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To graze the ranker mead; that noble herd
On whose sublime and shady fronts is rear'd
Nature's great masterpiece, to show how soon
Great things are made, but sooner are undone.
Here have I seen the King, when great affairs
Gave leave to slacken and unbend his cares,
Attended to the chase by all the flow'r
Of youth, whose hopes a nobler prey devour;
Pleasure with praise and danger they would buy,
And wish a foe that would not only fly.
The stag now conscious of his fatal growth,
At once indulgent to his fear and sloth,
To some dark covert his retreat had made,
Where nor man's eye, nor heaven's should invade
His soft repose; when th' unexpected sound
Of dogs and men his wakeful ear does wound.
Roused with the noise, he scarce believes his ear,
Willing to think th' illusions of his fear

Had given this false alarm, but straight his view
Confirms that more than all he fears is true.
Betray'd in all his strengths, the wood beset,
All instruments, all arts of ruin met,
He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed,
His winged heels, and then his armed head;
With these t' avoid, with that his fate to meet;
But fear prevails, and bids him trust his feet.
So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye
Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry;
Exulting, till he finds their nobler sense
Their disproportion'd speed doth recompense;
Then curses his conspiring feet, whose scent
Betrays that safety which their swiftness lent :
Then tries his friends; among the baser herd,
Where he so lately was obey'd and fear'd,
His safety seeks: the herd, unkindly wise,
Or chases him from thence or from him flies.
Like a declining statesman, left forlorn
To his friends' pity, and pursuers' scorn,
With shame remembers, while himself was one
Of the same herd, himself the same had done.
Thence to the coverts and the conscious groves,
The scenes of his past triumphs and his loves,
Sadly surveying where he ranged alone,
Prince of the soil, and all the herd his own,
And like a bold knight-errant did proclaim
Combat to all, and bore away the dame,
And taught the woods to echo to the stream
His dreadful challenge, and his clashing beam;
Yet faintly now declines the fatal strife,
So much his love was dearer than his life.
Now ev'ry leaf, and ev'ry moving breath
Presents a foe, and ev'ry foe a death.
Wearied, forsaken, and pursued, at last
All safety in despair of safety placed,
Courage he thence resumes, resolved to bear
All their assaults, since 'tis in vain to fear.
And now, too late, he wishes for the fight
That strength he wasted in ignoble flight;
But when he sees the eager chase renew'd,
Himself by dogs, the dogs by men pursued,
[Originally, our Charles.]

He straight revokes his bold resolve, and more
Repents his courage than his fear before;
Finds that uncertain ways unsafest are,
And doubt a greater mischief than despair.
Then to the stream, when neither friends, nor force,
Nor speed, nor art, avail, he shapes his course;
Thinks not their rage so desp'rate to essay
An element more merciless than they.
But fearless they pursue, nor can the flood
Quench their dire thirst: alas! they thirst for
blood.

So t'wards a ship the oar-finn'd galleys ply,
Which wanting sea to ride, or wind to fly,
Stands but to fall revenged on those that dare
Tempt the last fury of extreme despair.
So fares the stag; among th' enraged hounds
Repels their force, and wounds returns for
wounds:

And as a hero, whom his baser foes

In troops surround, now these assails, now those,
Though prodigal of life, disdains to die
By common hands; but if he can descry
Some nobler foe approach, to him he calls,
And begs his fate, and then contented falls.
So when the king a mortal shaft lets fly
From his unerring hand, then glad to die,
Proud of the wound, to it resigns his blood,
And stains the crystal with a purple flood.
This a more innocent and happy chase
Than when of old, but in the self-same place,
Fair Liberty pursued, and meant a prey
To lawless power, here turn'd, and stood at bay;
When in that remedy all hope was placed
Which was, or should have been at least, the last.
Here was that Charter seal'd wherein the crown
All marks of arbitrary power lays down;
Tyrant and slave, those names of hate and fear,
The happier style of king and subject bear:
Happy when both to the same centre move,
When kings give liberty and subjects love.
Therefore not long in force this Charter stood;
Wanting that seal, it must be seal'd in blood.
The subjects arm'd, the more their princes gave,
Th' advantage only took the more to crave;
Till kings, by giving, give themselves away,
And ev'n that power that should deny betray.
"Who gives constrain'd, but his own fear reviles,
Not thank'd, but scorn'd; nor are they gifts, but
spoils."

