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Sea. Unnatural villain!
Ware. Thou enemy to my blood!
Sea. Thou worse than parricide!
Ware. Next my sins, I do repent I am thy uncle.
Sea. And I thy father.
[father
Ware. Death o' my soul! Did I, when first thy
Broke in estate, and then broke from the Counter,
Where Mr. Seathrift laid him in the hole
For debt, among the ruins of the city,

And trades like him blown up, take thee from dust,
Give thee free education, put thee in
My own fair way of traffic; nay, decree
To leave thee jewels, land, my whole estate,
Pardon'd thy former wildness, and couldst thou sort
Thyself with none but idle gallants, captains,
And poets, who must plot before they eat,
And make each meal a stratagem? Then could
But I be subject of thy impious scoffs? [none
I swoon at sight of meat; I rise a glutton
From half an orange: Wretch, forgetful wretch!
'Fore heaven I count it treason in my blood
That gives thee a relation. But I'll take
A full revenge. Make thee my heir! I'll first
Adopt a slave, brought from some galley; one
Which laws do put into the inventory,

And men bequeath in wills with stools, and brasspots;

[heir.

One who shall first be household-stuff, then my
Or to defeat all thy large aims, I'll marry.
Cypher, go find me Baneswright; he shall straight
Provide me a wife. I will not stay to let
My resolution cool. Be she a wench
That every day puts on her dowry, wears
Her fortunes, has no portion, so she be
Young and likely to be fruitful, I'll have her:
By all that's good, I will; this afternoon!
I will about it straight.

Sea. I follow you.
[Ex. WARE. CYPHER.
And as for you, Tim, mermaid, triton, haddock,
The wond'rous Indian fish caught near Peru,
Who can be of both elements, your sight
Will keep you well. Here I do cast thee off,
And in thy room pronounce to make thy sister
My heir; it would be most unnatural

To leave a fish on land. 'Las! sir, one of your Bright fins and gills must swim in seas of sack, Spout rich canaries up like whales in maps;

I know you'll not endure to see my jack
Go empty, nor wear shirts of copperas-bags,
Nor fast in Paul's, you. I do hate thee now,
Worse than a tempest, quicksand, pirate, rock,
Or fatal lake, ay, or a privy-seal.

Go let the captain make you drunk, and let
Your next change be into some ape, ('tis stale
To be a fish twice,) or some active baboon.
And when you can find money out, betray
What wench i' th' room has lost her maidenhead,
Can mount to th' king, and can do all your feats.
If your fine chain and yellow coat come near
Th' Exchange, I'll see you; so I leave you.

Plot. Now [ET. SEA. Were there a dext'rous beam and two-pence hemp,

Never had man such cause to hang himself.

Tim. I have brought myself to a fine pass too.

Now

Am I fit only to be caught, and put Into a pond to leap carps, or beget A goodly race of pickrel.

SONG IN "THE AMOROUS WAR."

TIME is the feather'd thing,
And whilst I praise

The sparklings of thy locks, and call them rays,
Takes wing-

Leaving behind him, as he flies,

An unperceived dimness in thine eyes:

His minutes, whilst they're told,

Do make us old;

And every sand of his fleet glass,
Increasing age as it doth pass,

Insensibly sows wrinkles there
Where flowers and roses do appear.

Whilst we do speak, our fire
Doth into ice expire;

Flames turn to frost; and ere we can
Know how our cheek turns pale and wan,
Or how a silver snow

Springs there where jet did grow,

Our fading spring is in dull winter lost.

RICHARD BRATHWAITE.

[Born, 1588. Died, 1673.]

RICHARD BRATHWAITE, mentioned incidentally | deputy-lieutenant of the county. His latter days by Warton as a pastoral poet, but more valuable as a fluent though inelegant satirist, was the son of Thomas Brathwaite of Warcop, near Appleby, in Westmoreland. When he had finished his education at both universities, his father gave him the estate or Barnside, in Westmoreland, where he held a commission in the militia, and was

were spent near Richmond, in Yorkshire, where he died, with a highly respectable character. To the list of his pieces enumerated by Wood two have been since added by Mr. Ellis and Mr. Malone, amounting in all to nineteen, among which are two tragi-comedies, Mercurius Britannicus and the Regicidium.

