general rule (it surely is no uncharity to say this, since the annals of Jesuitism have confessedly been so stained with falsehood, treachery, every insidious art, and every detestable crime) seems to have belonged our poet. No proof was produced that he had any connexion with the treacherous and bloody designs of his party, although he had plied his priestly labours with unwearied assiduity. He was too sincere-minded a man to have ever been admitted to the darker secrets of the Jesuits. His verses are ingenious, simpler in style than was common in his time-distinguished here by homely picturesqueness, and there by solemn moralising. A shade of deep but serene and unrepining sadness, connected partly with his position and partly with his foreseen destiny, (his larger works were written in prison,) rests on the most of his poems. LOOK HOME. Retired thoughts enjoy their own delights, A brief wherein all miracles summ'd lie; Of fairest forms, and sweetest shapes the store, To nature's patterns adding higher skill Man's soul of endless beauties image is, Drawn by the work of endless skill and might: All that he had, his image should present; All that it should present, he could afford; To that he could afford his will was bent; His will was follow'd with performing word. Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest, He should, he could, he would, he did the best. THE IMAGE OF DEATH. Before my face the picture hangs, Do think hereon, that I must die. I often look upon a face Most ugly, grisly, bare, and thin; Where eyes and nose had sometime been; I see the bones across that lie, Yet little think that I must die. I read the label underneath, That telleth me whereto I must; But yet, alas! how seldom I Do think, indeed, that I must die! Continually at my bed's head A hearse doth hang, which doth me tell That I ere morning may be dead, Though now I feel myself full well; But yet, alas! for all this, I The gown which I am used to wear, My ancestors are turn'd to clay, And can I think to 'scape alone? If none can 'scape Death's dreadful dart; If strong, if wise, if all do smart, LOVE'S SERVILE LOT. Love mistress is of many minds, The will she robbeth from the wit, May never was the month of love; With soothing words, inthralled souls Her little sweet hath many sours, Like winter rose, and summer ice, Fair first, in fine1 unseemly. Plough not the seas, sow not the sands, TIMES GO BY TURNS. The lopped tree in time may grow again, The driest soil suck in some moistening shower: Time goes by turns, and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. 1 Fine:' end. The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favours to the lowest ebb: Her tides have equal times to come and go; Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web: No joy so great but runneth to an end, Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring, The roughest storm a calm may soon allay. A chance may win that by mischance was lost; Few all they need, but none have all they wish. Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all. THOMAS WATSON. He was born in 1560, and died about 1592. All besides known certainly of him is, that he was a native of London, and studied the common law, but seems to have spent much of his time in the practice of rhyme. His sonnets-one or two of which we subjoin-have considerable merit; but we agree with Campbell in thinking that Stevens has surely overrated them when he prefers them to Shakspeare's. THE NYMPHS TO THEIR MAY-QUEEN. With fragrant flowers we strew the way, |