If Potentates reply, Tell men of high condition That rule affairs of state,Their purpose is ambition, Their practice,-only hate. And if they once reply, Tell them that brave it most, They beg for more by spending, Who, in their greatest cost, Seek nothing but commending. And if they make reply, Then give them all the lie. Tell zeal-it lacks devotion; Tell Love-it is but lust; Tell Flesh-it is but dust. Tell Age-it daily wasteth; Tell Honour-how it alters; Tell Beauty-how she blasteth; Tell Wit-how much it wrangles Tell Wisdom-she entangles Herself in over-wiseness. And when they do reply, Straight give them both the lie. Tell Physic-of her boldness; Tell Skill-it is pretension; Tell Charity-of coldness; Tell Law-it is contention. And as they do reply, So give them still the lie. Tell Fortune-of her blindness; Tell Nature-of decay; Tell Friendship-of unkindness; And if they will reply, Tell Arts-they have no soundness, Tell Schools-they want profoundness, If Arts and Schools reply, Give Arts and Schools the lie. Tell Faith-it's fled the City; So when thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blabbing, Although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing, Yet stab at thee who will, MICHAEL DRAYTON. (1563-1631.) DRAYTON was born of comparatively humble parentage in the parish of Atherstone in Warwickshire. In the capacity of page he obtained the patronage of the great. From his earliest years he displayed a warm enthusiasm to become a poet. He is one of the most voluminous of "the rhyming tribe;" his works extend to above 100,000 verses. His" Baron's Wars," a poetical narrative of the civil wars of Edward II.'s reign, were a tribute to the prevailing taste for poetized history. The work on which Drayton's fame rests is the Polyolbion, a minute chorographical description of England, county by county, stream by stream, and hill by hill, in 30 books of Alexandrine metres. Part of the poem is illustrated with notes by the antiquary Selden. He has left also "England's Heroical Epistles," and some smaller pieces. Drayton is a pleasing and sparkling writer; but with no remarkable elevation of fancy or depth of feeling. His great poem tires by the monotony of the measure, and the sameness of its fantastic personi. fications. It is full, however, of fine descriptive passages. Though esteemed to have been of service to James in the intrigues which preceded his accession to the English throne, he was neglected by the king. The facility of Drayton's muse was singular; most of his principal pieces were published before he was thirty years of age. FROM NYMPHIDIA; THE COURT OF FAIRY." He quickly arms him for the field, And puts him on a coat of mail, That, when his foe should him assail, His rapier was a hornet's sting, His helmet was a beetle's head, Yet it did well become him; And for a plume a horse's hair, Himself he on an earwig set, Yet scarce he on his back could get, Ere he himself could settle: He made him turn and stop and bound, FROM THE POLYOLBION." PERSONIFICATION OF THE RIVER SEVERN. Fifth Song. Now Sabrine, as a queen, miraculously fair, Is absolutely plac'd in her imperial chair Of crystal richly wrought, that gloriously did shine, 1 For a combat with King Oberon. Point. from Lat pilum, a javelin. 2 A kind of grass; a rush. English poetry frequently personifies rivers as feminine. Shakespeare has Severn masculine, I. Henry IV. Act 1. Sc. 3.; bu Tyber feminine, Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 1. And as her god-like self, so glorious was her throne, In which himself to sit great Neptune had been known; Whose skirts were to the knee, with coral fringed below, To grace her goodly steps. And where she meant to go, The path was strewed with pearl: which though they orient were, THE STAG HUNT. Thirteenth Song. Now when the hart doth hear 4 The often bellowing hounds to vent his secret leir,3 6 When he hath gotten ground (the kennel cast arrear) And makes amongst the herds, and flocks of shag wool'd sheep, 1 Azure; said to be derived from the name of a blue cloth manufactured at Watchet in Worcestershire. 2 Neptune's queen. 4 Thickets. 5 One of the measures in winding the horn. 3 Lair. • "A deer is imbost when it throws forth bosses or bubbles of foam, or when it swells at the knees with hard hunting. As a dismayed deer in chase embost. Spencer, F. Queen III. 12."-Richardson. But, when as all his shifts his safety still denies, Put quite out of his walk, the ways and fallows tries. The shepherd him pursues, and to his dog doth hollo: When, with tempestuous speed, the hounds and huntsmen follow; His long and sinewy legs then failing him at length, To anything he meets now at his sad decay. The cruel ravenous hounds and bloody hunters near, Some bank or quickset finds: to which his haunch opposed, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. (1564-1616.) THE neglect of Shakespeare by his countrymen, immediately after his own age, has left to the anxious curiosity of modern admiration slight materials for the construction of his biography. Official documents, tradition, and scattered notices in various writers have been carefully gleaned to procure a few meagre facts from which we may trace the great poet's living career. He was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, in April 1564. His father, a wool-comber in that village, though not opulent, seems to have been in good circumstances, since, notwithstanding the burden of a numerous family, he possessed property both in land and houses, and held the highest official dignities of the place. It is alleged that a short course in the Stratford grammar school was all the regular education Shakespeare ever received. The necessity of assistance in his business forced his father to withdraw him early from school. The traditionary anecdotes of his youth indicate anything but the earnest student anxiously expanding the rudimentary acquirements received from a village pedagogue; and yet the question of his learning has employed the elaborate, and often sarcastic and angry erudition of hostile critics. But Shakespeare's "wit" was "made of Atalanta's heels:" an hour of a mind like his could extract the honey, the acquisition of which employed the days and nights of less vigorous intellects. If we cannot believe, in all its circumstances, the traditionary tale of the deer-stealing in Charlecote Park, the angry vengeance of Sir Thomas Lucy, and the forced flight of the poet from his native place; we can yet discern in the compelled hurry of "The hart weepeth at his dying: his tears are held to be precious in medicine."-Compare Shakesp." As you like it," Act II. Sc. 1. |