[Line: 53 seq. In the original there are side-notes: 'Job', 'Ecclesiastes', 'The Act of Parliament for Public Thanksgiving on the fifth of November, set to a tune by H. Dod a tradesman of London, at the end of his Psalms, which stole from the Press Anno Domini 1620'; 'Hymns', 'Lamentations', 'Psalms', referring to other Paraphrases of Sandys on the various books named, and (in the third place) on certain Songs selected from other parts of the Bible. The unfortunate 'H. Dod a tradesman' may have had his Manes refreshed by a notice in the _D.N.B._] [Line: 70 It was too early for King to recognize, as has been done since, the reason of the 'perfect harmony' he relished as a fact in Sandys. That poet was one of the earliest after Fairfax, and probably before Beaumont or Waller, to master (though not always to practise) the stopped antithetic couplet which was conquering, and to conquer, public favour.] [Line: 71 It were much to be desired (though Hannah did not think so) that King had allowed his wishes to be satisfied by Sandys' performance, without attempting competition.] [Line: 79 The reference is, of course, to the universally heard of, but perhaps by extremely few read, 'Sternhold and Hopkins'. The actual terms of King's criticism are not very happy, but nobody then knew, or easily could know, much about literary history. It was a fifteenth- rather than a sixteenth-century fault 'hardly to distinguish _verse_ and _rhyme_'. Where Sternhold and Hopkins--in common with much greater men, from Wyatt to Gascoigne--sometimes went wrong, was in their inability to attain anything but a 'butterwoman's rank to market'--a sing-song and soulless uniformity of cadence, and (a sin more specially their own) in the hopeless dullness and drabness of their diction.] _The Woes of Esay._ Woe to the worldly men, whose covetous Ambition labours to join house to house, Lay field to field, till their enclosures edge The plain, girdling a country with one hedge: That leave no place unbought, no piece of earth Which they will not engross, making a dearth Of all inhabitants, until they stand Unneighbour'd, as unblest, within their land. This sin cries in God's ear, who hath decreed The ground they sow shall not return the seed. 10 They that unpeopled countries to create Themselves sole Lords,--made many desolate To build up their own house,--shall find at last Ruin and fearful desolation cast Upon themselves. Their mansion shall become A desert, and their palace prove a tomb. Their vines shall barren be, their land yield tares; Their house shall have no dwellers, they no heirs.