THOMAS GOFFE. [Born, 1592. Died, 1627.] THIS writer left four or five dramatic pieces, of very ordinary merit. He was bred at Christ's Church, Oxford. He held the living of East Clandon in Surrey, but unfortunately succeeded not only to the living, but to the widow of his SCENE FROM GOFFE'S TRAGEDY OF “AMURATHI, OR THE COURAGEOUS TURK." ALADIN, husband to the daughter of AMURATH, having rebelled against his father-in-law, is brought captive before him. Enter at one door, AMURATH, with Attendants; at the other door, ALADIN, his Wife, two Children, in white,—they kneel to AMURATH. Amur. OUR hate must not part thus. I'll tell thee, prince, That thou hast kindled Ætna in our breast! His blood whose hasty and rebellious blast [hide Alad. Why then, I'll, like the Roman Pompey, My dying sight, scorning imperious looks Should grace so base a stroke with sad aspèct. Thus will I muffle up, and choke my groans, Lest a grieved tear should quite put out the name Of lasting courage in Carmania's fame! Amur. What, still stiff-neck'd? truce you beg? Is this the Sprinkled before thy face, those rebel brats Alad. Wife. Dear father, let thy fury rush on me! "Twas nature's fault, not theirs. O if affection those threats; [father! Unclasp that impious helmet; fix to earth Amur. I fear; for after daughter's perjury, predecessor, who, being a Xantippe, contributed, according to Langbaine, to shorten his days by the violence of her provoking tongue." He had the reputation of an eloquent preacher, and some of his sermons appeared in print. Alad. Wife.. O let me kiss, kind father! first the earth Amur. Yes; to have them collect a manlystrength, Whose horns are yet scarce crept from out his front, Alad. Wife....... Alas, these infants!-these weak-sinew'd hands .... [Born, 1554. Died, 1628.] WHO ordered this inscription for his own grave: "Servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sydney;" was created knight of the bath at James's coronation, STANZAS FROM HIS "TREATISE ON HUMAN LEARNING." KNOWLEDge. A CLIMBING height it is, without a head, IMAGINATION. Knowledge's next organ is imagination, REASON. The last chief oracle of what man knows .... afterwards appointed sub-treasurer, chancellor of the exchequer, and made a peer, by the title of Baron Brooke, in 1621. He died by the stab of a revengeful servant, in 1628. INSUFFICIENCY OF PHILOSOPHY. Then what is our high-praised philosophy, SONNET FROM LORD BROOKE'S CAELICA. MERLIN, they say, an English prophet born, Good manners doth make answer unto passion. This man no part hath in the child he sorrows, SIR JOHN BEAUMONT. [Born, 1582. Died 1628.] SIR JOHN BEAUMONT, brother of the celebrated dramatic poet, was born at Grace Dieu, the seat of the family in Leicestershire. He studied at Oxford, and at the inns of court; but, forsaking the law, married and retired to his native seat. Two years before his death he was knighted by Charles the First. He wrote the Crown of Thorns, a poem, of [* "The commendation of improving the rhythm of the couplet is due also to Sir John Beaumont, author of a short poem on the Battle of Bosworth Field. In other respects it has no pretensions to a high rank."-HALLAM'S Lit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 499. The poem, though a posthu which no copy is known to be extant; Bosworth Field; and a variety of small original and translated pieces. Bosworth Field may be compared with Addison's Campaign, without a high compliment to either. Sir John has no fancy, but there is force and dignity in some of his passages; and he deserves notice as one of the earliest polishers of what is called the heroic couplet.* mous publication, was not without its prefatory commendations: This book will live; it hath a genius; this RICHARD BEFORE THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH. So offer'd beasts near death in garlands shine- But if my father, when at first he tried name. Be still yourselves! Ye fight against the dross MICHAEL DRAYTON. [Born, 1570? Died, 1631.] MICHAEL DRAYTON was born in the parish of Atherston, in Warwickshire. His family was ancient, but it is not probable that his parents were opulent, for he was educated chiefly at the expense of Sir Godfrey Godere. In his childhood, which displayed remarkable proficiency, he was anxious to know what strange kind of beings poets were, and on his coming to college he importuned his tutor, if possible, to make him a poet. Either from