understand better than most of the most learned heathens) dealt with him just as he did with Solomon; because he prayed for wisdom in the first place, he added all things else which were subordinately to be desired. He made him one of the best philosophers and best husbandmen; and to adern both those faculties, the best poet: he made him, besides all this, a rich man, and a mar who desired to be no richer. To be a husbandman is but a retr from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world as it is man's, into the world as it is God's. But since nature denies to most men the capacity or appetite, and fortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or possibility of applying themselves wholly to philosophy, the best mixture of human affairs that we can make are the employments of a country life. We are here among the vast and noble scenes of nature; we are there (alluding to courts and cities) among the pitiful shifts of policy we walk here in the light and open ways of the divine bounty; we grope there in the dark and confused labyrinths of human malice: our senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine taste of their objects, which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part overwhelmed with their contraries. Here pleasure looks (methinks) like a beautiful, constant, and modest wife; it is there an impudent, fickle, and painted harlot. Here is harmless and cheap plenty, there guilty and expenseful luxury. I shall only instance in one delight more, the most natural and best natured of all others, a perpetual companion of the husbandman; and that is, the satisfaction of looking round about him, and seeing nothing but the effects and improvements of his own art and diligence to be always gathering of some fruits of it, and at the same time to behold others ripening, and others budding; to see all his fields and gardens covered with the beauteous creations of his own industry; and to see, like God, that all his works are good. CHARACTER OF CROMWELL.1 What can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly-founded monarchies upon the earth? That he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous "Cowley's character of Oliver Cromwell, which is intended as a satire, (though it certainly pro duces a very different impression on the mind,) may vie for truth of outline and force of coloring With the master-pieces of the Greek and Latin historians."--Hazlitt. and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for awhile, and to command them victoriously at last; to over-run each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth; to call together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory,) to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him, not to be extinguished, but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs? SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. 1605-1668. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT, though now read chiefly by the antiquary in English literature, had, in his lifetime, considerable celebrity as a writer. He was born in 1605 at Oxford, where his father kept an inn, and was educated at that university. He early began to write for the stage, and on Ben Jonson's death was made Poet-Laureate. In the civil wars he held a considerble post in the army, and was knighted by the king; but on the decline of the royalists, whose cause he had espoused, he sought refuge in France, where 1 From the Latin laureatus, "crowned with laurel." Under the Roman emperors, poets contended the public games, and the prize was a crown of oak or olive leaves. From this custom. most of the European sovereigns assumed the privilege of nominating a court poet with various titles. in Eng. and, traces of this office are found as early as the reign of Henry III., (1216-1272,) but the express itle, poet-laureate, does not occur till the reign of Edward IV., (1461–1483,) when John Kay received he appointment. The office was made patent by Charles I., and the salary fixed at £100 per year, and a tierce of wine. In the reign of George III. the salary was increased, and the wine dispensed vitn, and also the custom of requiring annual odes. The succession of poets-laureate has been, I be leve, since Davenant's day, John Dryden, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Laurence Eusden Coley Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, and Robert Southey he wrote two books of his poem for which he is mos. known-his "Gondi bert"-under the patronage of Henrietta Maria, that "ill-f: led, ill-advised queen" of Charles I. By her he was despatched with a colony of artificers for Virginia. He had scarcely cleared the French coast when his vessel was taken by a parliamentary ship, and he was sent prisoner to Cowes Castle. Here, with great composure and manliness of mind, he continued his poem till he had carried through about one-half of what he designed, when he suddenly broke off, expecting immediately to be led to execution. His life, however, was spared, through the intercession of two aldermen of York, (whom Davenant had rescued from great peril in the civil wars,) united to the then all-powerful influence of Milton. After his release he supported himself by writing plays till the Restoration, when, beautiful to relate, it is believed that Milton himself was spared at