Our next quotation shall be from Robert Green, best known as a dramatic writer, who was born about 1550, and died in 1592. He is said to have been the first English poet that wrote for bread, and it has been observed, that his life thus forms "a melancholy epocha in the history of our literature." But is this justly said? Is that a melancholy era at which poetical talent came to be employed as the means of supporting its possessor? Such a change seems rather to cast a gloomy hue upon the times that preceded it; as implying either that the public had previously been unwilling to give bread for poetry, or that poetry had never arisen where there was a want of bread. On either supposition, when properly followed out, we must infer a striking deficiency in social culture. Who would desire to see in this respect a retrograde movement, or to confine poetical composition to "courtly makers" or men of fortune? Who is it that longs for the time when poets shall cease to write, and to write better than they would otherwise do, either simply for bread, or for better bread than they would otherwise eat? Poor Green, however, diminished by his vices and follies both the honour and advantage of his laudable exertions for a livelihood. Yet he seems, in the midst of dissipation, to have preserved some purity of taste, and tenderness of feeling. The following lines are not without smoothness and elegance. "Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content; The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frown. "The homely house that harbours quiet rest, From inter And freely poured libation Adm. Neither As wothardy as car the bes :: F དམ་ཅང་ To car by Mony Hans As death at basshil z To ease my ges Heated my dro My daly gods y are both of them meritorious composi- As careles life, in quite tions, infected, indeed, with the vulgar Might cause my soul iz disease of running an analogy for ever His Good-Morrow and Good-Night Which I to bedward us, for companions, we must, from con to separate what their author intended Are patterns of the pangs of se siderations of space, confine ourselves And of my bed each sundry pa to the quotation of one of these pieces, In shadows doth resemble and shall give the preference to the The sundry shapes of death whose it Shall make my flesh to treme coigne, we may observe, died in the "My bed itself is like the grave, My sheets the winding-sheet, To cover me most meet. The hungry fleas which frisk so fresh, Which greedily shall gnaw my flesh, "The waking cock that early crows To wear the night away, Puts in my mind the trump that blows So hope I to rise joyfully I wake, thus will I sleep, I hope to rise, neither wail nor weep, in goodly wise. hall in this bed remain, in God shall trust, hope to rise again eath and earthly dust." ay be excused for here add "When God ordain'd the restless state of man, To show itself was this: to save from snares "Few see themselves, but each man seeth his child, We care for them in age to gather pelf. Our next quotation shall be from obert Green, best known as a draatic writer, who was born about 1550, nd died in 1592. He is said to have een the first English poet that wrote or bread, and it has been observed, hat his life thus forms "a melancholy epocha in the history of our literature." But is this justly said? Is that a melancholy era at which poetical talent came to be employed as the means of supporting its possessor? Such a Such a change seems rather to cast a gloomy hue upon the times that preceded it; as implying either that the public had previously been unwilling to give bread for poetry, or that poetry had never arisen where there was a want of bread. On either supposition, when properly followed out, we must infer a striking deficiency in social culture. Who would desire to see in this respect a retrograde movement, or to confine poetical composition to "courtly makers" or men of fortune? Who is it that longs for the time when poets shall cease to write, and to write better than they would otherwise do, either simply for bread, or for better bread than they would otherwise eat? Poor Green, however, diminished by his vices and follies both the honour and advantage of his laudable exertions for a livelihood. Yet he seems, in the midst of dissipation, to have preserved some purity of taste, and tenderness of feeling. The following lines are not without smoothness and elegance. "Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content; The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frown. "The homely house that harbours quiet rest, "Some have too much, yet still they crave; I little have, yet seek no more: And I am rich with little store: They poor, I rich; they beg, I give ; I grudge not at another's gain: I brook that is another's bane: I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend; "I wish but what I have at will, I wander not to seek for more: I like the plain, I climb no bill, In greatest storms I sit on shore, The last line of these verses suggests a well known popular poem, of which the composition seems referable to this or to an earlier period. "My mind to me a kingdom is," the song to which we now refer, appears to have been printed and familiarly known some years prior to 1590. Its author is undiscovered, and is apparently beyond the reach of conjecture. It was a favourite subject of imitation in its own day, and has been often since inserted in poetical collections with a I loath not life, nor dread mine end. high degree of praise. It is certainly in its own department a remarkable composition, and reflects credit on the infancy or adolescence of English popular poetry. The commencement, if now deprived of the charm of novelty, is strong and impressive; and several of the lines or stanzas throughout are neatly expressed, smoothly constructed, and diversified by some variety of point and metaphor. Yet the leading idea of the poem, such as it is, is not expanded with much fertility of thought, or skilfulness of management. The same things are repeated with needless iteration, and the brief and sententious phrases employed, while they interrupt the flow of melody and feeling, are often strung together with out any natural tie of connexion or congruity. The prevalence of this fault may be apparent from the circumstance that different editors have differently arranged a good number of the stanzas, without its being easy to tell that the true order has been materially violated. We insert such verses of it as we think best deserving of attention. 