AN INHOSPITABLE MANSION.1

When Mævio's first page of his poesy,
Nailed to an hundred posts for novelty,2
With his big title, an Italian mot,*

Lays siege unto the backward buyer's groat,
Which all within is drafty sluttish gear"
Fit for the oven or the kitchen fire:

So this gay gate adds fuel to thy thought

That such proud piles were never raised for nought.
Beat the broad gates; a goodly hollow sound
With double echoes doth again rebound;
But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee,
Nor churlish porter canst thou chasing see;
All dumb and silent, like the dead of night,
Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite;
The marble pavement hid with desert weed,
With house-leek, thistle, dock, and hemlock seed.
But, if thou chance cast up thy wondering eyes,
Thou shalt discern upon the frontispiece
ΟΥΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ" graven up on high,

A fragment of old Plato's poesy :

The meaning is, "Sir Fool, ye may be gone;
Go back, by leave, for way here lieth none.'

Look to the towered chimneys, which should bẹ
The windpipes of good hospitality

Through which it breatheth to the open air,
Betokening life and liberal welfare:

Lo, there the unthankful swallow takes her rest,
And fills the tunnel with her circled nest;

Nor half that smoke from all his chimneys goes
Which one tobacco pipe drives through his nose.

RICHARD BARNFIELD.

(1574-?)

THIS name reminds us that the golden age of Spenser and his fellow-shepherds was not yet over. Only one pastoral song of this poet has acquired a lasting popularity, and few facts

1 From Book V. Satire II.

2 The original method of advertising a book was to nail up the title-page on posts in the streets. Hence the long title-pages of our old books, which read sometimes like title and index in one. 3 Its. 4 Motto. 5 Stuff.

are recorded concerning him. He was of Staffordshire parentage; studied at Brasenose College, Oxford; graduated as Bachelor in Arts in Feb. 1591-2; and was mentioned by Francis Meres in his Wit's Treasury, 1598, as one of the best for pastoral in his time. He published in 1594 a series of sonnets entitled The Affectionate Shepherd, fresh editions of which appeared in 1595 and 1596. His other works were Cynthia, with certain Sonnets, and the Legend of Cassandra, in 1595, and a third volume of poems in 1598, among which is his best known song. This song and another are in England's Helicon, with the signature 'Ignoto,' and also a sonnet bearing his name.

AS IT FELL UPON A DAY.

As it fell upon a day

In the merry month of May,

Sitting in a pleasant shade

Which a grove of Myrtles made,
Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,
Trees did grow, and plants did spring,
Everything did banish moan,

Save the Nightingale alone.

She, poor bird, as all forlorn,

Leaned her breast uptill a thorn,

And there sung the dolefullest ditty,
That to hear it was great pity:
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry;

Teru, Teru, by and bye:

That, to hear her so complain,

Scarce I could from tears refrain;

For her griefs, so lively shown,

Made me think upon my own.

Ah," thought I, "thou mourn'st in vain ;
None takes pity on thy pain!
Senseless trees they cannot hear thee;
Ruthless beasts they will not cheer thee;
King Pandion he is dead;
All thy friends are lapped in lead;
All thy fellow-birds do sing,

Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee,

BEN JONSON.

(1574-1637.)

BEN JONSON was ten years younger than Shakespeare, and survived him twenty-one years, living on almost into the troubled close of Charles I.'s reign. He was born in the north of England, the posthumous son of a minister, or preacher, in London, who came originally of a Scottish family in Annandale. Jonson's widowed mother was married a second time to a bricklayer; and her son, after a period of soldier life in the Low Countries, settled in London, married, and took to literature and the stage as a means of livelihood. The main bulk of his works consisted of Dramas and Masks, of which he produced in all more than fifty ; but he wrote also a considerable quantity of nondramatic verse in the form of Epigrams, Elegies, Songs, Epistles, and miscellaneous pieces. The massive force and the versatility of his genius were extraordinary. When the world had had enough of his Plays, he flung off a succession of brilliant revelries for the Court; he assailed beauty with a ponderous homage and in songs as graceful as the spray on a wave; he could write witty epistles to his great friends and tender little epitaphs on dead children; he added another to the glorious memories of Penshurst, and left the best contemporary criticism of Shakespeare that we have. In 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, Jonson was at the height of his fame. In that year he received a lifepension of a hundred marks from King James; he also collected his own works and published them in two volumes, grouping his non-dramatic verse in two series under the heads The Forest and Underwoods. It was at this date, also, that he ceased writing for the theatres, intending henceforward to produce only Entertainments for the Court; but in the early part of Charles I.'s reign he was compelled by poverty to resume the old kind of work. In 1630 Charles ratified Jonson's pension, raising it from marks to pounds, and adding thereto "one tierce of Canary Spanish wine yearly" from the cellars of Whitehall. Nevertheless, in spite of Charles's kindness, Jonson's last years were sad ones; and,

mortal group of poets, he was solitary and poor. His grave is in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. England was too busy in those years to build him a monument; but a young squire from Oxfordshire, visiting the spot, gave eighteenpence to a workman to engrave upon the flagstone that covered him this epitaph:-0 Rare Ben Jonson!

AN ODE TO HIMSELF.

Where dost thou careless lie?
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps doth die;
And this security,

It is the common moth

That eats on wits and arts, and so destroys them both.

Are all the Aonian springs

Dried up? Lies Thespia waste?

Doth Clarius' harp want strings,

That not a nymph now sings?

Or droop they as disgraced,

To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies defaced?

If hence thy silence be,

As 'tis too just a cause,

Let this thought quicken thee:

Minds that are great and free

Should not on fortune pause;

'Tis crown enough to virtue still,—her own applause.

What though the greedy fry

Be taken with false baits

Of worded balladry,

And think it poesy?

They die with their conceits,

And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.

Then take in hand thy lyre,

Strike in thy proper strain,

With Japhet's line aspire

Sol's chariot for new fire

To give the world again :

Who aided him will thee, the issue of Jove's brain.

And, since our dainty age
Cannot endure reproof,

Make not thyself a page
To that strumpet the stage,
But sing high and aloof,

Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof.1

OF EARLY DYING.

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make men better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear :
A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

A LOVE SONG.

O, do not wanton with those eyes,
Lest I be sick with seeing;

Nor cast them down, but let them rise,
Lest shame destroy their being.

O, be not angry with those fires,
For then their threats will kill me;
Nor look too kind on my desires,
For then my hopes will spill me.

O, do not steep them in thy tears,
For so will sorrow slay me;

Nor spread them as distract with fears:

Mine own enough betray me.

1 This scornful mood was characteristic of Jonson, especially in his early life. The last line of the "Ode," evidently a favourite with its author, occurs also at the close of the Epilogue to The Poetaster, written in 1601 :

I, that spend half my nights and all my days

Here in a cell, to get a dark pale face,

To come forth worth the ivy or the bays,

And, in this age, can hope no other grace

Leave me ! There's something come into my thought

That must and shall be sung high and aloof,