nom de guerre of Chalkhill must also have been an old one with Walton, if he wrote Thealma; for thirty years before its publication he had inserted in his Compleat Angler two songs, signed 'Io. Chalkhill.' Thealma, though it has something Spenserian in its subject, is very unlike the work of a contemporary of Spenser: probably it may date from the days of James I. The scene of this highly artificial 'pastoral' is laid in Arcadia, and the author describes the Golden Age and all its charms, succeeded by an Age of Iron, with its ambition, avarice, and tyranny. The plot is complicated and obscure, and the characters lack individuality; the interest depends on the romantic descriptions and occasional felicity of language. The versification is that of the heroic couplet, varied, like Milton's Lycidas, by breaks and pauses in the middle of the line:

The Priestess of Diana.
Within a little silent grove hard by,
Upon a small ascent he might espy
A stately chapel, richly gilt without,
Beset with shady sycamores about :
And ever and anon he might well hear
A sound of music steal in at his ear

As the wind gave it being so sweet an air

Would strike a syren mute. . . .

A hundred virgins there he might espy
Prostrate before a marble deity,

Which, by its portraiture, appeared to be
The image of Diana: on their knee

They tendered their devotions; with sweet airs,
Offering the incense of their praise and prayers.
Their garments all alike; beneath their paps,
Buckled together with a silver claps,

And cross their snowy silken robes, they wore
An azure scarf, with stars embroidered o'er.
Their hair in curious tresses was knit up,
Crowned with a silver crescent on the top.
A silver bow their left hand held; their right,
For their defence held a sharp-headed flight,
Drawn from their' broidered quiver, neatly tied
In silken cords, and fastened to their side.
Under their vestments, something short before,
White buskins, laced with ribanding, they wore.
It was a catching sight for a young eye,
That love had fired before: he might espy
One whom the rest had sphere-like circled round,
Whose head was with a golden chaplet crowned.
He could not see her face, only his ear

clasp

Was blest with the sweet words that came from her.

The Witch's Cave.

Her cell was hewn out of the marble rock,
By more than human art; she need not knock;
The door stood always open, large and wide,
Grown o'er with woolly moss on either side,
And interwove with ivy's flattering twines,
Through which the carbuncle and diamond shines,
Not set by Art, but there by Nature sown
At the world's birth, so star-like bright they shone.
They served instead of tapers, to give light
To the dark entry, where perpetual Night,
Friend to black deeds, and sire of Ignorance,
Shuts out all knowledge, lest her eye by chance

Might bring to light her follies: in they went.
The ground was strewed with flowers, whose sweet scent,
Mixed with the choice perfumes from India brought,
Intoxicates his brain, and quickly caught

His credulous sense; the walls were gilt, and set
With precious stones, and all the roof was fret
With a gold vine, whose straggling branches spresi
All o'er the arch; the swelling grapes were red;
This Art had made of rubies clustered so,

To the quick'st eye they more than seemed to grow;
About the walls lascivious pictures hung,
Such as were of loose Ovid sometimes sung.
On either side a crew of dwarfish elves
Held waxen tapers, taller than themselves :
Yet so well shaped unto their little stature,
So angel-like in face, so sweet in feature ;
Their rich attire so differing; yet so well
Becoming her that wore it, none could tell
Which was the fairest, which the handsomest decked,
Or which of them Desire would soon'st affect.
After a low salute, they all 'gan sing,

And circle in the stranger in a ring.

Orandra to her charms was stepped aside,
Leaving her guest half won and wanton-eyed.
He had forgot his herb: cunning delight
Had so bewitched his ears, and bleared his sight,
And captivated all his senses so,

That he was not himself: nor did he know
What place he was in, or how he came there,
But greedily he feeds his eye and ear
With what would ruin him. . . .
Next unto his view

She represents a banquet, ushered in
By such a shape as she was sure would win
His appetite to taste; so like she was
To his Clarinda, both in shape and face;
So voiced, so habited, of the same gait
And comely gesture; on her brow in state
Sat such a princely majesty as he
Had noted in Clarinda; save that she
Had a more wanton eye, that here and there
Rolled up and down, not settling anywhere.
Down on the ground she falls his hand to kiss,
And with her tears bedews it; cold as ice
He felt her lips, that yet inflamed him so,
That he was all on fire the truth to know,
Whether she was the same she did appear,
Or whether some fantastic form it were,
Fashioned in his imagination

By his still working thoughts; so fixed upon
His loved Clarinda, that his fancy strove,
Even with her shadow, to express his love.

