And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,—

A stain to human sense in sin that low'rs.
What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs
(Attir'd in sweetness) sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget Earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
And lift a reverend eye and thought to Heaven?
Sweet, artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels' lays.

EASTER.

Rise from those fragrant climes,1 thee now embrace;
Unto this world of ours, O haste thy race,
Fair Sun, and though contràry ways all year
Thou hold thy course, now with the highest share,
Join thy blue wheels to hasten time that low'rs,
And lazy minutes turn to perfect hours;

The night and death too long a league have made,
To stow the world in horror's ugly shade.
Shake from thy locks a day with saffron rays
So fair, that it outshine all other days;
And yet do not presume, great eye of light,
To be that which this day must make so bright.

See, an eternal Sun hastes to arise;

Not from the eastern blushing seas or skies,

Or any stranger worlds Heaven's concaves have,
But from the darkness of an hollow grave.

And this is that all-powerful Sun above

That crown'd thy brows with rays, first made thee move.
Light's trumpeters, ye need not from your bow'rs

Proclaim this day; this the angelic pow'rs

Have done for you: but now an opal hue

Bepaints Heaven's crystal to the longing view:
Earth's late-hid colours shine, light doth adorn

The world, and, weeping joy, forth comes the morn;
And with her, as from a lethargic trance,

The breath return'd, that bodies doth advance,
Which two sad nights in rock lay coffin'd dead,
And with an iron guard environéd :

Life out of death, light out of darkness springs,
From a base jail forth comes the King of kings;
What late was mortal, thrall'd to every woe
That lackeys life, or upon sense doth grow,
Immortal is, of an eternal stamp,

Far brighter beaming than the morning lamp.
So from a black eclipse out-peers the Sun;

Such (when her course of days have on her run,

1 Supply which a frequent ellipsis, e. g. "What art thou dare?" i. e. who dare.— Fletcher, Faithful Shepherdess, Act IV. Sc. 4.

In a far forest in the pearly east,

And she herself hath burnt, and spicy nest),1
The lovely bird with youthful pens and comb,
Doth soar from out her cradle and her tomb:

*

The world, that wanning late and faint did lie,
Applauding to our joys thy victory,

To a young prime essays to turn again,
And as ere soil'd with sin yet to remain ;
Her chilling agues she begins to miss ;
All bliss returning with the Lord of bliss.

With greater light, Heaven's temples opened shine;
Morns smiling rise, evens blushing do decline,
Clouds dappled glister, boist'rous winds are calm,
Soft zephyrs do the fields with sighs embalm,
In silent calms the sea hath hush'd his roars,
And with enamour'd curls doth kiss the shores.
All-bearing Earth, like a new-married queen,
Her beauties heightens in a gown of green;
Perfumes the air; her meads are wrought with flow'rs,
In colours various, figures, smelling, pow'rs;
Trees wanton in the groves with leafy locks;
Here hills enamell'd stand; the vales, the rocks,
Ring peals of joy; here floods and prattling brooks
(Stars' liquid mirrors), with serpènting crooks,
And whispering murmurs, sound unto the main,-
"The golden age returnéd is again!"
The honey people leave their golden bow'rs,
And innocently prey on budding flow'rs;
In gloomy shades, perch'd on the tender sprays,
The painted singers fill the air with lays :
Seas, floods, earth, air, all diversely do sound,
Yet all their diverse notes hath but one ground,
Re-echo'd here down from Heaven's azure vail;
Hail, holy Victor! greatest Victor, hail !"

66
FROM THE RIVER FORTH FEASTING."2

EULOGY OF KING JAMES.

Oh, virtue's pattern, glory of our times,
Sent of past days to expiate the crimes.
Great King, but better far than thou art great,
Whom state not honours but who honours state;
By wonders born, by wonder first installed,
By wonder after to new kingdoms called;
Young, kept by wonder from home-bred alarms,‘
Old, saved by wonder from pale traitor's harms,"

392-407.

2 Composed on the 3 Miracle.

I The Phoenix.-Sec Herod. ii. 73. Ovid, Met. xv occasion of the visit of James I. to Scotland in 1617. The Forth speaks. The youth of James was disturbed by factions. • Alluding probably to the Gowrie Conspiracy and the Gunpowder Plot.

To be for this thy reign, which wonders brings,
A king of wonder, wonder unto kings.

If Pict, Dane, Norman, thy smooth yoke had seen,
Pict, Dane, and Norman had thy subjects been;
If Brutus knew the bliss thy rule doth give,
Even Brutus joy would under thee to live.
For thou thy people dost so dearly love,
That they a father more than prince thee prove.
O days to be desired! Age happy thrice,
If you your heaven-sent good could duly prize!1
But we, half palsy-sick, think never right
Of what we hold, till it be from our sight;2
Prize only summer's sweet and muskéd breath,
When armed winters threaten us with death;
In pallid sickness do esteem of health,
And by sad poverty discern of wealth.
I see an age, when, after some few years
And revolutions of the slow-paced spheres,
These days shall be 'bove other far esteem'd,
And like Augustus' palmy reign be deem'd.3

*

This is that king who should make right each wrong,
Of whom the bards and mystic sybils sung,

The man long promised by whose glorious reign
This isle should yet her ancient name regain,5

And more of Fortunate deserve the style,

Than those where heavens with double summers smile.
Run on, great Prince, thy course in glory's way!
The end of life, the evening, crowns the day.

Heap worth on worth, and strongly soar above

Those heights, which made the world thee first to love.
Surmount thyself, and make thine actions past

Be but as gleams or lightnings of thy last.

