He also hints in some lines which accompany "The Poetaster," how he would soon demonstrate to the world his scholastic and dramatic abilities, as follows:

To strike the ears of Time in these fresh strains
As shall, beside the cunning of their ground,
Give cause to some of wonder, some despite,
And more despair to imitate their sound.
I, that spend half my nights and all my days
Here in a cell, to get a dark, pale face,
To come forth with the ivy and the bays,
And in this age can hope no better grace,

Leave me! There's something come into my thought,
That must and shall be sung high and aloof,

Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof."

The "wolf's black jaw" and the "dull ass's hoof" 66 rare Ben" seems to have thought too good not to be repeated, and so we find it once more in "An Ode to Himself." First he says:

"What though the greedy fry

Be taken with false baits

Of worded balladry,

And think it poesy?

They die with their conceits,

And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.

“Then take in hand thy lyre,

Strike in thy proper strain."

After this the poet, who had earned some bread and much reputation by writing for the stage, gets his "jaw" and "hoof" in again :

"And since our dainty age

Cannot endure reproof,
Make not thyself a page
To that strumpet the stage ;
But sing high and aloof
Safe from the wolf's black jaw
And the dull ass's hoof."

B. 1576.

ROBERT BURTON.

D. 1640.

BURTON was said to have hastened the day of his death in order to enjoy the posthumous repute of having in his own epitaph correctly calculated the date of his departure. His "Anatomy of Melancholy" had a large reputation in its day, and no library is complete without it at the present time. Swift, Johnson, and Byron resorted to it for its literary anecdotes and learned quotations.

"Yet thus much I will say of myself," writes Burton, "and that I hope without all suspicion of pride or self-conceit, I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, mihi et musis, in the University, as long almost as Xenocrates in Athens, ad senectam ferè, to learn wisdom as he did, penned up most part in my study, for I have been brought up a student in the most flourishing college of Europe."

B. 1591.

ROBERT HERRICK.

D. 1674.

IT is a pity that decency requires an expurgated edition of an author among whose writings such charming lyrics are to be found as the "Dirge of Jephthah's Daughter;" but Herrick was a contemporary of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, and yielded, of course, to the prevailing standard of public taste. Being ejected by Cromwell from his church living in 1648, he dropped his title of "Reverend" to assume that of "Esquire," and published a volume to which he gave the title of "Hesperides; or, the Works both Humane and Divine, of Robert Herrick, Esq."

Doubtless the "Esquire" was accepted by the public, as well as by himself, as more appropriate than "Reverend" would have been to the character of the lyrics, some part of which he yet seems rather arrogantly to call "Divine."

But, whether "Reverend" or "Esquire," "His Poetrie his Pillar" uncovers a rank growth of conceit, as the following extracts will show:

"How many lye forgot

In Vaults beneath?

And piecemeal rot
Without a fame in death?

"Behold this living stone,

I reare for me,

Ne'er to be thrown

Downe, envious Time, by thee.

"Pillars let some set up,
If so they please;
Here is my hope,
And my Pyramides."

B. 1608.

JOHN MILTON.

D. 1674.

WHEN we remember that Milton obtained only ten pounds for his "Paradise Lost," while Hoyle obtained two hundred for his work on Whist, it is not easy to see any foundation for vanity, even if his song should a “fit audience find, though few," as he expected; but it is very plain that the greatest of English poets was not unconscious of his lofty merits. After saying that he was

he adds,

"Not sedulous by nature to incite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deemed,"

"Me of these

Nor skilled, nor studious higher argument
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise

That name, unless an age too late, or cold

Climate, or years damp my intended wing
Depressed, and much they may, if all be mine,
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear."

When but thirty-three years of age, Milton appears to have had a sublime confidence in his power to produce both prose and verse of exceptional merit, and may have had in his mind some vague idea of his great work in his mother tongue, "Para

dise Lost," brought forth long after, and when he was wholly bereft of eyesight. "I must say, therefore, that after I had for my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father (whom God recompense!) been exercised to the tongues, and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that, whether aught was imposed on me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of my own choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live."

Then, after referring to "encomiums" he had received in Italy, "which the Italian is not forward to bestow upon men of this side of the Alps," he says: "I began thus far to assert both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labor and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.” He was right; the world will "not willingly let it die."

Of his youth he says: "For seven years I studied the learning and arts wont to be taught, far from all vice, and approved of all good men, even till having taken what they call the master's degree, and that with praise."