Edward Fairfax (c.1580-1635), translator of Tasso's Jerusalem, a son-probably illegitimateof Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton, in Yorkshire, was born near Leeds, and spent his life mainly in literary work at Newhall, in Fewston parish, near Otley, Yorkshire. He dedicated his Godfrey of Bulloigne or the Recoverie of Jerusalem, to Queen Elizabeth (1st ed. 1600; 2nd ed. 1624). The poetical beauty and freedom of this version of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata have been the theme of almost universal praise. Dryden ranked Fairfax with Spenser as a master of our language, and Waller said he derived from him the harmony of

his numbers, though Ben Jonson said 'it was not well done.' It charmed James I. and solaced the imprisonment of Charles I. Hallam, admitting that it shows spirit and freedom, decides not unreasonably that it lacks the grace of the original. It was not the first translation (Richard Carew translated the first five cantos; see above at page 353), and there have been over half-a-dozen since; but it may still claim to be the English rendering, and an essential part of English literature. In 1621 Fairfax wrote a Discourse of Witchcraft (first printed in the Philobiblon Miscellanies, 1859), and in the preface to it he states that in religion he was 'neither a fantastic Puritan nor a superstitious Papist,' but describes in full the bewitching of two of his own daughters. He also wrote a series of Eclogues, one of whicha poor thing-was published in 1741.

If the opening of the first book of the Godfrey (or Jerusalem) recalls Homer and Virgil on the one hand, the English version suggests Spenser and Milton on the other :

The sacred Armies and the godly Knight
That the great Sepulcher of Christ did free
I sing; much wrought his valour and foresight
And in that glorious warre much suffred he:
In vaine gainst him did hell oppose her might,
In vaine the Turkes and Morians armed be:

His soldiers wilde, to braules and mutines prest,
Reduced he to peace, so heaven him blest.

O heavenly Muse that not with fading baies
Deckest thy brow by th' Heliconian spring,
But sittest crowned with starres immortall raies,
In heaven where legions of bright Angels sing;
Inspire life in my wit, my thoughts upraise,
My verse ennoble and forgive the thing,

If fictions light I mix with truth divine,

And fill these lines with other praise than thine.

In Tasso's great epic Armida is a beautiful sorceress, employed to seduce Rinaldo and other Crusaders as they approach the Holy City. Rinaldo after a struggle triumphs over her witcheries, confesses his love to her, and persuades her to become a Christian.

Armida and her Enchanted Girdle. And with that word she smiled, and nerethelesse Her love-toyes still she used, and pleasures bold : Her haire, that done, she twisted up in tresse, And looser locks in silken laces rolled; Her curles garland-wise she did up-dresse, Wherein, like rich ennamell laid on gold,

The twisted flowrets smiled, and her white brest
The Lillies there that spring with Roses drest.

The jolly Peacocke spreads not halfe so faire
The eyed feathers of his pompous traine;
Nor golden Iris so bends in the aire

Her twentie-coloured bow, through clouds of raine :
Yet all her ornaments, strange, rich, and rare,
Her girdle did in price and beauty staine;

Not that, with scorn, which Tuscan Guilla lost,
Nor Venus Ceston could match this for cost.

cestus

Of milde denaies, of tender scornes, of sweet
Repulses, war, peace, hope, despaire, joy, feare;
Of smiles, jests, mirth, woe, grief, and sad regreet;
Sighs, sorrowes, teares, embracements, kisses deare,
That mixed first by weight and measure meet,
Then at an easy fire attempred were ;

This wondrous girdle did Armida frame,
And when she would be loved, wore the same.

Rinaldo at the Enchanted Wood.
It was the time when gainst the breaking day
Rebellious night yet strove, and still repined,
For in the east appeared the morning gray,
And yet some lampes in Joves high palace shined,
When to Mount Olivet he took his way,

And saw, as round about his eies he twined,
Nights shadows hence, from thence the mornings shine,
This bright, that darke; that earthly, this divine.

Phineas and Giles Fletcher

were sons of Giles Fletcher, LL.D. (c.1549–1611), himself something of a poet, who was sent in 1588 as ambassador to Russia, and wrote Of the Russe Common Wealth (1591) and Licia or Poemes of Love. Both were clergymen; Phineas educated, like his father, at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, Phineas and Giles at Westminster and Trinity. (1582-1650) in 1621 became rector of Hilgay, in Norfolk; Giles (c.1588-1623) from about 1618 was rector of Alderton, Suffolk. The elder Giles was the brother of the Bishop of London, father of John Fletcher the dramatist-who was accordingly cousin of the two poet-brothers.

The works of Phineas consist of the Purple Island or the Isle of Man, Piscatory Eclogues, and miscellaneous poems. The Purple Island was published in 1633, but written much earlier, as appears from allusions in it to the Earl of Essex. The name of the poem conjures up images of poetical and romantic beauty such as we may suppose a youthful admirer and follower of Spenser to have drawn-unless, indeed, it suggests the misapprehension that led to its being entered in a bookseller's topographical catalogue under ‘Man, Isle of. A perusal of the work dispels illusions. The Purple Island of Fletcher is no sunny spot 'amid the melancholy main;' it is an elaborate and anatomical description of the body and mind of man, involving a portentous allegory which inevitably repels the average reader. Beginning with the veins, arteries, bones, and muscles of the human frame, the poet pictures them as hills, dales, streams, and rivers, and describes with great minuteness their different meanderings, elevations, and appearances; one is reminded of Harvey's recent great discovery of the circulation of the blood. But that Fletcher's physiology differed pretty widely from our current doctrines will be plain from the kindly view he takes of the liver and its normal functions:

So 'tween the Splenion's frost and th' angry Gall
The joviall Hepar sits; with great expence
Cheering the Isle by his great influence (!);

and he does not reject the view that 'within (viz. the liver) love hath his habitation.' Having in five cantos exhausted man's physical phenomena, he proceeds to describe the complex nature and operations of the mind. Intellect is the prince of the Isle of Man, and he is furnished with eight counsellors -Fancy, Memory, the Common Sense, and five external senses. The human fortress thus garrisoned is assailed by the Vices, and a fierce contest ensues for the possession of the human soul. At length an angel interposes, and ensures victory to the Virtues the angel being King James I., on whom is heaped much fulsome adulation. From the above sketch of this odd poem, it will be apparent that its worth must rest, not upon the attractions of its plot, but upon the beauty of isolated passages and particular descriptions. Some of Phineas's seven-line stanzas have the flow and sweetness of Spenser's Faerie Queene, a few of them Spenser's charm; multitudes are marred by affectation, perversities, and the tedium of long-protracted allegory. Giles Fletcher published only one poem of any length-Christ's Victorie and Triumph. It appeared at Cambridge in 1610, and met with such indifferent success that a second edition was not called for till twenty years afterwards. There is a massive grandeur and earnestness about Christ's Victorie which strikes the imagination. The materials of the poem are better fused together and more harmoniously linked than those of the Purple Island; the unusual eight-line stanza contrasts with interspersed lyrics. Both of these brothers,' said Hallam, are deserving of much praise; they were endowed with minds eminently poetical, and not inferior in imagination to any of their contemporaries. But an injudicious taste, and an excessive fondness for a style which the public was rapidly abandoning, that of allegorical personification, prevented their powers from being effectively displayed.' Campbell's criticism is not antiquated : 'They were both the disciples of Spenser, and, with his diction gently modernised, retained much of his melody and luxuriant expression. Giles, inferior as he is to Spenser and Milton, might be figured, in his happiest moments, as a link of connection in our poetry between these congenial spirits, for he reminds us of both, and evidently gave hints to the latter in a poem on the same subject with Paradise Regained. These hints are indeed very plain and obvious. The appearance of Satan as an aged sire 'slowly footing' in the silent wilderness, the temptation of our Saviour in the 'goodly garden' and in the Bower of Vain Delight, are outlines which Milton adopted and filled up in his second epic, with a grace and power unknown to the Fletchers-for whom may be claimed ingenuity of invention, copiousness of fancy, melodious numbers, and language at times rich, ornate, and highly poetical. If Spenser had not previously written his Bower of Bliss, Giles Fletcher's Bower of Vain Delight would have been unequalled in the poetry of that day; probably, like his master,

