A FRAGMENT OF ONE OF THE LOST QUATER

58 NIONS OF EUPHEME. You worms (my rivals), whiles she was alive How many thousands were there that did strive To have your freedom ? For their sakes for

bear Unseemly holes in her soft skin to wear; But, if you must (as what worm can abstain ?) Taste of her tender body, yet refrain, With your disordered eating, to deface her, And feed yourselves so as you most may grace

her. First, through yon ear-tips see you work a pair Of holes, which as the moist enclosed air Turns into water, may the cold drops take, And in her ears a pair of jewels make. That done, upon her bosom make your feast, Where, on a cross, carve Jesus in her breast. Have you not yet enough of that soft skin, The touch of which in times past might have

been Enough to ransom many a thousand soul Captived to love? Then hence your bodies roll A little higher; when I would you have This epitaph upon her forehead grave: Living, she was fair, young, and full of wit; Dead, all her faults are in her forehead writ.

From Notes and Queries, Ist.

58 See ante, page 298. series, III. 367.

ON THE AUTHOR, worKS AND TRANSLATOR.59 Who tracks this author's, or translator's, pen Shall find that either hath read books and men: To

say but one were single : Then it chimes When the old words do strike on the new times, As in this Spanish Proteus; who, though writ But in one tongue, was formed with the world's

wit; And hath the noblest mark of a good book, That an ill man dares not securely look Upon it, but will loathe or let it pass, As a deformed face doth a true glass. Such books deserve translators of like coat, As was the genius wherewith they were wrote: And this hath met that one that may be styled More than the foster father of this child. For though Spain gave him his first air and

vogue He would be called henceforth The English

Rogue, But that he's too well suited, in a cloth Finer than was his Spanish, if my oath Will be received in Court; if not, would I Had cloathed him so. Here's all I can supply

a

59 Prefixed to the Translation of The Spanish Rogue, by James Mabbe, 1623. James Mabbe learned his Spanish by accompanying Sir John Digby when he went as ambassador to Spain. He alopted the quaint name of Don Diego Puede Ser (that is, Don James May-Be), and translated other Spanish books,

To your desert, who have done it, friend. And

this Fair emulation and as envy is, When

you

behold me with myself the man That would have done that which you only can.

ODE αλληγορική.89

I.

Who saith our times nor have nor can

Produce us a black swan ?
Behold where one doth swim

Whose note and hue

60 These spirited and thoroughly Jonsonian stanzas are prefixed to a Poem published in 1603, with the following title, “ PANCHARIS : The First Booke, containing The Preparation of the Love betweene Owen Tudyr, and the Queene, long since intended to her Maiden Majestie; And now dedicated to The Invincible James, Second and greater Monarch of Great Britaine, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, with the Islands adjacent. Printed at London, by V. S. for Clement Knight. 1603.”

This work, of which only one copy is known to exist (among Burton's books in the Bodleian) was first described in 1865 by Mr. Collier, in his Bibliographical Catalogue, Vol. II. p. 443, and afterwarıls reprinted in the following year in his

green series,” or “Illustrations of our old English Literature.” Particular attention was called by him to this Ode of Jonson's, which has, notwithstanding, been overlooked by Mr. Hazlitt. The notices of Scotland are especially interesting, as showing for how many years before he actually visited it the localities of his ancestral land had occupied his mind. His mention of the drinking habits of the Danes, in the same year in which Hamlet was first published, has hitherto escaped Shakespearian commentators.- CUNNINGHAM.

Besides the other swans admiring him,

Betray it true:
A gentler bird than this
Did never dint the breast of Tamisis.

II.

Mark, mark, but when his wing he takes

How fair a flight he makes !
How upward and direct !

Whilst pleased Apollo
Smiles in his sphere to see the rest affect

In vain to follow.
This swan is only his,
And Phæbuslove cause of his blackness is.

III.

He showed him first the hoof-cleft spring,

Near which Thespiads sing;
The clear Dircæan fount

Where Pindar swam ;
The pale Pyrene and the forked Mount:

And when they came
To brooks and broader streams,
From Zephyr's rape would close him with his

beams.

IV.

This changed his down, till this, as white

As the whole beard in sight,
And still is in the breast;

That part nor wind,

Nor sun could make to vary from the rest,

Or alter kind;
So much doth virtue hate,
For style of rareness, to degenerate.

Be then both rare and good : and long

Continue thy sweet song.
Nor let one river boast

Thy tunes alone;
But prove the air, and sail from coast to coast :

Salute old Mône. But first to Cluid stoop low, The vale that bred thee pure as her hills' snow.

VI.

From thence display thy wing again

Over Ierna main
To the Engenian dale ;

There charm the rout
With thy soft notes, and hold them within pale

That late were out. Music hath power to draw, Where neither force can bend, nor fear can awe.

VII.

Be proof, the glory of his hand,

(Charles Montjoy) whose command
Hath been all harmony:

And more hath won