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vanus can;

Cho. Hear, O ye groves, and, hills, re-
sound his praise.

Of brightest MIRA do we raise our song,
Sister of Pan, and glory of the spring;
Nym. Who walks on earth, as May still
went along.

Cho. Rivers and valleys, echo what we sing.

Of Pan we sing, the chief of leaders, Pan,
Cho. of Shep. That leads our flocks and
To better pastures than great Pales can:
us, and calls both forth
Hear, O ye groves, and, hills, resound
his worth.

Of brightest Mira is our song; the grace
Cho. of Nym. Of all that nature yet to

life did bring;

And were she lost, could best supply her place:

Rivers and valleys, echo what we sing.

his chemical reveries, his sympathetic powder, &c., than for his talents and accomplishments. He was, however, an eminent man, and a benefactor to the literature of his country. He died 1665.

was mistaken, and did it for the rhyme sake.'
We have here a couple of dreamers-but they
are not worth an argument: it is more to the
purpose to observe from the latter, that "Sir
Kenelm Digby was held to be the most accom-in
plished cavalier of his time, the Mirandola of
his age, that he understood ten or twelve lan-
guages, and was well versed in all kinds of
learning, very generous and liberal to deserving
persons, and a great patron to Ben Jonson, who
has some excellent verses on him," &c.-Letters
by Eminent Persons, vol. ii. p. 326.

Sir Kenelm Digby was one of our poet's adopted sons: he is now more remembered for

1 For he doth love my verses, and will look, Kenelm had a great affection for the Fairy Upon them, next to Spenser's noble book.] Sir Queen, and wrote a commentary on a single stanza of that poem. It is called, Observations on the 22nd stanza in the 9th canto of the zna book of Spenser's Fairy Queen, Lond. 1644. Octavo.-WHAL.

I Shep. Where'er they tread the enamoured ground,

The fairest flowers are always found:

2 Shep. As if the beauties of the year Still waited on them where they were.

I Shep. He is the father of our peace;
2 Shep. She to the crown hath brought

increase.

I Shep. We know no other power than his;
Pan only our great shepherd is,
Cho. Our great, our good.
so drest

Where one's

In truth of colours, both are best.

Make first a song of joy and love,
Which chastely flames in royal eyes,
Then tune it to the spheres above,
When the benignest stars do rise,
And sweet conjunctions grace the skies.
Long may, &c.

To this let all good hearts resound,
Whilst diadems invest his head;
Long may he live, whose life doth bound
More than his laws, and better led
By high example, than by dread.
Long may, &c.

Rect. Cho. Haste, haste you hither, all Long may he round about him see

you gentler swains,

That have a flock or herd upon these plains:
This is the great preserver of our bounds,
To whom you owe all duties of your grounds;
Your milks, your fells, your fleeces, and first
lambs,

Your teeming ewes, as well as mounting rams.
Whose praises let's report unto the woods,
That they may take it echoed by the floods.
Cho. 'Tis he, 'tis he; in singing he,
And hunting, Pan, exceedeth thee:
He gives all plenty and increase,
He is the author of our peace.

Rect. Cho. Where'er he goes upon the
ground

The better grass and flowers are found.
To sweeter pastures lead he can,
Than ever Pales could, or Pan:
He drives diseases from our folds,
The thief from spoil his presence holds :
Pan knows no other power than his,
This only the great shepherd is.
Cho. 'Tis he, 'tis he; &c.1

XCIX.

ON THE KING'S BIRTHDAY.

Rouse up thyself, my gentle Muse,
Though now our green conceits be gray,
And yet once more do not refuse

To take thy Phrygian harp, and play
In honour of this cheerful day:
Long may they both contend to prove
That best of crowns is such a love.

1 In the old copy several love verses are ridiculously tacked to this chorus: they have already appeared, and the circumstance is only noted here to mark the carelessness or ignorance of those who had the ransacking of the poet's study after his death. [See ante, Underwoods, No. xl. p. 307 a.-F. C.]

This is probably Ben's last tribute of duty to his royal master: it is not his worst; it was perhaps better as it came from the poet, for a

VOL. III.

His roses and his lilies blown :
Long may his only dear and he

Joy in ideas of their own
And kingdom's hopes, so timely sown.
Long may they both contend to prove
That best of crowns is such a love.

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354

CI.

AN ELEGY.

ON THE LADY JANE PAWLET, MAR-
CHIONESS OF WINTON.1

What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew,2
And beckoning woos me, from the fatal tree
To pluck a garland for herself or me?
I do obey you, Beauty! for in death
You seem a fair one. O that you had breath
To give your shade a name! Stay, stay, I
feel

A horror in me, all my blood is steel;
Stiff! stark my joints 'gainst one another
knock !

Whose daughter?-Ha! great Savage of
the Rock,3

He's good as great. I am almost a stone!
And ere I can ask more of her, she's gone!
Alas, I am all marble! write the rest
Thou wouldst have written, Fame, upon
my breast:

It is a large fair table, and a true,
And the disposure will be something new,
When I, who would the poet have become,
At least may bear the inscription to her
tomb.

She was the Lady JANE, and Marchionisse
Of Winchester; the heralds can tell this.
Earl Rivers' grandchild-'serve not forms,
good Fame,

Sound thou her virtues, give her soul a

name.

Had I a thousand mouths, as many tongues,
And voice to raise them from my brazen
lungs,

I durst not aim at that; the dotes were such
Thereof, no notion can express how much

An Elegy on the Lady Fane Pawlet, &c.] The folio reads Lady Anne, though Jane, the true name, occurs, as Whalley observes, just below. This wretched copy is so full of errors, that the reader's attention would be too severely proved if called to notice the tithe of them; in general they have been corrected in silence.