FROM A "STRAPPADO FOR THE DEVIL."*
A MAN there was who had lived a merry life
Till in the end he took to him a wife,
One that no image was, for she could speak,
And now and then her husband's costrel break;
This drove the poor man to a discontent,
And oft and many times did he repent
That e'er he changed his former quiet state;
But 'las! repentance then did come too late,
No cure he finds to heal this malady,
But makes a virtue of necessity.
The common cure for care to every man,
A pot of nappy ale, where he began

To fortify his brains 'gainst all should come,
'Mongst which the clamour of his wife's loud
tongue.

This habit grafted in him grew so strong,
That when he was from ale an hour seem'd long,
So well he liked the potion. On a time,
Having staid long at pot-for rule or line
Limits no drunkard-even from morn to night,
He hasted home apace by the moonlight,
Where as he went what phantasies were bred,
I do not know, in his distemper'd head,
But a strange ghost appear'd and forced him stay,
With which perplext he thus began to say:
"Good spirit if thou be, I need no charm,
For well I know thou wilt not do me harm;
And if the devil, sure thou shouldst not hurt!
I wed thy sister, and am plagued for't."

The spirit, well approving what he said,
Dissolved to air and quickly vanished.

JOHN MILTON.

[Born, 1608. Died, 1674.]

church of his own. Whilst a boy, the intensity of his studies laid the seeds of his future blindness; and at that period the Latin verses addressed to his father attest not only the prematurity of his attainments, but the endearing strength of his affections.

If the memory of Milton has been outraged by Dr. Johnson's hostility, the writings of Blackburne, Hayley, and, above all, of Symmons, may be deemed sufficient to have satisfied the poet's injured shade. The apologies for Milton have indeed been rather full to superfluity than defective. Dr. Johnson's triumphant regret at the The few years which he spent at his father's supposed whipping of our great poet at the uni-house, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, after versity, is not more amusing than the alarm of his favourable biographers at the idea of admitting it to be true. From all that has been written on the subject, it is perfectly clear that Milton committed no offence at college which could deserve an ignominious punishment. Admitting Aubrey's authority for the anecdote, and his authority is not very high, it points out the punishment not as a public infliction, but as the personal act of his tutor, who resented or imagined some unkindnesses.

The youthful history of Milton, in despite of this anecdote, presents him in an exalted and amiable light. His father, a man of no ordinary attainments, and so accomplished a musician† as to rank honourably among the composers of his age, intended him for the ministry of the church, and furnished him with a private tutor, who probably seconded his views; but the piety that was early instilled into the poet's mind grew up, with the size of his intellect, into views of religious independence that would not have suited any definite ecclesiastical pale; and if Milton had become a preacher, he must have founded a

[There is, perhaps, no work in English which illustrates more fully and amusingly the manners, occupa tions, and opinions of the time when it was written than Braithwaite's Strappado; but it is a strange, undigested and ill-arranged collection of poems, of various kinds and of different degrees of merit, some of them composed considerably before the rest, but few without claims to notice. The principal part consists of satires and epigrams, although the author purposely confounds the

distinction between the two:

leaving the university, and before setting out on his travels, were perhaps the happiest in his life. In the beautiful scenery of that spot, disinclined to any profession by his universal capacity, and thirst for literature, he devoted himself to study, and wrote the most exquisite of his minor poems. Such a mind, in the opening prime of its genius, enjoying rural leisure and romantic walks, and luxuriating in the production of Comus and the Arcades, presents an inspiring idea of human

beatitude.

When turned of thirty he went to Italy, the most accomplished Englishman that ever visited her classical shores. The attentions that were shown to him are well known. We find him at the same time, though a stranger and a heretic, boldly expressing his opinions within the verge of the Vatican. There, also, if poetry ever deigns to receive assistance from the younger art, his imagination may have derived at least congenial impressions from the frescoes of Michael Angelo, and the pictures of Raphael; and those impressions he may have possibly recalled in the formation of his great poem, when

I call't an Epigram which is a Satire.