66 My mind to me a kingdom is, That God or nature hath assigned; "Content I live, this is my stay; I seek no more than may suffice: "I see how plenty surfeits oft, And hasty climbers soonest fall: I see that such as sit aloft Mishap doth threaten most of all: These get with toil and keep with fear: Such cares my mind could never bear. "My wealth is health and perfect ease, My conscience clear my chief defence; never seek by bribes to please, I Nor by desert to give offence; Would all did so as well as I." If it were fair to subject a composition of this popular kind to very serious criticism, or if it deserved such a tribute to its importance, a graver objection to this piece, as to others of a similar character, might be found in the general coldness of its temperature, connected with the fallaciousness of the sentiments involv ed in it. "My mind to me a kingdom is, has a lofty and imposing sound, and This is surely a poor view of that noble domain, the mind of man, and it is not a poetical one. Indifference to human affections implies a low tone, both of poetry and morality, as there can be neither praise nor sympathy without virtuous exertion or strong emotion. It must be confessed that several poems of the class we are now considering are pitched upon this under key, and seem merely to represent virtue as implying the negation of vice, and to place the only security from criminal indulgence in the retrenchment of natural passion. Some minds may find their best refuge in this retreat from active life, but they ought to announce their preference with the humility of those who have been forced to fly where it was their duty to fight. In a world of creatures of kindred origin and constitution with ourselves, a proud exultation in a state of mere quiescence, unaffected by the innumerable variations of fortune and feeling occurring around us to demand our sympathy, is nothing else than a refined selfishness, unattainable, indeed, in our actual condition, and not desirable if it could be attained. Such voluntary separatists from the natural union of the human family might be addressed in lines, somewhat resembling, in homely plainness, the productions of the school which we are now considering: "My mind to me a kingdom is' No longer urge that swelling strain, For who can hope the praise is his, A monarch o'er himself to reign? "Nor boast that thus in cold content Thou bear'st a calm and careless mind; Nor deign'st to laugh or to lament For joys or sorrows of thy kind. "Such lonely life may lurk apart, Unreached by tainting passion's stain; And what was once a human heart May lose the touch of human pain. "But heavy is the blame he bears Who, flying vice, flies virtue too: Whose fields, devoid of corn or tares, Lie barren in his Maker's view. "And greater bliss it were to groan, With all whose sufferings ask a sigh, Than, thus congealed to conscious stone, Unwept, unweeping, live and die." Our next object of selection, "The Soul's Errand, or the Lie," has had its due share of controversy and perhaps of commendation. It has often been ascribed to Raleigh, and was at one time supposed to have been written by him the night before his execution. What authentic instances there are of poetical composition in so awful a situation we shall not pause to enquire; but we should be in general disposed to ascribe them less to magnanimity than to desperation, or the love of effect. Certain we are that, in such moments, a man should be more intent on examining himself than on condemning his fellow-creatures, and should be too much occupied with the mysterious scene on which he is entering, to rail at the world from which he is taking his departure. But all speculation as to the probability or propriety of such a poem being composed by this great man, in such circumstances, is here excluded by the facts. Raleigh perished in 1618, and Mr Ellis observed that the poem appeared in "Davison's Poetical Rhapsody" ten years before. Recent critics, however, have somewhat pertinaciously clung to a similar idea, with the modified suggestion, that the poem might possibly have been written by Raleigh "the night before he expected to have been executed" in 1603. But it appears that the poem can be traced, if not to print, at least to paper, ten years even before that date, so that this new possibility becomes again impossible. We must, therefore, be content to abandon entirely this romantic account of its origin, and either betake ourselves to some other theory, or submit to leave the matter in obscurity. Mr Ellis has rather rashly assigned the composition to the silver-tongued Sylvester, on no better ground than that his editor has kidnapped and disfigured it by incluIding it with some wretched additional stanzas in the collection of his poems in 1641. Ritson attributes it to Francis Davison, in whose "Rhapsody" the earliest printed copy of it is found. But in the Rhapsody" are collected the compositions of various authors, some by name and some anonymously, and there is no special reason for ascribing this poem to Davison, whose signature is not affixed to it as it is to other pieces of his acknowledged composition. Mr Campbell enquires whether the "Soul's Errand" is not the same |