Before her hope, behind remorse, Plough not the seas, sow not the sands, Seek other mistress for your Love's service is in vain. minds, LOOK HOME. RETIRED thoughts enjoy their own delights, more. The mind a creature is, yet can create, Of finest works; wit better could the state, Devise of man in working hath no end; What thought can think, another thought can mend. Man's soul of endless beauties image is, Drawn by the work of endless skill and might: And, to discern this bliss, a native light, To frame God's image as his worth required; All that he had, his image should present; THOMAS WATSON, BORN 1560-DIED ABOUT 1592, WAS a native of London, and studied the common law, but from the variety of his productions (Vide Theatrum Poetarum, p. 213), would seem to have devoted himself to lighter studies. Mr. Steevens has certainly overrated his sonnets in preferring them to Shakespeare's. THE NYMPHS TO THEIR MAY QUEEN. From England's Helicon. WITH fragrant flow'rs we strew the way, O beauteous, queen of second Troy, Now th' air is sweeter than sweet balm, Now birds record new harmony, SONNET. ACTEON lost, in middle of his sport, I leese my wonted shape, in that my mind I leave my life, in that each secret thought I dare not name the nymph that works my smart, EDMUND SPENSER, DESCENDED from the ancient and honourable family of Spenser, was born in London, in East Smithfield, by the Tower, probably about the year 1553. He studied at the university of Cambridge, where it appears, from his correspondence, that he formed an intimate friendship with the learned, but pedantic, Gabriel Harvey1. Spenser, with Sir P. Sydney, was, for a time, a convert to Harvey's Utopian scheme for changing the measures of English poetry into those of the Greeks and Romans. Spenser even wrote trimeter iambics sufficiently 1 For an account of Harvey the reader may consult Wood's Athen. Oxon. Vol. I.-Fasti col. 128. 2 A short example of Spenser's Iambicum Trimetrum will suffice, from a copy of verses in one of his letters to Harvey. Unhappy verse! the witness of my unhappy state, Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be. bad to countenance the English hexameters of his friend; but the Muse would not suffer such a votary to be lost in the pursuit after chimeras, and recalled him to her natural strains. From Cambridge Spenser went to reside with some relations in the north of England, and, in this retirement, conceived a passion for a mistress, whom he has celebrated under the name of Rosalind. It appears, however, that she trifled with his affection, and preferred a rival. Harvey, or Hobinol, (by so uncouth a name did the shepherd of hexameter memory, the learned Harvey, deign to be called in Spenser's eclogues), with better judgment than he had shewn in poetical matters, advised Spenser to leave his rustic obscurity, and introduced him to Sir Philip Sydney, who recommended him to his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. The poet was invited to the family seat of Sydney, at Penshurst, in Kent, where he is supposed to have assisted the Platonic studies of his gallant and congenial friend. To him he dedicated his "Shepheard's Calendar." Sydney did not bestow unqualified praise on those eclogues; he allowed that they contained much poetry, but condemned the antique rusticity of the language. It was of these eclogues, and not of the Fairy Queen (as has been frequently misstated), that Ben Jonson said, that Whether lying restless in heavy bed, or else |