[706] [V. 92. and ffarwell my.]
[707] [V. 95. be still.]
XXIV.
ARGENTILE AND CURAN,
Is extracted from an ancient historical poem in XIII. Books, intitled, Albion's England, by William Warner: "An author (says a former editor,) only unhappy in the choice of his subject, and measure of his verse. His poem is an epitome of the British history, and written with great learning, sense, and spirit. In some places fine to an extraordinary degree, as I think will eminently appear in the ensuing episode (of Argentile and Curan). A tale full of beautiful incidents in the romantic taste, extremely affecting, rich in ornament, wonderfully various in style; and in short, one of the most beautiful pastorals I ever met with." (Muses Library, 1738, 8vo.) To his merit nothing can be objected unless perhaps an affected quaintness in some of his expressions, and an indelicacy in some of his pastoral images.
Warner is said, by A. Wood,[708] to have been a Warwickshire man, and to have been educated in Oxford, at Magdalene-hall: as also in the latter part of his life to have been retained in the service of Henry Cary Lord Hunsdon, to whom he dedicates his poem. However that may have been, new light is thrown upon his history, and the time and manner of his death are now ascertained, by the following extract from the parish register book of Amwell, in Hertfordshire; which was obligingly communicated to the Editor by Mr. Hoole, the very ingenious translator of Tasso, &c.
(1608—1609.) "Master William Warner, a man of good yeares and of honest reputation; by his profession an Atturnye of the Common Pleas; author of Albions England, diynge suddenly in the night in his bedde, without any former complaynt or sicknesse, on thursday night beeinge the 9th daye of March; was buried the satturday following, and lyeth in the church at the corner under the stone of Walter Ffader." Signed Tho. Hassall Vicarius.
Though now Warner is so seldom mentioned, his contemporaries ranked him on a level with Spenser, and called them the Homer and Virgil of their age.[709] But Warner rather resembled Ovid, whose Metamorphoses he seems to have taken for his model, having deduced a perpetual poem from the deluge down to the æra of Elizabeth, full of lively digressions and entertaining episodes. And though he is sometimes harsh, affected, and obscure, he often displays a most charming and pathetic simplicity: as where he describes Eleanor's harsh treatment of Rosamond:
"With that she dasht her on the lippes
So dyed double red:
Hard was the heart that gave the blow,
Soft were those lippes that bled."