than in his early religious verses, especially in his collection entitled Songs and Hymns of the Church, first published in 1624. There is nothing of the kind in the language more perfectly beautiful than some of these. We subjoin two of

them :

Thanksgiving for Seasonable Weather. Song 85.

Lord, should the sun, the clouds, the wind,

The air, and seasons be

To us so froward and unkind

As we are false to thee;

All fruits would quite away be burned,

Or lie in water drowned,

Or blasted be or overturned,
Or chilled on the ground.

But from our duty though we swerve,
Thou still dost mercy show,
And deign thy creatures to preserve,
That men might thankful grow:
Yea, though from day to day we sin,
And thy displeasure gain,

No sooner we to cry begin

But pity we obtain.

The weather now thou changed hast

That put us late to fear,

And when our hopes were almost past

Then comfort did appear.

The heaven the earth's complaints hath heard;

Thoy reconciled be;

And thou such weather hast prepared

As we desired of thee.

For which, with lifted hands and eyes,

To thee we do repay

The due and willing sacrifice

Of giving thanks to-day;

Because such offerings we should not

To render thee be slow,

Nor let that mercy be forgot

Which thou art pleased to show.

Thanksgiving for Victory. Song 88.
We love thee, Lord, we praise thy name,
Who, by thy great almighty arm,
Hast kept us from the spoil and shame

Of those that sought our causeless harm:

Thou art our life, our triumph-song,
The joy and comfort of our heart;
To thee all praises do belong,

And thou the God of Armies art.

We must confess it is thy power

That made us masters of the field;
Thou art our bulwark and our tower,
Our rock of refuge and our shield:
Thou taught'st our hands and arms to fight;
With vigour thou didst gird us round;
Thou mad'st our foes to take their flight,
And thou didst beat them to the ground.

With fury came our armed foes,

To blood and slaughter fiercely bent;
And perils round did us inclose,

By whatsoever way we went;
That, hadst not thou our Captain been,
To lead us on, and off again,

We on the place had dead been seen,

Or masked in blood and wounds had lain.

This song we therefore sing to thee,
And pray that thou for evermore
Would'st our Protector deign to be,
As at this time and heretofore;
That thy continual favour shown
May cause us more to thee incline,
And make it through the world be known
That such as are our foes are thine.

BROWNE.

Along with Wither ought to be mentioned a contemporary poet of a genius, or at least of a manner, in some respects kindred to his, and whose fate it has been to experience the same long neglect, William Browne, the author of Britannia's Pastorals, of which the first part was published in 1613, the second in 1616, and of The Shepherd's Pipe in Seven Eclogues, which appeared in 1614. Browne was a native of Tavistock in Devonshire, where he was born in 1590, and he is supposed to have died in 1645. It is remarkable that, if he lived to so late a date, he should not have written more than he appears to have

done the two parts of his Britannia's Pastorals were reprinted together in 1625; and a piece called The Inner Temple Masque, and a few short poems, were published for the first time in an edition of his works brought out, under the care of Dr. Farmer, in 1772; but the last thirty years of his life would seem, in so far as regards original production, to have been a blank. Yet a remarkable characteristic of his style, as well as of Wither's, is its ease and fluency; and it would appear, from what he says in one of the songs of his Pastorals, that he had written part of that work before he was twenty. His poetry certainly does not read as if its fountain would be apt soon to run dry. His facility of rhyming and command of harmonious expression are very great; and, within their proper sphere, his invention and fancy are also extremely active and fertile. His strength, however, lies chiefly in description, not the thing for which poetry or language is best fitted, and a species of writing which cannot be carried on long without becoming tiresome; he is also an elegant didactic declaimer; but of passion, or indeed of any breath of actual living humanity, his poetry has almost none. This, not doubt, was the cause of the neglect into which after a short time it was allowed to drop; and this limited quality of his genius may also very probably have been the reason why he so soon ceased to write and publish. From the time when religious and political contention began to wax high, in the latter years of King James, such poetry as Browne's had little chance of acceptance; from about that date Wither, as we have seen, who also had previously written his Shepherd's Hunting, and other similar pieces, took up a new strain; and Browne, if he was to continue to be listened to, must have done the same, which he either would not or could not. Yet, although without the versatility of Wither, and also with less vitality than Wither even in the kind of poetry which is common to the two, Browne rivals that writer both in the abundance of his poetic vein and the sweetness of his verse; and the English of the one has nearly all the purity, perspicuity, and unfading freshness of style which is so remarkable in the other. Here is a specimen from the reply of Remond to the love-tale of his brother shepherd, in the first Song of the first Book of Britannia's Pastorals:

Have thy stars malign been such,
That their predominations sway so much

Over the rest, that with a mild aspect
The lives and loves of shepherds do affect?

Then do I think there is some greater hand
Which thy endeavours still doth countermand.
Wherefore I wish thee quench the flame thus moved,
And never love except thou be beloved;

For such an humour every woman seizeth,

She loves not him that plaineth, but that pleaseth.

When much thou lovest, most disdain comes on thee;

And, when thou think'st to hold her, she flies from thee.
She, followed, flies; she, fled from, follows post,
And loveth best where she is hated most.
"Tis ever noted, both in maids and wives,
Their hearts and tongues are never relatives ;-
Hearts full of holes (so elder shepherds sayn),

As apter to receive than to retain.
Whose crafts and wiles did I intend to show,
This day would not permit me time, I know:
The day's swift hours would their course have run,
And dived themselves within the ocean,

Ere I should have performed half my task,
Striving their crafty subtleties to unmask.

And, gentle swain, some counsel take of me:

Love not still where thou may'st; love who loves thee;

Draw to the courteous; fly thy love's abhorrer;

And, if she be not for thee, be not for her.

If that she still be wavering, will away,

Why should'st thou strive to hold what will not stay? This maxim reason never can confute :

Better to live by loss than die by suit.

Favour and pity wait on patience;

And hatred oft attendeth violence.

If thou wilt get desire whence love hath pawned it,
Believe me, take thy time, but ne'er demand it.
Women, as well as men, retain desire,

But can dissemble more than men their fire.

Be never caught with looks, nor self-wrought rumour,

Nor by a quaint disguise, nor singing humour.

Those outside shows are toys which outwards snare;
But virtue, lodged within, is only fair.

If thou hast seen the beauty of our nation,

And find'st her have no love, have thou no passion;

But seek thou further: other places, sure,

May yield a face as fair, a love more pure.
Leave, oh then leave, fond swain, this idle course;

For love's a good no mortal wight can force.

And here is another short extract from the second Song, exemplifying Browne's more habitual manner, on ground where all the descriptive poets have been competitors :

Not all the ointments brought from Delos isle,
Nor from the confines of seven-headed Nile;
Nor that brought whence Phenicians have abodes;
Nor Cyprus' wild vine flower; nor that of Rhodes;
Nor rose's oil from Naples, Capua;

Saffron confected in Cilicia;

Nor that of quinces, nor of marjoram,

That ever from the isle of Coos came:

Nor these, nor any else, though ne'er so rare,
Could with this place for sweetest smells compare.
There stood the elm, whose shade, so mildly dim,
Doth nourish all that groweth under him:
Cypresses, that like pyramids run topping,
And hurt the least of any by their dropping:
The alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth ;-
Each plant set near to him long flourisheth :
The heavy-headed plane-tree, by whose shade
The grass grows thickest, men are fresher made:
The oak that best endures the thunder-strokes :
The everlasting ebony, cedar, box:

The olive, that in wainscot never cleaves:

The amorous vine, which in the elm still weaves:

The lotus, juniper, where worms ne'er enter:

The pine, with whom men through the occan venture:
The warlike yew, by which, more than the lance,
The strong-armed English spirits conquered France.
Amongst the rest the tamarisk there stood,

For housewives' besoms only known most good:

The cold-place-loving birch and service tree;

The walnut loving vales, and mulberry;

The maple, ash, that do delight in fountains

Which have their currents by the sides of mountains;
The laurel, myrtle, ivy, date, which hold

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

The fir, that often-times 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 arbour, that might keep within it
The best of beauties that the world hath in it.