They jealous are of every sight they see; What grudge and grief our joys may then suppress, JOHN HARRINGTON, the father of the translator of Ariosto, was imprisoned by Queen Mary for his suspected attachment to Queen Elizabeth, by whom he was afterwards rewarded with a grant of lands. Nothing that the younger Harrington has written seems to be worth preserving: but the few specimens of his father's poetry which are found in the Nugæ Antiquæ may excite a regret that he did not write more. His love verses have an elegance and terseness, more modern, by an hundred years, than those of his contemporaries. SONNET MADE ON ISABELLA MARKHAM, WHEN I FIRST THOUGHT HER FAIR, AS SHE STOOD AT THE From the Nuge Antiquæ, where the original Manuscript is said to be dated 1564. WHENCE comes my love? O heart disclose; The blushing cheek speaks modest mind, Why thus, my love, so kind, bespeak Sweet eye, sweet lip, sweet blushing cheek- Make not so fair to cause our moan, Or make a heart that's like our own. VERSES ON A MOST STONY HEARTED MAIDEN WHO J. H. MSS. 1564.-From the Nugæ Antiquæ. I. WHY didst thou raise such woeful wail, II. Why, thank her then, not weep or moan; Their lips can gloze and gain such root, III. But, ere the blossom fair doth rise, IV. Give o'er thy plaint, the danger's o'er ; No youth shall sue such one to win, SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. BORN 1554.-DIED 1586. WITHOUT enduring Lord Orford's cold-blooded depreciation of this hero, it must be owned that his writings fall short of his traditional glory; nor were his actions of the very highest importance to his country. Still there is no necessity for supposing the impression which he made upon his contempo raries to have been either illusive or exaggerated. Traits of character will distinguish great men, independently of their pens or their swords. The contemporaries of Sydney knew the man: and foreigners, no less than his own countrymen, seem to have felt, from his personal influence and conversation, an homage for him, that could only be paid to a commanding intellect guiding the principles of a noble heart. The variety of his ambition, perhaps, unfavourably divided the force of his genius: feeling that he could take different paths to reputation, he did not confine himself to one, but was successively occupied in the punctilious duties of a courtier, the studies and pursuits of a scholar and traveller, and in the life of a soldier, of which the chivalrous accomplishments could not be learnt without diligence and fatigue. All his excellence in those pursuits, and all the celebrity that would have placed him among the competitors for a crown, was gained in a life of thirty-two years. His sagacity and independence are recorded in the advice which he gave to his own sovereign. In the quarrel with Lord Oxford he opposed the rights of an English commoner to the prejudices of aristocracy and of royalty itself. At home he was the patron of literature. All England wore mourning for his death. Perhaps the well known anecdote of his generosity to the dying soldier speaks more powerfully to the * Vide the biographical notice of Lord Oxford. |