But if of baser metal be his mind,

In base revenge there is no honor won.
Who would a worthy courage overthrow,
And who would wrestle with a worthless foe?

We say our hearts are great and cannot yield;
Because they cannot yield, it proves them poor;
Great hearts are task'd beyond their power, but seld
The weakest lion will the loudest roar.

Truth's school for certain doth this same allow,
High-heartedness doth sometimes teach to bow.

A noble heart doth teach a virtuous scorn,
To scorn to owe a duty overlong;
To scorn to be for benefits forborne,

To scorn to lie, to scorn to do a wrong.

To scorn to bear an injury in mind,

To scorn a free-born heart slave-like to bind.

But if for wrongs we needs revenge must have,
Then be our vengeance of the noblest kind;
Do we his body from our fury save,

And let our hate prevail against our mind?
What can 'gainst him a greater vengeance be,
Than make his foe more worthy far than he?

Had Mariam scorn'd to leave a due unpaid,

She would to Herod then have paid her love;
And not have been by sullen passion sway'd.
To fix her thoughts all injury above

Is virtuous pride. Had Mariam thus been proud,
Long famous life to her had been allow'd.

We know but little of the personal history of Samuel Daniel. He was the son of a music master, and was born near Taunton, in Somersetshire, in 1562. In 1579 he entered Oxford, and left it at the end of three years without taking his degree. Towards the close of his life he retired to a farm in his native county, and died in 1619.

His most elaborate work is "The History of the Civil Wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster," which is rather an uninteresting work, for the reason that you see in it more of the correctness of the annalist than the fancy of the poet. Sound morality, prudential wisdom, and occasional touches of the pathetic, delivered in a style of great perspicuity, will be recognised throughout his work; but neither warmth, passion, nor sublimity, nor the most distant trace of enthusiasm, can be found to animate the mass. some of his minor poems, especially his moral epistles, have great merit, abounding in original thought, expressed in clear, simple, and vigorous language. A very discriminating and candid critic says, "We find both in lis poetry and prose such a legitimate and rational flow of language, as ap proaches nearer the style of the eighteenth than the sixteenth century. and

But

of which, we may safely assert, that it will never become obsolete. He cer tainly was the Atticus of his day."

EQUANIMITY.

He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And reard the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope 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 wilds of man survey?
And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon those lower regions of turmoil?
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood: where honor, 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 monarchs' 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-faced enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:
Justice, he sees, (as if seduced,) 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 colors, all attires,

To serve his ends, and make 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 mock this smoke of wit.

And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompassed; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceived; 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.

Thus, madam, fares that man, that hath prepared

A rest for his desires; and sees all things

Beneath him; and hath learn'd this book of man,
Full of the notes of frailty; and compared

The best of glory with her sufferings:

By whom, I see, you labor all you can

To plant your heart; and set your thoughts as near
His glorious mansion as your powers can bear.

Epistle to the Countess of Camberians.

1 Read-notices of Daniel in Headley's “Beauties of Ancient English Poetry;" in the Retrospective Review viii. 22: and in Drake s Shakspeare, 1. 611.

RICHARD THE SECOND,

The Morning before his Murder in Pomfret Castle.
Whether the soul receives intelligence,
By her near genius, of the body's end,
And so imparts a sadness to the sense,
Foregoing ruin whereto it doth tend;

Or whether nature else hath conference
With prófound sleep, and so doth warning send,
By prophetising dreams, what hurt is near,
And gives the heavy careful heart to fear:
However, so it is, the now sad king,
Toss'd here and there his quiet to confound,
Feels a strange weight of sorrows gathering
Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground;
Feels sudden terror bring cold shivering;
Lists not to eat, still muses, sleeps unsound;
His senses droop, l.is steady eyes unquick,
And much he ails, and yet he is not sick.

The morning of that day which was his last,
After a weary rest, rising to pain,

Out at a little grate his eyes he cast

Upon those bordering hills and open plain,
Where others' liberty makes him complain

The more his own, and grieves his soul the more,
Conferring captive crowns with freedom poor.

O happy man, saith he, that lo I see,
Grazing his cattle in those pleasant fields,
If he but knew his good. How blessed he
That feels not what affliction greatness yields!
Other than what he is he would not be,

Nor change his state with him that sceptre wields.
Thine, thine is that true life: that is to live
To rest secure, and not rise up to grieve.

Thou sitt'st at home safe by thy quiet fire,
And hear'st of others' harms, but fearest none:
And there thou tell'st of kings, and who aspire,
Who fall, who rise, wno triumph, who do moan.
Perhaps thou talk'st of me, and dost inquire
Of my restraint, why here I live alone,
And pitiest this my miserable fall;

For pity must have part-envy not all.

