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from actual experience. We are not, indeed, aware of any book, which contains more original and accurate images drawn from rural life and scenery, than are to be found in the Britannia's Pastorals.-An extraordinary circumstance, if we consider the very early age at which they were written, and that the most important part of his life, immediately preceding their composition, had been spent at Oxford and the Inner TempleBut it is one of the properties of genius to confound the calculations of ordinary individuals, and display fruits at a time when the seeds are not imagined to be sown.

"Then walk'd they to a grove but neare at hand,
Where fiery Titan had but small command,
Because the leaves conspiring kept his beames,
For feare of hurting, when he's in extreames,
The under-flowers, which did enrich the ground
With sweeter scents than in Arabia found.

The earth doth yeeld, which they through pores exhale,
Earth's best of odours, th' aromaticall:

Like to that smell, which oft our sense descries
Within a field which long unplowed lyes,
Some-what before the setting of the sunne;
And where the raine-bow in the horizon

Doth pitch her tips or as when in the prime,

The earth being troubled with a drought long time,
The hand of heaven his spungy clouds doth straine,
And throwes into her lap a showre of raine;
She sendeth up, conceived from the sunne,
A sweet perfume and exhalation.

Not all the oyntments brought from Delos isle;
Nor from the confines of seaven-headed Nyle;

Nor that brought whence Phoenicians have abodes;

Nor Cyprus wilde vine-flowers; nor that of Rhodes;
Nor roses-oyle from Naples, Capua,

Saffron confected in Cilicia;

Nor that of quinces, nor of marjoram,

That ever from the isle of Coös, came.

Nor these, nor any else, though ne're so rare,
Could with this place for sweetest smels compare."

The characterization of the forest trees will remind the reader of that in Spenser, from which it is, perhaps, taken-it is, however, by no means inferior. Such enumerations of trees, flowers, birds, or other interesting classes of objects, are invariably, when well executed, favorites with the poetical reader.-In this extract, the different trees of the grove pass in review be

fore the mind, distinguished by their peculiar qualities and affections, until the whole assumes an appearance of life and animation; and acquires somewhat of the interest which we feel for a large body of individuals of various habits, ranks, and charac

ters.

"There stood the elme, whose shade so mildely dym
Doth nourish all that groweth under him.
Cipresse that like piramides runne topping,
And hurt the least of any by their dropping.
The alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth,
Each plant set neere to him long flowrisheth.
The heavie-headed plane-tree, by whose shade
The grasse growes thickest, men are fresher made.
The oake, that best endures the thunder shocks :
The everlasting ebene, cedar, boxe.

The olive that in wainscot never cleaves.

The amorous vine which in the elme still weaves.
The lotus, juniper, where wormes ne'er enter:
The pyne, with whom men through the ocean venter.
The warlike yewgh, by which (more than the lance)
The strong-arm'd English spirits conquer'd France.
Amongst the rest, the tamariske there stood,
For huswive's besomes onely knowne most good.
The cold-place-loving birch, and servis tree:
The walnut loving vales, and mulbury.

The maple, ashe, that doe delight in fountaines,
Which have their currents by the sides of mountaines.
The laurell, mirtle, ivy, date, which hold

Their leaves all winter, be it ne'er so cold.

The firre, that oftentimes doth rosin drop:

The beech that scales the welkin with his top:
All these, and thousand more within this grove,

By all the industry of nature strove

To frame an harbour that might keepe within it
The best of beauties that the world hath in it."

The description of two streams, one in pursuit of the other, is painted with a very lively and fanciful pencil. Indeed, one of the most remarkable peculiarities in the poetry of Browne, is its fancifulness-it is also one of its worst vices.-And, by fancifulness we wish to be understood, a wild and unmeasured play of the imagination which endues, for instance, the properties of one being with the attributes of another-which disposes of pleasing ideas, and beautiful imagery, in the wrong place; and, by the idea of unfitness, gives an air of the ridiculous

to what would otherwise be lovely or delightful.-But, perhaps,
the term fantastic is rather the term which would best express
our notion of Browne's characteristic. His poetry almost always
strikes us, as if written by one who took delight to deck himself in
such gifts, as he feigns the water-nymphs to have loved to bring
him, in these lines. Speaking of himself, " Willy hight," he says,
By Tavy's speedy stream he fed his flock,
Where, when he sat to sport him on a rock,

The water-nymphs would often come unto him,
And for a dance, with many gay gifts woo him:
Now posies of this flow'r, and then of that;
Now with fine shells, then with a rushy hat:
With coral or red stones brought from the deep,
To make him bracelets.-

Of his fantastic vein, we have here an instance;-the language is musical and expressive, the imagery is striking and picturesque, and the delineation is vivid and spirited; yet the passage is both fanciful and fantastic, and so gives but a tame kind of pleasure. Take the parts separately, that is, allow the poet to animate the streams without relation to each other, then the descriptions are only fanciful; but, let the two rivulets not only have life and character given to them, but also feigned to be in pursuit of each other, and the whole becomes fantastic and absurd.

