Labour. His beaftes he kept upon the hyll And thus with fighes and forowes fhryll "O Harpalus, thus would he fay, "The cause of thine unhappy day By love was firft begunne! "For thou wentst first by fute to seke "A tigre to make tame, "That fettes not by thy love a leeke, "As eafy it were to convert "The froft into the flame, "As for to turne a froward hert "He leapes among the leaves; "He eates the frutes of thy redresse 1, "My beaftes, awhile your "And hark your herdfmans founde; "O happy be ye, beaftes wilde, "The hart he fedeth by the hinde, "The buck hard by the do: "The turtle dove is not unkinde "To him that loves her fo. Pains. Pierce through. So fol. 113. infr. "But, welaway, that nature wrought, "Thee, Phyllida, fo faire; "For I may fay, that I have bought Thy beauty all too deare ! &c '.” The illustrations in the two following ftanzas, of the restleffness of a lover's mind, deferve to be cited for their fimple beauty, and native force of expreffion. The owle with feble fight But wo to me, alace! I cannot finde a resting place My burden to unlade TM. Nor can I omit to notice the fentimental and expreffive metaphor contained in a single line. Walking the path of penfive thought ". Perhaps there is more pathos and feeling in the Ode, in which The Lover in defpaire lamenteth his Cafe, than in any other piece of the whole collection. Adieu defert, how art thou spent ! 1 Fol. 55. Fol. 71. n Fol. 87. • Favour. As As easy tis the ftony rocke As by thy plaint for to provoke A frofen hart from hate to love. To fawne on them that force P thee not! Alas! poore hart, thus haft thou spent That thy true hart should cause thy wo'. These reflections, resulting from a retrospect of the vigorous and active part of life, destined for nobler pursuits, and unworthily wafted in the tedious and fruitless anxieties of unfuccefsful love, are highly natural, and are painted from the heart: but their force is weakened by the poet's allufions. This miscellany affords the first pointed English epigram that I remember; and which deserves to be admitted into the modern collections of that popular species of poetry. Sir Thomas More was one of the best jokers of that age: and there is some probability, that this might have fallen from his pen. It is on a fcholar, who was pursuing his ftudies fuccefsfully, but in the midst of his literary career, married unfortunately. A ftudent, at his boke so plast', That welth he might have wonne, Now, who hath plaid a feater cast, Himself he hath undonne ". But the humour does not arife from the circumstances of the character. It is a general joke on an unhappy match. These two lines are faid to have been written by Mary queen of Scots with a diamond on a window in Fotheringay caftle, during her imprisonment there, and to have been of her compofition. From the toppe of all my truft Mishap hath throwen me in the dust ". But they belong to an elegant little ode of ten ftanzas in the collection before us, in which a lover complains that he is caught by the fnare which he once defied. The unfortunate queen only quoted a diftich applicable to her fituation, which the remembered in a fashionable fett of poems, perhaps the amusement of her youth. The ode, which is the comparison of the author's faithful and painful paffion with that of Troilus, is founded on Chaucer's So purfuing his ftudies. Plaft, fo spelled for the rhyme, is placed. "Fol. 64. w See Ballard's LEARN. LAD. p. 161. poem, poem, or Boccace's, on the fame fubject. This was the most favorite love-story of our old poetry, and from its popularity was wrought into a drama by Shakespeare. Troilus's fufferings for Creffida were a common topic for a lover's fidelity and affiduity. Shakespeare, in his MERCHANT OF VENICE, compares a night favorable to the ftratagems or the meditation of a lover, to such a night as Troilus might have chofen, for stealing a view of the Grecian camp from the ramparts of Troy. And figh'd his foul towards the Grecian tents Among these poems is a fhort fragment of a translation into Alexandrines of Ovid's epistle from Penelope to Ulyffes. This is the first attempt at a metrical translation of any part of Ovid into English, for Caxton's Ovid is a loose paraphrase in profe. Nor were the heroic epistles of Ovid translated into verse till the year 1582, by George Tuberville. It is a proof that the claffics were studied, when they began to be translated. It would be tedious and intricate to trace the particular imitations of the Italian poets, with which these anonymous poems abound. Two of the sonnets are panegyrics on Petrarch and Laura, names at that time familiar to every polite reader, and the patterns of poetry and beauty. The fonnet on The diverfe and contrarie paffions of the lover, is formed on one of Petrarch's fonnets, and which, as I have remarked before, was tranflated by fir Thomas Wyat". So many of the nobility, and principal perfons about the court, writing fonnets in the Italian style, is a circumstance which must have greatly contributed to circulate this mode of compofition, and to encourage the study of the Italian poets. Befide lord Surrey, fir Thomas Wyat, lord Boleyn, lord Vaux, and fir Francis Bryan, already mentioned, Ed z A& V. Sc. i. • Fol. 89. • Fol. 74. e Fol. 107. H 2 mund |