combinations, unfamiliar allusions, elliptical apostrophes, and abruptness of expression. Perhaps some will think that his manner betrays too much of the laborious exactness and pedantic anxiety of the scholar and the student. Ariosto in Italian, and Regnier in French, were now almost the only modern writers of satire; and I believe there had been an English translation of Ariosto's Satires. But Hall's acknowledged patterns are Juvenal and Persius, not without some touches of the urbanity of Horace. His parodies of these poets, or rather his adaptations of ancient to modern manners, a mode of imitation not unhappily practised by Oldham, Rochester, and Pope, discover great facility and dexterity of invention. The moral gravity and the censorial declamation of Juvenal, he frequently enlivens with a train of more refined reflection, or adorns with a novelty and variety of images."[629:A]
The Satires of Hall exhibit a very minute and curious picture of the literature and manners, the follies and vices of his times, and numerous quotations in the course of our work will amply prove the wit, the sagacity, and the elegance of his Muse. Poetry was the occupation merely of his youth, the vigour and decline of his days being employed in the composition of professional works, calculated, by their piety, eloquence, and originality, to promote, in the most powerful manner, the best interests of morality and religion. This great and good man died, after a series of persecution from the republican party, at his little estate at Heigham, near Norwich, on the 8th of September 1656, and in the eighty-second year of his age.
21. Harington, Sir John. Among the numerous translators of the Elizabethan period, this gentleman merits peculiar notice, as having, through the medium of his Ariosto, "enriched our poetry by a communication of new stores of fiction and imagination, both of the romantic and comic species, of Gothic machinery and familiar manners."[629:B] His version of the Orlando Furioso, of which the first
edition was published in 1591, procured him a large share of celebrity. Stowe, in his Annals, has classed him among those "excellent poets which worthily flourish, in their own works, and lived together in Queen Elizabeth's reign[630:A];" and Fuller[630:B], Philips, Dryden, and others, to the middle of the eighteenth century, have spoken of him in terms of similar commendation. In point of poetical execution, however, his translation, whatever might be its incidental operation on our poetic literature, must now be considered as vulgar, tame, and inaccurate. Sir John was born at Kelston near Bath, in 1561, and died there in 1612, aged fifty-one. His "Epigrams," in four Books, were published after his death; first in 1615, when the fourth book alone was printed; again in 1618, including the whole collection; and a third time in 1625, small 8vo.[630:C] The poetical merit of these pieces is very trifling, but they throw light upon contemporary character and manners.[630:D]
22. Jonson, Benjamin. Of this celebrated poet, the friend and companion of Shakspeare, a very brief notice, and limited to his
minor pieces, will here be necessary, as his dramatic works and some circumstances of his life, will hereafter occupy their due share of attention. His poems were divided by himself into "Epigrams," "The Forest," "Under-woods," and a translation of "Horace's Art of Poetrie;" to which his late editors have added, "Miscellaneous Pieces." The general cast of these poems is not such as will recommend them to a modern ear; they are but too often cold and affected; but occasionally, instances of a description the very reverse of these epithets, are to be found, where simplicity and beauty of expression constitute the prominent features. It is chiefly, if not altogether, among his minor pieces in the lyric measure that we meet with this peculiar neatness and concinnity of diction: thus, in "The Forest," the lines from Catullus, beginning "Come, my Celia, let us prove," and the well-known song
"Drink to me only with thine eyes;"
in the "Underwoods," the stanzas commencing
"For Love's sake kisse me once again;"
"Or scorne, or pittie on me take;"