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Thus sate the olde man counselling the young;
Whilst, underneath a tree which over-hung
The silver streame, (as some delight it tooke
To trim his thick boughes in the chrystall brooke)
Were set a jocund crew of youthfull swaines

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,
And gladly run unto the swimming pooles
Or in the thickets, all with nettles stung,

Rush to despoil some sweet thrush of her young;
Or with their hats (for fish) lade in a brooke
Withouten paine: but when the morne doth looke
Out of the eastern gates, a snayle would faster
Glide to the schooles than they unto their master ;
So when, &c. &c.

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
Was dumb; a rising earthquake rocked the ground;
With deeper brown the grove was overspread,

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,
And as night's chariot through the ayre was driven,
Clamour grew dumb; unheard was shepherd's song,
And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue
Talked to the echo; satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance.
Only the curled streames soft chidings kept;
And little gales that from the green leafe swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whispering stirred
As loth to waken any singing bird.—Browne.

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 resemblance!" This is not the case. The simile of the rose is as follows:

:

[From Browne.]

Looke as the sweet rose fairely buddeth forth
Bewrayes her beauties to the enamoured morn,
Until some keene blast from the envious north
Killes the sweet bud that was but newly borne,
Or else her rarest smells delighting

Make her, herself betray,

Some white and curious hand inviting
To plucke her thence away.

So stands my mournfull case,

For had he been lesse good

He yet (all uncorrupt) had kept the stocke
Whereon he fairly stood.

[From Milton.]

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows,

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 :
Their beauties fade, and violets

For sorrow hang their heads.

The glowing violet,

Browne.

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine.
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.

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,
The realm of care, hath holier pilgrim trod !
The priest of Nature, Poetry, and God!

His words were bodied radiance, and his worth

An angel's dower. There seemed nor gloom nor dearth
When he but smiled. His thoughts were lovelier far

Than flower or gem, or sun or moon or star,

Or river-waves that dance in summer mirth.
Of transitory hopes the base control
He proudly spurned for heaven's eternal day.
A death-spark touched his tenement of clay,
And forth upsprang towards its destined goal
The flame divine. A purer spirit never

Hath joined the choir that hymn their God for ever!

LOVE-VERSES.

I.

WHEN thou wert nigh the world was bright,

And life a lovely dream;

I basked beneath the warm sun's light,
Or hailed the lunar beam ;—

In every mood, by night or day,
The time too swiftly passed away.

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