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himself thereby, as his friends and neighbours, and to compose suits and differences between them;" so early did the love of peace and virtue awake in his bosom. As he grew older, his attachment to the serene pleasures of a quiet life increased. "He was neither so unfit for Court preferment, nor so ill-beloved there," says his widow, "but that he might have raised his fortunes thereby, if he had had any inclination that way: but his mind was chiefly set upon devotion and study, yet not altogether so much but that he faithfully discharged the place of Cup-bearer to the Queen of Bohemia." Of his appointment to this office, I have not met with any contemporary account. Miss Benger, in her amusing Memoirs of Elizabeth, does not even mention his name. Quarles may have been an actor in the splendid pageant prepared by the members of Lincoln's Inn, in honour of the nuptials of the Princess, and which is said by Winwood to have "given great content." The fancy of the youthful poet could hardly fail of being fascinated by one who was beautiful enough to win the heart, and accomplished and amiable enough to retain it. Her name was dear to all the poets of the age. That lovely Canzo of Sir Henry Wotton, beginning, "You meaner beauties of the night," was composed to grace "this most illustrious Princess;" and Donne, when he visited her in Holland, derived "new life" from the contemplation of the happiness of "his most dear Mistress." How long Quarles continued with the Queen is uncertain*. Mr. Chalmers conjectures that he left her service on the ruin of the Elector's affairs, and went over to Ireland. This seems probable, for we find him in Dublin in the spring of 1621, from which place he dates his Argalus and Parthenia, on

* In Ogborne's History of Essex, part i. p. 160, Quarles is said to have remained in the service of the Queen of Bohemia about four years; but the statement is unsupported.

the 4th of March in that year. His connexion with the learned Usher may have commenced at this period, although we possess no information on the subject.

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In his youth, Usher had cultivated the Muse, and we may imagine, from the interesting, though apocryphal, anecdote communicated to Aubrey by Sir John Denham, that he had been acquainted with the author of the Fairy Queen. When Sir William Davenant's Gondibert appeared, Denham asked the Bishop if he had seen it. Out upon him with his vaunting preface," he replied; "he speaks against my old friend, Edmund Spenser." But Quarles had qualities more calculated than a poetical fancy to attract the great Prelate's regard; unaffected piety, unwearied industry, and much rapidity and excellence in prose composition. When he published the History of Argalus and Parthenia, Usher had only recently returned to Ireland, on his elevation to the see of Meath; and in the preface, the poet speaks of the work as the "fruit. of a few broken hours." It is clear, therefore, that he was employed in severer studies. The he tells us, poem, was a scion" lately taken out of Sir Philip Sidney's orchard, and “grafted on a crab-stick of his own." The fruit in Sidney's Arcadia has been oftener praised than tasted, and Quarles's "scion" has shared a similar fate. Yet the Fair Parthenia must have been favourably received, for the poet's son, John, published a continuation of it in 1659*.

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But this was not his first production: he had before written the Feast of Worms, or the History of Jonah, which must have been the earliest effort of his pen, for he calls it his "Morning Muse." In this singular poem, his

*There was also a play of the same name. Pepys says in his Diary, January 31, 1660,-"To the theatre, and there sat in the pit among the company of fine ladies, and the house was exceeding full to see Argalus and Parthenia, the first time that it hath been acted."

merits and defects are curiously mingled; there is the same strength, frequently degenerating into coarseness, and the same freedom of touch, and breadth of colouring. The sleepy man whose arms

Enfolded knit

A drowsy knot upon his careless breast;

and the herd of deer, which startled

at the fowler's piece, or yelp of hound, Stand fearfully at gaze;

are natural and pleasing images.

About the same time he wrote the Quintessence of Meditation, and the History of Queen Esther.