This Lady Jane was the first wife of that brave and loyal nobleman, John, fifth Marquis of Winchester. He was one of the greatest sufferers by the Usurpation; but he lived to see the restoration of the royal family, and died full of years and honour in 1674. The Marchioness died in 1631, which is therefore the date of the >Elegy.

? What gentle ghost besprent with April dew, Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?] Pope seems to have imitated the first lines of this elegy, in his poem to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady:

Their caract was: I or my trump must

break,

But rather I, should I of that part speak;
It is too near of kin to heaven, the soul,
To be described! Fame's fingers are too
foul

To touch these mysteries: we may admire
The heat and splendour, but not handle fire.
What she did here, by great example, well,
T' inlive posterity, her Fame may tell;
And calling Truth to witness, make that
good

From the inherent graces in her blood!
Else who doth praise a person by a new
But a feigned way, doth rob it of the true.
Her Sweetness, Softness, her fair Courtesy,
Her wary guards, her wise simplicity,
Were like a ring of Virtues 'bout her set,
And Piety the centre where all met.
A reverend state she had, an awful eye,
A dazzling, yet inviting, majesty:
What Nature, Fortune, Institution, Fact
Could sum to a perfection, was her Act!
How did she leave the world, with what
contempt !

Just as she in it lived, and so exempt
From all affection! when they urged the cure
Of her disease, how did her soul assure
Her sufferings, as the body had been away!
And to the torturers, her doctors, say,
Stick on your cupping-glasses, fear not, put
Your hottest caustics to, burn, lance, or cut:
'Tis but a body which you can torment,
And I into the world all Soul was sent :
Then comforted her lord, and blest her son, 4
Cheered her fair sisters in her race to run,
With gladness tempered her sad parents

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"What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight
shade,

Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?"
WHAL.

Pope's imitation, however, falls far short of the
picturesque and awful solemnity of the original.
3 Great Savage of the Rock.] The seat of
that family in Cheshire, from which the lady
was descended. Camden gives us the following
account of it: "The Wever flows between
Frodsham, a castle of ancient note, and Clifton,
at present called Rock Savage, a new house of
the Savages, who by marriage have got a great
estate here." Brit. p. 563.-WHAL.

Then comforted her lord and blest her son, &c.] Warton calls this a "pathetic Elegy," and indeed this passage has both pathos and beauty. It is a little singular that Jonson makes no allusion to her dying in childbed, which it would appear from Milton's Epitaph, she actually did.' He

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To carry and conduct the complement "Twixt death and life, where her mortality Became her birth-day to eternity! And now through circumfused light she looks,

On Nature's secret there, as her own books: Speaks heaven's language, and discourseth free

To every order, every hierarchy !

Beholds her Maker, and in him doth see What the beginnings of all beauties be; And all beatitudes that thence do flow: Which they that have the crown are sure to know!

Go now, her happy parents, and be sad, If you not understand what child you had. If you dare grudge at heaven, and repent T have paid again a blessing was but lent,

speaks of a disease: she was delivered of a dead child; and some surgical operation appears to have been performed, or attempted, without success. There can be no doubt of Jonson's accuracy, for he was living on terms of respectful friendship with the Marquis of Winchester.

Jonson principally dwells on the piety of this lady; she seems also to have been a person of rare endowments and accomplishments. Howell (p. 182) puts her in mind that he taught her Spanish, and sends her a sonnet which he had translated into that language from one in Eng. lish by her ladyship, with the music, &c., and Cartwright returns her thanks, in warm language, for two most beautiful pieces, wrought by herself in needlework, and presented to the University of Oxford, the one being the story of the Nativity, the other of the Passion of our Saviour:"

"Blest mother of the church, he, in the list,
Reckon'd from hence the she-Evangelist;
Nor can the style be profanation, when
The needle may convert more than the pen ;

When faith may come by seeing, and each leaf,
Rightly perused, prove gospel to the deaf," &c.
Poems, p. 196.

1 Sir John Beaumont has also an elegy on the death of this lady, beginning with these lines: "Can my poor lines no better office have,

But lie like scritch-owls still about the grave? When shall I take some pleasure for my pain, Commending them that can commend again?" -WHAL.

It may also be added that Eliot has an "Elegy on the Lady Jane Paulet, Marchioness of Winchester," &c., in which he follows Milton

And trusted so, as it deposited lay
At pleasure, to be called for every day!
If you can envy your own daughter's
bliss,

And wish her state less happy than it is;
If you can cast about your either eye,
And see all dead here, or about to die!
The stars, that are the jewels of the
night,

And day, deceasing, with the prince of light,

The sun, great kings, and mightiest kingdoms fall;

Whole nations, nay, mankind! the world, with all

That ever had beginning there, t' have end!

With what injustice should one soul pretend

T'escape this common known necessity? When we were all born, we began to die ; And, but for that contention, and brave strife

The Christian hath t' enjoy the future life,1

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Steevens says that the allusion is "to the ancient custom of writing on waxen tablets," and Malone proves, at the expense of two pages, that his friend has mistaken the poet's meaning, and that he himself is just as wide of it.

In many parts of the Continent it is customary, upon the decease of an eminent person, for his friends to compose short laudatory poems, epitaphs, &c., and affix them to the herse or grave, which was once prevalent here also, I had colwith pins, wax, paste, &c. Of this practice, lected many notices, which, when the circumstance was recalled to my mind by Eliot's verses, I tried in vain to recover: the fact, however, is certain.

In the Bishop of Chichester's verses to the memory of Dr. Donne is this couplet: "Each quill can drop his tributary verse,

And pin it, like a hatchment, to his herse." Eliot's lines are these:

"Let others, then, sad Epitaphs invent,

And paste them up about thy monument:

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