But when he was quite past, and they could find Sorrow became more busy with the mind, The grandeur of the last line has been often imitated. All the elegies, however, are not equally excellent. The 34th begins, Black was Whitehall,-a noble specimen of the bathos*. In the following year, his Muse awoke a livelier measure, to celebrate the union of the Princess Elizabeth with the Count Palatine of the Rhine. Mr. Dalrymple says, that no edition of the Epithalamia is mentioned earlier than 1622; but he might have found them in The Works of Master George Wither, published by Thomas Walkley, in 1620. According to Dr. Bliss, they were first printed in 4to., in 1613. At the commencement of the poems, Wither describes himself to have been "lately grieved more than can be expressed," and determining to "shut up his Muse in dark obscurity," he -In content, the better to repose, A lonely grove upon a mountain chose, East from Caer-winn, midway 'twixt Arle and Dis, But before he departed, the winter which, in a marginal note we are informed, was exceedingly tempestuous, had set in. His Muse ingeniously accounts to him for the recent floods, by the gathering together of the tributary streams of the Thames to honour the approaching "match betwixt great Thame and Rhine." For this hyperbole he might have pleaded the example of Bishop Hall, who had traced the unseasonable winter to the death of Prince * When the women in Scotland, says an anonymous writer, quoted in Nichol's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, v. iii., p. 353, do lament the death of their dearest children, to comfort them it is ordinarily said, and is passed into a proverb, Did not good Prince Henry die? Henry*. Our poet returned to London in the beginning of spring: My lonely life I suddenly forsook, And to the Court again my journey took. * The winter 'gan to change in everything, And seemed to borrow mildness of the spring, And, as in April, trimmed both copse and row†. Wither composed the Epithalamia with a twofold object to honour the Princess, and to convince the public that he "had as well an affable look to encourage honesty, as a stern frown to cast on villainy. If the times would suffer me," he adds, "I could be as pleasing as others, and, perhaps, ere long I will make you amends for my former rigour." The song of congratulation was worthy of himself and of the occasion; and the manner in which he recommends his rustic melody, is very graceful and tender: But if amongst Apollo's lays you can Or think your country-shepherd loves as dear As if he were a courtier or a peer; Then I, that else must to my cell of pain, Will joyful turn unto my flock again. The sound of Pan's shepherd-reed was in some danger of being drowned in the general rejoicing and pomp of these sumptuous nuptials; upon the celebration of which, according to Rapin, the enormous sum of 93,2781. was expended. Neither should the Water-poet's song be forgotten. In the description of the "sea-fights" and fireworks upon the Thames, Taylor was quite at home. *The winter weeps and mourns indeed.-Lacrymæ Lacrymarum. + Wither was in no favour at Court: I myself, though meanest stated, And in Court now almost hated, Will knit up my scourge, and venture It has been supposed, upon the authority of a passage in the Warning Piece to London, that the first edition of Abuses Whipt and Stript appeared in 1611; but I am inclined to think that the expression of Wither am one; In sixteen hundred ten and one, refers to an earlier publication, from the evil consequences of which he was extricated by the kind intervention of the young Princess Elizabeth. And this opinion seems to be strengthened by the dedication of his version of the Psalms, in 1632, to that unfortunate lady. "Among those who are in affection of your Majesty's loyal servants I and in my own country great multitudes have took notice of a special obligation which I had, above many others, to honour and serve you. For I do hereby most humbly and thankfully acknowledge, that when my overforward Muse first fluttered out of her nest, she obtained the preservation of her endangered liberty by your gracious favour; and, perhaps, escaped also thereby that 'pinioninge' which would have marred her flying forth for ever after." The Princess had early evinced her poetical skill in a poem addressed to her guardian, Lord Harington, and may, therefore, be supposed to have interested herself with peculiar pleasure in the cause of an endangered poet. When Wither boasted, in the Shepherd's Hunting, that The noblest Nymph of Thame had graced his verse unto his " to the same accomplished lady. greater fame," he alluded Satire, specifically so called, observes Warton in his History of English Poetry, did not commence in England till the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth. Eclogues and Allegories had hitherto been made the vehicles of satire, but the first professed English satirist was Bishop Hall, whose Toothless Satires were printed in 1597. Warton, in this instance, is not implicitly to be followed. Chaucer and Skelton, in particular, had long before furnished specimens of unconcealed and bitter satire; and Gascoigne's Steele Glas, expressly entitled a satire, was published in 1576, twenty years before the first appearance of Hall's poems. The eloquent Bishop, indeed, considered himself the first adventurer in this path of poetry*; but Mr. Beloe, in the Anecdotes of Literature, and Mr. Collier, in the Poetical Decameront, have both ingeniously attempted, and with apparent success, to establish the prior claims of Thomas Lodge and Dr. Donne. But if Hall was second in point of time, he was first in merit. So much elegance of thought, enforced by such vigour of delineation, and felicity of style, had not been often seen in our poetry. 66 Hall was followed, in 1598, by Marston, with his 'rough-hew'd rhymes," his bitter personalities, his lifelike sketches, and the choice pictorial epithets that won the youthful ear of Milton. Both attacked the vices and follies of the times-Hall, with the scholastic severity of one acquainted with vice only by contemplating its effects in others; and Marston, with a vigour and warmth of colouring that betokened a familiarity with the scenes he described. His invectives against crime are frequently only incentives to its commission, unintentionally, we are told, on the author's part, and yet not less dangerous on that account. Warton has excellently remarked, that when Vice is led forth to be sacrificed at the shrine of Virtue, the victim should not be too richly drest. Marston often * I first adventure, follow me who list, And be the second English satyrist.-Prolog. to Sat. Upon every subject connected with the history of our poetry, Mr. Collier is to be listened to with the respect due to his inquiring industry and acuteness of judgment. bound the garland upon her head. Compared with Bishop Hall, his rhythm is more copious and disengaged, and, although not so carefully modulated, flows with a more sustained energy and power. After Marston may be mentioned Samuel Rowlands, whose Letting of Humour's Blood appeared in 1600. Sir Walter Scott, who reprinted the poem in 1814, says that he anatomizes in his rugged numbers the follies of the time in which he lived, with a vigour of ridicule not inferior to that of Hall or Donne. Wither wrote his Satire under the excitement of disappointed expectations. Instead, however, of lamenting his misfortunes, he rejoiced that God by "dashing his hopes," had called him to himself again. Considered as the production of a young man, neither prepared by study nor experience for the task, this Satire merits our approbation*. In the Address to the Reader, we are cautioned not to look "for Spenser's or Daniel's well-composed numbers, or the deep conceits of now flourishing Jonson." He purposely avoided speaking in "dark parables," and rejected as useless, all "poetical additions and feigned allegories." We find little of Warton says that Wither's poem is characterized by a vein of severity unseasoned by wit; but wit, in the common acceptation of the word, has never been thought necessary to the formation of a satirist. it in Juvenal, and still less in Johnson's noble imitation of his manner. The vices and crimes of men are not to be cured or restrained by laughter. The light arrows of mirthful irony and humour make no impression on their coat of steel; it is only by the "mailed and resolved hand'' of virtuous indignation that their coverings can be rent and their natural deformity and loathsomeness away, * When he this book composed, it was more |