Lecture the Ninth.

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT-PHINEAS FLETCHER-GILES FLETCHER-THOMAS CAREWGEORGE WITHER WILLIAM BROWNE -HENRY KING

GEORGE HERBERT-ROBERT HERRICK-JOSEPH HALL.

FRANCIS QUARLES

THE remaining English miscellaneous poets connected with the period

which we are at present considering, though numerous, will not generally require notices so extended as those who have already passed in review before us. Of these poets, those who in the order of time first present themselves are, Beaumont, the Fletchers, Carew, Wither, Browne, King, and Quarles.

JOHN BEAUMONT was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont, and elder brother of the celebrated dramatic poet Francis Beaumont. He was born at GraceDieu, in Leicestershire, in 1582, and admitted gentleman commoner of Broadgate Hall, Oxford, in 1596. After having passed three years at the university, he removed to one of the Inns of Court, London, but he soon relinquished the study of the law, and retired to the family estate in Leicestershire. In 1626, he was knighted by Charles the First, and died two years after in the forty-seventh year of his age.

Sir John Beaumont wrote a number of pieces, the principal of which are Bosworth Field, and Lines to the Memory of Ferdinando Pulton. These poems are both in heroic verse-a measure which Beaumont wrote with great ease and correctness. 'Bosworth Field' is generally cold and unimpassioned, though there are in it occasional spirited passages; but the 'Lines to the Memory of Pulton' contain many passages of rare excellence, such as the following:

Why should vain sorrow follow him with tears,
Who shakes off burdens of declining years?
Whose thread exceeds the usual bounds of life,
And feels no stroke of any fatal knife?
The destinies enjoin their wheels to run,
Until the length of his whole course be spun.
No envious clouds obscure his struggling light,
Which sets contented at the point of night:

N

Yet this large time no greater profit brings,
Than every little moment whence it springs;
Unless employ'd in works deserving praise,
Must wear out many years and live few days.
Time flows from instants, and of these each one
Should be esteem'd as if it were alone

The shortest space, which we so lightly prize
When it is coming, and before our eyes:
Let it but slide into the eternal main,

No realms, no worlds, can purchase it again :

Remembrance only makes the footsteps last,

When winged time, which fixed the prints, is past.

To the above extract we feel constrained to add the following fine epitaph upon Sir John's son, Gervase Beaumont :

Can I, who have for others oft compiled

The songs of death, forget my sweetest child,
Which like a flow'r crush'd with a blast, is dead,
And ere full time hangs down his smiling head,
Expecting with clear hope to live anew,
Among the angels fed with heavenly dew?
We have this sign of joy, that many days,
While on the earth his struggling spirit stays,
The name of Jesus in his mouth contains
His only food, his sleep, his ease from pains.
O may that sound be rooted in my mind,
Of which in him such strong effect I find!
Dear Lord, receive my son, whose winning love
To me was like a friendship, far above
The course of nature, or his tender age;
Whose looks could all my better griefs assuage:
Let his pure soul-ordain'd seven years to be
In that frail body, which was part of me—
Remain my pledge in heaven, as sent to show
How to this port at every step I go.

PHINEAS and GILES FLETCHER were brothers, and were sons of the celebrated Doctor Giles Fletcher, who stood so high in the favor of Queen Elizabeth that she employed him on various important foreign embassies. Both these brothers were clergymen, and their lives, therefore, afford little variety of incident.

PHINEAS FLETCHER was born in 1584; and after passing through preparatory studies at Eton, he entered the university of Cambridge, whence being graduated, he took orders, and soon after settled at Kilgay, in Norfolk, where he passed his life in the quiet of the country. He died in 1650, in his sixty-seventh year.

The principal poems of Phineas Fletcher are, the Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, and Piscatory Eclogues. The name of the former poems suggests images of poetical and romantic beauty, such as we may suppose an admirer and follower of Spenser to have drawn; but a perusal of the work

soon dispels this illusion. The 'Purple Island' of Fletcher is no 'sunny spot amid the melancholy main,' but is an elaborate and anatomical description of the body and soul of man. Its value, therefore, must not rest upon the plot, but upon isolated passages and poetical descriptions. Some of his stanzas have all the easy flow and mellifluous sweetness of the 'Faery Queen;' and clearly show a luxuriance of fancy, which had it been disciplined by taste and judgment, must have rivalled the softer scenes of Spenser. To justify this remark we take the following passage:

DESCRIPTION OF PARTHENIA, OR CHASTITY.

With her, her sister went, a warlike maid,
Parthenia, all in steel and gilded arms;
In needle's stead, a mighty spear she sway'd,
With which in bloody fields and fierce alarms,
The boldest champion she down would bear,
And like a thunder-bolt wide passage tear,
Flinging all to the earth with her enchanted spear.

Her goodly armour seem'd a garden green,
Where thousand spotless lilies freshly blew;

And on her shield the lone bird might be seen,

Th' Arabian bird, shining in colours new;

Itself unto itself was only mate:

Ever the same, but new in newer date:

And underneath was writ, 'Such is chaste single state.'

Thus hid in arms she seem'd a goodly knight,

And fit for any warlike exercise:

But when she list lay down her armour bright,
And back resume her peaceful maiden's guise;
The fairest maid she was, that ever yet
Prison'd her locks within a golden net,

Or let them waving hang, with roses fair beset.

