The Character of a Happy Life (c. 1614).
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 prepar'd for death,
Unti'd unto the World by care

Of publick fame or private breath.

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Nor vice hath ever 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 ruine make Oppressors great.
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace then 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.

On his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia (c. 1620).
You meaner Beauties of the Night,
That poorly satisfie our Eyes
More by your number than your light,

You Common people of the Skies;
What are you when the Sun shall rise?

You curious Chanters of the Wood,

That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your Voices understood

By your weak accents; what's your praise,
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You Violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known
Like the proud Virgins of the year,

As if the Spring were all your own;
What are you when the Rose is blown?

So, when my Mistriss shall be seen
In Form and Beauty of her mind,
By Vertue first, then Choice, a Queen,
Tell me if she were not designed

Th' Eclipse and Glory of her kind?

The last-quoted poem has been not unjustly described as an imperishable lyric. Other poems often cited are 'On a bank as I sate a-fishing,' 'Tears at the Grave of Sir Albertus Morton,' and the couplet on the death of the latter's wife:

He first deceas'd; she for a little tri'd To live without him: lik'd it not, and di'd. His prose is perhaps hardly worthy of his varied powers; he began many things, and finished too few, being fastidious. But almost all his prosethough it is unequal in style, and some laboriously worded passages contain little better than

commonplace—is enlivened by happy strokes of wit and real humour, quaint conceits (sometimes passing into artificiality), apt allusions, and the wisdom of a man of the world. Amongst his prose pieces are a Survey of Education (unfinished), a tedious panegyric of Charles I., 'characters,' and aphorisms on education. Characteristic was his advice to Milton, when he went to Italy, to 'keep his thoughts close, and his countenance loose,' and his recommendation to a young diplomatist 'that to be in safety himself and serviceable to his country' he should always speak the truth ; 'and by this means, your truth will secure yourself, if you shall ever be called to any account; and 'twill also put your Adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a loss in all their disquisitions and undertakings.' Other famous sayings of his are that at Hastings 'the English would not run away and the Normans could not;'‘All that went for good and bad in Caesar was clearly his own;' 'Great deservers do grow intolerable presumers;' and that 'hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.'

Besides the Life by Walton prefixed to the Reliquiæ Wottoniana, there is a biographical sketch' by A. W. Ward (new ed. 1900). Dyce edited his poems in 1843, and Hannah in 1845, 1864, and 1875.

Sir John Davies (1569–1626), lawyer, statesman, and poet, of good Wiltshire family, studied at Queen's College, Oxford. Between 1594 and 1596, while a student of the Middle Temple, he published Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing, in a Dialogue between Penelope and one of her Wooers, in which he represents Penelope as declining to dance with Antinous; whereon Antinous lectures her upon the antiquity and universality of that elegant exercise, whose merits are described in verses partaking of the flexibility and grace of the subject. This sudden rash half-capreol of his wit,' as he called it, is in a seven-line stanza, obviously imitating Spenser, and is a harmonious poem in the conceit that natural phenomena have rhythmical motions and may be said to dance. The following is a fairly representative passage: And now behold your tender nurse, the Ayre,

For what are breath, speech, ecchoes, musicke, winds, But dauncings of the ayre in sundry kinds? For when you breath, the ayre in order moves, Now in, now out, in time and measure trew; And when you speake, so well she dauncing loves, That doubling oft, and oft redoubling new, With thousand formes she doth herselfe endew: For all the words that from our lips repaire, Are nought but tricks and turnings of the ayre. Hence is her pratling daughter, Eccho, borne, That daunces to all voyces she can heare: There is no sound so harsh that shee doth scorne, Nor any time wherein shee will forbeare The ayrie pavement with her feet to weare:

And yet her hearing sence is nothing quick,
For after time she endeth every trick.

And thou, sweet Musicke, dauncing's onely life,
The eare's sole happinesse, the ayre's best speach,
Loadstone of fellowship, charming rod of strife,

The soft mind's Paradice, the sicke mind's leach,
With thine own tong thou trees and stones canst teach,
That when the aire doth dance her finest measure,
Then art thou born, the gods' and men's sweet
pleasure.

Lastly, where keepe the Winds their revelry,

Their violent turnings, and wild whirling hayes, But in the ayre's tralucent gallery?

translucent

Where shee herselfe is turnd a hundreth wayes, While with those maskers wantonly she playes: Yet in this misrule, they such rule embrace, As two at once encomber not the place.

