astrologer being patronised, half a century afterwards, by the government of England.*

During his youth and education he had to struggle with poverty; and in his old age he was one of those sufferers in the cause of episcopacy whose virtues shed a lustre on its fall. He was born in the parish of Ashby de la Zouche, in Liecestershire, studied and took orders at Cambridge, and was for some time master of the school of Tiverton, in Devonshire. An accidental opportunity which he had of preaching before Prince Henry seems to have given the first impulse to his preferment, till by gradual promotion he rose to be bishop of Exeter, having previously accompanied King James, as one of his chaplains to Scotland, and attended the Synod of Dort at a convocation of the protestant divines. As bishop of Exeter he was so mild in his conduct towards the puritans, that he, who was one of the last broken pillars of the church, was nearly persecuted for favouring them. Had such conduct been, at this critical period, pursued by the high

SATIRE I. BOOK I.

NOR ladies' wanton love, nor wand'ring knight,
Legend I out in rhymes all richly dight.
Nor fright the reader with the Pagan vaunt
Of mighty Mahound, and great Termagaunt.
Nor list I sonnet of my mistress' face,

To paint some Blowesse with a borrowed grace;
Nor can I bide to pen some hungry scene
For thick-skin ears, and undiscerning eyne.
Nor ever could my scornful muse abide
With tragic shoes her ancles for to hide.
Nor can I crouch, and writhe my fawning tail
To some great patron, for my best avail.
Such hunger starven trencher poetry,
Or let it never live, or timely die:
Nor under every bank and every tree,
Speak rhymes unto my oaten minstrelsy:
Nor carol out so pleasing lively lays,

As might the Graces move my mirth to praise.†
Trumpet, and reeds, and socks, and buskins fine,
I them bequeath: whose statues wand'ring twine
Of ivy mix'd with bays, circling around
Their living temples likewise laurel-bound.
Rather had I, albe in careless rhymes,
Check the mis-order'd world, and lawless times.
Nor need I crave the muse's midwifery,
To bring to light so worthless poetry:

William Lilly received a pension from the council of state, in 1648. He was, besides, consulted by Charles; and during the siege of Colchester, was sent for by the heads of the parliamentary army, to encourage the soldiers, by assuring them that the town would be taken. Fairfax told the seer, that he did not understand his art, but hoped it was lawful, and agreeable to God's word. Butler alludes to this when he says,

Do not our great Reformers use
This Sidrophel to forebode news;
To write of victories next year,
And castles taken yet i' th' air?...
And has not he point-blank foretold
What's'er the Close Committee would;
Made Mars and Saturn for the Cause,
The moon for fundamental laws?

churchmen in general, the history of a bloody age might have been changed into that of peace; but the violence of Laud prevailed over the milder counsels of a Hall, an Usher, and a Corbet. When the dangers of the church grew more instant, Hall became its champion, and was met in the field of controversy by Milton, whose respect for the bishop's learning is ill concealed under the attempt to cover it with derision.

By the little power that was still left to the sovereign in 1641, Hall was created bishop of Norwich; but having joined, almost immediately after, in the protest of the twelve prelates against the validity of laws that should be passed in their compelled absence, he was committed to the Tower, and, in the sequel, marked out for sequestration. After suffering extreme hardships, he was allowed to retire, on a small pittance, to Higham, near Norwich, where he continued, in comparative obscurity, but with indefatigable zeal and intrepidity, to exercise the duties of a pastor, till he closed his days at the venerable age of eighty-two.

Or if we list, what baser muse can bide,
To sit and sing by Granta's naked side?
They haunt the tided Thames and salt Medway,
E'er since the fame of their late bridal day.
Nought have we here but willow-shaded shore,
To tell our Grant his banks are left forlore.

SATIRE III BOOK I.

