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WILLIAM WARNER

[Died, 1608-9.]

WAS a native of Oxfordshire, and was born, as Mr. Ellis conjectures, in 1558. He left the university of Oxford without a degree, and came to London, where he pursued the business of an attorney of the common pleas. Scott, the poet of Amwell, discovered that he had been buried in the church of that parish in 1609, having died suddenly in the night-time.*

His "Albion's England" was once exceedingly popular. Its publication was at one time interdicted by the Star-chamber, for no other reason that can now be assigned, but that it contains some love-stories more simply than delicately related. His contemporaries compared him to Virgil, whom he certainly did not make his

model. Dr. Percy thinks he rather resembled Ovid, to whom he is, if possible, still more unlike. His poem is, in fact, an enormous ballad on the history, or rather on the fables appendant to the history of England; heterogeneous, indeed, like the Metamorphoses, but written with an almost doggrel simplicity. Headley has rashly preferred his works to our ancient ballads; but with the best of these they will bear no comparison. Argentile and Curan has indeed some beautiful touches, yet that episode requires to be weeded of many lines to be read with unqualified pleasure; and through the rest of his stories we shall search in vain for the familiar magic of such ballads as Chevy Chase or Gill Morrice.

ARGENTILE AND CURAN.
FROM ALBION'S ENGLAND.

Argentile, the daughter and heiress of the deceased King, Adelbright, has been left to the protection of her uncle Edel, who discharges his trust unfaithfully, and seeks to force his niece to marry a suitor whom he believes to be ignoble, that he may have a pretext for seizing on her kingdom.

YET well he fosters for a time the damsel, that was grown

The fairest lady under heav'n, whose beauty being known,

A many princes seek her love, but none might her obtain,

For gripel Edel to himself her kingdom sought

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On the 9th March, 1608-9.

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And (which was working to his wish) he did observe with joy,

How Curan, whom he thought a drudge, scap'd many an am'rous toy:

The king, perceiving such his vein, promotes his vassal still,

Lest that the baseness of the man should let perhaps his will;

Assured, therefore, of his love, but not suspecting who

The lover was, the king himselfin his behalf did woo: The lady, resolute from love, unkindly takes that he Should bar the noble and unto so base a match agree; And therefore, shifting out of doors, departed hence by stealth,

Preferring poverty before a dangerous life in wealth.

When Curan heard of her escape, the anguish of his heart

Was more than much, and after her he did from court depart;

Forgetful of himself, his birth, his country, friends, and all,

And only minding whom he miss'd, the foundress of his thrall:

Nor means he after to frequent the court, or stately towns,

But solitarily to live among the country growns. A brace of years he lived thus, well pleased so to live, And, shepherd-like, to feed a flock himself did wholly give;

So wasting love, by work and want, grew almost to the wane,

And then began a second love the worser of the

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Did feed her drove; and now on her was all the shepherd's keep.

He borrow'd on the working days his holie russets oft, And of the bacon's fat to make his startups black and soft,

And lest his tar-box should offend, he left it at the fold:

Sweet grout or whig his bottle had as much as it might hold;

A shave of bread as brown as nut, and cheese as white as snow,

And wildings, or the season's fruit, he did in scrip bestow;

And whilst his pyebald cur did sleep, and sheephook lay him by,

On hollow quills of oaten straw he piped melody; But when he spied her his saint.

Thus the shepherd woo'd . . Thou art too elvish, faith, thou art; too elvish and too coy;

Am I, I pray thee, beggarly, that such a flock enjoy!

...

Believe me, lass, a king is but a man, and so am I; Content is worth a monarchy, and mischiefs hit the high,

As late it did a king, and his, not dwelling far from hence,

Who left a daughter, save thyself, for fair a matchless wench;

Here did he pause, as if his tongue had done his heart offence:

The neatress, longing for the rest, did egg him on to tell

How fair, she was, and who she was. quoth he, the belle;

She bore,

For beauty, though I clownish am, I know what beauty is,

Or did I not, yet seeing thee, I senseless were to miss : Suppose her beauty Helen's like, or Helen's some

thing less,

Her smiles were sober, and her looks were cheerful unto all,

And such as neither wanton seem, nor wayward, mell nor gall:

A nymph no tongue, no heart, no eye, might praise, might wish, might see,

For life, for love, for form, more good, more worth, more fair than she;

Yea, such a one as such was none, save only she was such;

Of Argentile, to say the most, were to be silent much.

