ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

ROBERT SOUTHWELL is remarkable as a victim of the persecuting laws of the period. He was born in 1560, at St. Faiths, Norfolk, of Roman Catholic parents, who sent him, when very young, to be educated at the English College at Douay, in Flanders, and from thence to Rome, where, at sixteen years of age, he entered the society of the Jesuits. In 1584, he returned to his native country as a missionary, notwithstanding a law which threatened all members of his profession found in England with death. For eight years he appears to have ministered secretly but zealously to the scattered adherents of his creed; but, in 1592, he was apprehended at Uxenden, in Middlesex, and committed to a dungeon in the Tower. An imprisonment of three years, with ten inflictions of the rack, wore out his patience, and he entreated to be brought to trial. Cecil is said to have made the brutal remark, that if he was in so much haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire.' Being at this trial found guilty, upon his own confession, of being a Romish priest, he was condemned to death, and executed at Tyburn accordingly (February 21, 1595,) with all the horrible circumstances dictated by the old treasonlaws of England.

Southwell's poetical works were edited by W. B. Turnbull, 1856. The prevailing tone of his poetry is that of religious resignation. His short pieces are the best.

His two longest productions, 'St. Peter's Complaint' and Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears,' were written in prison. After experiencing great popularity in their own time, insomuch that eleven editions were printed between 1593 and 1600, the poems of Southwell fell, like other productions of the minor poets, into neglect. Some of his conceits are poetical in conception-for example:

And

He that high growth on cedars did bestow,
Gave also lowly mushrooms leave to grow.

We trample grass and prize the flowers of May,
Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away.
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 see 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. alus! 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 turned to clay,
And many of my mates are gone;
My youngers daily drop away,

And can I think to 'scape alone?
No, no; I know that I must die,
And yet my life amend not I.

If none can 'scape Death's dreadful dart;
If rich and poor his beck obey;
If strong, if wise, if all do smart,

Then I to 'scape shall have no way:
Then grant me grace, O God! that
My life may mend, since I must die.

The Burning Babe.

Ben Jonson, in his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, said Southwell had so written that piece of his, "The Burning Babe,' he (Jonson) would have been content to destroy many of his.'

As I in hoary winter's night
Stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat,
Which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye

To view what fire was near,

A pretty babe all burning bright,
Did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat,

Such floods of tears did shed,

My faultless breast the furnace is

The fuel, wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,
The ashes, shames and scorns;
The fuel justice layeth on,

And mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought
Are men's defiled souls;

'or which, as now on fire I am,
To work them to their good,

As though his floods should quench his So will I melt into a bath.

flames,

To wash them in my blood.'
With this he vanished out of sight,

And swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I called unto mind
That it was Christmas Day.

Times go by Turns.

The lopped tree in time may grow again,
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorriest wight might find release of pain,

The driest soil suck in some moistening shower;
Time goes by turns, and chances change by course
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow;

She draws her favours to the lowest ebb;
Her tides have equal times to come and go;

Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web;
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring,
Not endless night, yet not eternal day:
The saddest birds a season find to sing,

The roughest storm a calm may soon allay.
Thus, with succeeding turns, God tempereth all
That man may hope to rise yet fear to fall.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
That net that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crossed;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish.
Unmingled joys here to no man befall;

Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all.

WILLIAM WARNER.

·

A rhyming history entitled Albion's England,' was published in 1869, by WILLIAM WARNER (1558-1609), an attorney of the Common Pleas. It was admired in its own day, and is said to have supplanted in popularity the Mirror for Magistrates.' The poem is written in the long fourteen-syllable verse, but is tedious and monotonous. A few lines will shew the style of the poem :

The Life of a Shepherd.

Then choose a shepherd; with the sun he doth his flock unfold.
And all the day on hill or plain he merry chat can hold :
And with the sun doth fold again: then jogging home betime,
He turns a crab, or tunes a round, or sings some merry rhyme;
Nor lacks he gleeful tales to tell, whilst that the bowl doth trot:
And sitteth singing care away, till he to bed hath got.
There sleeps he soundly all the night, forgetting morrow cares,
Nor fears he blasting of his corn, or wasting of his wares,
Or storms by sea, or stirs on land, or crack of credit lost,
Nor spending franklier than his flock shall still defray the cost.
Well wot I, sooth they say, that say, more quiet nights and days
The shepherd sleeps and wakes than he whose cattle he doth graze.

SAMUEL DANIEL.