WITH Some pot fury, ravish'd from their wit,
They sit and muse on some no-vulgar writ:
As frozen dunghills in a winter's morn,
That void of vapours seemed all beforn,
Soon as the sun sends out his piercing beams,
Exhale out filthy smoke and stinking steams.
So doth the base, and the sore-barren brain,
Soon as the raging wine begins to reign.
One higher pitch'd doth set his soaring thought
On crowned kings, that fortune hath low brought;
Or some upreared, high-aspiring swain,
As it might be the Turkish Tamberlain :
Then weeneth he his base drink-drowned spright,
Rapt to the threefold loft of heaven height,
When he conceives upon his feigned stage
The stalking steps of his great personage,
Graced with huff-cap terms and thund'ring threats,
That his poor hearer's hair quite upright sets.

Made all the Royal stars recant,
Compound and take the Covenant?

Hudibras, Canto

In this satire, which is not perfectly intelligible at the first glance, the author, after deriding the romantic and pastoral vein of affected or mercenary poetasters, proceeds to declare, that for his own part he resigns the higher walks of genuine poetry to others; that he need not crave the "Muse's midwifery," since not even a baser muse would now haunt the shore of Granta (the Cam), which they have left deserted, and crowned with willows, the types of desertion ever since Spenser celebrated the mar riage of the Medway and the Thames.-E.

This satire is levelled at the intemperance and bombastic fury of his contemporary dramatists, with an evident allusion to Marlowe; and in the conclusion he attacks the buffoonery that disgraced the stage.-E.

Such soon as some brave-minded hungry youth
Sees fitly frame to his wide-strained mouth,
He vaunts his voice upon an hired stage,
With high-set steps, and princely carriage;
Now sweeping in side robes of royalty,
That erst did scrub in lousy brokery,
There if he can with terms Italianate
Big sounding sentences, and words of state,
Fair patch me up his pure iambic verse,
He ravishes the gazing scaffolders:
Then certes was the famous Corduban,
Never but half so high tragedian.

Now, lest such frightful shows of fortune's fall,
And bloody tyrant's rage, should chance appal
The dead-struck audience, 'midst the silent rout,
Comes leaping in a self-misformed lout,
And laughs, and grins, and frames his mimic face,
And justles straight into the prince's place;
Then doth the theatre echo all aloud,
With gladsome noise of that applauding crowd.
A goodly hotch-potch! when vile russetings
Are match'd with monarchs, and with mighty kings.
A goodly grace to sober tragic muse,
When each base clown his clumsy fist doth bruise,
And show his teeth in double rotten row,
For laughter at his self-resembled show.
Meanwhile our poets in high parliament
Sit watching every word and gesturement,
Like curious censors of some doughty gear,
Whispering their verdict in their fellow's ear.
Woe to the word whose margent in their scroll
Is noted with a black condemning coal.
But if each period might the synod please,
Ho-bring the ivy boughs, and bands of bays.
Now when they part and leave the naked stage,
'Gins the bare hearer, in a guilty rage,

To curse and ban, and blame his likerous eye,
That thus hath lavish'd his late halfpenny.
Shame that the muses should be bought and sold
For every peasant's brass, on each scaffold.

SATIRE V. BOOK III.

FIE on all courtesy and unruly winds,
Two only foes that fair disguisement finds.
Strange curse! but fit for such a fickle age,
When scalps are subject to such vassalage.
Late travelling along in London way,
Me met, as seem'd by his disguised array,
A lusty courtier, whose curled head
With auburn locks was fairly furnished.
I him saluted in our lavish wise:
He answers my untimely courtesies.
His bonnet vail'd, ere ever I should think,
Th' unruly wind blows off his periwink.
He lights and runs, and quickly hath him sped
To overtake his over-running head.
The sportful wind, to mock the headless man,
Tosses apace his pitch'd Rogerian,

In this description of a famished gallant, Hall has rivalled the succeeding humour of Ben Jonson in similar comic portraits. Among the traits of affectation in his finished character, is that of dining with Duke Humphry, while he pretends to keep open house. The phrase of dining with Duke Humphry arose from St. Paul's being

And straight it to a deeper ditch hath blown :
There must my yonker fetch his waxen crown.
I look'd and laugh'd, whiles, in his raging mind,
He crust all courtesy and unruly wind.

