Their Catilines are but fencers, whose fights rise

Not to the fame of battle, but of prize. But thou still put'st true passions on; dost write

With the same courage that tried captains fight;

Giv'st the right blush and colour unto things,

Low without creeping, high without loss of wings;

Smooth, yet not weak, and by a thorough

care,

Big without swelling, without painting fair,
They, wretches, while they cannot stand to fit,
Are not wits, but materials of wit.
What though thy searching wit did rake

the dust

Of time, and purge old metals of their rust? Is it no labour, no art, think they, to Snatch shipwrecks from the deep, as divers do?

And rescue jewels from the covetous sand, Making the sea's hid wealth adorn the land? What though thy culling muse did rob the

store

Of Greek and Latin gardens to bring o'er
Plants to thy native soil? their virtues were
Improved far more by being planted here.
If thy still to their essence doth refine
So many drugs, is not the water thine?
Thefts thus become just works; they and

their grace

Are wholly thine: thus doth the stamp and face

Make that the king's, that's ravished from the mine;

In others then 'tis ore, in thee 'tis coin.

Blest life of authors! unto whom we owe Those that we have, and those that we want too :

Thou art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,

And to have writ so well's thine only curse. Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate That servile base dependence upon fate; Success thou ne'er thoughtst virtue, nor that fit,

Which chance, and th' age's fashion did make hit;

confess

Thy strong perfumes made them not smell thy less.

But, though to err with thee be no small skill,

And we adore the last draughts of thy quill: Though those thy thoughts, which the now queasy age,

Doth count but clods, and refuse of the stage, Will come up porcelain-wit some hundreds hence,

When there will be more manners and more sense;

'Twas judgment yet to yield, and we afford Thy silence as much fame, as once thy word:

Who like an aged oak, the leaves being gone, Wast food before, art now religion; Thought still more rich, though not so richly stored,

Viewed and enjoyed before, but now adored.

Great soul of numbers, whom we want and boast;

Like curing gold, most valued now thou art lost

When we shall feed on refuse offals, when We shall from corn to acorns turn again; Then shall we see that these two names are one,

The plays and poems of William Cartwright are too well known to dramatic readers to render a minute account of his life necessary or even excusable. Wood, whose narrative corresponds with the calculation of Humphrey Mosely, a

W. CARTWRIGHT.1

printer to whom literature is much indebted, says that he was born in 1611, educated first at Cirencester, afterwards at Westminster, and lastly at Oxford, where, in 1628, he was admitted student of Christ Church, and where, in 1635, he took

Is got beyond the reach of chance or fame,

Which none can lessen, nor we bring enough

To raise it higher, through our want of stuff;
I find no room for praise, but elegy,
And there but name the day when thou
didst die :

That men may know thou didst so, for they will

Hardly believe disease or age could kill
A body so informed, with such a soul,
As, like thy verse, might fate itself control.
But thou art gone, and we like greedy
heirs,

That snatch the fruit of their dead father's

cares,

Begin to inquire what means thou left'st behind

For us, pretended heirs unto thy mind :
And myself, not the latest 'gan to look
And found the inventory in thy Book;
A stock for writers to set up withal :
That out of thy full comedies, their small
And slender wits by vexing much thy writ
And their own brains, may draw good
saving wit;

And when they shall upon some credit pitch,

May be thought well to live, although not rich.

Then for your songsters, masquers, what a deal

We have? enough to make a commonweal
Of dancing courtiers, as if poetry
Were made to set out their activity.
Learning great store for us to feed upon,
But little fame; that, with thyself, is gone,
And like a desperate debt, bequeathed, not
paid

Before thy death has us the poorer made.
Whilst we with mighty labour it pursue,
And after all our toil, not find it due.
Jo. RUTTER.1

the degree of Master of Arts. In 1642 the editor of this collection (B. Duppa), appointed him his successor in the Church of Salisbury. On the 12th of April, 1643, he was chosen Junior Proctor of the University of Oxford, where he died on the 29th of the November following, "Praised, wept, and honoured by the muse he loved."-GILCHRIST.

VOL. III.

TO THE

MEMORY OF IMMORTAL BEN.

To write is easy; but to write of thee Truth, will be thought to forfeit modesty. So far beyond conceit thy strengths ap pear,

That almost all will doubt, what all must hear.

For, when the world shall know, that Pindar's height,

Plautus his wit, and Seneca's grave weight, Horace his matchless nerves, and that high phrase

Wherewith great Lucan doth his readers

maze,

Shall with such radiant illustration glide,
(As if each line to life were propertied)
Through all thy works; and like a torrent
move,

Rolling the muses to the court of Jove,
Wit's general tribe will soon entitle thee
Heir to Apollo's ever verdant tree.
And 'twill by all concluded be, the stage
Is widowed now; was bed-rid by thy age.
As well as empire, wit his zenith hath,
Nor can the rage of time, or tyrant's wrath
Encloud so bright a flame: but it will shine
In spight of envy, till it grow divine.
As when Augustus reigned, and war did

own?

Admit his muse was slow. 'Tis judgment's fate

To move, like greatest princes, still in state. Those planets placed in the higher spheres, End not their motion but in many years; Whereas light Venus and the giddy moon, In one or some few days their courses run. Slow are substantial bodies: but to things That airy are, has nature added wings. Each trivial poet that can chant a rhyme, May chatter out his own wit's funeral chime:

And those slight nothings that so soon are made,

Like mushrooms, may together live and fade.

The boy may make a squib; but every line Must be considered, where men spring a mine:

1 It seems somewhat remarkable that nothing should be known of the author of a book so popular as Feltham's "Resolves" has always been, beyond the bare circumstances related by Oldys in his MS. notes on Langbaine, of his father, Thomas Feltham, being a Suffolkman, and that Owen was one of three children. Although Owen has many poems scattered up and down, it is upon his prose work that his fame depends; and his "Resolves," though by no means free from pedantry, is rational and pious, and shows a mind of no ordinary strength and attainments. If Feltham was indeed the author

TO THE MEMORY
OF BEN JONSON.

I do not blame their pains, who did not doubt

By labour, of the circle to find out
The quadrature; nor can I think it strange
That others should prove constancy in
change.

He studied not in vain, who hoped to give
A body to the echo, make it live,
Be seen, and felt; nor he whose art would
borrow

Belief for shaping yesterday, to-morrow:
But here I yield; invention, study, cost,
Time, and the art of Art itself is lost.
When any frail ambition undertakes
For honour, profit, praise, or all their sakes,
To speak unto the world in perfect sense,
Pure judgment, JONSON, 'tis an excellence
Suited his pen alone, which yet to do
Requires himself, and 'twere a labour too
Crowning the best of Poets: say all sorts
Of bravest acts must die without reports,

horred,

Let memory be nothing but a word;
Grant JONSON th' only genius of the times,
Fix him a constellation in all rhymes,
All height, all secrecies of wit invoke
The virtue of his name, to ease the yoke
Of barbarism; yet this lends only praise
To such as write, but adds not to his bays:
For he will grow more fresh in every
story,

Out of the perfumed spring of his own
glory.
GEORGE DONNE.1

A FUNERAL SACRIFICE TO THE SACRED MEMORY OF HIS THRICE HONOURED FATHER,

BEN JONSON.

I cannot grave nor carve; else would I give Thee statues, sculptures, and thy name should live

In tombs, and brass, until the stones or rust

Of thine own monument mix with thy dust:
But nature has afforded me a slight
And easy muse, yet one that takes her flight
Above the vulgar pitch. BEN, she was thine,
Made by adoption free and genuine ;
By virtue of thy charter, which from heaven,
By Jove himself, before thy birth was given.
The sisters nine this secret did declare,
Who of Jove's counsel, and his daughters

are.

These from Parnassus' hill came running down,

And though an infant did with laurels crown. Thrice they him kist, and took him in their

arms,

And dancing round, encircled him with charms.

Pallas her virgin breast did thrice distil Into his lips, and him with nectar fill. When he grew up to years, his mind was all On verses; verses, that the rocks might call To follow him, and hell itself command, And wrest Jove's three-fold thunder from his hand.

The satyrs oft-times hemmed him in a ring, And gave him pipes and reeds to hear him sing;

1 George Donne, the mediocrity of whose muse is compensated in some measure by the warmth of his friendship, appears to have limited his endeavours to measured praises of his companions' labours. He was evidently familiar

The syrens, and the muses did admire. The nymphs to him their gems and corals sent;

And did with swans, and nightingales present, The golden

Gifts far beneath his worth. ore,

That lies on Tagus or Pactolus' shore, Might not compare with him, nor that pure sand

The Indians find upon Hydaspes' strand.
His fruitful raptures shall grow up to seed,
And as the ocean does the rivers feed,
So shall his wit's rich veins the world supply
With unexhausted wealth, and ne'er be
dry.

