That is the pride of Cynthia's train;
Then stay thy tongue;
Thy mermaid song

Is all bestow'd on me in vain.
He's a fool, that basely dallies,

Where each peasant mates with him:
Shall I haunt the thronged valleys,
Whilst there's noble hills to climb ?
No, no, though clowns
Are scar'd with frowns,

I know the best can but disdain
And those I'll prove,
So will thy love

Be all bestow'd on me in vain.

I do scorn to vow a duty,

Where each lustful lad may woo; Give me her, whose sun-like beauty, Buzzards dare not soar unto:

So now is come our joyful'st feast;
Let every man be jolly;

Each room with ivy leaves is drest,
And every post with holly.
Though some churls at our mirth repine,
Round your foreheads garlands twine,
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,

And let us all be merry.

Now all our neighbours' chimneys smoke,
And Christmas blocks are burning;
Their ovens they with baked meat choke,
And all their spits are turning.
Without the door let sorrow lie;
And if for cold it hap to die,
We'll bury't in a Christmas pie,
And evermore be merry.
Now every lad is wond'rous trim,
And no man minds his labour;

Our lasses have provided them
A bagpipe and a tabor;

Young men and maids, and girls and boys,
Give life to one another's joys;
And you anon shall by their noise
Perceive that they are merry,

Rank misers now do sparing shun;
Their hall of music soundeth;

And dogs thence with whole shoulders run,

So all things there aboundeth. The country folks, themselves advance, With crowdy-muttons out of France; And Jack shall pipe and Gill shall dance, And all the town be merry.

Ned Squash hath fetcht his bands from pawn, And all his best apparel;

Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn

With dropping of the barrel.
And those that hardly all the year
Had bread to eat, or rags to wear,
Will have both clothes and dainty fare,

And all the day be merry.
Now poor men to the justices
With capons make their errants;

And if they hap to fail of these,

They plague them with their warrants:
But now they feed them with good cheer,
And what they want they take in beer,
For Christmas comes but once a year,

And then they shall be merry.
Good farmers in the country nurse
The poor, that else were undone ;
Some landlords spend their money worse,

On lust and pride at London.
There the roysters they do play,
Drab and dice their lands away,
Which may be ours another day,
And therefore let's be merry.
The client now his suit forbears,
The prisoner's heart is eased;
The debtor drinks away his cares,
And for the time is pleased.
Though others' purses be more fat,
Why should we pine, or grieve at that!
Hang sorrow! care will kill a cat,
And therefore let's be merry.

Hark! now the wags abroad do call,

Each other forth to rambling;
Anon you'll see them in the hall,

For nuts and apples scrambling.
Hark! how the roofs with laughter sound,
Anon they'll think the house goes round,
For they the cellar's depth have found,

And there they will be merry.
The wenches with their wassail bowls
About the streets are singing;
The boys are come to catch the owls,

The wild mare in is bringing.
Our kitchen boy hath broke his box,
And to the dealing of the ox,
Our honest neighbours come by flocks,
And here they will be merry.

Now kings and queens poor sheepcotes have,

And mate with every body;
The honest now may play the knave,
And wise men play the noddy.
Some youths will now a mumming go,
Some others play at Rowland-bo,
And twenty other game boys mo,
Because they will be merry.

Then, wherefore, in these merry days,
Should we, I pray, be duller?
No, let us sing some roundelays,

To make our mirth the fuller:
And, while we thus inspired sing,
Let all the streets with echoes ring;
Woods and hills, and everything,
Bear witness we are merry

WILLIAM BROWNE.

