complishments and amiable qualities, Sydney was the most admired and popular man of his times. At the early age of thirty-two, he received a mortal wound at a battle near Zutphen, in the Netherlands, when his generous character was manifested by an incident which will never be forgotten in the history of England, and of humanity. Being overcome with thirst from excessive bleeding, he called for drink, which, though not easily procured, was brought to him. At the moment he was lifting it to his mouth, a poor soldier was carried by, desperately wounded, who fixed his eyes eagerly upon the cup-Sydney, observing this, instantly delivered the beverage to him, saying, Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.'

6

Spenser, Sydney, and Shakspeare, may be considered as the chief poetical names which fall more particularly under the reign of Elizabeth. The last, who will be noticed more at large in the department of the Dramatists, published, in early life, two poems of considerable length, one of which referred to the story of Venus and Adonis, and the other to the story of Lucretia; but his best productions in miscellaneous poetry are his sonnets, one hundred and fifty-four in number, in which he embodies much of his own character and daily thought, with a pathos in the highest degree interesting. As specimens, the following may be given :

CONSOLATION FROM FRIENDSHIP.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old thoughts new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long-since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of sore-bemoaned moan,
Which I now pay as if not paid before;
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

SELF-ABANDONMENT.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell

SYDNEY.-SOUTHWELL.

Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with viler things to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O if (I say) you look upon this verse,

When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay:

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

35

Other poets immediately belonging to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, were Sir Walter Raleigh, who will presently be spoken of as a prose-writer; John Lylly, author of several plays, and originator of an affected and conceited style of speech called Euphuism; Sackville, Earl of Dorset; George Gascoigne; Thomas Lodge; and Robert Southwell; in all of whose works are to be found some strikingly beautiful pieces. *Gascoigne who died 1578, though called "one of the smaller poets of Queen Elizabeth's days," possesses, however, no inconsiderable merit. His Steel Glass is one of the earliest specimens of original blank verse in the English tongue, and after some of the pieces of Wyatt, the first regular satire of which it can boast. According to the fashion of the times, he fancifully divided his poems into Weeds, Flowers, and Herbs, &c., under which titles, are several happy specimens of versification.* It may be mentioned that this was the age when collections of fugitive and miscellaneous poetry first became common. Several volumes of this kind were published in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, and contain some lyrical poetry of the greatest merit, without any author's name. As a specimen of one of the forms of composition, and one of the styles of thinking, followed in this age, we may give Southwell's little poem, entitled,—

SCORN NOT THE LEAST.

Where wards are weak, and foes encountering strong,
Where mightier do assault than do defend,

The feebler part puts up enforced wrong,

And silent sees that speech could not amend;

Yet higher powers must think, though they repine,
When sun is set, the little stars will shine.

* AM. ED.

While pike do range, the silly tench doth fly,
And crouch in privy creeks with smaller fish;
Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by,

These fleet afloat, while those do fill the dish;
There is a time even for the worms to creep,
And suck the dew while all their foes do sleep.
The marline cannot ever soar on high,

Nor greedy greyhound still pursue the chase,
The tender lark will find a time to fly,

And fearful hare to run a quiet race.
He that high growth on cedars did bestow,
Gave also lowly mushrooms leave to grow.
In Haman's pomp poor Mordocheus wept;
Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe.
The Lazar pin'd, while Dives' feast was kept,
Yet he to heaven, to hell did Dives go.
We trample grass, and prize the flowers of May;
Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away.

Among the poets more immediately belonging to the seventeenth century, or the reigns of James and Charles, the earliest presented to our notice is SAMUEL DANIEL (1562-1619), who spent the greater part of his life under the protection of noble and royal personages, and was distinguished as a writer of masques—namely, a dramatic kind of entertainment which, at this period, became fashionable at court, consisting chiefly of a few dialogues, supported by allegorical characters. The miscellaneous poems of Daniel were in general so applicable only to the persons and circumstances of his own age, that they have fallen almost entirely out of notice. Yet he wrote in a style rather in advance of his time, and in some of his pieces rises to a high degree of excellence. His address to the Countess of Cumberland is still ranked among the finest effusions of meditative thought in the English language. It opens with the following stanzas, to which we shall give the title of

THE PHILOSOPHICAL OBSERVER.

