ave ended about 1643. Browne was evidently a man of
very wide literary sympathy, which saved him from falling into the mere
groove of the Fletchers. He was a personal friend and an enthusiastic
devotee of Jonson, Drayton, Chapman. He was a student of Chaucer and
Occleve. He was the dear friend and associate of a poet more gifted but
more unequal than himself, George Wither. All this various literary
cultivation had the advantage of keeping him from being a mere
mocking-bird, though it did not quite provide him with any prevailing or
wholly original pipe of his own. _Britannia's Pastorals_ (the third book of
which remained in MS. for more than two centuries) is a narrative but
extremely desultory poem, in fluent and somewhat loose couplets,
diversified with lyrics full of local colour, and extremely pleasant to
read, though hopelessly difficult to analyse in any short space, or indeed
in any space at all. Browne seems to have meandered on exactly as the fancy
took him; and his ardent love for the country, his really artistic though
somewhat unchastened gift of poetical description and presentment enabled
him to go on just as he pleased, after a fashion, of which here are two
specimens in different measures:--

"'May first
(Quoth Marin) swains give lambs to thee;
And may thy flood have seignory
Of all floods else; and to thy fame
Meet greater springs, yet keep thy name.
May never newt, nor the toad
Within thy banks make their abode!
Taking thy journey from the sea
May'st thou ne'er happen in thy way
On nitre or on brimstone mine,
To spoil thy taste! This spring of thine,
Let it of nothing taste but earth,
And salt conceived in their birth.
Be ever fresh! Let no man dare
To spoil thy fish, make lock or wear,
But on thy margent still let dwell
Those flowers which have the sweetest smell.
And let the dust upon thy strand
Become like Tagus' golden sand.
Let as much good betide to thee
As thou hast favour shew'd to me.'"

* * * * *

"Here left the bird the cherry, and anon
Forsook her bosom, and for more is gone,
Making such speedy flights into the thick
That she admir'd he went and came so quick.
Then, lest his many cherries should distaste,
Some other fruit he brings than he brought last.
Sometime of strawberries a little stem
Oft changing