FullReads

Was the composition of Britannia’s Pastorals then, a useless or inconsiderable feat? Not at all: since to read them is to taste a mild but continuous pleasure. In the first place, it is always pleasant to see a good man thoroughly enjoying himself: and that Browne thoroughly “relisht versing”–to use George Herbert’s pretty phrase–would be patent enough, even had he not left us an express assurance:–

“What now I sing is but to pass away
A tedious hour, as some musicians play;
Or make another my own griefs bemoan–“

–rather affected, that, one suspects:

“Or to be least alone when most alone,
In this can I, as oft as I will choose,
Hug sweet content by my retirèd Muse,
And in a study find as much to please
As others in the greatest palaces.
Each man that lives, according to his power,
On what he loves bestows an idle hour.
Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills
Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,
I like the pleasing cadence of a line
Struck by the consort of the sacred Nine.
In lieu of hawks …”

–and so on. Indeed, unless it be Wither, there is no poet of the time who practised his art with such entire cheerfulness: though Wither’s satisfaction had a deeper note, as when he says of his Muse–

“Her true beauty leaves behind
Apprehensions in the mind,
Of more sweetness than all art
Or inventions can impart;
Thoughts too deep to be express’d,
And too strong to be suppressed.”

Yet Charles Lamb’s nice observation–

“Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from their art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession as well as a rich reversion, and that the muse had promise of both lives–of this, and of that which was to come.”

–must be extended by us, after reading his lines quoted above, to include William Browne. He, at least, had no doubt of the Muse as an earthly companion.

As for posthumous fame, Browne confides to us his aspirations in that matter also:–

“And Time may be so kind to these weak lines
To keep my name enroll’d past his that shines
In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves:
Since verse preserves, when stone and brass deceives.
Or if (as worthless) Time not lets it live
To those full days which others’ Muses give,
Yet I am sure I shall be heard and sung
Of most severest eld and kinder young
Beyond my days; and maugre Envy’s strife,
Add to my name some hours beyond my life.”

This is the amiable hope of one who lived an entirely amiable life in

“homely towns,
Sweetly environ’d with the daisied downs:”

and who is not the less to be beloved because at times his amiability prevents him from attacking even our somnolence too fiercely. If the casual reader but remember Browne as a poet who had the honor to supply Keats with inspiration,[A] there will always be others, and enough of them, to prize his ambling Muse for her own qualities.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Cf. his lament for William Ferrar (brother of Nicholas Ferrar, of Little Gidding), drowned at sea–

“Glide soft, ye silver floods,
And every spring:
Within the shady woods
Let no bird sing….”