SAMUEL DANIEL, son of a music-master, was born in 1562, near Taunton, in Somersetshire, and seems to have been educated under the patronage of the Pembroke family. In 1579, he was entered a commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he chiefly devoted himself to the study of poetry and history; at the end of three years, he quitted the university, without taking a degree, and was appointed tutor to Anne Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Cumberland. After the death of Spenser, Daniel became what Mr. Campbell calls 'voluntary laureate' to the court, but he was soon superseded by Ben Jonson. In the reign of James, he was appointed Master of the Queen's Revels, and inspector of the plays to be represented by the juvenile performers. He was also preferred to be a gentleman-extraordinary and groom of the chamber to Queen Anne. He lived in a garden-house in Old Street, St. Luke's, where, according to Fuller, he would lie hid for some months together, the more retiredly to enjoy the company of the Muses, and then would appear in public to converse with his friends, whereof Dr. Cowell and Mr. Camden were principal.' Daniel is said also to have shared the friendship of Shakspeare, Marlowe, and Chapman. His character was irreproachable, and his society appears to have been much courted. 'Daniel,' says Coleridge, in a letter to Charles Lamb, caught and re-communicated the spirit of the great Countess of Pembroke, the glory of the north; he formed her mind, and her mind inspirited him. Gravely sober on all ordinary affairs, and not easily excited by any, yet there is one on which his blood boils-whenever he speaks of English valour exerted against a foreign enemy. Coleridge seems to have felt a great ad

miration for the works and character of Daniel, and to have lost no opportunity of expressing it. Towards the close of his life, the poet retired to a farm he had at Beckington, in Somersetshire, where he died October 14, 1619

The works of Daniel fill two considerable volumes. They include sonnets, epistles, masques, and dramas; but his principal production is a History of the Civil Wars between York and Lancaster,' a poem in eight books, published in 1604. Musophilus, containing a General Defence of Learning,' is another elaborate and thoughtful work by Daniel His tragedies and masks fail in dramatic interest, and his epistles are perhaps the most pleasing and popular of his works. His style is remarkably pure, clear, and flowing, but wants animation. He has been called the well-languaged Daniel;' and certainly the copiousness, ease and smoothness of his language distinguish him from his contemporaries. He is quite modern in style. In taste and moral feeling he was also pre-eminent. Mr. Hallam thinks Da el wanted only greater confidence in his own power; but he was deficient in fire and energy. His thoughtful, equable verse flows on unintermittingly, and never offends; but it becomes tedious and uninteresting from its sameness, and the absence of what may be called salient points. His quiet graces and vein of moral reflection are, however, well worthy of study. His 'Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland' is a fine effusion of meditative thought.

From the Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland.

He that of such a height hath built his mind,

And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,

As neither hope nor fear can shake the frame

Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind

Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong

His settled peace, or to disturb the same:
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!
And with how free an eye doth he lock down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil,
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood! where honour, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;

Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet

As frailty doth: aud only great doth seem

To little minds who do it so esteem.

He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars,
But only as on stately robberies;

Where evermore the fortune that prevals
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-faced enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails;
Justice he sees, as if reduced, still

Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill.

He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man;

Who puts it in all colours, all attires.

To serve his ends, and makes his courses hold.
He sees that, let deceit work what it can,
Plot aud contrive base ways to high desires;
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet
All disappoint and mocks the smoke of wit.

Nor is he moved with all the thunder-cracks
Of tyrants' threats, or with the surly brow
Of power, that proudly sits on others' crimes;
Charged with more crying sins than those he checks.
The storms of sad confusion, that may grow

Up in the present for the coming times,
Appal not him; that hath no side at all,

But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.

Richard II. the Morning before his Murder in Pontefract Castle.

Whether the soul receives intelligence,
By her near genius, of the body's end,
And so imparts a sadness to the sense,
Foregoing ruin whereto it doth tend:
Or whether nature else hath conference

With profound sleep, and so doth warning send,
By prophetising dreams, what hurt is near,
And gives the heavy careful heart to fear:

However, so it is, the now sad king,
Tossed here and there his quiet to confound,
Feels a strange weight of sorrows gathering
Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground;
Feels sudden terror bring cold shivering;
Lists not to eat, still muses, sleeps unsound;
His senses droop, his steady eyes unquick,
And much he ails, and yet he is not sick.

The morning of that day which was his last,
After a weary rest, rising to pain,

Out at a little grate his eyes he cast

Upon those bordering hills and open plain,
Where others' liberty make him complain

The more his own, and grieves his soul the more,
Conferring captive crowns with freedom poor.

"O happy man,' saith he, 'that lo I see,
Grazing his cattle in those pleasant fields,
If he but knew his good. How blessed he
That feels not what affliction greatness yields!
Other than what he is he would not be,

Nor change his state with him that sceptre wields
Thine, thine is that true life: that is to live,
To rest secure, and not rise up to grieve.

"Thou sitt'st at home safe by thy quiet fire,
And hear'st of other's harms, but fearest none:
And there thou tell'st of kings, and who aspire,
Who fall, who rise, who triumph, who do moan.
Perhaps thou talk'st of me, and dost inquire
Of my restraint, why here I live alone,
And pitiest this my miserable fall;
For pity must have part-nvy not all.