applied the name of local, may, probably, be allowed*; but Wither and Brown had already furnished specimens of more beautiful description than anything in Denham. Pope formed a truer estimate of his merits, when he styled him "Majestic Denham," an appellation to which the occasional dignity of his manner, particularly in the lines upon the Earl of Strafford, fully entitle him. In more peaceful times his Muse might have given utterance to a grander strain. The happier efforts of his pen are still remembered with pleasure, and the portrait left of him by his friend Aubrey, places the poet before us in an interesting light. "He was of the tallest, but a little incurveting at his shoulders, not very robust. His hair was but thin and flaxen, with a moist curl.

*

*

*

His

eye a kind of light goose gray, not big, but it had a strange piercingness, not as to shining and glory (but like a Momus) when he conversed with you, he looked into your very thoughts."

On the 25th of July 1643, the House of Commons directed the knights and burgesses of Middlesex and Surrey to summon Wither before them, and inquire what money or goods he had received upon the Orders of the 9th of February, and from whom, and what lands he possessed. The loss of his property, and the interruption of his agricultural occupations involved him in great distress; he was fined and imprisoned, and on him was laid the censure" merited by others. Nothing remained for his support but "the poor household furniture within his door." friends forsook him as a faulty man," and his enemies

66

His

*The four lines, which since their commendation by Dryden, bave been so often celebrated, are not found in the first London edition of Cooper's Hill. They stand thus:

O could my verse freely and smoothly run

As thy pure flood, heaven should no longer know
Her old Eridanus; thy purer stream

Should bathe the gods, and be the poet's theme.

grew bold and insolent in proportion. His afflictions cannot be told more touchingly than in his own narrative:—

To add yet further to my great afflictions,

God with a sickness (spreading forth infections)
Visits my house, and drove all those from thence
Who were some comfort to my indigence.
My children were all sick of that disease,
Their single keeper, to her little ease,
Was their poor mother; whilst, as sad as she,
I thought whereby they might supported be,
And we who served were awhile before,
With sixteen household servants, sometimes more,
Had then but one boy, who sick also lay,
And one poor woman hired by the day.

Westrow Revived, 1653.

To support his family, he had already disposed of his plate, and his wife had "ript away" the silver and the "lace of gold” from her garments, and exchanged her ornaments for daily bread. Even the dishes that held their meat were also sold; and last of all they parted with the " precious stones, the jewels, and the rings," which had been given to them as "tokens of respect" from various distinguished persons. In this melancholy condition, yet still relying upon the Divine Providence, Wither says that he walked out and met his friend Mr. Westrow, who, touched by his calamities, presented him with twenty pounds. Westrow's charity did not relax; the twenty pounds gradually grew to "twenty hundred crowns and more,” which he advanced without desiring a bond, or bill, or note

To testify the lending of one groat:

And when Wither sent a full acknowledgment of all he had received, Westrow returned it to him, with an injunction that he should tell no man of the transactions between them. By this seasonable help he was enabled to recover some money detained from him "in a private hand,” and

he carried something to his friend every year in liquidation of the debt*.

Westrow died in 1653, and Wither honoured his memory with a poem, apparently inspired by unfeigned gratitude and esteem. Walker, in his History of Independency, has not left so favourable a picture of this individual; he numbers him with those persons who had enriched themselves, from poverty and a low degree, and says he was worth nothing until he became " a captain and a parliament man, when he got the Bishop of Worcester's manor of Hartlerow, which proved he had two good and beneficial offices+." Wither indignantly repelled this accusation against his friend, and represents him as one who,

Living, walk'd upright in crooked ways,

And chose the best part in the worst of days.

Lord Essex also endeavoured to alleviate the poet's distresses. On the 12th of September, 1643, he issued a a warrant for immediate payment of 2871. 12s., and on the 13th of the same month another warrant for the further sum of 2947.; and on the 3rd of March in the following year, for the like payment of 1907.

Wither lent the cause he had adopted the aid of his pen as well as his sword. About the first year after the commencement of the war, he wrote the Mercurius Rusticus, a country messenger, in imitation of the Weekly Intelligencers. The newspapers published during the civil

*In 1659 Wither had not forgotten his friend. "When I was much poorer than at present I am, God raised me up a friend, who, knowing by what means I was necessitated, (and how unlikely I was to repay him,) brought nevertheless unto me without my asking ought (without obliging by a note under my hand, and without so much as requiring a promise of repayment), 500l., by parcels at several times during the continuance of my wants."-Epistolium-Vagum Prosa Metricum, p. 5.

