You violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, As if the spring were all your own! In form and beauty of her mind; A Farewell to the Vanities of the World. And torture free-born minds; embroider'd trains Fame, honour, beauty, state, train, blood, and birth, * * Welcome, pure thoughts, welcome, ye silent groves, The Character of a Happy Life. 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 6 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 advantage 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 attention 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 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 dramatic 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 its colouring. The Rape of Lucrece is less animated, and is perhaps an inferior poem, though, from the boldness of its figurative expressions, and its tone of dignified pathos and reflection, it is more like the hasty sketch of a great poet. 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 Which by and by black night doth take away, [The Horse of Adonis.] Look, when a painter would surpass the life, 1 To bid the wind a base: i. c. to challenge the wind to contend with him in speed: base-prison-base, or prison-bars, was a rustic game, consisting chiefly in running. For through his mane and tail the high wind sings, Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings. [Venus's Prophecy after the Death of Adonis.] Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophecy, Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend; It shall be waited on with jealousy, Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end, Ne'er settled equally, but high or low: That all love's pleasure shall not match his wee. It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud, Bud and be blasted in a breathing while, The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile. The strongest body shall it make most weak, Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak. It shall be sparing, and too full of riot, Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures; The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet, It shall be raging mad, and silly mild, Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures ; Make the young old, the old become a child. It shall suspect, where is no cause of fear; It shall not fear, where it should most mistrust; It shall be merciful, and too severe, And most deceiving when it seems most just: Perverse it shall be, when it seems most toward, Put fear to valour, courage to the coward. It shall be cause of war, and dire events, And set dissension 'twixt the son and sire: Subject and servile to all discontents, As dry combustious matter is to fire. Sith in his prime, death doth my love destroy, They that love best, their love shall not enjoy. [Selections from Shakspeare's Sonnets.] When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least ; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee-and then my state (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new. Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth Askance and strangely; but, by all above, These blenches gave my heart another youth, And worst essays prov'd thee my best of love. Now all is done, save what shall have no end: Mine appetite I never more will grind On newer proof, to try an older friend, A God in love, to whom I am confined. Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, E'en to thy pure and most most loving breast. O for my sake do thou with fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public means, which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd ; 106 Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink When to the sessions of sweet silent thought And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, When summer's breath their masked buds discloses; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made; No longer mourn for me when I am dead, Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; Ah! do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow, If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, From you have I been absent in the spring, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: 1 Vinegar. Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; Let me not to the marriage of true minds That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; I never writ, nor no man ever loved. [Selections from Shakspeare's Songs.] [From As you like it."] Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind, As man's ingratitude! Thy tooth is not so keen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh, ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly, Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then heigh, ho, the holly! This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Though thou the waters warp, [At the end of 'Love's Labour Lost."] When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail; Tu-whit! tu-whoo! a merry note, And Marion's nose looks red and raw; Tu-whit! tu-whoo! a merry note, 107 [In Much Ado about Nothing."] Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more; Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never: Then sigh not so, But let them go, And be you blithe and bonny; Sing no more ditties, sing no mo [In Cymbeline.'] Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages: To thee the reed is as the oak. The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust. Fear no more the lightning-flash, Nor th' all-dreaded thunder stone; Fear not slander, censure rash, Thou hast finished joy and moan. No exorciser harm thee! SIR JOHN DAVIES (1570-1626), an English barrister, at one time Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, was the author of a long philosophical poem, On the Soul of Man and the Immortality thereof, supposed to have been written in 1598, and one of the earliest poems of that kind in our language. Davies is a profound thinker and close reasoner: in the happier parts of his poem,' says Campbell, 'we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. The judgment and fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poem seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction.' The versification of the poem (long quatrains) was afterwards copied by Davenant and Dryden. Mr Southey has remarked that Sir John Davies and Sir William Davenant, avoiding equally the opposite faults of too artificial and too careless a style, wrote in numbers which, for precision, and clearness, and felicity, and strength, have never been surpassed.' The compact structure of Davies's verse is indeed remarkable for his times. In another production, entitled Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing, in a Dialogue between Penelope and One of her Wooers, he is much more fanciful. He there represents Penelope as declining to dance with Antinous, and the latter as proceeding to lecture her upon the antiquity of' that elegant exercise, the merits of which he describes in verses partaking, as has been justly remarked, of the flexibility and grace of the subject. The following is one of the most imaginative passages: [The Dancing of the Air.] And now behold your tender nurse, the air, Now in, now out, in time and measure true, And yet her hearing sense is nothing quick, The soft mind's paradise, the sick mind's leech, With thine own tongue thou trees and stones can teach, That when the air doth dance her finest measure, Lastly, where keep the Winds their revelry, Where she herself is turn'd a hundred ways, Afterwards, the poet alludes to the tidal influence of the moon, and the passage is highly poetical in expression: : For lo, the sea that fleets about the land, And like a girdle clips her solid waist, Sometimes his proud green waves in order set, The poem on Dancing is said to have been written in fifteen days. It was published in 1596. The Nosce Teipsum, or Poem on the Immortality of the Soul, bears the date (as appears from the dedication to the Queen) of 1602. The fame of these works introduced Sir John Davies to James I., who made him successively solicitor-general and attorney-general for Ireland. He was also a judge of assize, and was knighted by the king in 1607. The first Reports of Law Cases, published in Ireland, were made by this able and accomplished man, and his preface to the volume is considered the best that was ever prefixed to a law-book.' [Reasons for the Soul's Immortality.] Again, how can she but immortal be, When, with the motions of both will and wit, She still aspireth to eternity, And never rests till she attain to it? # All moving things to other things do move Of the same kind, which shows their nature such; Yet nature so her streams doth lead and carry At first her mother earth she holdeth dear, For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth, Then, as a bee which among weeds doth fall, [The Dignity of Man.] Oh! what is man, great Maker of mankind! That thou to him so great respect dost bear ; That thou adorn'st him with so bright a mind, Mak'st him a king, and even an angel's peer? Oh! what a lively life, what heav'nly pow'r, How great, how plentiful, how rich a dow'r What spreading virtue, what a sparkling fire, Dost thou within this dying flesh inspire! Thou leav'st thy print in other works of thine, But thy whole image thou in man hast writ; There cannot be a creature more divine, Except, like thee, it should be infinite: But it exceeds man's thought, to think how high God hath rais'd man, since God a man became ; The angels do admire this mystery, And are astonish'd when they view the same: Nor hath he given these blessings for a day, Nor made them on the body's life depend; The soul, though made in time, survives for aye; And though it hath beginning, sees no end. JOHN DONNE. JOHN DONNE was born in London in 1573, of a Catholic family; through his mother he was related to Sir Thomas More and Heywood the epigrammatist. He was educated partly at Oxford and partly at Cambridge, and was designed for the law, but relinquished the study in his nineteenth year. About this period of his life, having carefully considered the controversies between the Catholics and Protestants, he became convinced that the latter were right, and became a member of the established church. The great abilities and amiable character of Donne were early distinguished. The Earl of Essex, the Lord Chancellor Egerton, and Sir Robert Drury, successively befriended and employed him; and a saying of the second of these eminent persons respecting him is recorded by his biographers-that he was fitter to serve a king than a subject. He fell, nevertheless, into trouble, in consequence of secretly marrying the daughter of Sir George Moore, lord lieutenant of the Tower. This step kept him for several years in poverty, and by the death of his wife, a few days after giving birth to her twelfth child, he was plunged into the greatest grief. At the age of forty-two, Donne became a clergyman, and soon attaining distinction as a preacher, he was preferred by James I. to the deanery of St Paul's; in which benefice he continued till his death in 1631, when he was buried honourably in Westminster Abbey. The works of Donne consist of satires, elegies, religious poems, complimentary verses, and epigrams: they were first collected into one volume by Tonson in 1719. His reputation as a poet, great in his own day, low during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth centuries, has latterly in some degree revived. In its days of abasement, critics spoke of his harsh and rugged versification, and his leaving nature for conceit: Dryden even hints at the necessity of translating him into numbers and English. It seems to be now acknowledged that, amidst much rubbish, there is much real poetry, and that of a high order, in Donne. He is described by a recent critic as 'imbued to saturation with the learning of his age,' endowed with a most active and piercing intellect -an imagination, if not grasping and comprehensive, most subtle and far-darting-a fancy, rich, |