and simplicity of expression, and a more than common portion of metrical har mony. He is supposed, on the authority of an epitaph in the church of Norton, a village in Northamptonshire, to have died on the 22d of June, 1624.* 3. BROWNE, WILLIAM, was born at Tavistock, in Devonshire, in 1590, and, there is reason to suppose, began very early to cultivate his poetical talents; for in the first book of his "Britannias Pastorals," which were published in folio, in 1613, when in his twenty-third year, he speaks of himself, "as weake in yeares as skill", which leads to the supposition that his earlier pastorals were written before he had attained the age of twenty. Indeed, all his poetry appears to have been written previous to his thirtieth year. In 1614, he printed in octavo, "The Shepherd's Pipe," in seven eclogues; in 1616, the second part of his "Britannias Pastorals" was given to the public, and in 1620, his "Inner Temple Mask" is supposed to have been first exhibited. Browne enjoyed a large share of popularity during his life-time; numerous commendatory poems are prefixed to the first edition of his pastorals; and, in a copy of the second impression of 1625, in the possession of Mr. Beloe, and which seems to have been a presentation copy to Exeter College, Oxford, of which Browne was a member and Master of Arts, there are thirteen adulatory addresses to the poet, from different students of this society, and in the handwriting of each. Among his earliest eulogists are found the great characters Selden, Drayton, and Jonson, by whom he was highly respected both as a poet and as a man; and as a still more imperishable honour, we must not forget to mention, that he was a favourite with our divine Milton. Until lately, however, he has been under little obligation to subsequent times; nearly one hundred and fifty years elapsed before a third edition of his poems employed the press; this came out in 1772, under the auspices of Mr. Thomas Davies, and, with the exception of some extracts] in Hayward's British Muse, this long interval passed without any attempt to revive his fame, by any judicious specimens of his genius. A more propitious era followed the republication of Davies; in 1787, Mr. Headley obliged us with some striking proofs of, and some excellent remarks on, his beauties; in 1792, his whole works were incorporated in the edition of the poets, by Dr. Anderson; in 1801, Mr. Ellis gave further extension to his fame by additional examples, and in 1810 his productions again became a component part of a body of English poetry in the very elaborate and comprehensive edition of the English poets, by Mr. Chalmers. Still it appears to us, that sufficient justice has not, since the era of Milton, been paid to his talents; for, though it be true, as Mr. Headley has observed, that puerilities, forced allusions, and conceits, have frequently debased his materials; yet are these amply atoned for by some of the highest excellencies of his art; by an imagination ardent and fertile, and sometimes sublime; by a vivid personification of passion; by a minute and truly faithful delineation of rural scenery; by a peculiar vein of tenderness which runs through the whole of his pastorals, and by a versification uncommonly, varied and melodious. With these are combined a species of romantic extravagancy which sometimes heightens, but more frequently degrades, the effect of his pictures. Had he exhibited greater judgment in the selection of his imagery, and greater simplicity in his style, hist claim on posterity would have been valid, had been general and undisputed. Browne is conjectured by Wood to have died in the winter of 1645. § Shaw's Staffordshire, vol. i. p. 442. Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, p. 143. Chalmers's English Poets, vol. vi. p. 268. col. 2. It is sufficient praise, however, to remark, that Milton, both in his L'Allegro and his Lycidas, is under many obligations to our author. We are told by Prince, in his "Worthies of Devonshire," that as Browne "had honoured his country with his sweet and elegant Pastorals, so it was expected, and he also entreated a little farther to grace it, by his drawing out the line of his poetic ancestors, beginning in Joseph Iscanus, and endtng in himself." Had this design been executed, how much more full and curious had our information been with regard to 4. Chalkhill, John. This poet was the intimate friend of Spenser, a genman, a scholar, and, to complete the encomium, a man of strict moral character. He was the author of a pastoral history, entitled, "Thealma and Clearchus;" but he died," relates Mrs. Cooper, "before he could perfect even the Fable of his poem, and, by many passages in it, I half believe, he had not given the last hand to what he has left behind him. However, to do both him and his editor justice, if my opinion can be of any weight, 'tis great pity so beautiful a relique should be lost; and the quotations I have extracted from it will sufficiently evidence a fine vein of imagination, a taste far from being indelicate, and both language and numbers uncommonly harmonious and polite." The editor alluded to by Mrs. Cooper was the amiable Isaac Walton, who published this elegant fragment in 8vo, in 1683, when he was ninety years old, and who has likewise inserted two songs by Chalkhill in his "Complete Angler."