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Negative Love.

I NEVER stoop'd so low as they
Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey,
Seldom to them which soar no higher
Than virtue or the mind t' admire;
For sense and understanding may

Know what gives fuel to their fire.
My love, tho' silly, is more brave,
For, may I miss whene'er I crave,
If I know yet what I would have.

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JOSEPH HALL

Was born at Bristow-park, in the county of Leicester, 1574, and having received a school-education at his native place, was sent at the age of 15 to Emanuel college Cambridge, where he was distinguished as a wit, a poet, and a rhetorician. In 1612 he took the degree of D. D. was presented to the deanery of Worcester in 1616; promoted to the see of Exeter in 1627; and in 1641 translated to Norwich, of which he was deprived by sequestration in 1643. He then retired to a small estate, where he ended his life in 1656; plenus dierum, plenus virtutum.

The various literary labours of his long life, and the persecutions to which he was exposed in his old age, are recited in every dictionary of biography. His only poetical compositions, entitled "Virgidemiarum," satires in six books, 1597, 1598, 1599, 12mo. (reprinted at Oxford, 1753, and in Anderson's Poets,) are, from their subject, by no means suited to the present publication; but it is hoped that the reader will excuse the insertion of one specimen from a work which must, even now, be considered as a model of elegance. The following satire is a ridicule on the fashion of attempt. ing to subject our language to the rules of Greek and Latin prosody, a fashion introduced by Gabriel Harvey, encouraged by Sir Philip Sidney and others, and not discouraged by Spenser. The extract here made has a particular allusion to Stanyhurst's translation of part of the Æneid, which had before been ridiculed in similar terms by Nash.

LIB. I. SAT. VI.

ANOTHER SCorns the home-spun thread of rhymes,
Match'd with the lofty feet of elder times.
Give him the number'd verse that Virgil sung,
And Virgil self shall speak the English tongue;
Manhood and Garboiles shall he chaunt with changed
feet,

And headstrong dactyls making music meet:
The nimble dactyls, striving to outgo

The drawling spondees, pacing it below:
The lingering spondees labouring to delay
The breathless dactyls with a sudden stay!
Who ever saw a colt, wanton and wild,
Yok'd with a slow-foot ox on fallow field,
Can right areed how handsomely besets
Dull spondees with the English dactylets.
If Jove speak English in a thundering cloud,
Thwick-thwack and riff-raff roars he out aloud.
Fie on the forged mint that did create
New coin of words never articulate!

BEN JONSON

Was born in 1574, and died in 1637.

SONG.

[From "The Forest."]

COME, my Celia, let us prove,
While we may, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours for ever,
He at length our good will sever:
Spend not then his gifts in vain!
Suns that set may rise again;
But if once we lose this light,
"Tis with us perpetual night.
Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumour are but toys.
Cannot we delude the eyes
Of a few poor household spies?
Or his easier ears beguile,
So removed by our wile?

"Tis no sin love's fruit to steal ;

But the sweet theft to reveal,

To be taken, to be seen,—

These have crimes accounted been.

SONG.

To Celia.

[From the same.]

DRINK to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine,

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that there

It could not withered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me;

Since when it grows and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.

SONG.

[From "The Silent Woman."]

STILL to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast;

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