e able to invent more adventures for Marina, if he
chooses to, by the hour together. If he does not choose to, well and
good.

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 retired 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