+ The pastoral strains of Chalkhill merit the eulogium of their female critic; the versification, more especially, demands our notice, and may be described, in many instances, as possessing the spirit, variety, and harmony of Dryden. To verify this assertion, let us listen to the following passages; describing the Golden age, he informs us, Their sheep found cloathing, earth provided food, How beautifully versified is the opening of his picture of the Temple of Diana! "Within a little silent grove hard by, As the wind gave it Being: so sweet an air Pourtraying the cell of an Enchantress, he says, "About the walls lascivious pictures hung, Muses Library, p. 317, 319, 327. Mr. Beloe, in the first volume of his Anecdotes, p. 70, has given us a Latin epitaph on a John Chalkhill, copied from Warton's History of Winchester. This inscription tells us, that the person whom it commemorates died a Fellow of Winchester College, on the 20th of May, 1679, aged eighty; and yet Mr. Beloe, merely from similarity of name and character, contends that this personage must have been the Chalkhill of Isaac Walton; a supposition which a slight retrospection as to dates would have proved impossible. Walton, in the title Shakspeare and his contemporaries, and how much is it to be lamented that so noble a scheme was relinquished. Since these critical notices were written, Sir Egerton Brydges has favoured the world with some hitherto unpublished poems of Browne; productions which not only support the opinions given in the text, but which tend very considerably to heighten our estimation of the genius and imagination of this fie old bard. Bagster's edit. 1808. p. 156, 276. Muses Library, 1741. p. 315. page of Thealma and Clearchus, describes Chalkhill as an acquaintance and friend of Edmund Spenser; now as Spenser died in January, 1598, and the subject of this epitaph, aged 80, in 1679, the latter must consequently have been born in 1599, the year after Spenser's death! The coincidence of character and name is certainly remarkable, but by no means improbable or unexampled. 5. CHAPMAN, GEORGE, who was born in 1557, and died in 1634, aged seventyseven, is here introduced as the principal translator of his age; to him we are indebted for Homer, Musæus, and part of Hesiod. His first published attempt on Homer appeared in 1592,* under the title of "Seaven Bookes of the Shades of Homer, Prince of Poets;" and shortly after the accession of James the First, the entire Iliad was completed and entitled, "The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets. Never before in any language truly translated. With a comment upon some of his chief places: done according to the Greeke." This version, which was highly prized by his contemporaries, is executed in rhymed couplets, each line containing fourteen syllables; a species of versification singularly cumbrous and void of harmony; and, notwithstanding this protracted metre, fidelity is, by no means, the characteristic of Chapman. He is not only often very paraphrastic, but takes the liberty of omitting, without notice, what he could not comprehend. It has been asserted by Pope, that a daring fiery spirit, something like what we might imagine Homer himself to have written before he arrived to years of discretion, animates his translation, and covers his defects; an opinion which seems rather the result of partiality than unbiassed judgment; for though Chapman is certainly superior to his successor Hobbes, and occasionally exhibits some splendid passages, he must be considered by every critic of the present day as, in general, coarse, bombastic, and often disgusting; a violator, indeed, in almost every page, of the dignity and simplicity of his original. The magnitude and novelty of the undertaking, however, deserved and met with encouragement, and Chapman was induced, in 1614, to present the world with a version of the Odyssey. This is in the pentameter couplet; inferior in vigour to his Iliad, but in diction and versification more chaste and natural. Of his Musæus and his Georgics of Hesiod, we shall only remark that the former was printed in 1616, the latter in 1618, and that the first, which we have alone seen, does not much exceed the character of mediocrity. As an original writer, we shall have to notice Chapman under the dramatic department, and shall merely add now, that he was, in a moral light, a very estimable character, and the friend of Spenser, Shakspeare, Marlowe, Daniel, and Drayton. 