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III.

THE PICTURE OF THE BODY.

ITTING, and ready to be drawn,

What make these velvets, silks, and lawn,
Embroideries, feathers, fringes, lace,
Where every limb takes like a face?

Send these suspected helps to aid
Some form defective, or decay'd;
This beauty, without falsehood fair,
Needs nought to clothe it but the air.
Yet something to the painter's view,
Were fitly interposed; so new:
He shall, if he can understand,
Work by my fancy, with his hand.

Draw first a cloud, all save her neck,
And, out of that, make day to break;
Till like her face it do appear,
And men may think all light rose there.

Then let the beams of that disperse
The cloud, and shew the universe;
But at such distance, as the eye
May rather yet adore, than spy.

The heaven design'd, draw next a spring,
With all that youth, or it can bring:
Four rivers branching forth like seas,
And Paradise confining these.2

2 Four rivers branching forth, like seas,

And Paradise confining these.] That could never be the case : the land may be confined by the rivers, though not these by the land. And this the sacred historian tells us was the situation of Paradise; for confining, therefore, we must read, confin'd in these.

WHAL.

Whalley has prayed his pible ill, and the poet is a better scrip

Last, draw the circles of this globe,
And let there be a starry robe
Of constellations 'bout her hurl'd;
And thou hast painted Beauty's world.
But, painter, see thou do not sell
A copy of this piece; nor tell
Whose 'tis but if it favour find,
Next sitting we will draw her mind.

IV.

THE PICTURE OF THE MIND.

AINTER, you're come, but may be
gone,
Now I have better thought thereon,
This work I can perform alone;
And give you reasons more than one.
Not that your art I do refuse;
But here I may no colours use,
Beside, your hand will never hit,
To draw a thing that cannot sit.
You could make shift to paint an eye,
An eagle towering in the sky,
The sun, a sea, or soundless pit; 3
But these are like a mind, not it.

No, to express this mind to sense,
Would ask a heaven's intelligence;
Since nothing can report that flame,
But what's of kin to whence it came.

tural geographer than the priest. The river that watered Paradise, branched into four heads immediately upon quitting it. Paradise therefore, was not inclosed by the four rivers; it merely touched them. Could my predecessor be ignorant that the primitive sense of confine, was to border upon?

3

or soundless pit,] i. e. bottomless, that cannot be fathomed. WHAL.

Sweet Mind, then speak yourself, and say,
As you go on, by what brave way
Our sense you do with knowledge fill,
And yet remain our wonder still.

I call you, Muse, now make it true :
Henceforth may every line be you;
That all may say, that see the frame,
This is no picture, but the same.

A mind so pure, so perfect fine,
As 'tis not radiant, but divine;
And so disdaining any trier,
'Tis got where it can try the fire.

There, high exalted in the sphere,
As it another nature were,

It moveth all; and makes a flight
As circular as infinite.

Whose notions when it will express
In speech; it is with that excess
Of grace, and music to the ear,
As what it spoke, it planted there.

The voice so sweet, the words so fair,

As some soft chime had stroked the air;
And though the sound were parted thence,
Still left an echo in the sense.

But that a mind so rapt, so high,
So swift, so pure, should yet apply
Itself to us, and come so nigh

Earth's grossness; there's the how and why.

Is it because it sees us dull,

And sunk in clay here, it would pull
Us forth, by some celestial sleight,
Up to her own sublimed height?

Or hath she here, upon the ground,
Some Paradise or palace found,
In all the bounds of Beauty, fit
For her t'inhabit? There is it.

Thrice happy house, that hast receipt
For this so lofty form, so streight,
So polish'd, perfect, round and even,
As it slid moulded off from heaven.

Not swelling like the ocean proud,
But stooping gently, as a cloud,
As smooth as oil pour'd forth, and calm
As showers, and sweet as drops of balm.

Smooth, soft, and sweet, in all a flood,
Where it may run to any good;
And where it stays, it there becomes
A nest of odorous spice and gums.

In action, winged as the wind;
In rest, like spirits left behind
Upon a bank, or field of flowers,
Begotten by the wind and showers.

In thee, fair mansion, let it rest,

Yet know, with what thou art possest,
Thou, entertaining in thy breast

But such a mind, mak'st God thy guest.*

[A whole quaternion in the midst of this poem is lost, containing entirely the three next pieces of it, and all of the fourth (which in the order of the whole is the eighth) excepting the very end: which at the top of the next quaternion goeth on thus.]

4 This little piece is highly poetical. Some of the stanzas are exquisitely beautiful, and indeed the whole may be said to be vigorously conceived, and happily expressed.

VIII.

(A FRAGMENT.)

UT for you, growing gentlemen, the happy branches of two so illustrious houses as these,

wherefrom your honoured mother is in both lines descended; let me leave you this last legacy of counsel; which, so soon as you arrive at years of mature understanding, open you, sir, that are the eldest, and read it to your brethren, for it will concern you all alike. Vowed by a faithful servant and client of your family, with his latest breath expiring it.

BEN JONSON.

TO KENELM, JOhn, George.5

yours:

BOAST not these titles of your ancestors,
Brave youths, they're their possessions, none of
When your own virtues equall'd have their names,
'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames;
For they are strong supporters: but, till then,
The greatest are but growing gentlemen.
It is a wretched thing to trust to reeds;
Which all men do, that urge not their own deeds
Up to their ancestors; the river's side

By which you're planted shews your fruit shall bide.

Of these three sons, George probably died young. Kenelm, the eldest, a young man of great abilities and virtues, nobly redeemed the error of his grandfather, and took up arms for his sovereign. He was slain at the battle of St. Neot's in Huntingdonshire, July 7, 1648; and John is said to have succeeded to the family estate, after removing some legal bar interposed, in a moment of displeasure, by his father.

The lines which follow bear a running allusion to the eighth satire of Juvenal; they are evidently a mere fragment.

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