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But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee,
Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see.
All dumb and silent like the dead of night,
Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite;
The marble pavement hid with desert weed,
With house-leek, thistle, dock, and hemlock seed.
*
*
Look to the towered chimneys, which should be
The wind-pipes of good hospitality,

*

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Through which it breatheth to the open air,
Betokening life and liberal welfare,

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Lo, there th' unthankful swallow takes her rest
And fills the tunnel with her circled nest.

During his youth and education he had to struggle with poverty; and in his old age he was one of those sufferers in the cause of episcopacy whose virtues shed a lustre on its fall. He was born in the parish of Ashby de la Zouche, in Liecestershire, studied and took orders at Cambridge, and was for some time master of the school of Tiverton, in Devonshire. An accidental opportunity which he had of preaching before Prince Henry seems to have given the first impulse to his preferment, till by gradual promotion he rose to be bishop of Exeter, having previously

His satires are neither cramped by personal accompanied King James, as one of his chaplains,

hostility, nor spun out to vague declamations on vice, but give us the form and pressure of the times exhibited in the faults of coeval literature, and in the foppery or sordid traits of prevailing manners. The age was undoubtedly fertile in eccentricity. His picture of its literature may at first view appear to be overcharged with severity, accustomed as we are to associate a

As

to Scotland, and attended the Synod of Dort at bishop of Exeter he was so mild in his conduct a convocation of the protestant divines. towards the puritans, that he, who was one of the last broken pillars of the church, was nearly persecuted for favouring them. Had such conduct been, at this critical period, pursued by the

general idea of excellence with the period of high churchmen in general, the history of a

Elizabeth; but when Hall wrote there was not a great poet firmly established in the language except Spenser, and on him he has bestowed ample applause. With regard to Shakspeare, the reader will observe a passage in the first satire, where the poet speaks of resigning the honours of heroic and tragic poetry to more inspired geniuses; and it is possible that the great dramatist may be here alluded to, as well as Spenser. But the allusion is indistinct, and not necessarily applicable to the bard of Avon. Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet, Richard II. and III. have been traced in print to no earlier date than the year 1597, in which Hall's first series of satires appeared; and we have no sufficient proof of his previous fame as a dramatist having been so great as to leave Hall without excuse for omitting to pay him homage. But the sunrise of the drama with Shakspeare was not without abundance of attendant mists in the contemporary fustian of inferior playmakers, who are severely ridiculed by our satirist. In addition to this, our poetry was still haunted by the whining ghosts of the Mirror for Magistrates, while obscenity walked in barbarous nakedness, and the very genius of the language was threatened by revolutionary prosodists.

From the literature of the age Hall proceeds to its manners and prejudices, and among the latter derides the prevalent confidence in alchymy and astrology. To us this ridicule appears an ordinary effort of reason; but it was in him a common sense above the level of the times. If any proof were required to illustrate the slow departure of prejudices, it would be found in the fact of an astrologer being patronised, half a century afterwards, by the government of England*.

*William Lilly received a pension from the council of state, in 1648. He was, besides, consulted by Charles;

bloody age might have been changed into that of peace; but the violence of Laud prevailed over the milder counsels of a Hall, an Usher, and a Corbet. When the dangers of the church grew more instant, Hall became its champion, and was met in the field of controversy by Milton, whose respect for the bishop's learning is ill concealed under the attempt to cover it with derision.

By the little power that was still left to the sovereign in 1641, Hall was created bishop of Norwich; but having joined, almost immediately after, in the protest of the twelve prelates against the validity of laws that should be passed in their compelled absence, he was committed to the Tower, and, in the sequel, marked out for sequestration. After suffering extreme hardships, he was allowed to retire, on a small pittance, to Higham, near Norwich, where he continued, in comparative obscurity, but with indefatigable zeal and intrepidity, to exercise the duties of a pastor, till he closed his days at the venerable age of eighty-two.

and during the siege of Colchester, was sent for by the
heads of the parliamentary army, to encourage the
soldiers, by assuring them that the town would be taken.
Fairfax told the seer, that he did not understand his art,
but hoped it was lawful, and agreeable to God's word.
Butler alludes to this when he says,

Do not our great Reformers use
This Sidrophel to forebode news;
To write of victories next year,
And castles taken yet i' th' air?

*

And has not he point-blank foretold
Whats'e'r the Close Committee would;
Made Mars and Saturn for the Cause,
The moon for fundamental laws?

Made all the Royal stars recant,
Compound, and take the Covenant?
Hudibras, Canto m.

SATIRE I BOOK I.

