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Labour.

His beaftes he kept upon the hyll
And he fate in the dale;

And thus with fighes and forowes fhryll
He gan to tell his tale.

"O Harpalus, thus would he say,
"Unhappiest under funne!

"The cause of thine unhappy day

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By love was first begunne!

"For thou wentst first by fute to feke

"A tigre to make tame,

"That fettes not by thy love a leeke,
"But makes thy grief her game.

"As easy it were to convert

"The froft into the flame,

"As for to turne a froward hert
"Whom thou so faine wouldft frame.
"Corin he liveth carèleffe,

"He leapes among the leaves;
"He eates the frutes of thy redresse »,
"Thou reapes, he takes the fheaves.

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My beaftes, awhile your foode refraine,
"And hark your herdsmans founde;
"Whom fpitefull love, alas, hath flaine
Through-girt with many a wounde!
"O happy be ye, beaftes wilde,
"That here your pasture takes!
"I fe that ye be not begilde

"Of these your faithfull makes *.

"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.

i Pierce through. So fol. 113. infr.

His entrails with a lance through-girded

quite.

k Mates.

"But

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The illustrations in the two following ftanzas, of the restleffnefs of a lover's mind, deferve to be cited for their fimple beauty, and native force of expreffion.

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

But wo to me, alace!
In funne, nor yet in shade,

I cannot finde a refting place

My burden to unlade ".

Nor can I omit to notice the fentimental and expreffive metaphor contained in a fingle 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!
Ah dropping tears, how do ye wafte!
Ah scalding fighes, how ye be spent,
To pricke Them forth that will not haste!
Ah! pained hart, thou gapft for grace,
Even there, where pitie hath no place.

1 Fol. 55. Fol. 71.

a Fol. 87.

• Favour.

As

As easy tis the ftony rocke
From place to place for to remove,

As by thy plaint for to provoke

A frofen hart from hate to love.
What should I fay? Such is thy lot

To fawne on them that force thee not!
Thus mayft thou fafely fay and fweare,
That rigour raignes where ruth doth faile,
In thankleffe thoughts thy thoughts do weare:
Thy truth, thy faith, may nought availe
For thy good will: why shouldst thou so
Still graft, where grace it will not grow?
Alas! poore hart, thus haft thou spent
Thy flowring time, thy pleasant yeres?
With fighing voice wepe and lament,
For of thy hope no frute apperes !
Thy true meaning is paide with scorne,
That ever foweth and repeth no corne.

And where thou fekes a quiet port,
Thou doft but weigh against the winde :
For where thou gladdeft woldst resort,
There is no place for thee affinde '.
Thy destiny hath fet it fo,

That thy true hart should cause thy wo'.

These reflections, resulting from a retrospect of the vigorous and active part of life, deftined for nobler pursuits, and unworthily wafted 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 allufions.

This mifcellany affords the first pointed English epigram that I remember; and which deferves to be admitted into the modern collections of that popular species of poetry. Sir Thomas More

Love. • Pity.

VOL. III.

• Affigned.

• Fol. 109. H

was

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 purfuing his ftudies fuccessfully, but in the midst of his literary career, married unfortunately.

A ftudent, at his boke so plast',

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

Now, who hath plaid a feater cast,
Since jugling first begonne?
In knitting of himself so fast,

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

of all my truft

Mishap hath throwen me in the dust".

But they belong to an elegant little ode of ten stanzas 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 she 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 pursuing his ftudies. Plaft, so spelled for the rhyme, is placed.

" Fol. 64.

* See Ballard's LEARN. LAD. p. 161.
* Fol. 53.
y Fal. 81.

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 sufferings 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 fuch 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
Where Creffid lay that night.

Among these poems is a fhort fragment of a tranflation into Alexandrines of Ovid's epiftle 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 prose, Nor were the heroic epiftles of Ovid tranflated into verfe till the year 1582, by George Tuberville. It is a proof that the claffics were ftudied, when they began to be tranflated.

It would be tedious and intricate to trace the particular imitations of the Italian poets, with which these anonymous poems abound. Two of the fonnets 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 circumftance 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.

a Fol. 89.

Fol. 74.

H 2

• Fol. 107.
d Supr. p. 31.

mund

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