Snatch at the worme, and hasting fast away
He, knowing it a fish of stubborne sway,
Puls up his rod, but soft; (as having skill)
Wherewith the hooke fast holds the fishe's gill.
Then all his line he freely yeeldeth him,
Whilst furiously all up and downe doth swimme
Th' insnared fish, here on the toppe doth scud,
There underneath the banckes, then in the mud;
And with his franticke fits so scares the shole,
That each one takes his hyde or starting hole :
By this the pike, cleane wearied, underneath
A willow lyes, and pants (if fishes breathe);
Wherewith the angler gently puls him to him.
And leaste his haste might happen to undoe him,
Layes downe his rod, then takes his line in hand,
And by degrees getting the fish to land,
Walkes to another poole: at length is winner
Of such a dish as serves him for his dinner :
So when the climber halfe the way had got,
Musing he stood, and busily gan plot.
How (since the mount did always steeper tend)
He might with steps secure his journey's end.
At last (as wand'ring boyes to gather nuts)
A hooked pole he from a hasell cuts;
Now throws it here, then there, to take some hold,
But bootlesse and in vaine, the rocky molde
Admits no cranny, where his hasell hooke
Might promise him a step, till in a nooke
Somewhat above his reach he hath espide
A little oake, and having often tride
To catch a bough with standing on his toe,
Or leaping up, yet not prevailing so;
He rolls a stone towards the little tree,
Then gets upon it, fastens warily
His pole unto a bough, and at his drawing
The early rising crow with clam'rous kawing,
Leaving the greene bough flyes about the rocke,
Whilst twentie twentie couples to him flocke:
And now within his reach the thinne leaves wave,
With one hand onely then he holds his stave,
And with the other grasping first the leaves,
A pretty bough he in his fist receives;
Then to his girdle making fast the hooke,
His other hand another bough hath tooke;
His first, a third, and that, another gives,
To bring him to the place where his roote lives.
Then, as a nimble squirrill from the wood,
Ranging the hedges for his filberd-food,
Sits partly on a bough his browne nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernell taking,
Till (with their crookes and bags) a sort of boyes
(To share with him) come with so great a noyse,
That he is forc'd to leave a nut nigh broke,
And for his life leape to a neighbour oake ;
Thence to a beech, thence to a row of ashes;
Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes,
The boyes runne dabling thro' thicke and thin,
One tears his hose, another breakes his shin;
This, torne and tatter'd hath with much adoe
Got by the bryers; and that hath lost his shooe:
This drops his band; that headlong fals for haste;
Another cryes behinde for being last:
With stickes and stones, and many a sounding hollow,
The little foole, with no small sport, they follow,
Whilst he, from tree to tree, from spray to spray,
Gets to the wood, and hides him in his dray:
Such shift made RIOT, ere he could get up,
And so from bough to bough he wonne the toppe,
Though hind'rances from ever comming there
Were often thrust upon him by Despaire.
I have seen the line marked in italics noticed with high praise and very justly, but forget by whom. It is a particularly characteristic little touch. The following passage opens with a fresh and vivid description of a morning in the country.
THE Muse's friend (gray-eyde Aurora) yet
Held all the meadows in a cooling sweat,
The milk-white gossamores not upwards snow'd,
Nor was the sharp and useful steering goad
Laid on the strong-neckt oxe; no gentle bud
The sun had dryde; the cattle chew'd the cud
Low leveld on the grasse; no flye's quicke sting
Inforc'd the stonehorse in a furious ring
To teare the passive earth, nor lash his taile
About his buttockes broad; the slimy snayle
Might on the wainscot (by his many mazes
Winding meanders and self-knitting traces)
Be follow'd, where he stucke, his glittering slime
Not yet wiped off. It was so earely time
The careful smith had in his sooty forge
Kindled no coale: nor did his hammers urge
His neighbour's patience: owles abroad did flye,
And day as then might plead his infancy.
Yet faire Albion all the westerne swaines
Were long since up, attending on the plaines
When Nereus' daughter with her mirthfull boast
Should summon them, on their declining coast.
But since her stay was long for feare the Sunne
Should find them idle, some of them begunne
To leape and wrestle, others threw the barre,
Some from the company removed are
To meditate the songs they meant to play,
Or make a new round for next holiday;
Some tales of love their love-sicke fellowes told:
Others were seeking stakes to pitch their fold.
