of extreme folly. Lastly, if you think it hath not well answered the title of the Shepherd's Hunting, go quarrel with the Stationer, who bid himself godfather, and imposed the name according to his own liking; and if you or he find any faults, pray mend them.

VALETE

[The prison-notes of WITHER are finer than the wood-notes of most of his poetical brethren. Prince Henry said of Sir Walter Raleigh, that none but his father would have kept such a bird in a cage. But whether encaged or roaming at liberty, WITHER never seems to have lost the least particle of that free spirit which characterizes all his early writings, as much as a glowing feature of independence distinguishes every page of the poet BURNS; but Burns thinks too much of annoying his foes to be quite easy within. The spiritual defence of Wither on the contrary is like a perpetual source of inward sunshine and satisfaction. The magnanimity also of Burns is not without its alloy of soreness, and a sense of injustice which seems to gall and irritate. Wither was the best skilled in the 'sweet uses of adversity:' he knew how to extract the 'precious jewel' from the 'head of the toad,' without drawing any of the 'venom' along with it.

The description in the fourth Eclogue of the Power of Fancy, or the Muse, to extract pleasure from common objects, and even to convert the most unpromising accidents into occasions of rejoicing, has been more quoted and is better known than any extract from the Poems of Wither. Great part of the Eclogue indeed is in a strain so much above, what he himself had before written, that he could not refrain from noticing it. He remarks that his spirits had been raised higher than they used to fly, 'through the love of poesy.' The finest parts of The Mistress of Philarete would suffer in comparison with this Eclogue.

The praises of poesy have been often sung in ancient and in modern times; strange powers have been ascribed to its influence over animals and inanimate auditors; but before Wither, no poet ever fcelebrated its power at home. It was Wither who discovered the wealth and the strength, which this divine gift confers upon the breast in which it is lodged, the alchemic virtue of the imagination, to transmute the lowest and vilest things into rare and precious, and to make the most untoward events of life to admit of a commentary and an interpretation, such as may

'sweeten gladness

In the very gall of sadness.'

EDITOR.]

WITHER'S MOTTO.

Nec Habeo, Nec Careo, Nec Curo.

LONDON:

Printed for John Marriott,

[The title-page to this Poem is a well engraved copperplate, of which the following versified description is an nexed. It represents the Author sitting on a rock. Beneath him is a fair domain of houses, gardens, meadows, and woods, and other goodly possessions, to which he points with his right hand, in which, at the same time, he holds a ribband with the words "Nec habeo." At his feet is a globe of the earth, with the words "Nec curo." while, is looking up to Heaven, from

The Author, meanwhence descends a

stream of glory; and from his lips proceed the words "Nec

cureo."]

The Explanation to the Emblem.

THIS little Emblem here doth represent
The blest condition of a man content.
The place he lies, on is a mighty rock,
To shew that he contemns and makes a mock
Of force or underminers. We express
What others think him, by his nakedness.
His mantle, with hearts-ease ywrought doth shew
What he doth of his own well-being know.
The pillar on whose base his head doth rest,
Hath fortitude and constancy exprest.
The cornucopia that so near him lies
Declares that he enough hath to suffice,
And that he can be pleas'd with what the fields
Or what the fruitful tree by nature yields.
That pleasant prospective, in which you see
Groves, rivers, lawns and palaces there be,
Lies far below him, and is that in which
The truest happy man is seldom rich.
The words Nec Habeo he doth there bestow;
And what he means doth with his finger shew.
Above him hover angels; and his eye
He fixing on the glorious heavens on high,
(From whence a ray into his breast descends)
His other words, Nec Careo, thither sends,