After his death, his brother published a collection of his miscellaneous pieces. We extract a few, of no little merit. His verses to Ben Jonson, written before their author came to London, and first appended to a play entitled 'Nice Valour,' are picturesque and interesting, as illustrating the period.
TO BEN JONSON.
The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the selfsame thing
They know, they see, however absent) is
Here, our best haymaker (forgive me this,
It is our country's style) in this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine.
Oh, we have water mix'd with claret lees,
Brink apt to bring in drier heresies
Than beer, good only for the sonnet's strain,
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain,
So mix'd, that, given to the thirstiest one,
'Twill not prove alms, unless he have the stone.
I think, with one draught man's invention fades:
Two cups had quite spoil'd Homer's Iliades.
'Tis liquor that will find out Sutcliff's wit,
Lie where he will, and make him write worse yet;
Fill'd with such moisture in most grievous qualms,
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms;
And so must I do this: And yet I think
It is a potion sent us down to drink,
By special Providence, keeps us from fights,
Makes us not laugh when we make legs to knights.
'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,
A medicine to obey our magistrates:
For we do live more free than you; no hate,
No envy at one another's happy state,
Moves us; we are all equal: every whit
Of land that God gives men here is their wit,
If we consider fully, for our best
And gravest men will with his main house-jest
Scarce please you; we want subtilty to do
The city tricks, lie, hate, and flatter too:
Here are none that can bear a painted show,
Strike when you wink, and then lament the blow;
Who, like mills, set the right way for to grind,
Can make their gains alike with every wind;
Only some fellows with the subtlest pate,
Amongst us, may perchance equivocate
At selling of a horse, and that's the most.
Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best,
With the best gamesters: what things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life: then when there had been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past; wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly
Till that were cancell'd; and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
Eight witty; though but downright fools were wise.
When I remember this,
* * * I needs must cry
I see my days of ballading grow nigh;
I can already riddle, and can sing
Catches, sell bargains, and I fear shall bring
Myself to speak the hardest words I find
Over as oft as any with one wind,
That takes no medicines, but thought of thee
Makes me remember all these things to be
The wit of our young men, fellows that show
No part of good, yet utter all they know,
Who, like trees of the garden, have growing souls.
Only strong Destiny, which all controls,
I hope hath left a better fate in store
For me, thy friend, than to live ever poor.
Banish'd unto this home: Fate once again
Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plain
The way of knowledge for me; and then I,
Who have no good but in thy company,
Protest it will my greatest comfort be,
To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee,
Ben; when these scenes are perfect, we'll taste wine;
I'll drink thy muse's health, thou shalt quaff mine.
ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER.
Mortality, behold and fear,
What a charge of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heap of stones:
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands;
Where, from their pulpits seal'd with dust,
They preach—in greatness is no trust.
Here's an acre sown indeed
With the richest, royal'st seed,
That the earth did e'er suck in
Since the first man died for sin:
Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though gods they were, as men they died:
Here are wands, ignoble things,
Dropp'd from the ruin'd sides of kings.
Here's a world of pomp and state
Buried in dust, once dead by fate.
AN EPITAPH.
Here she lies, whose spotless fame
Invites a stone to learn her name:
The rigid Spartan that denied
An epitaph to all that died,
Unless for war, in charity
Would here vouchsafe an elegy.
She died a wife, but yet her mind,
Beyond virginity refined,
From lawless fire remain'd as free
As now from heat her ashes be:
Keep well this pawn, thou marble chest;
Till it be call'd for, let it rest;
For while this jewel here is set,
The grave is like a cabinet.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
The verses attributed to this illustrious man are few, and the authenticity of some of them is doubtful. No one, however, who has studied his career, or read his 'History of the World,' can deny him the title of a great poet.
We cannot be expected, in a work of the present kind, to enlarge on a career so well known as that of Sir Walter Kaleigh. He was born in 1552, at Hayes Farm, in Devonshire, and descended from an old family there. He went early to Oxford, but finding its pursuits too tame for his active and enterprising spirit, he left it, and became a soldier at seventeen. For six years he fought on the Protestant side in France, besides serving a campaign in the Netherlands. In 1579, he went a voyage, which proved disastrous, to Newfoundland, in company with his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. There can be no doubt that this early apprenticeship to war and navigation was of material service to the future explorer and historian. In 1580, he fought in Ireland against the Earl of Desmond, who had raised a rebellion there, and on one occasion is said to have defended a ford of Shannon against a whole band of wild Irish rebels, till the stream ran purple with their blood and his own. With the Lord- Deputy, Lord Grey de Wilton, he got into a dispute, and to settle it came over to England. Here high favour awaited him. His handsome appearance, his graceful address, his ready wit and chivalric courtesy, dashed with a fine poetic enthusiasm, (see them admirably pictured in 'Kenilworth,') combined to exalt him in the estimation of Queen Elizabeth. On one occasion he flung his rich plush cloak over a miry part of the way, that she might pass on unsoiled. By this delicate piece of enacted flattery he 'spoiled a cloak and made a fortune.' The Queen sent him, along with some other courtiers, to attend the Duke of Anjou, who had in vain solicited her hand, back to the Netherlands. In 1584, he fitted two ships, and sent them out for the discovery and settlement of those parts of North America not already appropriated by Christian states, and the next year there followed a fleet of seven ships under the command of Sir Richard Grenville, Raleigh's kinsman. The attempt to colonise America at that time failed, but two important things were transplanted through means of the expedition from Virginia to Britain, namely, tobacco and the potato, —the former of which has ever since been offered up in smoky sacrifice to Raleigh's memory throughout the whole world, and the latter of which has become the most valuable of all our vegetable esculents. Raleigh first planted the potato in Ireland, a country of which it has long been the principal food. A ludicrous story is told about this. It is said that he had invited a number of his neighbours to an entertainment, in which the new root was to form a prominent part, but when the feast began Raleigh found, to his horror, that the servants had boiled the plums, a most unsavoury mess, and immediately, we suppose, 'tabulae solvuntur risu.' In 1584 the Queen had knighted him, and shortly after she granted him certain lucrative monopolies, and an estate in Ireland, in addition to one he had possessed for some years. In 1588, he was of material service as one of Her Majesty's Council of War, formed to resist the Spanish Armada, and as one of the volunteers who joined the English fleet with ships of their own. Next year he accompanied a number of his countrymen in an expedition, which had it in view to restore Don Antonio to the throne of Portugal, of which the Spaniards had deprived him. On his return he lost caste considerably, both with the Queen and country, by taking bribes, and otherwise abusing the influence he had acquired at Court. Yet, about this time, his active mind was projecting what he called an 'Office of Address,'—a plan for facilitating the designs of literary and scientific men, promoting intercourse between them, gaining, in short, all those objects which are now secured by our literary associations and philosophical societies. Raleigh was eminently a man before his age, but, alas! his age was too far behind him.