WILLIAM BROWNA (1590-1645) was a pastoral and descriptive poet, who, like Phineas and Giles Fletcher, adopted Spenser for his model. He was a native of Tavistock, in Devonshire, and the beautiful scenery of his native county seems to have inspired his early strains. His descriptions are vivid and true to nature. Browne was tutor to the Earl of Carnarvon, and on the death of the latter at the battle of Newbury in 1643, he received the patronage and lived in the family of the Earl of Pembroke. In this situation he realised a competency, and, according to Wood, purchased an estate. He died at Ottery-St-Mary (the birth-place of Coleridge) in 1645. Browne's works consist of Britannia's Pastorals, the first part of which was published in 1613, the second part in 1616. He wrote, also, a pastoral poem of inferior merit, entitled, The Shepherd's Pipe. In 1620, a masque by Browne was produced at court, called The Inner Temple Masque; but it was not printed till a hundred and twenty years after the author's death, transcribed from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library. As all the poems of Browne were produced before he was thirty years of age, and the best when he was little more than twenty, we need not be surprised at their containing marks of juvenility, and frequent traces of resemblance to previous poets, especially Spenser, whom he warmly admired. His pastorals obtained the approbation of Selden, Drayton, Wither, and Ben Jonson. Britannia's Pastorals are written in the heroic couplet, and contain much beautiful descriptive poetry. Browne had great facility of expression, and an intimate acquaintance with the phenomena of inanimate nature, and the characteristic features of the English landscape. Why he has failed in maintaining his ground among his contemporaries, must be attributed to the want of vigour and condensation in his works, and the almost total absence of human interest. His shepherds and shepherdesses have nearly as little character as the 'silly sheep' they tend; whilst pure description, that takes the place of sense,' can never permanently interest any large number of readers. So completely had some of the poems of Browne vanished from the public view and recollection, that, had it not been for a single copy of them possessed by the Rev. Thomas Warton, and which that poetical student and antiquary lent to be transcribed, it is supposed there would have remained little of those works which their author fondly hoped would

Keep his name enroll'd past his that shines
In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves.

Warton cites the following lines of Browne, as containing an assemblage of the same images as the morning picture in the L'Allegro of Milton:i

By this had chanticleer, the village cock,
Bidden the goodwife for her maids to knock;
And the swart ploughman for his breakfast stayed,
That he might till those lands were fallow laid;
The hills and valleys here and there resound
With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound;
Each shepherd's daughter with her cleanly pail
Was come a-field to milk the morning's meal;
And ere the sun had climb'd the eastern hills,
To gild the muttering bourns and pretty rills,
Before the labouring bee had left the hive,
And nimble fishes, which in rivers dive,
Began to leap and catch the drowned fly,
I rose from rest, not infelicity.

O what a rapture have I gotten now!
That age of gold, this of the lovely brow,
Have drawn me from my song! I onward run
(Clean from the end to which I first begun),
But ye, the heavenly creatures of the West,
In whom the virtues and the graces rest,
Pardon! that I have run astray so long,
And grow so tedious in so rude a song.
If you yourselves should come to add one grace
Unto a pleasant grove or such like place,
Where, here, the curious cutting of a hedge,
There in a pond, the trimming of the sedge;
Here the fine setting of well-shaded trees,
The walks there mounting up by small degrees,
The gravel and the green so equal lie,
It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye:
Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air,

Arising from the infinite repair
Of odoriferous buds, and herbs of price,
(As if it were another paradise),

So please the smelling sense, that you are fain
Where last you walk'd to turn and walk again
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing go:
Here further down an over-arched alley
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spy at end thereof a standing lake,
Where some ingenious artist strives to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of lead
Through birds of earth most lively fashioned)
To counterfeit and mock the sylvans all
In singing well their own set madrigal.
This with no small delight retains your ear,
And makes you think none blest but who live there
Then in another place the fruits that be
In gallant clusters decking each good tree,
Invite your hand to crop them from the stem,
And liking one, taste every sort of them:
Then to the arbours walk, then to the bowers,
Thence to the walks again, thence to the flowers,
Then to the birds, and to the clear spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sense:
Here one walks oft, and yet anew begin'th,
As if it were some hidden labyrinth.

[Evening.]

As in an evening, when the gentle air
Breathes to the sullen night a soft repair,
I oft have sat on Thames' sweet bank, to hear
My friend with his sweet touch to charm mine ear:
When he hath play'd (as well he can) some strain,
That likes me, straight I ask the same again,
And he, as gladly granting, strikes it o'er

I would have been content if he would play,
In that one strain, to pass the night away;
But, fearing much to do his patience wrong,
Cawillingly have ask'd some other song:
53, in this diff'ring key, though I could well
A many hours, but as few minutes tell,
Yet, lest mine own delight might injure you,
(Though loath so soon) I take my song anew.

