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Arb. Then I curse my birth! Must this be added to my miseries, That thou art willing too? Is there no stop To our full happiness, but these mere sounds, Brother and sister?

Pan. There is nothing else:

But these, alas! will separate us more
Than twenty worlds betwixt us.

Arb. I have lived

To conquer men, and now am overthrown
Only by words, brother and sister. Where

Have those words dwelling? I will find 'em out,
And utterly destroy 'em; but they are

Not to be grasp'd: let them be men or beasts,
And I will cut 'em from the earth; or towns,
And I will raze 'em, and then blow 'em up:
Let 'em be seas, and I will drink 'em off,
And yet have unquench'd fire left in my breast:
Let 'em be any thing but merely voice.

Pan. But 'tis not in the power of any force, Or policy, to conquer them.

Arb. Panthea,

What shall we do?

Shall we stand firmly here,

And gaze our eyes out?

Pan. 'Would I could do so! But I shall weep out mine.

Arb. Accursed man,

Thou bought'st thy reason at too dear a rate; For thou hast all thy actions bounded in With curious rules, when every beast is free: What is there that acknowledges a kindred, But wretched man? Who ever saw the bull Fearfully leave the heifer that he liked, Because they had one dam?

Pan. Sir, I disturb you

And myself too; 'twere better I were gone.
Arb. I will not be so foolish as I was;
Stay, we will love just as becomes our births,
No otherwise: brothers and sisters may
Walk hand and hand together; so shall we.
Come nearer: Is there any hurt in this?
Pan. I hope not.

Arb. 'Faith, there is none at all:
And tell me truly now, is there not one
You love above me?

Pan. No, by Heaven.

Arb. Why, yet

You sent unto Tigranes, sister.
Pan. True,

But for another: for the truth
Arb. No more,

I'll credit thee; I know thou canst not lie.
Thou art all truth.

Pan. But is there nothing else, That we may do, but only walk? Methinks, Brothers and sisters lawfully may kiss.

Arb. And so they may, Panthea; so will we; And kiss again too; we were too scrupulous And foolish, but we will be so no more.

Pan. If you have any mercy, let me go To prison, to my death, to any thing:

I feel a sin growing upon my blood,

Worse than all these, hotter, I fear, than yours. Arb. That is impossible: what should we do? Pan. Fly, sir, for Heaven's sake.

Arb. So we must; away!

Sin grows upon us more by this delay. [Exeunt several ways.

SIR JOHN DAVIES.

[Born, 1570. Died, 1626.]

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SIR JOHN DAVIES wrote, at twenty-five years of age, a poem on the immortality of the soul; and at fifty-two, when he was a judge and a statesman, another on "the art of dancing." Well might the teacher of that noble accomplishment, in Molière's comedy exclaim, La philosophie est quelque chose mais la danse!

Sir John was the son of a practising lawyer at Tisbury, in Wiltshire. He was expelled from the Temple for beating Richard Martin,† who was afterwards recorder of London; but his talents redeemed the disgrace. He was restored to the Temple, and elected to parliament, where, although he had flattered Queen Elizabeth in his poetry, he distinguished himself by supporting the privileges of the house, and by opposing royal monopolies. On the accession of King James he went to Scotland with Lord Hunsdon, and was received by the new sovereign with flattering cordiality, as author of the poem Nosce Teipsum. In Ireland

[This is not the case; the "Poeme of Dauncing" appeared in 1596, in his twenty-sixth year, and, curious enough, with a dedicatory sonnet "To his very Friend, Ma. Rich. Martin." A copy, supposed unique, is in the Bridgewater Library. The poem was the work of fifteen days. See COLLIER'S Billiographical Catalogue, p. 92. The poet wrote his name DAUYS.-C.]

he was successively nominated solicitor and attorney-general, was knighted, and chosen speaker of the Irish House of Commons, in opposition to the Catholic interest. Two works which he published as the fruits of his observation in that kingdom, have attached considerable importance to his name in the legal and political history of Ireland. On his return to England he sat in parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyne, and had assurances of being appointed chief justice of England, when his death was suddenly occasioned by apoplexy. He married, while in Ireland, Eleanor, a daughter of Lord Audley, by whom he had a daughter, who was married to Ferdinand Lord Hastings, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon. Sir John's widow turned out an enthusiast and a prophetess. A volume of her ravings was published in 1649, for which the revolutionary government sent her to the Tower, and to Bethlehem Hospital.

