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heavy and pestilent season in this land. Such a sickness came on men, that full nigh every other man was in the worst disorder, that is, in the diarrhoea; and that so dreadfully, that many men died in the disorder. Afterwards came, through the badness of the weather, as we before mentioned, so great a famine over all England, that many hundreds of men died a miserable death through hunger.* Alas! how wretched and how rueful a time was there! when the poor wretches lay, full nigh driven to death prematurely, and afterwards came sharp hunger, and dispatched them withal! Who will not be penetrated with grief at such a season? or who is so hard-hearted as not to weep at such misfortune? Yet such things happen for folk's sins, that they will not love God and righteousness. So it was in those days, that little righteousness was in this land with any men but with the monks alone, wherever they fared well. The king and the head men loved much, and over much, covetousness in gold and in silver; and recked not how sinfully it was got, provided it came to them. The king let his land at as high a rate as he possibly could; then came some other person, and bade more than the former one gave, and the king let it to the men that bade him more. Then came the third, and bade yet more; and the king let it so hard to the men that bade him most of all: and he recked not how very sinfully the stewards got it of wretched men, nor how many unlawful deeds they did; but the more men spake about right law, the more unlawfully they acted. They erected unjust tolls, and many other unjust things they did, that are difficult

to reckon."

"He died in Normandy, on the next day after the nativity of St. Mary, and he was buried at Caen, in St. Stephen's minster, which he had formerly reared, and afterwards endowed with manifold gifts. Alas! how false and how uncertain is this world's weal! He that was before a rich king, and lord of many lands, had not then of all his land more than a space of seven feet! and he that was whilom enshrouded in gold and gems, lay there covered with mould !"†

Query. What was the proportion of this famine, thus attributed to mere badness of the weather, which ought in justice to be ascribed to that desolation of homesteds, pastures, farms, and villages, so extensively made by this Norman lover of harts and hinds and boars, and beasts of all chace, to extend his parks and forests? How much to the rude trampling of the native peasantry and cultivators of the soil, beneath the armed hoofs of those sons of rapine and military violence, who left the high roads and fastnesses of France and Normandy for the more permanent spoil of Saxon England, and brought with them the same improvident contempt of industry and the industrious, which had accompanied them in their former scenes of pillage and depredation?

+ Who would not imagine that Shakspeare had been looking into this page of the Saxon Chronicle, when he put those fine lines into the mouth of the expiring Warwick, in the fifth act of the third part of Henry the Sixth ?—

He was

"If any person wishes to know what kind of man he was, of what honour he had, or of how many lands he was lord, then will we write about him as well as we understand him; we who often looked upon him, and lived some time in his court. This King William, then, that we speak about, was a very wise man, and very rich; more splendid and powerful than any of his predecessors were. mild to the good men that loved God (the monks and priests), and beyond all measure severe to the men that gainsayed his will. On that same spot where God granted him that he should gain England, he reared a mighty minster, and set monks therein, and well endowed it. In his days was the great monastery in Canterbury built, and also very many others over all England. This land was moreover well filled with monks, who modelled their lives after the rule of St. Benedict. But such was the state of Christianity in his time, that each man followed what belonged to his profession-he that would. He was also very dignified. Thrice he bare his crown each year, as oft as he was in England. At Easter, he bare it in Winchester; at Pentecost, in Westminster; at midwinter, in Gloucester. And then were with him all the rich men over all England; archbishops and diocesan bishops, abbots and earls, thanes and knights. So very stern was he also, and hot, that no man durst do any thing against his will. had earls in his custody, who acted against his will. Bishops he hurled from their bishoprics, and abbots from their abbacies, and thanes into prison. At length, he spared not his own brother Odo, who was a very rich bishop in Normandy. At Baieux was his episcopal stall; and he was the foremost man of all to aggrandize the king. He had an earldom in England; and when the king was in Normandy, then was he the mightiest man in this land, him he confined in prison.

He

"But amongst other things is not to be forgotten, that good peace that he made in this land; so that a man of any account might go over his kingdom unhurt with his bosom full of gold. No man durst stay another, had he never so much evil done to the other; and

if

any churl lay with a woman against her will, he soon lost the limb that he played with. He truly reigned over England; and by his capacity so thoroughly surveyed it, that there was not a hide of land in England that he wist not who had it, or what it was worth, and afterwards set it down in his book. The land of the Britons was in his power; and he wrought castles therein; and ruled Anglesey withal. So also he subdued Scotland by his great strength. As to Normandy, that was his native land; but he reigned also over the earldom called

"Lo! now my glory smear'd in dust and blood!
My parks, my walks, my manors that I had,
Even now forsake me; and, of all my lands,

Is nothing left me but my body's length!
Why what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And, live we how we can, yet die we must."

Maine; and if he might have yet lived two years more, he would have won Ireland by his valour, and without any weapons. Assuredly in his time had men much distress, and very many sorrows. Castles he let men build, and miserably swink the poor. The king himself was so very rigid; and extorted from his subjects many marks of gold, and many hundred pounds of silver; which he took of his people, for little need, by right and by unright. He was fallen into covetousness, and greediness he loved withal. He made many deer parks; and he established laws therewith; so that whosoever slew a hart, or a hind, should be deprived of his eyesight. As he forbade men to kill the harts, so also the boars; and he loved the tall deer as if he were their father. Likewise he decreed by the hares, that they should go free. His rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men shuddered at it. But he was so stern, that he recked not the hatred of them all; for they must follow withal the king's will, if they would live, or have land, or pos

sessions, or even his peace. Alas! that any man should presume so to puff himself up, and boast over all men. May the almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his sins!"

