To the readers of poetry for its merely sensuous qualities of flowing measure, attractive imagery, and brilliant description, the poems of Southwell possess but few attractions. Their subjects are all religious, or, at least, serious; and, in reading him, we must totally forget the traditional pagan poet pictured to us as crowned with flowers, and holding in hand an overflowing anacreontic cup. Serious, indeed, his poems might well be, for they were all composed during the intervals of thirteen bodily rackings in a gloomy prison that opened only upon the scaffold. And yet we look in vain among them for expressions of the reproaches or repining such a fate might well engender, and we search with but scant result for record or trace of his own sufferings in the lines traced with fingers yet bent and smarting with the rack. The vanity of all earthly things, the trials of life, the folly and wickedness of the world, the uncertainty of life, and the consolations and glories of religion, are the constantly returning subjects of his productions, and, however treated, they always reflect the benignity and elevation of the poet’s character. Certain it is that Southwell was largely read by the generation that immediately succeeded him. Many years ago, Ellis[27] said: “The very few copies of his works which are now known to exist are the remnant of at least seventeen different editions, of which eleven were printed between 1593 and 1600”; and at a later period, Drake, in his _Shakespeare and his Times_, says:[28] “Both the poetry and the prose of Southwell possess the most decided merit; the former, which is almost entirely restricted to moral and religious subjects, flows in a vein of great harmony, perspicuity, and elegance, and breathes a fascination resulting from the subject and the pathetic mode of treating it which fixes and deeply interests the reader.” A valuable tribute of admiration to Southwell’s poetic talent is that of Ben Jonson, who said: “that Southwell was hanged; yet so he (Jonson) had written that piece of his, ‘The Burning Babe,’ he would have been content to destroy many of his.”[29] Our readers, we are sure, will thank us for giving it here, although we strongly suspect that Mr. Grosart will not approve of its modern orthography.