Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 1 of 2] / Including the Biography of the Poet; criticisms on his genius and writings; a new chronology of his plays; a disquisition on the on the object of his sonnets; and a history of the manners, customs, and amusements, superstitions, poetry, and elegant literature of his age

by Nathan Drake

Thy mother Avon runnest soft to seek;

In whose fair streams, the speckled trout doth play,

The roch, the dace, the gudgin, and the bleike:

Teach me the skill with slender line and hook

To take each fish of river, pond, and brook."

A second edition of "The Secrets of Angling," "augmented with many approved experiments," by W. Lawson, was printed in 1652, and a third would be acceptable even in the present day.

11. Donne, John, D.D. The greater part of the poetry of this prelate, though not published, was written, according to Ben Jonson, before he was twenty-five years of age; and as he was born in London in 1573, he must consequently be ranked as a bard of the sixteenth century. His poems consist of elegies, satires, letters, epigrams, divine poems, and miscellaneous pieces, and procured for him, among his contemporaries, through private circulation and with the public when printed, during the greater part of the seventeenth century, an extraordinary share of reputation. A more refined age, however, and a more chastised taste, have very justly consigned his poetical labours to the shelf of the philologer. A total want of harmony in versification, and a total want of simplicity both in thought and expression, are the vital defects of Donne. Wit he has in abundance, and even erudition, but they are miserably misplaced; and even his amatory pieces exhibit little else than cold conceits and metaphysical subtleties. He may be considered as one of the principal establishers of a school of poetry founded on the worst Italian model, commencing towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, continued to the decease of Charles the Second, and including among its most brilliant cultivators the once popular names of Crashaw, Cleveland, Cowley, and Sprat.

Dr. Donne died in March 1631, and the first edition of his poems was published by his son two years after that event.

12. Drayton, Michael, of an ancient family in Leicestershire, was born in the village of Harshul, in the parish of Atherston, in Warwickshire, in 1563. This voluminous and once highly-popular poet has gradually sunk into a state of undeserved oblivion, from which he can alone be extricated by a judicious selection from his numerous Works. These may be classed under the heads of historical, topographical, epistolary, pastoral, and miscellaneous poetry. The first includes his Barons Warres, first published in 1596 under the title of "Mortimeriades; the lamentable Civil Warres of Edward the Second, and the Barons;" his Legends, written before 1598 and printed in an octavo edition of his poems in 1613, and his Battle of Agincourt. It cannot be denied that in these pieces there are occasional gleams of

imagination, many just reflections, and many laboured descriptions, delivered in perspicuous language, and generally in smooth versification; but they do not interest the heart or elevate the fancy; they are tediously and minutely historical, void of passion, and, for the most part, languid and prosaic. The second department exhibits the work on which he rested his hopes of immortality, the elaborate and highly-finished Poly-olbion, of which the first eighteen songs made their appearance in 1612, accompanied by the very erudite notes of Selden, and the whole was completed in thirty parts in 1622. The chief defect in this singular poem results from its plan; to describe the woods, mountains, vallies, and rivers of a country, with all their associations, traditionary, historical, and antiquarian, forms a task which no genius, however exalted, could mould into an interesting whole, and the attempt to enliven it by continued personification has only proved an expedient which still further taxes the patience of the reader. It possesses, however, many beauties which are poetically great; numerous delineations which are graphically correct, and a fidelity with regard to its materials so unquestioned, as to have merited the reference of Hearne and Wood, and the praise of Gough, who tells us that the Poly-olbion has preserved many circumstances which even Camden has omitted. It is a poem, in short, which will always be consulted rather for the information that it conveys, than for the pleasure that it produces.