His lambes' warm fleece well fits his little need,
Not in that proud Sidonian tincture di'd:

No emptie hopes, no courtly fears him fright;
No begging wants his middle fortune bite:
But sweet content exiles both miserie and spite.

Instead of music and base flattering tongues,
Which wait to first-salute my lord's uprise;
The cheerfull lark wakes him with early songs,
And birds' sweet whistling notes unlock his
eyes.
In countrey playes is all the strife he uses;
Or sing, or dance, unto the rurall Muses;
And but in music's sports, all difference refuses.

His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets, and rich content:
The smooth-leav'd beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noon-tide's rage is spent:
His life is neither tost in boist'rous seas

Of troublous world, nor lost in slothfull ease;
Pleas'd and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.

His bed of wool yeelds safe and quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithfull spouse hath place:
His little sonne into his bosome creeps,

The lively picture of his father's face:

Never his humble house or state torment him;

Lesse he could like, if lesse his God had sent him; And when he dies, green turfs, with grassie tombe, content him.

The world's great Light his lowly state hath bless'd,
And left his Heav'n to be a shepherd base:

Thousand sweet songs he to his pipe addrest:

Swift rivers stood, beasts, trees, stones, ranne apace,
And serpents flew, to heare his softest strains:

He fed his flock where rolling Jordan reignes;
There took our rags, gave us his robes, and bore our pains.

Fond man, that looks on Earth for happinesse,
And here long seeks what here is never found!
For all our good we hold from Heav'n by lease,
With many forfeits and conditions bound;

Nor can we pay the fine and rentage due:

Tho' now but writ, and seal'd, and giv'n anew,
Yet daily we it break, then daily must renew.
Why should'st thou here look for perpetuall good,
At ev'ry losse against Heav'ns face repining?
Do but behold where glorious cities stood,
With gilded tops and silver turrets shining;

There now the hart, fearlesse of greyhound, feeds,
And loving pelican in safety breeds;

There shrieking satyres fill the people's emptie steads.

Where is th' Assyrian lion's golden hide,

That all the east once graspt in lordly paw?
Where that great Persian beare, whose swelling pride
The lion's self tore out with ravenous jaw?

Or he which, 'twixt a lion and a pard,

Thro' all the world with nimble pineons far'd,

And to his greedy whelps his conquer'd kingdomes shar'd?

Hardly the place of such antiquitie,

Or note of these great monarchies we finde: Onely a fading verball memorie,

And empty name in writ, is left behinde:

But when this second life and glory fades, And sinks at length in time's obscurer shades, A second fall succeeds, and double death invades.

That monstrous beast, which, nurst in Tiber's fenne,
Did all the world with hideous shape affray;

That fill'd with costly spoil his gaping denne,
And trode down all the rest to dust and clay :
His batt'ring horns pull'd out by civil hands,
And iron teeth, lie scatter'd on the sands;
Backt, bridled by a monk, with sev'n heads yoked stands.
And that black vulture, which with deathfull wing
Oreshadows half the Earth, whose dismall sight

Frighted the Muses from their native spring,
Already stoops, and flagges with weary flight:

Who then shall look for happiness beneath?

Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and death;

And life itself's as flit as is the aire we breathe.

GILES FLETCHER, the brother of the Poet Phineas, the son of a poet, and the cousin of the great dramatist-of whose family it was said "the very name's a poet ”— has left us but scanty materials out of which to form a biography even so limited as that we require. He was born probably a short time after his brother; the year of his birth is not recorded; but he has himself informed us that Phineas was the elder. In allusion to the Purple Island, he says,

"But my green muse hiding her younger head."

He was, according to Wood, "equally beloved both of the Muses and the Graces." Giles, as well as Phineas, was a clergyman; he was also educated at Cambridge; and was beneficed at Alderton in Suffolk, where his death took place some years before that of his brother-probably in 1623. And this is nearly all we know of the life of one of the higher order of our poets; whose name must live with "our land's language." His great, indeed, his only, poem, if we except one or two elegiac compositions, is "Christ's Victory and Triumph."-It was first published at Cambridge in 1610; but appears to have met with unmerited neglect, a second edition not having been called for until upwards of twenty years had elapsed. The Poet, therefore, relinquished the unprofitable companionship of the Muses-the warm and fervent praise of a few of his contemporaries being insufficient to satisfy his cravings after fame. He seems to have turned his thoughts into another channel, to have attained the reputation of "good skill" in scholastic divinity, and to have secured the reward of a fellowship. He was thus enabled to gratify his love of college life; which, in evil hour, he resigned for the living of Alderton; where, we are told, "his clownish parishioners (having nothing but their shoes high about them) valued not their pastor according to his worth, which disposed him to melancholy, and hastened his dissolution." Though yielding early to the influence of sickness and "hope deferred," he appears to have anticipated that after-fame, which is, however, unworthily withheld from him. When cautioned by his brother against esteeming "malicious tongues," he looked to the future for his exceeding great reward; "It is only Poetry," he says, "that can make us be thought living men when we lie among the dead"-"a recompense," he adds, "which neither Philosophy nor Ethics, nor all the arts, can bestow upon us."

