To tell my riches and endowments rare,
That by my foes are now all spent and gone ;
To tell my forces matchable to none,

Were but lost labour, that few would believe,
And with rehearsing would me more aggrieve.

High towers, fair temples, goodly theatres,
Strong walls, rich porches, princely palaces,
Large streets, brave houses, sacred sepulchres,
Sure gates, sweet gardens, stately galleries,
Wrought with fair pillars and fine imageries;
All those, oh pity, now are turned to rust,
And overgrown with black oblivion's dust!

FULKE GREVILE, LORD BROOKE.

(1554-1628.)

THIS poet, "descended from the ancient family of the Greviles, was born at Alcaster in Warwickshire." He was a court favourite during the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. He was assassinated by his servant in 1628.

His poetry is remarkable for its depth of thought and masculine strength of expression. Southey calls him "the most difficult of all our poets." In reference to his two tragedies, Lamb says, " He is nine parts of Machiavel and Tacitus for one of Sophocles or Seneca." And again; "Whether we look into his plays, or his most passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and made rigid with intellect." Southey says of Lord Brooke, "No writer of this, or any other country, appears to have reflected more deeply on momentous subjects."

His chief works are," A Treatise on Humane Learning ;" "An Inquisition upon Fame and Honour;" "A Treatise of Wars ;" "A Treatise of Monarchy;" "A Treatise of Religion ;"—with plays and smaller poems. His writings are understood to represent the opinions of his friend Sir Philip Sydney.

66

FROM THE TREATISE ON HUMANE LEARNING."

IMAGINATION.

KNOWLEDGE's next organ is imagination;
A glass, wherein the object of our sense
Ought to respect true height, or declination,
For understanding's clear intelligence:
But this power also hath her variation,
Fixed in some, in some with difference;
In all, so shadowed with self-application,
As makes her pictures still too foul, or fair;
Not like the life in lineament or air.

This power, besides, always cannot receive
What sense reports, but what th' affections please
To admit; and, as those princes that do leave
Their state in trust to men corrupt with ease,
False in their faith, or but to faction friend,
The truth of things can scarcely comprehend;

So must th' imagination from the sense
Be misinformed, while our affections cast
False shapes and forms on their intelligence,
And to keep out true intromission thence,
Abstracts the imagination or distastes,
With images pre-occupately plac'd.

Hence our desires, fears, hopes, love, hate, and sorrow,
In fancy make us hear, feel, see impressions,
Such as out of our sense they do not borrow;
And are the efficient cause, the true progression
Of sleeping visions, idle phantasms waking,
Life, dreams, and knowledge, apparitions making.1

FROM THE TREATISE OF MONARCHY."
CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATION OF DESPOTISM.

CROWNS, therefore keep your oaths of coronation,
Succession frees no tyranny from those;
Faith is the balance of power's reputation;
That circle broken, where can man repose?
Since sceptre pledges, which should be sincere,
By one false act grow bankrupt every where.

Make not men's conscience, wealth, and liberty,
Servile, without book, to unbounded will;
Procrustes like he racks humanity,
That in power's own mould casts their good will;
And slaves men must be by the sway of time,
When tyranny continues thus sublime.3

Yet above all these, tyrants must have care
To cherish these assemblies of estate
Which in great monarchies true glasses are,
To show men's grief, excesses to abate,

Brave moulds for laws, a medium that in one
Joins with content a people to the throne.*

1 These stanzas form a specimen of the abstruse thinking that pervades Lord Brooke poetry.

2 The Athenian robber, killed by Theseus; his guests were either cut down to the lon gitude of the bed he provided for them, or racked to the proper dimensions.-Ovid, Heroid ii. v. 69. Met. vii. 43. 3 Haughty.

4 It is not difficult to see what side Lord Brooke would have embraced had he lived to see the civil war, and been young enough to take part in it.

REALITY OF A TRUE RELIGION.

FOR sure in all kinds of hypocrisy

No bodies yet are found of constant being;
No uniform, no stable mystery,

No inward nature, but an outward seeming;
No solid truth, no virtue, holiness,

But types of these, which time makes more or less.

