pressure of the times exhibited in the faults of coeval literature, and in the foppery or sordid traits of prevailing manners. The age was undoubtedly fertile in eccentricity. His picture of its literature may at first view appear to be overcharged with severity, accustomed as we are to associate a general idea of excellence with the period of Elizabeth; but when Hall wrote there was not a great poet firmly established in the language except Spenser, and on him he has bestowed ample applause. With regard to Shakspeare, the reader will observe a passage in the first satire, where the poet speaks of resigning the honours of heroic and tragic poetry to more inspired geniuses; and it is possible that the great dramatist may be here alluded to, as well as Spenser. But the allusion is indistinct, and not necessarily applicable to the bard of Avon. Shakspeare's 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'Richard II.,' and 'Richard III.' have been traced in print to no earlier date than the year 1597, in which Hall's first series of satires appeared; and we have no sufficient proof of his previous fame as a dramatist having been so great as to leave Hall without excuse for omitting to pay him homage. But the sunrise of the drama with Shakspeare was not without abundance of attendant mists in the contemporary fustian of inferior playmakers, who are severely ridiculed by our satirist. In addition to this, our poetry was still haunted by the whining ghosts of The Mirror for Magistrates,' while obscenity walked in barbarous nakedness, and the very genius of the language was threatened by revolutionary prosodists. From the literature of the age Hall proceeds to its manners and prejudices, and among the latter derides the prevalent confidence in alchymy and astrology. To us this ridicule appears an ordinary effort of reason; but it was in him a common sense above the level of the times. If any proof were required to illustrate the slow departure of prejudices, it would be found in the fact of an astrologer being patronised, half a century afterwards, by the government of England.* * William Lilly received a pension from the council of state in 1648. He was, besides, consulted by Charles; and during the siege of Colchester was sent for by the heads of the parliamentary army, to encourage the soldiers, by assuring them that the town would be taken. Fairfax told the seer that he did not understand his art, but hoped it During his youth and education he had to struggle with poverty; and in his old age he was one of those sufferers in the cause of episcopacy whose virtues shed a lustre on its fall. He was born in the parish of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, in Leicestershire, studied and took orders at Cambridge, and was for some time master of the school of Tiverton, in Devonshire. An accidental opportunity which he had of preaching before Prince Henry seems to have given the first impulse to his preferment, till by gradual promotion he rose to be Bishop of Exeter, having previously accompanied King James, as one of his chaplains, to Scotland, and attended the Synod of Dort at a convocation of the Protestant divines. As Bishop of Exeter he was so mild in his conduct towards the Puritans, that he, who was one of the last broken pillars of the Church, was nearly persecuted for favouring them. Had such conduct been, at this critical period, pursued by the high churchmen in general, the history of a bloody age might have been changed into that of peace; but the violence of Laud prevailed over the milder counsels of a Hall, an Usher, and a Corbet. When the dangers of the church grew more instant, Hall became its champion, and was met in the field of controversy by Milton, whose respect for the bishop's learning is ill concealed under the attempt to cover it with derision. By the little power that was still left to the sovereign in 1641, Hall was created Bishop of Norwich; but having joined, almost immediately after, in the protest of the twelve prelates against the validity of laws that should be passed in their compelled absence, he was committed to the Tower, and, in the sequel, was lawful and agreeable to God's word. Butler alludes to this when he says "Do not our great reformers use marked out for sequestration. After suffering extreme hardships, he was allowed to retire on a small pittance to Higham, near Norwich, where he continued, in comparative obscurity, but with indefatigable zeal and intrepidity, to exercise the duties of a pastor, till he closed his days at the venerable age of eighty-two. WILLIAM WARNER [Died, 1608-9.] WAS a native of Oxfordshire, and was born, as Mr. Ellis conjectures, in 1558. He left the university of Oxford without a degree, and came to London, where he pursued the business of an attorney of the common pleas. Scott, the poet of Amwell, discovered that he had been buried in the church of that parish in 1609, having died suddenly in the night-time.