is an essay on death, akin in spirit to the religious temper of the Middle Ages, and in philosophic breadth to the diviner mood of Plato. Only a mind of a high order would have conceived so beautiful and lofty a meditation on the Final Mystery. This brief essay marks the utmost reach of Drummond's mind, and shows the strength of that serene spirituality, which could thus hold its way undisturbed by the sectarian bitterness that fixed a great gulf between England and Scotland. The History of the Five Jameses,' which Drummond was ten years in compiling and which was not published until six years after his death, added nothing to his reputation. It lacked alike the diligent minuteness of the chronicler and the broader view of the historian. Many minor papers on the state of religion and politics, chief of which is the political tract 'Irene,' show Drummond's aggressive interest in contemporary affairs. It is not generally known that this gentle scholar was also an inventor of military engines. In 1626 Charles I. engaged him to produce sixteen machines and "not a few inventions besides." The biographers have remained curiously ignorant of this phase of his activity, but the State papers show that the King named him "our faithful subject, William Drummond of Hawthornden." He died in 1649, his death being hastened, it was said, by his passion of grief over the martyrdom of King Charles.

SEXTAIN

HE heaven doth not contain so many stars,

THE

So many leaves not prostrate lie in woods
When autumn's old and Boreas sounds his wars,

So many waves have not the ocean floods,

As my rent mind hath torments all the night,

And heart spends sighs when Phoebus brings the light.

Why should I have been partner of the light,
Who, crost in birth by bad aspéct of stars,
Have never since had happy day or night?
Why was not I a liver in the woods,

Or citizen of Thetis's crystal floods,

Than made a man, for love and fortune's wars?

I look each day when death should end the wars,

Uncivil wars, 'twixt sense and reason's light;

My pains I count to mountains, meads, and floods,

And of my sorrow partners make the stars;

All desolate I haunt the fearful woods,

When I should give myself to rest at night.

With watchful eyes I ne'er behold the night,

Mother of peace, but ah! to me of wars,

And Cynthia, queen-like, shining through the woods,

When straight those lamps come in my thought, whose light My judgment dazzled, passing brightest stars,

And then mine eyes en-isle themselves with floods.

Turn to their springs again first shall the floods,
Clear shall the sun the sad and gloomy night,

To dance about the pole cease shall the stars,
The elements renew their ancient wars
Shall first, and be deprived of place and light,
E'er I find rest in city, fields, or woods.

End these my days, indwellers of the woods,
Take this my life, ye deep and raging floods;
Sun, never rise to clear me with thy light,
Horror and darkness, keep a lasting night;
Consume me, care, with thy intestine wars,
And stay your influence o'er me, bright stars!

In vain the stars, indwellers of the woods,
Care, horror, wars, I call, and raging floods,
For all have sworn no night shall dim my sight.

fierce is Death;

His speedy greyhounds are

Lust, sickness, envy, care,

Strife that ne'er falls amiss,

With all those ills which haunt us while we breathe.
Now if by chance we fly

Of these the eager chase,
Old age with stealing pace

Casts up his nets, and there we panting die.

I

REASON AND FEELING

KNOW that all beneath the moon decays,

And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In Time's great periods shall return to naught;
That fairest States have fatal nights and days.
I know that all the Muse's heavenly lays,

With toil of sp'rit, which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,—
That there is nothing lighter than vain praise.
I know frail beauty like the purple flower,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords;
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,

Where sense and will envassal Reason's power:
Know what I list, all this cannot me move,
But that, alas! I both must write and love.

DEGENERACY OF THE WORLD

HAT hapless hap had I for to be born

In these unhappy times, and dying days Of this now doting World, when Good decays, Love's quite extinct, and Virtue's held a-scorn! When such are only prized, by wretched ways, Who with a golden fleece them can adorn;

When avarice and lust are counted praise,

And bravest minds live orphan-like forlorn!

Why was not I born in that golden age

When gold was not yet known? and those black arts By which base worldlings vilely play their parts, With horrid acts staining Earth's stately stage? To have been then, O Heaven! 't had been my bliss; But bless me now, and take me soon from this.

L

THE BRIEFNESS OF LIFE

OOK, how the flower which ling'ringly doth fade,
The morning's darling late, the summer's queen,
Spoiled of that juice which kept it fresh and green,

As high as it did raise, bows low the head:
Right so my life, contentment being dead,

Or in their contraries but only seen,

With swifter speed declines than erst it spread,
And, blasted, scarce now shows what it hath been.
As doth the pilgrim, therefore, whom the night
By darkness would imprison on his way,—
Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright,

Of what's yet left thee of life's wasting day;
Thy sun posts westward, passèd is thy morn,
And twice it is not given thee to be born.

Ο

THE UNIVERSE

F THIS fair volume which we World do name,

If we the leaves and sheets could turn with care —

Of Him who it corrects and did it frame

We clear might read the art and wisdom rare,

Find out his power, which wildest powers doth tame,
His providence, extending everywhere,

His justice, which proud rebels doth not spare,
In every page and period of the same.

But silly we, like foolish children, rest

Well pleased with colored vellum, leaves of gold,
Fair dangling ribands, leaving what is best;

On the great Writer's sense ne'er taking hold;
Or if by chance we stay our minds on aught,
It is some picture on the margin wrought.

DEA

ON DEATH

From Cypress Grove'

EATH is a piece of the order of this all, a part of the life of this world; for while the world is the world, some creatures must die and others take life. Eternal things are raised far above this orb of generation and corruption where the First Matter, like a still flowing and ebbing sea, with diverse waves but the same water, keepeth a restless and never tiring current; what is below in the universality of its kind doth not in itself. abide. . If thou dost complain there shall be a time in the which thou shalt not be, why dost thou not too grieve that there was a time in which thou wast not, and so that thou art not as old as the enlivening planet of Time? excellent fabric of the universe itself shall one day suffer ruin, or change like ruin, and poor earthlings, thus to be handled, com plain!

The

J

JOHN DRYDEN

(1631-1700)

BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY

OHN DRYDEN, the foremost man of letters of the period following the Restoration, was born at Aldwinkle, a village of Northamptonshire, on August 9th, 1631. He died May 1st, 1700. His life was therefore coeval with the closing period of the fierce controversies which culminated in the civil war and the triumph of the Parliamentary party; that, in turn, to be followed successively by the iron rule of Cromwell, by the restoration of the exiled Stuarts, and the reactionary tendencies in politics that accompanied that event; and finally with the effectual exclusion from the throne of this same family by the revolution of 1688, leaving behind, however, to their successors a smoldering Jacobite hostility that perpetually plotted the overthrow of the new government and later broke out twice into open revolt. All these changes of fortune, with their changes of opinion, are faithfully reflected in the productions of Dryden. To understand him thoroughly requires therefore an intimate familiarity with the civil and religious movements which characterize the whole period. Equally also do his writings, both creative and critical, represent the revolution of literary taste that took place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. It was while he was in the midst of his intellectual activity that French canons of criticism became largely the accepted rules, by which the value of English productions was tested. This was especially true of the drama. The study of Dryden is accordingly a study of the political and literary history of his times to an extent that is correspondingly true of no other English author before or since.

His family, both on the father's and the mother's side, was in full sympathy with the party opposed to the court. The son was educated at Westminster, then under the mastership of Richard Busby, whose relentless use of the rod has made his name famous in that long line of flagellants who have been at the head of the great English public schools. From Westminster he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. There he received the degree of A. B. in January 1654. Later in that same decade - the precise date is not known - he took up his residence in London; and in London the rest of his life was almost entirely spent.