done the two parts of his Britannia's Pastorals were reprinted together in 1625; and a piece called The Inner Temple Masque, and a few short poems, were published for the first time in an edition of his works brought out, under the care of Dr. Farmer, in 1772; but the last thirty years of his life would seem, in so far as regards original production, to have been a blank. Yet a remarkable characteristic of his style, as well as of Wither's, is its ease and fluency; and it would appear, from what he says in one of the songs of his Pastorals, that he had written part of that work before he was twenty. His poetry certainly does not read as if its fountain would be apt soon to run dry. His facility of rhyming and command of harmonious expression are very great; and, within their proper sphere, his invention and fancy are also extremely active and fertile. His strength, however, lies chiefly in description, not the thing for which poetry or language is best fitted, and a species of writing which cannot be carried on long without becoming tiresome; he is also an elegant didactic declaimer; but of passion, or indeed of any breath of actual living humanity, his poetry has almost none. This, no doubt, was the cause of the neglect into which after a short time it was allowed to drop; and this limited quality of his genius may also very probably have been the reason why he so soon ceased to write and publish. From the time when religious and political contention began to wax high, in the latter years of King James, such poetry as Browne's had little chance of acceptance; from about that date Wither, as we have seen, who also had previously written his Shepherd's Hunting, and other similar pieces, took up a new strain; and Browne, if he was to continue to be listened to, must have done the same, which he either would not or could not. Yet, although without the versatility of Wither, and also with less vitality than Wither even in the kind of poetry which is common to the two, Browne rivals that writer both in the abundance of his poetic vein and the sweetness of his verse; and the English of the one has nearly all the purity, perspicuity, and unfading freshness of style which is so remarkable in the other. Here is a specimen from the reply of Remond to the love-tale of his brother shepherd, in the first Song of the first Book of Britannia's Pastorals:

Have thy stars malign been such,
That their predominations sway so much

Over the rest, that with a mild aspect
The lives and loves of shepherds do affect?

Then do I think there is some greater hand
Which thy endeavours still doth countermand.
Wherefore I wish thee quench the flame thus moved,
And never love except thou be beloved;

For such an humour every woman seizeth,

She loves not him that plaineth, but that pleaseth.
When much thou lovest, most disdain comes on thee;
And, when thou think'st to hold her, she flics from thee.
She, followed, flies; she, fled from, follows post,
And loveth best where she is hated most.

"Tis ever noted, both in maids and wives,
Their hearts and tongues are never relatives ;-
Hearts full of holes (so elder shepherds sayn),
As apter to receive than to retain.
Whose crafts and wiles did I intend to show,
This day would not permit me time, I know:
The day's swift hours would their course have run,
And dived themselves within the ocean,

Ere I should have performed half my task,
Striving their crafty subtleties to unmask.
And, gentle swain, some counsel take of me:

Love not still where thou may'st; love who loves thee;

Draw to the courteous; fly thy love's abhorrer;

And, if she be not for thee, be not for her.

If that she still be wavering, will away,

Why should'st thou strive to hold what will not stay? This maxim reason never can confute:

Better to live by loss than die by suit.

Favour and pity wait on patience;

And hatred oft attendeth violence.

If thou wilt get desire whence love hath pawned it,
Believe me, take thy time, but ne'er demand it.
Women, as well as men, retain desire,

But can dissemble more than men their fire.

Be never caught with looks, nor self-wrought rumour,
Nor by a quaint disguise, nor singing humour.

Those outside shows are toys which outwards snare;
But virtue, lodged within, is only fair.

If thou hast seen the beauty of our nation,

And find'st her have no love, have thou no passion ;
But seek thou further: other places, sure,

May yield a face as fair, a love more pure.
Leave, oh then leave, fond swain, this idle course;

For love's a good no mortal wight can force.

And here is another short extract from the second Song, exemplifying Browne's more habitual manner, on ground where all the descriptive poets have been competitors :

Not all the ointments brought from Delos isle,
Nor from the confines of seven-headed Nile;
Nor that brought whence Phenicians have abodes;
Nor Cyprus' wild vine flower; nor that of Rhodes ;
Nor rose's oil from Naples, Capua;

Saffron confected in Cilicia;

Nor that of quinces, nor of marjoram,
That ever from the isle of Coos came:

Nor these, nor any else, though ne'er so rare,
Could with this place for sweetest smells compare.
There stood the elm, whose shade, so mildly dim,
Doth nourish all that groweth under him:
Cypresses, that like pyramids run topping,
And hurt the least of any by their dropping:
The alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth ;-
Each plant set near to him long flourisheth:
The heavy-headed plane-tree, by whose shade
The grass grows thickest, men are fresher made:
The oak that best endures the thunder-strokes :
The everlasting ebony, cedar, box:

The olive, that in wainscot never cleaves:

The amorous vine, which in the elm still weaves:

The lotus, juniper, where worms ne'er enter:

The pine, with whom men through the ocean venture:
The warlike yew, by which, more than the lance,
The strong-armed English spirits conquered France.
Amongst the rest the tamarisk there stood,

For housewives' besoms only known most good :

The cold-place-loving birch and service tree;

The walnut loving vales, and mulberry ;

The maple, ash, that do delight in fountains

Which have their currents by the sides of mountains;

The laurel, myrtle, ivy, date, which hold

Their leaves all winter, be it ne'er so cold;

The fir, that often-times doth rosin drop;

The beech, that scales the welkin with his top.
All these, and thousand more, within this grove,

By all the industry of nature, strove

To frame an arbour, that might keep within it
The best of beauties that the world hath in it.

PROSE WRITERS:-CHARLES I.

Most of the prose that was written and published in England. in the middle portion of the seventeenth century, or the twenty years preceding the Restoration, was political and theological, but very little of it has any claim to be considered as belonging to the national literature. A torrent of pamphlets and ephemeral polemics supplied the ravenous public appetite with a mental sustenance which answered the wants of the moment, much as the bakers' ovens did with daily bread for the body. It was all devoured, and meant to be devoured, as fast as it was produced -devoured in the sense of being quite used up and consumed, so far as any good was to be got out of it. It was in no respect intended for posterity, any more than the linen and broad-cloth then manufactured were intended for posterity. Still even this busy and excited time produced some literary performances which still retain more or less of interest.

The writings attributed to Charles I. were first collected and published at the Hague soon after his death, in a folio volume without date, under the title of Reliquiæ Sacræ Carolina, and twice afterwards in England, namely, in 1660 and 1687, with the title of BAƐIAIKA: The Works of King Charles the Martyr. If we except a number of speeches to the parliament, letters, despatches, and other political papers, the contents of this col lection are all theological, consisting of prayers, arguments, and disquisitions on the controversy about church government, and the famous Eikon Basiliké, or, The Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings; which, having been printed under the care of Dr. Gauden (after the Restoration successively bishop of Exeter and Worcester), had been first published by itself immediately after the king's execution. It is now generally admitted that the Eikon was really written by Gauden, who, after the Restoration, openly claimed it as his own. Mr. Hallam, however, although he has no doubt of Gauden being the author, admits that it is, nevertheless, superior to his acknowledged writings. "A strain of majestic melancholy," he observes, "is well kept up; but the personated sovereign is rather too theatrical for real nature; the language is too rhetorical and amplified, the periods too artificially elaborated. None but scholars and practised writers employ such a style as

this.' "" # It is not improbable that the work may have been submitted to Charles's revisal, and that it may have received both his approval and his corrections. Charles, indeed, was more in the habit of correcting what had been written by others than of writing anything himself. "Though he was of as slow a pen as of speech," says Sir Philip Warwick, "yet both were very significant; and he had that modest esteem of his own parts, that he would usually say, he would willingly make his own despatches, but that he found it better to be a cobbler than a shoemaker. I have been in company with very learned men, when I have brought them their own papers back from him with his alterations, who ever confessed his amendments to have been very material. And I once, by his commandment, brought him a paper of my own to read, to see whether it was suitable to his directions, and he disallowed it slightingly: I desired him I might call Dr. Sanderson to aid me, and that the doctor might understand his own meaning from himself; and, with his majesty's leave, I brought him whilst he was walking and taking the air; whereupon we two went back; but pleased him as little when we returned it: for, smilingly, he said, a man might have as good ware out of a chandler's shop; but afterwards he set it down with his own pen very plainly, and suitably to his own intentions." The most important of the literary productions which are admitted to be wholly Charles's own, are his papers in the controversy which he carried on at Newcastle in June and July, 1646, with Alexander Henderson, the Scotch clergyman, on the question between episcopacy and presbytery, and those on the same subject in his controversy with the parliamentary divines at Newport in October, 1648. These papers show considerable clearness of thinking and logical or argu. mentative talent; but it cannot be said that they are written with any force or elegance. It is not easy to understand the meaning of Horace Walpole's judgment on Charles's style, that "it was formed between a certain portion of sense, adversity, dignity, and perhaps a little insincerity." What he says of a copy of verses said to have been written by his majesty during his confinement in Carisbrook Castle is more to the purpose: "The poetry is most uncouth and inharmonious; but there are strong thoughts in it, some good sense, and a strain of majestic piety." Though not very polished, indeed, or very like the Royal and Noble Authors.

* Lit. of Eur. iii. 376.