Dwell on my lines! and till the last sand fall,
Run hand in hand with my weak pastorall!
Cause every coupling cadence flow in blisses,
And fill the world with envy of such kisses.
Make all the rarest beauties of our clyme,
That deigne a sweet looke on my younger ryme,
To linger on each line's inticing graces,

As on their lovers' lips and chaste imbraces!"

There is a very agreeable enumeration of pastoral employments in the ensuing extract-the lines in italics are manifestly copied from a well-known and beautiful idea in the Arcadia, a work which our poet greatly admired.

"But since her stay was long: for feare the sunne
Should finde them idle, some of them begunne

To leape and wrastle, others threw the barre,
Some from the company removed are

To meditate the songs they meant to play,
Or make a new round for next holiday:

Some, tales of love their love-sicke fellowes told :
Others were seeking stakes to pitch their fold.

This, all alone was mending of his pipe;

That, for his lasse, sought fruits most sweet, most ripe.
Here, (from the rest) a lovely shepheard's boy
Sits piping on a hill, as if his joy

Would still endure, or else that age's frost

Should never make him thinke what he had lost.
Yonder a shepheardesse knits by the springs,
Her hands still keeping time to what she sings;
Or seeming, by her song, those fairest hands
Were comforted in working. Neere the sands
Of some sweet river sits a musing lad,

That moanes the loss of what he sometimes had,
His love by death bereft: when fast by him
An aged swaine takes place, as neere the brim

Of's grave as of the river; shewing how

That as those floods, which passe along right now

Are follow'd still by others from the spring,

'And in the sea have all their burying.'

These pastorals abound in similies-the following are no unfavorable specimens.

"And as a lowly maiden, pure and chaste,

With naked iv'rie necke, and gowne unlac'd

Within her chamber, when the day is fled,
Makes poore her garments to enrich her bed:
First, puts she off her lilly-silken gowne,

That shrikes for sorrow as she layes it downe;
And with her armes graceth a wast-coate fine,
Imbracing her as it would ne'er untwine.
Her flexen haire insñaring all beholders,
She next permits to wave about her shoulders,
And though she caste it backe, the silken slips
Still forward steale, and hang upon her lips:
Whereat she, sweetly angry with her laces,
Bindes up the wanton lockes in curious traces,
Whilst (twisting with her joynts) each haire long lingers,
As loth to be inchain'd, but with her fingers.
Then on her head a dressing like a crowne;
her kirtle slipping downe,

And all things off (which rightly ever be,
Call'd the foule-faire markes of our miserie)
Except her last; which enviously doth seize her,
Least any eye partake with it in pleasure,

Prepares for sweetest rest, while Silvans greet her,
And (lovingly) the downe-bed swels to meet her:
So by degrees"

And,

"As I have seene when on the brest of Thames
A heavenly beavy of sweet English dames,
In some calme ev'ning of delightfull May,
With musicke give a farewell to the day,
Or as they would (with an admired tone)
Greet Night's ascension to her ebon throne,
Rapt with their melodie, a thousand more
Run to be wafted from the bounding shore:
So ran the shepheards, and with hasty feet

Strove which should first increase that happy fleet."

In the following long extract, which we should quote at yet greater length, did we not fear the accumulating nature of the pleasing task of selection, he eulogizes and characterises his contemporary brothers in the art, dwelling chiefly on Sidney and his Arcadia, which is the subject of another article of this number.

"Ere their arrivall, Astrophel had done
His shepherd's lay, yet equaliz'd of none.
Th' admired mirrour, glory of our isle,
Thou farre-farre-more than mortall man,

whose stile

Stroke more men dumbe to harken to thy song,
Than Orpheus' harpe, or Tully's golden tongue."
To him (as right) for wit's deepe quintessence,
For honour, value, virtue, excellence,

Be all the garlands, crowne his tombe with bay,
Who spake as much as e'er our tongue can say.
Happy Arcadia! while such lovely straines
Sung of thy vallyes, rivers, hills, and plaines;
Yet most unhappy other joyes among,
That never heard'st his musicke nor his song.
Deafe men are happy so, whose vertues' praise
(Unheard of them) are sung in tunefull layes.
And pardon me, ye sisters of the mountaine,
Who wayle his losse from the Pegasian fountaine,
If (like a man for portraiture unable)

I set my pencil to Apelles' table;