[Night.]

The sable mantle of the silent night
Saut from the world the ever-joysome light.
Care fled away, and softest slumbers please
To leave the court for lowly cottages.
Wild beasts forsook their dens on woody hills,
And sleightful otters left the purling rills;

Rooks to their nests in high woods now were flung,
And with their spread wings shield their naked young.
When thieves from thickets to the cross-ways stir,
And terror frights the lonely passenger;

When nought was heard but now and then the howl Of some vile cur, or whooping of the owl.

[Pastoral Empl nyments.]

But since her stay was long: for fear the sun Should find them idle, some of them begun To leap and wrestle, others threw the bar,

FRANCIS QUARLES.

The writings of FRANCIS QUARLES (1592-1644) are more like those of a divine, or contemplative recluse, than of a busy man of the world, who held various public situations, and died at the age of fifty-two. Quarles was a native of Essex, educated at Cambridge, and afterwards a student of Lincoln's Inn. He was successively cup-bearer to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, secretary to Archbishop Usher, and chronologer to the city of London. He espoused the cause of Charles I., and was so harassed by the opposite party, who injured his property, and plundered him of his books and rare manuscripts, that his death was attributed to the affliction and ill health caused by these disasters. Notwithstanding his loyalty, the works of Quarles have a tinge of Puritanism and ascetic piety that might have mollified the rage of his persecutors. His poems consist of various pieces-Job Militant, Sion's Elegies, The History of Queen Esther, Argalus and Parthenia, The Morning Muse, The Feast of Worms, and The Divine Emblems. The latter were published in 1645, and were so popular, that Phillips, Milton's nephew, styles Quarles 'the darling of our plebeian judgments.' The eulogium still holds good to some extent, for the Divine Emblems, with their quaint and grotesque illustrations, are still found in the cottages of our peasants. After the Restoration, when everything sacred and serious was either neglected or made the subject of ribald jests, Quarles seems to have been entirely lost to the public. Even Pope, who, had he read him, must have relished his lively

| Some from the company removed are

To meditate the songs they meant to play,
Or make a new round for next holiday;
Some, tales of love their love-sick fellows told;
Others were seeking stakes to pitch their fold.

| This, all alone, was mending of his pipe;

fancy and poetical expression, notices only his bathos and absurdity. The better and more tolerant taste of modern times has admitted the divine emblemist into the 'laurelled fraternity of poets,' where,

Here (from the rest), a lovely shepherd's boy

Sits piping on a hill, as if his joy

Would still endure, or else that age's frost Should never make him think what he had lost,

least sure of his due measure of homage and attention. Emblems, or the union of the graphic and poetic arts, to inculcate lessons of morality and religion, had been tried with success by Peacham and Wither. Quarles, however, made Herman Hugo, a Jesuit, his model, and from the 'Pia Desideria' of this author, copied a great part of his prints and mottoes. His style is that of his age-studded with conceits, often extravagant in conception, and presenting the most outré and ridiculous combinations. There is strength, however, amidst his contortions, and true wit mixed up with the false. His epigrammatic point, uniting wit and devotion, has been considered the precursor of Young's Night Thoughts.

Yonder a shepherdess knits by the springs,

Her hands still keeping time to what she sings; Or seeming, by her song, those fairest hands

Were comforted in working. Near the sands

Of some sweet river, sits a musing lad,

That moans the loss of what he sometime had, His love by death bereft: when fast by him An aged swain takes place, as near the brim Of 's grave as of the river.

And what's a life? the flourishing array
Of the proud summer meadow, which to-day
Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay.

Read on this dial, how the shades devour
My short-lived winter's day! hour eats up hour;
Alas! the total's but from eight to four.
Behold these lilies, which thy hands have made,
Fair copies of my life, and open laid
To view, how soon they droop, how soon they fade!
Shade not that dial, night will blind too soon;
My non-aged day already points to noon;
How simple is my suit!--how small my boon!
Nor do I beg this slender inch to wile

The time away, or falsely to beguile

Mors Tua.

