My beastes, awhile your foode refraine,
And harke your herdmans sounde;
Whom spitefull love, alas! hath slaine
Through-girt with many a wounde.
O happy be ye, beastes wilde,
That here your pasture takes!
I se that ye be not begilde
Of these your faithfull makes.

The hart he fedeth by the hinde,
The buck harde by the do:

The turtle dove is not unkinde
To him that loves her so.

But, welaway, that nature wrought
Thee, Phyllida, so faire;

For I may say, that I have bought

Thy beauty all too deare!" &c.

The illustrations, in the two following stanzas, of the restlessness of a lover's mind, deserve to be cited for their simple beauty, and native force of expression.

The owle with feble sight
Lyes lurking in the leaves;
The sparrow in the frosty night
May shroud her in the eaves.

But wo to me, alas!

In sunne, nor yet in shade,

I cannot finde a resting place

My burden to unlade."

m

Nor can I omit to notice the sentimental and expressive metaphor contained in a single line.

Walking the path of pensive thought.
Perhaps there is more pathos

i pierced through. So fol. 113. infr. His entrails with a lance through-girded quite.

n

and feeling in the Ode, in

"Fol. 71. [The turn and texture of these stanzas would appear to be derived from the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, viii, 20. and ix. 58.- PARK.] " Fol. 87.

which The Lover in despaire lamenteth his Case, than in any other piece of the whole collection.

Adieu desert, how art thou spent!
Ah dropping tears, how do ye waste!
Ah scalding sighes, how ye be spent,
To pricke Them forth that will not haste!
Ah! pained hart, thou gapst for grace,
Even there, where pitie hath no place.
As easy it is the stony rocke
From place to place for to remove,
As by thy plaint for to provoke
A frosen hart from hate to love.
What should I say? Such is thy lot
To fawne on them that force thee not!

Thus mayst thou safely say and sweare,
That rigour raigneth and ruth doth faile,
In thanklesse thoughts thy thoughts do weare:
Thy truth, thy faith, may nought availe
For thy good will: why should thou so
Still graft, where grace it will not grow?
Alas! pore hart, thus hast thou spent
Thy flowryng time, thy pleasant yeres?
With sighing voice wepe and lament,
For of thy hope no frute apperes!
Thy true meanyng is paide with scorne,
That ever soweth and repeth no corne.
And where thou sekes a quiet port,
Thou dost but weigh against the winde:
For where thou gladdest woldst resort,
There is no place for thee assinde'.
The desteny hath set it so,

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 un

worthily wasted in the tedious and fruitless anxieties of unsuccessful love, are highly natural, and are painted from the heart : but their force is weakened by the poet's allusions.

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 scholar, who was pursuing his studies successfully, but in the midst of his literary career, married unfortunately.

A student, at his boke so plast',

That welth he might have wonne,
From boke to wife did flete in hast,
From wealth to wo to run.

Now, who hath plaid a feater cast,
Since jugling first begonne?

In knitting of himself so fast,

Himselfe he hath undonne."

But the humour does not arise from the circumstances of the character. It is a general joke on an unhappy match.

These two lines are said to have been written by Mary queen of Scots with a diamond on a window in Fotheringay castle, during her imprisonment there, and to have been of her composition.

From the toppe of all my trust

Mishap hath throwen me in the dust".

X

But they belong to an elegant little ode of terr stanzas in the collection before us, in which a lover complains that he is caught by the snare which he once defied. The unfortunate queen only quoted a distich applicable to her situation, which she remembered in a fashionable set of poems, perhaps the amusement of her youth.

so pursuing his studies. Plast, so spelled for the rhyme, is placed.

"Fol. 64.

"See Ballard's LEARN. LAD. p. 161. * Fol. 53.

The ode, which is the comparison of the author's faithful and painful passion with that of Troilus', is founded on Chaucer's poem, or Boccace's, on the same subject. This was the most favorite love-story of our old poetry, and from its popularity was wrought into a drama by Shakespeare. Troilus's sufferings for Cressida were a common topic for a lover's fidelity and assiduity. Shakespeare, in his MERCHANT OF VENICE, compares a night favorable to the stratagems or the meditation of a lover, to such a night as Troilus might have chosen, for stealing a view of the Grecian camp from the ramparts of Troy.

And sigh'd his soul towards the Grecian tents

Where Cressid lay that night "..

Among these poems is a short fragment of a translation into Alexandrines of Ovid's epistle from Penelope to Ulysses. 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 prose. Nor were the heroic epistles of Ovid translated into verse till the year 1582*, by George Turberville. It is a proof that the classics 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 sonnet on The diverse and contrarie passions of the lover, is formed on one of Petrarch's sonnets, and which, as I have remarked before, was translated by sir Thomas Wyat". So many of the nobility, and principal persons about the court, writing sonnets in the Italian style, is a circumstance which must have greatly contributed to circulate this mode of composition, and to encourage the study of the Italian poets. Beside lord Surrey, sir Thomas Wyat, lord Boleyn, lord Vaux, and sir Francis Bryan, already men

tioned, Edmund lord Sheffield, created a baron by king Edward the Sixth, and killed by a butcher in the Norfolk insurrection, is said by Bale to have written sonnets in the Italian manner.

I have been informed, that Henry lord Berners translated some of Petrarch's sonnets f. But this nobleman otherwise deserved notice here, for his prose works, which co-operated with the romantic genius and the gallantry of the age. He translated, and by the king's command, Froissart's chronicle, which was printed by Pinson in 1523. Some of his other translations are professed romances. He translated from the Spanish, by desire of the lady of sir Nicholas Carew, THE CASTLE of Love. From the French he translated, at the request of the earl of Huntingdon, SIR HUGH OF BOURDEAUX, which became exceedingly popular. And from the same language, The HisTORY OF ARTHUR an Armorican knight. Bale says, that he wrote a comedy called Ite in vineam, or the PARABLE of the VINEYARD, which was frequently acted at Calais, where lord Berners resided, after vespers". He died in 1532.

I have also been told, that the late lord Eglintoun had a genuine book of manuscript sonnets, written by king Henry the Eighth. There is an old madrigal, set to music by William Bird, supposed to be written by Henry, when he first fell in love with Anne Boleyn'. It begins,

The eagles force subdues eche byrde that flyes,
What metal can resyste the flamyng fyre?

Doth not the sunne dazle the cleareste eyes,

And melt the yce, and make the froste retyre?

It appears in Bird's PSALMES, SONGS, AND SONNETS, printed

* See Tanner BIBL. p. 668. Dugd. BAR. iii. 386. [And Noble Authors, i. 277. edit. 1806. also Nevyll's Letters of Lord Sheffield, p. 61. 1582.-PARK.] f MSS. Oldys.

Cent. ix. p. 706.

hATH. OXON. i. 53. It is not known, whether it was in Latin or English, Stowe says, that in 1528, at Greenwich, after a grand tournament and banquet,

there was the "most goodliest Disguising or Interlude in Latine," &c. CHRON. p. 539. edit. fol. 1615. But possibly this may be Stowe's way of naming and describing a comedy of Plautus. See supr. p. 188.

I must not forget, that a song is ascribed to Anne Boleyn, but with little probability, called her COMPLAINT. See Hawkins, Hist. Mus. iii. 32. v. 480.