(1591-1643)
Among the English poets fatuous for their imaginative interpretation of
nature, high rank must be given to William Browne, who belongs in the
list headed by Spenser, and including Thomas Lodge, Michael Drayton,
Nicholas Breton, George Wither, and Phineas Fletcher. Although he shows
skill and charm of style in various kinds of verse, his name rests
chiefly upon his largest work, 'Britannia's Pastorals.' This is much
wider in scope than the title suggests, if one follows the definition
given by Pope in his 'Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.' He says:--"A
Pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd or one considered
under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or
narrated, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite
nor too rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and
passion.... If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this Idea
along with us: that Pastoral is an image of what they call the Golden
Age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this
day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been when the
best of men followed the employment.... We must therefore use some
illusion to render a Pastoral delightful, and this consists in exposing
the best side only of a shepherd's life, and in concealing its
miseries."
In his 'Shepherd's Pipe,' a series of 'Eclogues' Browne follows this
plan; but 'Britannia's Pastorals' contains rambling stories of
Hamadryads and Oreads; figures which are too shadowy to seem real, yet
stand in exquisite woodland landscapes. When the story passes to the
yellow sands and "froth-girt rocks," washed by the crisped and curling
waves from "Neptune's silver, ever-shaking breast," or when it touches
the mysteries of the ocean world, over which "Thetis drives her silver
throne," the poet's fancy is as delicate as when he revels in the earthy
smell of the woods, where the leaves, golden and green, hide from sight
the feathered choir; where glow the hips of scarlet berries; where is
heard the dropping of nuts; and where the active bright-eyed squirrels
leap from tree to tree.
The loves, hardships, and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida,
Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from
delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy
branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets,
rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the
rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long
shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills
shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on
oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose
carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out
gentle streams from crystal urns. Every now and then, huntsmen in green
dash through his sombre woods with their hounds in full cry; anglers are
seated by still pools, shepherds dance around the May-pole, and
shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands. Gloomy caves appear,
surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and
sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of
herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings
the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the
nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and
shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only equaled by
Drayton and Herrick.
Several lyric songs of high order are scattered through the 'Pastorals,'
and the famous 'Palinode on Man' is imbedded in the Third Book as
follows:--
"I truly know
How men are born and whither they shall go;
I know that like to silkworms of one year,
Or like a kind and wronged lover's tear,
Or on the pathless waves a rudder's dint,
Or like the little sparkles of a flint,
Or like to thin round cakes with cost perfum'd,
Or fireworks only made to be consum'd:
I know that such is man, and all that trust
In that weak piece of animated dust.
The silkworm droops, the lover's tears soon shed,
The ship's way quickly lost, the sparkle dead;
The cake burns out in haste, the firework's done,
And man as soon as these as quickly gone."
Little is known of Browne's life. He was a native of Tavistock,
Devonshire; born, it is thought, in 1591, the son of Thomas Browne, who
is supposed by Prince in his 'Worthies of Devon' to have belonged to a
knightly family. According to Wood, who says "he had a great mind in a
little body," he was sent to Exeter College, Oxford, "about the
beginning of the reign of James I." Leaving Oxford without a degree, he
was admitted in 1612 to the Inner Temple, London, and a little later he
is discovered at Oxford, engaged as private tutor to Robert Dormer,
afterward Earl of Carnarvon. In 1624 he received his degree of Master of
Arts from Oxford. He appears to have settled in Dorking, and after 1640
nothing more is heard of him. Wood thinks he died in 1645, but there is
an entry in the Tavistock register, dated March 27th, 1643, and reading
"William Browne was buried" on that day. That he was devoted to the
streams, dales, and downs of his native Devonshire is shown in the
Pastorals, where he sings:--
"Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessèd plot
Whose equal all the world affordeth not!
Show me who can, so many crystal rills,
Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills;
Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines;
Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines."