COMMENDATORY POEMS.

To the Stationer.

TELL the sad world that now the labouring press
Has brought forth safe a child of happiness;
The frontispiece will satisfy the wise

And good so well, they will not grudge the price.
'Tis not all kingdoms joined in one could buy
(If prized aright) so true a library

Of man: where we the characters may find
Of every nobler and each baser mind.
Desert has here reward in one good line
For all it lost, for all it might repine;
Vile and ignobler things are open laid,
The truth of their false colours are displayed:
You'll say the poet's both best judge and priest,
No guilty soul abides so sharp a test

As their smooth pen; for what these rare men writ
Commands the world, both honesty and wit.

GRANDISON.

2 The frontispiece.] Alluding to the portrait of Fletcher prefixed to the first folio.

In Memory of Mr JOHN FLETCHER.

METHOUGHT Our Fletcher weary of this crowd,
Wherein so few have wit, yet all are loud,
Unto Elysium fled, where he alone

Might his own wit admire, and ours bemoan;
But soon upon those flowery banks, a throng,
Worthy of those even numbers which he sung,
Appeared, and though those ancient laureates strive
When dead themselves, whose raptures should survive,
For his temples all their own bays allows,

Not shamed to see him crowned with naked brows;
Homer his beautiful Achilles named,

Urging his brain with Jove's might well be famed,
Since it brought forth one full of beauty's charms,
As was his Pallas, and as bold in arms;

But when he the brave Arbases3 saw, one
That saved his people's dangers by his own,
And saw Tigranes by his hand undone
Without the help of any Myrmidon,

He then confess'd, when next he'd Hector stay,
That he must borrow him from Fletcher's play;
This might have been the shame, for which he bid
His Iliads in a nut-shell should be hid.

Virgil of his Æneas next begun,

Whose God-like form and tongue so soon had won
The queen of Carthage, and of beauty too,

Two powers the whole world else were slaves unto;
Urging that prince, for to repair his fault
On earth, boldly in hell his mistress sought:
But when he Amintor saw revenge that wrong,
For which the sad Aspatia sighed so long,
Upon himself, to shades hasting away,
Not for to make a visit, but a stay;
He then did modestly confess how far
Fletcher outdid him in a character.
Now, lastly, for a refuge, Virgil shows
The lines where Corydon Alexis wooes;
But those, in opposition, quickly met
The smooth-tongued Perigot and Amoret; 5
A pair whom, doubtless, had the others seen,
They from their own loves had apostates been:

The Maid's Tragedy.
Orig. Notes.

3 King and no King.
5 The Faithful Shepherdess.

Thus Fletcher did the fam'd laureat exceed,
Both when his trumpet sounded, and his reed.
Now if the ancients yield that heretofore
None worthier than those e'er laurels wore;
The least our age can say, now thou art gone,
Is, that there never will be such a one:

And since to express thy works our lines too narrow be,
To help it we'll be ample in our prophecy.

H. HOWARD.

On Mr JOHN FLETCHER and his Works, never before published.

To flatter living fools is easy sleight,

But hard, to do the living-dead men right.
To praise a landed lord is gainful art;
But thankless to pay tribute to desert.
This should have been my task: I had intent
To bring my rubbish to thy monument,
To stop some crannies there, but that I found
No need of least repair; all firm and sound.
Thy well-built fame doth still itself advance
Above the world's mad zeal and ignorance.
Though thou diedst not possess'd of that same pelf,
Which nobler souls call dirt, the city, wealth;
Yet thou hast left unto the times so great
A legacy, a treasure so complete,
That 'twill be hard, I fear, to prove thy will:
Men will be wrangling, and in doubting still,
How so vast sums of wit were left behind;
And yet nor debts, nor sharers, they can find.
'Twas the kind providence of Fate to lock
Some of this treasure up; and keep a stock
For a reserve until these sullen days;

When scorn, and want, and danger, are the bays
That crown the head of merit. But now he,
Who in thy will hath part, is rich and free.
But there's a caveat enter'd by command,

None should pretend, but those can understand.

