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Night, steale not on too fast: wee have not yet
Shed all our parting teares, nor paid the kisses,
Which foure dayes absence made us run in debt,
(O, who would absent be where growe such blisses?)
The Rose, which but this morning spred her leaves,
Kist not her neighbour flower more chast then wee:
Nor are the timelye Eares bound up in sheaves
More strict then in our Armes we twisted be;
O who would part us then, and disunite
Twoo harmeles soules, so innocent and true,
That were all honest Love forgotten quite,
By our Example men might Learne Anew.
Night severs us, but pardon her she maye,
And will once make us happyer then the daye.
William Browne.

25-XLVIII. The 61st, ibid. Poems. With Sondry Peeces inserted never before Imprinted, 1619. From Anacreon down to Moore,' says Henry Reed, speaking of this sonnet (Lectures on the British Poets, VII: i, 241, Philadelphia, 1857), 'I know of no lines on the old subject of lovers' quarrels, distinguished for equal tenderness of sentiment and richness of fancy. Especially may be observed the exquisite gracefulness in the transition from the familiar tone in the first part of the sonnet to the deeper feeling and the higher strain of imagination at the close.' 24-25-XLVII-XLVIII. As in the case of Samuel Daniel, with whom,

somehow, he is commonly associated, only a scant selection has been made from Michael Drayton, -'that Panegyrist of my native Earth; who has gone over her soil (in his Polyolbion) with the fidelity of a herald, and the painful love of a son; who has not left a rivulet (so narrow that it may be stept over) without honourable mention; and has animated Hills and Streams with life and passion above the dreams of old mythology'-the two examples given being perhaps as many out of the 'Sixtie Three Sonnets' composing his Idea as may with perfect safety be transplanted hither. Not that many of the others have not their portion of rememberable beauty, or that any of them is undeserving of study. Take the two following, for example, so perfect in their verbal mechanism :—

(23)

Love, banish'd Heav'n, in Earth was held in scorne,
Wand'ring abroad in need and Beggerie;

And wanting Friends, though of a Goddesse borne,
Yet crav'd the Almes of such as passed by:

I, like a Man, devout and charitable,

Clothed the Naked, lodg'd this wand'ring Ghest,

1 Charles Lamb (Dramatic Specimens, i, 49, ed. 1849).

S

Michael Brayton.

With Sighes and Teares still furnishing his Table,
With what might make the Miserable blest.
But this ungratefull, for my good desert,
Intic'd my Thoughts, against me to conspire,
Who gave consent to steale away my Heart,
And set my Brest, his Lodging, on a fire.

Well, well, my Friends, when Beggers grow thus bold,
No marvell then though Charitie grow cold.

(47)

In pride of Wit, when high desire of Fame
Gave Life and Courage to my lab'ring Pen,
And first the sound and vertue of my Name
Wonne grace and credite in the Eares of Men;
With those the thronged Theaters that presse,
I in the Circuit for the Lawrell strove,
Where the full Prayse I freely must confesse,
In heat of Bloud, a modest Mind might move:
With Showts and Claps at ev'ry little pawse,
When the proud Round on ev'ry side hath rung,
Sadly I sit, unmov'd with the Applause,
As though to me it nothing did belong :
No publique Glorie vainely I pursue-
All that I seeke, is to eternize you.

And the beautiful 53rd too, which contains some of Drayton's picturesque and luscious epithets, and has the special interest of being a full-hearted tribute in sonnet-form to that native stream which he loved more than all those he was afterwards to celebrate, and which had doubtless been to him what the Derwent was to be two centuries later to Wordsworth, who sings how

'One, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams.'1

By help of the little poem moreover we shall be able to revisit in imagination the haunt of that melancholy one whom Amiens and his companion overheard moralizing

' as he lay along

Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood.'

In the edition used, that of 1619, it is entitled in the margin Another to the River Ankor, a previous sonnet, the 32nd, having been addressed to the same stream :

The Prelude, Book 1.

2 As You Like It, ii, 1. 30.

Cleere Ankor, on whose Silver-sanded shore
My Soule-shrin'd Saint, my faire IDEA lies,
O blessed Brooke, whose milke-white Swans adore
Thy Cristall streame refined by her Eyes,

Where sweet Myrrh-breathing Zephire in the Spring
Gently distills his Nectar-dropping showres,
Where Nightingales in Arden sit and sing,
Amongst the daintie Dew-impearlèd flowres ;

Say thus faire Brooke, when thou shalt see thy Queene,
Loe, heere thy Shepheard spent his wandring yeeres;
And in these Shades, deare Nymph, he oft hath beene,
And heere to Thee he sacrific'd his Teares:

Faire Arden, thou my Tempe art alone,

And thou, sweet Ankor, art my Helicon.

None of these, not to mention the two masterpieces in the text, can have been remembered by Mrs. Jameson when she took it upon herself to say that Drayton's sonnets 'have neither poetry, nor passion, nor even elegance.'1

PAGE

Joshua Sylvester.

