William Browne was born at Tavistock in 1588, and died, probably, in the year 1643. He went to Oxford as a member of Exeter College; entered the Inner Temple in 1612; published his elegy on Prince Henry in a volume along with another by his friend Christopher Brooke 1613; the first book of his “Britannia’s Pastorals” in the same year; his “Shepherd’s Pipe” in 1614; and the second book of his “Pastorals” in 1616, the year of the death of Shakespeare. The third book of his “Britannia’s Pastorals” was unknown till 1851, when it was published for the Percy Society from a manuscript in the Cathedral Library at Salisbury. The most complete edition of Browne is that published in the Roxburghe Library by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt in 1868.

  An excellent edition of Browne is available in the Muses’ Library, edited by Gordon Goodwin, with an introduction by A. H. Bullen, in 1894.

Personal

  In the same year he was actually created Master of Arts, as I shall tell you elsewhere in the Fasti, and after he had left the Coll. with his pupil, he became a retainer to the Pembrochian family, was beloved by that generous Count, William E. of Pembroke, and got wealth and purchased an estate, which is all I know of him hitherto, only that as he had a little body, so a great mind. In my searches I find that one Will Browne of Ottery S. Mary in Devon. died in the winter time 1645. Whether the same with the poet, I am hitherto ignorant. After the time of the said poet, appeared another person of both his names, author of two common law-books, written in English.

  Browne was fortunate in his friends. His life at the Inner Temple brought him into contact not only with his intimate friend Wither and Charles Brooke, but also with such a man as Selden, who wrote commendatory verses to the first book of his “Pastorals.” He was too, apparently, one of that knot of brilliant young men who called themselves the “sons” of Ben Jonson, and there are some interesting verses, of warm yet not extravagant praise, prefixed by Ben Jonson to the second book of the same poem. With Drayton he appears to have been on cordial and intimate terms. Some verses by Browne are prefixed to the second edition of the “Polyolbion,” and some of the most charming commendatory verses that were ever written were penned by Drayton in honour of “Britannia’s Pastorals.” Chapman too, “the learned Shepherd of fair Hitching Hill,” was, as more than one indication sufficiently proves, intimate with our poet, and Browne was not only familiar with his friend’s Iliad and Odyssey, but also, we may be very sure, knew well that golden book of poetry, the “Hero and Leander.” With such contemporary influences, and with the fullest knowledge of and reverence for such of his predecessors as Sidney and Spenser, Browne had every advantage given to his genius, and every help to enable him to float in the full and central stream of poetic tradition.

Britannia’s Pastorals, 1613–16–1852

	Drive forth thy flock, young pastor, to that plain
	Where our old shepherds wont their flocks to feed;
	To those clear walks where many a skilful swain
	To’ards the calm ev’ning tun’d his pleasant reed….
	*        *        *        *        *
	So may thy sheep like, so thy lambs increase,
	And from the wolf feed ever safe and free!
	So may’st thou thrive, among the learned prease,
	As thou young shepherd art belov’d of me!

	So much a stranger my severer Muse
	Is not to love-strains, or a shepward’s reed,
	But that she knows some rites of Phœbus’ dues,
	Of Pan, of Pallas, and her Sisters’ meed.
	Read and commend she durst these tun’d essays
	Of him that loves her. (She hath ever found
	Her studies as one circle.) Next she prays
	His readers be with rose and myrtle crown’d!
	No willow touch them! As his bays are free
	From wrong of bolts, so may their chaplets be.

	Some men, of books or friends not speaking right,
	May hurt them more with praise than foes with spite.
	But I have seen thy work, and I know thee:
	And, if thou list thyself, what thou canst be.
	For though but early in these paths thou tread,
	I find thee write most worthy to be read.
	It must be thine own judgment yet that sends
	This thy work forth: that judgment mine commends.

