she came she 'gan for music call,
And sung this wooing song to welcome him withal:

'Love is the blossom where there blows
Everything that lives or grows:
Love doth make the heavens to move,
And the sun doth burn in love;
Love the strong and weak doth yoke,
And makes the ivy climb the oak;
Under whose shadows lions wild,
Softened by love, grow tame and mild:
Love no medicine can appease;
He burns the fishes in the seas;
Not all the skill his wounds can stench,
Not all the sea his fire can quench:
Love did make the bloody spear
Once a leafy coat to wear,
While in his leaves there shrouded lay
Sweet birds, for love, that sing and play:
And of all love's joyful flame
I the bud and blossom am.

Only bend thy knee to me,
Thy wooing shall thy winning be.

'See, see! the flowers that below
Now as fresh as morning blow,

And of all the virgin rose,

That as bright Aurora shews:

How they all unleaved lie

Losing their virginity;
Like unto a summer shade,

But now born and now they fade.
Everything doth pass away;
There is danger in delay;
Come, come, gather then the rose;
Gather it, or it you lose.
All the sands of Tagus' shore
Into my bosom casts his ore:

All the valleys' swimming corn
To my house is yearly borne;
Every grape of every vine

Is gladly bruised to make me wine;
While ten thousand kings as proud
To carry up my train have bowed,
And a world of ladies send me
In my chambers to attend me;
All the stars in heaven that shine,
And ten thousand more, are mine:
Only bend thy knee to me,

Thy wooing shall thy winning be.'

Thus sought the dire enchantress in his mind
Her guileful bait to have embosomed :
But he her charms dispersed into wind,
And her of insolence admonished,
And all her optic glasses shattered.

So with her sire to hell she took her flight-
The starting air flew from the damned sprite-
Where deeply both aggrieved plunged themselves in
night.

But to their Lord, now musing in his thought,
A heavenly volley of light angels flew,
And from his Father him a banquet brought
Through the fine element, for well they knew,
After his Lenten fast, he hungry grew:
And as he fed, the holy choirs combine
To sing a hymn of the celestial Trine;

All thought to pass, and each was past all thought divine.

The birds' sweet notes, to sonnet out their joys,
Attempered to the lays angelical;

And to the birds the winds attune their noise;
And to the winds the waters hoarsely call,
And echo back again revoiced all;

That the whole valley rung with victory.

But now our Lord to rest doth homewards fly: See how the night comes stealing from the mountains high.

WILLIAM BROWNE.

WILLIAM BROWNE (1590-1645) was a pastoral and descriptive poet, who, like Phineas and Giles Fletcher, adopted Spenser for his model. He was a native of Tavistock, in Devonshire, and the beautiful scenery of his native county seems to have inspired his early strains. His descriptions are vivid and true to nature. Browne was tutor to the Earl of Carnarvon, and on the death of the latter at the battle of Newbury in 1643, he received the patronage and lived in the family of the Earl of Pembroke. In this situation he realised a competency, and according to Wood, purchased an estate. He died at Ottery-St-Mary (the birthplace of Coleridge) in 1645. Browne's works consist of Britannia's Pastorals, the first part of which was published in 1613, the second part in 1616. He wrote also a pastoral poem of inferior merit, entitled The Shepherd's Pipe. In 1620, a masque by Browne was produced at court, called The Inner Temple Masque; but it was not printed till a hundred and twenty years after the author's death, transcribed from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library. As all the poems of Browne were produced before he was thirty years of age, and the best when he was little more than twenty, we need not be surprised at their containing marks of juvenility, and frequent traces of resemblance to previous poets, especially Spenser, whom he warmly admired. His pastorals obtained the approbation

of Selden, Drayton, Wither, and Ben Jonson. Britannia's Pastorals are written in the heroic couplet, and contain much beautiful descriptive poetry. Browne had great facility of expression, and an intimate acquaintance with the phenomena of inanimate nature, and the characteristic features of the English landscape. Why he has failed in maintaining his ground among his contemporaries, must be attributed to the want of vigour and condensation in his works, and the almost total absence of human interest. His shepherds and shepherdesses have nearly as little character as the silly sheep' they tend; whilst pure description, that 'takes the place of sense,' can never permanently interest any large number of readers. So completely had some of the poems of Browne vanished from the public view and recollection, that, had it not been for a single copy of them possessed by the Rev. Thomas Warton, and which that poetical student and antiquary lent to be transcribed, it is supposed there would have remained little of those works which their author fondly hoped would

Keep his name enrolled past his that shines
In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves.

Warton cites the following lines of Browne, as containing an assemblage of the same images as the morning picture in the L'Allegro of Milton:

By this had chanticleer, the village cock,
Bidden the goodwife for her maids to knock;
And the swart ploughman for his breakfast stayed,
That he might till those lands were fallow laid;
The hills and valleys here and there resound
With the re-echoes of the deep-mouthed hound;
Each shepherd's daughter with her cleanly pail
Was come a-field to milk the morning's meal;
And ere the sun had climbed the eastern hills,
To gild the muttering bourns and pretty rills,
Before the labouring bee had left the hive,
And nimble fishes, which in rivers dive,
Began to leap and catch the drowned fly,
I rose from rest, not infelicity.

Browne celebrated the death of a friend under the name of Philarete in a pastoral poem; and Milton is supposed to have copied his plan in Lycidas. There is also a faint similarity in some of the sentiments and images. Browne has a very fine illustration of a rose :

Look, as a sweet rose fairly budding forth

Betrays her beauties to th' enamoured morn,
Until some keen blast from the envious north
Kills the sweet bud that was but newly born;
Or else her rarest smells, delighting,
Make herself betray
Some white and curious hand, inviting
To pluck her thence away.