† A respectable man, to whom Ben Jonson dedicated his Poetaster.

The works are "A Discovery of the Causes why Ireland was never subdued till the beginning of his Majesty's Reign," and "Reports of Cases adjudged in the King's Courts in Ireland."

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What is this knowledge but the sky-stol'n fire,
For which the thief* still chain'd in ice doth sit?
And which the poor rude satyr did admire,
And needs would kiss, but burnt his lips with it...

In fine, what is it but the fiery coach
Which the youth sought, and sought his death
withal,

Or the boy's wings
The sun's hot beams, did melt and let him fall?
And yet, alas! when all our lamps are burn'd,
Our bodies wasted and our spirits spent;
When we have all the learned volumes turn'd,
Which yield men's wits both strength and orna-
ment,

which, when he did approach

What can we know, or what can we discern,
When error chokes the windows of the mind?
The divers forms of things how can we learn,
That have been ever from our birth-day blind?
When reason's lamp, that, like the sun in sky,
Throughout man's little world her beams did spread,
Is now become a sparkle, which doth lie
Under the ashes, half extinct and dead.

How can we hope, that through the eye and ear
This dying sparkle, in this cloudy space,
Can recollect these beams of knowledge clear,
Which were infused in the first minds by grace?
So might the heir whose father hath in play
Wasted a thousand pounds of ancient rent,
By painful earning of one groat a day
Hope to restore the patrimony spent.

The wits that dived most deep and soar'd most high, Seeking man's powers, have found his weakness such;

Skill comes so slow, and time so fast doth fly,
We learn so little and forget so much.

...

For this the wisest of all moral men
Said, "he knew nought but that he did not know."
And the great mocking master mock'd not then,
When he said "Truth was buried deep below."
As spiders, touch'd, seek their web's inmost part;
As bees, in storms, back to their hives return;
As blood in danger gathers to the heart;
As men seek towns when foes the country burn:
If aught can teach us aught, affliction's looks
(Making us pry into ourselves so near)
Teach us to know ourselves beyond all books,
Or all the learned schools that ever were.....
She within lists my ranging mind hath brought,
That now beyond myself I will not go:
Myself am centre of my circling thought:
Only myself I study, learn, and know.

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I know my body's of so frail a kind,
As force without, fevers within can kill;
I know the heavenly nature of my mind,
But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will.

I know my soul hath power to know all things,
Yet is she blind and ignorant in all;

I know I'm one of nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

I know my life's a pain, and but a span;
I know my sense is mock'd in every thing:
And, to conclude, I know myself a man,
Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing. . . .
We seek to know the moving of each sphere,
And the strange cause of th' ebbs and floods of Nile;
But of that clock within our breasts we bear,
The subtle motions we forget the while.
For this few know themselves; for merchants broke
View their estate with discontent and pain;
And seas are troubled, when they do revoke
Their flowing waves into themselves again.
And while the face of outward things we find
Pleasing and fair, agreeable and sweet,
These things transport and carry out the mind,
That with herself the mind can never meet.
Yet if affliction once her wars begin,
And threat the feebler sense with sword and fire,
The mind contracts herself and shrinketh in,
And to herself she gladly doth retire.

REASONS FOR THE SOUL'S IMMORTALITY.
AGAIN, how can she but immortal be,
When, with the motions of both will and wit,
She still aspireth to eternity,

And never rests till she attain to it? . . . .

All moving things to other things do move
Of the same kind, which shows their nature such;
So earth falls down, and fire doth mount above,
Till both their proper elements do touch.
And as the moisture which the thirsty earth
Sucks from the sea to fill her empty veins,
From out her womb at last doth take a birth,
And runs a lymph along the grassy plains.
Long doth she stay, as loth to leave the land
From whose soft side she first did issue make;
She tastes all places, turns to every hand,
Her flowery banks unwilling to forsake.
Yet nature so her streams doth lead and carry,
As that her course doth make no final stay,
Till she herself unto the sea doth marry,
Within whose wat'ry bosom first she lay.
E'en so the soul, which, in this earthly mould,
The spirit of God doth secretly infuse,
Because at first she doth the earth behold,
And only this material world she views.
At first her mother earth she holdeth dear,
And doth embrace the world and worldly things;
She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,
And mounts not up with her celestial wings:

Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught
That with her heavenly nature doth agree;
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented be.