To dance the hay' is to dance in a ring. Anticipations of thoughts in more than one modern author have been found in the verses on the tides that closely follow:

For loe, the Sea that fleets about the Land, And like a girdle clips her solide waist, Musicke and measure both doth understand: For his great chrystall eye is alwayes cast Up to the Moone, and on her fixed fast : And as she daunceth in her pallid spheere So daunceth he about the center heere. Sometimes his proud greene waves in order set, One after other flow into the shore, Which when they have with many kisses wet, They ebbe away in order as before; And to make knowne his courtly love the more, He oft doth lay aside his three-forkt mace, And with his armes the timorous earth embrace. The poem on dancing is said to have been written in fifteen days. It was published in 1596; and the same year he showed a temper other than poetical by breaking his stick over the head of a fellow-Templar who had provoked him by mistimed raillery-oddly enough the same wit to whom he had dedicated his Orchestra. Davies was promptly disbarred, and was not readmitted till after ample apologies in 1601. His next venture was a new departure for the gay but chastened wit-his famous Nosce Teipsum, or Poem on the Immortality of the Soul, which, first published in 1599, passed through four other editions in the author's lifetime. Davies accompanied the commissioners who brought to James VI. of Scotland the official announcement of Queen Elizabeth's death (not the unofficial Sir Robert Carey on his headlong ride); and James at once took the author of Nosce Teipsum into high favour. It was at this time that Bacon wrote to Davies the letter begging him to use his interest with the king in favour of concealed poets-whatever the term may have meant—of which the Bacon-Shakespeare faction make so much. James made Davies Solicitor-General and Attorney-General for Ireland, and knighted him ; having been Speaker of the Irish Parliament, and

shown great zeal in the plantation of Ulster, he returned to English law practice, sat for Newcastle in the House of Commons, and was King's Sergeant and newly appointed Chief-Justice at his death.

Davies, especially in Nosce Teipsum, represents, like Donne, a complete revolt against the lovelyrics and pastorals of the earlier Elizabethans, but has most in common with the didactic poet Fulke Greville, Sidney's friend, who had more of the stuff of poetry within him than Davies. Nosce Teipsum deals with subjects of profound interest in a philosophical rather than a poetical temper; many of the best passages are eloquent; the plan is compact, and the argument logical. Campbell said: In the happier parts of his poem we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. The judgment and fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poem seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction.' The versification of the poem (long quatrains) was afterwards copied by D'Avenant and Dryden, and used by Gray in the Elegy. Hallam said there was hardly a languid verse; but there are few passages that have as much claim to be called poetry as these reasons for the soul's immortality:

All moving things to other things doe move

Of the same kind, which shews their nature such ;
So earth falls downe, and fire doth mount above,
Till both their proper elements doe touch.
And as the moysture which the thirstie earth
Suckes from the sea to fill her empty veins,
From out her wombe at last doth take a birth,
And runs a nymph along the grassie plaines ;
Long doth shee stay, as loth to leave the land,
From whose soft side she first did issue make;
Shee tastes all places, turnes to every hand,
Her flowry bankes unwilling to forsake.

Yet nature so her streames doth lead and carry
As that her course doth make no finall stay,
Till she herselfe unto the sea doth marry,
Within whose watry bosome first she lay.

E'en so the soule, which in this earthly mold
The Spirit of God doth secretly infuse,
Because at first she doth the earth behold,
And onely this materiall world she viewes.

At first her mother-earth she holdeth deare,
And doth embrace the world and worldly things;
She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,
And mounts not up with her celestiall wings:
Yet under heaven she cannot light on ought
That with her heavenly nature doth agree;
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented bee.

For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth,
Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
Who ever ceasd to wish when he had health,
Or having wisdome was not vext in mind?
Then as a bee which among weeds doth fall,
Which seeme sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay,

She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all, But, pleasd with none, doth rise and soare away. So, when the soule finds here no true content, And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take, She doth returne from whence she first was sent, And flies to him that first her wings did make. Davies also wrote a series of Hymns to Astrea in acrostics to the glory of ELISA BETHA REGINA, and some of his shorter poems were printed in Davison's Rapsody and other collections. He wrote

in prose on law subjects and the state of Ireland, and edited in the Norman-French still current a collection of Cases et matters in Ley resolues and adjudjes en les Courts del Roy en cest Realme (i.e. Ireland]. His wife, Lady Eleanor Davies, also a poetess, turned prophetess on the strength of the anagram on her name, Reveal O Daniel, and was not cured by the counter-anagram of the witty Dean of Arches, Never so mad a ladie! Sir John's works were printed by Grosart in the Fuller Worthies' (3 vols. 1869-76); the complete poems in the Old English Poets' (2 vols. 1876).

John Davies of Hereford (1565?-1618), poet, was of Welsh descent, and is sometimes spoken of as the Welsh poet. He became famous as a writing-master, and practised this profession in Oxford and London. But he found time to write a vast number (too great!) of poems, longer and shorter, on sacred, philosophical, and other themes, eclogues, elegies, and eulogies, for the most part in a very tedious manner. Mirum in Modum discusses in verse God's glory and the soul's shape; Microcosmus deals with psychology. Some of his sonnets are good, and there was a noted poem on The Picture of an Happy Man, full of antitheses of the nature of solemn puns, and beginning thus:

How blest is he though ever crost

that can all Crosses Blessings make; That findes himself ere he be lost,

and lose that found for Vertues sake.

Yea blest is he in life and death,

that feares not Death nor loves this Life; That sets his Will his wit beneath,

and hath continuall peace in strife. . . . and ends :

This Man is great with little state,
Lord of the World epitomiz'd,
Who with staid Front outfaces Fate,
and being emptie is suffic'd,

Or is suffic'd with little, sith at least

He makes his Conscience a continuall Feast. His poems fill two large quarto volumes of Dr Alexander B. Grosart's 'Chertsey Worthies Library' (1873).

Sir Robert Carey, or CARY, first Earl of Monmouth (c.1560–1639), wrote one of the earliest autobiographies in the language. Tenth son of Lord Hunsdon, he served upon several embassies, fought by land and sea, was a warden of the Border marches, was knighted by Essex in 1591, and became Baron of Leppington in 1622, Earl of Monmouth in 1626. His interesting Memoirs were edited by the Earl of Cork and Orrery in 1759, and by Scott in 1808. In 1589 Carey walked for a wager from London to Berwick (342 miles) in twelve days, and won £2000; in March 1603 he rode from near London to Edinburgh in about sixty hours, to bring the news of Queen Elizabeth's death to James VI., in direct defiance of the orders

of the Government, who were preparing to despatch a dignified and formal commission, which arrived two days after Carey (see page 395).

A Scottish Raider.

There was a favourite of Sir Robert Car's, a great thief, called Geordie Bourne. This gallant, with some of his associates, would in a bravery come and take goods in the East March. I had that night some of the garrison abroad. They met with this Geordie and his fellows, driving of cattle before them. The garrison set upon them, and with a shot killed Geordie Bourne's uncle, and he himself, bravely resisting, till he was sore hurt in the head, was taken. After he was taken, his pride was such as he asked who it was that durst avow that night's work? But when he heard it was the garrison, he was then more quiet. But so powerful and awful was this Sir Robert Car and his favourites, as there was not a gentleman in all the East March that durst offend them. Presently after he was taken, I had most of the gentlemen of the March come to me, and told me that now I had the ball at my foot, and might bring Sir Robert Car to what condition I pleased; for that this man's life was so near and dear unto him, as I should have all that my heart could desire for the good and quiet of the country and myself, if upon any condition I would give him his life. I heard them and their reasons; notwithstanding, I called a jury the next morning, and he was found guilty of March-treason Then they feared that I would cause him to be executed that afternoon, which made them come flocking to me, humbly intreating me that I would spare his life till the next day and if Sir Robert Car came not himself to me, and made me not such proffers as I could not but accept, that then I should do with him what I pleased. And further, they told me plainly that if I should execute him before I had heard from Sir Robert Car, they must be forced to quit their houses and fly the country; for his fury would be such against me and the March I commanded, as he would use all his power and strength to the utter destruction of the East March. They were so earnest with me that I gave them my word he should not die that day. There was post upon post sent to Sir Robert Car; and some of them rode to him themselves to advertise him in what danger Geordie Bourne was: how he was condemned, and should have been executed that afternoon, but by their humble suit I gave them my word that he should not die that day; and therefore besought him that he would send to me with all the speed he could, to let me know that he would be the next day with me, to offer me good conditions for the safety of his life. When all things were quiet, and the watch set at night, after supper, about ten of the clock, I took one of my men's liveries, and put it about me, and took two other of my servants with me in their liveries, and we three, as the Warden's men, came to the Provost Marshal's, where Bourne was, and were let into his chamber. We sat down by him, and told him that we were desirous to see him, because we heard he was stout and valiant, and true to his friend; and that we were sorry our master could not be moved to save his life. He voluntarily of himself said, that he had lived long enough to do so many villanies as he had done; and withal told us that he had lain with above forty men's wives, what in England, what in Scotland; and that

