contained by far the most interesting part of his work, the
so-called sonnet collection of Coelica--a medley, like many of those
mentioned in this chapter, of lyrics and short poems of all lengths and
metrical arrangements, but, unlike almost all of them, dealing with many
subjects, and apparently addressed to more than one person. It is here, and
in parts of the prose, that the reader who has not a very great love for
Elizabethan literature and some experience of it, can be recommended to
seek confirmation of the estimate in which Greville was held by Charles
Lamb, and of the very excusable and pious, though perhaps excessive,
admiration of his editor Dr. Grosart. Even _Coelica_ is very unlikely to
find readers as a whole, owing to the strangely repellent character of
Brooke's thought, which is intricate and obscure, and of his style, which
is at any rate sometimes as harsh and eccentric as the theories of poetry
which made him compose verse-treatises on politics. Nevertheless there is
much nobility of thought and expression in him, and not unfrequent flashes
of real poetry, while his very faults are characteristic. He may be
represented here by a piece from _Coelica_, in which he is at his very
best, and most poetical because most simple--

[25] He is a little liable to be confounded with two writers (brothers of a
patronymic the same as his title) Samuel and Christopher Brooke, the latter
of whom wrote poems of some merit, which Dr. Grosart has edited.

"I, with whose colours Myra dressed her head,
I, that ware posies of her own hand making,
I, that mine own name in the chimnies read
By Myra finely wrought ere I was waking:
Must I look on, in hope time coming may
With change bring back my turn again to play?

"I, that on Sunday at the church-stile found
A garland sweet with true love knots in flowers,
Which I to wear about mine arms, was bound
That each of us might know that all was ours:
Must I lead now an idle life in wishes,
And follow Cupid for his loaves and fishes?

"I, that did wear the ring her mother left,
I, for whose love she gloried to be blamed,
I, with whose eyes her eyes committed theft,
I, who did make her blush when I was named:
Must I lose ring, flowers, blush, theft, and go naked,
Watching with sighs till dead love be awaked?

"I, that when drowsy Argus fell asleep,
Like jealousy o'erwatched with desire,
W