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Born deaf, and blind; nothing might stop his way:
No pray'rs, no vows his keenest scythe could stay,
Nor beauty's self, his spite, nor virtue's self allay.
"No state, no age, no sex may hope to move him;
Down falls the young, and old, the boy and maid;
Nor beggar can entreat, nor king reprove him;
All are his slaves in's cloth of flesh array'd:

The bride he snatches from the bridegroom's arms,
And horrour brings in midst of love's alarms:
Too well we know his pow'r by long experienc'd harms.

"A dead man's skull supplied his helmet's place,
A bone his club, his armour sheets of lead :
Some more, some less, fear his all frighting face;
But most, who sleep in downy pleasure's bed;
But who in life have daily learn'd to die,

And dead to this, live to a life more high;
Sweetly in death they sleep, and slumb'ring quiet lie.

"The second far more foul in every part,

Burnt with blue fire, and bubbling sulphur streams;
Which creeping round about him fill'd with smart
His cursed limbs, that direly he blasphemes;

Most strange it seems, that burning thus for ever,
No rest, no time, no place these flames may sever;
Yet death in thousand deaths without death dieth never."

The other brother, GILES FLETCHER, after leaving Eton, went to Trinity College, Cambridge. He, like his brother, took holy orders, and held the living of Alderton in Suffolk. Nothing more is recorded of him; save that he died at Alderton while yet in the prime of life. He chose a far superior subject for his poem, to that which his brother had selected. Giles's poem is on Christ's Victory and Triumph. Hallam correctly decides that "he has more vigour than his elder brother, but more affectation in his style." I cannot concur with Hallam in adding that "he has less sweetness and less smoothness." I will quote a portion of the song of the sorceress in the scene of the Temptation. Many of these lines seem to me to be eminently smooth and sweet :

"Love is the blossom where there blows

Every thing that lives or grows :
Love doth make the Heav'ns to move,

And the Sun doth burn in love :

Love the strong and weak doth yoke,
And makes the ivy climb the oak;

Under whose shadows lions wild,
Soften'd by love, grow tame and mild :

Love did make the bloody spear
Once a leafy coat to wear,

:

While in his leaves there shrouded lay
Sweet birds, for love that sing and play:
And of all love's joyful flame,

I the bud and blossom am.

Only bend thy knee to me,

Thy wooing shall thy winning be.

"See, see the flowers that below
Now as fresh as morning blow,
And of all, the virgin rose,
That as bright Aurora shows;
How they all unleaved die,
Losing their virginity;

Like unto a summer-shade,

But now born, and now they fade.

Every thing doth pass away,

There is danger in delay :

Come, come, gather then the rose,
Gather it, or it you lose.
All the sand of Tagus' shore
Into my bosom casts his ore:
All the valleys' swimming corn
To my house is yearly borne:
Every grape of every vine

Is gladly bruis'd to make me wine;
While ten thousand kings, as proud,
To carry up my train have bow'd,
And a world of ladies send me
In my chambers to attend me.
All the stars in Heav'n that shine,
And ten thousand more, are mine :
Only bend thy knee to me,

Thy wooing shall thy winning be."

Giles Fletcher, like his brother, is of the Spenserian school; and, like his brother, sometimes ventures to compete with their common master. It is singular that each should have given an elaborate allegorical description of Despair, as if to try how closely they could follow their master in one of his most celebrated performances. The passage in Christ's Triumph on Earth, in which the description of Despair is given, is also remarkable, as having afforded a hint to Milton for his description of the first meeting between the Tempter and our Saviour in the "Paradise Regained:" "Twice had Diana bent her golden bow,

And shot from Heav'n her silver shafts, to rouse

The sluggish salvages, that den below,

And all the day in lazy covert drouse,

Since him the silent wilderness did house :

The Heav'n his roof, and arbour harbour was,

The ground his bed, and his moist pillow grass :
But fruit there none did grow, nor rivers none did pass.

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"At length an aged sire far off he saw

Come slowly footing, every step he guest
One of his feet he from the grave did draw.
Three legs he had, the wooden was the best,
And all the way he went, he ever blest

With benedicities, and prayers store,

But the bad ground was blessed ne'er the more,
And all his head with snow of age was waxen hoar.

"A good old hermit he might seem to be,
That for devotion had the world forsaken,
And now was travelling some saint to see,
Since to his beads he had himself betaken,
Where all his former sins he might awaken,

And them might wash away with dropping brine,
And alms, and fasts, and church's discipline;

And dead, might rest his bones under the holy shrine."

"Thus on they wandred; but these holy weeds
A monstrous serpent, and no man, did cover.
So under greenest herbs the adder feeds;
And round about the stinking corps did hover
The dismal prince of gloomy night, and over
His ever-damned head the shadows err'd
Of thousand peccant ghosts, unseen, unheard,
And all the tyrant fears, and all the tyrant fear'd.

