Time never can produce men to o'ertake
The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake,
Or worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more

That by their power made the Devonian shore
Mock the proud Tagus.9

Even while the poet gives fancy the rein in imagining the glories of Oberon's fairy palace, the banquet, the music, and the revels, 10 the countryman is still observant of rural proportions.

6

When, quitting the humble styled Pastoral', he ceases to Tread through the valleys, dance about the streams,

he can be the equal, as lover or mourner, of the best inspired frequenters of the Mermaid or Globe. The fourteen sonnets to Caelia, his wife to be, are as full of sweetness as of grace. Take for example, the seventh :

Fairest, when I am gone, as now the glass
Of Time is mark'd how long I have to stay,
Let me entreat you, ere from hence I pass,
Perhaps from you for evermore away,
Think that no common love hath fir'd my breast,
Nor base desire, but virtue truly known,
Which I may love, and wish to have possess'd,
Were you the high'st as fair'st of anyone;

'Tis not your lovely eye enforcing flames,
Nor beauteous red beneath a snowy skin,

That so much binds me yours, or makes you fame's,
As the pure light and beauty shrin'd within;

Yet outward parts I must affect of duty,

As for the smell we like the rose's beauty.11

Herrick's name might have been signed to the so-called

Sonnet :

For her gait, if she be walking,

Be she sitting I desire her

For her state's sake, and admire her

For her wit if she be talking.

Gait and state and wit approve her;
For which all and each I love her.

Be she sullen, I commend her
For a modest. Be she merry,
For a kind one her prefer I.
Briefly everything doth lend her

So much grace, and so approve her,
That for everything I love her.12

The reply to the question whom he loves might almost compete with Crashaw's 'She':

Hearken then awhile to me;
And if such a woman move,
As I now shall versify:
Be assur'd, 'tis she, or none

That I love, and love alone.
Nature did her so much right,

As she scorns the help of Art ;
In as many virtues dight

As e'er yet embraced a heart.
So much good so truly tried,
Some for less were deified.

Wit she hath without desire

To make known how much she hath;

And her anger flames no higher

Than may fitly sweeten wrath.

Full of pity as may be,

Though perhaps not so to me.

Reason masters every sense,

And her virtues grace her birth;

Lovely as all excellence,

Modest in her most of mirth;
Likelihood enough to prove,
Only worth could kindle love.

Such she is; and if you know
Such a one as I have sung;

Be she brown, or fair, or so,

That she be but somewhile young;

Be assur'd, 'tis she, or none

That I love and love alone.13

Delightful as a lover, he had it in him, when he chose, to rise yet higher as a mourner, and, in a memorable case, to be to perfection both in one. The elegy on Lady Pembroke contains fine lines on himself as well as his departed patroness:

I, hapless soul, that never knew a friend

But to bewail his too untimely end;

Whose hopes, cropp'd in the bud, have never come,
But to sit weeping on a senseless tomb,

That hides not dust enough to count the tears,
Which I have fruitless spent, in so few years;
I, that have trusted those that would have given
For our dear Saviour and the Son of Heaven,
Ten times the value Judas had of yore,

Only to sell him for three pieces more,

I that have lov'd and trusted thus in vain,
Yet weep for thee.14

There is equal beauty in the lament for her grandchild,

Lord Herbert :

All that sweetness, all that youth,

All that virtue, all that truth
Can or speak, or wish, or praise,
Was in him in his few days.

His blood of Herbert, Sidney, Vere,
Names great in either hemisphere,
Need not to lend him of their fame,
He had enough to make a name,
And to their glories he had come

Had Heaven but given a later tomb.15

But a couple of epitaphs testify to nobler capabilities still. Very near does that on Mrs. El:Y. approach in grace to Ben Jonson's on Elizabeth :

Underneath this stone there lies

More of beauty than are eyes,

Or to read that she is gone,

Or alive to gaze upon.

She in so much fairness clad,
To each grace a virtue had;
All her goodness cannot be
Cut in marble. Memory

Would be useless, ere we tell

In a stone her worth.-Farewell! 16

Of the four lines on the month of his young wife's death what more can I say than that for tender terseness, agony of pathos, they stand unparalleled !

May! Be thou never graced with birds that sing,

Nor Flora's pride!

In thee all flowers and roses spring,

Mine only died.17

A pool is William Browne's poetry, rather than a stream sparkling in sunshine! We may take our fill of gazing into its still mirror, and see hills reflected there,

groves,

Gallantly crown'd with large sky-kissing trees;

where birds from heat or weather,
Sit sweetly tuning of their notes together;

or Venus ascending to Olympus,

Along the milky way by many a star.20

We can listen while

on the breast of Thames
A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames,
In some calm ev'ning of delightful May,
With music give a farewell to the day;

21

19

18

or imagine ourselves, and be, of the poet's kindly company,

when,

on Isis' banks,

And melancholy Cherwell, near the ranks

Of shading willows, often have we lain
And heard the Muses and Apollo's strain

In heavenly raptures, as the pow'rs on high
Had there been lecturers of

poesy,

And nature's searcher, deep philosophy.22

It is charming; and the charm is the deeper for the

personal accent. Yet at the same time no poetry of the period produces more the impression that it is of the period, its direct effluence. A tide of early seventeenth-, even sixteenth-, century spirit floats the verse along; and not the less, but the rather, that the writer himself floats upon it also. A certain want in the mass, not in the special pieces I have quoted, confirms the feeling. We have not, as in Herrick, as we shall have in Waller, the sense of art, of an artist. The general reader requires in poetry finish, which only the artist can give. Its absence may help to explain the lack of popularity for William Browne of Tavistock. But, in compensation, no poetry of the age has more of the age's essence, and for the student tells more about it.

William Browne of Tavistock, ed. Gordon Goodwin: Introduction by A. H. Bullen. Two vols. Lawrence and Bullen, 1894.

1 Britannia's Pastorals, Book II, Song ii, v. 248.

2 Ibid., Book II, Song i, v. 1001.

3 On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke (Miscell. Poems). 4 Brit. P., Book I, Song iv, vv. 353-4.

5 Ibid., Book I, Song v, vv. 75-6.

• Lydford Journey (Miscell. Poems).
'Brit. P., Book I, Song iii, vv. 197–202.
Brit. P., Book II, Song i, vv. 771-96.

9 Brit. P., Book II, Song iii, vv. 601-13.

10 Brit. P., Book III, Song i, vv. 721-970.

11 Sonnet vii (Miscell. Poems, Odes, Songs, and Sonnets).

12 6

Sonnet' (Miscell. Poems, &c.).

13 Brit. P., Book II, Song ii, vv. 194–222.

14 An Elegy on the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, vv. 101-12 (Miscell. Poems).

15 On Charles, Lord Herbert of Cardiff and Shurland.

16 An Epitaph on Mrs. El:Y. (Miscell. Poems: Epitaphs)

17 In Obitum. M. S. x. Maij, 1614 (Ibid.).

18 Brit. P., Book I, Song iv, v. 580.

19 Brit. P., Book I, Song iv, vv. 351-2.

20 Brit. P., Book III, Song ii, v. 76.

21 Brit. P., Book II, Song ii, vv. 231-4.
22 Brit. P., Book III, Song i, vv. 698–704,