Cromwellian effusion, that "the Merry Monarch" noticed it to the would-be Laureate. "Poets succeed much better in fiction, Sire, than in truth," was the unabashed wit's courtly reply.

A DIFFERENT fate befel another poet under similar circumstances of poetic pliability and royal remembrance. Luigi Alamanni, who is as well known for his politics as his poetry, having entered into a conspiracy to overthrow the power of the Medici family in Florence, his native city; on the elevation of Guilio de Medici to the Pontificate, he left Italy and attached himself to the French monarch Francis I. During his residence at the court of that Prince, he wrote a poem called "The Eagle," against the Emperor Charles V. making the imperial Eagle a bird of prey, well carnaged, and at the same time, a sort of monster, with two heads and two beaks, that it might be doubly destructive.

L'Aquila grifagna

Che per più divorar, duoi rostri porta.

Ox the re-establishment of peace between these Potentates, Signor Alamanni, whose abilities as a statesman, were highly estimated by the French King, was despatched by him as Ambassador to the Emperor. The envoy made a grand oration, attributing to his imperial Majesty, the great and noble qualities of the King of birds. As the diplomatic orator often repeated "l'Aquila," and before he had completed his peroration, the Emperor repeated gravely

L'Aquila grifagna

Che per più divorar, duoi rostri porta.

To which quotation Alamanni, nothing abashed, as

gravely replied that when he wrote those verses, he spoke as a poet, but now as an ambassador; that it was allowable for poets to lie, but Ambassadors should always speak the truth. Magnanimo Principe," said the audacious envoy, "allora io raggionava come gli Poeti aquali è lecito di favoleggiare io raggiono in questo discorso come un Ambasciatore che non devo fingere."

ROBERT HERRICK too, sang in this grim and rugged period, but it was in foreign lands, to which he was exiled for loyalty to his King, and fidelity to his church, of which he was an appointed minister. Rather than remain at home with a people whom he loved not, and whose violence he abhorred, he suffered, in common with many other faithful members of the episcopal clergy, deprivation of his benefice, and followed the broken fortunes of his fellow royalists. During this exile he wrote his sorrows and his hopes, his threnodic and his nuga, his "Hesperides" a garden of fruits human and divine. This genuine poet deserves a better notoriety than as a writer of the pretty but hacknied ballad of "Cherry ripe," whilst some of the brightest of his golden apples are ungathered, although unguarded by any dragon. Read the following epitaph upon a babe, sweet and gentle as the subject of his verse;

HERE she lies, a pretty bud,

Lately made of flesh and blood:
Who, as soon fell fast asleep,

As her little eyes did peep.

Give her strewings; but not stir
The earth that lightly covers her.

Or one to a lady who died in child-bed and left a female infant to survive her:

As Gilly-flowers do but stay

To blow and seed, and so away;

So you, sweet Lady, sweet as May,
The garden's glory, liv'd awhile

To lend the world your scent and smile.
But when your own fair print was set,
In a virgin flosculet,

Sweet as yourself and newly blown,
To give that life, resign'd your own :
But so, as still the mother's power
Lives in that pretty Lady-flower.

Or another who died in maidenhood :

HERE she lies, in bed of spice,
Fair as Eve in Paradise:

For her beauty it was such
Poets could not praise too much.
Virgins, come, and in a ring
Her supremest Requiem sing;
Then depart, but see ye tread
Lightly, lightly, on the dead.

His epitaph upon a clerical friend, a residentiary, is full of suggestive thoughts upon the remains of him he wept, and of the times in which he departed from the troubled world.

TREAD, Sirs, as lightly as you can,
Upon the grave of this old man.
Twice forty, bating but one year

And thrice three weeks, he lived here,
Whom gentle fate translated hence,
To a more happy residence.

Yet, READER, let me tell thee this,
Which from his ghost a promise is,
If here ye will a few tears shed
He'll never haunt you, now he's dead.

The poet, herein, not only alludes to the ancient wish, Sit tibi terra levis, but also to their belief, that till the funeral rites had been fulfilled, and the tears of relatives and friends duly shed upon the grave, the ghost of the deceased could enjoy no rest but would haunt their slumbers till the pious debt had been paid.

MALHERBE wrote an epitaph upon a centenarian in a different spirit, when he makes his old man, desire the reader to judge of him by the regret which Death had to take him from a world, in which he had lived so long, and with such glory.

N'attend PASSANT, que de ma gloire,

Je te fasse une longue histoire,

Pleine de langage indiscret.

Que se loüe irrite l'envie :

Juge de moi par le regret

Qu'eut la Mort de m'ôter la vie.

ONE of Herrick's epitaphs upon himself, for he wrote several, he addresses to his melodious namesake, Robin Redbreast, to whom he gives the following instructions for his simple funeral.

LAID out for dead, let thy last kindness be,
With leaves and moss-work, for to cover me;
And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter,
Sing thou my dirge, sweet warbling chorister!
For epitaph, in foliage, next write this-

Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is!

Ir it be said this is too epicurean for a Christian Divine, it may be answered, that it is the pastoral poet, exiled from the tombs of his ancestors, who

speaks. Here, however, is another in a more sober vein.

As wearied pilgrims, once possest

Of long'd for lodgings, go to rest :
So I, now having rid my way,
Fix here my buttoned staff, and stay.
Youth, I confess, hath me misled,

But Age hath brought me, right, to bed.

In the following he laments his exile, and expresses his desire to die at home, and sleep with his ancestors. If that my fate hath now fulfilled my year,

And so soon stopt my longer living here;
What was't, O God! a dying man to save,

But while he met with his paternal grave;
Though while we living 'bout the world do roam,
We love to rest in peaceful urns at home,
Where we may snug and close together lie,
By the dear bones of our dead ancestry.

HERRICK, in another place, addresses the yew and cypress to grace his funeral.

BOTH you two have

Relation to the grave:

And where

The fun'ral trump sounds, you are there.

I shall be made

Ere long, a fleeting shade:

Pray come,

And do some honour to my tomb.

Do not deny

My last request; for I

Will be

Thankful to you, or friends for me.

In the first stanza, the poet alludes to the

yew and