by not knowing when to stay his hand." (Goodwin's Browne, II, 257.) The concluding conceit is by no means foreign to Browne's mode of thought. See especially his Epitaph On one drowned in the snow, Hazlitt's Browne, II, 339. I have therefore given both stanzas of the epigram in the text.

201 1. Hearse. The canopy of open work or trellis, set over the tomb, and used to support candles at times of ceremony. Here= tomb.

201. Hence away, you Sirens. I take my text from the Spenser Society's Reprint of The Mistress of Phil'arete, Poems of George Wither, p.814. There is a second, decidedly weaker version of this facile poem. Wither was often troubled with pangs of conscience for the levity of his earlier Muse; it may have been in one of these moments that he reduced his Sirens to one, and somewhat prudishly covered their antique nakedness.

201 4. Prove. Test, make trial of.

202 16. Ray. Radiance, light.

203 42.

Mates with him. Enjoys like privileges, is his equal.

203 44. There's noble hills. A noun in the plural was often used as the logical subject of is. Cf. Hen. V, iv, 6, 32: "There is salmons in both."

203 52. Greatest-fairest. Wither had not lost the great Elizabethan daring in the formation of compounds. Cf. never-touchèd thorn, v. 34 above; and see 13 5, note.

204 73. That coy one in the winning. That one who is coy while winning or, as we say, while being won. This phrase almost amounts to a compound.

204 85-90. Few attempt to gain favor with her. And if a lover should be so bold as to woo (complain), she is not to be gained at a word. 204 96. You labor may. You will find it a great labor.

205. Flowers of Sion.

folio collected edition, 1711.

The text is here, as above, from the first

205 1. Brandons. Torches. The fol. and the earlier collected ed. of 1656 read tapers. Brandons is apparently the earlier reading. See Main, English Sonnets, p. 432 f.

205 4. Out-weep. Cf. 13 5, note.

205 5-8.

These locks, the gilt (ie., the golden and guilty) attire of blushing deeds; waves (of hair and of the sea) curling to shadow deep (conceal in their depths) wrackful shelves (ship-wrecking reefs); rings (ringlets of hair), which wed souls, etc., do now aspire to touch thy sacred feet.

205. The Book of the World. Main quotes besides a parallel in Daniel's Defence of Rime, the following lines from Wither's Motto, 1621 (as above, p. 325): :

205 9-12.

For many books I care not; and my store
Might now suffice me, though I had no more
Than God's two Testaments, and therewithall
That mighty volume which we world do call.

Main likewise refers the reader for a parallel to these lines to Astrophel and Stella, xi :

:

For like a child that some fair book doth find,
With gilded leaves and colored vellum plays,
Or at the most on some fine picture stays,

But never heeds the fruit of writer's mind, etc.

206. The world's a bubble. In the first ed. this poem was signed 'Ignoto.' It was first ascribed to Bacon in Farnaby's Florilegium, 1629, p. 10; elsewhere it has been variously ascribed to Raleigh, Donne, and to Henry Harrington. Although it compares rather favorably with Bacon's translations of the Psalms, in view of the fact that it is little more than a translation, and peculiarly in accord with the passionless worldliness that marks the character of the Lord Chancellor, I see no reason to doubt his authorship of it. The whole poem is a paraphrase of a Greek epigram attributed to Poseidippus, by others to Plato, the comic poet, or to Crates the Cynic, beginning:

Ποίην τις βιότοιο τάμοι τρίβον; εἰν ἀγορῇ μὲν

Νείκεα καὶ χαλεπαὶ πρήξιες· etc.

See Anthol. Graeca, IX, 359. I am indebted for this parallel to my friend and colleague, Professor Lamberton.

206 1. The world's a bubble. Cf. Drummond's Madrigal, Life, a Bubble, p. 181, above.

206 2. Less than a span. Cf. 165 8-9.

207 25. Affections. Emotions, feelings. Cf. 115 13, 21.

207 29.

Noise. Tumult, disturbance. Cf. 150 6.

207. Guests. "This magnificent descant," as Mr. Saintsbury calls it, was discovered by Mr. Bullen, and first printed in his More Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books from the MS. K. 3. 43. 5 in the library of Christ Church College, Oxford. Well may Mr. Bullen declare that "verse so stately, so simple, so flawless, is not easily forgotten." Both Mr. Bullen and Mr. Saintsbury have surmised that Henry Vaughan is the

Ruthor. But as Thomas Ford, who set these words to music, was a musician in the suite of Prince Henry in 1607, and on the accession of Charles was appointed one of the king's musicians, dying, evidently a very old man, in 1648; and as Vaughan's earliest published work is dated 1650, I think that we may safely place this poem within our period. Mr. Bullen suggests that these verses may have once formed part of a longer poem. I have printed them for the first time in the stanzas which their structure demands.

208 7-18. "Few could have dealt with common household objects tables and chairs and candles and the rest-in so dignified a spirit," comments Mr. Bullen.

208 10.

208 14.

208 30.

Order taken. Arrangements made.

Dazie. A canopy of state. Mr. Bullen reads dais.
Still lodge. Ever lodge.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES.

This Index contains, besides the poems of the text, those which, belonging to this
period, are quoted entire in the Introduction and Notes. Such poems are indicated by
an asterisk.