WILLIAM BROWNE OF TAVISTOCK.* , A QUARTER of a century

ago Mr. Carew Hazlitt edited a fine edition of Browne's works for the Roxburghe Library.

It was a generous tribute to the merits of a poet whose work, in spite of manifold defects, is, as his friend Ben Jonson said, "good upon the Exchange of Letters." Mr. Hazlitt executed his task with care, and the editor of

this new and attractive edition acknowledges his indebted- ness to him.

It is fitting that so true a poet as Browne should have a place in the publishers' charming series of the poets known as the "Muses' Library," and Mr. Bullen may be congratulated upon his introduction, which says the right word about the Devonshire poet. Notwithstanding the graceful dress in which he now appears, William Browne's discursive verse is not likely to please a large number of readers. He wants art, definiteness of purpose, distinctness of vision. His pastorals have indeed many a pretty picture that arrests the eye, but the vision is like a flash of sunshine on a hazy morning, and as the poet pursues his way we are soon surrounded by the mist again. To country livers and lovers such an atmosphere is not without its charm, and readers with leisure for the enjoyment of a singer whose verse, like Coleridge's sacred river, "meanders with a mazy motion," will be glad to possess a pocket edition of his poetry

What so pleasant," Mr. Millen writes, "as to read of May games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade ? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic bridals and junketings ? of angling, hunting the squirrel, nut-gathering ? Of such like subjects William Browne treats, singing like the shepherd in the 'Arcadia' as though he would never grow old. He was a happy poet. It was his good fortune to grow up among wholesome surroundings, whose gracious influences sank into his spirit. He loved the hills and dales round Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset ; they leave no vivid impression, but charm

the reader by their quiet beauty Browne had nothing of that restless energy which inspired the old dramatists ; he was all for pastoral contentment. Assuredly he was not a great poet, but he was a true poet and a modest."

In writing of the subjects treated by Browne, Mr. Bullen, although he does not mention him, could scarcely have failed to think of another Devonshire poet, born in the same year, who, while professing to hate the country, sang about it delightfully. Rural description is not Herrick's most char-

* 17ts Poems of William Browne, of Taristock. Edited by Gordon Goodwin ; with an Introduction by A. H. Bullen. 2 vols. London; Lawrence and Bullen. acteristic achievement, but he is greatly Browne's superior in describing the sports and customs of the people. If he did not feel the delights of a rural life, he knew how to sing of them with a vivacity and picturesqueness

wholly free from the conventional method which satisfied a later age.

In one respect alone was Browne superior to the author of the "Hesperides." He is always pure, whereas Herrick's " unbaptised rhymes" are numerous, and in many instances insufferably coarse. Both poets have the freshness and quaint simplicity, the delight in song and the faculty of singing, that passed away with the seventeenth century. In the next age the charm of their verse was unrecognised. Pastoral poetry, it is needless to say, was attempted by the poets and poetasters who flourished under Anne and the- Georges ; but with the exception of Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," pastorals in the last century were written for the town by men who knew little of the country beyond what they had learnt from books. Any one who has undergone the depressing labour of examining the mass of poetical work produced in this form by Pope and his successors, will know how destitute it is of all vital power. There is only about half-a-century between the publication of the "Hesperides and of Pope's " Pastorals," and even Browne's verse, although published much earlier, was not removed from the Queen Anne men further than we are from Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" or from Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads," yet both Browne and Herrick were entirely disregarded, and apparently unknown, in the "Augustan Age." In the five volumes of

the Pope Correspondence, there is not, we believe, an allusion to them ; neither are they mentioned in the correspondence of Gray. Dr. Johnson appears, also, to have been ignorant of their

existence. In his days, our old poets were apt to be treated as semi-barbarous and inelegant ; in ours there is the danger of esteeming them too highly on account of their antiquity..

It is the age and not the flavour of the wine that pleases the literary epicure. Mr. Bullen has not fallen into this error.

He is fully alive to his poet's defects, but knows how to love him in spite of them.

Johnson said of Richardson that if you read him for the story, you would hang yourself, and the saying is far truer of William Browne :—

" The story of the Pastorals," says Mr. Bullen, "if story there be, is naught; it would be a hopeless task to attempt to give all intelligible summary of the adventures of Celand, Marina, and the others. But the dallying diffuseness of the pee* constitutes no small part of its charm. Horace Walpole threw out the sug- gestion that somebody should issue a series of Lounging Books,' —books that one can take up without fatigue at odd moments. I fear that his nice critical judgment would not have included William Browne in the series ; but to the lovers of our old poets, Britannia's Pastorals will always be a favourite lounging-book. They know that at whatever page they open, they have not far to travel before they find entertainment.'

In his own day, Browne's poetical worth was amply recog- nised. If he did not, like Herrick, belong to the tribe of Ben, Jonson and the best poets of the day recognised him as a brother. With his contemporaries, Phineas and Giles Fletcher, he is a disciple of Spenser, and follows at a humble distance in the steps of that great master, whose "ever-living Faerie Queene " he calls "the Muses' chiefest

glory." In another place, his favourite poet is. termed " divinest Spenser;" but Browne is not very discriminative in his use of adjectives, for he applies the same epithet to. Da Barton.

It adds something to the modicum of poetical reputation which time has awarded to Browne, that his poems were honoured, as we know, by the careful perusal of Milton ; that

they supplied suggestions to Keats; and were of slight service

to Mrs. Browning, who gives to the poet the somewhat mystic praise of "sitting in the sun with Gnarini and Marini, and

perplext in the extreme' by a thousand images and sounds of beauty calling him across the dewy fields." A small poet may inspire a great one, a mere verseman never ; and no just estimate can be formed of Browne which does not heartily endorse his friend Drayton's opinion that he is a "rightly born poet."

We may add to the praise of an edition beautiful enough to satisfy the book-lover, that Mr. Goodwin's notes, which must

have cost him considerable labour, while giving all needful information, contain nothing that is superfluous.