THE

LIFE OF WILLIAM WARNER,

BY MR. CHALMERS.

As in the scanty notices of this poet's life, there is little either to excite or gratify curiosity, they are here given nearly in the words of their respective authors, and nearly in the order in which they are arranged by the judicious editor of the late edition of Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum.

William Warner, a good honest plain writer of moral rules and precepts, in that old fashioned kind of seven-footed verse, which yet sometimes is in use, though in different manner, that is to say, divided into two. He may be reckoned with several other writers of the same time: i. e. queen Elizabeth's reign; who, though inferior to Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, and Daniel, yet have been thought by some not unworthy to be remembered and quoted: namely, George Gascoigne, Th. Hudson, John Markham, Thomas Achely, John Weever, Ch. Middleton, George Turberville, Henry Constable, sir Edw. Dyer, Thomas Churchyard, Charles Fitzgeoffry'.

William Warner was a native of Oxfordshire, born, as Mr. Ellis is inclined to think, about 1558, and probably published his first work at the age of twenty-five. He was educated at Oxford, but spent his time in the flowery paths of poetry, history, and romance, in preference to the dry pursuits of logic and philosophy, and departed without a degree to the metropolis, where he soon became distinguished among the minor poets. It is said, that in the latter part of his life he was retained in the service of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon, to whom he dedicates his poem. Mr. Ritson adds to this account, that by his dedications to Henry and George, successive barons of Hunsdon, he appears to have been patronized by, or in some measure connected with, that family 3.

In the fourth edition of Percy's Ballads, we find the following extract from the parish register of Amwell, in Hertfordshire, communicated by Mr. Hoole, although first given by Scott, in his poem of Amwell, edit. 1776:

Phillip's Theatrum. c.

* Ellis's Specimens, vol. 11. p. 297. Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica. e.

" 1608-1609-Master William Warner, a man of good yeares, & of honest reputation by his profession an atturnye of the Common Pleas: author of Albion's England, diynge suddenly in the night in his bedde, without any former complaynt or sicknesse, on Thursday night, beeinge the 9th day of March: was buried the Saturday following, and lyeth in the church at the corner, under the stone of Walter Ffader."

His Albion's England was his principal work, and was not only a favourite with his own age, but has received very high praise from the critics of our time. It is an epitome of the British history, and, according to the editor of the Muses' Library, Mrs. Cooper, is written with great learning, sense, and spirit: in some places fine to an extraordinary degree, of which an instance is given in the story of Argentill and Curan, a tale which, Mrs. Cooper adds, is full of beautiful incidents, in the romantic taste, extremely affecting, rich in ornament, wonderfully various in style, and, in short, one of the most beautiful pastorals she ever met with. To this opinion, high as it is, Dr. Percy thinks nothing can be objected, unless perhaps an affected quaintness in some of his expressions, and an indelicacy in some of his pastoral images.

Warner's contemporaries ranked him on a level with Spenser, and called him. the Homer and Virgil of their age. But Dr. Percy remarks, that he rather resembled Ovid, whose Metamorphoses he seems to have taken for a model, having deduced a perpetual poem from the deluge down to the reign of queen Elizabeth, full of lively digressions and entertaining episodes. And though he is sometimes harsh, affected, and indelicate, he often displays a most charming and pathetic simplicity.

He was numbered in his own time among the refiners of the English tongue, which "by his pen was much enriched and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments." Such is the opinion of Meres in his Wit's Treasury, but the progress Warner made in refining the English tongue, was certainly very inconsiderable. He owed his simplicity to his taste, but he had not the courage to abandon the uncouth and quaint expressions so peculiar to his time, and to show that wit and point might exist without them. His style, however, was then thought elegant, and such was his power of pleasing, that Albion's England superseded that very popular work The Mirror of Magistrates.

Warner was a writer of prose. His work was entitled, Syrinx, or a Seauenfold Historie, handled with varietie of pleasant & profitable, both commical & tragical argument," printed in 1597. Warton calls it a novel, or rather a suite of stories, much in the style of the adventures of Heliodorus's Ethiopic Romance. He appears also to have translated Plautus's Menæchmi, published in 1595.

Ritson informs us that, by an entry in the Stationers' book, on the 17th of October; 1586, "The wardens upon serche of Roger Ward's house, dyd find there in printing, a book in verse, intytled England's Albion, beinge in English, and not aucthorised to be printed, which he had ben forbidden to prynte, aswell by the L. archb. of Canterburye, as also by the said wardens at his own house;" and for as much as he had done this " contrary to the late decrees of the hon, court of Starre

chamber, the said wardens seised three heaps of the said England's Albion." Why this work was prohibited, except for the indelicacies already noticed, is not very apparent. We know that bishop Hall's Satires incurred the displeasure of the guardians of the press at no long distance from this time.

Mr. Headley, who has extracted many beauties from Warner, says that his tales, though often tedious, and not unfrequently indelicate, abound with all the unaffected incident and artless ease of the best old ballads, without their cant and puerility. The pastoral pieces that occur are superior to all the eclogues in our language, those of Collins only excepted. He also quotes Drayton's lines on Warner, which the reader will find in his piece Of Poets and Poesy. In the present edition, the division of the lines adopted by Mr. Ellis in his specimens has been followed throughbut the whole.

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE, MY VERY GOOD LORD AND MAISTER

HENRIE CAREY,

BARON OF HUNSDON,

KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER:

LORD CHAMBERLAINE OF HER MAIESTIES MOST HONORABLE HOUSHOLD:

LORD GOUERNOUR OF BARWICK:

LORD WARDEN OF THE EAST MARCHES FOR AND ANENST SCOTLAND:

LORD LIEFTENANT OF SUFFOLKE AND NORFOLKE:

CAPTAINE OF HER MAIESTIES GENTLEMEN PENCIONERS:

AND ONE OF HER HIGHNES MOST HONORABLE PRIUIE COUNSELL

THIS our whole Iland, anciently called Brutaine, but more aunciently Albion, presently containing two kingdomes, England and Scotland, is cause (right honorable) that to distinguish the former, whose only occurrents I abridge, from the other, remote from our historie, I intitle this my booke Albion's England. A subject, in troth, (without vaine-glory be it spoken) worthy your honorable patronage: had it passed from the pen of a more countenaunced author. But for great personages gratefully to entertaine the good wils of meane workemen, is answerable to themselues, and animating to feeble artists. I therefore secure of your honors clemencie, and herein not vnlike to Phaeton, who at the first did fearefully admire euen the pallace of Phoebus, but anon feareles aduenture euen the presence of Phoebus, (hauing dedicated a former booke to him that from your honor deriueth his birth) now also present the like to your lordship, with so much the lesse doubt and so much the more duty, by how much the more I esteeme this my latter laboure of more valew, & I owe, & your lordship ex