Or dare to draw his curtaine, with a will

To shew his true worth, when the artist's skill
Within that curtaine fully doth expresse,
His owne art's-mastry, my unablenesse.
He sweetly touched, what I harshly hit,
Yet thus I glory in what I have writ;
Sidney began, (and if a wit so meane

May taste with him the dewes of Hippocrene)
I
sung the past'rall next; his muse, my mover:
And on the plaines full many a pensive lover
Shall sing to us their loves, and praising be,
My humble lines, the more, for praising thee.
Thus we shall live with them, by rockes, by springs,
As well as Homer by the death of kings.
Then in a straine beyond an oaten quill,
The learned shepheard of faire Hitching-hill *
Sung the heroicke deeds of Greece and Troy,
In lines, so worthy life, that I imploy
My reede in vaine to overtake his fame;
All praisefull tongues doe waite upon
Our second Ovid, the most pleasing muse
That heav'n did e'er in mortal's braine infuse,
All-loved Draiton, in soul-raping straines,
A genuine noate, of all the nymphish traines,
Began to tune; on it all eares were hung
As sometime Dido's on Æneas' tongue.

that name,

Jonson, whose full of merit to rehearse
Too copious is to be confinde in verse;
Yet therein only fittest to be knowne,
Could any write a line which he might owne,
One, so judicious; so well knowing; and
A man whose least worth is to understand;
One so exact in all he doth preferre,
To able censure; for the theater

Not Seneca transcends his worth of praise;
Who writes him well shall well deserve the bayes.
Well-languag'd Danyel: Brooke, whose polisht lines
Are fittest to accomplish high designes ;

Whose pen (it seemes) still young Apollo guides;
Worthy the forked hill for ever glides

Streames from thy braine so faire, that time shall see
Thee honor'd by thy verse, and it by thee.
And when thy temple's well deserving bayes
Might impe a pride in thee to reach thy praise,
As in a christall glasse, fill'd to the ring
With the cleare water of as cleare a spring,
A steady hand may very safely drop
Some quantitie of gold, yet o'er the top
Not force the liquor run; although before
The glasse (of water) could containe no more:
Yet so all-worthy Brooke, though all men sound
With plummets of just praise thy skill profound,
Thou in thy verse those attributes canst take
And not apparent ostentation make,

That any second can thy vertues raise,
Striving as much to hide as merit praise.
Davies and Wither, by whose muse's power
A naturall day to me seemes but an houre,
And could I ever heare their learned layes,
Ages would turne to artificiall dayes.”

He thus apologises for being led into frequent digressions; we quote the passage, for the fertility and richness of its expression, though employed in describing a landscape too much in the Dutch style for our tastes: the poet had been led away by his praises of the golden age and of women.

"O what a rapture have I gotten now!
That age of gold, this of the lovely browe,
Have drawne me from my song!
(Cleane from the end to which I first begun)

I onward run

But ye the heavenly creatures of the West,
In whom the vertues and the graces rest,
Pardon! that I have run astray so long,
And grow so tedious in so rude a song,
If you yourselves should come to adde one grace
Unto a pleasant grove or such like place,
Where, here, the curious cutting of a hedge,
There in a pond, the trimming of the sedge;
Here the fine setting of well shaded trees,
The walkes there mounting up by small degrees,
The gravell and the greene so equall lye,
It, with the rest, drawes on your ling'ring eye:
Here the sweet smels that doe perfume the ayre,
Arising from the infinite repayre

Of odoriferous buds, and hearbs of price
(As if it were another paradice)

So please the smelling sence, that you are faine
Where last you walk'd to turne and walke againe.
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floates:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing goe:
Here further downe an over-arched alley
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spye at end thereof a standing lake
Where some ingenious artist strives to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of lead
Through birds of earth most lively fashioned)
To counterfeit and mocke the Silvans all
In singing well their owne set madrigall.
This with no small delight retaynes your eare,
And makes you think none blest but who live there.
Then in another place the fruits that be

In gallant clusters decking each good tree
Invite your hand to crop them from the stem,
And liking one, taste every sort of them:
Then to the arbors walke, then to the bowres,
Thence to the walkes againe, thence to the flowres,
Then to the birds, and to the cleare spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sence:
Here one walkes oft, and yet anew begin❜th,
'As if it were some hidden laborinth."

It is absolutely necessary, however, that we bring our extracts to a close, which we will do with the poet's spirited ad