To Nature all that I in rhyme have writ! And to my company my wit: Thou, Love, by making me adore Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do but restore. To him for whom the passing bell next tolls I give my physic books; my written rolls Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give; In want of bread; to them which pass among For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion. Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo Than a sun-dial in a grave. Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all three. Character of a Bore.-From Donne's Satires. A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been Velvet, but 'twas now-so much ground was seen- The thing hath travelled, and saith, speaks all tongues; Of our two academies, I named. Here To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood.' You would leave loneness.' I said: 'Not alone To teach by painting drunkards doth not taste He, like to a high-stretched lute-string, squeaked: 'O sir, 'Tis sweet to talk of kings!' 'At Westminster,' Said I, the man that keeps the Abbey-tombs, And, for his price, doth, with whoever comes, Of all our Harrys and our Edwards talk, From king to king, and all their kin can walk : He smacked, and cried: 'He's base, mechanic, coarse, 'Not so, sir. I have more."' Under this pitch And asks: What news?' I tell him of new plays; He knows who loves; whom, and who by poison He knows who hath sold his land, and now doth beg One of the earliest poetic allusions to the Copernican system occurs in Donne : As new Philosophy arrests the sun, And bids the passive earth about it run. The following is a simile often copied by later poets : When goodly, like a ship in her full trim, In 1839, a complete edition of the works of Donne, including sermons, devotions, poems, letters, &c. was published in six volumes, edited by the Rev. Henry Alford, afterwards Dean of Canterbury. JOSEPH HALL. JOSEPH HALL, born at Bristow Park, in Leicestershire, in 1574, and who rose through various church preferments to be bishop of Norwich, is distinguished as a satirical poet, whose works have been commended by Pope and Warton, and often reprinted. His satires, which were published under the title of Virgidemiarum, in 1597-8, refer to general objects, and present some just pictures of the more remarkable anomalies in human character they are also written in a style of greater vigour and volubility than most of the compositions of this age. His chief defect is obscurity, arising from remote allusions and elliptical expression. Bishop Hall died in 1656, at the age of eighty-two. Selections from Hall's Satires. A gentle squire would gladly entertain Seest thou how gaily my young master goes,* If chance his fates should him that bane afford. Whose thousand double turnings never met: His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings, MARSTON-CHURCHYARD—TUBERVILLE— Nearly contemporary with Hall's satires were those of JOHN MARSTON, the dramatist, known for his subsequent rivalry and quarrel with Ben Jonson. Marston, in 1598, published a small volume, Certayne Satires, and in 1599 The Scourge of Villany, &c. He survived till 1634. Little is known of this' English Aretine,' but all his works are coarse and licentious. Ben Jonson boasted to Drummond that he had beaten Marston and taken his pistol from him. If he had sometimes taken his pen, he would have better served society. Among the swarm of poets ranking with the earlier authors of this period, we may note the following as conspicuous in their own times. THOMAS CHURCHYARD (1520-1604) wrote about seventy volumes in prose and verse. He served in the army, 'trailed a pike' in the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth, and received from Elizabeth-whom he had propitiated by complimentary addresses-a pension of eighteenpence a day, not paid regularly. Churchyard is supposed to be the Palamon of Spenser's Colin Clout, That sang so long until quite hoarse he grew. -GEORGE TUBERVILLE (circa 1530-1594) was secretary to Randolph, Queen Elizabeth's ambassador at the court of Russia. So early as 1568, he had published songs and sonnets; but some of his works-as his Essays and Book of Falconry— were not published till after his death.-THOMAS WATSON (circa 1557-1592) was author of Hecatompathia, or Passionate Century of Love (1582), a series of sonnets of superior elegance and merit; also Amyntas, 1585, &c.-HENRY CONSTABLE (circa 1560-1612) was author of a great number of sonnets, partly published in 1592 under the title of Diana. Almost every writer of this time ventured on a sonnet or translation. Some settled down into dramatists, and as such will be noticed hereafter; others became best known as prose writers. Dr Drake calculates that there were about two hundred poets in the reign of Elizabeth! This is no exaggeration; but it is to the last decade of the century that we must look for its brightest names. Sonnets by Thomas Watson. When May is in his prime, and youthful Spring Doth clothe the tree with leaves and ground with flowers, And time of year reviveth every thing, And lovely Nature smiles and nothing lowers; To whom fond Love doth work such wrongs by day, Whilst others are becalmed or lie them still, So she, for whom I wail both day and night, Time wasteth years, and months, and hours; NICHOLAS BRETON. NICHOLAS BRETON (1558-1624) was a prolific and often happy writer, pastoral, satirical, and humorous. His Works of a Young Wit appeared in 1577; and a succession of small volumes proceeded from his pen; eight pieces with his name are in England's Helicon-a valuable poetical miscellany published in 1600, including contributions from Sidney, Spenser, Raleigh, Lodge, Marlowe, Watson, Greene, &c. Of Breton, little personally is known, but he is supposed to have been the son of a Captain Nicholas Breton of Tamworth, in Staffordshire, who had an estate at Norton, in Northamptonshire. A Pastoral.