For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth,
Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
Who ever ceased to wish, when he had health,
Or, having wisdom, was not vex'd in mind?

Then, as a bee which among weeds doth fall, Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay,

She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all,
But, pleased with none, doth rise and soar away.

So, when the soul finds here no true content,
And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take,
She doth return from whence she first was sent,
And flies to him that first her wings did make....
Doubtless, all souls have a surviving thought,
Therefore of death we think with quiet mind;
But if we think of being turned to nought,
A trembling horror in our souls we find.

IN WHAT MANNER THE SOUL IS UNITED TO
THE BODY.

BUT how shall we this union well express?
Nought ties the soul, her subtlety is such,
She moves the body which she doth possess,
Yet no part toucheth but by virtue's touch.
Then dwells she not therein as in a tent,
Nor as a pilot in his ship doth sit,
Nor as the spider in his web is pent,
Nor as the wax retains the print in it.

Nor as a vessel water doth contain,
Nor as one liquor in another shed,
Nor as the heat doth in the fire remain,
Nor as the voice throughout the air is spread;

But as the fair and cheerful morning light
Doth here and there her silver beams impart,
And in an instant doth herself unite

To the transparent air, in all and every part. . . .

So doth the piercing soul the body fill,
Being all in all, and all in part diffused;
Indivisible, incòrruptible still,

...

Not forced, encounter'd, troubled, nor confused.

And as the sun above the light doth bring,
Though we behold it in the air below,
So from the Eternal light the soul doth spring,
Though in the body she her powers do show.

THAT THE SOUL IS MORE THAN THE TEMPERA-
TURE OF THE HUMOURS OF THE BODY.

IF she doth, then, the subtle sense excel,
How gross are they that drown her in the blood,
Or in the body's humours temper'd well?
As if in them such high perfection stood.

As if most skill in that musician were,
Which had the best, and best tuned, instrument;
As if the pencil neat, and colours clear,
Had power to make the painter excellent.
Why doth not beauty, then, refine the wit,
And good complexion rectify the will?
Why doth not health bring wisdom still with it?
Why doth not sickness make men brutish still?
Who can in memory, or wit, or will,
Or air, or fire, or earth, or water, find;
What alchymist can draw, with all his skill,
The quintessences of these from out the mind?
If th' elements, which have nor life nor sense,
Can breed in us so great a power as this,
Why give they not themselves like excellence,
Or other things wherein their mixture is?

If she were but the body's quality,

Then we should be with it sick, maim'd, and blind;
But we perceive, where these privations be,
An healthy, perfect, and sharp-sighted mind. . . .

THAT THE SOUL IS MORE THAN A PERFECTION
OR REFLEXION OF THE SENSE.

ARE they not senseless, then, that think the soul
Nought but a fine perfection of the sense,
Or of the forms which fancy doth enrol,
A quick resulting and a consequence?
What is it, then, that doth the sense accuse
Both of false judgments and fond appetites?
What makes us do what sense doth most refuse,
Which oft in torment of the sense delights?...
Could any powers of sense the Roman move,
To burn his own right hand with courage stout?
Could sense make Marius sit unbound, and prove
The cruel lancing of the knotty gout?....
Sense outsides knows-the soul through all things

sees;

Sense, circumstance; she doth the substance view:
Sense sees the bark, but she the life of trees;
Sense hears the sounds, but she the concord true...

Then is the soul a nature which contains
The power of sense within a greater power,
Which doth employ and use the sense's pains,
But sits and rules within her private bower.

THOMAS GOFFE.

[Born, 1592. Died, 1627.]

THIS writer left four or five dramatic pieces, of very ordinary merit. He was bred at Christ's Church, Oxford. He held the living of East Clandon in Surrey, but unfortunately succeeded not only to the living, but to the widow of his

SCENE FROM GOFFE'S TRAGEDY OF "AMURATH, OR THE COURAGEOUS TURK."

ALADIN, husband to the daughter of AMURATH, having rebelled against his father-in-law, is brought captive before him.

Enter at one door, AMURATH, with Attendants; at the other door, ALADIN, his Wife, two Children, in white,-they kneel to AMURATH.