NOR ladies' wanton love, nor wand'ring knight,
Legend I out in rhymes all richly dight.
Nor fright the reader with the Pagan vaunt
Of mighty Mahound, and great Termagaunt.
Nor list I sonnet of my mistress' face,

To paint some Blowesse with a borrowed grace;
Nor can I bide to pen some hungry scene
For thick-skin ears, and undiscerning eyne.
Nor ever could my scornful muse abide
With tragic shoes her ancles for to hide.
Nor can I crouch, and writhe my fawning tail
To some great patron, for my best avail.
Such hunger starven trencher poetry,
Or let it never live, or timely die :

Nor under every bank and every tree,
Speak rhymes unto my oaten minstrelsy:
Nor carol out so pleasing lively lays,

As might the Graces move my mirth to praise*.
Trumpet, and reeds, and socks, and buskins fine,
I them bequeath: whose statues wand'ring twine
Of ivy mix'd with bays, circling around
Their living temples likewise laurel-bound.
Rather had I, albe in careless rhymes,
Check the mis-order'd world, and lawless times.
Nor need I crave the muse's midwifery,
To bring to light so worthless poetry :
Or if we list, what baser muse can bide,
To sit and sing by Granta's naked side?
They haunt the tided Thames and salt Medway,
E'er since the fame of their late bridal day.
Nought have we here but willow-shaded shore,
To tell our Grant his banks are left forlore.

SATIRE III†. BOOK I.

WITH Some pot fury, ravish'd from their wit,
They sit and muse on some no-vulgar writ :
As frozen dunghills in a winter's morn,
That void of vapours seemed all beforn,
Soon as the sun sends out his piercing beams,
Exhale out filthy smoke and stinking steams.
So doth the base, and the sore-barren brain,
Soon as the raging wine begins to reign.
One higher pitch'd doth set his soaring thought
On crowned kings, that fortune hath low brought:

* In this satire, which is not perfectly intelligible at the first glance, the author, after deriding the romantic and pastoral vein of affected or mercenary poetasters, proceeds to declare, that for his own part he resigns the higher walks of genuine poetry to others; that he need not crave the "Muse's midwifery," since not even a baser muse would now haunt the shore of Granta (the Cam), which they have left deserted, and crowned with willows, the types of desertion ever since Spenser celebrated the marriage of the Medway and the Thames.-E. + This satire is levelled at the intemperance and bombastic fury of his contemporary dramatists, with an evident allusion to Marlowe; and in the conclusion he attacks the buffoonery that disgraced the stage.-E.

Or some upreared, high-aspiring swain,
As it might be the Turkish Tamberlain :
Then weeneth he his base drink-drowned spright,
Rapt to the threefold loft of heaven height,
When he conceives upon his feigned stage
The stalking steps of his great personage,
Graced with huff-cap terms and thund'ring threats,
That his poor hearer's hair quite upright sets.
Such soon as some brave-minded hungry youth
Sees fitly frame to his wide-strained mouth,
He vaunts his voice upon an hired stage,
With high-set steps, and princely carriage;
Now sweeping in side robes of royalty,
That erst did scrub in lousy brokery,
There if he can with terms Italianate
Big sounding sentences, and words of state,
Fair patch me up his pure iambic verse,
He ravishes the gazing scaffolders:
Then certes was the famous Corduban,
Never but half so high tragedian.

Now, lest such frightful shows of fortune's fall,
And bloody tyrant's rage, should chance appal
The dead-struck audience, 'midst the silent rout,
Comes leaping in a self-misformed lout,
And laughs, and grins, and frames his mimic face,
And justles straight into the prince's place;
Then doth the theatre echo all aloud,
With gladsome noise of that applauding crowd.
A goodly hotch-potch! when vile russetings
Are match'd with monarchs, and with mighty kings.
A goodly grace to sober tragic muse,
When each base clown his clumsy fist doth bruise,
And show his teeth in double rotten row,
For laughter at his self-resembled show.
Meanwhile our poets in high parliament
Sit watching every word and gesturement,
Like curious censors of some doughty gear,
Whispering their verdict in their fellow's ear.
Woe to the word whose margent in their scroll
Is noted with a black condemning coal.
But if each period might the synod please,
Ho bring the ivy boughs, and bands of bays.
Now when they part and leave the naked stage,
'Gins the bare hearer, in a guilty rage,
To curse and ban, and blame his likerous eye,
That thus hath lavish'd his late halfpenny.
Shame that the muses should be bought and sold
For every peasant's brass, on each scaffold.

SATIRE V. BOOK III.

