suggesting a little posy of wild-flowers thrown through the iron bars
of the poet's cage, and pressed between the pages of his manuscript.
Nor is there any book of Wither's which breathes more deeply of the
perfume of the fields than this which was written in the noisome
seclusion of the Marshalsea.

Although the title-page assures us that these "eglogues" were written
during the author's imprisonment, we may have a suspicion that the
first three were composed just after his release. They are very
distinct from the rest in form and character. To understand them we
must remember that in 1614, just before the imprisonment, Wither had
taken a share with his bosom friend, William Browne, of the Inner
Temple, in bringing out a little volume of pastorals, called _The
Shepherd's Pipe_. Browne, a poet who deserves well of all Devonshire
men, was two years younger than Wither, and had just begun to come
before the public as the author of that charming, lazy, Virgilian poem
of _Britannia's Pastorals_. There was something of Keats in Browne, an
artist who let the world pass him by; something of Shelley in Wither,
a prophet who longed to set his seal on human progress. In the
_Shepherd's Pipe_ Willy (William Browne) and Roget (Geo-t-r) had been
the interlocutors, and Christopher Brooke, another rhyming friend, had
written an eclogue under the name of Cutty. These personages reappear
in _The Shepherd's Hunting_, and give us a glimpse of pleasant
personal relations. In the first "eglogue," Willy comes to the
Marshalsea one afternoon to condole with Roget, but finds him very
cheerful. The prisoner poet assures his friend that

_This barren place yields somewhat to relieve,
For I have found sufficient to content me,
And more true bliss than ever freedom lent me_;