THE SOUL'S ERRAND. Go, Soul, the body's guest, The truth shall be thy warrant ; Go, tell the Court it glows, Tell potentates they live, Not strong but by their factions; If potentates reply, Give potentates the lie. Tell men of high condition Tell them that brave it most, Tell Zeal it lacks devotion, Tell Age it daily wasteth, Tell Wit how much it wrangles Tell Physic of her boldness, Tell Fortune of her blindness, Tell Nature of decay, Tell Friendship of unkindness, Tell Justice of delay; And if they will reply, Then give them all the lie. Tell Arts they have no soundness, If Arts and Schools reply, Tell Faith it's fled the city, And when thou hast, as I CANZONET. FROM DAVISON'S RHAPSODY. EDIT. 1608. THE golden sun that brings the day, But thou, my sun, more bright than he I heard the praise of Beauty's grace, I gazed on many a lovely face, But now thy beams have clear'd my sight, I blush to think I was so blind, Thy flaming eyes afford me light, FROM THE PHOENIX' NEST. EDIT. 1593. O NIGHT, O jealous night, repugnant to my pleasure, O night so long desired, yet cross to my content, Trere's none but only thou can guide me to my treasure, Yet none but only thou that hindereth my intent. Sweet night, withhold thy beams, withhold them till to-morrow, Whose joy, in lack so long, a hell of torment breeds, Sweet night, sweet gentle night, do not prolong my sorrow, Desire is guide to me, and love no loadstar needs. Let sailors gaze on stars and moon so freshly shining, Let them that miss the way be guided by the light, I know my lady's bower, there needs no more divining, Affection sees in dark, and love hath eyes by night. Dame Cynthia, couch awhile; hold in thy horns for shining, And glad not low'ring night with thy too glorious rays; But be she dim and dark, tempestuous and repining, That in her spite my sport may work thy endless praise. And when my will is done, then Cynthia shine, good lady, All other nights and days in honour of that night, That happy, heavenly night, that night so dark and shady, Yet your sweet lips so soft kiss and delight me ; Wherein my love had eyes that lighted my delight. Your taunts my life destroying ; LOVE me not for comely grace, Keep, therefore, a true woman's eye, Yet know not why, So hast thou the same reason still, ISANG Sometimes my thoughts and fancy's pleasure, Where then I list, or time served best, While Daphne did invite me To supper once, and drank to me to spite me : I smiled, yet still did doubt her, And drank where she had drank before, to flout her. But O, while I did eye her, My eyes drank love, my lips drank burning fire. O LIGHT is love, in matchless beauty shining, FROM BIRD'S COLLECTION OF SONGS, &c. YOUR shining eyes and golden hair, AMBITIOUS love hath forced me to aspire But what may love live under any law? Proceed, then, in this deperate enterprise AMID the seas a gallant ship set out, Who makes his seat a stately stamping steed, Whose neighs and plays are princely to behold; Whose courage stout, whose eyes are fiery red, Whose joints well knit, whose harness all of gold, Doth well deserve to be no meaner thing Than Persian knight, whose horse made him a king. By that bedside where sits a gallant dame, SONGS FROM WEELKES'S MADRIGALS. EDIT. 1604. LIKE two proud armies marching in the field, GIVE me my heart and I will go, No, no, no-No, no, no. But since my dear doth doubt me, With no, no, no, I mean to flout thee; No, no, no. Now there is hope we shall agree, Since double no imparteth yea; If that be so, my dearest, With no, no, no, my heart thou cheerest. COLD winter ice is fled and gone, And summer brags on every tree; HOLD out my heart, with joy's delights accloy'd; My true love not regarding, Hath giv'n me at length his full rewarding, The joys that overfill me, SAY, dear, will you not have me? Or if you will not take the thing once given, FROM BATESON'S MADRIGALS. LOVE would discharge the duty of his heart WHITHER SO fast? Ah, see the kindly flowers YET stay, alway be chained to my heart TO HIS LOVE. FROM ENGLAND'S HELICON. COME away, come, sweet love! Come away, come, sweet love! Wing'd with sweet hopes and heavenly fire. Come, come, sweet love! Do not in vain adorn Beauty's grace, that should rise Lilies on the river's side, And fair Cyprian flow'rs newly blown, JOHN LYLY [Born, 