FIE on all courtesy and unruly winds,
Two only foes that fair disguisement finds.
Strange curse! but fit for such a fickle age,
When scalps are subject to such vassalage.
Late travelling along in London way,
Me met, as seem'd by his disguised array,
A lusty courtier, whose curled head
With auburn locks was fairly furnished.
I him saluted in our lavish wise :
He answers my untimely courtesies.

His bonnet vail'd, ere ever I could think,
Th' unruly wind blows off his periwink.
He lights and runs, and quickly hath him sped
To overtake his over-running head.
The sportful wind, to mock the headless man,
Tosses apace his pitch'd Rogerian,

And straight it to a deeper ditch hath blown :
There must my yonker fetch his waxen crown.
I look'd and laugh'd, whiles, in his raging mind,
He curst all courtesy and unruly wind.
I look'd and laugh'd, and much I marvelled,
To see so large a causeway in his head;
And me bethought that when it first begon,
'Twas some shroad autumn that so bared the bone.
Is't not sweet pride then,when the crowns must shade
With that which jerks the hams of every jade,
Or floor-strew'd locks from off the barber's shears?
But waxen crowns well 'gree with borrow'd hairs.

Though he perhaps ne'er pass'd the English shore, Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.

His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head, One lock amazon-like dishevelled,

As if he meant to wear a native cord,

If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin,
Close notched is his beard both lip and chin;
His linen collar labyrinthian set,

Whose thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
What monster meets mine eyes in human show?
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin,
Did never sober nature sure conjoin.
Lik'st a straw scare-crow in the new-sown field,
Rear'd on some stick, the tender corn to shield;
Or if that semblance suit not every deal,
Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel.
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SATIRE VII*. BCOK III

SEEST thou how gaily my young master goes, Vaunting himself upon his rising toes; And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side; And picks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide? "Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he dined to-day? In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humfrày. Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer, Keeps he for every straggling cavalier. And open house, haunted with great resort; Long service mix'd with musical disport. Many fair yonker with a feather'd crest, Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest, To fare so freely with so little cost, Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host. Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say He touch'd no meat of all this live-long day. For sure methought, yet that was but a guess, His eyes seem'd sunk from very hollowness, But could he have (as I did it mistake) So little in his purse, so much upon his back? So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt, That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt. Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip? Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip. Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by, All trapped in the new-found bravery. The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent, In lieu of their so kind a conquerment. What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain, His grandame could have lent with lesser pain? * In this description of a famished gallant, Hall has rivalled the succeeding humour of Ben Jonson in similar comic portraits. Among the traits of affectation in his finished character, is that of dining with duke Humphry while he pretends to keep open house-The phrase of dining with Duke Humphry arose from St. Paul's being the general resort of the loungers of those days, many of whom, like Hall's gallant, were glad to beguile the thoughts of dinner with a walk in the middle aisle, where there was a tomb, by mistake supposed to be that of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester.-E.

SATIRE VIt. BOOK IV. Quid placet ergo ?

I wor not how the world's degenerate,
That men or know or like not their estate :
Out from the Gades up to th' eastern morn,
Not one but holds his native state forlorn.
When comely striplings wish it were their chance
For Canis' distaff to exchange their lance,
And wear curl'd periwigs, and chalk their face,
And still are poring on their pocket-glass.
Tired with pinn'd ruffs and fans, and partlet strips
And busks and verdingales about their hips;
And tread on corked stilts a prisoner's pace,
And make their napkin for their spitting-place,
And gripe their waist within a narrow span :
Fond Canis, that wouldst wish to be a man!
Whose mannish housewives like their refuse state,
And make a drudge of their uxorious mate,
Who like a cot-queen freezeth at the rock,
Whiles his breech'd dame doth man the foreign stock.
Is't not a shame to see each homely groom
Sit perched in an idle chariot room,
That were not meet some pannel to bestride,
Surcingled to a galled hackney's hide?
Each muck-worm will be rich with lawless gain,
Although he smother up mows of seven years' grain,
And hang'd himself when corn grows cheap again;
Although he buy whole harvests in the spring,
And foist in false strikes to the measuring
Although his shop be muffled from the light,
Like a day dungeon, or Cimmerian night;
Nor full nor fasting can the carle take rest,
While his george-nobles rusten in his chest ;

The general scope of this satire, as its motto denotes, is directed against the discontent of human beings with their respective conditions. It paints the ambition of the youth to become a man, of the muckworm to be rich, of the rustic to become a soldier, of the rhymer to appear in print, and of the brain-sick reader of foreign wonders to become a traveller.-E.