* His Albion's England' was once exceedingly popular. Its publication was at one time interdicted by the Star Chamber, for no other reason that can now be assigned but that it contains some love-stories more simply than delicately related. His contemporaries compared him to Virgil, whom he certainly did not make his model. Dr. Percy thinks he rather resembled Ovid, to whom he is, if possible, still more unlike. His poem is, in fact, an enormous ballad on the history, or rather on the fables appendant to the history of England; heterogeneous, indeed, like the Metamorphoses,' but written with an almost doggrel simplicity. Headley has rashly preferred his works to our ancient ballads; but with the best of these they will bear no comparison. 'Argentile and Curan' has indeed some beautiful touches, yet that episode requires to be weeded of many lines to be read with unqualified pleasure; and through the rest of his stories we shall search in vain for the familiar magic of such ballads as 'Chevy Chase' or Gill Morrice.' * [9th March, 1608-9.] SIR JOHN HARRINGTON. [Born, 1561? Died, 1612?] THE poetry of Sir John Harrington's father is so polished and refined as almost to warrant a suspicion that the editor of the "Nugæ Antiquæ' got it from a more modern quarter. The elder Harrington was imprisoned in the Tower, under Queen Mary, for holding a correspondence with Elizabeth; on whose accession his fidelity was rewarded by her favour. His son, the translator of Ariosto, was knighted on the field by the Earl of Essex, not much to the satisfaction of Elizabeth, who was sparing of such honours, and chose to confer them herself. He was created a Knight of the Bath in the reign of James, and distinguished himself, to the violent offence of the high church party, by his zeal against the marriage of bishops. HENRY PERROT. PERROT, I suspect, was not the author, but only the collector, of his book of epigrams entitled 'Springes for Woodcocks,' some of which are claimed by other epigrammatists, probably with no better right. It is indeed very difficult to ascertain the real authors of a vast number of little pieces of the 16th and 17th centuries, as the minor poets pilfer from each other with the utmost coolness and apparent impunity. SIR THOMAS OVERBURY [Born, 1581. Died, 1613.] Was born in 1581, and perished in the Tower of London, 1613, by a fate that is too well known. The compassion of the public for a man of worth, "whose spirit still walked unrevenged amongst them," together with the contrast of his ideal Wife with the Countess of Essex, who was his murderess, attached an interest and popularity to his poem, and made it pass through sixteen editions before the year 1653. His 'Characters, or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons,' is a work of considerable merit; but unfortunately his prose, as well as his verse, has a dryness and quaintness that seem to oppress the natural movement of his thoughts. As a poet he has few imposing attractions: his beauties must be fetched by repeated perusal. They are those of solid reflection, predominating over, but not extinguishing, sensibility; and there is danger of the reader neglecting, under the coldness and ruggedness of his manner, the manly but unostentatious moral feeling that is conveyed in his maxims, which are sterling and liberal, if we can only pardon a few obsolete ideas on female education. SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Born, 1552. Died, 1618.] It is difficult exactly to estimate the poetical character of this great man, as many of the pieces that are ascribed to him have not been authenticated. Among these is 'The Soul's Errand,'* which possesses a fire of imagination that we would willingly ascribe to him; but his claim to it, as has been already mentioned, is exceedingly doubtful. The tradition of his having written it on the night before his execution is highly interesting to the fancy, but, like many fine stories, it has the little defect of being untrue, as the poem was in existence more than twenty years before his death.† Sir Walter was born at Hayes Farm, in Devonshire, and studied at Oxford. Leaving the university at seventeen, he fought for six years under the Protestant banners in France, and afterwards served a campaign in the Netherlands. He next dis [Or, 'The Lie.'-Ante, p. 74.] This bold and spirited poem has been ascribed to several authors, but to none on satisfactory authority. It can be traced to MS. of a date as early as 1593, when Francis Davison, who published it in his 'Poetical Rhapsody' [1608], was too young to be supposed, with much probability, to have written it; and as Davison's work was a compilation, his claims to it must be very doubtful. Sir Egerton Brydges has published it among Sir Walter Raleigh's poems, but without a tittle of evidence to show that it was the production of that great man. [The Lie' is ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh in an answer to it written at the time, and recently discovered in a MS. in the Chetham Library at Manchester. That it was written by Raleigh is now almost past a doubt.] |