	Thus do I spur thee on with sharpest praise,
	To use thy gifts of Nature and of skill,
	To double-gild Apollo’s brows and bays,
	Yet make great Nature Art’s true sov’reign still.
	So Fame shall ever say, to thy renown,
	The shepherd’s-star, or bright’st in sky, is Browne!

	I feel an envious touch,
	And tell thee, swain, that at thy fame I grutch,
	Wishing the art that makes this poem shine,
	And this thy work (wert not thou wronged) mine.
	For when detraction shall forgotten be,
	This will continue to eternize thee;
	And if hereafter any busy wit
	Should, wronging thy conceit, miscensure it,
	Though seeming learn’d or wise: here he shall see,
	’Tis prais’d by wiser and more learn’d than he.

  Many inferior faculties are yet left, wherein our Devon hath displaied her abilities as well as in the former, as in Philosophers, Historians, Oratours and Poets, the blazoning of whom to the life, especially the last, I had rather leave to my worthy friend Mr. W. Browne, who, as hee hath already honoured his countrie in his elegant and sweet “Pastoralls,” so questionles will easily be intreated a little farther to grace it by drawing out the line of his Poeticke Auncesters, beginning in Josephus Iscanus and ending in himselfe.

  Esteemed then, by judicious persons, to be written in a sublime strain, and for subject amorous and very pleasing.

  Browne was a pastoral poet, with much natural tenderness and sweetness, and a good deal of allegorical quaintness and prolixity.

  Brown is one of the sweetest Pastoral Writers in the world.

  His “Britannia’s Pastorals” appear to have been much read then by persons of fine taste; nor could persons of the same class find now, among the books of that time, a more pleasant book of the kind for a day or two of peculiar leisure. The plan of the book is that of a story of shepherds and shepherdesses, with allegorical personages introduced into their society, wandering in quest of their loves and adventures, through scenes of English rural nature; but the narrative is throughout subordinate to the descriptions for which it gives occasion. A rich and sweet, and yet varied sensuousness, characterizes these descriptions…. The mood is generally calm and quiet, like that of a painter of actual scenery; there is generally the faintest possible breath of human interest; but now and then the sensuous takes the hue of the ideal, and the strain rises in vigor. In the course of the poem Spenser is several times acknowledged as the poet whose genius the author venerates most. The influence of other poets may, however, be traced, and especially that of Du Bartas…. Browne is a far more cultured versifier than Sylvester, and his lines are linked together with an artist’s fondness for truth of phrase and rhyme, and for natural ease of cadence.

  Browne has no constructive power, and no human interest in his pastorals, but he has an eye for nature.

  Browne was absolutely devoid of all epic or dramatic talent. His maids and shepherds have none of the sweet plausibility which enlivens the long recitals of Spenser. They outrage all canons of common sense. When a distracted mother wants to know if a man has seen her lost child, she makes the inquiry in nineteen lines of deliberate poetry. An air of silliness broods over the whole conception. Marina meets a lovely shepherd, whose snowy buskins display a still silkier leg, and she asks of him her way to the marish; he misunderstands her to say “marriage,” and tells her that the way is through love; she misunderstands him to refer to some village so entitled, and the languid comedy of errors winds on through pages. The best of the poem consists in its close and pretty pictures of country scenes. At his best, Browne is a sort of Bewick, and provides us with vignettes of the squirrel at play, a group of wrens, truant schoolboys, or a country girl,

	When she upon her breast, love’s sweet repose,
	Doth bring the Queen of Flowers, the English Rose.

But these happy “bits” are set in a terrible waste of what is not prose, but poetry and water, foolish babbling about altars and anagrams, long lists of blooms and trees and birds, scarcely characterized at all, soft rhyming verse meandering about in a vaguely pretty fashion to no obvious purpose.

