It is written in stanzas of seven lines; the first and third, and the second, fourth, and fifth, rhiming to each other, while the sixth and seventh form a couplet; an arrangement exactly similar to the stanza of the Rape of Lucrece. Like many of our author's smaller pieces, it is too full of imagery and allusion, but has several passages of great beauty and force. In the description which this forsaken fair one gives of the person and qualities of her lover, the following lines will be acknowledged to possess considerable excellence:— "His browny locks did hang in crooked curls, And every light occasion of the wind Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.— His qualities were beauteous as his form, For maiden-tongu'd he was, and therefore free; Yet, if men mov'd him, was he such a storm As oft 'twixt May and April is to see, When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.— His real habitude gave life and grace To appertainings and to ornament." These, and every other portion of the poem, however, are eclipsed by a subsequent part of the same picture, in which, as Mr. Steevens well remarks, the poet "has accidentally delineated his own character as a dramatist."[83:A] So applicable, indeed, did the passage appear to us, as a forcible though rapid sketch of the more prominent features of the author's own genius, and of his universal influence over the human mind, that we have selected it as a motto for the second volume of this work:— —— "On the tip of his subduing tongue All kind of arguments and question deep, All replication prompt, and reason strong, For his advantage still did wake and sleep: To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep, He had the dialect and different skill, Catching all passions in his craft of will; That he did in the general bosom reign Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted." The address which the injured mistress puts into the mouth of her seducer, when "he 'gan besiege her," opens in a strain of such beautiful simplicity, that we cannot avoid an expression of regret, that the defective taste of the age prevented its continuance and completion in a similar style of tenderness and ease:— ————————————— "Gentle maid, Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity, And be not of my holy vows afraid." After relating, rather too circumstantially, the arts and hypocrisy which had been exercised for her ruin, she bursts into the following exclamation:— "O father, what a hell of mischief lies In the small orb of one particular tear!"