are more flowers than fruit.) I am entering upon my winter, and yet these blooms of my first spring, must now needs shew themselves to our ripe wits, who certainly will give them no other entertainment but derision. For myself, I cannot account that worthy of your patronage, which comes forth so short of my desires, thereby meriting no other light than the fire. But since you please to have them see more day than their credit can well endure, marvel not if they fly under your shadow, to cover them from the piercing eye of this very curious (yet more censorious) age. In letting them abroad, I desire only to testify how much I prefer your desires to mine own, and how much I owe to you more than any other. This if they witness for me, it is all the service I require. Sir, I leave them to your tuition, and intreat you to love him who will contend with you in nothing but to outlove you, and would be known to the world by no other name, than

Your true friend,

Hilgay, May 1st. 1633.

PHINEAS FLETCHER."

Not only his love and admiration of Spenser, but the taste of the age, for allegory and personification, probably induced Fletcher to prefer that species of composition for his principal poem, "The Purple Island,” which is a description of the human body, the passions, and intellectual faculties. The first Canto commences with a very brief account of the season of the year, the meeting of Shepherds at their annual election of "May-Lords," and an allusion to himself and his brother Giles, on both of whom the choice of the Shepherds had fallen :

The warmer sun the golden bull out-ran

And with the twins made haste to inn and play; Seattering ten thousand flow'rs, he now began

To paint the world, and piece the length'ning day;

The Shepherd-boys, who with the muses dwell,
Met in the plain their May-lords new to choose,
(For two they yearly choose,) to order well
Their rural sports and year that next ensues :

Now were they sat, where by the orchard walls The learned Chame with stealing water crawls, And lowly down before that royal temple falls.

Among the rout they take two gentle swains,

Whose sprouting youth did now but greenly bud: Well could they pipe and sing, but yet their strains Were only known unto the silent wood:

Their nearest blood from self-same fountains flow,
Their souls self-same in nearer love did grow;
So seem'd two join'd in one, or one disjoin'd in two!

Now when the Shepherd lads, with common voice
Their first consent had firmly ratified,

A gentle boy thus 'gan

Enlarging on the difficulty of finding new subjects for Poetry, and the want of encouragement to Poets, he alludes to Spenser :

Witness our Colin; whom, though all the Graces And all the Muses nurs'd; whose well-taught song Parnassus' self, and Glorian* embraces,

And all the learn'd, and all the Shepherd throng;

* Cam. Queen Elizabeth.

Yet all his hopes were cross'd; all suit denied;
Discourag'd, scorn'd, his writings villified;

Poorly, poor man, he liv'd; poorly, poor man, he died!

And had not that great Hart,* (whose honour'd head,
Ah! lies full low!) pity'd thy woeful plight;
There had'st thou lain unwept, unburied,

Unbless'd, nor grac'd with any common rite:

Yet shalt thou live when thy great foe † shall sink Beneath his mountain tomb, whose fame shall stink! And Time his blacker name shall blurr with blackest ink!

O let th' Iambic muse revenge that wrong,

Which cannot slumber in thy sheets of lead;

Let thy abused honour cry as long

As there be quills to write, or eyes to read :
On his rank name let thy own votes be turn'd;
"O may that man that hath the muses scorn'd
Alive, nor dead, be ever of a muse adorn'd.”‡

Never elsewhere is the gentle muse of Thirsil roused to such ungentle language;-but, after a few more stanzas, settling into composure, she leads us to her own retired scenes, and places us beside her in such sweet tranquility, that we soon forget the frugal Treasurer, and almost the injured Bard. In the whole poem, nor perhaps in any other poem, is there a passage more pleasing and delightful than the following, referring still, under his twofold pastoral character, to his hopes of domestic enjoyment, and to his sacred office, as well as to his love of song.

But, ah! let me, under some Kentish hill,

Near rolling Medway, 'mong my shepherd peers, With fearless merry make, and piping still, Securely pass my few and slow-pac'd years:

*The Earl of Essex, whose cognizance was a hart. Burleigh. Spenser's "Ruins of Time."

+ Lord

There may I, master of a little flock,

Feed my poor lambs, and often change their fare; My lovely mate shall tend my sparing stock,

And nurse my little ones with pleasing care,

Whose love and look shall speak their father plain; Health be my feast, heav'n, hope, content my gain;

So in my little house, my lesser heart shall reign.

The beech shall yield a cool safe canopy,

While down I sit, and chant to th' echoing wood;
Oh, singing might I live, and singing die!-
So by fair Thames, or silver Medway's flood,

The dying swan, when years her temples pierce, In music's strains breathes out her life and verse; And chanting her own dirge rides on her wat'ry hearse.

Invoking then no patron but the great Prince of Shepherds, "Than his own Heaven more high;" he enters at once on his subject.

Hark then, ah hark! you gentle shepherd crew;

An isle I fain would sing, an island fair;
A place too seldom viewed, yet still in view;
Near as ourselves, yet farthest from our care;
Which we by leaving find, by seeking lost;

A foreign home, a strange, though native coast; </ Most obvious to all, yet most unknown to most,

Yet this fair isle, scited so nearly near,

That from our sides nor place nor time may sever, Though to yourselves, yourselves are not more dear, Yet with strange carelessness you travel never:

Then, while yourselves, and native home forgetting,
You search for distant worlds with needless

sweating,

You never find yourselves, so lose ye more by getting.

Having mentioned the general plan of the Poem, and selected much for future extracts, we must decline entering into an analysis of the scientific portion of the work; but we cannot forbear to remark that when we consider the early age at which he wrote, and the imperfect state of medical knowledge, as well as of general science, at that day, the information he has displayed does him great credit, and proves him to have been no unworthy son of his alma mater, and that had he invoked Apollo in both capacities, and attached himself to the art of healing, he would have excelled in physic as in song.

After describing the "new-born earth," and the formation of man, in a style much more ingenious and metaphysical than entertaining to modern readers, he concludes his first canto in the true spirit of devotional feeling for the great act of redemption, and with another affectionate reference to his brother's work.

O thou deep well of life, wide stream of love;
More deep, more wide, than widest, deepest seas,
Who dying, death to endless death did'st prove,
To work this wilful rebel island's ease;

Thy love no time began, no time decays;

But still increaseth with decreasing days;

Where then may we begin, where may we end thy praise?

My callow wing that newly left the nest,

How can it make so high a towering flight? A depth without a depth! in humble breast With praises I admire so wond'rous height : But thou, my sister muse may'st well go higher, *See a book called "Christ's Victory and Triumph.”

*