I look'd and laugh'd, and much I marvelled,
To see so large a causeway in his head;
And me bethought that when it first begon,
"Twas some shroad autumn that so bared the bone.
Is't not sweet pride then, when the crowns must
shade

With that which jerks the hams of every jade, Or floor-strew'd locks from off the barber's shears? But waxen crowns well 'gree with borrow'd hairs.

SATIRE VII. BOOK III.

SEEST thou how gayly my young master goes,
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes;
And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side;
And picks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide?
"Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he dined to-day
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humfray.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier.
And open house, haunted with great resort.
Long service mix'd with musical disport.
Many fair yonker with a feather'd crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free gues,
To fare so freely with so little cost,
Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say
He touch'd no meat of all this live-long day.
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess,
His eyes seem'd sunk from very hollowness,
But could he have (as I did it mistake)
So little in his purse, so much upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt,
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.
Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip?
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip.
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.
The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.
What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain,
His grandame could have lent with lesser pain?
Though he perhaps ne'er pass'd the English shore,
Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.
His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head.
One lock amazon-like dishevelled,
As if he meant to wear a native cord,

If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin,
Close notched is his beard both lip and chin;
His linen collar labyrinthian set,
Whose thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
What monster meets mine eyes in human show?

the general resort of the loungers of those days, many of whom, like Hall's gallant, were glad to beguile the thoughts of dinner with a walk in the middle aisle, where there was a tomb, by mistake supposed to be that of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester.-E.

So slender waist with such an abbot's loin,
Did never sober nature sure conjoin.

Lik'st a straw scare-crow in the new-sown field,
Rear'd on some stick, the tender corn to shield;
Or if that semblance suit not every deal,
Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel....

SATIRE VI. BOOK IV.

Quid placet ergo? ·

I wor not how the world's degenerate,
That men or know or like not their estate:
Out from the Gades up to th' eastern morn,
Not one but holds his native state forlorn.
When comely striplings wish it were their chance
For Canis' distaff to exchange their lance,
And wear curl'd periwigs, and chalk their face,
And still are poring on their pocket-glass.
Tired with pinn'd ruffs and fans, and partlet strips
And busks and verdingales about their hips;
And tread on corked stilts a prisoner's pace,
And make their napkin for their spitting-place,
And gripe their waist within a narrow span:
Fond Cænis, that wouldst wish to be a man!
Whose mannish housewives like their refuse state,
And make a drudge of their uxorious mate,
Who like a cot-queen freezeth at the rock,
Whiles his breech'd dame doth man the foreign
stock.

Is't not a shame to see each homely groom
Sit perched in an idle chariot room,
That were not meet some pannel to bestride,
Surcingled to a galled hackney's hide?
Each muck-worm will be rich with lawless gain,
Although he smother up mows of seven years'
grain,

And hang'd himself when corn grows cheap again;
Although he buy whole harvests in the spring,
And foist in false strikes to the measuring,
Although his shop be muffled from the light,
Like a day dungeon, or Cimmerian night;
Nor full nor fasting can the carle take rest,
While his george-nobles rusten in his chest;
He sleeps but once, and dreams of burglary
And wakes, and casts about his frighted eye,
And gropes for thieves in every darker shade;
And if a mouse but stir, he calls for aid.
The sturdy ploughman doth the soldier see,
All scarf'd with pied colours to the knee,
Whom Indian pillage hath made fortunate,

The general scope of this satire, as its motto denotes, is directed against the discontent of human beings with their respective conditions. It paints the ambition of the youth to become a man, of the muckworm to be rich, of