Through this thy empire range, like world's bright eye,
That once each year surveys all earth and sky.

The wanton wood-nymphs of the verdant spring,
Blue, golden, purple flowers to thee shall bring;
Pomona's fruits, the Panisks: Thetis' girls

1 Virgil, Georg. ii. 459. See note 2, p. 150.

2 Compare Shakespeare's Much ado about Nothing, Act IV. Sc. 1-" that what we have," &c.

The poet lived to have bitter experience of the groundlessness of his flattering prophecy.

Alluding probably to the prophecies known under the names of Merlin, Thomas the Rhymer, Sybilla, Berlington, and others; a very early reference to these prophecies, if this be the case.

5 and 6 Compare Virgil, Eclog. iv.

The Greek diminutive of Pan; young Fauns, the sylvan gods; the wood-nymphs, the Dryads; Pomona, the fruit-goddess.

The Nereids, the sea-nymphs, were the daughters of Nereus and Doris; Thetis was one of them.

The Thule's' amber, with the ocean pearls.
The Tritons, herdsmen of the glassy field,
Shall give thee what far distant shores can yield,
The Serian fleeces, Erythrean1 gems,
Vast Plata's silver, gold of Peru streams,
Antarctics parrots, Ethiopian plumes,
Sabaean odours, myrrh, and sweet perfumes.
And I myself, wrapt in a watchets gown,
Of reeds and lilies on mine head a crown,
Shall incense to thee burn, green altars raise,
And yearly sing due Paeans in thy praise."

157

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

(BEAUMONT, 1586-1615. FLETCHER, 1576–1625.)

FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER were "the most inviolable of friends; the Orestes and Pylades of the poetical world."-Biographia Dramatica. Both were gentlemen of good descent. Beaumont's father was a Judge of the Common Pleas ; Fletcher was the son of Dr Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London.-See the Life of Phineas and Giles Fletcher, p. 144. The eagerness of the period for theatrical amusements threw in a dramatic direction a considerable quantity of the talent reared in Oxford and Cambridge (Gifford). The custom of copartnery in the production of pieces was frequent (see the Life of Jonson, p. 138), but Beaumont and Fletcher carried it to an unexampled extent. Their united works amount to about fifty dramas. The share of each in their joint productions cannot be ascertained: Fletcher, who survived Beaumont ten years, bears by far the greater portion of their voluminous labours. Their dramas are praised for elegance of language, sprightliness of wit, and luxuriance of poetical ornament; but censured for the loose conduct of their plots, the frequent repulsiveness of their subjects, and their immoral tendency. "They are not safe teachers of morality," says Hazlitt; "they tamper with it like an experiment in corpore vili. * The tone of Shakespeare's writings is manly and bracing; theirs is at once insipid and meretricious in the comparison. The dramatic paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher are to all appearance tinctured with an infusion of personal vanity and laxity of principle. I do not say that this was the character of the men, but it strikes me as the character of their minds. The two things are very distinct. * *(They) were the first who laid the founda

*

For Scandinavia, the region whence amber was supposed to have floated. Tacit. De Mor. Germ. 45. Thule, the Roman extremity of the world, is variously localized as Greenland, Iceland, Shetland, Norway. The British ocean-pearls are mentioned by Tacitus, Agric. XII.; by Suetonius, Julius, XLVII.; and by Camden.

The Tritons were Neptune's trumpeters; the proper ocean-herdsman is Proteus.-Virg. Georg. IV. 395.

3 Virgil's second Georgic (115, &c.) furnishes most of the succeeding splendour. Serian fleeces may be translated Chinese silk, supposed to have been combed from the tree leaves. -See Georg. II. 120, 121.

The Mare Erythraeum is the Indian Ocean; the name implies Red. 5 Southern. Ostrich feathers; they were regarded as the richest and rarest of ornaments. 7 Arabian. 8 Azure is the dress of river-gods. See note 1, p. 82.-Chaucer writes the word waget (Miller's Tale); Skinner conjectures it to be from the blue dye woad.

9 James did not often regale on confections of dattery so elegant as this, compounded as it is from Virgil's sweetmeats.

tion of the artificial diction and tinsel pomp of the next generation of poets." But in counterpoise to this censure he writes; "They are lyrical and descriptive poets of the highest order; every page of their writings is a florilegium.

* There is hardly a passion which they have not touched in their devious range, and whatever they touched, they adorned with some new grace or striking feature; they are masters of style and versification, in almost every variety of which they are capable: in comic wit and spirit they are scarcely surpassed by any writers of any age." Their plays were popular in the age of Charles II. They share with Ben Jonson the honour of the second rank in English dramatic literature.

Oh do not wrong my honest simple truth!
Myself and my affections are as pure

As those chaste flames that burn before the shrine
Of the great Dian: only my intent

To draw you hither was to plight our troths,
With interchange of mutual chaste embraces,
And ceremonious tying of our souls.

For to that holy wood is consecrate

A virtuous well,1 about whose flowery banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds,
By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes
Their stolen children,2 so to make them free
From dying flesh and dull mortality.

By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn,
And given away his freedom: many a troth
Been plight, which neither Envy nor old Time
Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given.
By this fresh fountain, many a blushing maid
Hath crown'd the head of her long-lovéd shepherd
With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung
Lays of his love and dear captivity.

CHLOE TO THENOT.

ACT I. SC. 3.

Whither goest thou? Here be woods as green
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet

As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curléd streams, with flowers as many

As the young spring gives, and as choice as any.

1 The fairies were supposed to be attached to wells and brooks. See Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II. p. 163.-Weber.

For a fairy-stolen child see Hogg's Queen's Wake, Kilmeny.