He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither hope nor fear can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind

Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same:
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wields of man survey?

And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil,

DRAYTON.

Where all the storms of passions mainly beat

On flesh and blood! where honours, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;

Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds who do it so esteem.

He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars,
But only as on stately robberies;

Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best fac'd enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:
Justice he sees, as if reduced, still

Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill.

He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man;
Who puts it in all colours, all attires,

To serve his ends, and makes his courses hold.
He sees that, let deceit work what it can,
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires;
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet
All disappoint and mocks this smoke of wit.
And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompass'd; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceiv'd; whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And th' inheritance of desolation leaves
To great expecting hopes; he looks thereon,
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in impiety.

37

MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631), is a very voluminous author, but, throughout the whole extent of his writings, shows the fancy and feeling of a true poet. His chief work is entitled Polyolbion, a poem in thirty parts, which he calls songs, constructed in an uncommon measure of twelve syllables, and containing a description of the island of Great Britain. The Polyolbion, is a work entirely unlike any other in English poetry, both in its subject, and the manner in which it is written. It is full of topographical and antiquarian details, with innumerable allusions to remarkable events and persons, as connected with various localities; yet such is the poetical genius of the author, so happily does he idealize almost every thing he touches on, and so lively is the flow of his verse, that we do not readily tire in perusing this vast mass of information. He seems to have followed the manner of Spenser in his unceasing

personifications of natural objects, such as hills, rivers, and woods. The prevailing taste of Drayton is a mixture of the historical and the poetical; and besides the Polyolbion, he wrote several poems, in which these two characteristics are very happily blended-such as the Baron's Wars, and England's Heroical Epistles. His miscellaneous writings are chiefly odes and pastorals. As a specimen of his cheerful and vivacious style, we may quote from the Polyolbion a description of the hunting of the hart in the forest of Arden in Warwickshire :

THE HUNTING OF THE HART.

Now, when the hart doth hear,
The often-bellowing hounds to vent his secret lair,
He rousing rusheth out, and through the brakes doth drive,
As though up by the roots the bushes he would rive.
And through the cumbrous thicks, as fearfully he makes,
He with his branched head the tender saplings shakes,
That, sprinkling their moist pearl, do seem for him to weep;
When after goes the cry, with yellings loud and deep,
That all the forest rings and every neighbouring place;
And there is not a hound but falleth to the chace.
Rechating with his horn, which then the hunter cheers,
Whilst still the lusty stag his high-palm'd head upbears,
His body showing state, with unbent knees upright,
Expressing from all beasts, his courage in his flight.
But when th' approaching foes still following he perceives,
That he his speed must trust, his usual walk he leaves;
And o'er the champain flies; which when the assembly find,
Each follows, as his horse were footed with the wind.
But being then imbost, the noble stately deer,
When he hath gotten ground, (the kennel cast arrear,)
Doth beat the brooks and ponds for sweet refreshing soil;
That serving not, then proves if he his scent can foil,
And makes among the herds and flocks of shag-wool'd sheep,
Them frighting from the guard of those who had their keep.
But when as all his shifts his safety still denies,

Put quite out of his walk, the ways and fallows tries.

Whom when the ploughman meets, his teem he letteth stand,
T'assail him with his goad: so with his hook in hand

The shepherd him pursues, and to his dog doth hollow;

When, with tempestuous speed, the hounds and huntsman follow;
Until the noble deer, through toil bereaved of strength,

His long and sinewy legs then failing him at length,
The villages attempts, enraged, not giving way
To any thing he meets now at his sad decay.

The cruel rav'nous hounds and bloody hunters near,

This noblest beast of chase, that vainly doth but fear,

Some bank or quickset finds; to which his haunch opposed,
He turns upon his foes, that soon have him inclosed.

* A peculiar kind of blast upon the hunting horn.