WILLIAM BROWNE. [Born, 1590. Died, 1645.] WILLIAM BROWNE was the son of a gentleman of Tavistock, in Devonshire. He was educated at Oxford, and went from thence to the Inner Temple, but devoted himself chiefly to poetry. In his twenty-third year he published the first part of his Britannia's Pastorals, prefaced by poetical eulogies, which evince his having been, at that early period of life, the friend and favourite of Selden and Drayton. To these testimonies he afterwards added that of Ben Jonson. In the following year he published the Shepherd's Pipe, of which the fourth eclogue is often said to have been the precursor of Milton's Lycidas. A single simile about a rose constitutes all the resemblance! In 1616 he published the second part of his Britannia's Pastorals. His Masque of the Inner Temple was never printed, till Dr. Farmer transcribed it from a MS. of the Bodleian library, for Thomas Davies's edition of Browne's works, more than 120 years after the author's death. He seems to have taken his leave of the Muses about the prime of his life, and returned to Oxford, in the capacity of tutor to Robert Dormer, Earl of Caernarvon, who fell in the battle of Newbury, 1643. After leaving the university with that nobleman, he found a liberal patron in William, Earl of Pembroke, whose character, like that of Caernarvon, still lives among the warmly coloured and minutely touched portraits of Lord Clarendon. The poet lived in Lord Pembroke's family; and, according to Wood, grew rich in his employment. But the particulars of his history are very imperfectly known, and his verses deal too little with the business of life to throw much light upon his circumstances. His poetry is not without beauty; but it is the beauty of mere landscape and allegory, without the manners and passions that constitute human interest. SONG. GENTLE nymphs, be not refusing, They and beauty are but lent you; Let her not be out of favour. SONG. SHALL I tell you whom I love? Nature did her so much right, As e'er yet embraced a heart. Wit she hath, without desire To make known how much she hath; And her anger flames no higher Than may fitly sweeten wrath. Full of pity as may be, Though perhaps not so to me. Time never can produce men to o'ertake EVENING. As in an evening when the gentle air FROM BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS. BETWEEN two rocks (immortal, without mother)* Yet that their happy voyage might not be Without time's shortener, heaven-taught melody *This description coincides very strikingly with the scenery of the Tamar, in Devonshire. Browne, who was a native of that county, must have studied it from nature. (Music that lent feet to the stable woods, Least thou shouldst wanting be, when swans would fain Have sung one song, and never sung again) Nevermore let holy Dee O'er other rivers brave, Kings row'd upon his wave. That Neptune for my fare would row.... Swell then, gently swell, ye floods, See the salmons leap and bound To please us as we pass, Blow, but gently blow, fair wind, Till we have ferried o'er: H THOMAS HEYWOOD. [Died, 1649.] THOMAS HEYWOOD was the most prolific writer in the most fertile age of our drama.* In the midst of his theatrical labours as an actor and poet, he composed a formidable list of prose works, and defended the stage against the puritans, in a work that is full of learning. One of his projects was to write the lives of all poets that were ever distinguished, from the time of Homer downwards. Yet it has happened to the framer of this gigantic design to have no historian so kind to his own memory as to record either the period of his death, or the spot that covers his remains. His merits entitled him to better remembrance. He composed indeed with a careless rapidity, and seems to have thought as little of Horace's precept of • sæpe stylum vertas" as of most of the injunctions in the Art of Poetry. But he possesses considerable power of interesting the affections, by placing his plain and familiar characters in affecting situations. The worst of him is, that his commonplace sentiments and plain incidents fall not only beneath the ideal beauty of art, but are often more fatiguing than what we meet with in the ordinary and unselected circumstances of life. When he has hit upon those occasions where the passions should obviously rise with accumulated expression, he lingers on through the scene with a dull and level indifference. The term artlessness may be applied to Heywood in two very