The story of his own forbearance, which follows, is highly interesting.

While the Christian sings his own victory over Anger, the Man of Courage cannot help peeping out to let you know, that it was some higher principle than _fear_ which counselled this forbearance.
[Footnote 1: Milton.] Whether encaged, or roaming at liberty, Wither never seems to have abated a jot of that free spirit which sets its mark upon his writings, as much as a predominant feature of independence impresses every page of our late glorious Burns; but the elder poet wraps his proof-armor closer about him, the other wears his too much outwards; he is thinking too much of annoying the foe to be quite easy within; the spiritual defences of Wither are a perpetual source of inward sunshine, the magnanimity of the modern is not without its alloy of soreness, and a sense of injustice, which seems perpetually to gall and irritate.

Wither was better skilled in the "sweet uses of adversity;" he knew how to extract the "precious jewel" from the head of the "toad," without drawing any of the "ugly venom" along with it.
The prison-notes of Wither are finer than the wood-notes of most of his poetical brethren.

The description in the Fourth Eclogue of his _Shepherds Hunting_ (which was composed during his imprisonment in the Marshalsea) of the power of the Muse to extract pleasure from common objects, has been oftener quoted, and is more known, than any part of his writings.

Indeed, the whole Eclogue is in a strain so much above not only what himself, but almost what any other poet has written, that he himself could not help noticing it; he remarks that his spirits had been raised higher than they were wont, "through the love of poesy." The praises of Poetry have been often sung in ancient and in modern times; strange powers have been ascribed to it of influence over animate and inanimate auditors; its force over fascinated crowds has been acknowledged; but, before Wither, no one ever celebrated its power _at home_, the wealth and the strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor.