GEORGE WITHER.

You shall find it quit the while,
And excuse the homely style.
Well I wot, the man that first

Sung this lay, did quench his thirst,
Deeply as did ever one,

In the muse's Helicon.

Many times he hath been seen
With the fairies on the green,
And to them his pipe did sound,
Whilst they danced in a round.
Mickle* solace would they make him,
And at midnight often wake him,
And convey him from his room,
To a field of yellow broom;
Or into the meadows where
Mints perfume the gentle air,

And where Flora spends her treasure,
There they would begin their measure.

The Shepherd's Pipe is dedicated by Browne to Lord Zouch, the friend of Sir Henry Wotton, and the poet dwells with evident pleasure upon the shades of the "delightful Bramshill." Lord Zouch is supposed to have been the occasional patron of Ben Jonson, who called him "good Lord Zouch." It was in the park of this magnificent seat that Archbishop Parker, while hunting, in the summer of 1621, accidentally struck with an arrow Peter Hawkins, one of the keepers.

After his liberation, with a view of recreating his mind during severer studies, Wither wrote his Motto.

months.

Of this book he tells us, in the Fragmenta Prophetica, thirty thousand copies were circulated within a few He numbers it among the books composed during his maturer years. His object was to draw the true picture" of his own heart, that his friends who “knew him outwardly, might have some representation of

* Mickle, great. In this sense it is used by Shakspeare. O mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities.

Rom. and Jul. ii. 3.-Nares's Glossary.

his inside also." But he was at the same time impelled by the higher and better hope of confirming himself in his own good resolutions, and of preventing "such alterations as time and infirmities" might tend to produce. The poem is, therefore, rather moral and didactic than satiric-the poet's "furies were tied in chains." At this period he was in comfortable circumstances. In the Inventory of his wealth, he enumerates a friend, books, and papers, which he calls his jewels, a servant, and a horse. The merits of the Motto will be sufficiently exemplified by one or two specimens. The following passage contains all the materials of poetry; it only requires the taste and finish of a patient architect*.

Yet I confess, in this my pilgrimage,

I, like some infant, am of tender age.
For as the child who from his father hath
Strayed in some grove thro' many a crooked path;
Is sometimes hopeful that he finds the way,
And sometimes doubtful he runs more astray.
Sometime with fair and easy paths doth meet,
Sometime with rougher tracts that stay his feet;
Here goes, there runs, and yon amazed stays;
Then cries, and straight forgets his care, and plays.
Then hearing where his loving father calls,
Makes haste, but through a zeal ill-guided falls;
Or runs some other way, until that he
(Whose love is more than his endeavours be)
To seek the wanderer, forth himself doth come,
And take him in his arms, and bear him home.
So in this life, this grove of ignorance,
As to my homeward, I myself advance,
Sometimes aright, and sometimes wrong I go,
Sometimes my pace is speedy, sometimes slow:

*Not the least singular part of the Motto is the frontispiece. The author is represented sitting on a rock, with gardens, houses, woods, and meadows, spread beneath him, to which he points with his finger, holding a riband, on which is written nec habeo, nor have I. At his feet is a globe of the earth, with the words nec curo, nor care I. The poet himself sits with eyes uplifted towards heaven, from which a ray of light descends, and from his lips proceed nec careo, nor want I.

One while my ways are pleasant unto me,
Another while as full of cares they be.
I doubt and hope, and doubt and hope again,
And many a change of passion I sustain
In this my journey, so that now and then
I lost, perhaps, may seem to other men.
Yea, to myself awhile, when sins impure
Do my Redeemer's love from me obscure.
But whatsoe'er betide, I know full well,
My Father, who above the clouds doth dwell.
An eye upon his wandering child doth cast,
And he will fetch me to my home at last.

Passages like this, full of humble reliance upon the mercy and long suffering of our heavenly Father, abound in almost every page of the poet's compositions, casting a hallowing light over much that is unworthy both of the writer and the Christian. The indignant attack upon the hired flatterers and elegists of the day deserves to be extracted. Wither preserved himself, in a great measure, unspotted from this "burning sin" of the age he lived in.

