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...."

THOMAS CAREW

July 28, 1894. A Note on his Name.

Even as there is an M alike in Macedon and Monmouth, so Thomas Carew
and I have a common grievance--that our names are constantly
mispronounced. It is their own fault, of course; on the face of it
they ought to rhyme with "few" and "vouch." And if it be urged
(impolitely but with a fair amount of plausibility) that what my name
may or may not rhyme with is of no concern to anybody, I have only to
reply that, until a month or so back, I cheerfully shared this opinion
and acquiesced in the general error. Had I dreamed then of becoming a
subject for poetry, I had pointed out--as I do now--for the benefit of
all intending bards, that I do not legitimately rhyme with "vouch" (so
liable is human judgment to err, even in trifles), unless they
pronounce it "vooch," which is awkward. I believe, indeed (speaking as
one who has never had occasion to own a Rhyming Dictionary), that the
number of English words consonant with my name is exceedingly small;
but leave the difficulty to the ingenious Dr. Alexander H. Japp,
LL.D., F.R.S.E., who has lately been at the pains to compose and put
into private circulation a sprightly lampoon upon me. As it is not my
intention to reply with a set of verses upon Dr. Japp, it seems
superfluous to inquire if _his_ name should be pronounced as it is
spelt.

But Carew's case is rather important; and it