When setting to their lips their little beugles shrill The warbling echoes waked from every dale and hill: Their bauldricks set with studs, athwart their shoulders cast, To which under their arms their sheafs were buckled fast, A short sword at their belt, a buckler scarce a span, Who struck below the knee, not counted then a man: All made of Spanish yew, their bows were wond'rous strong; They not an arrow drew, but was a cloth yard long. Of archery they had the very perfect craft, With broad-arrow, or but, or prick, or roving shaft, At marks full forty score, they used to prick, and rove, Yet higher than the breast, for compass never strove; Yet at the farthest mark a foot could hardly win: At long-buts, short, and hoyles, each one could cleave the pin: Their arrows finely pair'd, for timber, and for feather, With birch and brazil pieced, to fly in any weather: And shot they with the round, the square, or forked pile, The loose gave such a twang, as might be heard a mile. And of these archers brave, there was not any one, But he could kill a deer his swiftest speed upon, Which they did boil and roast, in many a mighty wood, Sharp hunger the fine sauce to their more kingly food. Then taking them to rest, his merry men and he Slept many a summer's night under the greenwood And now before young David could come in, To rouse itself; some climb the nearest tree, Suiting to these he wore a shepherd's scrip, Some seeing him so wonderously fair (As in their eyes he stood beyond compare), And though he seemed thus to be very young, Which when Goliah saw, 'Why, boy, quoth he, Nor beasts of ravine, that shall make a prey That for thy shape, the monster art of men; That more than mighty, that eternal One, In meantime David looking in his face, And as in scorn, stands leaning on his spear, Then with such sleight the shot away be sent, Which gave a crack, when his thick scalp it hit, When down he came, like an old o'ergrown oak, 1 : With a fair comely gait; nor doth he run, Now the Philistines, at this fearful sight, Back to the tents retire and take the spoil Of what they left; and ransacking, they cry, 'A David, David, and the victory!' When straightway Saul his general, Abner, sent Fer valiant David, that incontinent He should repair to court; at whose command The giant's head, by the long hair of his crown, EDWARD FAIRFAX. The celebrated translation of Tasso's Jerusalem, br EDWARD FAIRFAX, was made in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and dedicated to that princess, who was proud of patronising learning, but not very lavish in its support. The poetical beauty and freedom of Fairfax's version has been the theme of ahost universal praise. Dryden ranked him with Spenser as a master of our language, and Waller said he derived from him the harmony of his numbers. Collins has finely alluded to his poetical and inmaginative genius Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders which he sung! The date of Fairfax's birth is unknown. He was the natural son of Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton, in Yorkshire, and spent his life at Fuystone, in the forest of Knaresborough, in the enjoyment of many Hessings which rarely befall the poetical race-competence, ease, rural scenes, and an ample command of the means of study. He wrote a work on Demon wogy, which is still in manuscript, and in the preface to it he states, that in religion he was 'neither a fantastic Puritan, nor a superstitious Papist.' He also wrote a series of eclogues, one of which was pablished in 1741, in Cooper's Muses' Library, but it is puerile and absurd. Fairfax was living in 1631, but the time of his death has not been recorded. [Description of Armida and her Enchanted Girdle.] And with that word she smiled, and ne'ertheless Her love-toys still she used, and pleasures bold: Her hair (that done) she twisted up intress, And looser locks in silken laces roll'd; Her curls, garland-wise, she did up dress, Wherein, like rich enamel laid on gold, The twisted flow'rets smil'd, and her white breast The lilies there that spring with roses drest. The jolly peacock spreads not half so fair The eyed feathers of his pompous train; Nor golden Iris so bends in the air Her twenty-coloured bow, through clouds of rain. Yet all her ornaments, strange, rich, and rare, Of mild denays, of tender scorns, of sweet [Rinaldo at Mount Olivet and the Enchanted Woxi.] It was the time, when 'gainst the breaking day, And there kneel'd down with reverence and fear; And sprinkled so that all that paleness fled, And thence of purest white bright rays outstream: A dreadful thunder-clap at last he heard, On the green banks, which that fair stream inbound, And through the grove one channel passage found; And so exchang'd their moisture and their shade. SIR JOHN HARRINGTON. The first translator of Ariosto into English was SIR JOHN HARRINGTON, a courtier of the reign of Elizabeth, and also god-son of the queen. He was the son of John Harrington, Esq., the poet already noticed. Sir John wrote a collection of epigrams, and a Brief View of the Church, in which he reprobates the marriage of bishops. He is supposed to have died about the year 1612. The translation from Ariosto is poor and prosaic, but some of his epigrams are pointed. Of Treason. Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason? For if it prosper none dare call it treason. Of Fortune. Fortune, men say, doth give too much to many, But yet she never gave enough to any. Against Writers that carp at other Men's Books. The readers and the hearers like my books, Of a Precise Tailor. A tailor, thought a man of upright dealing- to the service of the Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, but had the sagacity to foresee the fate of that nobleman, and to elude its consequences by withdrawing in time from the kingdom. Having afterwards gained the friendship of King James, by communicating the secret of a conspiracy formed against him, while yet only king of Scotland, he was employed by that monarch, when he ascended the English throne, as ambassador to Venice. A versatile and lively mind qualified Sir Henry in an eminent degree for this situation, of the duties of which we have his own idea in the well-known punning expression, in which he defines an ambassador to be 'an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.' He ultimately took orders, to qualify himself to be provost of Eton, in which situation he died in 1639, in the seventy-second year of his age. His writings were published in 1651, under the title of Reliquiæ Wottoniance; memoir of his very curious life has been published by Izaak Walton. To his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia. You meaner beauties of the night, You curious chanters of the wood, That warble forth dame Nature's lays, A Farewell to the Vanities of the World. Farewell, ye gilded follies, pleasing troubles; Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles! Fame's but a hollow echo; gold pure clay; Honour the darling but of one short day; Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin; State but a golden prison to live in, And torture free-born minds; embroider'd trains Merely but pageants for proud swelling eins; And blood allied to greatness, is alone Inherited, not purchased, nor our own: Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. 