Thus, by God’s blessing, it befell thee
         Nec turpem senectam
   Degere, nec cithara carentem.

I would, Father, that I could get at the verity about thy poems.  Those recommendatory verses with which thou didst grace the Lives of Dr. Donne and others of thy friends, redound more to the praise of thy kind heart than thy fancy.  But what or whose was the pastoral poem of ‘Thealma and Clearchus,’ which thou didst set about printing in 1678, and gavest to the world in 1683?  Thou gavest John Chalkhill for the author’s name, and a John Chalkhill of thy kindred died at Winchester, being eighty years of his age, in 1679.  Now thou speakest of John Chalkhill as ‘a friend of Edmund Spenser’s,’ and how could this be?

Are they right who hold that John Chalkhill was but a name of a friend, borrowed by thee out of modesty, and used as a cloak to cover poetry of thine own inditing?  When Mr. Flatman writes of Chalkhill, ’t is in words well fitted to thine own merit: 

   Happy old man, whose worth all mankind knows
   Except himself, who charitably shows
   The ready road to virtue and to praise,
   The road to many long and happy days.

However it be, in that road, by quiet streams and through green pastures, thou didst walk all thine almost century of years, and we, who stray into thy path out of the highway of life, we seem to hold thy hand, and listen to thy cheerful voice.  If our sport be worse, may our content be equal, and our praise, therefore, none the less.  Father, if Master Stoddard, the great fisher of Tweed-side, be with thee, greet him for me, and thank him for those songs of his, and perchance he will troll thee a catch of our dear River.

  Tweed! winding and wild! where the heart is unbound,
  They know not, they dream not, who linger around,
  How the saddened will smile, and the wasted rewin
  From thee—­ the bliss withered within.

Or perhaps thou wilt better love,

  The lanesome Tala and the Lyne,
  And Mahon wi’ its mountain rills,
  An’ Etterick, whose waters twine
  Wi’ Yarrow frae the forest hills;
  An’ Gala, too, and Teviot bright,
  An’ mony a stream o’ playfu’ speed,
  Their kindred valleys a’ unite
  Amang the braes o’ bonnie Tweed!

So, Master, may you sing against each other, you two good old anglers, like
Peter and Corydon, that sang in your golden age.

X.

To M. Chapelain.

Monsieur,—­You were a popular writer, and an honourable, over-educated, upright gentleman.  Of the latter character you can never be deprived, and I doubt not it stands you in better stead where you are, than the laurels which flourished so gaily, and faded so soon.

  Laurel is green for a season, and Love is fair for a day,
  But Love grows bitter with treason, and laurel out-lives not May.