Choice nymph! the crown of chaste Diana's train,
Thou beauty's lily, set in heavenly earth;
Thy fairs unpattern'd, all perfection stain;
Sure Heaven with curious pencil at thy birth
In thy rare face her own full picture drew:
It is a strong verse here to write, but true,
Hyperboles in others are but half thy due.
Upon her forehead Love his trophies fits,
A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying:
And in the midst himself full proudly sits,
Himself in awful majesty arraying:

Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow,

And ready shafts; deadly those weapons show;

Yet sweet the death appear'd, lovely that deadly blow.

*

A bed of lilies flow'r upon her cheek,

And in the midst was set a circling rose;

Whose sweet aspect would force Narcissus seek

New liveries, and fresher colours choose

To deck his beauteous head in snowy 'tire;

But all in vain: for who can hope t' aspire

To such a fair, which none attain, but all admire?

Her ruby lips lock up from gazing sight

A troop of pearls, which march in goodly row;
But when she deigns these precious bones undight,
Soon heavenly notes from those divisions flow,
And with rare music charm the ravish'd ears,
Daunting bold thoughts, but cheering modest fears:
The spheres so only sing, so only charm the spheres.

Yet all these stars which deck this beauteous sky
By force of th' inward sun both shine and move;
Thron'd in her heart sits love's high majesty;
In highest majesty the highest love,

As when a taper shines in glassy frame,

The sparkling crystal burns in glittering flame,

So does that brightest love brighten this lovely dame.

GILES FLETCHER was younger than his brother, but neither the date of his birth, nor the period of his death has been preserved. His only impor tant poetical production is a sacred poem entitled Christ's Victory and Triumph. There is a massive grandeur and earnestness about this performance, which strike the imagination with great force. The materials of the poem are more harmoniously linked together than those of the 'Purple Island.' Hallam remarks that, both of these brothers are deserving of much praise they were endowed with minds eminently poetical, and not inferior in imagination to any of their contemporaries. But an injudicious taste, and an excessive fondness for a style which the public was fast abandoning, that of allegorical personification, prevented their powers from being effectively displayed.' Campbell also observes that, they were both the disciples of Spenser, and with his diction gently modernized, retained much of his melody and luxuriant expression. Giles, inferior as he is to Spenser and Milton, might be figured in his happiest moments, as a link of connection in our poetry between these congenial spirits, for he reminds us of both, and evidently gave hints to the latter in a poem on the same subject with Paradise Regained.'

We shall close our notice of these brother poets with the following passage from 'Christ's Victory and Triumph:

THE RAINBOW.

High in the airy element there hung
Another cloudy sea, that did disdain,

As though his purer waves from heaven sprung,
To crawl on earth, as doth the sluggish main:
But it the earth would water with his rain,
That ebb'd and flow'd as wind and season would;
And oft the sun would cleave the limber mould
To alabaster rocks, that in the liquid roll'd.

Beneath those sunny banks a darker cloud,
Dropping with thicker dew, did melt apace,
And bent itself into a hollow shroud,

On which, if Mercy did but cast her face,
A thousand colours did the bow enchase,
That wonder was to see the silk distain'd
With the resplendence from her beauty gain'd,

And Iris paint her locks with beams so lively feign'd.

About her head a cypress heaven she wore,
Spread like a vail, upheld with silver wire,
In which the stars so burnt in golden ore,
As seem'd the azure web was all on fire:
But hastily, to quench their sparkling ire,
A flood of milk came rolling up the shore,
That on his curded wave swift Argus wore
And the immortal swan, that did her life depiore.

Yet strange it was so many stars to see,
Without a sun to give their tapers light;
Yet strange it was not that it so should be;
For, where the sun centers himself by right,
Her face and locks did flame, that at the sight
The heavenly vail, that else should nimbly move,
Forgot his flight, and all incensed, with love,

With wonder and amazement, did her beauty prove.

Over her hung a canopy of state,
Not of rich tissue nor of spangled gold,
But of a substance, though not animate,
Yet of a heavenly and spiritual mould,
That only eyes of spirits might behold:
Such light as from main rocks of diamond,

Shooting their sparks at Phoebus, would rebound,

And little angels, holding hands, danced all around.

THOMAS CAREW was of an ancient family, and was born in Gloucestershire in 1589. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, after which he travelled, for some time, upon the continent, and on his return to England, entered into the service of Charles the First, by whom he was made gentleman of the privy chamber, and was personally very highly esteemed. From this period his life was that of a courtier-witty, affable, and accomplished-without reflection; and in a strain of loose revelry which, according to Lord Clarenden, 'he deeply repented in his latter days.' He died in 1639, not having quite attained the fiftieth year of his age.

Carew was the precursor and representative of a numerous class of poetscourtiers of a gay and gallant school, who, to personal accomplishments, rank, and education, united a taste and talent for the conventional poetry then most popular and most cultivated. Their visions of fame were, in general, bounded by the circle of the court and of the nobility. To live in future generations, or to sound the depth of the human heart, seems not to have entered into their contemplations. A 'rosy cheek or coral lip' formed their