POETICAL COLLECTIONS. 97 most popular were poetical collections, made up from the pieces of different authors. The Mirrour of Magistrates appeared in 1557, and ran through many editions; The Paradyse of Daynty Devises, printed at the south-west doore of Saint Paules Church, embraces several excellent poems; A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions contained twenty-four pieces; The Phoenix Nest, England's Helicon, and many other collections, contain short poems by the best poets of the age, and by many unknown authors who are seldom without some real excellence. England's Helicon has one hundred and fifty names. Among its contributors are Peele, Ford, Lodge, Sidney, Shakspeare, Raleigh, Watson, Marlowe. Every educated person in this age, too, seemed to sing and play on some instrument; collections of musical pieces were constantly printed; songs, madrigals, canzonets, were set to airs from the Italian; and music was employed to set off the Tempest or A Midsummer Night's Dream, and accompany the banquets and the masks of princes and nobles. England's Parnassus.—England's Parnassus, an extensive collection of extracts, appeared in 1600, and reveals the poetical wealth of the wonderful age. It is arranged in subjects, and gives long or short pieces from the famous poets upon some definite theme. All the great names of the period appear in splendid array. The beauties of Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, are borrowed, and sometimes marred. I give one or two of its sections. Here is one on ART. Art hath a world of secrecy in her power. DRAYTON. Art curbeth nature, nature guildeth art. L. MARSTON. Art hath an enemy, cald ignorance. B. JONSON. Art perishes, wanting honors and applause. D. LODGE. Art must be wonne by art, and not by might. CONTENT. All wealth and wisdom rests in true content. The noblest mind the best contentment hath. ED. SPENSER. Content is worth a monarchy, and mischief hits the high. W. WARNER. PARNASSUS. LIFE. All man's life me seemes a tragedie, Our life is but a step in dustie way. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. The longer life I wot the greater sin; ED. SPENSER. The sunne doth set, and brings again the day; Тн. Асн. No life is blest, that is not graced with love. LOVE. The sweetest honey Is loathsome, in his owne deliciousnesse, W. SHAKSPEARE. Lordly love is such a tyrant fell, That where he rules, all power he doth expel. ED. SPENSER. SILENCE. Silence, Wisdome's mother. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 99 Such was a volume of elegant extracts in Spenser's age; so rich was England's Par nassus. Saxon Intellect. - The Saxon intellect, mild, gentle, humorous, powerful, of boundless strength, shows, in the Elizabethan Age, all its vigor and all its purity. It is not well to judge of an era or a people by its grosser and lower part: we must observe its tendencies, and follow its direction. M. Taine, the inimitable painter of literary epochs, has too often neglected this law, and drags into painful relief the grossness and the shame of the writers of the Elizabethan period. He has drawn a picture singularly distinct of their savage sensuality and malevolent wit; of the dreadful plots of Webster, the impious fancies of Marlowe, the wranglings of controversialists, the rage of pamphleteers, even the blots on Shakspeare's shield. He has forgotten to notice that all the greater intellects of the age show an unvarying tendency toward a purer and better life. He gives us the wild revels of the tavern, the street - fights, the murders, the shameful orgies of the country, the dissipation of the town, the coarseness of the theatre, the license of the court. He has, perhaps, neglected the quiet, well-ordered, Pu ritanical homes that now, more at least than ever before, began to abound in England. Bacon, Spenser, Shakspeare, Sidney, were the authors of a new civilization; and the three great intellects of Elizabeth's age are all the heralds of reform. Spenser, the gentlest of teachers, led on his generation to a higher life. Shakspeare, ever humane, humorous, kind, has no aim but to soften and improve. Bacon, except his profuseness and servility, labored to banish the barbarism of his time. The charity of Grindal, Parker's scholarship and taste, show that the soft vision of ideal virtue hovered forever over the strong minds and active natures of the Elizabethan period. Spenser. One hears a sweet note rising amidst the ruder strains of the Elizabethan authors, amidst the harsh grandeur of Marlowe, the rapid flow of Peele, the gloomy fancies of Webster, and the tenderer themes of Sidney's woodland muse. It is the first song of Spenser, the poet of Puritanism and faith. The ear of the public had already been highly cultivated in the music of numbers; and Raleigh, Sidney, Essex, the grave readers of the city and the court, even Elizabeth herself, possessed a taste for melodious verse, a quick sense of harmony that |