And, from these springs, strange inundations flow,
To drown the sea-marks of humanity,

With massacres, conspiracy, treason, woe,
By sects and schisms profaning Deity:

Besides, with furies, fiends, earth, air and hell,
They fit, and teach confusion to rebel.

But, as there lives a true God in the heaven,
So is there true religion here on earth:
By nature? No, by grace; not got, but given;
Inspir'd, not taught; from God a second birth;
God dwelleth near about us, even within,
Working the goodness, censuring the sin.

Such as we are to him, to us is he,
Without God there was no man ever good;
Divine the author and the matter be,

Where goodness must be wrought in flesh and blood:
Religion stands not in corrupted things,
But virtues that descend have heavenly wings.

SAMUEL DANIEL.

(1562-1619.)

DANIEL was the son of a music master, and was born near Taunton, in Somerset. He was educated at Oxford, and applied himself early to history and poetry. His merit procured him the patronage of the great, particularly of Mary, Countess of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sydney. He was a favourite also of Anne of Denmark, the Queen of James I. His largest work is "The History of the Civil Wars:" he wrote also a number of Epistles, sonnets, and masques. The style of the "weil languaged Daniel" is pure and more modern in appearance than that of most writers of the times. "For his diction alone he would deserve to be studied, even though his works did not abound in passages of singular beauty."-Southey. He was an amiable and good man, and died in 1619, in virtuous and well earned retirement.

LET their vile cunning, in their limits pent,
Remain among themselves that like it most,
And let the north, they count of colder blood,
Be held more gross, so it remain more good.

LXXXVII.

Let them have fairer cities, goodlier soils,
And sweeter fields for beauty to the eye,
So long as they have these ungodly wiles,
Such detestable vile impiety.

And let us want their vines, their fruits the whiles,
So that we want not faith or honesty.

We care not for these pleasures; so we may

Have better hearts and stronger hands than they.

LXXXVIII.

Neptune, keep out from thy embraced isle
This foul contagion of iniquity!
Drown all corruptions, coming to defile
Our fair proceedings, ordered formally.
Keep us mere1 English; let not craft beguile
Honour and justice with strange subtlety.
Let us not think how that our good can frame
That ruined hath the authors of the same.

FROM THE EPISTLE TO THE COUNTESS OF CUMBERLAND.

HE that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind

Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey

?

And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil?
Where all the storms of passion mainly beat
On flesh and blood; where honour, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;

Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet

As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.

Nor is he moved with all the thunder cracks1
Of tyrant's threats, or with the surly brow
Of Power, that proudly sits on others' crimes,
Charged with more crying sins than those he checks.
The storms of sad confusion, that may grow
Up in the present for the coming times,
Appal not him, that hath no side at all,
But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.

And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompassed; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceived; whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And the inheritance of desolation leaves
To great-expecting hopes; he looks thereon,
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture2 in impiety.

FROM 66 MUSOPHILUS."

THE NOBILITY EXHORTED TO THE PATRONAGE OF LEARNING.

You mighty lords, that with respected grace
Do at the stern of fair example stand,

And all the body of this populace

Guide with the turning of your hand;

Keep a right course; bear up from all disgrace;
Observe the point of glory to our land:

Hold up disgraced Knowledge from the ground;
Keep Virtue in request; give worth her due;
Let not Neglect with barbarous means confound
So fair a good, to bring in night a-new;
Be not, O be not accessary found

Unto her death, that must give life to you.

Where will you have your virtuous name safe laid ?—
In gorgeous tombs, in sacred cells secure?

Do you not see those prostrate heaps betray'd

Your fathers' bones, and could not keep them sure?
And will you trust deceitful stones fair laid,

And think they will be to your honour truer?

1 Compare Hor. Odes III. 3.

2 A mercantile speculation.

The muse has too frequently had reason to remind negligent Mccænases that Achilles is indebted to Homer for immortality.

G