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 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.  It cannot be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting (as the manner was) after far-fetched outrageous conceits.”

Browne is a poet’s poet.  Drayton, Wither, Herbert, and John Davies of Hereford, wrote his praises.  Mrs. Browning includes him in her ’Vision of Poets,’ where she says:—­

     “Drayton and Browne,—­with smiles they drew
     From outward Nature, still kept new
     From their own inward nature true.”

Milton studied him carefully, and just as his influence is perceived in the work of Keats, so is it found in ‘Comus’ and in ‘Lycidas.’  Browne acknowledges Spenser and Sidney as his masters, and his work shows that he loved Chaucer and Shakespeare.

     CIRCE’S CHARM

     Song from the ‘Inner Temple Masque’

     Son of Erebus and night,
     Hie away; and aim thy flight
     Where consort none other fowl
     Than the bat and sullen owl;
     Where upon thy limber grass,
     Poppy and mandragoras,
     With like simples not a few,
     Hang forever drops of dew;
     Where flows Lethe without coil
     Softly like a stream of oil. 
     Hie thee hither, gentle sleep: 
     With this Greek no longer keep. 
     Thrice I charge thee by my wand,
     Thrice with moly from my hand
     Do I touch Ulysses’s eyes,
     And with the jaspis:  then arise,
       Sagest Greek!

CIRCE.

Photogravure from a Painting by E Burne-Jones.

[Illustration]

     THE HUNTED SQUIRREL

     From ‘Britannia’s Pastorals’

     Then as a nimble squirrel from the wood
     Ranging the hedges for his filbert food
     Sits pertly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking,
     And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking;
     Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys
     To share with him come with so great a noise
     That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
     And for his life leap to a neighbor oak,
     Thence to a beach, thence to a row of ashes;
     Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes