X are descriptive of real passion." I think his poetical was not his strongest talent. In his poetry his genius does not ever appear to me to be paramount to his art. 4. Sir Edward Dyer. The birth of Sir Edward Dyer is placed by Mr. Ellis about 1540. He was educated at Oxford, and afterwards. employed in several embassies, particularly to Denmark in 1589; and on his return from thence made Chancellor of the Garter on the death of Sir John Wolley, and at the same time knighted. Mr. PARK has kindly furnished me with the following curious memoranda from Aubrey's MS. Auctarium Vitarum in the Ashmole Museum at Oxford. "Sir Edward Dyer of Sharpham Park, Somersetshire, "was a great critic, poet, and acquaintance of Mary, "Countess of Pembroke and Sir Philip Sydney. He is "mentioned in the Preface of the Arcadia. He had "4000l. per annum, and was left fourscore thousand "pounds in money.* He wasted it almost all. This "I had from Captain Dyer, his great grandson, or "brother's great grandson. I thought he had been the "son of the Lord Chief Justice: but that was a mis"take. The judge was of the same family, the Captain "tells me." Sir Edward was a great chymist; and a dupe of Dr. Dee, and Edward Kelly. He died some years after King James came to the throne; and was succeeded in his Chancellorship of the Garter by Sir Edward Herbert, Knight, Principal Secretary of State. † Six pieces of Sir Edward are here preserved. The first three stanzas of the first have been selected by Mr. Ellis. • Sums so large for those days, (when the rental of a great feudal Earl did not amount to 2000l. a year,) that they cannot easily be credited! Theatr. Poet. Angl. 144, 147. 5. Edmund xi 5. Edmund Spenser, Born about 1553, died 1599. Little can be said for the three pieces in this volume subscribed with the name of Spenser. 6. Robert Green, Born about 1550, died 1592. The best account of this memorable man was compiled by Mr. HASLEWOOD, and is to be found in Cens. Lit. VIII. 380. The biographer observes, that "those of his pieces which he has "perused display a rich and glowing fancy, much origi ❝nality and universal command of language, combined "with an extensive knowledge of the world." Mr. HASLEWOOD has defended Green's moral character with great feeling and great appearance of justice. He has also given the best extant catalogue of his numerous writings. Green has seven pieces in the present Collection. Doron's Description of Samela is reprinted by Ellis. Most of Green's publications are interspersed with poetry. Besides those selected by Ellis, &c. there are some very pretty descriptive lines, called "The Shepherd's Ode," extracted in Cens. Lit. VII. 127, from the Ciceronis Amor, 1611. And in the same volume, p. 269, is Sephestia's song to her child, which is inimitably beautiful and unaffected. The pieces in the Helicon are not among the author's best; still they possess merit. 7. Dr. Thomas Lodge Was of a Lincolnshire family, born about 1556, educated at Trinity College, Oxford, 1574. He practised as a physician in England, and was much patronized by the Catholics. He died (of the plague, it is supposed) in 1625. Of his poetical talents all that is necessary has been said already. Ellis has given a most beautiful extract from a poem of his in "Commendation of a Solitary Life." It has all the smoothness, even flow, selection and finished construction of language, of an elegant modern composition. c ij 8. Nicholas xii 8. Nicholas Breton. This poet is supposed to be the same Capt. Nicholas Breton, who was of Norton in Northamptonshire, and dying there June 22, 1624, has a monument in that church; of the manor of which parish the family continued lords till within these ten or twelve years, when the sons of the late Eliab Hervey Breton, Esq. sold it. In Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica is the best catalogue that has yet been compiled of Breton's numerous and scarce writings, which abound, like those of Robert Green, with an intermixture of prose and poetry. Three of his beautiful little poems are selected from the Helicon by Mr. Ellis; these are A Pastoral of Phillis and Coridon -Phillida and Coridon-and A sweet Pastoral. 