Amur. OUR hate must not part thus. I'll tell thee, prince,

That thou hast kindled Ætna in our breast!
And such a flame is quench'd with nought but
blood-

His blood whose hasty and rebellious blast
Gave life unto the fire!....

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Alad. Why then, I'll, like the Roman Pompey, My dying sight, scorning imperious looks Should grace so base a stroke with sad aspèct. Thus will I muffle up, and choke my groans, Lest a grieved tear should quite put out the name Of lasting courage in Carmania's fame!

Amur. What, still stiff-neck'd? Is this the truce you beg?

Sprinkled before thy face, those rebel brats
Shall have their brains-and their dissected limbs
Hurl'd for a prey to kites !-for, lords, 'tis fit
No spark of such a mountain-threatening fire
Be left as unextinct, lest it devour,
And prove more hot unto the Turkish Empery
Than the Promethean blaze did trouble Jove!-
First sacrifice those brats!

Alad. Wife. Dear father, let thy fury rush on me!
Within these entrails sheath thine insate sword!
And let this ominous and too fruitful womb
Be torn in sunder! for from thence those babes
Took all their crimes; error (hath) made them
guilty-

"Twas nature's fault, not theirs. O if affection
Can work then!-now show a true father's love:
If not, appease those murdering thoughts with me;
For as Jocasta pleaded with her sons
For their dear father, so to a father I
For my dear babes and husband-husband!—
Which shall I first embrace? Victorious father!
Be blunt those now sharp thoughts; lay down

those threats;

[father!

Unclasp that impious helmet; fix to earth
That monumental spear-look on thy child
With pardoning looks, not with a warrior's eye,
Else shall my breast cover my husband's breast,
And serve as buckler to receive thy wounds-
Why dost thou doubt ?-fear'st thou thy daugh-
ter's faith?

Amur. I fear; for after daughter's perjury,
All laws of nature shall distasteful be,
Nor will I trust thy children or thyself.

predecessor, who, being a Xantippe, contributed, according to Langbaine, to shorten his days by the violence of her provoking tongue." He had the reputation of an eloquent preacher, and some of his sermons appeared in print.

Alad. Wife.

O let me kiss, kind father! first the earth
Onwhich you tread, then kiss mine husband's cheek.
Great king, embrace those babes-you are the stock
On which these grafts were planted- [of sap,
Amur. True; and when sprouts do rob the tree
They must be pruned.
[similitudes.
Alad. Wife. Dear father! leave such harsh
By my deceased mother, to whose womb
I was a ten months' burden-by yourself,
To whom I was a pleasing infant once.
Pity my husband and these tender infants!
Amur. Yes; to have them collect a manly strength,
And their first lesson that their dad shall teach them,
Shall be to read my misery,
[shows

Alad. Stern conqueror! but that thy daughter
There once dwelt good in that obdurate breast,
I would not spend a tear to soften thee.
Thou see'st my countries turn'd into a grave!
My cities scare the sun with fiercer flames,
Which turn them into ashes!-all myself
So sleckt and carved, that my amazed blood
Knows not through which wound first to take its
If not on me, have mercy on my babes,
[way!
Which with thy mercy thou may'st turn to love.
Amur. No, Sir, we must root out malicious seed;
Nothing sprouts faster than an envious weed.
We see a little bullock 'mongst an herd,
Whose horns are yet scarce crept from out his front,
Grows on a sudden tall, and in the fields
Frolics so much, he makes his father yield.
A little twig left budding on an elm,
Ungratefully bars his mother's sight from heaven-
I love not future Aladins.

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Alas, these infants!-these weak-sinew'd hands
Can be no terror to these Hector's arms.
Beg, infants-beg, and teach these tender joints
To ask for mercy-learn your lisping tongues
To give due accent to each syllable;
Nothing that fortune urgeth to is base.
Put from your thoughts all memory of descent;
Forget the princely titles of your father.
If your own misery you can feel,
Thus learn of me to weep-of me to kneel. . . . .
1st Child. Good grandsire, see-see how my father
cries!
[ter prays.

Wife. Good father, hear-hear how thy daugh-
Thou that know'st how to use stern warrior's arms,
Learn how to use mild warrior's pity too.....
Amur. Rise, my dear child! as marble against
So I at these obedient showers melt.
Thus I do raise thy husband-thus thy babes,
Freely admitting you to former state. . . . .
Be thou our son and friend.