Spenser, he drew from Tasso. The poems of both brothers are included in Dr Grosart's Fuller Worthies Library' (1868-69, four vols. being given to Phineas and one to Giles), and Giles's also in his 'Early English Poets' (1876).

Decay of Human Greatness.

From the Purple Island. By Phineas Fletcher. Fond man, that looks on earth for happinesse, And here long seeks what here is never found! For all our good we hold from heav'n by lease, With many forfeits and conditions bound;

Nor can we pay the fine and rentage due:
Though now but writ, and seal'd, and giv'n anew,
Yet daily we it break, yet daily must renew.
Why should'st thou here look for perpetuall good,
At every losse against heav'ns face repining?
Do but behold where glorious Cities stood,
With gilded tops and silver turrets shining;

There now the hart fearlesse of greyhound feeds,
And loving pelican in safety breeds;

There schrieching Satyres fill the people's emptie steads.
Where is th' Assyrian Lion's golden hide,
That all the East once graspt in lordly paw?
Where that great Persian Beare, whose swelling pride
The Lion's self tore out with ravenous jaw?

Or he which 'twixt a Lion and a Pard,
Through all the world with nimble pineons far'd,
And to his greedy whelps his conquer'd kingdomes shar'd?
Hardly the place of such antiquitie,

Or note of those great Monarchies we finde :
Onely a fading verball memorie,

And empty name in writ is left behinde :

But when this second life and glory fades,
And sinks at length in Time's obscurer shades,
A second fall succeeds, and double death invades.
That monstrous Beast, which nurst in Tiber's fenne
Did all the world with hideous shape affray;
That fill'd with costly spoil his gaping denne,
And trode down all the rest to dust and clay:
His batt'ring horns pull'd out by civil hands,
And iron teeth lie scatter'd on the sands;
Backt, bridled by a monk, with sev'n heads yoked stands.

And that black Vulture, which with deathfull wing
O're-shadows half the earth, whose dismall sight
Frighted the Muses from their native spring,
Already stoops, and flagges with weary flight.
Who then shall look for happines beneath;
Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and
And life it self's as flit as is the air we breathe?

[death,

fleeting

(From Canto VII.) The symbolical Leo-pard is Alexander the Great; the monstrous Beast is of course the Papacy; the black Vulture is the Turk.

Parthenia.

From the Purple Island. With her her sister went, a warlike maid, Parthenia, all in steel and gilded arms; In needle's stead a mighty spear she sway'd, With which in bloudy fields and fierce alarms The boldest champion she down would bear, And like a thunderbolt wide passage tear, Flinging all to the earth with her enchanted spear.

Her goodly armour seem'd a garden green,
Where thousand spotlesse lilies freshly blew ;
And on her shield the 'lone bird might be seen,
Th' Arabian bird, shining in colours new:
It self unto it self was onely mate;
Ever the same, but new in newer date :

And underneath was writ, Such is chaste single state.

Thus hid in arms, she seem'd a goodly knight,
And fit for any warlike exercise :

And when she list lay down her armour bright,
And back resume her peacefull maiden's guise ;
The fairest maid she was, that ever yet
Prison'd her locks within a golden net,
Or let them waving hang, with roses fair beset.