This, all alone was mending of his pipe;
That, for his lasse sought fruits most sweet, most ripe.
Here, (from the rest) a lovely shepheard's boy
Sits piping on a hill, as if his joy
Would still endure, or else that age's frost
Should never make him thinke what he had lost.
Yonder a shepheardesse knits by the springs,
Her hands still keeping time to what she sings;
Or seeming, by her song, those fairest hands
Were comforted working. Neere the sands
Of some sweet river sits a musing lad,
That moanes the losse of what he sometime had,
His love by death bereft : when fast by him
An aged swaine takes place, as neere the brim
Of's grave as of the river; showing how
That as those floods, which passe along right now,
Are follow'd still by others from their spring,
And in the sea have all their burying;
Right so our times are knowne, our ages found, (Nothing is permanent within this round :)
One age is now, another that succeedes,
Extirping all things which the former breedes :
Another follows that, doth new times raise,
New yeers, new months, new weeks, new hours, new days, Mankinde thus go like rivers from their spring,
And in the earth have all their burying.
Thus sate the olde man counselling the young ;
Whilst, underneath a tree which over-hung
The silver streame, (as some delight it tooke
To trim his thick boughes in the chrystall brooke)
Were set a jocund crew of youthfull swaines
Wooing their sweetings with dilicious straynes.
The exquisite picture of the Shepherd boy, piping as if he would never be old, is borrowed from the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, a beautiful prose pastoral which Browne must have read with enthusiasm. He is by no means a frequent plagiarist, for he had too much wealth in his own hand to be tempted by the wealth of others; but there are two or three other passages for which he is evidently indebted, perhaps quite unconsciously, to his contemporaries. In the following lines we are reminded of Shakespeare's well-known description (in As You Like It) of the boy creeping like a snail unwillingly to school.
As children on a play-day leave the schooles,
And gladly run unto the swimming pooles
Or in the thickets, all with nettles stung,
Rush to despoil some sweet thrush of her young;
Or with their hats (for fish) lade in a brooke
Withouten paine : but when the morne doth looke
Out of the eastern gates, a snayle would fuster
Glide to the schooles than they unto their master;
So when, &c. &c.
But if Browne has occasionally caught a flash of light from the lamps of other men, he has the honour to be much more sinned against than sinning. I have already alluded to the hints he afforded to the great Milton, and will now lay before the reader a beautiful passage that evidently suggested to Dryden his nobly modulated lines at the commencement of his Theodore and Honoria, which I have cited, on a former occasion and in another place, as a fine specimen of imitative harmony. It may be as well to refresh the reader's memory with Dryden's verses.
While listening to the murmuring leaves he stood
More than a mile immersed within the wood;
At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound
Was dumb; a rising earthquake rocked the ground;
With deeper brown the grove was overspread,
A sudden horror seized his giddy head,
And his ears tingled and his colour fled.— Dryden.
These lines, admirable as they are, were suggested by the following, which exhibit the same fine variety of pause.
sound must have haunted the ear of Dryden.
Each river, every rill
Sent up their vapours to attend her will.
These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt earth and heaven,
And as night's chariot through the ayre was driven,
Clamour grew dumb; unheard was shepherd's song,
And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue
Talked to the echo; satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance.
Only the curled streames soft chidings kept;
And little gales that from the green leafe swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whispering stirred
As loth to waken any singing bird.-Browne.
Mr. Campbell, in his “ Specimens of the British Poets," has given a few passages from Browne. But while Campbell acknowledges that the poetry is not without beauty, he seems to sneer at those who have thought the fourth eclogue of Browne's "Shepherd's Pipe" the precursor of Milton's Lycidas. “A single simile" (he observes) "about a rose constitutes all the resemblance!" This is not the case. The simile of the rose is as follows:
Looke as the sweet rose fairely buddeth forth
Bewrayes her beauties to the enamoured morn,
Until some keene blast from the envious north
Killes the sweet bud that was but newly borne,
Or else her rarest smells delighting
Make her, herself betray,
Some white and curious hand inviting
To plucke her thence away.
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