Have made their fairest flight, Yet doth some wholsome physic for the mind, Which in the taking if you misapply, Your covetous hand, You are unkind. Happy in that fair honour it hath gain'd, True valour doth her own renown command This same which you have caught, Such thoughts will make you more in love with truth: 'Tis wisdom, and that high, For men to use their fortune reverently, XLV. Even in youth. AN ODE. ELEN, did Homer never see Thy beauties, yet could write of thee? Of Phaon's form? or doth the boy, In whom Anacreon once did joy, 3 3 as yet it is not mute, &c.] From Horace : Spirat adhuc amor, Vivuntque commissi calores Eolia fidibus puellæ. Nec si quid olim lusit Anacreon, Delevit atas, &c. Lie drawn to life in his soft verse, Made Dian not his notes refuse?" 4 Or Constable's ambrosiac muse Made Dian not his notes refuse?] This author, though honour'd with so ample a testimony from Jonson, is almost unknown in this age. "Henry Constable," in the words of Antony Wood, "was a great master of the English tongue; and there was no gentleman of our nation who had a more pure, quick, and higher delivery of conceit than he witness, among all others, that sonnet of his before the poetical translation called the Furies, made by king James the first of England, while he was king of the Scots. He hath also several sonnets extant, written to sir Philip Sidney; some of which are set before the Apology for Poetry, written by the said knight." This author flourished in the reign of queen Elizabeth. WHAL. Antony's taste in poetry was not very refined, and he did not therefore discover that his author (Edmund Bolton) had unluckily fixed upon one of Constable's worst sonnets. The Diana of which Jonson speaks, was published in 1594. Constable seems to have been the most voluminous sonnet-writer of those sonneteering times; and to have acquired a reputation rather more than equal to his Have all these done-and yet I miss XLVI. A SONNET, TO THE NOBLE LADY, THE LADY MARY WRoth. THAT have been a lover, and could shew it, Though not in these, in rhymes not wholly dumb, Since I exscribe your sonnets, am become A better lover, and much better poet. merits since, besides Jonson, he is mentioned with praise by others of his contemporaries, and placed immediately after Spenser by Judicio, in the Return from Parnassus: "Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear, And lays it up in willing prisonment." 5 And yet I miss The swan so relish'd Pancharis.] This was the French poet Bonefons or Bonefonius; who, in imitation of Secundus, wrote Basia, in the praise of his mistress Pancharis. He has a character for tenderness and delicacy. WHAL. • Since I exscribe your sonnets, &c.] The allusion is probably to lady Wroth's Urania, a pastoral romance published in 1621. This, in imitation of her uncle's (sir Philip Sidney's) Arcadia, is interspersed with songs, sonnets, and other little pieces of poetry, which our author, who seems to have been favoured with the MS., was permitted to copy. The Urania has long been forgotten, and no revolution in taste or manners can ever revive its memory; yet it was once in considerable vogue; it did not, perhaps, like Tetrachordon, number good intellects, yet it certainly counted many bright Nor is my Muse or I asham'd to owe it To those true numerous graces, whereof some Both brains and hearts; and mine now best do know it: His flames, his shafts, his quiver, and his bow, But then his mother's sweets you so apply, eyes, among its admirers. The poetical part of Urania is rather above than below the usual standard of ladies' rhymes, and though the chariest maid of these times may read it without the smallest peril, (except of her patience) it was looked upon as inflammatory by the combustible damsels of James's days: "The lady Wroth's Urania is complete With elegancies; but too full of heat," sir Aston Cokayne says; and he was not singular in his opinion. The following sonnet may serve as a specimen of the poetry which our author exscribed: it is neither the best nor the worst of the collection : SONNET. "Late in the forest I did Cupid see, Cold, wet, and crying, he had lost his way; Poor child, complain'd he starved was with stay, And to my breast I took him then unharm'd, Burning my heart, who had him kindly warm'd." Sir Robert Wroth, the husband of this celebrated lady, was also a poet fortunately his genius was turned to wit, as hers to love; so that the respective pursuits of this tuneful pair did not clash, and the domestic harmony continued unbroken to the end: Felices ter et amplius Quos irrupta tenet copula, nec malis Divulsus querimoniis Suprema citius solvet amor die! Her joys, her smiles, her loves, as readers take For Venus' ceston every line you make. XLVII. A FIT OF RHYME AGAINST RHYME. HYME, the rack of finest wits, Spoiling senses of their treasure, Wresting words from their true calling; Jointing syllabes, drowning letters, Soon as lazy thou wert known, For a thousand years together, All Parnassus' green did wither, And wit vanish'd! Starveling rhymes did fill the stage, Not a poet in an age Worthy crowning. Not a work deserving bays, Nor a line deserving praise, Pallas frowning: |