Choice nymph, the crown of chaste Diana's train,
Thou Beautie's lilie, set in heav'nly earth;
Thy fairs, unpattern'd, all perfections stain:
Sure heav'n with curious pencil at thy birth
In thy rare face her own full picture drew:
It is a strong verse here to write but true:
Hyperboles in others are but half thy due.

Upon her forehead Love his trophies fits,
A thousand spoils in silver arch displaying;
And in the midst himself full proudly sits,
Himself in awfull majestie araying:

Upon her brows lies his bent ebon bow,

And ready shafts: deadly those weapons show;

Yet sweet that death appear'd, lovely that deadly blow. . . .

A bed of lilies flower upon her cheek,

And in the midst was set a circling rose ;
Whose sweet aspect would force Narcissus seek
New liveries, and fresher colours choose

To deck his beauteous head in snowie tire;
But all in vain: for who can hope t' aspire
To such a fair, which none attain, but all admire?

Her rubie lips lock up from gazing sight
A troop of pearls, which march in goodly row:
But when she deignes those precious bones undight,
Soon heav'nly notes from those divisions flow,

And with rare musick charm the ravisht eares, Danting bold thoughts, but cheering modest fears: The spheres so onely sing, so onely charm the spheres...

Yet all the starres which deck this beauteous skie,
By force of th' inward sunne both shine and move:
Thron'd in his heart sits Love's high majestie;
In highest majestie the highest Love.

As when a taper shines in glassie frame, The sparkling crystall burns in glitt'ring flame: So does that brightest Love brighten this lovely dame. (From Canto x.) Parthenia is defined by the poet as 'chastitie in the single,' as Agnia is 'chastitie in the married.' The Arabian bird, the phoenix, was of course a virgin bird.

The Sorceress of Vain Delight.
From Christ's Victorie and Triumph. By Giles Fletcher.
The garden like a ladie faire was cut,
That lay as if shee slumber'd in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut;

The azure fields of heav'n wear 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flow'rs of light:

The flowr's-de-luce, and the round sparks of deaw, dew That hung upon the azure leaves, did shew

Like twinkling starrs, that sparkle in th' eav'ning blew.

Upon a hillie banke her head shee cast,

On which the bowre of Vaine-delight was built;
White and red roses for her face wear plac't,
And for her tresses marigolds wear spilt:
Them broadly shee displaid, like flaming guilt,
Till in the ocean the glad day wear drown'd;
Then up againe her yellow locks she wound,

And with greene filletts in their prettie calls them bound.

What should I here depeint her lillie hand,
Her veines of violets, her ermine brest,
Which thear in orient colours living stand;
Or how her gowne with silken leaves is drest;
Or how her watchmen, arm'd with boughie crest,
A wall of prim hid in his bushes bears,
Shaking at every winde their leavie spears,
While she supinely sleeps, ne to be waked fears!

Over the hedge depends the graping elme,
Whose greener head empurpuled in wine,
Seemed to wonder at his bloodie helme,
And halfe suspect the bunches of the vine;
Least they, perhaps, his wit should undermine.
For well he knewe such fruit he never bore:
But her weake armes embraced him the more,
And with her ruby grapes laught at her paramour.

The roofe thicke cloudes did paint, from which three boyes

A silver wande the sorceresse did sway,
And for a crowne of gold her haire she wore ;
Onely a garland of rose-buds did play
About her locks; and in her hand she bore
A hollowe globe of glasse, that long before
She full of emptinesse had bladdered,
And all the world therein depictured:
Whose colours, like the rainbowe, ever vanished.

Such watry orbicles young boyes do blowe
Out of their sopy shels, and much admire

The swimming world, which tenderly they rowe
With easie breath, till it be waved higher :
But if they chaunce but roughly once aspire,

The painted bubble instantly doth fall.

