To your voices tune the lute; Let such things as do not live, Run a never-ending round; That our holy hymn may be From the earth's vast hollow womb, So shall HE from Heaven's high tower, All this huge wide orb we see, And enforce the fiends that dwell Then, O come, with sacred lays, Let us sound th' Almighty's praise. In the Preparation to the Psalter, Wither announced his intention of dividing his Treatise upon the Psalms into fifteen Decades. The Exercises upon the First Psalm were published in 1620, and inscribed to Sir John Smith, Knt., only son of Sir Thomas Smith, Governor of the East India Company, from whom the poet had received many tokens of regard. The Exercises upon the nine following Psalms, we are told in the Fides Anglicana, were lost. In 1621 Wither published the Songs of the Old Testament, translated into English measures; afterwards reprinted in the Hymns and Songs of the Church. One of the most beautiful and least known of Wither's early productions, is Fair Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete, which, although not published until 1622, is described as one of his "first poems, and composed many years agone." The MS. having been secretly "gotten out of the author's custody by a friend of his," came into the hands of Marriot, the bookseller, who having obtained a license for it, intended to print it without any further inquiry: but hearing accidentally the name of Wither mentioned as the real author, Marriot applied to him for permission to affix his name to the title-page, a request he found the poet unwilling to comply with, "fearing that the seeming lightness of such a subject might somewhat disparage the more serious studies" he had since undertaken. These particulars are gathered from the address to the reader, professedly written by Marriot, but in reality furnished to him, at his own desire, by Wither himself. Wither at length consented that Fair Virtue should be published, but without his name; and in compliance with his wish, the title-page bears this quaint inscription :-Fair Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete, written by Himself. He accompanied the poem with these singular words, "When I first composed it I well liked thereof, and it well enough became my years; but now I neither like nor dislike it. That, therefore, it should be divulged I desire not; and whether it be, or whether (if it happen so) it be approved or no, I care not. For this I am sure of, that however it be valued, it is worth as much as I prize it at; likely it is, also, to be beneficial to the world, as the world hath been to me, and will be more than those who like it not ever deserved at my hands." The mystery hanging over certain parts of the poem, Wither refused to clear up, being unwilling, he said, to take away the occupation of his interpreter, and he purposely left somewhat remaining doubtful, to see "what Sir Politick Would-be and his companions could pick out of it." Whether, therefore, to employ the words of the address, the Mistress of Philarete be really a woman shadowed under the name of Virtue, or Virtue only whose loveliness is represented by the beauty of an excellent woman, or whether it mean both together I cannot tell you. Wither was anxious to bury the subject in obscurity, but the opinion that he intended to portray the charms and piety of some lady in the neighbourhood of Bentworth seems to be corroborated by certain "verses written to his loving friend upon his departure," inserted at the end of Fair Virtue, and signed "Phil'arete;" in which he describes her to have given "her vows" to another, and urges the propriety of their separation. The Mistress of Philarete was evidently the production of Wither's youthful Muse, and bears internal evidence of having been composed in the sequestered retirements of Bentworth and its neighbourhood. The poem opens with an introduction in heroic metre, unlike his later style, and resembling rather the soft and limpid versi fication of Browne : Two pretty rills do meet, and, meeting, make Which in those sweeter waters came to play. For pleasant was that pool; and near it then 14 On which oft pluming sat unfrighted then, The gaggling wild-goose, and the snow-white swan ; All the features of this animated landscape are not yet obliterated. The Ford of Arle, or Arlesford Pond, lying S. W. of the town of that name, is a fine piece of. water, covering nearly two hundred acres, and forming a head to the river Itchin. A few years ago boats were kept upon this lake by the proprietors of the neighbouring estates, and "the gaggling wild-goose" might be seen "oft pluming," without any fear, upon the quiet waters: North-east, not far from this great pool, there lies A tract of beechy mountains that arise, With leisurely ascending, to such height, As from their tops the warlike Isle of Wight Een there, and in the least frequented place Of pleasant ground, hemm'd in with dropping trees, 1 |