A Descriptive Sketch.

O what a rapture have I gotten now!
That age of gold, this of the lovely brow,
Have drawn me from my song! I onward run-
Clean from the end to which I first begun-
But ye, the heavenly creatures of the West,
In whom the virtues and the graces rest,
Pardon! that I have run astray so long,
And grow so tedious in so rude a song.

If you yourselves should come to add one grace
Unto a pleasant grove or such-like place,
Where, here, the curious cutting of a hedge,
There in a pond, the trimming of the sedge;

Here the fine setting of well-shaded trees,
The walks there mounting up by small degrees,
The gravel and the green so equal lie,

It, with the rest, draws on your lingering eye:
Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air,
Arising from the infinite repair

Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price-
As if it were another paradise-

So please the smelling sense, that you are fain
Where last you walked to turn and walk again.
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats:
For in her face a many dimples shew,
And often skips as it did dancing go:
Here further down an overarched alley
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spy at end thereof a standing lake,
Where some ingenious artist strives to make
The water-brought in turning pipes of lead
Through birds of earth most lively fashioned-
To counterfeit and mock the silvans all
In singing well their own set madrigal.
This with no small delight retains your ear,
And makes you think none blest but who live there.
Then in another place the fruits that be
In gallant clusters decking each good tree
Invite your hand to crop them from the stem,
And liking one, taste every sort of them:
Then to the arbours walk, then to the bowers,
Thence to the walks again, thence to the flowers,
Then to the birds, and to the clear spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sense:
Here one walks oft, and yet anew begin'th,
As if it were some hidden labyrinth.

Evening.

As in an evening, when the gentle air
Breathes to the sullen night a soft repair,

I oft have sat on Thames' sweet bank, to hear
My friend with his sweet touch to charm mine ear:
When he hath played--as well he can-some strain,
That likes me, straight I ask the same again,
And he, as gladly granting, strikes it o'er
With some sweet relish was forgot before:
I would have been content if he would play,
In that one strain, to pass the night away;
But, fearing much to do his patience wrong,
Unwillingly have asked some other song:
So, in this diff'ring key, though I could well
A many hours, but as few minutes tell,
Yet, lest mine own delight might injure you—
Though loath so soon-I take my song anew.

Night.

The sable mantle of the silent night
Shut from the world the ever-joysome light,
Care fled away, and softest slumbers please
To leave the court for lowly cottages.
Wild beasts forsook their dens on woody hills,
And sleightful otters left the purling rills;

Rooks to their nests in high woods now were flung, And with their spread wings shield their naked young.

When thieves from thickets to the cross-ways stir,
And terror frights the lonely passenger;
When nought was heard but now and then the howl
Of some vile cur, or whooping of the owl.

The Syrens' Song.

From The Inner Temple Masque.

Steer hither, steer your winged pines, All beaten mariners;

Here lie Love's undiscovered mines A prey to passengers;

So recently as 1852, a third part of Britannia's Pastorals was first printed, from the original manuscript, preserved in the library of Salisbury Cathedral. Though imperfect, this continuation is in some passages fully equal to the earlier portions. The following (in the original spelling) is part of a description of Psyche :

Her cheekes the wonder of what eye beheld
Begott betwixt a lilly and a rose,
In gentle rising plaines devinely swelled,

Where all the graces and the loves repose.
Nature in this peece all her workes excelled,

Yet shewd her selfe imperfect in the close,
For she forgott (when she soe faire did rayse her)
To give the world a witt might duely prayse her.

When that she spoake, as at a voice from heaven

On her sweet words all eares and hearts attended; When that she sung, they thought the planetts seaven By her sweet voice might well their tunes have mended;

When she did sighe, all were of joye bereaven;

And when she smyld, heaven had them all befriended.

If that her voice, sighes, smiles, soe many thrilled,
O, had she kissed, how many had she killed!

Her slender fingers (neate and worthy made
To be the servants to soe much perfection)

Joyned to a palme whose touch woulde streight invade

And bring a sturdy heart to lowe subjection.
Her slender wrists two diamond braceletts lade,
Made richer by soe sweet a soules election.

O happy braceletts! but more happy he
To whom those armes shall as a bracelett be!

A complete edition of Browne's works was published in 1868 by W. C. Hazlitt.

SCOTTISH POETS.

ALEXANDER SCOTT.

While Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and other poets were illustrating the reign of Elizabeth, the muses were not wholly neglected in Scotland. There was, however, so little intercourse between the two nations, that the works of the English bards seem to have been comparatively unknown in the north, and to have had no Scottish imitators. The country was then in a rude and barbarous state, tyrannised over by the nobles, and torn by feuds and dissensions. In England, the Reformation had proceeded from the throne, and was accomplished with little violence or disorder. In

Scotland, it uprooted the whole form of society, and was marked by fierce contentions and wild turbulence. The absorbing influence of this ecclesiastical struggle was unfavourable to the cultivation of poetry. It shed a gloomy spirit over the nation, and almost proscribed the study of romantic literature. The drama, which in England was the nurse of so many fine thoughts, so much stirring passion, and beautiful imagery, was shunned as a leprosy, fatal to religion and morality. The very songs in Scotland partook of this religious character; and so widely was the polemical spirit diffused, that ALEXANDER SCOTT, in his New-year Gift to the Queen, in 1562, says: That limmer lads and little lasses, lo,

Will argue baith with bishop, priest, and friar. Scott wrote several short satires, and some miscellaneous poems, the prevailing amatory character of which has caused him to be called the Scottish Anacreon, though there are many points wanting to complete his resemblance to the Teian bard. As specimens of his talents, the following two pieces are presented :