And now he 'gins to loath his former state;
Now doth he inly scorn his Kendal-green,
And his patch'd cockers now despised been,
Nor list he now go whistling to the car,
But sells his team, and fetleth to the war.
O war! to them that never tried thee, sweet!
When his dead mate falls grovelling at his feet,
And angry bullets whistlen at his ear,
And his dim eyes see nought but death and drear.
O happy ploughman! were thy weal well known:
O happy all estates, except his own!
Some drunken rhymer thinks his time well spent,
If he can live to see his name in print,
Who, when he is once fleshed to the press,
And sees his hansell have such fair success,
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail,
He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sail,
Nor then can rest, but volumes up bodged rhymes,
To have his name talked of in future times,
The brain-sick youth, that feeds his tickled ear
With sweet-sauced lies of some false traveller,
Which hath the Spanish Decades read awhile,
Or whetstone leasings of old Mandeville,
Now with discourses breaks his midnight sleep
Of his adventures through the Indian deep,
Of all their massy heaps of golden mine,
Or of the antique tombs of Palestine,
Or of Damascus' magic wall of glass,
Of Solomon his sweating piles of brass,
Of the bird ruc that bears an elephant,

Of mermaids that the southern seas do haunt,
Of headless men, of savage cannibals,
The fashions of their lives and governals;
What monstrous cities there erected be,
Cairo, or the city of the Trinity;

Now are they dunghill cocks that have not seen
The bordering Alps, or else the neighbour Rhine:
And now he plies the news-full Grasshopper,
Of voyages and ventures to inquire.
His land mortgaged, he sea-beat in the way,
Wishes for home a thousand sighs a day;
And now he deems his home-bred fare as leaf
As his parch'd biscuit, or his barrell'd beef.
'Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,
O let me lead an academic life;

To know much, and to think for nothing, know
Nothing to have, yet think we have enow;
In skill to want, and wanting seek for more;
In weal nor want, nor wish for greater store.
Envy, ye monarchs, with your proud excess,
At our low sail, and our high happiness.

the rustic to become a soldier, of the rhymer to appear in print, and of the brain-sick reader of foreign wonders to become a traveller.-E.

WAS a native of Oxfordshire, and was born, as Mr. Ellis conjectures, in 1558. He left the university of Oxford without a degree, and came to London, where he pursued the business of an attorney of the common pleas. Scott, the poet of Amwell, discovered that he had been buried in the church of that parish in 1609, having died suddenly in the night-time.*

His "Albion's England" was once exceedingly popular. Its publication was at one time interdicted by the Star-chamber, for no other reason that can now be assigned, but that it contains some love-stories more simply than delicately related. His contemporaries compared him to Virgil, whom he certainly did not make his

model. Dr. Percy thinks he rather resemblea Ovid, to whom he is, if possible, still more unlike. His poem is, in fact, an enormous ballad on the history, or rather on the fables appendant to the history of England; heterogeneous, indeed, like the Metamorphoses, but written with an almost doggrel simplicity. Headley has rashly preferred his works to our ancient ballads; but with the best of these they will bear no comparison. Argentile and Curan has indeed some beautiful touches, yet that episode requires to be weeded of many lines to be read with unqualified pleasure; and through the rest of his stories we shall search in vain for the familiar magic of such ballads as Chevy Chase or Gill Morrice.

ARGENTILE AND CURAN.
FROM ALBION'S ENGLAND.

Argentile, the daughter and heiress of the deceased King, Adelbright, has been left to the protection of her uncle Edel, who discharges his trust unfaithfully, and seeks to force his niece to marry a suitor whom he believes to be ignoble, that he may have a pretext for seizing on her kingdom.

YET well he fosters for a time the damsel, that was grown

The fairest lady under heav'n, whose beauty being known,

A many princes seek her love, but none might her obtain,

For gripel Edel to himself her kingdom sought to gain,

And for that cause, from sight of such he did his ward restrain.