I knew the lady very well, but worthless of such praise,

The neatress said, and muse I do a shepherd thus should blaze

The coat of beauty; credit me, thy latter speech bewrays

Thy clownish shape a colour'd show; but wherefore dost thou weep?

The shepherd wept, and she was woe, and both did silence keep:

:

In troth, quoth he, I am not such as seeming I

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self digress;

Her loved I, wretch that I am, a recreant to be,
I loved her that hated love, but now I die for thee.
At Kirkland is my father's court, and Curan is
my name,

In Edel's court sometime in pomp, till love controll'd the same;

But now-what now? dear heart, how now, what aileth thou to weep?—

The damsel wept, and he was woe, and both did silence keep.

I grant, quoth she, it was too much, that you did love so much,

But whom your former could not move, your second love doth touch;

And every star consorting to a pure complexion Thy twice-beloved Argentile submitteth her to thee,

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OF A PRECISE TAILOR.
FROM SIR JOHN HARRINGTON'S EPIGRAMS.

A TAILOR, thought a man of upright dealing-
True, but for lying-honest, but for stealing,
Did fall one day extremely sick by chance,
And on the sudden was in wond'rous trance;
The fiends of hell, mustering in fearful manner,
Of sundry colour'd silks display'd a banner
Which he had stolen, and wish'd, as they did tell,
That he might find it all one day in hell.
The man, affrighted with this apparition,
Upon recovery grew a great precisian :
He bought a Bible of the best translation,
And in his life he show'd great reformation;
He walked mannerly, he talked meekly,
He heard three lectures and two sermons weekly;
He vow'd to shun all company unruly,
And in his speech he used no oath; but truly

And zealously to keep the sabbath's rest,
His meat for that day on the eve was drest;
And lest the custom which he had to steal
Might cause him sometimes to forget his zeal,
He gives his journeymen a special charge,
That if the stuff, allowance being large,
He found his fingers were to filch inclined,
Bid him to have the banner in his mind.
This done (I scant can tell the rest for laughter)
A captain of a ship came three days after,
And brought three yards of velvet and three
quarters,

To make Venetians down below the garters.
He, that precisely knew what was enough,
Soon slipt aside three quarters of the stuff;
His man, espying it, said, in derision,
Master, remember how you saw the vision!
Peace, knave! quoth he, I did not see one rag
Of such a colour'd silk in all the flag.

FROM

HENRY PERROT'S BOOK OF EPIGRAMS,

ENTITLED "SPRINGES FOR WOODCOCKS."
(EDIT. 1613.)

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Was born in 1581, and perished in the Tower of London, 1613, by a fate that is too well known. The compassion of the public for a man of worth, "whose spirit still walked unrevenged amongst them," together with the contrast of his ideal Wife with the Countess of Essex, who was his murderess, attached an interest and popularity to his poem, and made it pass through sixteen editions before the year 1653. His Characters, or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of sundry Perzons, is a work of considerable merit; but unfortunately his prose, as well as his verse, has a dry

THE WIFE.

FROM SIR THOMAS OVERBURY'S POEM.

THEN may I trust her body with her mind,
And, thereupon secure, need never know
The pangs of jealousy and love doth find
More pain to doubt her false than find her so;

ness and quaintness that seem to oppress the natural movement of his thoughts. As a poet, he has few imposing attractions: his beauties must be fetched by repeated perusal. They are those of solid reflection, predominating over, but not extinguishing, sensibility; and there is danger of the reader neglecting, under the coldness and ruggedness of his manner, the manly but unostentatious moral feeling that is conveyed in his maxims, which are sterling and liberal, if we can only pardon a few obsolete ideas on female education.