this ambition, or from necessity, he seems to have adopted no profession, and to have generally owed his subsistence to the munificence of friends. An allusion which he makes, in the poem of " Moses's Birth and Miracles," to the destruction of the Spanish Armada, has been continually alleged as a ground for supposing that he witnessed that spectacle in a military capacity; but the lines, in fact, are far from proving that he witnessed it at all. On the accession of King James the First, he paid his court to the new sovereign, with all that a poet could offer, his congratulatory verses. James, however, received him but coldly, and though he was patronized by Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of Dorset, he obtained no situation of independence, but continued to publish his voluminous poetry amidst severe irritations with his booksellers.† Popular as Drayton once was in comparison of the present neglect of him, it is difficult to conceive that his works were ever so profitable as to allow the bookseller much room for peculation. He was known as a poet many years before the death of Queen Elizabeth. His Poly-olbion, which the [* Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of Dorset,-the poet and lord high treasurer,-are one and the same person.-C.] († He received a yearly peusion of ten pounds from Prince Henry, to whom he dedicated his Poly-olbion.-C.] learned, Selden honoured with notes, did not appear till 1613. In 1626 we find him styled poet laureate; but the title at that time was often a mere compliment, and implied neither royal appointment nor butt of canary. The Countess of Bedford supported him for many years. At the close of his life we find him in the family of the Earl of Dorset, to whose magnanimous countess the Aubrey MSS. ascribe the poet's monument over his grave in Westminster Abbey. The language of Drayton is free and perspicuous. With less depth of feeling than that which occasionally bursts from Cowley, he is a less excruciating hunter of conceits, and in harmony of expression is quite a contrast to Donne. A tinge of grace and romance pervades much of his poetry and even his pastorals, which exhibit the most fantastic views of nature, sparkle with elegant imagery. The Nymphidia is in his happiest characteristic manner of airy and sportive pageantry. In some historic sketches of the Barons' Wars he reaches a manner beyond himself-the pictures of Mortimer and the Queen, and of Edward's entrance to the castle, are splendid and spirited. In his Poly-olbion, or description of Great Britain, he has treated the subject with such topographical and minute detail as to chain his poetry to the map; and he has unfortunately chosen a form of verse which, though agreeable when interspersed with other measures, is fatiguing in long continuance by itself: still it is impossible to read the poem without admiring the richness of his local associations, and the beauty and variety of the fabulous allusions which he scatters around him. Such, indeed is the profusion of romantic recollections in the Poly-olbion, that a poet of taste and selection might there find subjects of happy description, to which the author who suggested them had not the power of doing justice; for Drayton started so many remembrances, that he lost his inspiration in the effort of memory. In the Barons' Wars, excepting the passages already noticed, where the Purpureus latè qui splendeat unus et alter, we unhappily exchange only the geographer for the chronicler. On a general survey, the mass of his poetry has no strength or sustaining spirit adequate to its bulk. There is a perpetual play MORTIMER, EARL OF MARCH, AND THE QUEEN, SURPRISED BY EDWARD III. IN NOTTINGHAM CASTLE. FROM "THE BARONS' WARS," BOOK VI. WITHIN the castle hath the queen devised In their corporeal shapes with stars inchased, As by th' old poets they in heaven were placed. About which lodgings, tow'rds the upper face, Ran a fine bordure circularly led, As equal 'twixt the high'st point and the base, Here Phoebus clipping Hyacinthus stood, The pretty wood-nymphs chaffing him with balm, [*Drayton's Poly-olbion is a poem of about 30,000 lines in length. written in Alexandrine couplets, a measure, from its monotony, and perhaps from its frequency in doggrel ballads, not at all pleasing to the ear. It contains a topographical description of England, illustrated with a prodigality of historical and legendary erudition of fancy on its surface; but the impulses of passion, and the guidance of judgment give it no strong movements nor consistent course. In scenery or in history he cannot command selected views, but meets them by chance as he travels over the track of detail. His great subjects have no interesting centre, no shade for uninteresting things. Not to speak of his dull passages, his description is generally lost in a flutter of whimsical touches. His muse has certainly no strength for extensive flights, though she sports in happy moments on a brilliant and graceful wing.* By which the heifer Io, Jove's fair rape, By perspective devised beholding now, Upon whose brows the water hung so clear, As through the drops the fair skin might appear. And ciffy Cynthus with a thousand birds, Whose freckled plumes adorn the bushy crown, Under whose shadow graze the straggling herds, Out of whose top the fresh springs trembling down, Dropping like fine pearl through his shaggy beards, With moss and climbing ivy over-grown; The rock so lively done in every part, As nature could be patterned by Art. The naked nymphs, some up and down descending, Small scatt'ring flowers at one another flung, With nimble turns their limber bodies bending, Cropping the blooming branches lately sprung, (Upon the briars their colour'd mantles rending) Which on the rocks grew here and there among; Some comb their hair, some making garlands by, As with delight might satisfy the eye. There comes proud Phaeton tumbling through the clouds, Cast by his palfreys that their reins had broke, The elements together thrust in crowds, Such a poem is essentially designed to instruct, and speaks to the understanding more than to the fancy. The powers displayed in it are, however, of a high cast. Yet perhaps no English poem, known as well by name, is so little known beyond its name."-HALLAM, Lel. Hist., vol. iii. p. 490–7.—C.] Trees into women seeming to be turn'd, In part of which, under a golden vine, Some at the sundry-colour'd birds do shoot, But when men think they most in safety stand, For to that largeness they increased were, That the young king down Mortimer must cast, Whereby he might the enterprise effect, By architects to serve the castle made, Now on along the crankling path doth keep, Rising tow'rds day, then falling tow'rds the deep, It casts the foul mask from its dusky face. To rouse the beast which kept them all at bay. Long after Phoebus took his lab'ring team, To his pale sister and resign'd his place, To wash his cauples in the open stream, And cool the fervour of his glowing face; And Phoebe, scanted of her brother's beam, Into the west went after him apace, Leaving black darkness to possess the sky, To fit the time of that black tragedy. What time by torch-light they attempt the cave, Which at their entrance seemed in a fright, With the reflection that their armour gave, As it till then had ne'er seen any light; Which, striving there pre-eminence to have, Darkness therewith so daringly doth fight, That each confounding other, both appear, As darkness light, and light but darkness were. The craggy cliffs, which cross them as they go, Made as their passage they would have denied, And threat'ned them their journey to foreslow, As angry with the path that was their guide, And sadly seem'd their discontent to show To the vile hand that did them first divide; Whose cumbrous falls and risings seem'd to say, So ill an action could not brook the day. And by the lights as they along were led, Their shadows then them following at their back, Were like to mourners carrying forth their dead, And as the deed, so were they, ugly, black, Or like to fiends that them had followed, Pricking them on to bloodshed and to wrack; Whilst the light look'd as it had been amazed At their deformed shapes, whereon it gazed. The clatt'ring arms their masters seem'd to chide, As they would reason wherefore they should wound, And struck the cave in passing on each side, As they were angry with the hollow ground, That it an act so pitiless should hide; Whose stony roof lock'd in their angry sound, And hanging in the creeks, drew back again, As willing them from murder to refrain. The night wax'd old (not dreaming of these things) And to her chamber is the queen withdrawn, To whom a choice musician plays and sings, Whilst she sat under an estate of lawn, In night-attire more god-like glittering, Than any eye had seen the cheerful dawn, |