1554. Died, 1600.] Was born in the Weald of Kent. Wood places his birth in 1553. Oldys makes it appear probable that he was born much earlier*. He | studied at both the universities, and for many years attended the court of Elizabeth in expectation of being made Master of the Revels. In this object he was disappointed, and was obliged, in his old age, to solicit the Queen for some trifling grant to support him+, which it is uncertain whether he ever obtained. Very little indeed is known of him, though Blount, his editor, tells us that❝he sate at Apollo's table, and that the god gave him a wreath of his own bays without [*Lyly was born in Kent in 1554, and was matriculated at Oxford in 1571, when it was recorded in the entry that he was seventeen years old.-COLLIER'S Annals, vol. iii. p. 174.] If he was an old man in the reign of Elizabeth, Oldys's conjecture as to the date of his birth seems to be verified, as we scarcely call a man old at fifty. snatching." Whether Apollo was ever so complaisant or not, it is certain that Lyly's work of "Euphues and his England," preceded by another called "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit," &c. promoted a fantastic style of false wit, bombastic metaphor, and pedantic allusion, which it was fashionable to speak at court under the name of Euphuism, and which the ladies thought it indispensable to acquire. Lyly, in his Euphues, probably did not create the new style, but only collected and methodised the floating affectations of phraseology.-Drayton ascribes the overthrow of Euphuism to Sir P. Sydney, who, he says, did first reduce Sydney died in 1586, and Euphues had appeared but six years earlier. We may well suppose Sydney to have been hostile to such absurdity, and his writings probably promoted a better taste; but we hear of Euphuism being in vogue many years after his death; and it seems to have expired, like all other fashions, by growing vulgar. Lyly wrote nine plays, in some of which there is considerable wit and humour, rescued from the jargon of his favourite system. CUPID AND CAMPASPE. CUPID and my Campaspe play'd Growing on 's cheek, but none knows how, SONG. FROM ALEXANDER AND CAMPASPE. WHAT bird so sings, yet so does wail? Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear? Hark! hark! but what a pretty note, FROM MOTHER BOMBIE. O CUPID, monarch over kings, It is all one in Venus' wanton school, That fools please women best. ALEXANDER HUME [Born, 1560? Died, 1609?] WAS the second son of Patrick, fifth Baron of Polwarth, from whom the family of Marchmont are descended. He was born probably about the middle, and died about the end, of the sixteenth century. During four years of the earlier part of his life, he resided in France, after which he returned home and studied law, but abandoned the bar to try his fortune at court. There he is said to have been disgusted with the preference shown to a poetical rival, Montgomery, with whom he exchanged flytings, (or invectives,) in verse, and who boasts of having " driven Polwart from the chimney nook." He then went into the church, and was appointed rector or minister of Logie; the names of ecclesiastical offices in Scotland then floating between presbytery and prelacy. In the clerical profession he continued till his death. Hume lived at a period when the spirit of Calvinism in Scotland was at its gloomiest pitch, and when a reformation, fostered by the poetry of Lyndsay, and by the learning of Buchanan, had begun to grow hostile to elegant literature. Though the drama, rude as it was, had been no mean engine in the hands of Lyndsay against popery, yet the Scottish reformers of this latter period even anticipated the zeal of the English puritans against dramatic and romantic poetry, which they regarded as emanations from hell. Hume had imbibed so far the spirit of his times as to publish an exhortation to the youth of Scotland to forego the admiration of all classical heroes, and to read no other books on the subject of love than the Song of Solomon. But Calvinism* itself could not entirely eradicate the * This once gloomy influence of Calvinism on the literary character of the Scottish churchmen, forms a contrast with more recent times, that needs scarcely to be suggested to those acquainted with Scotland. In extend |