6. CHURCHYARD, THOMAS. This, author merits notice rather for the quantity than the quality of his productions, though a few of his pieces deserve to be rescued from utter oblivion. He commenced a writer, according to his own account,† in the reign of King Edward the Sixth, and as Wood informs us, that at the age of seventeen he went to seek his fortune at court, and lived four years with Howard, Earl of Surry, who died 1546, it is probable that he was born about 1524. Shrewsbury had the honour of producing him, and he continued publishing poetical tracts until the accession of James the First. Ritson has given us a catalogue, which might be enlarged, of seventeen of his publications, with dates, from 1558 to 1599, independent of a variety of scattered pieces; some of these are of such bulk as to include from twelve to twenty subjects, and in framing their titles the old bard seems to have been very partial to alliteration; for we have "Churchyards Chippes, 1575; Churchyards Choice, 1579; Churchyards Charge, 1580; Churchyards Change; Churchyards Chance, 1680; Churchyards Challenge, 1593; and Churchyards Charity, 1595." In the "Mirror See Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 83. Ritson has erroneously dated this publication 1598. lu his "Challenge" he tells us, that his first publication was "a book named Davie Dicars Dream, un King Edward's daies.” This publication, which was likewise called "A Musicall Consort of heavenly Harmonie," is not mentoned by Ritson. for Magistrates," first published in 1559, he contributed "The Legend of Jane Shore," which he afterwards augmented in his "Challenge," by the addition of twenty-one stanzas; this is perhaps the best of his poetical labours, and contains several good stanzas. His "Worthiness of Wales," also, first published in 1587, and reprinted a few years ago, is entitled to preservation. This painstaking author, as Ritson aptly terms him, died poor on April 4th, 1604, after a daily exertion of his pen, in the service of the Muses, for nearly sixty years. 7. CONSTABLE, HENRY, of whom little more is personally known, than that he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1579;* that he was compelled to leave his native country from a zealous attachment to the Roman Catholic religion, and that venturing to return, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, but released towards the close of 1604. Constable possessed unrivalled reputation with his contemporaries as a writer of sonnets; Jonson terms his muse "ambrosiack;" in "The Return from Parnassus," 1606, we are told that "Sweet Constable doth take the wondring ear And lays it up in willing prisonment; "+ and Bolton calls him "a great master in English tongue," and adds, "nor had any gentleman of our nation a more pure, quick, or higher delivery of conceit; witness, among all other, that Sonnet of his before his Majesty's Lepanto." In consequence of these encomia more modern authors have prolonged the note of praise; Wood describes him as "a noted English poet;" Hawkins, as thefirst, or principal sonnetteer of his time," and Warton, as "a noted sonnet-writer." To justify the reputation thus acquired, we have two collections of his sonnets still existing; one published in 1594, under the title of "Diana, or the excellent conceitful sonnets of H. C., augmented with divers quatorzains of honorable and learned personages, devided into viij Decads ;" and the other a manuscript in the possession of Mr. Todd, consisting of sonnets divided into three parts, each part containing three several arguments, and every argument seven sonnets.‡ From the specimens which we have seen of his Diana, and from the sonnet extracted by Mr. Todd from the manuscript collection, there can be little hesitation in declaring, that the reputation which Constable once enjoyed, was built upon no stable foundation, and that mediocrity is all which the utmost indulgence of the present age can allow him. 8. DANIEL, SAMUEL, a poet and historian of no small repute, was born near Taunton, in Somerset hire, in 1562. Having received a classical education at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and being afterwards enabled to pursue his studies under the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke's family, he became the most correct poet of his age. He commenced author as early as 1585, by a translation of Paulus Jovius's Discourse of rare Inventions; but his first published poems appear to have been his Delia, a collection of Sonnets, with the complaint of Rosamond, 1592. He continued to write until nearly the close of his life, for the Second Part of his History of England was published in 1618, and he died on the 14th of October, 1619. Of the poetry of Daniel, omitting