He never scruples to use the plainest terms, and though he seldom inserts names, he spares neither rank nor condition.-COLLIER, Bridge. Cat. p. 32.]

† Milton was early instructed in music. As a poet he speaks like one habituated to inspiration under its influence, and seems to have attached considerable importance to the science in his system of education.

his eyes were shut upon the world, and when he looked inwardly for "godlike shapes and forms."

In the eventful year after his return from the Continent, the fate of Episcopacy, which was yet undecided, seemed to depend chiefly on the influence which the respective parties could exercise upon the public mind, through the medium of the press, which was now set at liberty by the ordinance of the Long Parliament. Milton's strength led him foremost on his own side of the controversy; he defended the five ministers, whose book was entitled Smectymnus,* against the learning and eloquence of Bishop Hall and Archbishop Usher, and became, in literary warfare, the bulwark of his party. It is performing this and similar services, which Dr. Johnson calls Milton's vapouring away his patriotism in keeping a private boarding-house; and such are the slender performances at which that critic proposes that we should indulge in some degree of merriment. Assuredly, if Milton wielded the pen instead of the sword, in public dispute, his enemies had no reason to regard the former weapon as either idle or impotent in his hand. An invitation to laugh on such an occasion, may

remind us of what Sternhold and Hopkins denominate "awful mirth;" for of all topics which an enemy to Milton's principles could select, his impotence in maintaining them is the most unpropitious to merriment.

The most difficult passage of his life for his biographers to comment upon with entire satisfaction, is his continued acceptance of Cromwell's wages after Cromwell had become a tyrant. It would be uncandid to deny, that his fear of the return of the Stuarts, the symptoms of his having been seldom at the usurper's court, and the circumstance of his having given him advice to spare the liberties of the people, form some apology for this negative adherence. But if the people, according to his own ideas, were capable of liberty after Cromwell's death, they were equally so before it; and a renunciation of his profits under the despot would have been a nobler and fuller sacrifice to public principles, than any adFrom ordinary men this was more than could be expected; but Milton prescribed to others such austerity of duty, that in proportion to the altitude of his character, the world, which looked to him for example, had a right to expect his practical virtue to be severe.

vice.

UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

YE flaming powers, and winged warriors bright,
That erst with music and triumphant song,
First heard by happy watchful shepherd's ear,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along,
Through the soft silence of the list'ning night;
Now mourn, and if sad share with us to bear
Your fiery essence can distil no tear,
Burn in your sighs, and borrow

Seas wept from our deep sorrow;

He who with all Heaven's heraldry whilere
Enter'd the world, now bleeds to give us ease;
Alas, how soon our sin
Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize!

O more exceeding love, or law more just?
Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!
For we by rightful doom remediless
Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above
High throned in secret bliss, for us frail dust
Emptied his glory, even to nakedness;

And that great covenant which we still transgress
Entirely satisfied,

And the full wrath beside

Of vengeful justice bore for our excess,

And seals obedience first with wounding smart This day, but, O! ere long

Huge pangs and strong

Will pierce more near his heart.

From the initial letters of their names.

SONNET TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

O NIGHTINGALE, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,

While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May. Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,

First heard before the shallow cuckow's bill, Portend success in love; O if Jove's will Have link'd that amorous power to thy soft lay, Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh; As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet hadst no reason why:

Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate, Both of them I serve, and of their train am I.

SONG

ON MAY MORNING.

Now the bright morning Star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May! that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing!
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATICK

POET, WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.*

ATHENS.

FROM BOOK IV. OF PARADISE REGAINED.

WHAT needs my Shakspeare for his honour'd Look once more ere we leave this specular mount,

bones,

The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring

art

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb would wish to die.

SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide;
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied,"
I fondly ask? but Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state,

Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait."

Westward, much nearer by south-west behold
Where on the Ægean shore a city stands
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil,
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess.

