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ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

[BORN at Horsham St. Faith's, Norfolk, about 1562; entered the Society of Jesus, 1578, at Rome; accompanied Father Garnet to England, was captured; and was executed at Tyburn, 1594-5. St. Peter's Complaint, with other Poems, was first published in 1595; Maeoniae in the same year; Marie Magdalen's Funerall Teares, 1609.]

Southwell's poems enjoyed a vast popularity in the last decade of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. St. Peter's Complaint, first printed in 1595, was again and again re-issued in that and the immediately following years. Both Hall and Marston refer to it in their Satires. 'Never,' says Bolton in his Hypercritica, must be forgotten St. Peter's Complaint and those other serious poems said to be father Southwell's; the English whereof, as it is most proper, so the sharpness and light of wit is very rare in them.'

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No doubt this popularity was greatly due to the deep interest and pity excited by his misfortunes, encountered and borne with so rare a constancy. No Protestant could be so desperately bigoted as not to be touched by the sad yet noble story of what this young English gentleman dared and endured. Whatever may be thought of his cause, one can only admire the fearless devotion with which he gave himself up to it, reckless of danger, of torture, of death. 'Let antiquity,' says one whose office it then was to suppress so far as might be the efforts often at least miserably misguided, of the confederacy to which Southwell belonged, 'boast of its Roman heroes and the patience of captives in torments; our own age is not inferior to it, nor do the minds of the English cede to the Romans. There is at present confined one Southwell, a Jesuit, who, thirteen times most cruelly tortured, cannot be induced to confess anything, not even the colour of the horse whereon on a certain day he rode, lest from such indication his adversaries might conjecture in what house, or in company of what Catholics, he that day was.' He was only about twenty-four years of age-the exact year of his birth is not ascertained-when along with Garnet (afterwards associated with the

Gunpowder Plot, as was believed, and on evidence never yet successfully rebutted), he returned to England on his perilous mission. Some six years afterwards he fell into his enemies' hands. For three years he was closely confined in the Tower; and then came the ignominious end at Tyburn. Such a story could not but move men,—the story of a spirit so strong in its faith, zealous, inflexible.

Nor would those who were drawn to his writings by sympathy with his martyrdom fail to see in them the reflection of his lofty and devoted nature. Nearly all his poetry must have been written in the valley of the shadow of death, some of it in death's very presence. And throughout it we perceive the thoughts and beliefs that ever inspired and upheld him. Especially dear and welcome and present is the idea that 'Life is but loss.' Death is cruel, not for coming, but for delaying to come. This has often been said, but never with an intenser sincerity and conviction. This death,' he said just before 'the horses were started and the car removed from his feet' and he was hanged, although it may now seem base and ignominious, can to no rightly-thinking person appear doubtful but that it is beyond measure an eternal weight of glory to be wrought in us, who look not to the things which are visible, but to those which are unseen.' We may be sure these words were with him no vulgar commonplace.

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And apart from their attraction as revealing the secret of his much-enduring spirit, his poems show a true poetic power. They show a rich and fertile fancy, with an abundant store of effective expression at its service. He inclines to sententiousness; but his sentences are no mere prose edicts, as is so often the case with writers of that sort; they are bright and coloured with the light and the hues of a vivid imagination. In imagery, indeed, he is singularly opulent. In this respect St. Peter's Complaint reminds one curiously of the almost exactly contemporary poem, Shakespeare's Lucrece. There is a like inexhaustibleness of illustrative resource. He delights to heap up metaphor on metaphor. Thus he describes Sleep as

'Death's ally, oblivion of tears,

Silence of passions, blame of angry sore,

Suspense of loves, security of fears,

Wrath's lenity, heart's ease, storm's calmest shore;
Senses' and souls' reprieval from all cumbers,

Benumbing sense of ill with quiet slumbers.'

St. Peter's Complaint reminds one of Lucrece also in the minuteness of its narration, and in the unfailing abundance of thought and fancy with which every detail is treated. It is undoubtedly the work of a mind of no ordinary copiousness and force, often embarrassed by its own riches, and so expending them with a prodigal carelessness. Thus Southwell's defects spring not from poverty, but from imperfectly managed wealth; or, to use a different image, the flowers are overcrowded in his garden, and the blaze of colour is excessive. Still, flowers they are. Like many another Elizabethan, he was wanting in art; his genius ran riot.

I i

VOL. J.

JOHN W. HALES.

TIMES GO BY TURNS.

The lopped tree in time may grow again;
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorest wight may find release of pain,
The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower;
Times go by turns and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb;

Her time hath equal times to come and go,

Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web; No joy so great but runneth to an end,

No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring,
No endless night yet not eternal day;
The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay;
Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise yet fear to fall.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
The well that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are cross'd,
Few all they need, but none have all they wish;
Unmeddled joys here to no man befall,
Who least hath some, who most hath never all.

LOSS IN DELAY.

Shun delays, they breed remorse ;

Take thy time while time is lent thee;

Creeping snails have weakest force,

Fly their fault lest thou repent thee.
Good is best when soonest wrought,
Linger'd labours come to nought.

Hoist up sail while gale doth last,

Tide and wind stay no man's pleasure; Seek not time when time is past,

Sober speed is wisdom's leisure.
After-wits are dearly bought,
Let thy forewit guide thy thought.
Time wears all his locks before,

Take thy hold on his forehead;
When he flies he turns no more,
And behind his scalp's naked.
Works adjourn'd have many stays,
Long demurs breed new delays.
Seek thy salve while sore is green,
Fester'd wounds ask deeper lancing;
After-cures are seldom seen,

Often sought, scarce ever chancing.
Time and place give best advice,
Out of season, out of price.

Crush the serpent in the head,

Break ill eggs ere they be hatch'd; Kill bad chickens in the tread,

Fledged, they hardly can be catch'd.

In the rising stifle ill,

Lest it grow against thy will.

Drops do pierce the stubborn flint,

Not by force but often falling;

Custom kills with feeble dint,

More by use than strength and vailing.

Single sands have little weight,

Many make a drawing freight.

Tender twigs are bent with ease,

Aged trees do break with bending ;

Young desires make little prease1,

Growth doth make them past amending

Happy man, that soon doth knock

Babel's babes against the rock!

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