LINES ON A PRAYER-BOOK SENT TO MRS. R.

Lo! here a little volume, but large book,
(Fear it not, sweet,
It is no hypocrite,)

Much larger in itself than in its look.
It is, in one rich handful, heaven and all-
Heaven's royal hosts encamp'd thus small;
To prove that true, schools used to tell,
A thousand angels in one point can dwell

It is love's great artillery,

Which here contracts itself, and comes to lie

Close couch'd in your white bosom, and from thence. As from a snowy fortress of defence,

Against the ghostly foe to take your part,

And fortify the hold of your chaste heart.
It is the armory of light:

Let constant use but keep it bright,
You'll find it yields

To holy hands and humble hearts,
More swords and shields

Than sin hath snares or hell hath darts.

Wakeful and wise,

Here is a friend shall fight for you.
Hold but this book before your heart,
Let prayer alone to play his part.
But oh! the heart

That studies this high art

Must be a sure housekeeper,

And yet no sleeper.

Dear soul, be strong,

Mercy will come ere long,

And bring her bosom full of blessings-
Flowers of never-fading graces,

To make immortal dressings,

For worthy souls whose wise embraces
Store up themselves for Him who is alone
The spouse of virgins, and the virgin's son.
But if the noble Bridegroom, when He come,
Shall find the wandering heart from home,
Leaving her chaste abode

To gad abroad

Amongst the gay mates of the god of flies;1
To take her pleasure and to play,

And keep the devil's holiday;

To dance in the sunshine of some smiling
But beguiling

Sphere of sweet and sugar'd lies;

1 Beelzebub.

The following is a portion of his version of the twenty-third Psalm : « Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” It is highly spirited and beautiful.

Come now all ye terrors, sally,

Muster forth into the valley

Where triumphant darkness hovers
With a sable wing, that covers
Brooding Horror. Come, thou Death,
Let the damps of thy dull breath
Overshadow e'en the shade,
And make darkness' self afraid :
There my feet, e'en there shall find
Way for a resolved mind.
Still my Shepherd, still my God,
Thou art with me, still thy rod
And thy staff, whose influence
Gives direction, gives defence.

PHINEAS FLETCHER. 1584-1650.

PHINEAS FLETCHER was the brother of Giles Fletcher, and born about the year 1584. He took his degree at Cambridge, and after completing his studies for the ministry, was presented with the living of Hilgay, in Norfolk, in 1621, which he held for twenty-nine years; and it is supposed that he died there in 1650.

His chief poem is entitled "The Purple Island," which title, on being first heard, would suggest ideas totally different from what is its real subject. The truth is, it is a sort of anatomical poem, the "Purple Island” being nothing less than the human body, the veins and arteries of which are filled with the purple fluid coursing up and down; so that the first part of the poem, which is anatomically descriptive, is not a little dry and uninteresting. But after describing the body, he proceeds to personify the passions and intellectual faculties. "Here," says Headley, "fatigued attention is not merely relieved, but fascinated and enraptured; there is a boldness of outline, a majesty of manner, a brilliancy of coloring, and an air of life, that we look for in vain in modern productions, and that rival, if not surpass, what we meet with of the kind even in Spenser, from whom our author caught his inspiration." This is rather extravagant, and yet a few passages can be selected from Phineas Fletcher, that, for beauty, are scarcely exceeded by any poetry in the language.

THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE.1

Thrice, oh thrice happy, shepherd's life and state,
When courts are happiness' unhappy pawns!

His cottage low, and safely humble gate

Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns:
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep:
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep;
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.

No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread
Draw out their silken lives; nor silken pride:
His lambs' warm fleece well fits his little need,
Not in that proud Sidonian tincture dyed:

No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright;
Nor begging wants his middle fortune bite:
But sweet content exiles both misery and spite.

Instead of music and base flattering tongues,
Which wait to first salute my lord's uprise;
The cheerful lark wakes him with early songs,
And birds' sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes:
In country plays is all the strife he uses,
Or sing, or dance unto the rural Muses;
And, but in music's sports, all difference refuses.