25-XLIX. From Davison's Poetical Rapsody, 1602, and attributed to Sylvester from the signature I. S. affixed to it. Sir Egerton Brydges in his edition of the Rhapsody, 1814-17, followed by Sir Harris Nicolas in his, 1826, makes the misleading statement that the signature was withdrawn in the fourth edition of 1621. The explanation is not far to seek. In the first three editions this sonnet and another, beginning 'The Poets fayne that when the world beganne,' each bearing the signature I. S., are separated by a couple of anonymous madrigals (one of them the well-known 'My Love in her Attyre doth shew her witt'), while in the fourth edition, in which the contents underwent an entire re-arrangement and classification, the two sonnets are simply brought together, and the initials in question placed at the end of the second sonnet, so as to serve for both. It may be mentioned, however, that neither of these sonnets was included in the collected Sylvester folio of 1641, from which the three following additional specimens are extracted. The two first belong to that section of the volume to which the old editor (John Vicars?) has prefixed a title whereon the 'fantastick eye' of the dead poet himself must look with pleasure:- Posthumi. Or Sylvesters Remains: containing Divers Sonnets, Epistles, Elegies, Epitaphs, Epigrams, and other Delightfull Devises, Revised out of the Ashes of that Silver-Tongued Translatour and Divine Poet-Laureat, Master Josuah Sylvester, Never, Till Now, Imprinted.

Romance of Biography; or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, 3rd ed., 1837, i, 263.

Joshua Sylvester.

( 16 )

They say that shadowes of deceased ghosts
Doe haunt the houses and the graves about,
Of such whose lives-lamp went untimely out,
Delighting still in their forsaken hostes:
So, in the place where cruell love doth shoote
The fatall shaft that slue my loves delight,
I stalke and walke and wander day and night,
Even like a ghost with unperceived foote.
But those light ghosts are happier far then I,
For, at their pleasure, they can come and goe
Unto the place that hides their treasure, so,
And see the same with their fantastick eye;
Where I (alas) dare not approach the cruell
Proud Monument that doth inclose my Jewell.

( 20 )

Thrice tosse these oaken ashes in the aire,

And thrice three times tie-up this true Loves knot;
Thrice sit thee downe in this enchanted chaire,
And murmure soft, shee will or shee will not.
Goe burn these poys'ned weeds in that blew fire,
This Cipresse gath'red at a dead man's grave,
These Scriech-owles feathers, and this pricking bryer,
That all thy thorny Cares an end may have.
Then come you Fairies, dance with mee a round:
Dance in this circle, let my love be center,
Melodiously breath out a charming sound;
Melt her hard heart, that some remorse may enter.
In vain are all the charmes I can devise,

Shee hath an Arte to breake them with her eyes.

Like so many other things which have been attributed to Sylvester, the curious love-incantation last given must be regarded as of doubtful authenticity. It is one (Son. 22, p. 634, beginning 'Thou art not faire for all thy red and white,' being another) of those pieces from the posthumous additions to the Sylvester folio which Sir Egerton Brydges, on the authority of cotemporary MSS. of the British Museum,' prints as Thomas Campion's (Excerpta Tudoriana, i, 1814, 36). The difficulty is to believe that two productions of so strongly-marked a physiognomy as it and its associate above are not from one and the same pen. A specimen of a different order may now be given illustrating Sylvester's more characteristic style; for it was hardly by pictures so ghastly-grim as these that the English Du Bartas earned his appellation of the silvertongued,' but by such qualities as are shewn in this first of two isolated sonnets occupying the page directly following the quaintly-beautiful Ode to Astræa in an earlier portion of the folio :

:

Sweet mouth, that sendst a muskie-rosèd breath,
Fountain of Nectar, and delightfull Balm;

Eyes cloudy-clear, smile-frowning, stormy-calm,
Whose every glance darts mee a living-death;
Brows, bending quaintly your round Eben Arks,
Smile, that then Venus sooner Mars besots;
Locks more then golden, curl'd in curious knots,
Where, in close ambush, wanton Cupid lurks;
Grace Angel-like, fair fore-head, smoth and high,
Pure white, that dimm'st the Lillies of the Vale;
Vermilion Rose, that mak'st Aurora pale:
Rare spirit, to rule this beauties Emperie,
If in your force Divine effects I view,

Ah, who can blame me, if I worship you?

:

With this compare a similar piece of fancy portraiture by the author of
· Parthenophil and Parthenophe (Son. 71, ed. Grosart, p. 47) :-
Those haires of Angels gold, thy natures treasure,
(For thou by nature Angellike art framed)
Those lovely browes, broade bridges of sweet pleasure,
Arche two cleare springs of graces gratious named;
There graces infinite do bathe and sporte:
Under on both sides those two pretious hilles
Where Phoeb'e and Venus have a severall forte :
Her couche with snowie lillyes Phoebe filles,
But Venus with redde Roses her's adorneth ;
There they with silent tokens doe dispute,
Whilst Phoebe Venus, Venus Phoebe scorneth,
And all the graces Judgers there sit mute
To give their verdict, till great Jove said this-
Dianaes arrowes wounde not like thy kisse.
Barnabe Barnes.

William Shakspeare.

The controversy on the Sonnets attributed to Shakspeare is a consequence of the obscurity in which everything about him is involved. His day and generation are not so very remote from our own, yet for all that we know of the personal history of this greatest among the children of men, he might almost as well be one of the shadowy figures in Arthurian legend. Hence not a little of what we habitually accept as Shakspeare's biography rests wholly on surmise. If, however, every attempt towards the elucidation, by biographical means, of these 'deep-brained sonnets'1 must proceed upon the unstable ground of conjecture only, there is one thing of which we may feel absolutely certain,—that they were written by Shakspeare. With a few trifling exceptions every Sonnet bears, in high relief, the image and superscription of him who (without irreverence)

1 Shakspeare's own epithet: A Lovers complaint, 209 (printed at the end of the Sonnets).