Thrice happy you that look as from the shore,
And have no venture in the wreck you see;

No interest, no occasion to deplore

Other men's travels, while yourselves sit free.

How much doth your sweet rest make us the more
To see our misery and what we be:

Whose blinded greatness, ever in turmoil,

Still seeking happy life, makes life a toil.

Third Book of the Civil War

GILES FLETCHER. 1588-1623

THIS truly pleasing Christian poet, the brother of Phineas Fletcher, who, m the words of old Antony Wood, "was equally beloved of the Muses and Graces," was born 1588. But very little is known of his life. He has, however. immortalized his name by that beautiful poem entitled, "Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death :" a poem which displays great sweetness, united to harmony of numbers. Headley styles i rich and picturesque," and Campbell says, that "inferior as he is to Spen ser and Milton, he might be figured, in his happiest moments, as a link of connection in our poetry between those congenial spirits, for he reminds us of both, and evidently gave hints to the latter, in a poem on the same subject with Paradise Regained."

REDEMPTION.

When I remember Christ our burden bears,
I look for glory, but find misery;

I look for joy, but find a sea of tears;

I look that we should live, and find Him die;
I look for angels' songs, and hear Him cry:

Thus what I look, I cannot find so well;

Or, rather, what I find I cannot tell;

These banks so narrow are, those streams so highly swell
Christ suffers, and in this his tears begin;
Suffers for us and our joy springs in this;
Suffers to death-here is his manhood seen;
Suffers to rise-and here his Godhead is;
For man, that could not by himself have ris',
Out of the grave doth by the Godhead rise;
And God, that could not die, in manhood dies,
That we in both might live by that sweet sacrifice.

A tree was first the instrument of strife,
Where Eve to sin her soul did prostitute;
A tree is now the instrument of life,

Though ill that trunk and this fair body suit;
Ah! cursed tree, and yet O blessed fruit!

That death to Him, this life to us doth give:
Strange is the cure, when things past cure revive,
And the Physician dies to make his patient live.

Sweet Eden was the arbor of delight,

Yet in his honey-flowers our poison blew;
Sad Gethseman, the bower of baleful night,
Where Christ a health of poison for us drew,
Yet all our honey in that poison grew:
So we from sweetest flowers could suck our bane,
And Christ from bitter venom could again
Extract life out of death, and pleasure out of pain.

A man was first the author of our fall,
A Man is now the author of our rise;

1 Specimens, vol. il. p. 306.

A garden was the place we perish'd all,
A garden is the place He pays our price:
And the old serpent, with a new device,
Hath found a way himself for to beguile:
So he, that all men tangled in his wile,

Is now by one Man caught, beguiled with his own guile.
The dewy night had with her frosty shade
Iminantled all the world, and the stiff ground
Sparkled in ice; only the Lord that made

All for Himself, Himself dissolved found,
Sweat without heat, and bled without a wound;
Of heaven and earth, and God and man forlore,
Thrice begging help of those whose sins he bore,
And thrice denied of those. not to deny had swore.

FRANCIS BACON. 1561-1626.

Him for the studious shade

Kind nature form'd, deep, comprehensive, clear,
Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul,

Plato, the Stagyrite, and Tully join'd,

The great deliverer he! who, from the gloom

Of cloister'd monks and jargon-teaching schools,
Led forth the true philosophy, there long

Held in the magic chain of words and forms,
And definitions void.

THOMSON.

FRANCIS BACON, Viscount of St. Albans, and lord high chancellor of Eng land, was born in London, January 22, 1561. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon lord keeper of the great seal. He entered Cambridge at the early age of thirteen, and after spending four years there, where he was distinguished for his zealous application to study, and for the extraordinary maturity of his understanding, he went abroad and travelled in France. But his father dying suddenly in 1579, and leaving but very little property, he hastily returned to England, and prosecuted the study of the law. He did not, however, neglect philosophy, for not far from this period he planned his great work, The Instauration of the Sciences." In 1590 he obtained the post of counser extraordinary to the queen, and three years after he had a seat in parliament from Middlesex. On the accession of James I. new honors awaited him. He was knighted in 1603. In 1607 he married Alice, daughter of Benedict Barnham, Esq., alderman of London, by whom he had a considerable fortune, but nʊ children. In subsequent years he obtained successively the offices of king's counsel, solicitor general, and attorney general. In 1617 the king presented the great seal to him; in 1618 he obtained the title of lord high chancellor of England, and about six months after the title of Baron of Verulam, which title gave place in the following year to that of Viscount of St. Albans. But a 'killing frost" was soon to nip these buds of honor: his fall and disgrace

1 This is a town in Hertfordshire, famous for the two battles fought in 1455 and 146', between the two rival houses of York and Lancaster. It was anciently called Verulam, whence Bacon's subsequent title of honor, Baron Verulam.