SIR THOMAS OVERBURY

Was born in 1581, and perished in the Tower of London, 1613, by a fate that is too well known. The compassion of the public for a man of worth, "whose spirit still walked unrevenged amongst them," together with the contrast of his ideal Wife with the Countess of Essex, who was his murderess, attached an interest and popularity to his poem, and made it pass through sixteen editions before the year 1653. His "Characters, or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of sundry Persons," is a work of considerable merit; but unfortunately his prose, as well as his verse, has a dryness and quaintness that seem to oppress the natural movement of his thoughts. As a poet, he has few imposing attractions: his beauties must be fetched by repeated perusal. They are those of solid reflection, predominating over, but not extinguishing, sensibility; and there is danger of the reader neglecting, under the coldness and ruggedness of his manner, the manly but unostentatious moral feeling that is conveyed in his maxims, which are sterling and liberal, if we can only pardon a few obsolete ideas on female education.

THEN may I trust her body with her mind,
.And, thereupon secure, need never know
The pangs of jealousy and love doth find
More pain to doubt her false than find her so;
For patience is, of evils that are known,

:

The certain remedy; but doubt hath none.

And be that thought once stirr'd, 'twill never die,

Nor will the grief more mild by custom prove,

Nor yet amendment can it satisfy;

The anguish more or less is as our love;
This misery doth from jealousy ensue,
That we may prove her false, but cannot true.

Give me, next good, an understanding wife,

By nature wise, not learned by much art;
Some knowledge on her part will, all her life,
More scope of conversation impart;

Besides her inborn virtue fortify;

They are most firmly good that best know why.

A passive understanding to conceive,
And judgment to discern, I wish to find d;
Beyond that all as hazardous I leave ;
Learning and pregnant wit, in womankind,

What it finds malleable (it) makes frail,

And doth not add more ballast, but more sail.

Books are a part of man's prerogative;

In formal ink they thoughts and voices hold,
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old;
Our life fame pieceth longer at the end,
And books it farther backward do extend.

So fair at least let me imagine her ;
That thought to me is truth. Opinion
Cannot in matters of opinion err;
And as my fancy her conceives to be,
Ev'n such my senses both do feel and see.

*

Beauty in decent shape and colour lies; Colours the matter are, and shape the soul; The soul which from no single part doth rise, But from the just proportion of the whole ;— And is a mere spiritual harmony

Of every part united in the eye.

No circumstance doth beauty fortify

Like graceful fashion, native comeliness;

But let that fashion more to modesty

Tend than assurance-Modesty doth set
The face in her just place, from passion free;

"Tis both the mind's and body's beauty met.

All these good parts a perfect woman make ;
Add love to me, they make a perfect wife;
Without her love, her beauty I should take
As that of pictures dead-that gives it life;
Till then her beauty, like the sun, doth shine
Alike to all;-that only makes it mine.

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

BORN 1564.-DIED 1616.

FROM HIS SONNETS.

SONNET 2.

WHEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held;
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,-
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days-

To say
"within thine own deep sunken eyes,"
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise;
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou could'st answer" This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,"
Proving his beauty by succession thine:
This were to be new-made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

SONNET 54.

On! how much more doth Beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live ;

The canker'd blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses;
But, for their virtue only is their shew,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves-Sweet roses do not so,

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made;
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,

When that shall fade

verse my

distils your

truth.

SONNET 116.

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove;

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken ;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come;