Thus kings, by grasping more than they could

hold,

First made their subjects by oppression bold;
And popular sway, by forcing kings to give
More than was fit for subjects to receive,
Ran to the same extremes; and one excess
Made both, by striving to be greater, less.
When a calm river, raised with sudden rains,
Or snows dissolved, o'erflows th' adjoining plains,
The husbandmen with high-raised banks secure
Their greedy hopes, and this he can endure;
But if with bays and dams they strive to force
His channel to a new or narrow course,

No longer then within his banks he dwells,
First to a torrent, then a deluge, swells;
Stronger and fiercer by restraint, he roars,
And knows no bound, but makes his pow'r his
shores.

ON THE EARL OF STRAFFORD'S TRIAL AND DEATH.

GREAT Strafford! worthy of that name, though all
Of thee could be forgotten but thy fall,
Crush'd by imaginary treason's weight,
Which too much merit did accumulate.

As chemists gold from brass by fire would draw,
Pretexts are into treason forged by law.
His wisdom such, at once it did appear
Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear,

[This poem by Denham, though it may have been exceeded by later attempts in description, yet deserves the highest applause, as it far surpasses all that went before it. The concluding part, though a little too much crowded, is very masterly.-GOLDSMITH.]

Whilst single he stood forth, and seem'd, although
Each had an army, as an equal foe ;
Such was his force of eloquence, to make

The hearers more concern'd than he that spake,
Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
And none was more a looker-on than he.
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish, for the defence, the crime their own.
Now private pity strove with public hate,
Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.
Now they could him, if he could them, forgive;
He's not too guilty, but too wise, to live:

Less seem those facts which treason's nickname bore

Than such a fear'd ability for more.
They after death their fears of him express,
His innocence and their own guilt confess.
Their legislative frenzy they repent,
Enacting it should make no precedent.
This fate he could have 'scaped, but would not lose
Honour for life, but rather nobly chose
Death from their fears than safety from his own,
That his last action all the rest might crown.

JOHN BULTEEL.

[Died, 1669.]

MR. RITSON, in his Collection of English Songs, supposes John Bulteel to have been secretary to the Earl of Clarendon, and to have died in 1669. He was the collector of a small miscellany, published about the middle of the seventeenth century.

Mr. Park makes a query whether he was not the gentleman mentioned by Wood (Fasti) as having translated from French into English "A General Chronological History of France, before the reign of Pharamond."

CHLORIS, 'twill be for either's rest
Truly to know each other's breast;
I'll make th' obscurest part of mine
Transparent, as I would have thine:
If you will deal but so with me,
We soon shall part, or soon agree.

Know then, though you were twice as fair,
If it could be, as now you are:
And though the graces of your mind
With a resembling lustre shined;

Yet, if you loved me not, you'd see
I'd value those as you do me.

Though I a thousand times had sworn
My passion should transcend your scorn;
And that your bright triumphant eyes

SONG.

Create a flame that never dies;

Yet, if to me you proved untrue,

Those oaths should prove as false to you.

If love I vow'd to pay for hate,
'Twas, I confess, a mere deceit ;

Or that my flame should deathless prove, 'Twas but to render so your love:

I bragg'd, as cowards use to do,
Of dangers they'll ne'er run into.

And now my tenets I have show'd,
If you think them too great a load;
T' attempt your change were but in vain,
The conquest not being worth the pain:
With them I'll other nymphs subdue;
'Tis too much to lose time and you.

GEORGE WITHER.

[Born, 1388. Died, 1667.]

GEORGE WITHER, the descendant of a family who had for several generations possessed the property of Manydowne, in Hampshire, was born in that county, at Bentworth, near Alton. About the age of sixteen he was sent to Oxford, where he had just begun to fall in love with the mysteries of logic, when he was called home by his father, much to his mortification, to hold the plough. He was even afraid of being put to some mechanical trade, when he contrived to get to London, and with great simplicity had proposed to try his fortune at court. To his astonishment, however, he found that it was necessary to flatter in order to be a courtier. To show his independence he therefore wrote his "Abuses whipt and stript," and instead of rising at court, was committed for some months to the Marshalsea. But if his puritanism excited enemies, his talents and frankness gained him friends. He appears to have been intimate with the poet Browne, and to have been noticed by Selden. To the latter he inscribed his translation of the poem on the Nature of Man, from the Greek of Bishop Nemesius, an ancient father of the church. While in prison he wrote his "Shepherd's Hunting," which contains perhaps the very finest touches that ever came from his hasty and irregular pen, and besides those prison eclogues, composed his "Satire to the King," a justification of his former satires, which, if it gained him his liberation, certainly effected it without retracting his principles.