I have no Muses that will serve the turn,
At every triumph, and rejoice or mourn,
After a minute's warning, for their hire,
If with old sherry they themselves inspire,
I am not of a temper like to those

That can provide an hour's sad talk in prose
For any funeral, and then go dine,

And choke my grief with sugar-plums and wine.
I cannot at the claret sit and laugh,
And then, half tipsy, write an epitaph.
I cannot for reward adorn the hearse
Of some old rotten miser with my verse;
Nor like the poetasters of the time,
Go howl a doleful elegy in rhyme,
For every lord or ladyship that dies,
And then perplex their heirs to patronize,
That muddy poesy. Oh, how I scorn,

That raptures which are free and nobly born,
Should, fidler-like, for entertainment scrape
At strangers' windows, and go play the ape
In counterfeiting passion.

An occasional resemblance has been pointed out between the style of Wither and Churchill; but Wither was as inferior to that ill-judging writer in the general fertility and poignancy of his invective as he was superior in what alone can render satire effective, or even justifiable, the wish to benefit our fellow-men. Churchill's genius was only surpassed by his profligacy; and while we acknowledge the justice of Cowper's eulogy upon his talents, we almost regret that it was ever bestowed.

Wood said of the notorious John Lilburne, that if he had been left alone in the world, "John would be against Lilburne, and Lilburne against John." Wither partook of this quarrelsome disposition. In a postscript to the Motto, he exclaims,—

Quite thro' this Island hath my Motto rung,
And twenty days are past since I uphung
My hold Impreza, which defiance throws
At all the malice of Fair Virtue's foes.

66

But, although no person had answered his challenge, his enemies, hoping to move his choler and his patience shake," had hired some rhymers

To chew

Their rancour into balladry.

The only known work to which his allusion can apply was Taylor's Motto, published in 1621, and playfully dedicated to Every Body, as Wither's had been to Any Body*.

* In 1625 was printed at Oxford, an "Answer to Wither's Motto, without a frontispiece; wherein nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo, are neither approved nor confuted, but modestly controuled or qualified by F. G., Esq." The object of this tract, according to Park, (Brit. Bib., v. 1. p. 189,) is to point out some contradictory passages in Wither's Motto, which either the timidity or ignorance of the writer prevented him from doing effectually. From the manner in which Wither alludes to the Motto in the Præmonition to Britain's Remembrancer, it seems probable that the Balladry' particularly referred to has been lost. His words are," Against my Motto, though (as I forespake) it redounded to their own shame, so raged my adversaries, that not content with my personal troubles, they sought the disparagement of that book by a libellous

Of Taylor, or to speak of him in more familiar terms, the Water-poet, a most interesting account has been given by Dr. Southey, in his notice of uneducated poets. He was an honest right-hearted man, a sincere and devoted loyalist, and a very good poet for a waterman. He was also no

mean scholar, having read Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Tasso, of course in translations, besides many worthies of his own country. He wrote also with great facility. His Motto, we learn from his own narrative, was written in “three days at most;" but so far was its author from entertaining any feeling of enmity, or even rivalry against Wither, that he distinctly says,

This Motto in my head at first I took

In imitation of a better book.

It is scarcely necessary to say that this "better book was Wither's Motto.

"

The earliest extant copy of Fidelia bears the date of 1619; but we are told by the publisher, George Norton, that it had long since "been imprinted for the use of the author, to bestow it on such as had voluntarily requested it in way of adventure." Mr. Park thinks that it was privately circulated, perhaps with a hope of a pecuniary return, in order to assist the writer during his imprisonment in the Marshalsea. The title may have been suggested by Spenser, who had bestowed the appellation upon Faith in the Fairy Queen. Fidelia is described as the "fragment of some greater poem, and discovers the modest affections of a discreet and constant woman shadowed under the name of Fidelia." The charm of the epistle

answer thereunto. * * * And then, also, it was very gloriously fixed on the gate of my lodging, as if it had been some bill of triumph. But it proved a ridiculous pamphlet, and became more loss and disgrace unto the divulgers thereof than I desired."

It also appeared in 1620, 1622, 1633, and lastly under the editorship of Sir Egerton Brydges, in 1815. George Norton kept a shop at the sign of the Red Bull, near Temple Bar.-Brit. Bibliog., v. 1, p. 184.