City or suburban, studious walks and shades;
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream: within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:
There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
Æolian charms, and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life;
High actions and high passions best describing;
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

SONNET ON HIS DECEASED WIFE.

METHOUGHT I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint, Purification in the old Law did save,

And such, as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight.

But, O! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

[We have copied this title at full length from the poem as it was first printed: "It is true," says Sir Walter Scott, "that Milton descended to upbraid the unfortunate Charles I., that the chosen companion of his private hours was one William Shakspeare, a player." (Life of Dryden, p. 9.) Nothing is more untrue, and we quote the passage: "The poets, and some English, have been so mindful of decorum, as to put never more pious words in the mouth of any person than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an

SAMSON BEWAILING HIS BLINDNESS AND CAPTIVITY.

(Allendant leading him.)

FROM SAMSON AGONISTES.

A LITTLE onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on:
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade;
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
Daily in the common prison clse enjoin'd me,
Where I a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
The air imprison'd also, close and damp,

Unwholsome draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath ofheaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to respiro.-
This day a solemn feast the people hold

abstruse author, wherein the king [Charles I.] might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet companion of these, his solitudes, William Shakspeare, who introduces the person of Richard III." &c., speaking such stuff, he goes on to say, as the king has written, and deep dissemblers indulge in. What is there in this disrespectful to the "sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child," of his juvenile verses?]

To Dagon their sea-idol, and forbid
Laborious works; unwillingly this rest
Their superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind,
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an angel, who at last in sight
Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burn'd,
As in a fiery column, charioting

His godlike presence, and from some great act
Or benefit reveal'd to Abraham's race?
Why was my breeding order'd and prescribed
As of a person separate to God,
Design'd for great exploits; if I must die
Betray'd, captived, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze;
To grind in brazen fetters under task
With this heaven-gifted strength?
Put to the labour of a beast, debased [strength
Lower than bond-slave! Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds, under Philistian yoke.

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O glorious

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Of man or worm: the vilest here excel me;
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!

O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
"Let there be light, and light was over all;"
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?
The sun to me is dark

And silent as the moon,

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,

She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quench'd?
And not as feeling through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exiled from light,
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,

And buried; but O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave,
Buried, yet not exempt

By privilege of death and burial,

From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs;
But made hereby obnoxious more

To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

SPEECHES, OF MANOAH THE FATHER OF SAMSON, AND OF THE CHORUS, ON HEARING OF HIS LAST ACHIEVEMENT AND DEATH.

Manoah. SAMSON hath quit himself

Like Samson, and heroically hath finish'd
A life heroic; on his enemies

Fully revenged, hath left them years of mourning,
And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor
Through all Philistian bounds, to Israel
Honour hath left, and freedom, let but them
Find courage to lay hold on this occasion;
To himself and father's house eternal fame,
And which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, as was fear'd,
But favouring and assisting to the end.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Let us go find the body where it lies
Soak'd in his enemies' blood, and from the stream,
With lavers pure, and cleansing herbs, wash off
The clotted gore. I with what speed the while
(Gaza is not in plight to say us nay,)
Will send for all my kindred, all my friends,
To fetch him hence, and solemnly attend
With silent obsequy, and funeral train,
Home to his father's house: there will I build him
A monument, and plant it round with shade
Of laurel ever green, and branching palm,
With all his trophies hung, and acts inroll'd
In copious legend, or sweet lyric song.
Thither shall all the valiant youth resort,
And from his memory inflame their breasts
To matchless valour, and adventures high:
The virgins also shall on feastful days
Visit his tomb with flowers, only bewailing
His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice,
From whence captivity and loss of eyes.
Chorus. All is best, though we oft doubt
What th' unsearchable dispose
Of highest Wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.

Oft he seems to hide his face,

But unexpectedly returns,

And to his faithful champion hath in place

Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns, And all that band them to resist

His uncontrollable intent;

His servants he with new acquist

Of true experience from this great event,
With peace and consolation hath dismiss'd,
And calm of mind all passion spent.

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