It is not probable that the works of Wither will ever be published collectively, curious as they are, and occasionally marked by originality of thought: but a detailed list of them is given in the "British Bibliographer." From youth to age George continued to pour forth his lucubrations, in prophesy, remonstrance, complaint and triumph, through good and evil report, through all vicissitudes of fortune: at one time in command among the saints, and at another scrawling his thoughts in gaol, when pen and ink were denied

* He was imprisoned for his "Abuses whipt and stript;" yet this could not have been his first offence, as an allusion is made to a former accusation. [It was for the Scourge (1615) that his first known imprisonment took place. He had dealt, as he tells us in after life, in particulars not in season to be touched upon, and the greatest fault of what he said was that it savoured more of honesty than discretion. Vice in high places was then more than ordinarily sensitive and suspicious, and satire when dealing in generals, like Hate, Envy, Lust and Avarice, was always individualized by the reader; and men appropriated, as Lamb says, the most innocent abstractions to themselves. Ben Jonson complains of this in more than one place.]

him, with red ochre upon a trencher. It is generally allowed that his taste and genius for poetry did not improve in the political contest. Some of his earliest pieces display the native amenity of a poet's imagination; but, as he mixed with the turbulent times, his fancy grew muddy with the stream. While Milton in the same cause brought his learning and zeal as a partisan, he left the Muse behind him, as a mistress too sacred to be introduced into party brawlings; Wither, on the contrary, took his Muse along with him to the camp and the congregation, and it is little to be wondered at that her cap should have been torn and her voice made hoarse in the confusion.

Soon after his liberation from prison he published the Hymns and Songs of the Church, one edition of which is dedicated to King James, in which he declares that the hymns were printed under his majesty's gracious protection. One of the highest dignitaries of the church also sanctioned his performance; but as it was Wither's fate to be for ever embroiled, he had soon after occasion to complain that the booksellers, "those cruel bee-masters," as he calls them, "who burn the poor Athenian bees for their honey," endeavoured to subvert his copy-right; while some of the more zealous clergymen complained that he had interfered with their calling, and slanderous persons termed his hymns needless songs and popish rhymes. From any suspicion of popery

his future labours were more than sufficient to clear him. James, it appears, encouraged him to finish a translation of the Psalms, and was Soon after the kindly disposed towards him. decease of his sovereign, on remembering that he had vowed a pilgrimage to the Queen of Bohemia, he travelled to her court to accomplish his vow, and presented her highness with a copy of his Psalms.

In 1639 he was a captain of horse in the expedition against the Scots, and quarter master general of his regiment, under the Earl of Arundel. But as soon as the civil wars broke out he sold his estate to raise a troop of horse for the parliament, and soon afterwards rose to the rank of major. In the month of October of the same year, 1642, he was appointed by parliament captain and commander of Farnham Castle, in Surrey; but his government was of short duration, for the castle was ceded on the first of December to Sir William Waller. Wither says, in his own justification, that he was advised by his superiors to quit the place; while his enemies alleged that he deserted it. The defence of his conduct which

he published, seems to have been more resolute than his defence of the fortress. In the course of the civil war, he was made prisoner by the royalists, and when some of them were desirous of making an example of him, Denham, the poet, is said to have pleaded with his majesty that he would not hang him, for as long as Wither lived he (Denham) could not be accounted the worst poet in England. Wood informs us that he was afterwards constituted by Cromwell majorgeneral of all the horse and foot in the county of Surrey. In his addresses to Cromwell there is, mixed with his usual garrulity of advice and solemnity of warning, a considerable degree of adulation. His admonitions probably exposed him to little hazard; they were the croakings of the raven on the right hand. It should be mentioned however, to the honour of his declared principles, that in the "National Remembrancer" he sketched the plan of an annual and freely elected parliament, which differed altogether from the shadow of representation afforded by the government of the usurper. On the demise of Cromwell he hailed the accession of Richard with

joyful gratulation. He never but once in his life foreboded good, and in that prophecy he was mistaken.

At the Restoration, the estates, which he had either acquired or purchased during the interregnum, were taken from him. But the event which crushed his fortunes could not silence his pen, and he was committed first to Newgate and afterwards to The Tower, for remonstrances, which were deemed a libel on the new government. From the multitude of his writings, during a three years' imprisonment, it may be clearly gathered, that he was treated not only with rigour, but injustice; for the confiscation of his property was made by forcible entry, and besides being illegal in form, was directly contrary to the declaration that had been issued by Charles the Second before his accession. That he died in prison may be inferred from the accounts, though not clear from the dates of his biographers; but his last days must have been spent in wretchedness and obscurity*. He was buried between the east door and the south end of the Savoy church, in the Strand.

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FROM "THE SHEPHERD'S HUNTING."

