As had not he been first that him did raise, Ne'er had his great heir wrought his grandsire's praise.

You that but boast your ancestors' proud style, And the large stem whence your vain greatness

grew,

When you yourselves are ignorant and vile,
Nor glorious thing dare actually pursue,
That all good spirits would utterly exile,
Doubting their worth should else discover you,
Giving yourselves unto ignoble things-

Base I proclaim you, though derived from kings.

Virtue, but poor, God in this earth doth place,
'Gainst the rude world to stand up in his right,
To suffer sad affliction and disgrace,

Nor ceasing to pursue her with despite :
Yet when of all she is accounted base,
And seeming in most miserable plight,

Out of her power new life to her doth take;
Least then dismayed, when all do her forsake.

That is the man of an undaunted spirit,
For her dear sake that offereth him to die;
For whom, when him the world doth disinherit,
Looketh upon it with a pleased eye;

What's done for virtue thinking it doth merit,
Daring the proudest menaces defy;

More worth than life, howe'er the base world rate him,

Beloved of heaven, although the earth doth hate him.

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

BORN 1568; DIED 1640.

THE various accomplishments of SIR HENRY WOTTON, and the vicissitudes of his life, have been made familiar to most readers by the pleasing narrative of Isaac Walton. His active occupations, as a traveller, a secretary, a diplomatist, and, finally, as provost of Eton College, probably left him but little leisure for the labours of authorship. He has, however, bequeathed to posterity some curious prose tracts, of which the chief are, "The State of Christendom," and a treatise "On the Elements of Architecture”—with a few poems, of sufficient merit to have survived to our times, though connected with a name less celebrated in its day, than that of Wotton.

SIR H. WOTTON.

HYMN.

ETERNAL Mover! whose diffused glory,

To show our grovelling reason what thou art, Unfolds itself in clouds of nature's story,

Where man, thy proudest creature, acts his part,

Whom yet, alas! I know not why, we call
The world's contracted sum, the little ALL;—

For, what are we, but lumps of walking clay? Why should we swell? Whence should our spirits rise?

Are not brute beasts as strong, and birds as gay, Trees longer lived, and creeping things as wise? Only our souls was left an inward light,

To feel our weakness, and confess thy might.

Thou then, our strength, Father of life and death, To whom our thanks, our vows, ourselves we

owe,

From me, thy tenant of this fading breath,
Accept these lines, which from thy goodness

flow;