Of this rude pile we carry, as the soul
Hath excellence above this earth-born frailty.
My lord, by the king's will, is led already
To a severe arraignment, and to judges
Will make no tender search into his tract
Of life and state ; stay but a little while,
And France shall echo to his shame or innocence.
This suit I beg with tears, I shall have sorrow
Enough to hear him censured foul and monstrous
Should you forbear to antedate my sufferings. [cline

Queen. Your conscience comes about, and you in-
To fear he may be worth the law's condemning.
Wife [rising). I sooner will suspect the stars may

lose

Their way, and crystal Heaven return to chaos ;
Truth sits not on her square more firm than he ;
Yet let me tell you, madam, were his life
And action so foul as you have character'd
And the bad world expects, though as a wife
"Twere duty I should weep myself to death
To know him fall’n from virtue, yet so much
I, a frail woman, love my king and country,
I should condemn him too, and think all honours,
The price of his lost faith, more fatal to me
Than Cleopatra's asps warm in my bosom,
And as much boast their killing.

ALEXANDER BROME.

(Born, 1620. Died, 1666.]

ALEXANDER BROME was an attorney in the which was acted in 1651, at the private house in Lord Mayor's Court. From a verse in one of Drury. There is a playful variety in his metre, his poems, it would seem that he had been sent that probably had a better effect in song than in once in the civil war (by compulsion no doubt), reading. His thoughts on love and the bottle on the parliament side, but had staid only three have at least the merit of being decently jovial, days, and never fought against the king and the though he arrays the trite arguments of convivial cavaliers. He was in truth a strenuous loyalist, invitation in few original images. In studying and the bacchanalian songster of his party. Most the traits and complexion of a past age, amuseof the songs and epigrams that were published ment, if not illustration, will often be found from against the Rump have been ascribed to him. the ordinary effusions of party ridicule. In this He had besides a share in a translation of Horace, view the Diurnal, and other political satires of with Fanshawe, Holiday, Cowley, and others, and Brome, have an extrinsic value as contemporary published a single comedy, the Cunning Lovers, caricatures.

Tell me not of a face that's fair,

Nor lip and cheek that's red,
Nor of the tresses of her hair,

Nor curls in order laid ;
Nor of a rare seraphic voice,

That like an angel sings ;
Though if I were to take my choice,

I would have all these things.
But if that thou wilt have me love,

And it must be a she;
The only argument can move

Is, that she will love me.

Of all the rare juices
That Bacchus or Ceres produces,
There's none that I can, nor dare I
Compare with the princely Canary.

For this is the thing
That a fancy infuses,

This first got a king,

And next the nine Muses ; 'Twas this made old poets so sprightly to sing,

And fill all the world with the glory and fame on't ; They Helicon call'd it, and the Thespian spring, But this was the drink though they knew not

[the name on't.
Our cider and perry
May make a man mad, but not merry ;

It makes people windmill-pated,
And with crackers sophisticated ;

And your hops, yest, and malt,
When they're mingled together,

Makes our fancies to halt,
Or reel any whither :
It stuff's up our brains with froth and with yest,

That if one would write but a verse for a bellman,
Hemuststudy till Christmas foran eight-shilling jest;
These liquors won't raise, but drown, and o'er-

whelm man.

The glories of your ladies be

But metaphors of things,
And but resemble what we see

Each common object brings.
Roses out-red their lips and cheeks.

Lilies their whiteness stain :
What fool is he that shadows seeks,

And may the substance gain !
Then if thou'lt have me love a lass,

Let it be one that's kind,
Else I'm a servant to the glass

That's with Canary lined.

ROBERT HERRICK.

(Born, 1591.)

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

(Born, 1618. Died, 1667.)

ten
years

from his native country, was employed in confidential journeys for his party, and in deciphering the royal correspondence. The object of his return to England, in 1656, I am disposed to think, is misrepresented by his biographers : they tell us that he came over, under pretence of privacy, to give notice of the posture of affairs. Cowley came home indeed, and published an edition of his poems, in the preface to which he decidedly declares himself a quietist under the existing government, abjures the idea of all political hostility, and tells us that he had not only abstained from printing, but had burnt the very copies of his verses that alluded to the civil wars. “The enmities of fellow-citizens,” he continues, "should

be like those of lovers, the redintegration of their government, though without having published amity.” If Cowley employed this language to make a word even in his amiable and pacific preface, his privacy the deeper pretence for giving secret that committed his principles. But an absurd intelligence, his office may be worthily named that idea prevailed that his Cutter of Coleman-street of a spy; but the manliness and placidity of his was a satire on his party, and he had published character render it much more probable that he an ode to Brutus ! It is impossible to contrast was sincere in those declarations; nor were his this injured honesty of Cowley with the successstudious pursuits, which were chiefly botanical, ful profligacy of Waller and Dryden, and not to well calculated for political intrigue. He took a be struck with the all-prevailing power of impudoctor's degree, but never practised, and was one dence. In such circumstances it is little to be of the earliest members of the philosophical society. wondered at that Cowley should have sighed for While Butler's satire was unworthily employed in retirement, and been ready to accept of it even ridiculing the infancy of that institution, Cowley's in the deserts of America. Misanthropy, as far as wit took a more than ordinary stretch of perversion so gentle a nature could cherish it, naturally in the good intention of commending it. Speaking strengthened his love of retirement, and inof Bacon, he calls him

creased that passion for a country life which the mighty man,

breathes in the fancy of his poetry, and in the Whom a wise king and nature chose

eloquence of his prose. By the influence of

Buckingham and St. Albans, he at last obtained At his first arrival in England he had been a competence of about 3001. a year from a lease imprisoned, and obliged to find bail to a great of the queen's lands, which enabled him to retire, amount. On the death of Cromwell, he con first to Barnes Elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, sidered himself at liberty, and went to France, on the Thames. But his health was now dewhere he stopt till the Restoration. At that clining, and he did not long experience either event, when men who had fought under Crom the sweets or inconveniences of rustication. He well were rewarded for coming over to Charles | died, according to Dr. Sprat, in consequence of II., Cowley was denied the mastership of the exposing himself to cold one evening that he Savoy on pretence of his disloyalty, and the staid late among his labourers. Another account Lord Chancellor told him that his pardon was ascribes his death to being benighted in the his reward. The sum of his offences was, that fields, after having spent too convivial an evening he had lived peaceably under the usurping with the same Dr. Sprat.

To be the chancellor of both their laws.

THE CHRONICLE, A BALLAD*.

MARGARITA first possess'd,
If I remember well, my breast,
Margarita first of all ;
But when a while the wanton maid
With my restless heart had play'd,
Martha took the flying ball.

Mary then, and gentle Anne,
Both to reign at once began;
Alternately they sway'd,
And sometimes Mary was the fair,
And sometimes Anne the crown did wear,
And sometimes both l' obey'd.

Martha soon did it resign
To the beauteous Catharine :
Beauteous Catharine gave place
(Though loth and angry she to part
With the possession of my heart)
To Eliza's conquering face.

Another Mary then arose,
And did rigorous laws impose;
A mighty tyrant she !
Long, alas ! should I have been
Under that iron-sceptred queen,
Had not Rebecca set me free.

Eliza till this hour might reign,
Had she not evil counsels ta'en :
Fundamental laws she broke
And still new favourites she chose,
Till up in arms my passions rose,

And cast away her yoke
(* • The Chronicle' is a composition unrivalled and
alone: such gaiety of fancy, such facility of expression,
such varied similitude, such a succession of images, and
such a dance of words, it is in vain to expect except from
Cowley. To such a performance, Suckling could have
brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden
could have supplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety.
-JOHNSON.)

When fair Rebecca set me free,
'Twas then a golden time with me :
But soon those pleasures fed ;
For the gracious princess died
In her youth and beauty's pride,
And Judith reigned in her stead.
One month, three days, and half an hour,
Judith held the sovereign power :
Wondrous beautiful her face,
But so weak and small her wit,
That she to govern was unfit,
And so Susanna took her place.