For patience is, of evils that are known,
The certain remedy; but doubt hath none.
And be that thought once stirr'd, 'twill never die,
Nor will the grief more mild by custom prove,
Nor yet amendment can it satisfy;
The anguish more or less is as our love;

This misery doth from jealousy ensue,
That we may prove her false, but cannot true...
Give me, next good, an understanding wife,
By nature wise, not learned by much art;
Some knowledge on her part will, all her life,
More scope of conversation impart;
Besides her inborn virtue fortify;

They are most firmly good that best know why.
A passive understanding to conceive,
And judgment to discern, I wish to find;
Beyond that all as hazardous I leave;
Learning and pregnant wit, in womankind,
What it finds malleable (it) makes frail,
And doth not add more ballast, but more sail.
Books are a part of man's prerogative;
In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold,
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old;
Our life fame pieceth longer at the end,
And books it farther backward do extend.....
So fair at least let me imagine her;
That thought to me is truth. Opinion

Cannot in matters of opinion err;

And as my fancy her conceives to be,
Ev'n such my senses both do feel and see.....
Beauty in decent shape and colour lies;
Colours the matter are, and shape the soul;
The soul-which from no single part doth rise,
But from the just proportion of the whole :-
And is a mere spiritual harmony
Of every part united in the eye.
No circumstance doth beauty fortify
Like graceful fashion, native comeliness;
But let that fashion more to modesty
Tend than assurance-Modesty doth set
The face in her just place, from passion free;
"Tis both the mind's and body's beauty met.
All these good parts a perfect woman make;
Add love to me, they make a perfect wife;
Without her love, her beauty I should take
As that of pictures dead-that gives it life;
Till then her beauty, like the sun, doth shine
Alike to all;-that only makes it mine.

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

[Born, 1564. Died, 1616.]

[MR. CAMPBELL gave us no history or opinion of Shakspeare, in his specimens of the British Poets, but he prefixed to Moxon's edition of the works of the great dramatist an elaborate biography and criticism, of which the present editor makes the following abridgment.]

Shakspeare's father, John Shakspeare, was a glover in Stratford; that this was his main trade has been completely ascertained by Mr. Malone. He seems, however, to have been a speculative tradesman; he farmed meadow-land, and may possibly have traded in wool and cattle, as has been alleged; but the tradition of his having been a butcher is entitled to no credit, for, if he sold gloves, it is not very likely that he had either another shop, or the same shop with shambles before it.

Our great poet, the eldest son and the third child of his parents, was born at Stratford in the month of April, 1564, probably on the twentythird of the month, says Mr. Malone, because he was baptized on the twenty-fifth. When he was but nine weeks old the plague visited Stratford, and carried off more than a seventh part of the population, but the door-posts of our sacred infant, like those of the Israelites in Egypt, were sprinkled so as to be passed by by the destroying angel, and he was spared.

No anecdotes of his earliest years have been preserved. All the education he ever received was probably at the free school of Stratford; but at what age he was placed there, or how long he remained, are points that can be only conjectured. That Shakspeare was not a classical scholar, may be taken for granted; but that he learned some

Latin at the free school of Stratford, is conceded even by those who estimate his classic acquirements at the lowest rate; even allowing, as seems to be ascertained, that he derived his plots, in the main, from translations of books.

Shakspeare's learning, whatever it was, gave him hints as to sources from which classical information was to be drawn. The age abounded in classical translations; it also teemed with public pageants, and Allegory itself might be said to have walked the streets. He may have laughed at the absurdity of many of those pageants, but still they would refresh his fancy. Whether he read assiduously or carelessly, it should be remembered that reading was to him not of the vulgar benefit that it is to ordinary minds. Was there a spark of sense or sensibility in any author, on whose works he glanced, that spark assimilated to his soul, and it belonged to it as rightfully as the light of heaven to the eye of the eagle.

Malone calls in question Rowe's assertion that our poet was recalled from school merely on account of his father's circumstances, and in order to assist him in his own trade; and says, it is more likely that he was taken away with a view to his learning some business, in which he might afterwards maintain himself. My own suspicions however is, that his father recalled him in order to assist him in his own business.

Whatever his occupation was, between the time of his leaving school and his going to London, it is certain that he married in the interim. His choice was Anne Hathaway, who was then in her twenty-sixth year, he, the boy poet, being only eighteen years and some months, and conse

quently nearly eight years younger than his

spouse.

Shakspeare's marriage bond is dated, according to Malone, the 28th of November, 1582. In May, 1583, his wife brought him a daughter, who was named Susanna, and was baptized the 26th of May of the same year. If this was the case, the poet's first child would appear to have been born only six months and eleven days after the bond was entered into. If Mr. Malone be correct, as to the date of her birth in the Stratford register, Miss Susanna Shakspeare came into the world a little prematurely.