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His next work was a paraphrase upon Job, interspersed with original meditations. Of this composition, Fuller, the church historian, thought very highly. The author in his preface calls it a "work difficult and intricate;" and in the imitative parts, he was less successful than in those more strictly original. Passages in the Meditations read like fragments from an uncorrected copy of Pope's Essay on Man; they have the strength and roughness which we may suppose to have existed in the draught of that poem, before it grew into perfect harmony beneath the lingering hand of the writer :

O strange Divinity! but sung by rote;
Sweet is the tune, but in a wilder note.
The moral says all wisdom that is given

To hoodwink'd mortals first proceeds from heaven:
Truth's error, wisdom but wise insolence,

And light's but darkness, not derived from thence;
Wisdom's a strain transcends morality;

No virtue's absent, wisdom being by.

The master-piece of knowledge is to know

But what is good, from what is good in show;
And there it rests :-Wisdom proceeds and chooses
The seeming ill, the apparent good refuses;
Knowledge designs alone; Wisdom applies;

That makes some fools; this makes none but wise.

The curious hand of knowledge doth but pick
Bare simples; Wisdom pounds them for the sick.
In my afflictions, Wisdom apprehends

Who is the author, what the cause and ends;

It finds that Patience is my sad relief,

And that the hand that caused, can cure my grief.

The fine fable of the Gorgon's head has never been more grandly applied than in these verses.

Advance the shield of Patience to thy head,

And when Grief strikes, 'twill strike the striker dead.

And the comparison, in the third Meditation, of the longsuffering of God to the affectionate care of a nurse, is tenderly worked out :—

Even as a nurse, whose child's imperfect pace

Can hardly lead his foot from place to place,
Leaves her fond kissing, sets him down to go,
Nor does uphold him for a step or two:
But when she finds that he begins to fall,

She holds him up, and kisses him withal

So God from man sometimes withdraws his hand
Awhile, to teach his infant faith to stand,
But when he sees his feeble strength begin

To fail, he gently takes him up again.

7

The plague in 1695, bereaved our poet of one of his best and most esteemed friends, the son of Bishop Aylmer, and he honoured his memory with a collection of Elegies, which must ever be numbered among the most precious tributes of sincere affection, to be found in our language. He gave them the quaint title of "An Alphabet of Elegies upon the much and truly lamented death of that famous for learning, piety, and true friendship, Doctor Ailmer, a great favourer and fast friend to the Muses, and late Archdeacon of London."

memory.

Imprinted in his heart, that ever loves his They are introduced with this short and affecting address:

“Readers,—Give me leave to perform a necessary

duty, which my affection owes to the blessed memory of that reverend Prelate, my much honoured friend, Doctor Ailmer. He was one whose life and death made as full and perfect a story of worth and goodness, as earth would suffer, and whose pregnant virtues deserve as faithful a register as earth can keep. In whose happy remembrance I have here trusted these Elegies to time and your favour. Had he been a lamp to light me alone, my private griefs had been sufficient; but being a sun whose beams reflected on all, all have an interest in his memory."

We know that "true worth and grief were parents" to these tears. Strype has related some interesting anecdotes of Dr. Aylmer, in the Life of Bishop Aylmer*. Quarles might well call him a "great favourer and fast friend to the Muses :" his charity was extended not only to the poor of his own neighbourhood, but to all who needed it; to indigent scholars and strangers, especially, his hand and heart were ever open. Fugitives from Spain, Holland, France, Italy, and Greece, were all received with kindness and hospitality; for he remembered that his father had once been an exile for his religion. Besides his numberless private acts of beneficence, he supported several deserving Students at the University. The last days of this good man were "beautiful exceedingly." When asked how he felt, he answered, "I thank God, heart-whole;" and laying one hand on his breast, and lifting up the other to heaven, he said, "The glory above giveth no room to sickness." And when death was rapidly approaching,-"Let my people know," he said, "that their pastor died undaunted, and not afraid of death. I bless my God I have no fear, no doubt, no reluctation, but an assured confidence in the sin-overcoming merits of Jesus Christ."

Quarles' verses are worthy of so noble a subject; the * Oxford edition, 118-121.

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