"The Passionate Pilgrim" belonged in reality to the poetical miscellanies so popular at the time; it deserved utter failure for the undue liberty it had taken with Shakespeare's great name, and it perhaps deserved the almost too severe though eloquent censure which a modern poet, Mr. Swinburne, has passed upon it. When the genuine Shakespearian pieces have been taken into account, "the rest of the ragman's gatherings, with three most notable exceptions, is little better for the most part than dry rubbish or disgusting refuse. I need not say that those three exceptions are the stolen and garbled work of Marlowe and of Barnfield, our elder Shelley and our first-born Keats; the singer of Cynthia in verse well worthy of Endymion, who would seem to have died as a poet in the same fatal year of his age that Keats died as a man; the first adequate English laureate of the nightingale, to be supplanted or equalled by none until the advent of his mightier brother.'

Our Poet, him

Whose insight makes all others dim;
A thousand poets pried at life,
And only one amid the strise,
Rose to be Shakespeare.”

VENUS AND ADONIS.

Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua,

To the

RIGHT HONORABLE HENRIE WRIOTHESLEY, Earle of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield.

RIGHT HONOURABLE,

I KNOW not bow I shall offend in dedicating my unpolisht lines to your Lordship, nor bow the worlde will censure me for choosing so strong a proppe to support so weake a burthen, onely if your Honour seeme but pleased, I account my selfe bigbly praised, and vowe to take aduantage of all idle boures, till I baue honoured you with some grauer labour. But if the first beire of my inuention proue deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father: and neuer after eare so barren a land, for fear it yeeld me still so bad a baruest, I leaue it to your Honourable suruey, and your Honor to your hearts content which I wish may alwaies answere your owne wish, and the worlds bopefull expectation.

Your Honors in all dutie,

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Venus and Adonis.

EVEN as the sun with purple colour'd face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn:

Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him.

'Thrice fairer than myself,' thus she began,
'The field's chief flower, sweet above compare,
Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,
More white and red than doves or roses are;

Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.

'Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,
And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;
If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed
A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know:

Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses,
And being set, I'll smother thee with kisses;

'And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety,
But rather famish them amid their plenty,
Making them red and pale with fresh variety;
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty:

A summer's day will seem an hour but short,
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.'

ΙΟ

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