Pactolus, which perchance they have not read of often in our
vulgar rhymes. Galaxia (to omit both the etymology and what the
philosophers do write thereof) is a white way or milky circle in
the heavens, which Ovid mentioneth in this manner--

_Est via sublimis coelo manifesta sereno,_
_Lactea nomen habet, candore notabilis ipso._

--Metamorph. lib. 1.

And Cicero thus in Somnio Scipionis: _Erat autem is splendissimo
candore inter flammas circulus elucens, quem vos (ut a Graijs
accepistis) orbem lacteum nuncupatis._

Pactolus is a river in Lydia, which hath golden sands under it,
as Tibullus witnesseth in this verse:--

_Nec me regna juvant, nec Lydius aurifer amnis._--Tibul. lib. 3.

Who can recount the virtues of my dear,
Or say how far her fame hath taken flight,
That cannot tell how many stars appear
In part of heaven, which Galaxia hight,
Or number all the moats in Phoebus' rays,
Or golden sands whereon Pactolus plays?

And yet my hurts enforce me to confess,
In crystal breast she shrouds a bloody heart,
Which heart in time will make her merits less,
Unless betimes she cure my deadly smart:
For now my life is double dying still,
And she defamed by sufferance of such ill;

And till the time she helps me as she may,
Let no man undertake to tell my toil,
But only such, as can distinctly say,
What monsters Nilus breeds, or Afric soil:
For if he do, his labour is but lost,
Whilst I both fry and freeze 'twixt flame and frost."

Now this is undoubtedly, as Watson's contemporaries would have said, "a
cooling card" to the reader, who is thus presented with a series of
elaborate poetical exercises affecting the acutest personal feeling, and
yet confessedly representing no feeling at all. Yet the _Hecatompathia_ is
remarkable, both historically and intrinsically. It does not seem likely
that at its publication the author can have had anything of Sidney's or
much of Spenser's before him; yet his work is only less superior to the
work of their common predecessors than the work of these two. By far the
finest of his _Century_ is the imitation of Ferrabosco--

"Resolved to dust intombed here lieth love."

The quatorzains of the _Tears of Fancy_ are more attractive in form and
less artificial in structure and phraseology, but it must be remembered