He walked mannerly, he talked meekly,

He heard three lectures and two sermons weekly;
He vow'd to shun all company unruly,

And in his speech he used no oath but truly;

And zealously to keep the Sabbath's rest,
His meat for that day on the eve was drest;
And lest the custom which he had to steal,
Might cause him sometimes to forget his zeal,
He gives his journeyman a special charge,
That if the stuff, allowance being large
He found his fingers were to filch inclined,
Bid him to have the banner in his mind.

This done (I scant can tell the rest for laughter)

A captain of a ship came three days after,

And brought three yards of velvet and three quarters,
To make Venetians down below the garters.

He, that precisely knew what was enough,
Soon slipt aside three quarters of the stuff;
His man, espying it, said in derision,
Master, remember how you saw the vision!
Peace, knave! quoth he, I did not see one rag
Of such a color'd silk in all the flag.

SIR HENRY WOTTON, the miscellaneous poet who follows Fairfax and Harrington, was born at Bocton Hall, in Kent, on the thirtieth of March, 1568. His early education was conducted by private tutors at home, after which he was sent to Winchester school, whence he passed, in 1584, to New College, Oxford. He did not, however, long remain there, but soon entered Queen's College, where he became well versed in logic and rhetoric; and being also distinguished for various other learning, and for his wit, he was selected to write a tragedy for the private use of his college. The name of the tragedy was Tancredo, and Walton, Sir Henry's biographer, remarks that 'it was interwoven with sentences, and for the method and exact personating those humors, passions, and dispositions, which he proposed to represent, so performed, that the gravest of the society declared, he had in a slight employment, given an early and solid testimony of his future abilities.'

Wotton having, in the twentieth year of his age, taken his master's degree, left the university, and after travelling a number of years on the continent, returned to England, and attached himself to the service of the Earl of Essex, the chief favorite of Queen Elizabeth. Having afterward gained the friendship of king James, by communicating the secret of a conspiracy formed against him, while yet only king of Scotland, he was employed by that monarch, when he ascended the English throne, as ambassador to Venice. A versatile and lively disposition qualified Sir Henry, in an eminent degree, for this situation, of the duties of which we have his own idea on the wellknown punning expression, in which he defines an ambassador to be an honest gentleman, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.' Late in life Wotton took orders to qualify himself to be provost of Eton, and in

1600 A.D.]

that situation he died, in 1639, in the seventy-second year of his age. The poems of this author are generally brief unstudied effusions, of very consid erable merit, and from them we select the following:

A FAREWELL TO THE VANITIES OF THE WORLD.

Farewell, ye gilded follies, pleasing troubles;
Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles!
Fame 's but a hollow echo; gold, pure clay;
Honour, the darling but of one short day;
Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin;
State, but a golden prison to live in,

And torture free-born minds; embroider'd trains
Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins;
And blood allied to greatness, is alone

Inherited, not purchased, nor our own:

Fame, honour, beauty, state, train, blood, and birth,
Are but the fading blossoms of the earth.

*

*

*

*

*

Welcome pure thoughts, welcome ye silent groves,
These guests, these courts, my soul most dearly loves:
Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing
My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring:
A prayer-book now shall be my looking-glass,
In which I will adorn sweet Virtue's face.
Here dwell no hateful looks, no palace cares,
No broken vows dwell here, nor pale-faced fears:
Then here I'll sigh, and sigh my hot love's folly,
And learn t' affect an holy melancholy;

And if Contentment be a stranger then,
I'll ne'er look for it, but in heaven again.

THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE.

How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill.

Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the worldly care

Of public fame or private breath;
Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good:
Who hath his life from rumours freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great.

Who God doth late and early pray,
More of his grace than gifts to lend;

And entertains the harmless day

With a religious book or friend;

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands;

And having nothing yet hath all.

SIR JOHN DAVIES, the poet to whom our attention is next directed, was of low origin, being the son of a tanner. He was born at Chisgrove in Wiltshire in 1570, and after careful preparation, became in 1585, a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford. He remained at the university until he had taken his bachelor's degree, immediately after which he repaired to London, and entered the Middle Temple, where he applied himself so closely to the study of the common law, that he was soon called to the bar. An unfortunate quarrel, however, the cause of which is not known, with a gentleman of the society to which he belonged, resulted in his expulsion thence, and he returned to Oxford and continued the prosecution of his studies there; but being eventually reinstated in the Temple, he returned thither and practiced, for some time, as a counsellor; and in 1601, he became a member of parliament. Upon the death of Queen Elizabeth, he accompanied lord Hunsdon into Scotland to congratulate king James upon his accession to the crown of England; and being introduced into his majesty's presence, he was particularly noticed by him; and when the king was informed by lord Hunsdon that Davies was the author of Nosce tiepsum, his majesty graciously embraced him, and assured him of his favor. The 'Nosce tiepsum,' a poem on the origin, nature, and immortality of the soul, was published in 1599, and dedicated to queen Elizabeth, by whom it was very favorably received.