By chance one Curan, son unto a Prince of Danske, did see

The maid with whom he fell in love, as much as one might be:

Unhappy youth, what should he do? his saint

was kept in mew;

Not caring what became of her, so he by her might thrive;

At last his resolution was some peasant should her wive:

And (which was working to his wish) he did observe with joy,

How Curan, whom he thought a drudge, scap'd many an am'rous toy:

The king, perceiving such his vein, promotes his vassal still,

Lest that the baseness of the man should let perhaps his will;

Assured, therefore, of his love, but not suspecting who

The lover was, the king himself in his behalfdid woo: The lady, resolute from love, unkindly takes that he Should bar the noble and unto so base a match agree; And therefore, shifting out of doors, departed hence by stealth,

Preferring poverty before a dangerous life in

And only minding whom he miss'd, the foundress of his thrall:

Nor means he after to frequent the court, or stately towns,

But solitarily to live among the country growns. A brace of years he lived thus, well pleased so to live, And, shepherd-like, to feed a flock himself did wholly give;

So wasting love, by work and want, grew almost to the wane,

And then began a second love the worser of the twain;

A country wench, a neat-herd's maid, where Curan kept his sheep,

Did feed her drove; and now on her was all the shepherd's keep.

He borrow'd on the working days h's holie russets oft, And of the bacon's fat to make s startups black and soft,

And lest his tar-box should offend, he left it at the fold:

Sweet grout or whig his bottle had as much as it might hold;

A shave of bread as brown as nut, and cheese as white as snow,

And wildings, or the season's fruit, he did in scrip bestow;

And whilst his pyebald cur did sleep, and sheephook lay him by,

On hollow quills of oaten straw he piped melody;
But when he spied her his saint. . .
Thus the shepherd woo'd . . .
Thou art too elvish, faith, thou art; too elvish
and too coy;

Am I, I pray thee, beggarly, that such a flock enjoy?

...

Believe me, lass, a king is but a man, and so am I; Content is worth a monarchy, and mischiefs hit the high,

As late it did a king, and his, not dwelling far from hence,

Who left a daughter, save thyself, for fair a matchless wench;

Here did he pause, as if his tongue had done his heart offence:

The neatress, longing for the rest, did egg him on to tell

How fair she was, and who she was. quoth he, the belle;

She bore,

For beauty, though I clownish am, I know what beauty is,

Or did I not, yet seeing thee, I senseless were to miss : Suppose her beauty Helen's like, or Helen's something less,

And every star consorting to a pure complexion

guess;

Her stature comely tall, her gait well graced, and her wit

To marvel at, not meddle with, as matchless I omit; A globe-like head, a gold-like hair, a forehead smooth and high,

An even nose; on either side did shine a greyish eye.

Her smiles were sober, and her looks were cheerful unto all,

And such as neither wanton seem, nor wayward, mell nor gall:

A nymph no tongue, no heart, no eye, might praise, might wish, might see,

For life, for love, for form, more good, more worth, more fair than she;

Yea, such a one as such was none, save only she was such;

Of Argentile, to say the most, were to be silent much.

I knew the lady very well, but worthless of such praise,

The neatress said, and muse I do a shepherd thus should blaze

The coat of beauty; credit me, thy latter speech bewrays

Thy clownish shape a colour'd show ; but wherefore dost thou weep?—

The shepherd wept, and she was woe, and both did silence keep:

In troth, quoth he, I am not such as seeming I profess,

But then for her, and now for thee, I from my

self digress;

Her loved I, wretch that I am, a recreant to be,
I loved her that hated love, but now I die for thee.
At Kirkland is my father's court, and Curan is
my name,

In Edel's court sometime in pomp, till love controll'd the same;

But now-what now? dear heart, how now, what aileth thou to weep?

The damsel wept, and he was woe, and both did silence keep.

I grant, quoth she, it was too much, that you did love so much,

But whom your former could not move, your

second love doth touch;

A SPECIMEN of the poetry of Sir John Harrington's father has been already given in this volume, which is so polished and refined, as almost to warrant a suspicion that the editor of the Nuge Antique got it from a more modern quarter. The elder Harrington was imprisoned in the Tower, under Queen Mary, for holding a correspondence with Elizabeth; on whose accession his fidelity was rewarded by her favour.

His son, the translator of Ariosto, was knighted on the field by the Earl of Essex, not much to the satisfaction of Elizabeth, who was sparing of such honours, and chose to confer them herself. He was created a knight of the Bath in the reign of James, and distinguished himself, to the violent offence of the high-church party, by his zeal against the marriage of bishops.