Power then maintained itself even by those arts By which it grew-as justice, labour, love; Reserved sweetness did itself impart Even unto slaves, yet kept itself above, Order there equal was; Time courts ordained What wonder was it, then, if those thrones found PHINEAS AND GILES FLETCHER. These brother-poets were sons of Dr Giles Fletcher, and cousins of Fletcher the dramatist; both were clergymen, whose lives afforded but little variety of incident. Phineas was born in 1584, educated at Eton and Cambridge, and became rector of Hilgay in Norfolk, where he died in 1650. Giles was younger than his brother; the date of his birth has not been ascertained, but is supposed to have been about 1588. He was rector of Alderton in Suffolk, where he died in 1623. The works of PHINEAS FLETCHER consist of the Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, Piscatory Eclogues, and miscellaneous poems. The Purple Island was published in 1633, but written much earlier, as appears from some allusions in it to the Earl of Essex. The name of the poem conjures up images of poetical and romantic beauty, such as we may suppose a youthful admirer and follower of Spenser to have drawn. A perusal of the work, however, dispels this allusion. The Purple Island of Fletcher is no sunny spot 'amid the melancholy main,' but is an elaborate and anatomical description of the body and mind of man. He begins with the veins, arteries, bones, and muscles of the human frame, picturing them as hills, dales, streams, and rivers, and describing with great minuteness their different meanderings, elevations, and appearances. It is admitted that the poet was well skilled in anatomy, and the first part of his work is a sort of lecture fitted for the dissecting-room. Having in five cantos exhausted his physical phenomena, Fletcher proceeds to describe the complex nature and operations of the mind. Intellect is the prince of the Isle of Man, and he is furnished with eight counsellors-Fancy, Memory, the Common Sense, and five external senses. The human fortress, thus garrisoned, is assailed by the Vices, and a fierce contest ensues for the possession of the human soul. At length an angel interposes, and insures victory to the Virtues the angel being King James I., on whom the poet condescended to heap this fulsome adulation. From this sketch of Fletcher's poem, it will be apparent that its worth must rest, not upon plot, but upon isolated passages and particular descriptions. Some of his stanzas have all the easy flow and mellifluous sweetness of Spenser's Faery Queen; but others are marred by affectation and quaintness, and by the tediousness inseparable from long-protracted allegory. His fancy was luxuriant, and, if better disciplined by taste and judgment, might have rivalled the softer scenes of Spenser. GILES FLETCHER published only one poetical production of any length-a sacred poem, entitled Christ's Victory and Triumph. It appeared at Cambridge in 1610, and met with such indifferent success, that a second edition was not called for till twenty years afterwards. There is a massive grandeur and earnestness about Christ's Victory which strikes the imagination. The materials of the poem are better fused together, and more harmoniously linked in connection, than those of the Purple Ísland. Both of these brothers,' says Hallam, are deserving of much praise; they were endowed with minds eminently poetical, and not inferior in imagination to any of their contemporaries. But an injudicious taste, and an excessive fondness for a style which the public was rapidly abandoning, that of allegorical personification, prevented their powers from being effectively displayed.' According to 'Campbell: They were both the disciples of Spenser, and, with his diction gently modernised, retained much of his melody and luxuriant expression. Giles, inferior as he is to Spenser and Milton, might be figured, in his happiest moments, as a link of connection in our poetry between these congenial spirits, for he reminds us of both, and evidently gave hints to the latter in a poem on the same subject with Paradise Regained. These hints are indeed very plain and obvious. The appearance of Satan as an aged sire 'slowly footing' in the silent wilderness, the temptation of our Saviour in the 'goodly garden,' and in the Bower of Vain Delight, are outlines which Milton adopted and filled up in his second epic, with a classic grace and force of style unknown to the Fletchers. To the latter, however, belong the merit of original invention, copiousness of fancy, melodious numbers, and language at times rich, ornate, and highly poetical. If Spenser had not previously written his Bower of Bliss, Giles Fletcher's Bower of Vain Delight would have been unequalled in the poetry of that day; but probably, like his master, Spenser, he copied from Tasso. Decay of Human Greatness. Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness, Where is the Assyrian lion's golden hide, 1 Places. Or he which, 'twixt a lion and a pard, Hardly the place of such antiquity, Or note of these great monarchies we find: Only a fading verbal memory, And empty name in writ is left behind : But when this second life and glory fades, And sinks at length in time's obscurer shades, A second fall succeeds, and double death invades. That monstrous beast, which, nursed in Tiber's fen, Backed, bridled by a monk, with seven heads yoked stands. And that black vulture1 which with deathful wing Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and death, And life itself 's as flit as is the air we breathe. Description of Parthenia, or Chastity. With her, her sister went, a warlike maid, Parthenia, all in steel and gilded arms; In needle's stead, a mighty spear she swayed, With which, in bloody fields and fierce alarms, The boldest champion she down would bear, And like a thunderbolt wide passage tear, Flinging all to the earth with her enchanted spear. Her goodly armour seemed a garden green, Ever the same, but new in newer date : And underneath was writ, 'Such is chaste single state.' Thus hid in arms she seemed a goodly knight, But when she list lay down her armour bright, Choice nymph! the crown of chaste Diana's train, Upon her forehead Love his trophies fits, Yet sweet the death appeared, lovely that deadly blow.... 1 The Turk. A bed of lilies flower upon her cheek, Her ruby lips lock up from gazing sight Yet all these stars which deck this beauteous sky As when a taper shines in glassy frame, The Sorceress of Vain Delight. From Christ's Victory and Triumph. By Giles Fletcher. That lay as if she slumbered in delight, The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right Upon a hilly bank her head she cast, And with green fillets in their pretty cauls them bound. What should I here depaint her lily hand, Over the hedge depends the graping elm, The roof thick clouds did paint, from which three boys, The naked boys unto the water's fall And all about, embayed in soft sleep, A herd of charmed beasts aground were spread, Once men they lived, but now the men were dead, Through this false Eden, to his leman's bower- ... High over all, Panglorie's blazing throne, By the smooth crystal, that, most like her glass, A silver wand the sorceress did sway, Whose colours, like the rainbow, ever vanished. Such watery orbicles young boys do blow 'Love is the blossom where there blows Only bend thy knee to me, 'See, see! the flowers that below And of all the virgin rose, That as bright Aurora shews: How they all unleaved lie Losing their virginity; But now born and now they fade. All the valleys' swimming corn Is gladly bruised to make me wine; Thy wooing shall thy winning be.' Thus sought the dire enchantress in his mind So with her sire to hell she took her flight- But to their Lord, now musing in his thought, All thought to pass, and each was past all thought divine. The birds' sweet notes, to sonnet out their joys, And to the birds the winds attune their noise; That the whole valley rung with victory. But now our Lord to rest doth homewards fly: See how the night comes stealing from the mountains high. WILLIAM BROWNE. WILLIAM BROWNE (1590-1645) was a pastoral and descriptive poet, who, like Phineas and Giles Fletcher, adopted Spenser for his model. He was a native of Tavistock, in Devonshire, and the beautiful scenery of his native county seems to have inspired his early strains. His descriptions are vivid and true to nature. Browne was tutor to the Earl of Carnarvon, and on the death of the latter at the battle of Newbury in 1643, he received the patronage and lived in the family of the Earl of Pembroke. In this situation he realised a competency, and according to Wood, purchased an estate. He died at Ottery-St-Mary (the birthplace of Coleridge) in 1645. Browne's works consist of Britannia's Pastorals, the first part of which was published in 1613, the second part in 1616. He wrote also a pastoral poem of inferior merit, entitled The Shepherd's Pipe. In 1620, a masque by Browne was produced at court, called The Inner Temple Masque; but it was not printed till a hundred and twenty years after the author's death, transcribed from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library. As all the poems of Browne were produced before he was thirty years of age, and the best when he was little more than twenty, we need not be surprised at their containing marks of juvenility, and frequent traces of resemblance to previous poets, especially Spenser, whom he warmly admired. His pastorals obtained the approbation of Selden, Drayton, Wither, and Ben Jonson. Britannia's Pastorals are written in the heroic couplet, and contain much beautiful descriptive poetry. Browne had great facility of expression, and an intimate acquaintance with the phenomena of inanimate nature, and the characteristic features of the English landscape. Why he has failed in maintaining his ground among his contemporaries, must be attributed to the want of vigour and condensation in his works, and the almost total absence of human interest. His shepherds and shepherdesses have nearly as little character as the silly sheep' they tend; whilst pure description, that 'takes the place of sense,' can never permanently interest any large number of readers. So completely had some of the poems of Browne vanished from the public view and recollection, that, had it not been for a single copy of them possessed by the Rev. Thomas Warton, and which that poetical student and antiquary lent to be transcribed, it is supposed there would have remained little of those works which their author fondly hoped would Keep his name enrolled past his that shines Warton cites the following lines of Browne, as containing an assemblage of the same images as the morning picture in the L'Allegro of Milton: By this had chanticleer, the village cock, Browne celebrated the death of a friend under the name of Philarete in a pastoral poem; and Milton is supposed to have copied his plan in Lycidas. There is also a faint similarity in some of the sentiments and images. Browne has a very fine illustration of a rose : Look, as a sweet rose fairly budding forth Betrays her beauties to th' enamoured morn, A Descriptive Sketch. O what a rapture have I gotten now! If you yourselves should come to add one grace Here the fine setting of well-shaded trees, It, with the rest, draws on your lingering eye: Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price- So please the smelling sense, that you are fain Evening. As in an evening, when the gentle air I oft have sat on Thames' sweet bank, to hear Night. The sable mantle of the silent night Rooks to their nests in high woods now were flung, And with their spread wings shield their naked young. When thieves from thickets to the cross-ways stir, The Syrens' Song. From The Inner Temple Masque. Steer hither, steer your winged pines, All beaten mariners; Here lie Love's undiscovered mines A prey to passengers; So recently as 1852, a third part of Britannia's Pastorals was first printed, from the original manuscript, preserved in the library of Salisbury Cathedral. Though imperfect, this continuation is in some passages fully equal to the earlier portions. The following (in the original spelling) is part of a description of Psyche : Her cheekes the wonder of what eye beheld Where all the graces and the loves repose. Yet shewd her selfe imperfect in the close, When that she spoake, as at a voice from heaven On her sweet words all eares and hearts attended; When that she sung, they thought the planetts seaven By her sweet voice might well their tunes have mended; When she did sighe, all were of joye bereaven; And when she smyld, heaven had them all befriended. If that her voice, sighes, smiles, soe many thrilled, Her slender fingers (neate and worthy made Joyned to a palme whose touch woulde streight invade And bring a sturdy heart to lowe subjection. O happy braceletts! but more happy he A complete edition of Browne's works was published in 1868 by W. C. Hazlitt. SCOTTISH POETS. ALEXANDER SCOTT. While Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and other poets were illustrating the reign of Elizabeth, the muses were not wholly neglected in Scotland. There was, however, so little intercourse between the two nations, that the works of the English bards seem to have been comparatively unknown in the north, and to have had no Scottish imitators. The country was then in a rude and barbarous state, tyrannised over by the nobles, and torn by feuds and dissensions. In England, the Reformation had proceeded from the throne, and was accomplished with little violence or disorder. In Scotland, it uprooted the whole form of society, and was marked by fierce contentions and wild turbulence. The absorbing influence of this ecclesiastical struggle was unfavourable to the cultivation of poetry. It shed a gloomy spirit over the nation, and almost proscribed the study of romantic literature. The drama, which in England was the nurse of so many fine thoughts, so much stirring passion, and beautiful imagery, was shunned as a leprosy, fatal to religion and morality. The very songs in Scotland partook of this religious character; and so widely was the polemical spirit diffused, that ALEXANDER SCOTT, in his New-year Gift to the Queen, in 1562, says: That limmer lads and little lasses, lo, Will argue baith with bishop, priest, and friar. Scott wrote several short satires, and some miscellaneous poems, the prevailing amatory character of which has caused him to be called the Scottish Anacreon, though there are many points wanting to complete his resemblance to the Teian bard. As specimens of his talents, the following two pieces are presented : |