-From ' England's Helicon. Fair befall the dainty sweet! She that is the shepherds' joy, And did blind her little boy. Who would not this face admire? Who would not this saint adore? Who would not this sight desire, Though he thought to see no more? O fair eyes, yet let me see One good look, and I am gone : Look on me, for I am he, The poor silly Corydon. Thou that art the shepherds' queen, From Farewell to Town! Thou gallant court, to thee, farewell! For froward fortune me denies Now longer near to thee to dwell. I must go live, I wot not where, Nor how to live when I come there. And next, adieu, you gallant dames, That I am banished from your sight, Now next, my gallant youths, farewell; To think that I must from you part. LODGE-BARNFIELD. THOMAS LODGE, one of the most graceful and correct of the minor poets and imaginative writers of this period, appeared as an author in 1580. He then published a Defence of Stage Plays in Three Divisions, to which Stephen Gosson replied by a work quaintly styled Plays Confuted in Five Actions. Gosson speaks of Lodge as 'a vagrant person visited by the heavy hand of God.' Of the nature of this visitation we are not informed, but Lodge seems to have had a very varied life. He was of a respectable family in Lincolnshire, where he was born about 1556, and entered Trinity College, Oxford, as a servitor, under Sir Edward Hobby, in 1573. After leaving college, he is supposed to have been on the stage. But he afterwards joined in the expeditions of Captains Clarke and Cavendish, and wrote his Rosalynde to beguile the time during his voyage to the Canaries. He next appears as a law-student. In his Glaucus and Scilla (1589), Catharos Diogenes (1591), and A Fig for Comus (1595), he styles himself of Lincoln's Inn, Gent. His next work, A Margarite of America (1596), was written, he says, 'in those straits christened by Magellan, in which place to the southward, many wondrous isles, many strange fishes, many monstrous Patagons, withdrew my senses.' From the law, Lodge turned to physic. He studied medicine, Wood says, at Avignon, and he practised in London, being much patronised by Roman Catholic families, till his death by the plague in 1625. Lodge wrote several pastoral tales, sonnets, and light satires, besides two dramas; one of them in conjunction with Greene. His poetry is easy and polished, though abounding in conceits and gaudy ornament. His Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie, contains passages of fine description and delicate sentiment, with copies of verses interspersed. From this romantic little tale Shakspeare took the incidents of his As You Like It, following Lodge with remarkable closeness. The great dramatist has been censured for some anachronisms in his exquisite comedy-such as introducing a lioness and palm-tree into his forest of Arden; but he merely copied Lodge, who has the lion, the myrrh-tree, the fig, the citron, and pomegranate. In these romantic and pastoral tales, consistency and credibility were utterly disregarded. RICHARD BARNFIELD (born about 1570) resembled Lodge in the character of his writings and in the smoothness and elegance of his verse. He was also a graduate of Oxford. His works are -Cynthia, with Certain Sonnets, and the Legend of Cassandra (1595); the Affectionate Shepherd, &c. (1596); the Encomium of Lady Pecunia (1598), &c. But Barnfield is chiefly known from the circumstance, that some of his pieces were ascribed to Shakspeare, in a volume entitled 'The Passionate Pilgrim, by W. Shakespeare' (1599). The use of Shakspeare's name was a trick of the bookseller. The small volume contains two of Shakspeare's Sonnets, some verses taken from his Love's Labour's Lost (published the year before), some pieces known to be by Marlowe and Raleigh, and others taken from Barnfield's Encomium of Lady Pecunia. The following three extracts are from Lodge : Beauty. Like to the clear in highest sphere, Her eyes are sapphires set in snow, Her lips are like two budded roses, Her neck like to a stately tower, Where Love himself imprisoned lies, With marble white, with sapphire blue, Her body everywhere is fed, Yet soft in touch, and sweet in view. Nature herself her shape admires; The gods are wounded in her sight; And Love forsakes his heavenly fires, And at her eyes his brand doth light. Rosalind's Madrigal. Love in my bosom, like a bee, Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet. Within mine eyes he makes his nest, Ah, wanton, will ye? And if I sleep, then percheth he And makes his pillow of my knee, Strike I my lute, he tunes the string; Else I with roses every day Will whip you hence, I'll shut mine eyes to keep you in; If he gainsay me? What if I beat the wanton boy He will repay me with annoy, Then sit thou safely on my knee, Spare not, but play thee. Love. Turn I my looks unto the skies, He will be partner of my moan; And where I am, there will he be ! MARLOWE-SIR WALTER RALEIGH. The whole of the pieces in The Passionate Pilgrim were, as we have said, ascribed to Shakspeare. Among them was the fine poem, The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, with the answer, sometimes called The Nymph's Reply. The first is assigned to CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, in the poetical miscellany, England's Helicon; and the second appears in the same volume with the signature of Ignoto,' used in other instances to intimate that the author was unknown. To one copy, however, the initials of Sir Walter Raleigh are attached; and we have the explicit statement of Izaak Walton in his Complete Angler (1653)—but The following two short poems-often printed written long before it was printed-that the pieces as one-exhibit Barnfield's tone of sentiment and versification: As it fell upon a day, In the merry month of May, Trees did grow, and plants did spring; Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee; All thy friends are lapped in lead; Whilst as fickle Fortune smiled, Every man will be thy friend Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend; were really by Marlowe and Raleigh. The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.-By Marlowe. Come live with me, and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove And we will sit upon the rocks, And I will make thee beds of roses, A gown made of the finest wool, A belt of straw and ivy buds, The shepherd swains shall dance and sing, The Nymph's Reply.-By Raleigh. But Time drives flocks from field to fold, The flowers do fade, and wanton fields Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, To come to thee, and be thy love. |