opposite senses. His pathos is often artless in the better meaning of the word, because its objects are true to life, SCENE IN THE TRAGEDY "A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS." GRIEF OF FRANKFORD, AFTER DISCOVERING HIS WIFE'S INFIDELITY AND DISMISSING HER. Enter CRANWEL, FRANKFORD, and NICHOLAS. Cran. WHY do you search each room about your house, Now that you have despatch'd your wife away? [corner. Nic..... Master, here's her lute flung in a Fran. Her lute? Oh God! upon this instrument Her fingers have ran quick division, Swifter than that which now divides our hearts. These frets have made me pleasant, that have now Frets of my heart-strings made. O master Cranwel, [* He had, as he himself tells us, "either an entire hand, or at the least a main finger, in two hundred and twenty plays." He was a native of Lincolnshire.-C.] and their feelings naturally expressed. But he betrays still more frequently an artlessness, or we should rather call it, a want of art, in deficiency of contrivance. His best performance is, "A Woman killed with Kindness." In that play the repentance of Mrs. Frankford, who dies of a broken heart, for her infidelity to a generous husband, would present a situation consummately moving, if we were left to conceive her death to be produced simply by grief. But the poet most unskilfully prepares us for her death, by her declaring her intentions to starve herself; and mars, by the weakness, sin, and horror of suicide, an example of penitence that would otherwise be sublimely and tenderly edifying. The scene of the death of Mrs. Frankford has been deservedly noticed for its pathos by an eminent foreign critic, Mr. Schlegel, who also commends the superior force of its inexorable morality to the reconciling conclusion of Kotzebue's drama on a similar subject. The learned German perhaps draws his inference too rigidly. Mrs. Frankford's crime was recent, and her repentance and death immediately follow it; but the guilt of the other tragic penitent, to whom Mr. S. alludes, is more remote, and less heinous; and to prescribe interminable limits, either in real or imaginary life, to the generosity of individual forgiveness, is to invest morality with terrors, which the frailty of man and the mercy of Heaven do not justify. Oft hath she made this melancholy wood NICHOLAS overtakes MRS. FRANKFORD with her lute. Anne. I know the lute; oft have I sung to thee: We both are out of tune, both out of time. Nic. My master commends him unto ye; there's all he can find that was ever yours: he hath nothing left that ever you could lay claim to but his own heart, and he could not afford you that. All that I have to deliver you is this; he prays you to forget him, and so he bids you farewell. Anne. I thank him; he is kind, and ever was. All you that have true feeling of my grief, That know my loss, and have relenting hearts, Gird me about; and help me, with your tears, To wash my spotted sins: my lute shall groan; It cannot weep, but shall lament my moan. Mr. Schlegel, however, is mistaken in speaking of him as anterior to Shakspeare, evidently confounding him with an older poet of the name. DEATH OF MRS. FRANKFORD. FROM THE SAME. Persons.-MR. MALBY, MRS. ANNE FRANKFORD, FRANKFORD, Mal. Yes, Mrs. Frankford: divers gentlemen, Anne. You have half revived me with the pleasing news: My prostrate soul lies thrown down at your feet I'll wish to die with thee. All. So do we all. Acton. O, Mr. Frankford, all the near alliance I lose by her, shall be supplied in thee; You are my brother by the nearest way, Her kindred hath fallen off, but yours doth stay. Fran. Even as I hope for pardon at that day, When the great judge of heaven in scarlet sits, So be thou pardon'd. Though thy rash offence Divorced our bodies, thy repentant tears Unite our souls. Char. Then comfort, mistress Frankford; You see your husband hath forgiven your fall; Then rouse your spirits, and cheer your fainting Sus. How is it with you? Acton. How d'ye feel yourself? Anne. Not of this world. [soul. Fran. I see you are not, and I weep to see it. My wife, the mother to my pretty babes; Both those lost names I do restore thee back, And with this kiss I wed thee once again: Though thou art wounded in thy honour'd name, And with that grief upon thy death-bed liest, Honest in heart, upon my soul thou diest. Anne. Pardon'd on earth, soul, thou in heaven art free Once more! thy wife dies thus embracing thee. Acton. Peace with thee, Nan. Brothers and