for the present all notice of his dramatic works, the most important are his "Sonnets to Delia," the "History of the Civil war," the "Complaint of Rosamond," and the "Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius;" the remainder consisting of occasional pieces, and principally of Epistles to his friends and patrons. The Sonnets are not generally constructed on the legitimate or Petrarcan model; but they present us with some beautiful versification and much pleasing imagery. * Vide Bibliographia Poetica, p. 169. Todd's Milton, 2d edit. vol. vi. p. 439. Ancient British Drama, vol. i. p. 49. col. I The "Civil Wars between the two houses of Lancaster and York," the first four books of which were published in 1595, and the eighth and last in 1609, form the magnum opus of Daniel, and to which he looked for fame with posterity. That be has been disappointed, must be attributed to his having too rigidly adhered to the truth of history; for aspiring rather at the correctness of the annalist than the fancy of the poet, he rarely attempts the elevation of his subject by any flight of imagination, or digressional ornaments. Sound morality, prudential wisdom, and occasional touches of the pathetic, delivered in a style of then unequalled chastity and perspicuity, will be recognised throughout his work; but neither warmth, passion, nor sublimity, nor the most distant trace of enthusiasm can be found to animate the mass. In the "Complaint of Rosamond," and in the "Letter from Octavia," he has copied the manner of Ovid, though with more tenderness and pathos than are usually found in the pages of the Roman. In short, purity of language, elegance of style, and harmony of versification, together with an almost perfect freedom from pedantry and affectation, and a continual flow of good sense and just reflection, form the merits of Daniel, and resting on these qualities he is entitled to distinguished notice, as an improver of our diction and taste; but to the higher requisites of his art, to the fire and invention of the creative bard, he has few pretensions. Daniel was the intimate friend of Shakspeare, Marlowe, Chapman, Camden, and Cowel; and was so highly esteemed by the accomplished Anne, Countess of Pembroke, that she not only erected a monument to his memory in Beckington church, Somersestshire, but in a full length of herself, at Appleby Castle in Cumberland, had a small portrait of her favourite poet introduced. This partiality seems to have sprung from a connection not often productive of attachment; Daniel had been her tutor when she was only thirteen years old, and in his poem he addresses an epistle to her at this early age, which, as Mr. Park has justly said, "deserves entire perusal for its dignified vein of delicate admonition." "Dissatisfied with the opinions of his contemporaries as to his poetical merit, which appears to have been similar to the estimate that we have just given, he relinquished the busy world, and spent the closing years of his life in the cultivation of a farm. 9. DAVIES, SIR JOHN, was born at Chisgrove in Wiltshire, in 1570. Though a lawyer of great eminence, he is chiefly known to posterity through the medium of his poetical works. His "Nosce Teipsum," or poem on the Immortality of the Soul, on which his fame rests, was published in 1599, and not only secured him the admiration of his learned contemporaries, among whom may be recorded the great names of Camden, Harrington, Jonson, Selden, and Corbet, but accelerated his professional honours; for being introduced to James in Scotland, in order to congratulate him on his accession to the throne of England, the king, on hearing his name, enquired if he was Nosce Teipsum?" and being answered in the affirmative, graciously embraced him, and took him into such favour, that he soon made him his Solicitor, and then Attorney-General in Ireland. Besides this philosophical poem, the earliest of which our language can boast, Sir John printed, in 1596, a series of Epigrams, which were published at MiddleLurg, at the close of Marlowe's translation of Ovid's Epistles, and in the same year the first edition of his "Orchestra, or a poeme of dauncing;" these, with twenty-six acrostics on the words Elizabetha Regina, printed in 1599, and entitled Hymns of Astræa," complete the list of his publications. His "Nosce Teipsum" is a piece of close reasoning in verse, peculiarly harmonious for the period in which it appeared. It possesses, also, wit, ingenuity, vigour and condensation of thought, but exhibits few efforts of imagination, and nothing that is either pathetic or sublime. In point of argument, metaphysical acuteness and legitimate deduction, the English poet is, in every respect, superior to his classical model Lucretius; but how greatly does he fall beneath the fervid genius and creative fancy of the Latian bard! |