Is 't not a shame to see each homely groom That were not meet some pannel to bestride, Each muck-worm will be rich with lawless gain, Some drunken rhymer thinks his time well spent, Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail, Now are they dunghill cocks that have not seen Of voyages and ventures to enquire. His land mortgaged, he sea-beat in the way, And now he deems his home-bred fare as leaf To know much, and to think for nothing, know WILLIAM WARNER WAS a native of Oxfordshire, and was born, as Mr. Ellis conjectures, in 1558. He left the university of Oxford without a degree, and came to London, where he pursued the business of an attorney of the common pleas. Scott, the poet of Amwell, discovered that he had been buried in the church of that parish in 1609, having died suddenly in the night-time. His Albion's England was once exceedingly popular. Its publication was at one time interdicted by the Star-chamber, for no other reason that can now be assigned, but that it contains some lovestories more simply than delicately related. His contemporaries compared him to Virgil, whom he certainly did not make his model. Dr. Percy thinks he rather resembled Ovid, to whom he is, if pos sible, still more unlike. His poem is, in fact, an enormous ballad on the history, or rather on the fables, appendant to the history of England: heterogeneous, indeed, like the Metamorphoses, butwritten with an almost doggrel simplicity. Headley hás rashly preferred his works to our ancient ballads; but with the best of these they will bear no comparison. Argentile and Curan has indeed some beautiful touches, yet that episode requires to be weeded of many lines to be read with unqualified pleasure; and through the rest of his stories we shall search in vain for the familiar magic of such ballads as Chevy Chase or Gill Morrice. Argentile, the daughter and heiress of the deceased King, Adelbright, has been left to the protection of her uncle Edel, who discharges his trust unfaithfully, and seeks to force his niece to marry a suitor whom he believes to be ignoble, that he may have a pretext for seizing on her kingdom, YET Well he fosters for a time the damsel, that was grown The fairest lady under heav'n, whose beauty being known, VOL. I. T A many princes seek her love, but none might her obtain, For gripel Edel to himself her kingdom sought to gain, And for that cause, from sight of such he did his ward restrain. By chance one Curan, son unto a Prince of Danske, did see The maid, with whom he fell in love, as much as one might be: Unhappy youth, what should he do? his saint was kept in mew; Nor he nor any nobleman admitted to her view: One while in melancholy fits he pines himself away, Anon he thought by force of arms to win her if he may, And still against the king's restraint did secretly in veigh. At length the high controller, Love, whom none may disobey, Imbased him from lordliness into a kitchen drudge, That so at least of life or death she might become his judge; Access so had, to see and speak, he did his love bewray, And tells his birth-her answer was, she husbandless would stay: Meanwhile the king did heat his brain, his booty to achieve, |