Of "Christ's Victory and Triumph" we may speak in terms of the highest praise. The Poet has exhibited a fertility of invention and a rich store of fancy worthy of the sublime subject. The style is lofty and energetic, the descriptions natural and graphic, and the construction of his verse graceful and harmonious. But, unhappily, he has introduced among his sacred themes-the birth, temptation, passion, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of the Saviour-so many characters from, and allusions to, profane history, as often to jar upon the sense and to render the Poet justly liable to the charges of bad taste and inconsistency. Giles Fletcher, indeed, had no power of selecting his thoughts, or his reputation might have equalled his genius. The Poem is divided into four parts:-Christ's Victory in Heaven; Christ's Triumph on Earth; Christ's Triumph over Death; Christ's Triumph after Death. The first having reference to the Incarnation; the second, to the Temptation; the third, to the Crucifixion; and the fourth, to the Resurrection. In the course of these, he refers to the Graces, Mount Olympus, the Trojan Boy, the Titans, "wild Pentheus," "staring Orestes," Orpheus, Deucalion, Apollo, Bacchus, Pan, Adonis, Arcady, Mount Ida, and the honey of Hybla— references that bear us away from the solemn grandeur of his great theme. The poem, however, amply compensates for this defect. The passages we have selected describe the temptation of our Saviour in the wilderness; where, having passed two dreary days and nights, making "the ground his bed and his moist pillow grass," he perceives afar off an aged sire who "nearer came and lowted low" and besought the Son of Heaven to bless the humble cell of the old Palmer. So "on they wandered;" first visiting the cave of Despair-within whose gloomy hole the serpent vainly wooed his lord to enter; next Presumption her pavilion spread; then suddenly a goodly garden grew out of the frozen solitude-" as if the snow had melted into flowers;" and the Saviour is led by the tempter, through the bower of Vain Delight; the sorceress vainly seeking to corrupt the incorruptible. This brief description is a necessary introduction to the passage we have selected.

FROM CHRIST'S 1RIUMPH UN BARin.

TWICE had Diana bent her golden bowe,

And shot from Heav'n her silver shafts, to rouse

The sluggish salvages, that den belowe,

And all the day in lazie covert drouse,

Since him the silent wildernesse did house :

The Heav'n his roofe, and arbour harbour was,

The ground his bed, and his moist pillowe grasse:

But fruit thear none did growe, nor rivers none did passe.

At length an aged syre farre off he sawe

Come slowely footing, every step he guest

One of his feete he from the grave did drawe.

, Christs kump over Deau; novo kumpu anci stall, The first having reference to the Incarnation; the second, to the Temptation; the third, to the Crucifixion; and the fourth, to the Resurrection. In the course of these, he refers to the Graces, Mount Olympus, the Trojan Boy, the Titans, "wild Pentheus," "staring Orestes," Orpheus, Deucalion, Apollo, Bacchus, Pan, Adonis, Arcady, Mount Ida, and the honey of Hybla- references that bear us away from the solemn grandeur of his great theme. The poem, however, amply compensates for this defect. The passages we have selected describe the temptation of our Saviour in the wilderness; where, having passed two dreary days and nights, making "the ground his bed and his moist pillow grass," he perceives afar off an aged sire who "nearer came and lowted low" and besought the Son of Heaven to bless the humble cell of the old Palmer. So "on they wandered;" first visiting the cave of Despair-within whose gloomy hole the serpent vainly wooed his lord to enter; next Presumption her pavilion spread; then suddenly a goodly garden grew out of the frozen solitude-"as if the snow had melted into flowers;" and the Saviour is led by the tempter, through the bower of Vain Delight; the sorceress vainly seeking to corrupt the incorruptible. This brief description is a necessary introduction to the passage we have selected.