shepherdess, knitting and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voicemusic.' From The Defence of Poesy' we could cull, did space permit, a hundred passages even superior to the above, full of dexterous reasoning, splendid rhetoric, and subtle fancy, and substantiating all that has been said in favour of Sir Philip Sidney's accomplishments, chivalric earnestness, and richlyendowed genius. TO SLEEP. FROM THE 'ARCADIA." Come, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, With shield of proof shield me from out the prease1 Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, SONNETS. Because I oft in dark abstracted guise Seem most alone in greatest company, With dearth of words, or answers quite awry To them that would make speech of speech arise, 1 'Prease:' press, throng. They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies, II. With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb'st the skies, What may it be, that even in heavenly place III. Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; My blood from them who did excel in this, IV. In martial sports I had my cunning tried, In Mars's livery, prancing in the press, 'What now, Sir Fool,' said he, 'I would no less. V. eyes; Of all the kings that ever here did reign, Nor that he made the Flower-de-luce so 'fraid, Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause-- VI. O happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear! ROBERT SOUTHWELL. ROBERT SOUTHWELL was born in 1560, at St Faith's, Norfolk. His parents were Roman Catholics, and sent him when very young to be educated at the English College of Douay, in Flanders. Thence he went to Rome, and when sixteen years. of age he joined the Society of the Jesuits-a strange bed for the rearing of a poet. In 1585, he was appointed Prefect of Studies, and was soon after despatched as a missionary of his order to England. There, notwithstanding a law condemning to death all members of his profession found in this country, he laboured on for eight years, residing chiefly with Anne, Countess of Arundel, who died afterwards in the Tower. In July 1592, Southwell was arrested in a gentleman's house at Uxendon in Middlesex. He was thrust into a dungeon so filthy that when he was brought out to be examined his clothes were covered with vermin. This made his father-a man of good familypetition Queen Elizabeth that if his son was guilty of anything deserving death he might suffer it, but that, meanwhile, being gentleman, he should be treated as a gentleman. In consequence of this he was somewhat better lodged, but continued for nearly three years strictly confined to prison; and as the Queen's agents imagined that he was in the secret of some conspiracies against the Government, he was put to the torture ten times. In despair, he entreated to be brought to trial, whereupon Cecil coolly remarked, 'that if he was in such haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire.' On the 20th of February 1595, he was brought to trial at King's Bench, and having confessed himself a Papist and a Jesuit, he was condemned to death, and executed at Tyburn next day, with all the nameless barbarities enjoined by the treason laws of these unhappy times. He is believed to have borne all his sufferings with unalterable serenity of mind and sweetness of temper. 'It is fitting,' says Burke, 'that those made to suffer should suffer well.' And suffer well throughout all his short life of sorrow, Southwell did. He was, undoubtedly, although in a false position, a true man, and a true poet. To hope all things and believe all things, in reference to a Jesuit, is a difficult task for Protestant charity. Yet what system so vile but it has sometimes been gloriously misrepresented by its votaries? Who that ever read Edward Irving's 'Preface to Ben Ezra'-that modern Areopagitica-combining the essence of a hundred theological treatises with the spirit and grandeur of a Pindaric or Homeric ode-has forgot the pictures of Ben Ezra, or Lacunza the Jesuit? His work, 'The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty,' Irving translated from Spanish into his own noble English prose, and he describes the author as a man of primitive manners, ardent piety, and enormous erudition, and expresses a hope, long since we trust fulfilled, of meeting with the 'good old Jesuit' in a better world. To this probably small class of exceptions to a |