For whether he, like a fine thread does file
His terser poems in a comic style,
Or treats of tragic furies, and him list
To draw his lines out with a stronger
twist;

Minerva's, nor Arachne's loom can shew Such curious tracts; nor does the spring bestow

Such glories on the field, or Flora's bowers, As his work, smile with figures and with flowers.

Never did so much strength, or such a spell

Of art, and eloquence of papers dwell.
For whilst that he in colours, full and true,
Men's natures, fancies, and their humours

drew

In method, order, matter, sense and grace, Fitting each person to his time and place; Knowing to move, to slack, or to make haste,

Binding the middle with the first and last: He framed all minds, and did all passions stir,

And with a bridle guide the theatre.

To say now he is dead, or to maintain A paradox he lives, were labour vain : Earth must to earth. But his fair soul does

wear

Bright Ariadne's crown; or is placed near, Where Orpheus' harp turns round with Læda's swan :

Astrologers, demonstrate where you can Where his star shines, and what part of the sky

Holds his compendious divinity.

with several poets of eminence, and has commendations prefixed to the plays of Massinger and Ford, as well as before the writings of authors of inferior fame.-GILCHRIST.

There he is fixed; I know it, 'cause from thence,

Myself have lately received influence.
The reader smiles; but let no man deride
The emblem of my love, not of my pride.
SHACKERLEY MARMION.1

ON THE BEST OF ENGLISH POETS,

BEN JONSON,

DECEASED.

So seems a star to shoot; when from our sight

Falls the deceit, not from its loss of light; We want use of a soul, who merely know What to our passion, or our sense we owe: By such a hollow glass, our cozened eye Concludes alike, all dead, whom it sees die. Nature is knowledge here, but unrefined, Both differing, as the body from the mind; Laurel and cypress else had grown together,

And withered without memory to either: Thus undistinguished, might in every part The sons of earth vie with the sons of art. Forbid it, holy reverence, to his name, Whose glory hath filled up the book of fame!

Where in fair capitals, free, uncontrolled, JONSON, a work of honour lives enrolled: Creates that book a work; adds this far

more,

'Tis finished what unperfect was before. The muses, first in Greece begot, in Rome Brought forth, our best of poets hath called home,

Nurst, taught, and planted here; that Thames now sings

The Delphian altars, and the sacred springs. By influence of this sovereign, like the spheres,

Moved each by other, the most low (in years)

Shackerley Marmion, heir of the Shackerleys of Little Longsdon, in Derbyshire, was the eldest son of Shackerley Marmion, lord of the manor of Aynho, in Northamptonshire, where the poet was born in January, 1602. Wood has attributed the dissipation of the family estate to the Shackerley before us, from the habitual prodigality of poets; but the estate was alienated by the elder of the name in the 13th year of James I., when the poet was only 13 years of age. The poet Shackerley was educated at Thame, and afterwards at Wadham College, where, in 1624, he took his Master of Arts degree. He joined Sir John Suckling's memorable regiment, and died after a short illness in 1639.

Consented in their harmony; though some
Malignantly aspected, overcome
With popular opinion, aimed at name
More than desert: yet in despight of
shame

Even they, though foiled by his contempt of wrongs,

Made music to the harshness of their songs. Drawn to the life of every line and limb, He (in his truth of art, and that in him) Lives yet, and will, whilst letters can be read;

Great men, and worthy of report, must fall The loss is ours; now hope of life is dead. Since he, whose pen in every strain did use Into their earth, and sleeping there sleep all: To drop a verse, and every verse a muse, Is vowed to heaven; as having with fair Sung thanks of honour, or some nobler glory,

He has left several plays, some of which possess considerable merit, and has commendatory verses prefixed to the writings of his contemporaries.GILCHRIST.

John Ford was the second son of Thomas Ford, Esq., of Bagtor, a hamlet in the parish of Ilsington, in Devonshire, where the poet was baptized the 17th April, 1589. On the 6th November, 1602, Ford was entered of the Middle Temple, and while there published Fame's Memorial, or the Earl of Devonshire, deceased," a poem, 4to, 1606. He wrote for the stage as early as 1613, and as he ceased his dramatic labours in 1639, it is likely he did not long survive that period.-GILCHRIST.