So mixed, that, given to the thirstiest one,
"Twill not prove alms, unless he have the stone.
I think, with one draught man's invention fades:
Two cups had quite spoiled Homer's Iliades.
"Tis liquor that will find out Sutcliffe's wit,

Lie where he will, and make him write worse yet;
Filled with such moisture in most grievous qualms,
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms;
And so must I do this: And yet I think

It is a potion sent us down to drink,

By special Providence, keeps us from fights,
Makes us not laugh when we make legs to knights.
'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,

A medicine to obey our magistrates:

For we do live more free than you; no hate,
No envy at one another's happy state,
Moves us; we are all equal; every whit

Of land that God gives men here is their wit,
If we consider fully; for our best

And gravest men will with their main house-jest
Scarce please you; we want subtilty to do
The city tricks, lie, hate, and flatter too.
Here are none that can bear a painted show,

Strike when you wink, and then lament the blow;
Who, like mills, set the right way for to grind,
Can make their gains alike with every wind;
Only some fellows with the subtlest pate,
Amongst us, may perchance equivocate
At selling of a horse, and that's the most.
Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest

Held up at tennis, which men do the best,

With the best gamesters. What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,

As if that every one from whence they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life; then when there had been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past; wit that might warrant be

For the whole city to talk foolishly

Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise.

On the Tombs in Westminster.

Mortality, behold and fear,

What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones!
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their
hands;
[dust,
Where, from their pulpits sealed with
They preach, 'In greatnesss is no trust!'
Here's an acre sown indeed'

With the richest, royalest seed,
That the earth did e'er suck in
Since the first man died for sin.
Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though gods they were, as men they
died.'

Here are wands, ignoble things
Dropt from the ruined sides of kings.
Here's a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

Here she lies, whose spotless fame
Invites a stone to learn her name.
The rigid Spartan that denied
An epitaph to all that died,
Unless for war, in charity
Would here vouchsafe an elegy.

She died a wife, but yet her mind

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

་

SIR HENRY WOTTON-less famed as a poet than as a political character in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.-was born at Bocton Hall, the seat of his ancestors, in Kent, in 1568. After receiving his education at Winchester and Oxford, and travelling for some years on the continent, he attached himself to the service of the Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, but had the sagacity to foresee the fate of that nobleman, and to elude its consequences by withdrawing in time from the kingdom. Having afterwards gained the friendship of King James, by communicating the secret of a conspiracy formed against him, while yet only king of Scotland, he was employed by that monarch, when he ascended the English throne, as ambassador to Venice. A versatile and lively mind qualified Sir Henry in an eminent degree for this situation, of the duties of which we have his own idea in the well-known punning expression, in which he defines an ambassador to be an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.' He ultimately took orders, to qualify himself to be provost of Eton College, in which situation he died in 1639, in the seventy-second year of his age. While resident abroad, he embodied the result of his inquiries into political affairs in a work called 'The State of Christendom; or a most Exact and Curious Discovery of many Secret Passages and Hidden Mysteries of the Times.' This, however, was not printed till after his death. In 1624, while provost of Eton, he published 'Elements of Architecture,' then the best work on that subject. His writings were published in 1651, under the title of 'Reliquiæ Wottonianæ;' and a memoir of his very curious life has been published by Izaak Walton. The latest editor of Wotton's poems (Mr. Hannah) states that none of Sir Henry's pieces have been traced to an earlier date than 1602, but when very young, he wrote a tragedy, called 'Tancredo.' He was a scholar and patron of men of letters rather than an author, and his enthusiastic praise of Milton's Comus'-a copy of which the poet had sent to him-reflects credit on his taste. Not less characteristic is his advice to Milton, when he went to Italy, to keep his thoughts close, and his countenance loose;' an axiom which Sir Henry had learned from an old courtier, but which Milton was of all men the least likely to put in practice. Sir Henry appears to have been an easy, amiable man, an angler, and an undervaluer of money,' as Walton-who boasts of having fished and

conversed with him-relates. His poems are marked by a fine vein of feeling and happy expression.

The Character of a Happy Life (1614).

How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the world by care

Of public fame, or private breath:

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good:

Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great:

Who God doth late and early pray.

More of His grace than gifts to lend
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend:

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And having nothing, yet hath all.

To his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia (1620).
You violets that first appear,

You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies,
What are you, when the moon shall
rise?

You curious chanters of the wood,

That warble forth Dame Nature's lays, Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents! what's your praise

When Philomel her voice shall raise?

By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own!
What are you, when the rose is blown?

So, when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind;
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen!
Tell me, if she were not designed
Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

LORD BROOKE.

FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE (1554-1628), was a thoughtful, sententious author both in prose and verse, though nearly all his productions were unpublished till after his death. He lived in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles Í. In the government of Elizabeth he was Treasurer of Marine Causes: and in that of James, Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Privy-councillor. He was raised to the peerage by King James in the year 1620. Lord Brooke was in 1628 stabbed to death by an old servant, who had found he was not mentioned in his master's will; the man, struck with remorse, then slew himself. Lord Brooke's tomb may still be seen in the church at Warwick, with the emphatic inscription written by himself: 'Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, friend to Sir Philip Sidney.' The poems of Lord Brooke consist of "Treatises on Monarchy, Religion, and Humane Learning,' two tragedies, 110 sonnets, &c. He also wrote a Life of Sir Philip Sidney,' with whom, he said, he had lived and known from a child, yet never knew him other than à man. The whole works of Lord Brooke have been collected, edited, and printed in four volumes (1871) by the

Rev. A. B. Grosart. A few stanzas from the Treatise on Monarchy' will shew the grave style of the noble author's verse:

The Prehistoric Age.

There was a time, before the times of Story,
When nature reigned instead of laws or arts,
And mortal gods with men made up the glory
Of one republic by united hearts.

Earth was the common seat, their conversation
In saving love, and ours in adoration.

For in those golden days, with Nature's chains
Both king and people seemed conjoined in one;
Both nursed alike with mutual feeding veins,
Transcendency of either side unknown;
Princes with men using no other arts
But by good dealing to obtain good hearts.
Power then maintained itself even by those arts
By which it grew-as justice, labour, love;
Reservéd 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 illusion. The Purple Island' of Fletcher is no sunny spotamid the melan choly 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 Island.' '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 thegoodly garden,' and in the Bower of Vain Delight, are outlines which Milton adopted