HENRY WILLOBY

Appears to have been a scholar at Oxford, but is only known as author of a collection of love-poems, published during his departure, in her Majesty's service, to see the fashions of other countries, by his "friend and chamber-fellow" Hadrian Dorrell, under the title of "Willobie his Avisa; or the true picture of a modest maid and of a chast and constant wife: in Hexamiter verse," 1594, 4to. printed again in 1596, and a fourth time, corrected and augmented, in 1609, to which is added" the victorie of English chastitie, under the fained name of Avisa,” signed "Thomas Willoby, frater Henrici," &c. "the resolution of a chast and constant wife," and "the praise of a contented mind." The metre of these poems is harmonious and pleasing, but it would seem that the term hexameter was applied to stanzas containing six lines, and not to lines containing six feet.

Willoby died not long before the republication of his work in 1596, as appears from Dorrell's "Apologie." Vide also Ritson's Bibliographia.

The second letter of D. B. to hard-hearted Avisa.

I

[From Canto xxxIII.]

FIND it true, that some have said,
"It's hard to love and to be wise;"

For Wit is oft by Love betray'd,

And brought asleep by fond devise.

Sith faith no favour can procure,
My patience must my pain endure.

As faithful friendship mov'd my tongue
Your secret love and favour crave,
And, as I never did you wrong,

This last request so let me have:
Let no man know what I did move;
Let no man know that I did love!

That will I say, this is the worst ;
When this is said, then all is past:
Thou, proud Avisa, were the first,
Thou, hard Avisa, art the last!
Though thou in sorrow make me dwell,
Yet love will make me wish thee well.

[From Canto XLIIII.]

WHAT sudden chance or change is this
That doth bereave my quiet rest?

What surly cloud eclips'd my bliss ?

What sprite doth rage within my breast?

Such fainty qualms I never found,

Till first I saw this western ground.

Can change of air complexions change, And strike the senses out of frame? Though this be true, yet this is strange, Sith I so lately hither came;

And yet in body cannot find

So great a change as in my mind.

My lustless limbs do pine away,
Because my heart is dead within;
All lively heat I feel decay,

And deadly cold his room doth win:
My humours all are out of frame,
I freeze amidst the burning flame.

I know the time, I know the place,
Both when and where my eye did view
That novel shape, that friendly face,
That so doth make my heart to rue.
O happy time, if she incline!
If not, wo worth these luckless eyne!

I love the seat where she did sit,

I kiss the grass where she did tread; Methinks I see that face as yet,

I

And eye, that all these turmoils bred.

envy that this seat, this ground,

Such friendly grace and favour found.

I dreamt of late (God grant that dream
Portend my good!) that she did meet
Me in this green, by yonder stream,
And, smiling, did me friendly greet.
Whe'er wandering dreams be just or wrong,
I mind to try ere it be long.

But yonder comes my faithful friend
That like assaults hath often tried,

On his advice I will depend,

Whe'er I shall win or be denied: And look, what counsel he shall give, That will I do, whe'er die or live!

WILLIAM FOWLER,

A writer of amatory verses at the court of James VI. has been lately noticed by Mr.Leyden in his curious collection of "Scotish descriptive poems." (Edin.and Lond.1808,12mo.). Scarcely any anecdotes of his life are preserved, and even the time of his birth is doubtful, though it may be placed with some probability about the year 1569. He seems to have possessed the esteem of Drummond of Hawthornden, by whom two MS. volumes of his poems, the one entitled "The Tarantula of Love," and the other a translation of Petrarch's Triumphs, were in 1627 presented to the library of Edinburgh college; and he was a great favourite with king James, whose unkindly genius he had the singular good fortune of inspiring with a very tolerable commendatory sonnet prefixed to the triumphs of Petrarch.

Fowler's style, as his editor justly observes, " is often quaint, "affected, and full of antithesis;" though he " possesses

a facility of versification, and a harmony of numbers, "which the best poets of that period were not always able "to attain."

The following single specimen will be a sufficient comment

on the truth of this character. It is selected from a transcript of part of the Tarantula of Love, politely communicated to the editor by lord Woodhouselee.

SONNET.

PERHAPS you think, with your disdainful words, With rude repulse, with "nays," rehears'd in ire,