HENRY MOODY, Bart.6

6 Sir Henry Moody was of the number of those gentlemen who had honorary degrees conferred by King Charles the First at his return to Oxford after the battle of Edgehill. The poem has some strong marks of genius in it, particularly in these lines

On MR FLETCHER's Works.

THOUGH роets have a license which they use
As the ancient privilege of their free muse,
Yet whether this be leave enough for me
To write, great bard, an eulogy for thee,
Or whether to commend thy work, will stand
Both with the laws of verse and of the land,
Were to put doubts might raise a discontent
Between the muses and the

I'll none of that: There's desperate wits that be
(As their immortal laurel) thunder-free;
Whose personal virtues, 'bove the laws of fate,
Supply the room of personal estate;

And thus enfranchised, safely may rehearse,
Rapt in a lofty strain, their own neck-verse.
For he that gives the bays to thee, must then
First take it from the military men;
He must untriumph conquests, bid 'em stand,
Question the strength of their victorious hand;
He must act new things, or go near the sin,
Reader, as near as you and I have been ;

He must be that which he that tries will swear
It is not good being so another year.

And now that thy great name I've brought to this,
To do it honour is to do amiss.

What's to be done to those that shall refuse

To celebrate, great soul, thy noble muse?

until these sullen days,

When scorn, and want, and danger, are the bays
That crown the head of merit."

I confess myself a great admirer of verses in rhime, whose pauses run into each other as boldly as blank verse itself. When our moderns corrected many faults in the measure of our verse by making the accents always fall on right syllables, and laying aside those harsh elisions used by our ancient poets, they mistook this run of the verses into each other after the manner of Virgil, Homer, &c. for a fault, which deprived our rhime of that grandeur and dignity of numbers which arises from a perpetual change of pauses, and turned whole poems into distichs.-Seward. 7 and the ] This lacuna was certainly intended to be filled up with parliament. The eulogist, it must be recollected, wrote at the time of the proscription of theatrical representations, when it was considered sinful even to read a stage-play.

VOL. I.

Shall the poor state of all those wandering things
Thy stage once raised to emperors and kings;
Shall rigid forfeitures, that reach our heirs,
Of things that only fill with cares and fears;
Shall the privation of a friendless life,
Made up of contradictions and strife;
Shall he be entity would antedate
His own poor name and thine annihilate ?
Shall these be judgments great enough for one
That dares not write thee an encomion?

Then where am I? But now I've thought upon't,
I'll praise thee more than all have ventured on't.
I'll take thy noble work, and, like the trade
Where, for a heap of salt, pure gold is laid,
I'll lay thy volume, that huge tome of wit,
About in ladies' closets where they sit
Enthroned in their own wills, and, if she be
A laic sister, she'll strait fly to thee;
But, if a holy habit she have on,
Or be some novice, she'll scarce look upon
Thy lines at first; but watch her then a while,
And
you shall see her steal a gentle smile
Upon thy title, put thee nearer yet,
Breathe on thy lines a whisper, and then set
Her voice up to the measures; then begin
To bless the hour and happy state she's in:
Now she lays by her characters, and looks
With a stern eye on all her pretty books.
She's now thy votaress, and the just crown
She brings thee with it is worth half the town.
I'll send thee to the army; they that fight
Will read thy tragedies with some delight,
Be all thy reformadoes, fancy scars,

And pay too in thy speculative wars.

I'll send thy comic scenes to some of those

That for a great while have play'd fast and loose ;"

New universalists, by changing shapes,

Have made with wit and fortune fair escapes.

Then shall the country, that poor tennis-ball

Of angry fate, receive thy pastorall,

& Shall the poor state of all those wandering things

Thy stage once raised to emperors and kings.] Alluding to the miserable situation of the actors during the civil wars, when they were deprived of the means of living by their profession.

9 Fast and loose.] A cheating game practised at the time by the gipsies. See vol. VI., p. 300.