[rain,

SIR FULKE GREVILLE,

[Born, 1554. Died, 1628.]

WHO ordered this inscription for his own grave: "Servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sydney;" was created knight of the bath at James's coronation,

STANZAS FROM HIS "TREATISE ON HUMAN

LEARNING."

KNOWLEDGE.

A CLIMBING height it is, without a head,
Depth without bottom, way without an end;
A circle with no line environed,
Not comprehended, all it comprehends;
Worth infinite, yet satisfies no mind
Till it that infinite of the Godhead find.
For our defects in nature who sees not?
We enter first, things present not conceiving,
Not knowing future, what is past forgot;
All other creatures instant power receiving
To help themselves: man only bringeth sense
To feel and wail his native impotence.

IMAGINATION.

Knowledge's next organ is imagination,
A glass wherein the object of our sense
Ought to respect true height or declination,
For understanding's clear intelligence;
But this power also hath her variation
Fixed in some, in some with difference-
In all so shadow'd with self-application,
As makes her pictures still too foul or fair,
Not like the life in lineament or air. . . . .

REASON.

The last chief oracle of what man knows
Is understanding, which, though it contain
Some ruinous notions which our nature shows
Of general truths, yet they have such a stain
From our corruption, as all light they lose;
Save to convince of ignorance or sin,
Which, where they reign, let no perfection in.....
Nor in a right line can her eyes ascend,
To view the things that immaterial are ;
For as the sun doth, while his beams descend,
Lighten the earth but shadow every star,
So reason, stooping to attend the sense,
Darkens the spirit's clear intelligence. . .

....

afterwards appointed sub-treasurer, chancellor of the exchequer, and made a peer, by the title of Baron Brooke, in 1621. He died by the stab of a revengeful servant, in 1628.

INSUFFICIENCY OF PHILOSOPHY.

Then what is our high-praised philosophy,
But books of poesy in prose compiled,
Far more delightful than they fruitful be,
Witty appearance, guile that is beguiled;
Corrupting minds much rather than directing,
Th' allay of duty, and our pride's erecting.
For, as among physicians, what they call
Word magic, never helpeth the disease
Which drugs and diet ought to deal withal,
And by their real working give us ease;
So these word-sellers have no power to cure
The passions which corrupted lives endure.

SONNET

FROM LORD BROOKE'S CAELICA.

MERLIN, they say, an English prophet born,
When he was young, and govern'd by his mother,
Took great delight to laugh such fools to scorn,
As thought by nature we might know a brother.
His mother chid him oft, till on a day
They stood and saw a corpse to burial carried:
The father tears his beard, doth weep and pray,
The mother was the woman he had married.
Merlin laughs out aloud, instead of crying;
His mother chides him for that childish fashion,
Says men must mourn the dead, themselves are
dying;

Good manners doth make answer unto passion.
The child (for children see what should be hidden)
Replies unto his mother by and by:
Mother, if you did know, and were forbidden,
Yet you would laugh as heartily as I.

This man no part hath in the child he sorrows,
His father was the monk, that sings before him :
See then how nature of adoption borrows,
Truth covets in me that I should restore him.

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT.

[Born, 1582. Died 1628.]

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT, brother of the celebrated dramatic poet, was born at Grace Dieu, the seat of the family in Leicestershire. He studied at Oxford, and at the inns of court; but, forsaking the law, married and retired to his native seat. Two years before his death he was knighted by Charles the First.

He wrote the Crown of Thorns, a poem, of

[The commendation of improving the rhythm of the couplet is due also to Sir John Beaumont, author of a short poem on the Battle of Bosworth Field. In other respects it has no pretensions to a high rank."-HALLAM'S Lit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 499. The poem, though a posthu

which no copy is known to be extant; Bosworth Field; and a variety of small original and translated pieces. Bosworth Field may be compared with Addison's Campaign, without a high compliment to either. Sir John has no fancy, but there is force and dignity in some of his passages; and he deserves notice as one of the earliest polishers of what is called the heroic couplet.*

mous publication, was not without its prefatory commendations:

This book will live; it hath a genius; this
Above his reader, or his praiser, is.-BEN JONSON.-C.]

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