Can he be fair, that withers at a blast?
Or he be strong, that airy breath can cast?
Can he be wise, that knows not how to live?
Or he be rich, that nothing hath to give?
Can he be young, that's feeble, weak, and wan?
So fair, strong, wise, so rich, so young is man.
So fair is man, that death (a parting blast)
Blasts his fair flower, and makes him earth at last;
So strong is man, that with a gasping breath
He totters, and bequeaths his strength to death;
So wise is man, that if with death he strive,
His wisdom cannot teach him how to live;
So rich is man, that (all his debts being paid)
His wealth's the winding-sheet wherein he's laid;
So young is man, that, broke with care and sorrow,
He's old enough to-day, to die to-morrow:
Why bragg'st thou then, thou worm of five feet long?
Thou'rt neither fair, nor strong, nor wise, nor rich, nor
young.

The Vanity of the World.

False world, thou ly'st: thou canst not lend

The least delight:

Thy favours cannot gain a friend,
They are so slight:

Thy morning pleasures make an end
To please at night:

Poor are the wants that thou supply'st,
And yet thou vaunt'st, and yet thou vy'st

She is my Maker's creature; therefore good:
She is my mother, for she gave me birth;
She is my tender nurse-she gives me food;
But what's a creature, Lord, compared with thee!
Or what's my mother, or my nurse to me?

I love the air her dainty sweets refresh
My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me;
Her shrill-mouth'd quire sustains me with their flesh,
quire s
And with their polyphonian notes delight me:
But what's the air or all the sweets that she
Can bless my soul withal, compared to thee?

I love the sea: she is my fellow-creature,
My careful purveyor; she provides me store:
She walls me round; she makes my diet greater;
She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore:
But, Lord of oceans, when compared with thee,
What is the ocean, or her wealth to me!

To heaven's high city I direct my journey,
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye;
Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney,
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky:

But what is heaven, great God, compared to thee!
Without thy presence heaven 's no heaven to me.

Without thy presence earth gives no refection;
Without thy presence sea affords no treasure;
Without thy presence air 's a rank infection;
Without thy presence heaven itself no pleasure:
If not possess'd, if not enjoy'd in thee,
What's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me!

thou ly'st.

Thy babbling tongue tells golden tales

Of endless treasure;

Thy bounty offers easy sales

Of lasting pleasure;

Thou ask'st the conscience what she ails,
And swear'st to ease her:

There's none can want where thou supply'st:
There's none can give where thou deny'st.

Alas! fond world, thou boasts; false world, thou ly'st.

What well-advised ear regards

What earth can say?

Thy words are uu, but thy rewards

Are painted clay:

Thy cunning can but pack the cards,

Thou canst not play:

Thy game at weakest, still thou vy'st;

If seen, and then revy'd, deny'st:

Thou art not what thou seem'st; false world, thou ly'st.

Thy tinsel bosom seems a mint

Of new-coin'd treasure;

A paradise, that has no stint,

No change, no measure;

A painted cask, but nothing in't,

Nor wealth, nor pleasure:

Vain earth! that falsely thus comply'st

With man; vain man! that thou rely'st

Are subjects far too low for my desire;
The brightest beams of glory are (at most)
But dying sparkles of thy living fire:

The loudest flames that earth can kindle, be
But nightly glow-worms, if compared to thee.

Without thy presence wealth is bags of cares;
Wisdom but folly; joy disquiet-sadness:
Friendship is treason, and delights are snares;
Pleasures but pain, and mirth but pleasing madness
Without thee, Lord, things be not what they be,
Nor have they being, when compared with thee.

In having all things, and not thee, what have I !
Not having thee, what have my labours got?
Let me enjoy but thee, what further crave I ?
And having thee alone, what have I not?

I wish nor sea nor land; nor would I be
Possess'd of heaven, heaven unpossess'd of thee.

Decay of Life.