9. Thomas Watson Was a native of London, and educated at Oxford. He afterwards studied the law, and died about 1592. His "Hecatompathia; or Passionate Century of Love," (licensed in the Stationer's books, 1581,) consists of 100 copies of love-verses. Watson appears to have a great command of language; but more, as has been said, of the artificial fire of the scholar, than the spirit of the real poet. 10. Christopher Marlow. The fame of this author, who is supposed to have been born about 1562, and was educated at Cambridge; and was afterwards a player, and cotemporary with Shakspeare, and died of a wound suffered from a fray at a brothel, or gaming-table, 1583, has been rendered as immortal as the language in which he wrote, by one short but most exquisite poem, preserved in this Collec tion, entitled The Passionate Shepheard to his Love, p. 214, beginning "Come live with me, and be my love." Phillips, who speaks with the pure taste of his uncle Milton, ealls Marlow's "a pure unsophisticated wit." • See British Bibliographer, Vol. II. p. 268. And xiii And in what refined age could purer poetry, and in purer language, be written, than the following stanza? "And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepheards feed their flocks, 11. Ignoto; [viz. Sir Walter Raleigh.] This signature appears to have been generally though not exclusively, subscribed to the pieces of Sir Walter Raleigh. It is also subscribed to one piece, since appropriated to Shakspeare; and to one, which according to Ellis, belongs to Richard Barnfield. The celebrated Answer to Marlow's "Come live with me," here subscribed IGNOTO, is given expressly to Raleigh by Isaac Walton, in his " Compleat Angler," first published 1653; in which they are called "old fashioned poetry, "but choicely good; I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age." To this poem of Raleigh, the signature of Ignoto has been pasted over the initials W. R. as it has been to one at least, if not to two more pieces. Mr. PARK doubts whether this may not have arisen from the Editor's finding these pieces to have been erroneously appropriated; or from having learned that the authors would be offended at the disclosure of their names. testimony of Walton as to Raleigh seems to me to make the latter most probable. Most of the pieces with the signature of Ignoto I think bear internal marks of Raleigh's composition. There is in the Nimph's Reply to Marlow's Passionate Shepheard, beginning "If all the world and love were young," The Sir J. Hawkins observes "As to the Song itself, though a beautiful one, it is not so purely pastoral, as it is generally thought to be: buckles of gold, coral clasps, and amber studs, silver dishes, and ivory tables, are luxuries, and consist not with the parsimony and simplicity of rural life and manners." Walton's Angler, 69. † P. 65, 66, Hawkins's edition, 1784, 8vo. See postea. xiv so much of Raleigh's sententiousness and acute reflections on the frailty of human pleasures, that it speaks in strong terms the mind from which it issued. The second Answer, which follows the first, beginning Come live with me, and be my dear," is more in the style of the original, with less intermixture of that moral cast, which characterizes Raleigh. Raleigh was born at Hayes Farm, Co. Devon, in 1552, and lost his head in Palace-Yard, Westminster, 1618. 12. William Shakspeare, Born 1564, died 1618, has only one piece with his own signature, in England's Helicon, entitled "The Passionate Shepheard's Song," at p. 57. This Song is also introduced in Love's Labour Lost, Act IV. Sc. 3. (See Malone's Shakspeare, X. 333.) The other with the signature of Ignoto immediately precedes it at p. 58, and is entitled "The Unknown Shepheard's Complaint," and begins, My flocks feede not, my ewes breed not." 12. Richard Barnfield. This poet, of whom little is known, except that he was author of The Affectionate Shepheard," 1594, 12°. and two or three other scarce publications, of which the last was "Poems in divers humors," 1598, 4to. has two pieces in this Collection, one with his name at p. 126, the other subscribed Ignoto, taken from the Poems abovementioned. Meres ranks him among our best for pastoral. The song is to be found at p. 59, and begins, "As it fell upon a day." 13. Michael Drayton Was born at Hersall in Warwickshire, 1563, and died 1631. The four or five pieces of Drayton in this Collection, are not among his best productions. 14. H. C. |