+ Walker's History of Independency, p. 171, ed. 1660.

Recited in the report of Colonel Dove's Committee, to which Wither's claims were referred.-Journal of the House of Commons, January 2nd, 1650.

war have long since passed into the collections of antiquarians, and are become almost inaccessible even to the scholar. The witty Cleveland called the diurnals of that day, a history in sippets. So much brutality of insolence and cruelty of invective could only have been endured in a season of universal anarchy and confusion. The severity of the Royalists was, however, in some measure, redeemed by a vein of learning and wit. Wither touches pleasantly upon some of the most popular papers of the time. “Though I am not so witty as my friend Britannicus, nor bring you narratives that so well deserve the whetstone as Monsieur Aulicus*, nor come so furnished with novelties as Master Civicus, nor so supplied with passages as the Weekly Intelligencer, nor am at leisure to sum up occur rences as the Accomptant, &c. &c.;" he was afterwards ashamed of his periodical scribbling, and never renewed his visit, although he at first intimated his intention of doing so.

The next production of his soldier-pen was the Campo

*Monsieur Aulicus was Sir John Birkenhead, the prose Butler of the day. He was first brought into notice by Archbishop Laud, whose favour he obtained by some beautiful transcriptions. Birkenhead was at this time a Servitor of Oriel College, but Laud recommended him to a Fellowship at All Souls. When Charles the First held his Court at Oxford, Birkenhead was selected to write the Mercurius Aulicus, which he writ wittily enough, says Aubrey, until the surrender of the town in 1646. But this is not strictly true. During a considerable period the paper was written by Dr. Peter Heylin, though not with equal humour or spirit. Wither was the frequent object of Birkenhead's ridicule. In a highlyamusing pamphlet, entitled Two Centuries of Paul's Churchyard, in which the Libri Theologici, Politici, Historici, &c. are divided into classes, we find in the third class, among other interesting announcements, the following: Aristotle's Works in English Metre, by George Wither. Wither was never attacked with impunity; and in the Great Assizes holden in Parnassus, published in 1643, and abscribed to his pen, Sir John Birkenhead is severely handled.

The reader will find a full and interesting notice of the newspapers printed during the civil war, in the British Bibliographer, vol. 1., p. 513; Appendix to Chalmers's Life of Ruddiman, and the Introduction to Cromwelliana.

Aubrey, after describing Birkenhead "of middling stature and great goggle eyes," adds, rather needlessly, that he was not of a "sweet aspect."

Musæ, or Field Musings, written while he was "in arms for the King and Parliament." The king and the parliament was a phrase constantly in the mouth of the republicans, even while they were using every means to overthrow the monarchy. Through the Field Musings are scattered several interesting anecdotes of the writer's military life. His colonel, he tells us, was Middleton, a valiant Scot, on whose left flank he led his own troop to the charge*. His fare and lodging were of the true martial kind; he had the open fields for his quarters, and "wellwas very happy to find a comfortable bed in a made barley-cock," with the starry sky for his canopy and curtains. Yet even here, amid the din and tumult of arms, he prophesied the fall of nations, and prepared for publication his own views of the Bible, and the mysteries of the Apocalypse.

But Wither's tergiversation did not pass unnoticed: an opponent rose up in the person of the Water-poet. Honest John Taylor was now at Oxford, whither he had fled from the persecutions of his enemies in London; and he tells us, in that strange but amusing medley, Mad verse, Sad verse, Glad verse, and Bad verse, that upon his arrival at Oxford, he found the king and a large party of nobility in "Christ Church garden," and that the monarch, on perceiving him, immediately came towards him, and “put forth his royal hand strait," which, says Taylor, with no small exultation,

On my knees I humbly kneel'd and kist.

This mark of the king's favour lent a fresh vigour to his feelings, and he applied the lash with an unsparing

* A description of the poet's flag is given by Prestwich in his ResPublica, p. 35. Captain George Withers, the poet-gules; in saltier a sword bladed proper, hilted or; over which a golden pen; over both in fess, a scroll, and thereon Pro Rege, Lege, Grege,-fringed argent and gules. See also P. 94.