"He was the son of blackest Acheron,

Where many frozen souls do chatt'ring lie,
And rul'd the burning waves of Phlegethon,
Where many more in flaming suphur fry.
At once compelled to live, and forc'd to die,

Where nothing can be heard for the loud cry
Of Oh!' and 'Ah!' and 'Out, alas! that I
Or once again might live, or once at length might die !'

"Ere long they came near to a baleful bower,
Much like the mouth of that infernal cave,

That gaping stood all comers to devour,
Dark, doleful, dreary, like a greedy grave,

That still for carrion carcases doth crave.

The ground no herbs, but venomous, did bear,

Nor ragged trees did leave; but every where

Dead bones and skulls were cast, and bodies hanged were.

"Upon the roof the bird of sorrow sat,

Elonging joyful day with her sad note,
And through the shady air the fluttering bat

Did wave her leather sails, and blindly float,

While ever with her wings the screech owl smote
Th' unblessed house: there on a craggy stone
Celeno hung and made his direful moan,

And all about the murdered ghost did shriek and groan.

F

"Like cloudy moonshine in some shadowy grove,
Such was the light in which Despair did dwell;
But he himself with night for darkness strove.
His black uncombed locks dishevell'd fell
About his face; through which, as brands of Hell,
Sunk in his skull, his staring eyes did glow,

That made him deadly look, their glimpse did show
Like cockatrice's eyes, that sparks of poison throw.

"His clothes were ragged clouts, with thorns pinn'd fast;
And as he musing lay, to stony fright

A thousand wild chimeras would him cast:
As when a fearful dream in midst of night,
Skips to the brain, and phansies to the sight
Some winged fury, straight the hasty foot,
Eager to fly, cannot pluck up his root:

The voice dies in the tongue, and mouth gapes without boot.

"Now he would dream that he from Heaven fell,
And then would snatch the air, afraid to fall;
And now he thought he sinking was to Hell,
And then would grasp the earth, and now his stall
Him seemed Hell, and then he out would crawl :
And ever, as he crept, would squint aside,
Lest him, perhaps, some fury had espied,
And then, alas! he should in chains for ever bide.

"Therefore he softly shrunk, and stole away,

He never durst to draw his breath for fear,
Till to the door he came, and there he lay
Panting for breath, as though he dying were;
And still he thought he felt their craples tear

Him by the heels back to his ugly den:

Out fain, he would have leapt abroad, but then

The Heav'n, as Hell, he fear'd, that punish guilty men."

Perhaps the finest stanzas in Giles Fletcher's poem are those in which the remorse of Judas is described:

"For, him a waking bloodhound, yelling loud,
That in his bosom long had sleeping laid,

A guilty conscience, barking after blood,

Pursued eagerly, nay, never stay'd,

Till the betrayer's self it had betray'd.

Oft changed he place, in hope away to wind;

But change of place could never change his mind :

Himself he flies to lose, and follows for to find.

"There is but two ways for this soul to have,
When parting from the body, forth it perges;
To flie to Heav'n, or fall into the grave,
Where whips of scorpions, with the stinging scourges,

Feed on the howling ghosts, and fiery surges
Of brimstone roll about the cave of night,

Where flames do burn and yet no spark of light,
And fire both fries, and freezes the blaspheming spright.

"There lies the captive soul, aye-sighing sore,
Reck'ning a thousand years since her first bands;
Yet stays not there, but adds a thousand more,
And at another thousand never stands,

But tells to them the stars, and heaps the sands:
And now the stars are told, and sands are run,
And all those thousand thousand myriads done,
And yet but now, alas! but now all is begun."

THE MARTYRS.

In several of the preceding memoirs in this chapter I have alluded to the religious troubles and persecutions of Queen Mary's reign. Besides the eminent men whom I have already mentioned as having shared the sufferings of the Reformed Church during that period, many more Etonians are recorded in the Alumni Etonenses, as having been afflicted for conscience' sake. I do not stop to particularise them all; but our humble tribute of gratitude and honour must be said to Four, whose faith was strong even unto death, and who sealed their belief with their blood. These are JOHN FULLER, who became a scholar of King's in 1527; and was burnt to death on Jesus Green in Cambridge, April 2nd, 1556 ROBERT GLOVER, scholar of King's in 1533; burnt to death at Coventry on the 20th of September, 1555: LAWRENCE SAUNDERS, scholar of King's in 1538; burnt to death at Coventry on the 8th of February, 1556: JOHN HULLIER, scholar of King's also, in 1538; burnt to death on Jesus Green, Cambridge, on the 2nd of April, 1556. I have condensed from Fox some account of the Martyrdom of the two last. The narrative of JOHN GLOVER'S sufferings may also be found in that writer. (Townshend's Edition, vol. vii.) Respecting LAWRENCE SAUNDERS, the old Martyrologist of the Reformation says:—

"After that Queen Mary, by public proclamation in the first year of her reign, had inhibited the sincere preaching of God's holy word, as is before declared, divers godly ministers of the word, which had the cure and charge of souls committed to them, did, notwithstanding, according to their bounden duty, feed their flock faithfully, not as preachers authorised by public authority

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