his intercession, in return for his own preser vation. The fame of Sir William Davenant rests principally on his heroic poem, Gondibert; the main story of which, as far as developed, is as follows. Duke Gondibert and Prince Oswald were renowned knights, in the reign of Aribert, king of Lombardy, 653–661. Oswald sought the hand of Rhodalind, the only daughter of Aribert, and heiress to the crown: but the king preferred Gondibert, a choice in which Rhodalind fully concurred. It happened that "In a fair forest, near Verona's plain, Fresh, as if Nature's youth chose there a shade, Loyal and young, a solemn hunting made." The duke, on his return from the chase, is surprised by an ambush, laid by the jealous Oswald. A parley succeeds, and it is finally agreed that the quar rel shall be decided by the two leaders and three of the chief captains on each side. The combat accordingly takes place. Oswald and two of his friends are slain, and a third wounded and disarmed. Oswald's men are therefore so enraged that they immediately commence a general attack upon Gondibert, who is victorious, though severely wounded. He retires to the house of Astragon, a famous physician, where he is scarcely recovered from his wounds before he receives others of a more gentle kind from the eyes of Birtha, the daughter of Astragon, by whose permission he becomes her professed but secret lover. While the friends of Oswald are forming schemes of revenge for their recent defeat, a messenger arrives from Aribert to signify his intention of honoring Gondibert with the hand of Rhodalind; and he and his daughter follow shortly afterwards. The duke is therefore obliged to accompany them back to the court, and leave behind that which is far more pre cious to him than a crown or Rhodalind. On parting from Birtha, he gives her an emerald ring, which had been for ages the token of his ancestors to their betrothed brides; and which, by its change of color, would indicate any change in his affection. The arrival of some of the party at the capital concludes this singular and original fragment of a poem,-for a fragment it must be called, and we cannot but deeply regret that the author did not finish it.' "In the character and love of Birtha," remarks an able critic, "we have a 1 This poem nas divided the critics. Bishop Hurd, in his "Letters on Chivalry and Romance,' unds fault with Davenant because he rejects all machinery and supernatural agency. On the other hana, Dr. Aikin ably defends him. Read-"Miscellanies in Prose, by John Aikin, M. D., and Letitia Barbauld:" also, the prefatory remarks in the fourth volume of Anderson's "British Poets;" also, Come criticisms of Headley in his "Select Beauties," p. xlvi.: also, "Retrospective Review," ii. 304: Ana a few good remarks in "Campbell's Specimens," iv. 97. picture of most absolute loveliness and dove-like simplicity. Never was that de tal passion portrayed with a more chaste and exquisite pencil. CHARACTER AND LOVE OF BIRTHA. To Astragon, heaven for succession gave One only pledge, and Birtha was her name; She ne'er saw courts, yet courts could have undone She never had in busy cities been, Ne'er warm'd with hopes, nor e'er allay'd with fears; But here her father's precepts gave her skill, Her own free virtue silently employs, Whilst her great mistress, Nature, thus she tends, The just historians Birtha thus express, And tell how, by her sire's example taught, Black melancholy mists, that fed despair Through wounds' long rage, with sprinkled vervain clear'd; And with rich fumes his sullen senses cheer'd. He that had served great Love with reverend heart, In these old wounds worse wounds from him endures; For Love makes Birtha shift with Death his dart, And she kills faster than her father cures. Her heedless innocence as little knew The wounds she gave, as those from Love she took, "The longer we dwell upon this noble but unfinished monument of the genius of Sir William. Davenant, the more does our admiration of it increase, and we regret that the unjust attacks which were made against it at the time, (or whatever else was the cause,) prevented its completion. It night then, notwithstanding the prophetical oblivion to which Bishop Hurd has, with some acrimony, condemned it, have been entitled to a patent of nobility, and had its name inscribed upon the roll of epic aristocracy." -Ret. Rev. 1 324. And Love lifts high each secret shaft he drew; Love he had lik'd, yet never lodg'd before; So strange disorder, now he pines for health, Makes him conceal this reveller with shame; She not the robber knows, yet feels the stealth, And never but in songs had heard his name. She, full of inward questions, walks alone, Nor the guide sober that him thither brought. With open ears, and ever-waking eyes, And flying feet, Love's fire she from the sight Of all her maids does carry, as from spies; Jealous, that what burns her, might give them light. Beneath a myrtle covert now does spend In maids' weak wishes, her whole stock of thought; Fond maids! who love with mind's fine stuff would mond Which Nature purposely of bodies wrought. She fashions him she loved of angels kind, To the first fathers from th' Eternal Mind. As eagles then, when nearest heaven they fly, Soon her opinion of his hurtless heart, Affection turns to faith; and then love's fire If I do love, (said she,) that love, O Heaven! |