To have her linen, plate, and all things nigh, These, Penshurst, are thy praise, and yet not all; * * * * have been taught religion; thence Those proud ambitious heaps, and nothing else, TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED MASTER, WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, To draw no envy, Shakspeare, on thy name, I therefore will begin: Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakspeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further off, to make thee room : Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, Of all, that insolent Greece or haughty Rome The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please; As they were not of nature's family, For a good poet's made as well as born, And such wert thou! Look how the father's face Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance. And make those flights upon the banks of Thames But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere Advanced, and made a constellation there! Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage, Which since thy flight from hence hath mourn'd like night, And despairs day, but for thy volume's light! ON THE PORTRAIT OF SHAKSPEARE. (UNDER THE FRONTISPIECE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF HIS WORKS: 1623.) This figure that thou here seest put, VERE, STORRER, &c. In the same age of fertile, seething mind which produced Jonson and the rest of the Elizabethan giants, there flourished some minor poets, whose names we merely chronicle: such as Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, born 1534, and dying 1604, who travelled in Italy in his youth, and returned the 'most accomplished coxcomb in Europe,' who sat as Grand Chamberlain of England upon the trial of Mary Queen of Scots, and who has left, in the 'Paradise of Dainty Devices,' some rather beautiful verses, entitled, 'Fancy and Desire;'-as Thomas Storrer, a student of Christ Church, Oxford, and the author of a versified History of Cardinal Wolsey,' in three parts, who died in 1604;-as William Warner, a native of Oxfordshire, born in 1558, who became an attorney of the Common Pleas in London, and died suddenly in 1609, having made himself famous for a time by a poem, entitled 'Albion's England,' called by Campbell an enormous ballad on the history, or rather the fables appendant to the history of England,' with some fine touches, but heavy and prolix as a whole;-as Sir John Harrington, who was the son of a poet and the favourite of Essex, who was created a Knight of the Bath by James I., and who wrote some pointed epigrams and a miserable translation of Ariosto, in which he effectually tamed that wild Pegasus;-as Henry Perrot, who collected, in 1613, a book of epigrams, entitled, 'Springes for Woodcocks;'-as Sir Thomas Overbury, whose dreadful and mysterious fate, well known to all who read English history, excited such a sympathy for him, that his poems, 'A Wife,' and 'The Choice of a Wife,' passed through sixteen editions before the year 1653, although his prose 'Characters,' such as the exquisite and well-known 'Fair and Happy Milkmaid,' are far better than his poetry;-as Samuel Rowlandes, a prolific pamphleteer in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., author also of several plays and of a book of epigrams;—as Thomas Picke, who belonged to the Middle Temple, and published, in 1631, a number of songs, sonnets, and elegies ;- -as Henry Constable, born in 1568, and a well-known sonneteer of his day;-as Nicholas Breton, author of some pretty pastorals, who, it is conjectured, was born in 1555, and died in 1624;— and as Dr Thomas Lodge, born in 1556, and who died in 1625, after translating Josephus into English, and writing some tolerable poetical pieces. THOMAS RANDOLPH. THIS was a true poet, although his power comes forth principally in the drama. He was born at Newnham, near Daventry, Northamptonshire, in 1605, being the son of Lord Zouch's steward. He became a King's Scholar at Westminster, and subsequently a Fellow in Trinity College, Cambridge. Ben Jonson loved him, and he reciprocated the attachment. Whether from natural tendency or in imitation of Jonson, who called him, as well as Cartwright, his adopted son, he learned intemperate habits, and died, in 1634, at the age of twenty-nine. His death took place at the house of W. Stafford, Esq. of Blatherwyke, in his native county, and he was buried in the church beside, where Sir Christopher, afterwards Lord Hatton, signalised the spot of his rest by a monument. He wrote five dramas, which are imperfect and formal in plan, but written with con |