One of the first misfortunes that is alleged to have befallen our poet in his married life, has certainly no appearance of having originated in his marriage. "Shakspeare," says his biographer, Rowe, "had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and amongst them some that made a practice of deerstealing engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this," continues Rowe, "he was prosecuted by that gentleman, and in revenge he made a ballad upon him. The ballad itself is lost; but it was so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him, insomuch that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, and to shelter himself in London."

Of this lampoon, only one passage that is extant is believed to be genuine, and that one would do no great honour to the muse even of a poacher. Mr. Malone discredits the whole story of the deerstealing, and he is probably right in scouting Davies's exaggeration of it, namely, that our poet was whipped for the offence. But, false as the alleged punishment may be, it by no means follows that the anecdote of the theft, and of a threatened prosecution, must needs be incredible. The story is not one that we should exactly wish to be true, but still it was only a youthful frolic, and a prank very common among young men of those days.

Most probably for that reason he removed from Warwickshire to London, unaccompanied by wife or child, a few years after his marriage: it is generally thought in 1586 or 1587.

He now embraced the profession of a player. Plays he must have seen acted at Stratford, and some of the best of the then living actors, such as the elder Burbage, Heminge, and Thomas Green, who were in all probability personally known to him. The first of these Thespian heroes were the countrymen of Shakspeare, the last was certainly his townsman, and perhaps his relation.

Rowe says that Shakspeare was received into the company in a very mean rank. It has also been said, probably on the faith of Rowe's assertion, that he was employed as the call-boy, whose business is to give notice to the performers when their different entries on the stage are required. Another tradition is, that he used to hold the horses of those who rode to the theatre without attendants.

But the probability of Shakspeare's ever having been either a call-boy or a horse-holder, has never, in latter years, received much belief; and it has been completely put to discredit by Mr. Collier, who has proved by documents of his own discovery, that Shakspeare, in 1589, a very few years after the earliest date that can be assigned to his arrival in London, was among the proprietors of the very theatre in which he is alleged to have been once a call-boy; and from this fact it must be at least concluded, that if he was at first received in a mean rank, he made a rapid acquisition of theatrical consequence.

My own suspicion is quite adverse to his having been a novice, and meanly received on the London stage. The inhabitants of Stratford were great lovers of theatrical amusements; companies of the best comedians visited them during the youth of our poet, at least, on an average, once a year. From childhood to manhood, his attention must have been drawn to the stage, and there is every probability that he knew the best actors. He was probably a handsome man, and certainly an exquisite judge of acting; he was past the age at which we can conceive him to have been either a call-boy, or a horse-holder. Upon the whole it may be presumed that he was a good actor, though not of the very highest excellence; a circumstance perhaps not to be regretted, for if he had performed as well as he wrote, his actorship might have interfered with his authorship.

An interesting subject of inquiry in Shakspeare's literary history, is the state of English dramatic poetry when he began his career. Before his time mere mysteries and miracle plays, in which Adam and Eve appeared naked, in which the devil displayed his horns and tail, and in which Noah's wife boxed the patriarch's ears before entering the ark, had fallen comparatively into disuse, after a popularity of four centuries; and, in the course of the sixteenth century, the clergy were forbidden by orders from Rome to perform them. Meanwhile "Moralities," which had made their appearance about the middle of the fifteenth century, were also hastening their retreat, as well as those pageants and masques in honour of royalty which, nevertheless, aided the introduction of the drama. We owe our first regular dramas to the universities, the inns of court, and public seminaries. The scholars of these establishments engaged in free translations of classic dramatists, though with so little taste that Seneca was one of their favourites. They caught the coldness of that model, however, without the feeblest trace of his slender graces; they looked at the ancients without understanding them, and they brought to their plots neither unity, design, nor affecting interest. There is a general similarity among all the plays that preceded Shakspeare, in their ill-conceived plots, in the bombast and dullness of tragedy, and in the vulgar buffoonery of comedy.

Of our great poet's immediate predecessors, the most distinguished were Lyly, Peele, Greene, Kyd, Nash, Lodge, and Marlowe. Marlowe was the only great man among Shakspeare's precur

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