"Here dashes roughly on an aged rocke,
That his intended passage doth up locke:
There intricately 'mongst the woods doth wander,
Losing himselfe in many a wry meander :
Here amorously bent, clips some faire meade;
And then disperst in rils, doth measures treade
Upon her bosom 'mongst her flow'ry rankes:
There in another place beares downe the bankes
Of some day-labouring wretch: heere meets a rill,
And with their forces joynde cut out a mill
Into an iland, then in jocund guise
Survayes his conquest, lauds his enterprise :
Here digs a cave at some high mountaine's foote:
There undermines an oake, teares up his roote:
Thence rushing to some country farme at hand,

Breakes o'er the yeoman's mounds, sweepes from his land
His harvest hope of wheate, of rye, or pease:

And makes that channell which was shepheard's leas:
Here, as our wicked age doth sacriledge,

Helpes downe an abbey, then a naturall bridge

By creeping under ground he frameth out,
As who should say he eyther went about
To right the wrong he did, or hid his face,
For having done a deede so vile and base:
So ranne this river on, and did bestirre
Himselfe, to finde his fellow-traveller.

But th' other fearing least her noyse might show
What path she tooke, which way her streames did flow:
As some way-faring man strayes through a wood,
Where beasts of prey thirsting for humane bloud
Lurke in their dens, he softly list'ning goes,
Not trusting to his heeles, treades on his toes:
Dreads every noyse he heares, thinkes each small bush
To be a beast that would upon him rush:

Feareth to dye, and yet his winde doth smother;
Now leaves this path, takes that, then to another:
Such was her course. This feared to be found,

The other not to finde, swels o'er each mound,
Roares, rages, foames, against a mountaine dashes,
And in recoile, makes meadowes standing plashes:
Yet findes not what he seeks in all his way,
But in despaire runnes headlong to the sea.
This was the cause them by tradition taught,
Why one floud ranne so fast, th' other so soft,
Both from one head."

The contrast between his modest and his less decorous readers is drawn with a nervous pen.

"Then each faire Nymph whom Nature doth endow

With beautie's cheeke, crown'd with a shamefast brow;

Whose well-tun'd eares, chast-object-loving eyne

Ne'er heard nor saw the workes of Aretine;
Who ne'er came on the Citherean shelfe,
But is as true as chastitie itselfe,

Where hated impudence ne'er set her seede;
Where lust lies not'vail'd in a virgin's weede:
Let her withdraw. Let each young shepheardling
Walke by, or stop his eare, the whilst I sing.

But yee, whose bloud, like kids upon a plaine,
Doth skip, and daunce lavoltoes in each veine:
Whose brests are swolne with the Venerean game,
And warme yourselves at lust's alluring flame;
Who dare to act as much as men dare thinke,
And wallowing lie within a sensuall sinke;

Whose fained gestures doe entrap our youth
With an apparancie of simple truth:
Insatiate gulphs, in your defective part
By art helpe nature, and by nature, art:
Lend me your eares, and I will touch a string

Shall lull your sense asleepe the while I sing."

We consider the following enumeration of rural objects as a pleasing specimen of a large portion of the book; and, also, an instance of the fault for which our poet has been blamed, of over-charging his pictures. The separate images, or, as it were, the successive strokes of his pencil, are nearly always beautiful, natural, and correct; but then, through a want of taste, these images are frequently crowded to such an excess, as to deprive the picture of all verisimilitude. In the landscape we are about to quote, the shepherd piping, the hunt, the ploughman that 'careless leaves the plow,' the angler, the milkmaid, 'the auncient town buried in his dust,' and all the other images, are striking, natural, and beautiful, but they are too numerous, too distinct from each other, make the scene too busy, and destroy the entire effect intended to be produced, of a bright and cheerful country.

"And as within a landskip that doth stand
Wrought by the pencill of some curious hand,
We may descry, here meadow, there a wood:
Here standing ponds, and there a running floud:
Here on some mount a house of pleasure vanted,
Where once the roaring cannon had been planted:
There on a hill a swaine pipes out the day,
Out-braving all the quiristers of May.

A huntsman here followes his cry of hounds,
Driving the hare along the fallow grounds:
Whilst one at hand seeming the sport t'allow,
Followes the hounds, and carelesse leaves the plow.
There in another place some high-rais'd land,
In pride beares out her breasts unto the strand.
Here stands a bridge, and there a conduit-head:
Here round a May-pole some the measures tread :
There boyes the truant play and leave their booke:
Here stands an angler with a bayted hooke.
There for a stagge one lurkes within a bough:
Here sits a maiden milking of her cow.

There on a goodly plaine (by time throwne downe)
Lies buried in his dust some auncient towne ;

Who now invillaged, there's onely seene
In his vaste ruines what his state has beene:

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