educated at the University of Douay, became a member of the Society of Jesus at Rome, when but sixteen, and finally prefect in the English college there. Being sent as a missionary to England, in 1584, he was betrayed and apprehended in 1592, and after being imprisoned three years, and racked ten times, he was executed, as an agent for Popery, at Tyburn, on the 21st of February 1595.
Whatever may have been his religious intemperance or enthusiasm, his works, as a poet and a moralist, place him in a most favourable light; and we are unwilling to credit, that he who was thus elevated, just, and persuasive in his writings, could be materially incorrect in his conduct. In 1595, appeared his "Saint Peters Complaint, with other poems:" 4to., which went through a second impression in the same year, and was followed by "Mœoniæ. Or certaine excellent poems and spiritual Hymns; omitted in the last impression of Peter's complaint; being needefull thereunto to be annexed, as being both divine and wittie," 1595-1596. 4to. These two articles contain his poetical works; his other publications, under the titles of "Marie Magdalen's Funerall Tears;" "The Triumphs over Death; or a consolatorie Epistle, for afflicted minds, in the effects of dying friends," and "Short Rules of Good Life," being tracts in prose, though interspersed with occasional pieces of poetry.
The productions of Southwell, notwithstanding the unpopularity of his religious creed, were formerly in great request; "it is remarkable," observes Mr. Ellis, "that the very few copies of his works which are now known to exist, are the remnant of at least seventeen different editions, of which eleven were printed between 1593 and 1600."[644:A] The most ample edition of his labours was printed in 1620 in 16mo., and exhibits five distinct title-pages to the several pieces which we have just enumerated.
Bolton in his "Hypercritica," written about 1616, does credit, to his taste, by remarking that "never must be forgotten St. Peter's Complaint, and those other serious poems, said to be father
Southwells: the English whereof, as it is most proper, so the sharpness and light of wit is very rare in them."[645:A] From this period, however, oblivion seems to have hidden the genius of Southwell from observation, until Warton, by reproducing the criticism of Bolton, in the third volume of his History of English Poetry 1781, recalled attention to the neglected bard. Two years afterwards, Mr. Waldron, in his notes to Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd, gave us three specimens of Southwell's poetry; Mr. Headley reprinted these in 1787[645:B]; Mr. Ellis extracted an additional piece from the "Mœoniæ" in 1801; in 1802 Ritson presented us with a list of his writings accompanied by the notes of Mr. Park[645:C]; and lastly, in 1808, Mr. Haslewood favoured us with an essay on his life and works.[645:D]
Both the poetry and the prose of Southwell possess the most decided merit; the former, which is almost entirely restricted to moral and religious subjects, flows in a vein of great harmony, perspicuity, and elegance, and breathes a fascination resulting from the subject and the pathetic mode of treating it, which fixes and deeply interests the reader.
Mr. Haslewood, on concluding his essay on Southwell, remarks, that "those who 'least love the religion,' still must admire and praise the author, and regret that neither his simple strains in prose, nor his 'polished metre,' have yet obtained a collected edition of his works for general readers." The promise of such an edition escaped from the pen of Mr. Headley; at least it was his intention to re-publish "the better part of Southwell's poetry;" but death, most unhappily, precluded the attempt.
30. Spenser, Edmund. This great poet, who was born in London in 1553, has acquired an ever-during reputation in pastoral and epic poetry, especially in the last. His "Shepheard's Calender: conteining
twelve aeglogues, proportionable to the twelve monethes," was published in 1579; it is a work which has conferred upon him the title of the Father of the English pastoral, and has almost indissolubly associated his name with those of Theocritus and Virgil. Yet two great defects have contributed deeply to injure the popularity of his Calender; the adoption of a language much too old and obsolete for the age in which it was written, and the too copious introduction of satire on ecclesiastical affairs. The consequence of this latter defect, this incongruous mixture of church polemics, has been, that the aeglogues for May, July, and September, are any thing but pastorals. Simplicity of diction is of the very essence of perfection in pastoral poetry; but vulgar, rugged, and obscure terms, can only be productive of disgust; a result which was felt and complained of by the contemporaries of the poet, and which not all the ingenuity of his old commentator, E. K., can successfully palliate or defend. The pieces which have been least injured by this "ragged and rustical rudeness," as the scholiast aptly terms it, are the pastorals for January, June, October and December, which are indeed very beautiful, and the genuine offspring of the rural reed.
It is, however, to the Fairie Queene that we must refer for a just delineation of this illustrious bard. It appears to have been commenced about the year 1579; the first three books were printed in 1590, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth, in 1596. Whether the remaining six books, which were to have completed the design, were finished or not, continues yet unascertained; Browne, the author of Britannias Pastorals[646:A], and Sir Aston Cokain[646:B], consider the poem to have been left nearly in its present unfinished state; while Sir James Ware asserts[646:C] that the latter books were lost by the carelessness of the poet's servant whom he had sent before him into England on the breaking out of the rebellion, and, what seems still more to the