DESCRIPTION OF LADY GERALDINE.

When for thy love I left the Belgic shore,
Divine Erasmus, and our famous More,
Whose happy presence gave me such delight,
As made a minute of a winter's night;
With whom a while I staid at Rotterdame,
Not so renowed by Erasmus' name:

Yet every hour did seem a world of time,
Till I had seen that soul-reviving clime,
And thought the foggy Netherlands unfit,
A wat'ry soil to clog a fiery wit.
And as that wealthy Germany I past,
Coming unto the Emperor's court at last,
Great-learn'd Agrippa, so profound in art,
Who the infernal secrets doth impart,
When of thy health I did desire to know,
Me in a glass my Geraldine did show,

Sick in thy bed; and for thou could'st not sleep,'
By a wax taper set the light to keep;

I do remember thou did'st read that ode,
Sent back whilst I in Thanet made abode,
Where when thou cam'st unto that word of love,
Ev'n in thine eyes I saw how passion strove :
That snowy lawn which covered thy bed,
Methought look'd white, to see thy cheek so red;
Thy rosy cheek oft changing in my sight,
Yet still was red, to see the lawn so white:
The little taper which should give the light,
Methought wax'd dim, to see thy eyes so bright;,
Thine eye again supply'd the taper's turn,
And with his beams more brightly made it burn :
The shrugging air about thy temples hurls,
And wrapt thy breath in little clouded curls,

And as it did ascend, it straight did seize it,
And as it sunk it presently did raise it.
Canst thou by sickness banish beauty so,
Which, if put from thee, knows not where to go
To make her shifts, and for succour seek

To every rivel'd face, each bankrupt cheek?
"If health preserved, thou beauty still dost cherish;
If that neglected, beauty soon doth perish."
Care draws on care, woe comforts woe again,
Sorrow breeds sorrow, one grief brings forth twain,
If live or die, as thou do'st, so do I;

If live, I live; and if thou die, I die;

One heart, one love, one joy, one grief, one troth,
One good, one ill, one life, one death to both.

If Howard's blood thou hold'st as but too vile,
Or not esteem'st of Norfolk's princely stile;
If Scotland's coat no mark of fame can lend,
That lion plac'd in our bright silver bend,
Which as a trophy beautifies our shield,
Since Scottish blood discolour'd Floden field;
When the proud Cheviot our brave ensign bare,
As a rich jewel in a lady's hair,

And did fair Bramston's neighboring vallies choke
With clouds of cannons fire-disgorged smoke;

If Surrey's earldom insufficient be,
And not a dower so well contenting thee:
Yet I am one of great Apollo's heirs,
The sacred Muses challenge me for theirs.
By Princes my immortal lines are sung,
My flowing verses grac'd with ev'ry tongue:
The little children when they learn to go,
By painful mothers daded to and fro,
Are taught by sugar'd numbers to rehearse,

And have their sweet lips season'd with mv verse.

When heav'n would strive to do the best it can, And put an angel's spirit into man,

The utmost power it hath, it then doth spend,
When to the world a Poet it doth intend,

That little diff'rence 'twixt the gods and us,
(By them confirm’d) distinguished only thus:
Whom they in birth ordain to happy days,
The gods commit their glory to our praise;
T'eternal life when they dissolve their breath,
We likewise share a second pow'r by death.

When time shall turn those amber locks to gray,
My verse again shall gild and make them gay,
And trick them up in knotted curls anew,
And to thy autumn give a summer's hue;
That sacred power, that in my ink remains,
Shall put fresh blood into thy withered veins,
And on thy red decay'd, thy whiteness dead,
Shall set a white more white, a red more red:
When thy dim sight thy glass cannot descry,
Nor thy craz'd mirror can discern thine eye;
My verse, to tell th' one what the other was,
Shall represent them both, thine eye and glass:
Where both thy mirror and thine eye shall see,

What once thou saw'st in that, that saw in thee;
And to them both shall tell the simple truth,
What that in pureness was, what thou in youth.

Among the prose-writers of the reign of Elizabeth, her schoolmaster should not be forgotten. Roger Ascham wrote elegant English, free from quaintness and affectation, or startling antithesis so common in his day. Ascham regarded the Aristotelian maxim, as ex

pressed by himself. "He that will write well in any tongue, must speak as the common people do, think as wise men do; as so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him."

This tutor of queens wrote a work he called The Schoolmaster. It is a fine treatise on education, and contains all the elements which are found in the modern treatises upon that subject. He was for uniting the Gymnasia, the Lyceum, and the Academy together; only he did not name the workshop, as Pellendorff and others have since done, in systems of education. It is said, by one of his biographers, that Ascham became a Protestant through the medium of Greek literature. He was an admirer of Sir Thomas More, and followed his example in bringing out his works in the English language. He was one of the formers of the literary character of the reign of Elizabeth, she having been known as a scholar of his, previous to her coming to the throne. He was born in 1515, and lived ten years into the reign of Elizabeth.

John Fox, the ecclesiastical historian, was only two years younger than Ascham. He was an instructor of youth and a proof-reader for the German presses. He wrote the lives, or rather the accounts of the Martyrs. This has been held in great veneration by the Protestants of England and this country ever since; but it is more the subject than the power of the historian that interests us, in reading his gloomy history. He was, however, a very accurate scholar in the learned languages, and wrote very good English.

Many good prose-writers were at this time to be found in England. Hollingshed, Sir Philip Sidney, whose name we have before mentioned, and Raleigh,

were fine writers; the two latter, politicians, soldiers, and men of the world. Selby, Cecil, Stow, Knolles, and Agard, wrote works of fancy and history, and were great benefactors to the nation. But we must not pass over so hastily the works of Richard Hooker. The great work of this distinguished scholar and sound divine was his Ecclesiastical Polity. He wrote many other works; but this has come to us, a fine argument, and one that did much towards settling the disputes on religious subjccts in those days. The work is read now by all students in divinity who wish to make themselves reasoners in theology. Like Butler's Analogy, of a later date, this work is found in the hands of the young physicians and lawyers, as they are marking out the great outlines of their professional course. In such works there is matter and forms of reasoning which every professional man should be master of. He handled the Puritans with great power and effect, yet he has been honored and respected by the most enlightened of them ever since. They acknowledged the style of Hooker's works to have been superior to any thing in the English language before Bacon's works appeared. It is perspicuous, forcible, elevated, and manly. The mind of Hooker was rich in thoughts, original and acquired, and his soul was evidently in his works. It is, in my opinion, a model for modern writers; and evident traces of Hooker's influences may be found in the style of Chatham, Burke, and other states

men.

It is almost impossible to speak of Shakspeare, without falling into some errors of taste, feeling, or criticism, nor do we expect entirely to shun them. He was truly the poet of nature. He was born a few years