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An hundred of their merry pranks
By one that I could name

Are kept in store; con twenty thanks
To William for the same.

To William Churne of Staffordshire
Give laud and praises due,

Who every meale can mend your cheare
With tales both old and true:
To William all give audience,
And pray yee for his noddle:
For all the fairies evidence
Were lost, if it were addle.

TO HIS SON VINCENT CORBET.

WHAT I shall leave thee none can tell,
But all shall say I wish thee well:

I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth,
Both bodily and ghostly health;

Nor too much wealth, nor wit come to thee,
So much of either may undo thee.
I wish thee learning, not for show,
Enough for to instruct, and know;
Not such as gentlemen require
To prate at table, or at fire.

I wish thee all thy mother's graces,
Thy father's fortunes, and his places.
I wish thee friends, and one at court
Not to build on, but support;
To keep thee, not in doing many
Oppressions, but from suffering any.
I wish thee peace in all thy ways,
Nor lazy nor contentious days;
And when thy soul and body part,
As innocent as now thou art.

PHINEAS FLETCHER, the son of Dr. Giles Fletcher, "a learned man and an excellent poet," was born in the year 1584. He was educated at Eton, and elected to King's College, Cambridge; where he took his degree in 1604. He entered into holy orders, and was beneficed, in 1621, at Hilgay, in Norfolk-a living which he held during twenty-nine years, and where, probably, he died in 1650. Of the life of the Poet little else is known. His course appears to have been easy and unruffled; altogether free, indeed, from the difficulties and vexations which so commonly attend the followers of the Muses. His years glided by, untouched by care;-his duties were those of a country clergyman, active only as regarded the functions of his sacred office; and his enjoyments the pursuits of Literature, which he cultivated not as a business but as a relaxation; depending upon it mainly for his pleasures, but not resorting to it as a means of subsistence-a position to be envied, more especially when contrasted with the toils, troubles, or intrigues, which mark the career of nearly all the more distinguished of his contemporaries. If he failed in obtaining popularity, he was amply compensated by emancipation from those bonds in which society holds its favourites, and by the praise, so lavishly bestowed upon him, of a few choice spirits, who had sense and liberality enough to estimate his learning, his piety, and his poetry. By one of the most eminent among them, he is complimented-at some expense of truth-as the "Spenser of his age."

The Poems of Phineas Fletcher were, for the most part, written in early life. They were originally published in 1633, and the Dedication describes them as "blooms of his first spring"-"raw essays of his very unripe years and almost childhood." They consist of the Purple Island; Piscatory Eclogues; and various miscellaneous pieces. The Piscatory Eclogues are smooth and graceful-but no more. The subject has been lauded by certain critics as possessing advantages over the Pastoral; but it was rightly condemned by Mr. Addison. Coleridge, in a MS. note, describes it as necessarily failing to excite human sympathies;-from elementary causes, he observes, "i. c. independently of accidental associations, our feelings have nothing fishy in them." And he attributes this to "the coldness, the slime, the impracticability (in a word) of the habits" of the sea and water-dwellers-and also to their voicelessness, their being the ready victims of death and deceit-so that they are always as food. Fletcher has, indeed, done little with a theme so unpropitious.

Among his miscellaneous pieces the reader will find many of rare beauty; and in his Elegies there is a tone of deep sadness, admirably in keeping with the solemnity of the subjects.

But the work by which Phineas Fletcher is best known to fame is the Purple Island-a title so inapplicable that we are at a loss to guess why it was so called. Indeed the Poet himself seems to have been aware of the difficulty, when he added to it-"or the Isle of Man." It is, in fact, a rhymed lecture on anatomy: the Isle being the human body, with its bones, muscles, arteries, and veins, pictured as so many hills and dales, streams and rivers. Having described them with tedious and prosaic minuteness, he enters upon a branch of his subject somewhat more poetical-the qualities of the mind. The Virtues, under the command of Electra, or Intellect, are encountered by the Vices, and after a severe struggle are about to yield, when suddenly they achieve conquest by the help of a good angel-the angel being no other than our Sovereign Lord the King, James, by the grace of God, &c. This small circumstance is sufficient proof of the Poet's bad taste;-he who could so far forget the nature of his high calling as to pander thus to the gross love of flattery which characterised the meanest of the Stuarts, may not be expected to be over nice. Many of his images are coarse; others reach the remotest limits of the fantastic; and his obscurities are so frequent as to render his foot-notes absolutely necessary.

But if there are faults-and large faults-in the Purple Island, there are, undoubtedly, beauties of the rarest order. Fletcher is accused of imitating Spenser, and it is a charge he had no desire to traverse-"to lacky him was all his pride's aspiring." Although to read the whole of his long poem would be a wearisome task, he deservedly ranks high among the Poets of our country-so spirit-stirring is the occasional boldness of his thoughts and the loftiness of his style; so striking is the brilliancy of his colouring, and so effective is the energy with which he, at times, infuses life into the dullest things he touches.

PHINEAS FLETCHER.

FROM THE PURPLE ISLAND.

THE SHEPHERD'S HOME.

THRICE, oh, thrice happie shepherd's life and state
When courts are happinesse, unhappie pawns!

His cottage low, and safely humble gate,

.

Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns, and fawns:
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep:
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep;
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep..

No Serian worms he knows, that with their threed
Draw out their silken lives :-nor silken pride:

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the human body, with its bones, muscles, arteries, and veins, pictured as so many hills

and dales, streams and rivers. Having described them with tedious and prosaic minuteness, he enters upon a branch of his subject somewhat more poetical—the qualities of the mind. The Virtues, under the command of Electra, or Intellect, are encountered by the Vices, and after a severe struggle are about to yield, when suddenly they achieve conquest by the help of a good angel-the angel being no other than our Sovereign Lord the King, James, by the grace of God, &c. This small circumstance is sufficient proof of the Poet's bad taste;-he who could so far forget the nature of his high calling as to pander thus to the gross love of flattery which characterised the meanest of the Stuarts, may not be expected to be over nice. Many of his images are coarse; others reach the remotest limits of the fantastic; and his obscurities are so frequent as to render his foot-notes absolutely necessary.

But if there are faults-and large faults-in the Purple Island, there are, undoubtedly, beauties of the rarest order. Fletcher is accused of imitating Spenser, and it is a charge he had no desire to traverse-" to lacky him was all his pride's aspiring." Although to read the whole of his long poem would be a wearisome task, he deservedly ranks high among the Poets of our country-so spirit-stirring is the occasional boldness of his thoughts and the loftiness of his style; so striking is the brilliancy of his colouring, and so effective is the energy with which he, at times, infuses life into the dullest things he touches.

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THRICE, oh, thrice happie shepherd's life and state
When courts are happinesse, unhappie pawns!

His cottage low, and safely humble gate,

Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns, and fawns: No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep:

Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep; Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep..

No Serian worms he knows, that with their threed
Draw out their silken lives :-nor silken pride:

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