WILLIAM BROWNE was the son of a gentleman of Tavistock, in Devonshire. He was educated at Oxford, and went from thence to the Inner Temple, but devoted himself chiefly to poetry. In his twenty-third year he published the first part of his Britannia's Pastorals, prefaced by poetical eulogies, which evince his having been, at that early period of life, the friend and favourite of Selden and Drayton. To these testimonies he afterwards added that of Ben Jonson. In the following year he published the Shepherd's Pipe, of which the fourth eclogue is often said to have been the precursor of Milton's Lycidas. A single simile about a rose constitutes all the resemblance! In 1616 he published the second part of his Britannia's Pastorals. His Masque of the Inner Temple was never printed, till Dr. Farmer transcribed it from a MS. of the Bodleian library, for Thomas Davies's edition of Browne's works, more than 120 years after the author's death.

He seems to have taken his leave of the Muses about the prime of his life, and returned to Oxford, in the capacity of tutor to Robert Dormer, Earl of Caernarvon, who fell in the battle of Newbury, 1643. After leaving the university with that nobleman, he found a liberal patron in William, Earl of Pembroke, whose character, like that of Caernarvon, still lives among the warmly coloured and minutely touched portraits of Lord Clarendon. The poet lived in Lord Pembroke's family; and, according to Wood, grew rich in his employment. But the particulars of his history are very imperfectly known, and his verses deal too little with the business of life to throw much light upon his circumstances. His poetry is not without beauty; but it is the beauty of mere landscape and allegory, without the manners and passions that constitute human interest.

SONG.

GENTLE nymphs, be not refusing,
Love's neglect is time's abusing,

They and beauty are but lent you;
Take the one, and keep the other:
Love keeps fresh what age doth smother,
Beauty gone, you will repent you.
"Twill be said, when ye have proved,
Never swains more truly loved :
O, then fly all nice behaviour!
Pity fain would (as her duty)
Be attending still on Beauty,

Let her not be out of favour.

SONG.

SHALL I tell you whom I love?
Hearken then a while to me,
And if such a woman move
As I now shall versify;
Be assured, 'tis she, or none,
That I love, and love alone.

Nature did her so much right,
As she scorns the help of art.
In as many virtues dight

As e'er yet embraced a heart.
So much good so truly tried,
Some for less were deified.

Wit she hath, without desire

To make known how much she hath; And her anger flames no higher

Than may fitly sweeten wrath. Full of pity as may be,

Though perhaps not so to me.

Time never can produce men to o'ertake
The fames of Grenville, Davis, Gilbert, Drake,
Or worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more,
That by their power made the Devonian shore
Mock the proud Tagus; for whose richest spoil
The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soil
Bankrupt of store, knowing it would quit cost
By winning this, though all the rest were lost.

EVENING.

As in an evening when the gentle air
Breathes to the sullen night a soft repair,
I oft have sat on Thames' sweet bank to hear
My friend with his sweet touch to charm mine ear,
When he hath play'd (as well he can) some strain
That likes me, straight I ask the same again,
And he as gladly granting, strikes it o'er
With some sweet relish was forgot before:
I would have been content, if he would play,
In that one strain to pass the night away;
But fearing much to do his patience wrong,
Unwillingly have ask'd some other song:
So in this differing key though I could well
A many hours but as few minutes tell,
Yet lest mine own delight might injure you
(Though loath so soon) I take my song anew.

FROM BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS.
BOOK II. SONG V.

BETWEEN two rocks (immortal, without mother)*
That stand as if outfacing one another,
There ran a creek up, intricate and blind,
As if the waters hid them from the wind,
Which never wash'd but at a higher tide
The frizzled cotes which do the mountains hide,
Where never gale was longer known to stay
Than from the smooth wave it had swept away
The new divorced leaves, that from each side
Left the thick boughs to dance out with the tide.
At further end the creek, a stately wood
Gave a kind shadow (to the brackish flood)
Made up of trees, not less ken'd by each skiff
Than that sky-scaling peak of Teneriffe,
Upon whose tops the hernshew bred her young,
And hoary moss upon their branches hung;
Whose rugged rinds sufficient were to show,
Without their height, what time they 'gan to grow.
And if dry eld by wrinkled skin appears,
None could allot them less than Nestor's years.
As under their command the thronged creek
Ran lessen'd up. Here did the shepherds seek
Where he his little boat might safely hide,
Till it was fraught with what the world beside
Could not outvalue; nor give equal weight
Though in the time when Greece was at her
height.....