Inner Temple Masque

  It was not only by the parade of processions, and the decorations of scenery, that these spectacles were recommended. Some of them, in point of poetical composition, were eminently beautiful and elegant. Among these may be mentioned a masque on the story of Circe and Ulysses, called the “Inner Temple Masque,” written by William Brown, a student of that society, about the year 1620. From this piece, as a specimen of the temple-masques in this view, I make no apology for my anticipation in transcribing the following ode, which Circe sings as a charm to drive away sleep from Ulysses, who is discovered reposing under a large tree…. In praise of this song it will be sufficient to say, that it reminds us of some favourite touches in Milton’s “Comus,” to which it perhaps gave birth. Indeed one cannot help observing here in general although the observation more properly belongs to another place, that a masque thus recently exhibited on the story of Circe, which there is reason to think had acquired some popularity, suggested to Milton the hint of a masque on the story of Comus. It would be superfluous to point out minutely the absolute similarity of the two characters: they both deal in incantations conducted by the same mode of operation, and producing effects exactly parallel.

  A masque has come down to us written by William Browne, a disciple of Spenser, expressly for the society of which he was a member, and entitled the “Inner Temple Masque.” It is upon the story of Circe and Ulysses, and is worthy of the school of poetry out of which he came.

General

  It appears to us, that sufficient justice has not, since the era of Milton, been paid to his talents; for, though it be true, as Mr. Headley has observed, that puerilities, forced allusions, and conceits, have frequently debased his materials; yet are these amply atoned for by some of the highest excellencies of his art; by an imagination ardent and fertile, and sometimes sublime; by a vivid personification of passion; by a minute and truly faithful delineation of rural scenery; by a peculiar vein of tenderness which runs through the whole of his pastorals, and by a versification uncommonly varied and melodious. With these are combined a species of romantic extravagancy which sometimes heightens, but more frequently degrades, the effect of his pictures. Had he exhibited greater judgment in the selection of his imagery, and greater simplicity in his style, his claim on posterity had been valid, had been general and undisputed.

  His poetry is not without beauty; but it is the beauty of mere landscape and allegory, without the manners and passions that constitute human interest.

  Among these historical poets I should incline to class William Browne, author of a poem with the quaint title of “Britannia’s Pastorals;” though his story, one of little interest, seems to have been invented by himself. Browne, indeed, is of no distinct school among the writers of that age: he seems to recognize Spenser as his master; but his own manner is more to be traced among later than earlier poets…. Browne is truly a poet, full of imagination, grace, and sweetness, though not very nervous or rapid. I know not why Headley, favorable enough for the most part to this generation of the sons of song, has spoken of Browne with unfair contempt. Justice, however, has been done to him by later critics. But I have not observed that they take notice of what is remarkable in the history of our poetical literature, that Browne is an early model of ease and variety in the regular couplet. Many passages in his unequal poem are hardly excelled, in this respect, by the fables of Dryden. It is manifest that Milton was well acquainted with the writings of Browne.

  Browne is one of those poets whom few but children and poets will either like or love.

  His facility of rhyming and command of harmonious expression are very great; and, within their proper sphere, his invention and fancy are also extremely active and fertile. His strength, however, lies chiefly in description, not the thing for which poetry or language is best fitted, and a species of writing which cannot be carried on long without becoming tiresome; he is also an elegant didactic declaimer; but of passion, or indeed of any breath of actual living humanity, his poetry has almost none. This, no doubt, was the cause of the neglect into which after a short time it was allowed to drop; and this limited quality of his genius may also very probably have been the reason why he so soon ceased to write and publish.

  It is rare in literary history that so much promise is found so inexplicably stunted and silenced by time.

  He will never again be popular as he was unquestionably in his lifetime; but he will, I think, be always read by poets and students of poetry. The task of reading his works is not wholly pleasurable. If he charms us on one page, he wearies us on another; if he delights us one moment with a genuine bit of nature, in the next he is involved in the subtleties of allegory, and becomes unreadable if not unintelligible. When at his best his poetry is like a breath of sweet country air, or the scent of newly mown grass. His similes, drawn from what we are wont to call common objects, are often singularly happy; he gives us fresh draughts from nature, and his verse is frequently marked by an Arcadian simplicity, contrasting pleasurably with the classical conceits and forced allusions over which, in other portions, the reader is doomed to groan.