Here when she came, she 'gan for musique call, And sung this wooing song, to welcome Him withall:

Love is the blossome whear thear blowes

Every thing that lives or growes:
Love doth make the heav'ns to move,
And the sun doth burne in love:

Love the strong and weake doth yoke,
And makes the yvie climbe the oke;
Under whose shadowes lions wilde,
Soft'ned by love, grow tame and mild
Love no med'cine can appease,
He burnes the fishes in the seas;
Not all the skill his wounds can stench,
Not all the sea his fire can quench:
Love did make the bloody spear

Once a levie coat to wear,

While in his leaves thear shrouded lay Sweete birds for love that sing and play: And of all love's joyfull flame

I the bud and blossome am:

Onely bend Thy knee to mee,

Thy wooing shall Thy winning bee.

See, see the flowers that belowe
Now as fresh as morning blowe;
And of all, the virgin rose,
That as bright Aurora showes:
How they all unleaved die,
Loosing their virginitie;
Like unto a summer-shade,

But now borne, and now they fade.
Every thing doth passe away,
Thear is danger in delay:
Come, come gather then the rose,
Gather it, or it you lose :
All the sand of Tagus' shore
Into my bosome casts his ore :
All the valleys' swimming corne
To my house is yeerely 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 starres in heav'n that shine,
And ten thousand more, are mine.
Onely bend Thy knee to mee,

Thy wooing shall Thy winning bee.

stanch

leavy, leafy

Thus sought the dire Enchauntress in His minde Her guilefull bayt to have embosomèd;

But He her charmes dispersed into winde,
And her of insolence admonished;
And all her optique glasses shattered.

So with her sire to Hell shee took her flight, (The starting ayre flew from the damned spright,) Whear deeply both aggriev'd plunged themselves in night.

But to their Lord, now musing in His thought,
A heavenly volie of light angels flew,
And from His Father Him a banquet brought,
Through the fine element; for well they knew,
After His Lenten fast He hungrie grew;
And, as He fed, the holy quires combine
To sing a hymne of the celestiall Trine;

All thought to passe, and each was past all thought divine.

The birds' sweet notes, to sonnet out their joyes,
Attemper'd to the layes angelicall;

And to the birds the winds attune their noyse,
And to the winds the waters hoarcely call,
And Eccho back againe revoyced all;

That the whole valley rung with victorie.
But now our Lord to rest doth homeward flie:

See how the Night comes stealing from the mountains high!

Wear, whear, and thear stand throughout for were,' 'where,' and there; calls are cauls, caps; prim, privet; interall (entrail). inside; Lyæus, Bacchus; orgialls, orgiastic hymns; bloody spear, &c., refers to one of the many legends about the Crucifixion.

Sir John Beaumont (1582-1628) was the elder brother of the celebrated dramatist. Enjoying the family estate of Gracedieu, in Leicestershire, Sir John dedicated part of his leisure hours to the service of the Muses. He wrote, in neat enough heroic couplets, a somewhat unimpassioned poem on Bosworth Field. This is how he gives Richard's address to his troops on the eve of the decisive battle:

My fellow-souldiers, though your swords
Are sharpe, and need not whetting by my words;
Yet call to minde those many glorious dayes
In which we treasur'd up immortall prayse;

If when I serv'd, I ever fled from foe,
Fly ye from mine, let me be punisht so:

But if my father, when at first he try'd
How all his sonnes could shining blades abide,
Found me an eagle, whose undazled eyes
Affront the beames which from the steele arise,
And if I now in action teach the same,

Know then, ye have but chang'd your gen'rall's name;
Be still your selves, ye fight against the drosse
Of those that oft have runne from you with losse :
How many Somersets,-Dissention's brands!—
Have felt the force of our revengefull hands!
From whome this youth, as from a princely floud,
Derives his best, yet not untainted bloud;
Have our assaults made Lancaster to droupe?
And shall this Welshman with his ragged troupe
Subdue the Norman and the Saxon line,
That onely Merlin may be thought divine?
See what a guide these fugitives have chose!
Who bred among the French, our ancient foes,
Forgets the English language and the ground,
And knowes not what our drums and trumpets sound.

In a poem to the memory of a friend are these excellent observations in verse: