"What? you would faine haue all the great ones freed? They must not for their vices be controld: MORTON. The Frenchman made an empty boast of his courage when he said, Je ne puis rien nommer si ce n'est pas son nom, J'appelle un chat un chat, et Rolet un fripon, but he took special care to name nobody whose anger could do him injury in the quarter which he most aimed to please. BOURNE. Wither says elsewhere, that he only names the vices, not those who flourished in them, and he makes no vain pretensions to individual designation: yet the result showed the truth of what Lod. Barry excellently says in his Ram Alley, in Dodsley's Collection, "All great mens sins must still be humoured, The privilege that great men have in evil ELLIOT. Exceedingly well; but I am longing to see something more by the satirist in your hand. BOURNE. The following quotation is from the first satire of the first book " Of the passion of Love." "Counsels in vaine, cause when the fit doth take them Reason and understanding doth forsake them ; The Swart West Indian, or the tawny Moore. But how now? Wast not you, saies one, that late Like 't what I now dislike, emploi'd good times As are obiected: From my heart I sent As well as others; looke, where I haue seene As if I thought the places did containe Tis no such cause that made me change my minde; But my affection that before was blind, Rash and vnruly, now begins to find, That it hath run a large and fruitlesse race I neuer did dislik't, nor neuer will, So it be vertuous, and contein'd within The bounds of Reason; but when t'will begin I must, because I cannot chuse but speake. ELLIOT. There is not only uncommon ease in the running of the lines, but frequently great force in the very familiarity of the expressions. We have no right to complain that he is not very original on such a theme. BOURNE. The number and variety of his works prove, that he must have composed with very great rapidity. These satires were written in 1611, when the author was only 23 years old, and for that age they show great acuteness and extent of observation. MORTON. In the beginning of the extract Wither seems to allude to some work of his own, under the title of " Aretophils Complaint.". Is that extant ?\ BOURNE. It is not, though some have confounded it with his poem of the Mistress of Philarete.""Aretophils Complaint" (which he afterwards called "Philaretes Complaint") is mentioned by Wither as one of his earliest pieces in the catalogue I before spoke of, and he there states that it was lost in manuscript. It was most likely addressed to the lady he alludes to in what I just read, and who rejected him. We will proceed to the fourth Satire on Envy, where the passion is thus happily described': ,『,,》 "But what is this, that men are so inclind It makes them grieue when any man is friended, Others prosperitie doth make them leane; Their hellish thoughts; and then their bleared eies In the last line her is misprinted their: it is an obvious error, which I corrected. MORTON. And makes nonsense of the conclusion of a fine passage. ELLIOT. It is a fine passage upon the whole, though there are weak lines in it. The qualities of Envy have seldom been better described by any of the thousand writers that have touched it. The finest character that Churchill ever wrote, I mean that in the beginning of his Rosciad, is not much better than part of what you have just read. |