exquisite. His love poetry, which is distinguished by touches of genuine feeling, is modelled for the most part on the Sonnetti and Ballati of Petrarch, though it has little of Petrarch's frigid puerility and none of his metaphysical extravagance. The Laura of Surrey is the fair Geraldine. We may perhaps suspect the existence of some less shadowy object. As a lyrical poet, when he permits himself to follow his own bent he is easy and graceful. His elegiac verses and his epitaph on Clere have been deservedly praised for their pathos, dignity, and terseness, and his translation from Martial makes us regret that he has not left us more in the same vein. His versions from Virgil we are not inclined to rank so highly as Warton does, but they are interesting as being the first English versions from the poets of antiquity worthy of the name, and as furnishing us with the earliest specimens of that verse which was to become the omnipotent instrument of Shakespeare and Milton. As a sonneteer he follows closely in the footsteps of Petrarch, though he is not, like Wyatt, a servile copyist, and he is entitled to the high praise of being not only the first who introduced the sonnet into our language, but of having made that difficult form of composition the obedient interpreter of a poet's feelings and of a poet's fancies. His most unsuccessful pieces are his Scriptural paraphrases and the poems written in Alexandrines, though one of these, The Complaint of a Dying Lover, is valuable as being, next to Henryson's Robine and Makyne, the first pastoral poem in British literature. J. CHURTON COLLINS. DESCRIPTION OF SPRING. [Wherein each thing renews, save only the lover.] The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, And thus I see among these pleasant things A COMPLAINT BY NIGHT OF THE LOVER NOT BELOVED Alas! so all things now do hold their peace! The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease; The nightës car the stars about doth bring. Calm is the sea; the waves work less and less : In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease. For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring; Gives me a pang, that inwardly doth sting. To live and lack the thing should rid my pain. Prisoned in Windsor, he recounteth his pleasure there passed.] So cruel prison how could betide, alas, As proud Windsor? where I in lust and joy, In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy. And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love. The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue, The dances short, long tales of great delight; The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight; The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust ; And with this thought the blood forsakes the face; Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rue THE MEANS TO ATTAIN HAPPY LIFE Martial, the things that do attain The happy life be these, I find; The household of continuance. True wisdom joined with simpleness; The night discharged of all care, Where wine the wit may not oppress. The faithful wife, without debate; Such sleeps as inay beguile the night; Contented with thine own estate, Ne wish for death, ne fear his might. ' companion. 2 dear. 3 moderate. A PRAISE OF HIS LOVE. [Wherein he reproveth them that compare their ladies with his.] Give place, ye lovers, here before That spent your boasts and brags in vain ; My lady's beauty passeth more The best of yours, I dare well sayen, Than doth the sun the candle light Or brightest day the darkest night. And thereto hath a troth as just For what she saith, ye may it trust, As it by writing sealed were: I could rehearse, if that I would, I know she swore with raging mind, There was no loss by law of kind That could have gone so near her heart; And this was chiefly all her pain; Sith Nature thus gave her the praise, |