THE FOREST.

THE FOREST.] From the folio, 1616. Between this and the poem which now concludes the Epigrams, Whalley foisted in several compositions under that title, which appeared long after the publication of the volume. This was injudiciously done, for as the date of the folio was well known, it tended to confound the idea of time, and to mislead the general reader. Several of the pieces given by Whalley under the head of Epigrams, closed by the author in 1616, were written by him as late as 1630.

WHY I WRITE NOT OF LOVE.

OME act of Love's bound to rehearse,
I thought to bind him in my verse :
Which when he felt, Away, quoth he,
Can poets hope to fetter me?

It is enough, they once did get
Mars and my mother, in their net :
I wear not these my wings in vain.
With which he fled me; and again,
Into my rhymes could ne'er be got
By any art: then wonder not,
That since, my numbers are so cold,
When Love is fled, and I grow old.

II.

TO PENSHURST.1

HOU art not, Penshurst, built to envious

Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row Of polish'd pillars, or a roof of gold:

Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told;

1 To Penshurst.] This place is pleasantly situated near the banks

Or stair, or courts; but stand'st an ancient pile,
And these grudg'd at, art reverenced the while.
Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air,
Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.
Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport:
Thy mount, to which thy Dryads do resort,
Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made,
Beneath the broad beech, and the chestnut shade;
That taller tree, which of a nut was set,

At his great birth, where all the Muses met.3

of the Medway; it was the ancient seat of sir Stephen Pencestre, warden of the Cinque Ports, and Constable of Dover Castle, in the reign of Henry III., and was granted by Edward VI. to sir William Sidney and his heirs :-having been forfeited to the crown by the rebellion of sir R. Fane, its last proprietor.

2 Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show

Of touch or marble.] The common kind of black marble frequently made use of in funeral monuments, was then called by this name; so Weaver, giving the account of a tomb at Hampstead:

"Under a fair monument of marble and touch," &c. From its solidity and firmness it was used also as the test of gold: in this sense it occurs in Shakspeare :

"Ah! Buckingham, now do I ply the touch."
Richard III. Act iv. sc. 2.

And from this use of it, the name itself was taken. It seems to be the same with that anciently called basalt. WHAL.

3 At his great birth, where all the Muses met,] i. e. sir Philip Sidney's, who was born at Penshurst in Kent. WHAL.

Sir Philip Sidney was born 29th November, 1554. "That taller tree," produced from an acorn, planted on his birth-day, and which has been the theme of many poets, is no longer standing. It is said to have been felled by mistake in 1768; a wretched apology, if true, and, in a case of such notoriety, scarcely possible. Waller, in one of his poems, written at Penshurst, where he amused himself with falling in love, has an allusion to this oak:

"Go, boy, and carve this passion on the bark

Of yonder tree, which stands the sacred mark
Of noble Sidney's birth," &c.

On which the commentator on his poems observes that though no tradition of the circumstance remained in the family, yet the obser

There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names
Of many a sylvan, taken with his flames;
And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke
The lighter fauns, to reach thy lady's oak.1

Thy copse, too, named of Gamage, thou hast there,"
That never fails to serve thee season'd deer,
When thou wouldst feast, or exercise thy friends.
The lower land, that to the river bends,

Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed;
The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed.
Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops
Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sydneys copp's,
To crown thy open table, doth provide
The purpled pheasant, with the speckled side:
The painted partridge lies in ev'ry field,
And for thy mess is willing to be kill'd.

vation of Cicero on the Marian oak might not unaptly be applied
to it.
"Manet vero et semper manebit. Sata est enim ingenio:
Nullius autem agricolæ cultu stirps tam diuturna quam poetæ versu
seminari potest." De leg. lib. i.

About a century after the date of Waller's verses, this oak was still standing, and the ingenious Mr. F. Coventry wrote the following lines under its shade:

Stranger kneel here! to age due homage pay
When great Eliza held Britannia's sway

My growth began,-the same illustrious morn,
Joy to the hour! saw gallant Sidney born.
He perish'd early; I just stay behind

An hundred years; and lo! my clefted rind,
My wither'd boughs foretell destruction nigh;
We all are mortal; oaks and heroes die."

thy lady's oak.] There is an old tradition that a lady Leicester (the wife undoubtedly of sir Robert Sidney) was taken in travail under an oak in Penshurst park, which was afterwards called my Lady's oak.

5 Thy copse, too, named of Gamage.] "This coppice is now called lady Gamage's bower; it being said that Barbara Gamage, countess of Leicester, used to take great delight in feeding the deer therein from her own hands." Dug. Baron. This lady was daughter and heiress of John Gamage of Coytie, in Glamorganshire, and the first wife of sir Robert.