Companion Poets: Poems by George Wither. Edited, with an Introduction,
by Henry Morley, LL.D. (Routledge and Sons.)— Dr. Henry Morley, the most indefatigable of editors, deserves the thanks of all lovers of good poetry for this little volume. It is needless to say that it contains but a small portion of Wither's prolific verse, but it holds all, perhaps, that is worthy of remem- brance. In the early years of this century, Sir Egerton Brydges published a modern edition of "Fair Virtue ; or, the Mistress of Philarete," and from that time this delightful poem has been familiar to students. There is room for a new and cheap edition, and this tiny book, clear in print and almost imperceptible in weight. may serve to double the pleasure of a summer day's ramble. Here, in addition to "Fair Virtue," a pretty love-sonnet that is new to us, and a few minor pieces, is "The Shepherd's Hunting," which was written in prison, and contains the lovely lines on the soothing and sustaining charm of Poetry, whom the poet addresses as his best earthly bliss and the sweetest content that heaven has given to mortals, adding :— " Though thou be to them a scorn That to nought but earth,are born, Let my life no longer be
Than I am in love with thee."
Wither was an Oxford man, and on leaving the University endeavoured, with very indifferent success, to keep his father's farm in Hampshire. He loved his Muse too well, and was happier as a law-student in London, for there he met the poets who were "of the tribe of Ben," and was honoured with the good-will of the great dramatist himself.
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