'I know not,' says the modest poet, in his first dedication, 'how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen; only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take ad vantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear [till] so barren a land.' The allusion to 'idle hours' seems to point to the author's profession of an actor, in which capacity he had probably attracted the atten tion of the Earl of Southampton; but it is not so easy to understand how the Venus and Adonis was the 'first heir of his invention,' unless we believe that it had been written in early life, or that his dramatic labours had then been confined to the adaptation of old plays, not the writing of new ones, for the stage. There is a tradition, that the Earl of Southampton on one occasion presented Shakspeare Fame, honour, beauty, state, train, blood, and birth, with L.1000, to complete a purchase which he * wished to make. The gift was munificent, but the sum has probably been exaggerated. The Venus and Adonis is a glowing and essentially dramatie version of the well-known mythological story, full of fine descriptive passages, but objectionable on the score of licentiousness. Warton has shown that it gave offence, at the time of its publication, on account of the excessive warmth of ite colouring. The Rape of Lucrece is less animated, and is perhaps an inferior poem, though, from the boldness of its figu. rative expressions, and its tone of dignified pathos and reflection, it is more like the hasty sketch of a great poet. | Are but the fading blossoms of the earth. 1 Welcome, pure thoughts, welcome, ye silent groves, The Character of a Happy Life. How happy is he born and taught, Who envies none that chance doth raise, Who hath his life from rumours freed, SHAKSPEARE. SHAKSPEARE, as a writer of miscellaneous poetry, claims now to be noticed, and, with the exception of the Faery Queen, there are no poems of the reign of Elizabeth equal to those productions to which the great dramatist affixed his name. In 1593, when the poet was in his twenty-ninth year, appeared his Venus and Adonis, and in the following year his Rape of Lucrece, both dedicated to Henry The sonnets of Shakspeare were first printed in 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, a bookseller and publisher of the day, who prefixed to the volume the following enigmatical dedication:- To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr W. H., all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet, wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth, T. T.' The sonnets are 154 in number. They are, with the exception of twenty-eight, addressed to some male object, whom the poet addresses in a style of affection, love, and idolatry, remarkable, even in the reign of Elizabeth, for its extravagant and enthusiastic character. Though printed continuously, it is obvious that the sonnets were written at different times, with long intervals between the dates of composition; and we know that, previous to 1598, Shakspeare had tried this species of composition, for Meres in that year alludes to his 'sugared sonnets among his private friends. We almost wish, with Mr Hallam, that Shakspeare had not written these sonnets, beautiful as many of them are in language and imagery. They represent him in a character foreign to that in which we love to regard. him, as modest, virtuous, self-confiding, and independent. His excessive and elaborate praise of youthful beauty in a man seems derogatory to his genius, and savours of adulation; and when we find him excuse this friend for robbing him of his mistress-a married female-and subjecting his noble spirit to all the pangs of jealousy, of guilty love, and blind misplaced attachment, it is painful and difficult to believe that all this weakness and folly can be associated with the name of Shakspeare, and still more, that he should record it in verse which he believed would descend to future ages Not marble, not the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme. Some of the sonnets may be written in a feigned character, and merely dramatic in expression; but in others, the poet alludes to his profession of an actor, and all bear the impress of strong passion and deep sincerity. A feeling of premature age seems to have crept on Shakspeare That time of year thou may'st in me behold He laments his errors with deep and penitential sorrow, summoning up things past to the sessions of sweet silent thought,' and exhibiting the depths of a spirit 'solitary in the very vastness of its sympathies.' The 'W. H.' alluded to by Thorpe, the publisher, has been recently conjectured to be William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, who (as appears from the dedication of the first folio of 1623) was one of Shakspeare's patrons. This conjecture has received the assent of Mr Hallam and others; and the author of an ingenious work on the sonnets, Mr C. Armitage Brown, has supported it with much plausibility. Herbert was in his eighteenth year, when Meres first notices the sonnets in 1598; he was learned, of literary taste, and gallant character, but of licentious life. The sonnets convey the idea, that the person to whom they were addressed was of high rank, as well as personal beauty and accomplishments. We know of only one objection to this theory-the improbability that the publisher would address William Herbert, then Earl of Pembroke, and a Knight of the Garter, as 'Mr W. H.' Herbert succeeded his father in the earldom in 1601, while the sonnets, as published by Thorpe, bear the date, as already stated, of 1609. The composition of these mysterious productions evinces Shakspeare's great facility in versification of a difficult order, and they display more intense feeling and passion than either of his classical poems. They have the conceits and quaint turns of expression, then common, particularly in the sonnet; but they rise to far higher flights of genuine poetry than will be found in any other poet of the day, and they contain many traces of his philosophical and reflective spirit. [The Horse of Adonis.] Look, when a painter would surpass the life, In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone. Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares; 1 To bid the wind a base: i.e. to challenge the wind to consend with him in speed: base-prison-base, or prison-bars, was rustic game, consisting chiefly in running. For through his mane and tail the high wind sing, Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings. [Venus's Prophecy after the Death of Adonis.] It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud, [Selections from Shakspeare's Sonnets.] When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth O for my sake do thou with fortune chide, |