1 These beautiful lines seem to have suggested the plan of that most exquisite little piece called The Hamlet by Thomas Warton, which contains a selection of beautiful rural images, such as perhaps no other poem of equal length in our language presents us with. See it in the selections from Warton.

His certain life, that never can deceive him,

Is full of thousand sweets and rich content:

The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noontide's rage is spent:
His life is neither tost in boisterous seas

Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease:

Pleased and full bless'd he lives, when he his God can please

His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place:

His little son into his bosom creeps,

The lively picture of his father's face:

Never his humble house or state torment him;

Less he could like, if less his God had sent him;

And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him

ENVY.1

Envy the next, Envy with squinted eyes;

Sick of a strange disease, his neighbor's health;
Best lives he then, when any better dies;

Is never poor, but in another's wealth:

On best men's harms and griefs he feeds his fill;
Else his own maw doth eat with spiteful will:

Ill must the temper be, where diet is so ill.

Each eye through divers optics slyly leers,
Which both his sight and object's self belie;

So greatest virtue'as a moat appears,

And molehill faults to mountains multiply.

When needs he must, yet faintly, then he praises;

Somewhat the deed, much more the means he raises .
So marreth what he makes, and praising, most dispraises.

DECAY OF HUMAN GREATNESS

Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness,

And here long seeks what here is never found!
For all our good we hold from Heaven 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 given anew,
Yet daily we it break, then daily must renew.

Why shouldst thou here look for perpetual good,
At every loss against Heaven's face repining?

Do but behold where glorious cities stood,

With gilded tops and silver turrets shining;
There now the hart fearless of greyhound feeds,

And loving pelican in safety breeds:

There screeching satyrs fill the people's empty steads.2

Where is th' Assyrian lion's golden hide,

That all the East once grasp'd in lordly paw?

1 "In his description of Envy, Fletcher is superior to Spenser."-Retrospective Review li, 343, Places.

Where that great Persian bear, 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 pinions fared,

And to his greedy whelps his conquer'd kingdoms shared.

Hardly the place of such antiquity,

Or note of these great monarchies we find:

Only a fading verbal memory,

And empty name in writ is left behind:
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, nursed in Tiber's fen,
Did all the world with hideous shape affray;
That fill'd with costly spoil his gaping den,

And trod down all the rest to dust and clay:
His battering horns, pull'd out by civil hands,
And iron teeth, lie scatter'd on the sands;

Back'd, bridled by a monk, with seven heads yoked stands.

And that black vulture,' which, with deathful wing,
O'ershadows half the earth, whose dismal sight

Frighted the Muses from their native spring,

Already stoops, and flags with weary flight:

Who then shall hope for happiness beneath?

Where each new day proclaims chance, change, and death,
And life itself's as flit as is the air we breathe.

WILLIAM HABINGTON. 1605-1654.

year of the famed gunpowder come from his mother. They William was educated in the

WILLIAM HABINGTON was born at the country seat of his ancestors in Worcestershire, called Hindlip, in 1605, the plot, the discovery of which is said to have were a wealthy family, and were Papists. Jesuits' College in St. Omers, and afterwards at Paris, in the hope that he might enter into that society. But he preferred a wiser and happier course of life, and returning to his own country, married Lucy, daughter of William Herbert. In 1635 he published a volume of poems entitled "Castara," under which name he celebrates his wife, a kind of title fashionable in that day. He died when he had just completed his fiftieth year, and was buried in the family vault at Hindlip.

But little is known of Habington's history. He appears to have been distinguished for connubial felicity, for a love of retirement and study, and for the dignity and moral beauty of his sentiments. "His poems possess much elegance, much poetical fancy, and are almost everywhere tinged with a deep moral cast, which ought to have made their fame more permanent.”2

1 The Mohammedan Empire.

2 See "Censura Literaria," viii. 227 and 387; and "Retrospective Review,” xii. 274; also, "Hallam's Literature," &c., ii. 182.