But ran herself away alone;

Which when they heard, there was not one
But hasted after to be gone,

As she had been diswitted.

Hop, and Mop, and Drab so clear,
Pip and Trip, and Skip, that were
To Mab their sovereign so dear,

Her special maids of honour;
Fib, and Tib, and Pink, and Pin,
Tick, and Quick, and Jill, and Jin,
Tit, and Nit, and Wap, and Win,
The train that wait upon her.

Upon a grasshopper they got,
And, what with amble and with trot,
For hedge nor ditch they spared not,
But after her they hie them:

A cobweb over them they throw,
To shield the wind if it should blow;
Themselves they wisely could bestow
Lest any should espy them.

JOSEPH HALL.

Here should not be omitted a name of great note, that of Joseph Hall, who was born in 1574, and was successively bishop of Exeter and Norwich, from the latter of whicn sees, having been expelled by the Long Parliament, he died, after protracted sufferings from imprisonment and poverty, in 1656. Hall began his career of authorship by the publication of Three Books of Satires, in 1597, while he was a student at Cambridge, and only in his twenty-third year. A continuation followed the next year under the title of Virgidemiarum the Three last Books; and the whole were afterwards republished together, as Virgidemiarum Six Books; that is, six books of bundles of rods. "These satires," says Warton, who has given an elaborate analysis of them, "are marked with a classical precision to which English poetry had yet early attained. They are replete with animation of style and sentiment. . . . The characters are delineated in strong and lively colouring, and their discriminations are touched with the masterly traces of genuine humour.

...

Hall's

The versification is equally energetic and elegant, and the fabric of the couplets approaches to the modern standard."* Satires have been repeatedly reprinted in modern times.

SYLVESTER.

One of the most popular poets of this date was Joshua Sylvester, the translator of The Divine Weeks and Works, and other productions, of the French poet Du Bartas. Sylvester has the honour of being supposed to have been one of the early favourites of Milton.† In one of his publications he styles himself a Merchant-Adventurer, and he seems to have belonged to the Puritan party, which may have had some share in influencing Milton's regard. His translation of Du Bartas was first published in 1605; and the seventh edition (beyond which, we believe, its popularity did not carry it) appeared in 1641. Nothing can be more uninspired than the general run of Joshua's verse, or more fantastic and absurd than the greater number of its more ambitious passages; for he had no taste or judgment, and, provided the stream of sound and the jingle of the rhyme were kept up, all was right in his notion. His poetry consists chiefly of translations from the French; but he is also the author of some original pieces, the title of one of which, a courtly offering from the poetical Puritan to the prejudices of King James, may be quoted as a lively specimen of his style and genius :-" Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered, about their ears that idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at leastwise overlove so loathsome a vanity, by a volley of holy shot thundered from Mount Helicon."§ But, with all his general flatness and frequent absurdity, Sylvester has an uncommon flow of harmonious words at times, and occasionally even some fine lines and felicitous expressions. His

*Hist. of Eng. Poet. iv. 338.

+ Milton's obligations to Sylvester were first pointed out in Considerations on Milton's Early Reading, and the Prima Stamina of his Paradise Lost, together with Extracts from a Poet of the Sixteenth Century, by the Rev. Charles Dunster (who had a few years before produced his well-known edition of the Paradise Regained). 1800.

Ritson, in his Bibliographia Poetica, makes the edition of 1613 to have been only the third; but it is called the fourth on the title-page. § 8vo. Lond. 1615.

contemporaries called him the "Silver-tongued Sylvester," for what they considered the sweetness of his versification-and some of his best passages justify the title. Indeed, even when the substance of what he writes approaches nearest to nonsense, the sound is often very graceful, soothing the ear with something like the swing and ring of Dryden's heroics. But, after a few lines, is always sure to come in some ludicrous image or expression which destroys the effect of the whole. The translation of Du Bartas is inscribed to King James in a most adulatory and elaborate Dedication, consisting of a string of sonnet-shaped stanzas, ten in all, of which the two first are a very fair sample of the mingled good and bad of Sylvester's poetry :

To England's, Scotland's, France', and Ireland's king;
Great Emperor of Europe's greatest isles;
Monarch of hearts, and arts, and everything

Beneath Bootes, many thousand miles;

Upon whose head honour and fortune smiles;
About whose brows clusters of crowns do spring;

Whose faith him Champion of the Faith enstyles;
Whose wisdom's fame o'er all the world doth ring:
Mnemosyne and her fair daughters bring

The Daphnean crown to crown him laureate ;
Whole and sole sovereign of the Thespian spring,
Prince of Parnassus and Pierian state;

And with their crown their kingdom's arms they yield,
Thrice three pens sunlike in a Cynthian field;
Signed by themselves and their High Treasurer
Bartas, the Great; engrossed by Sylvester.