Yet that their happy voyage might not be Without time's shortener, heaven-taught melody

*This description coincides very strikingly with the scenery of the Tamar, in Devonshire. Browne, who was a native of that county, must have studied it from nature.

(Music that lent feet to the stable woods,
And in their currents turn'd the mighty floods,
Sorrow's sweet nurse, yet keeping joy alive,
Sad discontent's most welcome corrosive,
The soul of art, best loved when love is by,
The kind inspirer of sweet poesy,

Least thou shouldst wanting be, when swans would fain

Have sung one song, and never sung again)
The gentle shepherd, hasting to the shore,
Began this lay, and timed it with his oar.

Nevermore let holy Dee

O'er other rivers brave,
Or boast how (in his jollity)

Kings row'd upon his wave.
But silent be, and ever know

That Neptune for my fare would row....

Swell then, gently swell, ye floods,
As proud of what ye bear,
And nymphs that in low coral woods
String pearls upon your hair,
Ascend; and tell if ere this day
A fairer prize was seen at sea.

See the salmons leap and bound

To please us as we pass,
Each mermaid on the rocks around
Lets fall her brittle glass,
As they their beauties did despise
And loved no mirror but your eyes.

Blow, but gently blow, fair wind,
From the forsaken shore,
And be as to the halycon kind,

Till we have ferried o'er:
So mayst thou still have leave to blow,
And fan the way where she shall go.

THOMAS HEYWOOD was the most prolific writer in the most fertile age of our drama.* In the midst of his theatrical labours as an actor and poet, he composed a formidable list of prose works, and defended the stage against the puritans, in a work that is full of learning. One of his projects was to write the lives of all poets that were ever distinguished, from the time of Homer downwards. Yet it has happened to the framer of this gigantic design to have no historian so kind to his own memory as to record either the period of his death, or the spot that covers his remains. His merits entitled him to better remembrance. He composed indeed with a careless rapidity, and seems to have thought as little of Horace's precept of • sæpe stylum vertas" as of most of the injunctions in the Art of Poetry. But he possesses considerable power of interesting the affections, by placing his plain and familiar characters in affecting situations. The worst of him is, that his commonplace sentiments and plain incidents fall not only beneath the ideal beauty of art, but are often more fatiguing than what we meet with in the ordinary and unselected circumstances of life. When he has hit upon those occasions where the passions should obviously rise with accumulated expression, he lingers on through the scene with a dull and level indifference. The term artlessness may be applied to Heywood in two very opposite senses. His pathos is often artless in the better meaning of the word, because its objects are true to life,

SCENE IN THE TRAGEDY "A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS."

GRIEF OF FRANKFORD, AFTER DISCOVERING HIS WIFE'S INFIDELITY AND DISMISSING HER.

Enter CRANWEL, FRANKFORD, and NICHOLAS. Cran. WHY do you search each room about your house,

Now that you have despatch'd your wife away?
Frun. O sir, to see that nothing may be left,
That ever was my wife's: I loved her dearly,
And when I do but think of her unkindness,
My thoughts are all in hell; to avoid which torment,
I would not have a bodkin or a cuff,
A bracelet, necklace, or rebato wier;
Nor any thing that ever was call'd hers,
Left me, by which I might remember her.
Seek round about.

[corner. Nic..... Master, here's her lute flung in a Fran. Her lute? Oh God! upon this instrument Her fingers have ran quick division,

Swifter than that which now divides our hearts. These frets have made me pleasant, that have now Frets of my heart-strings made. O master Cranwel,

[* He had, as he himself tells us, "either an entire hand, or at the least a main finger, in two hundred and twenty plays." He was a native of Lincolnshire.-C.]

and their feelings naturally expressed. But he betrays still more frequently an artlessness, or we should rather call it, a want of art, in deficiency of contrivance. His best performance is, "A Woman killed with Kindness." In that play the repentance of Mrs. Frankford, who dies of a broken heart, for her infidelity to a generous husband, would present a situation consummately moving, if we were left to conceive her death to be produced simply by grief. But the poet most unskilfully prepares us for her death, by her declaring her intentions to starve herself; and mars, by the weakness, sin, and horror of suicide, an example of penitence that would otherwise be sublimely and tenderly edifying. The scene of the death of Mrs. Frankford has been deservedly noticed for its pathos by an eminent foreign critic, Mr. Schlegel, who also commends the superior force of its inexorable morality to the reconciling conclusion of Kotzebue's drama on a similar subject. The learned German perhaps draws his inference too rigidly. Mrs. Frankford's crime was recent, and her repentance and death immediately follow it; but the guilt of the other tragic penitent, to whom Mr. S. alludes, is more remote, and less heinous; and to prescribe interminable limits, either in real or imaginary life, to the generosity of individual forgiveness, is to invest morality with terrors, which the frailty of man and the mercy of Heaven do not justify.