gentlemen, (All we that can plead interest in her grief) A WITTLING SET UP BY A POET'S LEGACY. FROM "THE FAIR MAID OF THE EXCHANGE." Cripple. WHY, think'st thou that I cannot write Ditty, or sonnet, with judicial phrase, [a letter, As pretty, pleasing, and pathetical, As any Ovid-imitating dunce In all the town? Frank. I think thou canst not. Crip. Yea, I'll swear I cannot : Yet, sirrah, I could cony-catch the world, Frank. I prithee how? Crip. Why thus: there lived a poet in this town (If we may term our modern writers poets,) Sharp-witted, bitter-tongued, his pen of steel, His ink was temper'd with the biting juice, And extracts of the bitterest weeds that grew: He never wrote but when the elements Of fire and water tilted in his brain. This fellow, ready to give up his ghost To Luciae's bosom, did bequeath to me His library, which was just nothing SONG OF NYMPHS TO DIANA.] HAIL, beauteous Dian, queen of shades, Virginity we all profess, Than we to her have vow'd. And freely thus they may do. Of every steepy mountain; We drink the pleasant fountain. The shepherds, satyrs, &c. WILLIAM DRUMMOND. [Born, 1585. Died, 1649.] THIS poet was born at Hawthornden, his father's estate in Mid-Lothian, took a degree at the university of Edinburgh, studied the civil law in France, and, returning home, entered into possession of his paternal estate, and devoted himself to literature. During his residence at Hawthornden he courted, and was on the eve of marrying, a lady of the name of Cunningham. Her sudden death inspired him with a melancholy which he sought to dissipate by travelling. He accordingly visited France, Italy, and Germany, and, during a stay of eight years on the continent, conversed with the most polished society, and studied the objects most interesting to curiosity and taste. He collected at the same time a number of books and manuscripts, some of which are still in the library of his native university. On his second return to Scotland he found the kingdom distracted by political and religious ferment, and on the eve of a civil war. What connection this aspect of public affairs had with his quitting Hawthornden, his biographers have not informed us, but so it was, that he retired to the seat of his brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a man of letters, and probably of political sentiments congenial with his own. At his abode he wrote his History of the Five James's, Kings of Scotland, a work abounding in false eloquence and slavish principles. Having returned at length to settle himself at his own seat, he married a lady of the name of Logan, of the house of Restalrig, in whom he fancied a resemblance to his former mistress, and repaired the family mansion of Hawthornden, with an inscription importing his hopes of resting there in honourable case. But the times were little suited to promote his wishes; and on the civil war breaking out he involved himself with the covenanters, by writing in support of the opposite side, for which his enemies not only called him to a severe account, but compelled him to furnish his quota of men and arms to support the cause which he detested. His estate lying in different counties, he contributed halves and quarters of men to the forces that were raised; and on this occasion he wrote an epigram, bitterly wishing that the imaginary division of his recruits might be realized on their bodies. His grief for the death of Charles is said to have shortened his days. Such stories of political sensibility may be believed on proper evidence. The elegance of Drummond's sonnets, and the humour of his Scotch and Latin macaronics, have been at least sufficiently praised: but when Milton has been described as essentially obliged to him, the compliment to his genius is stretched too far. A modern writer, who edited the works of Drummond, has affirmed, that, "perhaps," if we had had no Drummond, we should not have seen the finer delicacies of Milton's Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso. "Perhaps" is an excellent leading-string for weak assertions. or two epithets of Drummond may be recognised in Milton, though not in the minor poems already mentioned.* It is difficult to apply any precise One [* The only passage in Milton that looks like borrowing from Drummond is in Lycidas: Gray, who borrowed always and ably, adopted one of his lines into his Elegy too exact and uncommon to be called a resemblance: Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.-C.] |