Th' angelical soft trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet
The silver sounding instruments did meet,
With the base murmur of the water's fall;
The water's fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call:
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.

The while, some one did chant this lovely lay;
Ah see, whoso fair thing thou dost fain to see,
In springing flower the image of thy day;
Ah see the virgin rose, how sweetly she
Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty,
That fairer seems, the less ye see her may;
Lo, see soon after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosom she doth broad display;
Lo, see soon after, how she fades and falls away

So presseth, in the passing of a day,

Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower,

No more doth flourish after first decay,

That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower

Of many a lady, and many a paramour;

Gather, therefore, the rose, while yet is prime,

For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower:

Gather the rose of love, while yet is time,

While loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.'

To the preceding extracts from the 'Fairy Queen,' which we have given in a modernized spelling, we shall add the following highly poetical description, in the poet's own orthography.

DESCRIPTION OF BELPHEBE.

In her faire eyes two living lamps did flame,
Kindled above at th' heavenly Maker's light,
And darted fyrie beames out of the same,
So passing persant, and so wondrous bright,
That quite bereav'd the rash beholder's sight:
In them the blinded God his lustfull fyre
To kindle oft assayd, but had no might;

For, with dredd majestie and awfull yre,

She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desyre.

Her yvorie forhead, full of bountie brave

Like a broad table did itselfe dispred,
For Love his loftie triumphes to engrave,
And write the battailes of his great godhed:

All good and honour might therein be red;

For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake,
Sweete wordes like dropping honey, she did shed;
And 'twixt the perles and rubins softly brake
A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seem'd to make.

Upon her eyelids many Graces sate,
Under the shadow of her even browes,

Working belgardes and amorous retrate;
And everie one her with a grace endowes,
And everie one with meekenesse to her bowes:
So glorious mirrhour of celestiall grace,
And soveraine moniment of mortall vowes,

How shall frayle pen descrive her heavenly face,

For feare, through want of skill, her beauty to disgrace!

So faire, and thousand thousand times more faire,

She seem'd, when she presented was to sight;

And was y-clad, for heat of scorching aire,

All in a silken Camus lily white,

Purfled upon with many a folded plight,
Which all above besprinkled was throughout
With golden aygulets.

And in her hand a sharpe bore-speare she held,
And at her backe a bow, and quiver gay

Stuft with steel-headed dartes, wherewith she queld
The salvage beastes in her victorious play,

Knit with a golden bauldricke which forelay
Athwart her snowy brest, and did divide

Her daintie paps; which, like young fruit in May,
Now little gan to swell, and being tide
Through her thin weed their places only signifide.

Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wyre,
About her shoulders weren loosely shed,
And, when the winde emongst them did inspyre,
They waved like a penon wyde despred,
And low behinde her backe were scattered:
And, whether art it were or heedlesse hap,

As through the flouring forrest rash she fled,

In her rude heares sweet flowres themselves did lap,
And flourishing fresh leaves and blossomes did enwrap.

Besides the important productions that we have noticed, Spenser was the author of some beautiful minor poems, the principal of which are The Tears of the Muses, Daphnaida, Amoretti, and the Elegy of Astrophel, the last of which was occasioned by the death of his lamented friend and early patron, Sir Philip Sidney.

Lecture the Eighth.

ROBERT SOUTHWELL-SAMUEL DANIEL-MICHAEL DRAYTON-EDWARD FAIRFAX -JOHN HARRINGTON-HENRY WOTTON-JOHN DAVIES-JOHN DONNE-ROBERT CORBET.

THE

HE bitter and acrimonious spirit of religious intolerance and oppression which pervaded the entire administration of the House of Tudor, unfortunately did not cease, even after Protestantism had gained a fixed and permanent ascendency under Elizabeth. The mild and amiable Southwell suffered as unjustly for conscience' sake, in her reign, as either Latimer or Tyndale had in that of her rigorous father, Henry the Eighth.

ROBERT SOUTHWELL was of Roman Catholic parentage, and was born at St. Farths, in 1560. His parents being anxious to have him carefully educated, sent him, when very young, to the English College at Douay, in Flanders, where he advanced in his studies with unusual rapidity, and at the early age of sixteen he left Douay for Rome, and immediately entered the society of Jesuits. In 1584, having completed his studies, and taken priest's orders, he returned to England as a missionary of the society to which he belonged, and during eight successive years administered, unostentatiously, but zealously, to the scattered adherents of his creed, without, as far as has ever been ascertained, doing any thing to disturb the peace of society, or the faith of the established church. In 1592, he was apprehended in a gen tleman's house at Uxenden in Middlesex, and committed to a dungeon in the Tower, so filthy, that when he was brought out for examination, his clothes, even, were noisomely offensive. When his father, who was a man of good family, beheld his situation, he presented a petition to the queen, requesting that, if his son had committed any thing for which, by the laws, he deserved death, he might suffer death; if not, as he was a gentleman, he hoped her majesty would be pleased to order him to be treated as a gentleman.' Southwell was afterward somewhat better lodged, but an imprisonment of three years, with ten inflictions of the rack, at length wore out his patience, and he entreated to be brought to trial. Being found guilty of heresy, on his own confession that he was a Romish priest, he was

condemned to death, and executed at Tyburn accordingly, in 1595, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. Throughout all the scenes of suffering to which he was exposed, Southwell conducted himself with a mildness and fortitude which nothing but a well-regulated mind and a satisfied conscience could have induced.

The life of Southwell, though short, was full of sorrow; and the prevailing tone of his poetry is, therefore, that of religious resignation under grief. His two principal poems, St. Peter's Complaint, and Mary Magdalene's Farewell Tears, were, like many other works of which the world has had reason to be proud, written in prison; and it is remarkable that, though composed while suffering under the most unfeeling persecution, no trace of anger against any human being or any human institution, occurs throughout either work. The general tone and quality of the author's writings may be gathered from the following pieces :

THE IMAGE OF DEATH.

Before my face the picture hangs,

That daily should put me in mind
Of those cold names and bitter pangs
That shortly I am like to find;

But yet, alas! full little I

Do think hereon, that I must die.

I often look upon a face

Most ugly, grisly, bare and thin;

I often view the hollow place

Where eyes and nose had sometime been;

I sce the bones across that lie,

Yet little think that I must die.

I read the label underneath,

That telleth me whereto I must;

I see the sentence, too, that saith,
Remember, man, thou art but dust.'

But yet, alas! how seldom I

Do think, indeed, that I must die!

Continually at my bed's head

A hearse doth hang, which doth me tell

That I ere morning may be dead,

Though now I feel myself full well;

But yet, alas! for all this, I

Have little mind that I must die.

The gown which I am used to wear,

The knife wherewith I cut my meat;
And eke that old and ancient chair,

Which is my only usual seat;
All these do tell me I must die,
And yet my life amend not I.

My ancestors are turn'd to clay,

And many of my mates are gone;