love*-how much more sharply doth care dwell in the heart of her who hath only God for her husband! How painful the reflection in future years of having driven sleep from her eyes, or planted a thorn in her pillow!" HERVEY. "Thou, at least, hast never moistened that pillow with a tear." COWLEY. "God forbid that I should wake a grief in that bosom, on which my childish heart hath so often forgot its own. But surely, if we had no better incitement, we ought to seek after knowledge for our own sake; for what is it but sowing the grain whose harvest we are to reap; planting the vineyard whose grapes we are to gather; rearing the * This allusion to the poet's father will go to the hearts of many. It may not be uninteresting to quote a passage from Love's Riddle, where the shepherd Alupis, in reply to the question of Calidora, how he happened to know so much of city life, says, Why, I'll tell you, Sir,— My father died, (you force me to remember A grief that deserves tears,) and left me young. The father of Cowley, indeed, died before the birth of his son, and the application of the passage, therefore, is not direct; but in the mind of the thoughtful scholar of Westminster School, the loss of a parent was likely to be a subject of meditation. fig-tree under whose shadow we are to repose? Let not the spring-time depart without its seed. O happy, and thrice happy he, who can bear a cluster of fruit to them who have nourished him ; fruit, sweeter to their lips, who for us have borne the heat and burden of the day, than ever swelled with purple wine in the gardens of Engaddi. The countenance of Wisdom-the celestial Venus-is always beautiful; not the morning or evening star is fairer-Και ως ούτε εσπερος, ούτε εωος ουτω καλα. * But never does she dawn upon the beholder with so sweet and golden a lustre, as in the early morningtime of our youth. The race, of a truth, is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but as the defeated candidate for the Garland departed not from the Palæstra without some increase of skill-some new grip which may ensure to him a future victory; so we, though driven down by a more nervous arm, or entangled in the meshes of a more cunning embrace, shall not have been fighting like one that beateth the air. Even our vanquishment will become the mother of victory. For so, in the public games of Greece, they chose the palm as the sign and prize of the triumph, because it is the nature of that plant to thrive and flourish under pressure." * Plotinus. HERVEY. "A very pretty flourish of fancy, methinks, wherewith to disband that array of grave authorities which thou hast brought to the charge. But wherefore such a shower of saws and instances? For do I not love learning almost as much as I love thee? and though my silence, perchance, may have spoken an oblivious mind, yet wer't thou never absent from my heart, during the long eight weeks of thy wanderings. I missed thee in all our accustomed haunts. The Cam reflected only one shadow; the warm grass was darkened only by one figure. But, most of all, the coming on of evening awoke a longing for my lost companion. I waited for thee, though in vain, in my solitary chamber, where so oft the moonlight hath crept in upon our book at the window, where we stood with eyes straining in the shadowy light over some page of mild Spenser, or ever-youthful Chaucer, or earlier bard of Greece or Latium."* * Cowley has tenderly recorded these Evenings:- We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine, Wit, eloquence, and poetry; Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine! COWLEY. "How I long to renew those happy evenings! to dwell again with the mighty and noble of the earth. A memory enriched by study is the real enchanter; no blast from the enemy's trumpet can dissolve into air the stately fabrics which she buildeth. The true scholar, whose mind is nourished by poetry and philosophy, carries a magic ring upon his finger. By a mere act of volition he is transported in the arms of Genii, over stormy seas and trackless deserts; he becomes a denizen of every clime; a citizen of every polity. His chamber brightens with the footsteps of Juliet; the woods echo with the trumpets of Fontarabia. He throws a bridge over the darkness of years, and mingles with the rush before the judgment seat of Appius; or floats with Cleopatra down the Cydnus in her burnished galley; or is borne with the rejoicing multitude to the crowning of Petrarch in the Capitol. Let us sit down here, where the sun chequers the grass with this tremulous dance of light, and the soft air creeps pleasantly through the leaves over head. The melody that sighs through the verses of Moschus is not sweeter.* * Cowley has himself very happily described a similar feeling in the lines attached to the Essay on Solitude: Here let me, careless and unthoughtful, lying, Hear the soft winds above me flying, And the more tuneful birds to both replying, "Heaven preserve me from the Babel-roar of busy life. Quid Romæ faciam? mentiri nescio. Before the even-song was heard I should pine to flee away from the City of Crime into some little Zoar, where I might, as Maro sings, studiis florere ignobilis otii. How should the poet listen to the Charmer in such a tumult? Could Spenser have written in the hum of a great town those lovely verses which the Muse brought to him on the banks of Mulla ?" 66 HERVEY. Nay, but was it not in London that Juliet dawned upon the fancy of sweet Shakspeare, and Fletcher courted his Faithful Shepherdess, and the soft Hero charmed the memory of poor Kit Marlowe? Surely the Muse doth appear to her children, albeit under a cloud, even in the busiest streets. The stranger seeth her not; but they know, by the ambrosial beauty of the air, that a celestial visitant hath alighted in the midst of them. And beside this, doth not a poetic heart carry all the delights of the seasons with it? So Shakspeare saw the moonlight sleeping on the bank, while walking, perchance, along the Blackfriars; and the Nightingale, which Sappho calls Ηρος άγγελος ιμερόφωνος αηδών. * Which Ben Jonson has charmingly translated :- |