Davies, soon after the accession of James, published a small volume of poems containing Hymns of Astrea, in acrostic verse; Orchestra, or a poem expressing the antiquity and excellency of dancing, and other pieces, which not only placed him in a high rank among his contemporary poets, but so far increased the favor of the king toward him, that he appointed him, first, his solicitor, and then his attorney-general, in Ireland; where, in 1606, he became one of his majesty's sergeants at law; and was afterward speaker in the House of Commons in that kingdom. In 1607, Davies received the honor of knighthood from the king at Whitehall; and in 1612, he quitted the post of attorney-general in Ireland, and was made one of the king's English sergeants at law; and, soon after he settled in England, one of the judges of assize on the circuit. In 1626, he was appointed by Charles the First, lord chief-justice of the King's Bench; but, before his installation, he died suddenly of apoplexy in the fifty-seventh year of his age.

Sir John Davies was a man of bold spirit, sharp and ready wit, and of most thorough and extensive learning; and among the minor poets of this period, he holds a very high rank. His philosophical poem, On the Soul of Man, and the Immortality thereof, is one of the earliest poems of that kind in the language. The author shows that he was a profound thinker, and close reasoner. In the happier parts of his poem,' says Campbell, 'we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not

whether to call the thoughts more poetical or philosophically just. The judgment and the fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poem seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction.' From this poem, the versification of which was afterward copied by Davenant and Dryden, we extract the following passage :

THE DIGNITY OF MAN.

Oh! what is man, great Maker of mankind!
That thou to him so great respect dost bear;
That thou adorn'st him with so bright a mind,
Mak'st him a king, and even an angel's peer?
Oh! what a lively life, what heav'nly pow'r,
What spreading virtue, what a sparkling fire,
How great, how plentiful, how rich a dow'r
Dost thou within this dying flesh inspire!

Thou leav'st thy print in other works of thine,
But thy whole image thou in man has writ;
There can not be a creature more divine,
Except, like thee, it should be infinite.

But it exceeds man's thought, to think how high
God hath rais'd man, since God a man became;
The angels do admire this mystery,

And are astonish'd when they view the same :

Nor hath he given these blessings for a day,
Nor made them on the body's life depend;
The soul, though made in time, survives for aye;
And though it hath beginning, sees no end.

In another production, the 'Orchestra, or Poem of Dancing, in a Dialogue between Penelope and one of her Wooers,' Davies is much more fanciful than in the previous poem. He there represents Penelope as declining to dance with Antinous, and the latter as proceeding to lecture her upon the antiquity of that elegant exercise, the merit of which he describes in verses partaking peculiarly of the flexibility and grace of the subject. Of this performance, the following is one of the most imaginative passages :—

THE DANCING OF THE AIR.

And now behold your tender nurse, the air,
And common neighbour, that aye runs around,

How many pictures and impressions fair

Within her empty regions are there found,
Which to your senses dancing do propound;
For what are breath, speech, echoes, music, winds,
But dancings of the air in sundry kinds.

For when you breathe, the air in order moves,
Now in, now out, in time and measure true,
And when you speak, so well she dancing loves,
That doubling oft, and oft redoubling new,
With thousand forms she doth herself endue:

For all the words that from your lips repair,
Are naught but tricks and turnings of the air.

Hence is her prattling daughter, Echo, born,
That dances to all voices she can hear:
There is no sound so harsh that she doth scorn,
Nor any time wherein she will forbear

The airy pavement with her feet to wear:
And yet her hearing sense is nothing quick,
For after time she endeth ev'ry trick.

And thou, sweet Music, dancing's only life,

The ear's sole happiness, the air's best speech,
Loadstone of fellowship, charming rod of strife,

The soft mind's paradise, the sick mind's leech,

With thine own tongue thou trees and stones can teach,
That when the air doth dance her finest measure,
Then art thou born, the gods, and men's sweet pleasure.

Lastly where keep the Winds, their revelry,

Their violent turnings, and wild whirling hays,

But in the air's translucent gallery?

Where she herself is turn'd a hundred ways,
While with those maskers wantonly she plays:
Yet in this misrule, they shall rule embrace,
As two at once encumber not the place.

Davies wrote a number of pieces in prose also; and the first Reports of Law Cases, published in Ireland, proceeded from his able and accomplished pen. The preface to the volume containing these Reports is considered the best that was ever prefixed to a law-book.

JOHN DONNE, the poet whom we are next to notice, was of respectable parentage, and was born in London, 1573. His mother was descended from the family of Sir Thomas More, and his parents being both rigidly attached to the Romish religion, had their son's education attended to at home until he reached the eleventh year of his age, when he was sent to the university of Oxford; where, such was the precociousness of intellect that he evinced, that one of his tutors, through admiration of his early genius, remarked, that he was rather born wise than made so by study. His acquirements in learning at the university realized all that his early mental developments had promised; so that at the expiration of three years he was prepared for the bachelor's degree-an honor which he was compelled to forego, as the religious sentiments of his parents would not allow him to take the oath of allegiance which the occasion required. Having passed three years at Oxford he entered the university of Cambridge, where he also remained for the same length of time; but as the difficulties in the way of obtaining university honors prevailed there also, which had existed at Oxford, he now relinquished collegiate studies, repaired to London, and entered Lincoln's Inn as a student of law. He had, however, no predilection for the legal profession; and as his father, who had been a merchant, died before he