  It is fair to say that there is in him no trace of the mawkish silliness which (blasphemy as the assertion may seem to some adorers of Keats) disfigures occasionally the work of that great poet. But Browne, like Keats, had that kind of love of Nature which is really the love of a lover, not of a mere artist, or a mere man of science, or a mere preacher; and he had, like Keats, a wonderful gift of expression of his love. When he tried other themes he was not generally successful, but his success, such as it is, is great; and, close student of poetry as Browne has been admitted to be, it must be added that, like Keats, who was also a close student in his way, he never smells of the lamp. It is evident that he would at any time and in any circumstances have sung, and that his studies have only to some extent coloured and conditioned the manner of his singing…. He may never reach the highest poetry, but he is always a poet.

  What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic bridals and junketings? of angling, hunting the squirrel, nut-gathering? of such-like subjects William Browne treats, singing like the shepherd in the “Arcadia” as though he would never grow old. He was a happy poet. It was his good fortune to grow up among wholesome surroundings, whose gracious influences sank into his spirit. He loved the hills and dales round Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting (as the manner was) after far-fetched outrageous conceits. Browne had nothing of that restless energy which inspired the old dramatists; he was all for a pastoral contentment. Assuredly he was not a great poet, but he was a true poet, and a modest.

  “On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke.” These famous lines occur in exactly the same form in the middle seventeenth-century MS. in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and are there signed “William Browne.” They appear to have been first printed in Osborne’s “Traditional Memoirs on the Reign of King James,” in 1658 (p. 78), and were also included in the “Poems” of the Countess’s son, William, Earl of Pembroke, and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd in 1660 (p. 66); but in neither volume is there any indication of the authorship. Writing about the same time Aubrey, in his “Natural History of Wiltshire” (ed. Britton, 1847, p. 90), cited the first sextain, and stated that the verses were “made by Mr. Browne, who wrote the ‘Pastorals.’” But in 1756 Peter Whalley printed a garbled version of the first six lines in his edition of Ben Jonson’s “Works” (vi. 297), giving as his reason that they were “universally assigned” to Jonson, and they appear in all editions of Jonson since Whalley’s time, and are commonly attributed to him. The epitaph is certainly more effective as a single sextain; and Mr. Hazlitt suggests that “whoever composed the original sextain, the addition is the work of another pen, namely, Lord Pembroke’s.” Still, it must be remembered that Browne has occasionally marred his work by not knowing when to stay his hand, and the epitaph, as it appears in the Lansdowne and Dublin MSS., reflects him at his best and at his worst. It may be worth noting that Browne thus pointedly refers to this very epitaph in his “Elegy” on Charles, Lord Herbert of Cardiff and Shurland (p. 257), which is written in the same metre:—

	“And since my weak and saddest verse
	Was worthy thought thy grandam’s herse;
	Accept of this!”

  William Browne is perhaps the easiest figure in our literature. He lived easily, he wrote easily, and no doubt he died easily. He no more expected to be read through at a sitting than he tried to write all the story of Marina at a sitting. He took up his pen and composed: when he felt tired he went off to bed, like a sensible man: and when you are tired of reading he expects you to be sensible and do the same.

  Either wanted power to condense, or did injustice to a pretty talent by fluency “long drawn out,” by want of taste and of proportion. His natural descriptions are apt to be in the old catalogue fashion; as if determined to outdo Chaucer or Spenser, he gives twenty-six lines to enumerate the trees in an imagined forest. Yet amongst his wearisome shepherd tales we have occasional glimpses of true landscape.

  The idyllic and objective spirit of the early period is better reproduced in Browne, who is often admirably suave and melodious, but whose manner tends to a more than lyrical profusion and length.