xceedingly odd piece, _The Metamorphosis of the
Walnut-Tree of Boarstall_, which is not quite like anything else of the
time. Basse, who seems also to have spelt his name "Bas," and perhaps lived
and wrote through the first forty or fifty years of the seventeenth
century, is but a moderate poet. Still he is not contemptible, and deserves
to rank as a member of the Spenserian family on the pastoral side; while
the _Walnut-Tree_, though it may owe something to _The Oak and the Brere_,
has a quaintness which is not in Spenser, and not perhaps exactly anywhere
else.

The comparative impotence of even the best criticism to force writers on
public attention has never been better illustrated than in the case of
George Wither himself. The greater part of a century has passed since
Charles Lamb's glowing eulogy of him was written, and the terms of that
eulogy have never been contested by competent authority. Yet there is no
complete collection of his work in existence, and there is no complete
collection even of the poems, saving a privately printed one which is
inaccessible except in large libraries, and to a few subscribers. His
sacred poems, which are not his best, were indeed reprinted in the Library
of Old Authors; and one song of his, the famous "Shall I Wasting in
Despair," is universally known. But the long and exquisite poem of
_Philarete_ was not generally known (if it is generally known now, which
may be doubted) till Mr. Arber reprinted it in the fourth volume of his
_English Garner_. Nor can _Fidelia_ and _The Shepherd's Hunting_, things
scarcely inferior, be said to be familiar to the general reader. For this
neglect there is but one excuse, and that an insufficient one, considering
the immense quantity of very indifferent contemporary work which has had
the honour of modern publication. What the excuse is we shall say
presently. Wither was born at Brentworth, in the Alresford district of
Hampshire (a district afterwards delightfully described by him), on 11th
June 1588. His family was respectable; and though not the eldest son, he
had at one time some landed property. He was for two years at Magdalen
College, Oxford, of which he speaks with much affection, but was removed
before taking his degree. After a distasteful experience of farm work,
owing to reverses of fortune in his family he came to London, entered at
Lincoln's Inn, and for some years haunted the town and the court. In 1613
he published his _Abuses Stri