Oft hath she made this melancholy wood
(Now mute and dumb for her disastrous chance)
Speak sweetly many a note; sound many a strain
To her own ravishing voice,which being well strung,
What pleasant strange airs have they jointly rung?
Post with it after her; now nothing's left;
Of her and hers I am at once bereft. . . . .

NICHOLAS overtakes MRS. FRANKFORD with her lute.
Nic. There.

Anne. I know the lute; oft have I sung to thee: We both are out of tune, both out of time.

Nic. My master commends him unto ye; there's all he can find that was ever yours: he hath nothing left that ever you could lay claim to but his own heart, and he could not afford you that. All that I have to deliver you is this; he prays you to forget him, and so he bids you farewell.

Anne. I thank him; he is kind, and ever was. All you that have true feeling of my grief, That know my loss, and have relenting hearts, Gird me about; and help me, with your tears, To wash my spotted sins: my lute shall groan; It cannot weep, but shall lament my moan.

Mr. Schlegel, however, is mistaken in speaking of him as anterior to Shakspeare, evidently confounding him with an older poet of the name.

DEATH OF MRS. FRANKFORD.

FROM THE SAME.

Persons.-MR. MALBY, MRS. ANNE FRANKFORD, FRANKFORD,
SIR CHARLES MOUNTFORD, SIR FRANCIS ACTON.
Mal. How fare you, Mrs. Frankford?
[pray
Anne. Sick, sick, oh sick: Give me some air. I
Tell me, oh tell me, where's Mr. Frankford?
Will he not deign to see me ere I die?

Mal. Yes, Mrs. Frankford: divers gentlemen,
Your loving neighbours, with that just request
Have moved and told him of your weak estate:
Who, though with much ado to get belief,
Examining of the general circumstance,
Seeing your sorrow and your penitence,
And hearing therewithal the great desire
You have to see him ere you left the world,
He gave to us his faith to follow us,
And sure he will be here immediately.

Anne. You have half revived me with the pleasing news:

My prostrate soul lies thrown down at your feet
To beg your gracious pardon: Pardon,O pardon me!
Fran. As freely from the low depth of my soul
As my Redeemer hath for us given his death,
I pardon thee; I will shed tears for thee;
Pray with thee; and in mere pity of thy weak
[estate,

I'll wish to die with thee.

All. So do we all.

Acton. O, Mr. Frankford, all the near alliance I lose by her, shall be supplied in thee; You are my brother by the nearest way, Her kindred hath fallen off, but yours doth stay. Fran. Even as I hope for pardon at that day, When the great judge of heaven in scarlet sits, So be thou pardon'd. Though thy rash offence Divorced our bodies, thy repentant tears Unite our souls.

Char. Then comfort, mistress Frankford; You see your husband hath forgiven your fall; Then rouse your spirits, and cheer your fainting Sus. How is it with you? Acton. How d'ye feel yourself? Anne. Not of this world.

[soul.

Fran. I see you are not, and I weep to see it. My wife, the mother to my pretty babes; Both those lost names I do restore thee back, And with this kiss I wed thee once again: Though thou art wounded in thy honour'd name, And with that grief upon thy death-bed liest, Honest in heart, upon my soul thou diest.

Anne. Pardon'd on earth, soul, thou in heaven art free

Once more! thy wife dies thus embracing thee.

Acton. Peace with thee, Nan. Brothers and

gentlemen,

(All we that can plead interest in her grief)
Bestow upon her body funeral tears.
Brother, had you with threats and usage bad
Punish'd her sin, the grief of her offence
Had not with such true sorrow touch'd her heart.

A WITTLING SET UP BY A POET'S LEGACY. FROM "THE FAIR MAID OF THE EXCHANGE."

Cripple. WHY, think'st thou that I cannot write Ditty, or sonnet, with judicial phrase, [a letter, As pretty, pleasing, and pathetical,

As any Ovid-imitating dunce

In all the town?

Frank. I think thou canst not.

Crip. Yea, I'll swear I cannot :

Yet, sirrah, I could cony-catch the world,
Make myself famous for a sudden wit,
And be admired for my dexterity,
Were I disposed.

Frank. I prithee how?

