ordinary themes. The court applauded; the lady was flattered or appeased by the compliment; and the poet was praised for his wit and gallantry; while the heart had nothing to do with the poetical homage thus tendered and accepted. Carew was capable, however, of ascending far beyond this heartless frivolity; and in his productions, therefore, we see only glimpes of a genius which might have been ripened into permanent and beneficial excellence. His short amatory pieces and songs were exceedingly popular in his day, and are now his only poems that are read. A few of these are here introduced, together with his lines on the Approach of Spring-a production which indicates that the passionate and imaginative view of the Elizabethan period had not wholly passed away, but that the 'genial and warm tints' of the elder muse still occasionally colored the landscape. SONG. Ask me no more where Jove bestows, For in your beauties, orient deep, Ask me no more whither do stray Ask me no more whither doth haste Ask me no more if east or west The Phoenix builds her spicy nest; For unto you at last she flies, THE COMPLIMENT. I do not love thee for that fair I do not love thee for those flowers I do not love thee for those soft Though from those lips a kiss being taken, I do not love thee, oh! my fairest, For that richest, for that rarest DISDAIN RETURNED. He that loves a rosy cheek, But a smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts and calm desires; No tears, Celia, now shall win My resolv'd heart to return; I have search'd thy soul within, Can disdain as much as thou. Some power, in my revenge, convey APPROACH OF SPRING. Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost But the warm sun thaws the benumb'd earth, GEORGE WITHER Was born in Hampshire on the eleventh of June, 1588, and was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. In the twenty-fifth year of his age he published a satire entitled Abuses Stript and Whipt, for which he was thrown into Marshalsea; but so far from allowing his imprisonment to depress his spirits, he there composed his fine poem, The Shepherds' Hunting. When the abuses satirized by the poet had accumulated and brought on the civil war, Wither embraced the popular side, and sold his patrimonial estate to raise a troop of horse for the Parliament. He rose to the rank of a major, and in 1642, was made governor of Farnham Castle. During the struggle that immediately followed, Wither was made prisoner by the royalists, and stood in danger of capital punishment, but was saved by the interference of his brother poet, Denham. Nothing daunted by the perilous contentions of the times, he again joined the parliamentary army, became one of Cromwell's major-generals, and was appointed by that dauntless leader to keep watch over the royalists of Surrey. From the sequestrated estates of these gentlemen, Wither obtained a considerable fortune, but the Restoration came, and he was stript of all his possessions. Against this he remonstrated loudly and angrily; his remonstrances were voted libels, and the unfortunate poet was again thrown into prison. In 1663 he was released from prison under bond of good behaviour, and died in London on the second of May, 1665. Wither's poetic fame is derived chiefly from those early productions which were composed while he was incarcerated in prison. His mind was extremely active, and though his body was confined within stone walls and iron bars, his fancy was among the hills and plains, with shepherds hunting; or loitering with Poesy, by rustling boughs or murmuring springs. There is hence a freshness and natural vivacity in his poetry, that render his early works a perpetual feast.' It is certainly not a feast where no crude surfeit reigns,' for he is often harsh, obscure, and affected; but he has an endless diversity of style and subject, and true poetical feeling and expression. Wither, for more than a century and a half, shared the fate so common to poets of his own age and class, of being comparatively forgotten; but his reputation has recently been revived by Ellis, who, in his Specimens of Early English Poets, first pointed out that playful fancy, pure taste, and artless delicacy of sentiment, which distinguish the poetry of his early youth.' His 'Address to Poetry' in the 'Shepherds' Hunting' is worthy of the theme, and superior to most of the effusions of that period. The pleasure with which he recounts the various charms and the 'divine skill' of his muse, that had derived nourishment and delight from 'the meanest objects' of external nature-a daisy, a bush, or a tree; and which, when these picturesque and beloved scenes of the country were denied him, could gladden even the vaults and shades of a prison, is one of the richest offer ings that has yet been made to the pure and hallowed shrine of poesy. The superiority of intellectual pursuits over the gratifications of sense, and all the malice of fortune, has never been more touchingly or finely illustrated The poem itself follows: THE COMPANIONSHIP OF THE MUSE. See'st thou not, in clearest days, Oft thick fogs cloud heaven's rays; And the vapours that do breathe So my Willy, shall it be With Detraction's breath and thee: It shall never rise so high, As to stain thy poesy. As that sun doth oft exhale Vapours from each rotten vale; Poesy so sometime drains Gross conceits from muddy brains; "Twixt men's judgments and her light: As she makes wing she gets power; Till she to the high'st hath past, And poor I, her fortune ruing, And though for her sake I'm crost, And the lasses more excel Than the sweet-voiced Philomel. That more makes than mends my grief (Whence she would be driven, too, By her help I also now Make this churlish place allow In the very gall of sadness, The dull loneness, the black shade, That these hanging vaults have made; The strange music of the waves, Beating on these hollow caves; This black den which rocks emboss, Overgrown with eldest moss: She hath taught me by her might Though they as a trifle leave thee, Whose dull thoughts can not conceive thee, |