He sleeps but once, and dreams of burglary,
And wakes, and casts about his frighted eye,
And gropes for thieves in every darker shade;
And if a mouse but stir, he calls for aid.
The sturdy ploughman doth the soldier see,
All scarf'd with pied colours to the knee,
Whom Indian pillage hath made fortunate,
And now he 'gins to loath his former state;
Now doth he inly scorn his Kendal-green,
And his patch'd cockers now despised been ;
Nor list he now go whistling to the car,
But sells his team, and fetleth to the war.
O war! to them that never tried thee, sweet!
When his dead mate falls groveling at his feet,
And angry bullets whistlen at his ear,
And his dim eyes see nought but death and drear.
O happy ploughman! were thy weal well known :
O happy all estates, except his own!

Some drunken rhymer thinks his time well spent,
If he can live to see his name in print,
Who, when he is once fleshed to the press,
And sees his hansell have such fair success,
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail,
He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sail,
Nor then can rest, but volumes up bodged rhymes,
To have his name talked of in future times.
The brain-sick youth, that feeds his tickled ear
With sweet-sauced lies of some false traveller,
Which hath the Spanish Decades read awhile,
Or whetstone leasings of old Mandeville,

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Now are they dunghill cocks that have not seen
The bordering Alps, or else the neighbour
Rhine:

And now he plies the news-full Grasshopper,
Of voyages and ventures to inquire.

His land mortgaged, he sea-beat in the way,
Wishes for home a thousand sighs a day;
And now he deems his home-bred fare as leaf
As his parch'd biscuit, or his barrell'd beef.
'Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,
O let me lead an academic life;

To know much, and to think for nothing, know
Nothing to have, yet think we have enow;
In skill to want, and wanting seek for more;
In weal nor want, nor wish for greater store.
Envy, ye monarchs, with your proud excess,
At our low sail, and our high happiness.

WILLIAM WARNER

[Died, 1608-9.]

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 love-stories 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 possible, 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, but written with an almost doggrel simplicity. Headley has 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.

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A many princes seek her love, but none might A brace of years he lived thus, well pleased so to live, her obtain, And, shepherd-like, to feed a flock himself did wholly give;

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 inveigh.

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:

So wasting love, by work and want, grew almost to the wane,

And then began a second love the worser of the twain ;

A country wench, a neat-herd's maid, where Curan kept his sheep,

Did feed her drove; and now on her was all the shepherd's keep.

He borrow'd on the working days his holie russets oft,

And of the bacon's fat to make his startups black and soft,

And lest his tar-box should offend, he left it at the fold:

Sweet grout or whig his bottle had as much as it might hold;

A shave of bread as brown as nut, and cheese as white as snow,

And wildings, or the season's fruit, he did in scrip bestow;

And whilst his pyebald cur did sleep, and sheephook lay him by,

On hollow quills of oaten straw he piped melody But when he spied her his saint

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Thus the shepherd woo'd.

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Meanwhile the king did beat his brain, his booty to achieve, Not caring what became of her, so he by her Thou art too elvish, faith, thou art; too elvish might thrive; and too coy; At last his resolution was some peasant should her Am I, I pray thee, beggarly, that such a flock enjoy? wive:

And (which was working to his wish) he did observe with joy,

How Curan, whom he thought a drudge, scap'd many an am'rous toy:

The king, perceiving such his vein, promotes his vassal still,

Lest that the baseness of the man should let perhaps his will;

Assured, therefore, of his love, but not suspecting who

The lover was, the king himself in his behalf did woo: The lady, resolute from love, unkindly takes that he Should bar the noble and unto so base a match agree;

And therefore, shifting out of doors, departed hence by stealth,

Preferring poverty before a dangerous life in wealth.

When Curan heard of her escape, the anguish of his heart

Was more than much, and after her he did from court depart;

Forgetful of hmself, his birth, his country, friends, and all,

And only minding whom he miss'd, the foundress of his thrall:

Nor means he after to frequent the court, or stately towns,

But solitarily to live among the country growns.

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Believe me, lass, a king is but a man, and so am I; Content is worth a monarchy, and mischiefs hit

the high,

As late it did a king, and his, not dwelling far

from hence,

Who left a daughter, save thyself, for fair a matchless wench;

Here did he pause, as if his tongue had done his heart offence :

The neatress, longing for the rest, did egg him on to tell She bore,

How fair she was, and who she was. quoth he, the belle;

For beauty, though I clownish am, I know what beauty is,

Or did I not, yet seeing thee, I senseless were to miss:

Suppose her beauty Helen's like, or Helen's something less,

And every star consorting to a pure complexion guess;

Her stature comely tall, her gait well graced, and her wit

To marvel at, not meddle with, as matchless I omit;

A globe-like head, a gold-like hair, a forehead smooth and high,

An even nose; on either side did shine a greyish

eye.

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