The day grows old, the low-pitch'd lamp hath made No less than treble shade,

And the descending damp doth now prepare

To uncurl bright Titan's hair;

Whose western wardrobe now begins to unfold
Her purples, fringed with gold,

To clothe his evening glory, when the alarms

Nature now calls to supper, to refresh

The spirits of all flesh;

The toiling ploughman drives his thirsty teams,

To taste the slipp'ry streams:

The droiling swineherd knocks away, and feasts

His hungry whining guests:

The boxbill ouzle, and the dappled thrush,

Like hungry rivals meet at their beloved bush.

And now the cold autumnal dews are seen

To cobwel every green;

And by the low-shorn rowans doth appear

The fast-declining year :

The sapless branches doff their summer suits,

And wain their winter fruits;

And stormy blasts have forced the quaking trees

To wrap their trembling limbs in suits of mossy frieze.

Our wasted taper now hath brought her light

To the next door to night;

Her sprightless flame grown with great snuff, doth turn

bad as her neighb'ring urn:

Her slender inch, that yet unspent remains,

Lights but to further pains,

And in a silent language bids her guest

Prepare his weary limbs to take eternal rest.

Now careful age hath pitch'd her painful plough

Upon the furrow'd brow;

And snowy blasts of discontented care

Have blanch'd the falling hair:

Suspicious envy mix'd with jealous spite

Disturbs his weary night:

He threatens youth with age; and now, alas!
He owns not what he is, but vaunts the man he was.

Grey hairs peruse thy days, and let thy past
Read lectures to thy last :

Those hasty wings that hurried them away
Will give these days no day:

The constant wheels of nature scorn to tire
Until her works expire :

That blast that nipp'd thy youth will ruin thee;
That hand that shook the branch will quickly strike
the tree.

To Chastity.

mitted his works to him before publicati. Tho poet was also in favour with King James, who gave him a sinecure office worth £120 per annum, which Queen Elizabeth had formerly given to Sir Philip Sidney. With this,' says Izaak Walton, 'and his annuity, and the advantages of his college, and of his oratorship, he enjoyed his genteel humour for clothes and court-like company, and seldom looked towards Cambridge unless the king were there, bit then he never failed.' The death of the king and of two powerful friends, the Duke of Richmond and Marquis of Hamilton, destroyed Herbert's court hopes, and he entered into sacred orders. He was first prebend of Layton Ecclesia (the church of which he rebuilt), and afterwards was made rector of Bemerton, in Wiltshire, where he passed the remainder of his life. After describing the poet's marriage on the third day after his first interview with the lady, old Izaak Walton relates, with characteristic simplicity and minuteness, a matrimonial scene preparatory to their removal to Bemerton :'The third day after he was made rector of Bemerton, and had changed his sword and silk clothes inte a canonical habit (he had probably never done duty

Oh, Chastity!- the flower of the soul,
How is thy perfect fairness turn'd to foul!
How are thy blossoms blasted all to dust,
By sudden light'ning of untamed lust!
How hast thou thus defil'd thy ev'ry feet,
Thy sweetness that was once, how far from sweet!
Where are thy maiden smiles, thy blushing cheek-
Thy lamb-like countenance, so fair, so meek?
Where is that spotless flower, that while-ere
Within thy lily bosom thou did'st wear?
Has wanton Cupid snatched it? hath his dart

Sent courtly tokens to thy simple heart?

The city wonders when a body names thee : Or have the rural woods engrost thee there,

And thus forestall'd our empty markets here?

Sure thou art not; or kept where no man shows thee; Or chang'd so much scarce man or woman knows thee.

GEORGE HERBERT.

* The rectory of Bemerton is now held by another post, the

with his friend Mr Woodnot to Bainton; and immediately after he had seen and saluted his wife, he said to her, "You are now a minister's wife, and must now so far forget your father s house as not to claim a precedence of any of your parishioners for you are to know that a prest's wife can challenge no precedence or place but that which she purchases by her obliging humility; and I am sure places so purchased do best become them. And let me tell you, I am so good a herald as to assure you that this is truth." And she was so meek a wife, as to assure him it was no vexing news to her, and that he should see her observe it with a cheerful willingness. Herbert discharged his clerical duties with sam