A CELEBRATION OF CHARIS. I. HIS EXCUSE FOR LOVING. PET it not your wonder move, Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace; 1 Though I now write fifty years.] This fixes the date of this little collection to 1624, the last year of health, perhaps, which the poet ever enjoyed. There is a considerable degree of ease and elegance in these effusions; and, indeed, it may be observed in general, of our poet's lyrics, that a vein of sprightliness and fancy runs through them which a reader of his epistles, &c., is scarcely prepared to expect. In the latter, Jonson, like several other poets of his age, or rather of his school, who also succeeded in lyrics, sedulously reigns in the imagination, and contents himself with strength of sentiment and thought, in simple but vigorous language, and unambitious rhyme. His" Charis" has all the vivid colouring of the best ages of antiquity; and it is truly delightful to mark the grace and ease with which this great poet plays with the boundless mass of his literary acquisitions. Or the feature, or the youth: II. HOW HE SAW HER. BEHELD her on a day, When her look out-flourish'd May: And her dressing did out-brave All the pride the fields then have : Far I was from being stupid, For I ran and call'd on Cupid;— Love, if thou wilt ever see Mark of glory, come with me; Every cloud about his eye; But he had not gain'd his sight Straight he ran, and durst not stay, Letting bow and arrow fall : Could be brought once back to look. Or else one that play'd his In a Hercules his shape. ape, III. WHAT HE SUFFERED. FTER many scorns like these, Eyes and limbs, to hurt me more, And would, on conditions, be |