except Spenser, and on him he has bestowed ample applause. With regard to Shakspeare, the reader will observe a passage in the first satire, where the poet speaks of resigning the honours of heroic and tragic poetry to more inspired geniuses, and it is possible that the great dramatist may be here alluded to, as well as Spenser. But the allusion is indistinct, and not necessarily applicable to the bard of Avon. Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet, Richard 2d and 3d, have been traced in print to no earlier date than the year 1597, in which Hall's first series of satires appeared; and we have no sufficient proof of his previous fame as a dramatist having been so great as to leave Hall without excuse for omitting to pay him homage. But the sunrise of the drama with Shakspeare was not without abundance of attendant mists in the contemporary fustian of inferior playmakers, who are severely ridiculed by our satirist. In addition to this, our poetry was still haunted by the whining ghosts of the Mirror for Magistrates, while obscenity walked in barbarous nakedness, and the very genius of the language was threatened by revolutionary prosodists.

From the literature of the age Hall proceeds to its manners and prejudices, and among the latter derides the prevalent confidence in alchymy and astrology. To us this ridicule appears an ordinary. effort of reason; but it was in him a common sense above the level of the times. If any proof were required to illustrate the slow departure of prejudices, it would be found in the fact of an astrologer being

patronized, half a century afterwards, by the government of England'.

During his youth and education he had to struggle with poverty; and in his old age he was one of those sufferers in the cause of episcopacy whose virtues shed a lustre on its fall. He was born in the parish of Ashby de la Zouche, in Leicestershire, studied and took orders at Cambridge, and was for some time master of the school of Tiverton, in Devonshire. An accidental opportunity which he had of preaching before Prince Henry seems to have given the first impulse to his preferment, till by gradual promotion he rose to be bishop of Exeter, having previously accompanied King James, as one of his chaplains, to Scotland, and attended the Synod of Dort at a convocation of the protestant divines. As bishop of Exeter he was so mild in his conduct towards the puritans, that he who was one of the last broken pillars of the church, was nearly persecuted for favouring them. Had such conduct been, at this critical period, pursued by the high churchmen in general, the history of a bloody age might have been

1 William Lilly received a pension from the council of state, in 1648. He was, besides, consulted by Charles; and, during the siege of Colchester, was sent for by the heads of the parliamentary army, to encourage the soldiers, by assuring them that the town would be taken. Fairfax told the seer, that he did not understand his art, but hoped it was lawful, and agreeable to God's word. Butler alludes to this when he says,

Do not our great Reformers use
This Sidrophel to forebode news;

changed into that of peace; but the violence of Laud prevailed over the milder counsels of a Hall, an Usher, and a Corbet. When the dangers of the church grew more instant, Hall became its champion, and was met in the field of controversy by Milton, whose respect for the bishop's learning is ill concealed under the attempt to cover it with derision.

By the little power that was still left to the sovereign in 1641, Hall was created bishop of Norwich; but having joined, almost immediately after, in the protest of the twelve prelates against the validity of laws that should be passed in their compelled absence, he was committed to the Tower, and, in the sequel, marked out for sequestration. After suffering extreme hardships, he was allowed to retire, on a small pittance, to Higham, near Norwich, where he continued, in comparative obscurity, but with indefatigable zeal and intrepidity, to exercise the duties of a pastor, till he closed his days at the venerable age of eighty-two.

SATIRE I.

BOOK I.

Nor ladies wanton love, nor wand'ring knight,
Legend I out in rhymes all richly dight.
Nor fright the reader with the Pagan vaunt
Of mighty Mahound, and great Termagaunt.
Nor list I sonnet of my mistress' face,

To paint some Blowesse with a borrowed grace;
Nor can I bide to pen some hungry scene
For thick skin ears, and undiscerning eyne.
Nor ever could my scornful muse abide
With tragic shoes her ancles for to hide.
Nor can I crouch, and writhe my fawning tail
To some great patron, for my best avail.
Such hunger starven trencher poetry,
Or let it never live, or timely die:
Nor under every bank and every tree,
Speak rhymes unto my oaten minstrelsy:
Nor carol out so pleasing lively lays,

As might the Graces move my mirth to praise1.
Trumpet, and reeds, and socks, and buskins fine,
I them bequeath: whose statues wand'ring twine

In this satire, which is not perfectly intelligible at the first glance, the author, after deriding the romantic and pastoral vein of affected or mercenary poetasters, proceeds to declare, that for his own part he resigns the higher walks of genuine poetry to others; that he need not crave the "Muse's midwifery," since not even a baser muse would now haunt the shore of Granta (the Cam), which they have left deserted, and crowned with willows, the types of desertion, ever since Spenser celebrated the marriage of the Medway and the Thames.-E.

Of ivy mix'd with bays, circling around
Their living temples likewise laurel bound.
Rather had I, albe in careless rhymes,

Check the mis-order'd world, and lawless times.
Nor need I crave the muse's midwifery,
To bring to light so worthless poetry:
Or if we list, what baser muse can bide,
To sit and sing by Granta's naked side?
They haunt the tided Thames and salt Medway,
E'er since the fame of their late bridal day.
Nought have we here but willow-shaded shore,
To tell our Grant his banks are left for lore.

SATIRE HI1.

BOOK I.

WITH Some pot fury, ravish'd from their wit,
They sit and muse on some no-vulgar writ;
As frozen dunghills in a winter's morn,
That void of vapours seemed all beforn,
Soon as the sun sends out his piercing beams,
Exhale out filthy smoke and stinking steams.
So doth the base, and the sore-barren brain,
Soon as the raging wine begins to reign.
One higher pitch'd doth set his soaring thought
On crowned kings, that fortune hath low brought:

This satire is levelled at the intemperance and bombastic fury of his contemporary dramatists, with an evident allusion to Marlowe; and in the conclusion he attacks the buffoonery that disgraced the stage.-E.