Our sun did set, and yet no night ensued;
Our woeful loss so joyful gain did bring.
In tears we smile, amid our sighs we sing;
So suddenly our dying light renewed.
As when the Arabian only bird doth burn

Her aged body in sweet flames to death,
Out of her cinders a new bird hath breath,
In whom the beauties of the first return;
From spicy ashes of the sacred urn

Of our dead Phenix, dear Elizabeth,

A new true Phenix lively flourisheth,

Whom greater glories than the first adorn.
So much, O King, thy sacred worth presume-I-on,
James, thou just heir of England's joyful un-i-on.

It is not to be denied that there is considerable skill in versifi

cation here, and also some ingenious rhetoric; but, not to notice the pervading extravagance of the sentiment, some of the best sounding of the lines and phrases have next to no meaning; and the close of each stanza, that of the last in particular, is in the manner of a ludicrous travesty. Many of Sylvester's conceits, however, belong to the original upon which he worked, and which upon the whole may be considered as fairly represented, perhaps occasionally improved, in his translation. Some passages are very melodiously given-the following, for instance, the commencement of which may put the reader in mind of Milton's "Hail, holy light! offspring of heaven first-born":

All hail, pure lamp, bright, sacred, and excelling;
Sorrow and care, darkness and dread repelling;
Thou world's great taper, wicked men's just terror,
Mother of truth, true beauty's only mirror,
God's eldest daughter; O! how thou art full
Of grace and goodness! O! how beautiful!

But yet, because all pleasures wax unpleasant
If without pause we still possess them present,
And none can right discern the sweets of peace
That have not felt war's irksome bitterness,
And swans seem whiter if swart crows be by
(For contraries each other best descry),
The All's architect alternately decreed

That Night the Day, the Day should Night succeed.
The Night, to temper Day's exceeding drought,
Moistens our air, and makes our earth to sprout:
The Night is she that all our travails eases,
Buries our cares, and all our griefs appeases:
The Night is she that, with her sable wing
In gloomy darkness hushing every thing,
Through all the world dumb silence doth distil,
And wearied bones with quiet sleep doth fill.

Sweet Night! without thee, without thee, alas !
Our life were loathsome, even a hell, to pass;
For outward pains and inward passions still,
With thousand deaths, would soul and body thrill.
O Night, thou pullest the proud masque away
Wherewith vain actors, in this world's great play,
By day disguise them. For no difference
Night makes between the peasant and the prince,
The poor and rich, the prisoner and the judge,
The foul and fair, the master and the drudge,

The fool and wise, Barbarian and the Greek;
For Night's black mantle covers all alike.

He that, condemned for some notorious vice,
Seeks in the mines the baits of avarice,
Or, melting at the furnace, fineth bright
Our soul's dire sulphur, resteth yet at night.
He that, still stooping, tugs against the tide

His laden barge alongst a river's side,

And, filling shores with shouts, doth melt him quite,
Upon his pallet resteth yet at night.

He that in summer, in extremest heat
Scorched all day, in his own scalding sweat,
Shaves with keen scythe the glory and delight
Of motley meadows, resteth yet at night,
And in the arms of his dear pheer forgoes
All former troubles and all former woes.
Only the learned Sisters' sacred minions,
While silent Night under her sable pinions
Folds all the world, with painless pain they tread
A sacred path that to the heavens doth lead;
And higher than the heavens their readers raise
Upon the wings of their immortal lays.

CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

Of the translators from the ancients in this age, by far the greatest is Chapman. George Chapman was born at Hitching Hill, in the county of Hertford, in 1557, and lived till 1634. Besides his plays, which will be afterwards noticed, he is the author of several original poetical pieces; but he is best and most favourably known by his versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. "He would have made a great epic poet," Charles Lamb has said, in his Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets, turning to these works after having characterized his dramas, "if, indeed, he has not abundantly shown himself to be one: for his Homer is not so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written. The earnestness and passion which he has put into every part of these poems would be incredible to a reader of mere modern translations. His almost Greek zeal for the honour of his heroes is only paralleled by that fierce spirit of Hebrew bigotry with which Milton, as if personating one of the zealots of the old law, clothed himself when he sat 2 N

VOL. I.