If such be the picture drawn of this founder of the Norman dynasty, by the priesthood whom he so favoured, what would be the account accumulated against him by that Saxon laity whom he so unmercifully oppressed.

We lament that our limits do not allow us to bring together, in a connected point of view, those many detached passages and notices of facts, scattered through this invaluable record, which might not only be highly interesting in a literary and antiquarian point of view; but might place in a new and unexpected light the arts, the commerce, the internal and external resources, and the wealth even in the precious metals of our supposed ignorant and barbarous forefathers. But these are subjects for which a few lines or paragraphs would not suffice; and here accordingly we must take our reluctant leave of the steadiest and most authentic of all our historical guides, the Saxon Chronicle.

ART. II.-The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Author of the English History; to which is prefixed, Memoirs of his Life and Writings. 2 vols. 12mo. London, 1718.

We learn little more from the Memoir prefixed to this edition of Daniel's Poems, than that he was the son of a music master; was born at Taunton, in Somersetshire, about the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign; was groom of the privy

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chamber to the consort of James I.; that he died at an advanced age; was a most exquisite poet and an unrivalled historian. This information, which the editor has dignified with the title of "Memoirs," is nearly all that is known of the author. He appears, from his Apology for Rhyme, addressed to William, Earl of Pembroke, to have been educated under the patronage of that family. Speaking of his application to the study of poetry, he says:

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Having been first encouraged and framed thereunto by your most worthy and honourable mother, and received the first notion for the formal ordering of those compositions at Wilton, which I must ever acknowledge to have been my best school, and thereof always am to hold a feeling and grateful memory. Afterward, drawn farther on by the well-liking and approbation of my worthy lord, the fosterer of me and my muse, I adventured to bestow all my whole powers therein, perceiving it agreed so well, both with the complection of the times, and my own constitution, as I found not wherein I might better employ me."

He was entered a commoner of Magdalene Hall, Oxford, which he quitted at the end of three years, without taking a degree. His poetical works consist of fifty-seven sonnets: The Complaint of Rosamond, The Letter of Octavia to Mark Antony; Hymen's Triumph, and The Queen's Arcadia, two pastoral tragi-comedies; Cleopatra and Philotas, two tragedies; The History of the Civil War; Musophilus, or a General Defence of Learning; and some epistles and miscellaneous poems. The sonnets were his first compositions, and were well received, but the reputation he gained by them he lost by his historical poem: falling from public favor to neglect, in his lifetime. With a longing after fame, Daniel saw that reputation gradually sinking into indifference and decay, and himself passing from the power of delighting, and the receipt of homage, to the censure of the critic, and the forgetfulness of the public. Finding his dearest hopes thus dying away, well might he exclaim, in the bitterness of his sorrow :

"But years have done this wrong,

To make me write too much and live too long."

His favorite and most elaborate work is, The History of the Civil Wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster; the unfinished state of which he frequently laments. He spent many years in the composition of this poem, on which his hopes of fame chiefly depended; but which only affords another proof of the incapacity of authors to judge of their own productions. The subject itself was ill chosen, and this

defect is, by no means, counterbalanced by the excellence of the execution. The author has, in fact, confined himself to the dry narrative of history, into which he has occasionally, though seldom, attempted to infuse a portion of the spirit of poetry; but he has failed in awakening any feeling of pathos or sympathy. It has been generally said, indeed, by those who have touched on Daniel, that pathetic passages are dispersed through his poem of The Civil War. We have looked for them in vain, and if we were to form our judgement of his poetical powers from this work alone, we should be disposed to concur in the much reprehended opinion of Ben Jonson, that he was not a poet. Eulogy, it seems, as well as censure, is frequently bestowed on the faith of common rumour; they descend unquestioned from one generation to another, until some prying critic chooses to read and judge for himself. Nothing, in fact, can be more tiresomely monotonous, more dry and antipoetical, than this rhyming chronicle. The merit of simple diction and harmonious cadence cannot be denied; the presence of good sense and unexceptionable fidelity, and the absence of any thing positively offensive against good taste, must be allowed it. Beyond this praise we cannot go, for it is embellished neither with beauty of description, nor the rapid narrative of passion. It is a fraud upon the reader to hold it out as a poem, and it is a round-about way to get at the facts of history.

His dramas are equally jejune and unimpassioned. Daniel's genius certainly was not calculated for dramatic composition: indeed we learn, from the Dedication to Cleopatra, that if he had followed his own inclination, he would have been contented to sing of Delia; but he was induced, by Mary, Countess of Pembroke, to cultivate an acquaintance with the tragic muse; "To sing of state, and tragic notes to frame." Because he had succeeded in writing agreeable sonnets, it was taken for granted that he must be capable of higher things. Without the solicitation or encouragement of friends, he would, probably, never have attempted so high a flight; for as he says of himself, "irresolution and a self-distrust were the most apparent faults of his nature." He was, indeed, as modest in his estimation of himself, as he was amiable in his disposition and blameless in his writings. Tragedy, however, he tried, and failed. Adhering, in a great measure, to the form of the Greek tragedy, but destitute of its poetry, his plays have not the spirit-stirring dialogue, the interest, or the reality of the modern drama. He was, apparently, afraid of trusting himself too far with dialogue, lest he should mismanage it; and he has, therefore, thrown almost the whole of his tragedies into the shape of narrative, and that too sufficiently long and

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