SEE'ST thou not, in clearest days,
Oft thick fogs could heavens raise ?
And the vapours that do breathe
From the earth's gross womb beneath,
Seem they not with their black steams
To pollute the sun's bright beams,
And yet vanish into air,
Leaving it (unblemish'd) fair?
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 sometimes drains
Gross conceits from muddy brains;
Mists of envy, fogs of spite,
"Twixt men's judgments and her light ;
But so much her power may do
That she can dissolve them too.
If thy verse do bravely tower,

As she makes wing, she gets power!
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still the more :
Till she to the high'st hath past,
Then she rests with Fame at last.
Let nought therefore thee affright,
But make forward in thy flight:
For if I could match thy rhyme,
To the very stars I'd climb ;
There begin again, and fly
Till I reach'd eternity.
But, alas! my Muse is slow;
For thy pace she flags too low.

Yes, the more's her hapless fate,
Her short wings were clipp'd of late;
And poor I, her fortune ruing,
Am myself put up a muing.
But if I my cage can rid,
I'll fly, where I never did.

And though for her sake I'm crost,
Though my best hopes I have lost,
And knew she would make my trouble
Ten times more than ten times double ;
I would love and keep her too,
Spite of all the world could do.
For though banish'd from my flocks,
And confined within these rocks,
Here I waste away the light,
And consume the sullen night;
She doth for my comfort stay,
And keeps many cares away.
Though I miss the flowery fields,

With those sweets the spring-tide yields ;
Though I may not see those groves,
Where the shepherds chaunt their loves,
And the lasses more excel

Than the sweet-voiced Philomel;
Though of all those pleasures past,
Nothing now remains at last,

But remembrance, poor relief,

That more makes than mends my grief:
She's my mind's companion still,
Maugre Envy's evil will:

[* He was released from prison on the 27th July 1663, on his bond to the Lieutenant of the Tower for his good behaviour; and died, though not in prison, on the 2nd of May 1667.-See Willmott's Lives of the Sacred Poets, vol. i.]

Whence she should be driven to,
Were't in mortals' power to do.
She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow;
Makes the desolatest place
To her presence be a grace,
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss,
His divine skill taught me this,
That from every thing I saw,
I could some invention draw;
And raise pleasure to her height
Through the meanest object's sight:
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustling;
By a daisy, whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed ;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me,
Than all Nature's beauties can,
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow

Some things that may sweeten gladness
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;
The rude portals, that give light
More to terror than delight,
This my chamber of neglect,
Wall'd about with disrespect,
From all these, and this dull air,
A fit object for despair,

She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight.

Therefore then, best earthly bliss,
I will cherish thee for this!
Poesy, thou sweet'st content
That e'er Heaven to mortals lent;
Though they as a trifle leave thee,
Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee,
Though thou be to them a scorn
That to nought but earth are born;
Let my life no longer be
Than I am in love with thee!
Though our wise ones call it madness,
Let me never taste of gladness
If I love not thy mad'st fits
Above all their greatest wits!
And though some, too seeming holy,
Do account thy raptures folly,
Thou dost teach me to contemn
What makes knaves and fools of them!

[* The praises of poetry have been often sung in ancient and modern times; strange powers have been ascribed to it of influence over animate and inanimate auditors; its force over fascinated crowds has been acknowledged;

THE SHEPHERD'S RESOLUTION.

SHALL I, wasting in despair,

Die because a woman's fair?

Or make pale my cheeks with care,
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow'ry meads in May;
If she be not so to me,

What care I how fair she be ?

Shall my foolish heart be pined,
'Cause I see a woman kind?
Or a well-disposed nature
Joined with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder, than
The turtle-dove or pelican;

If she be not so to me,

What care I how kind she be !
Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or, her well-deservings known,
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest,
Which may merit name of Best ;
If she be not such to me,

What care I how good she be ?
'Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool and die?
Those that bear a noble mind,
Where they want of riches find,
Think what with them they would do,
That without them dare to woo ;

And, unless that mind I see, What care I how great she be ? Great or good, or kind or fair, I will ne'er the more despair: If she love me, this believeI will die ere she shall grieve. If she slight me when I woo, I can scorn and let her go: If she be not fit for me, What care I for whom she be?

THE STEDFAST SHEPHERD.

HENCE away, thou Siren, leave me,

Pish! unclasp these wanton arms; Sugar'd words can ne'er deceive me, (Though thou prove a thousand charms). Fie, fie, forbear;

No common snare

Can ever my affection chain:

Thy painted baits,

And poor deceits,

Are all bestow'd on me in vain.

but before Wither, no one had celebrated its power at home; the wealth and the strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor.-LAMB.]

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