Crip. Why thus: there lived a poet in this town (If we may term our modern writers poets,) Sharp-witted, bitter-tongued, his pen of steel, His ink was temper'd with the biting juice, And extracts of the bitterest weeds that grew: He never wrote but when the elements Of fire and water tilted in his brain. This fellow, ready to give up his ghost To Luciae's bosom, did bequeath to me

His library, which was just nothing
But rolls and scrolls, and bundles of cast wit,
Such as durst never visit Paul's Churchyard:
Amongst them all I happen'd on a quire
Or two of paper fill'd with songs and ditties,
And here and there a hungry epigram:
These I reserve to my own proper use,
And, paternoster-like, have conn'd them all.
I could now, when I am in company
At alehouse, tavern, or an ordinary,
Upon a theme make an extemporal ditty,
(Or one at least should seem extemporal,)
Out of the abundance of this legacy,
That all would judge it, and report it too,
To be the infant of a sudden wit;
And then were I an admirable fellow.

SONG OF NYMPHS TO DIANA.]
FROM "THE GOLDEN AGE."

HAIL, beauteous Dian, queen of shades,
That dwells beneath these shadowy glades,
Mistress of all these beauteous maids
That are by her allow'd;

Virginity we all profess,
Abjure the worldly vain excess,
And will to Dian yield no less

Than we to her have vow'd.
The shepherds, satyrs, nymphs, and fauns,
For thee will trip it o'er the lawns.
Come to the forest let us go,
And trip it like the barren doe,
The fauns and satyrs will do so,

And freely thus they may do.
The fairies dance, and satyrs sing,
And on the grass tread many a ring,
And to their caves their ven'son bring,
And we will do as they do.
The shepherds, satyrs, &c.
Our food is honey from the bees,
And mellow fruits that drop from trees;
In chase we climb the high degrees

Of every steepy mountain;
And when the weary day is past
We at the evening hie us fast,
And after this our field repast,

We drink the pleasant fountain. The shepherds, satyrs, &c.

THIS poet was born at Hawthornden, his father's estate in Mid-Lothian, took a degree at the university of Edinburgh, studied the civil law in France, and, returning home, entered into possession of his paternal estate, and devoted himself to literature. During his residence at Hawthornden he courted, and was on the eve of marrying, a lady of the name of Cunningham. Her sudden death inspired him with a melancholy which he sought to dissipate by travelling. He accordingly visited France, Italy, and Germany, and, during a stay of eight years on the continent, conversed with the most polished society, and studied the objects most interesting to curiosity and taste. He collected at the same time a number of books and manuscripts, some of which are still in the library of his native university.

On his second return to Scotland he found the kingdom distracted by political and religious ferment, and on the eve of a civil war. What connection this aspect of public affairs had with his quitting Hawthornden, his biographers have not informed us, but so it was, that he retired to the seat of his brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a man of letters, and probably of political sentiments congenial with his own. At his abode he wrote his History of the Five James's, Kings of Scotland, a work abounding in false eloquence and slavish principles. Having returned at length to settle himself at his own seat, he married a lady of the name of Logan, of the house of Restalrig, in whom he fancied a resemblance to his former mistress, and repaired the family mansion of Hawthornden, with an inscription importing

his hopes of resting there in honourable case. But the times were little suited to promote his wishes; and on the civil war breaking out he involved himself with the covenanters, by writing in support of the opposite side, for which his enemies not only called him to a severe account, but compelled him to furnish his quota of men and arms to support the cause which he detested. His estate lying in different counties, he contributed halves and quarters of men to the forces that were raised; and on this occasion he wrote an epigram, bitterly wishing that the imaginary division of his recruits might be realized on their bodies. His grief for the death of Charles is said to have shortened his days. Such stories of political sensibility may be believed on proper evidence.

The elegance of Drummond's sonnets, and the humour of his Scotch and Latin macaronics, have been at least sufficiently praised: but when Milton has been described as essentially obliged to him, the compliment to his genius is stretched too far. A modern writer, who edited the works of Drummond, has affirmed, that, "perhaps," if we had had no Drummond, we should not have seen the finer delicacies of Milton's Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso. "Perhaps" is an excellent leading-string for weak assertions. or two epithets of Drummond may be recognised in Milton, though not in the minor poems already mentioned.* It is difficult to apply any precise

One

[* The only passage in Milton that looks like borrowing from Drummond is in Lycidas: Gray, who borrowed always and ably, adopted one of his lines into his Elegy too exact and uncommon to be called a resemblance:

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.-C.]