he had killed seven Englishmen with his own hands, cruelly murdering them: that he had spent his whole time in whoring, drinking, stealing, and taking deep revenge for slight offences. He seemed to be very penitent, and much desired a minister for the comfort of his soul. We promised him to let our master know his desire, who, we knew, would presently grant it. We took our leaves of him; and presently I took order that Mr Selby, a very worthy honest preacher, should go to him, and not stir from him till his execution the next morning: for after I had heard his own confession, I was resolved no conditions should save his life; and so took order that at the gates opening the next morning he should be carried to execution, which accordingly was performed.

The Dying of Queen Elizabeth.

I took my journey about the end of the year 1602. When I came to court, I found the Queen ill disposed, and she kept her inner lodging; yet she, hearing of my arrival, sent for me. I found her in one of her withdrawing chambers, sitting low upon her cushions. She called me to her; I kissed her hand, and told her it was my chiefest happiness to see her in safety, and in health, which I wished might long continue. She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said, 'No, Robin, I am not well,' and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days; and in her discourse, she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I was grieved at the first to see her in this plight; for in all my lifetime before, I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded. Then, upon my knowledge, she shed many tears and sighs, manifesting her innocence, that she never gave consent to the death of that Queen.

I used the best words I could, to persuade her from this melancholy humour; but I found by her it was too deep-rooted in her heart, and hardly to be removed. This was upon a Saturday night, and she gave command, that the great closet should be prepared for her to go to chapel the next morning. The next day, all things being in a readiness, we long expected her coming. After eleven o'clock, one of the grooms came out, and bade make ready for the private closet; she would not go to the great. There we stayed long for her coming, but at the last she had cushions laid for her in the privy chamber hard by the closet door, and there she heard service. From that day forwards, she grew worse and worse. She remained upon her cushions four days and nights at the least. All about her could not persuade her, either to take any sustenance, or go to bed. The Queen grew worse and worse, because she would be so, none about her being able to persuade her to go to bed. My Lord Admiral was sent for, (who, by reason of my sister's death, that was his wife, had absented himself some fortnight from court ;) what by fair means, what by force, he got her to bed. There was no hope of her recovery, because she refused all remedies.

On Wednesday, the 23d of March, she grew speech

less. That afternoon, by signs, she called for her council, and by putting her hand to her head, when the king of Scots was named to succeed her, they all knew he was the man she desired should reign after her. About six at night she made signs for Archbishop Whitgift and her chaplains to come to her, at which time I went in with them, and sat upon my knees full of tears to see that heavy sight. Her Majesty lay upon her back, with one hand in the bed, and the other without. The bishop kneeled down by her, and examined her first of her faith; and she so punctually answered all his several questions, by lifting up her eyes, and holding up her hand, as it was a comfort to all the beholders. Then the good man told her plainly what she was, and what she was to come to; and though she had been long a great Queen here upon earth, yet shortly she was to yield an account of her stewardship to the King of kings. After this he began to pray, and all that were by did answer him. After he had continued long in prayer, till the old man's knees were weary, he blessed her, and meant to rise and leave her. The Queen made a sign with her hand. My sister Scroop knowing her meaning, told the bishop the Queen desired he would pray still. He did so for a long half hour after, and then thought to leave her. The second time she made sign to have him continue in prayer. He did so for half an hour more, with earnest cries to God for her soul's health, which he uttered with that fervency of spirit, as the Queen, to all our sight, much rejoiced thereat, and gave testimony to us all of her Christian and comfortable end. By this time it grew late, and every one departed, all but her women that attended her.

This that I heard with my ears, and did see with my eyes, I thought it my duty to set down, and to affirm it for a truth, upon the faith of a Christian; because I know there have been many false lies reported of the end and death of that good lady.

He

Francis Meres (1565-1647) is often quoted as an authority on the literary history of this period in virtue of his Palladis Tamia. He was sprung of good old Lincolnshire stock, studied at Cambridge, became M.A. of both universities, and from 1602 was rector of Wing, in Rutland. published one or two religious works, but is only remembered for the Palladis Tamia, which is not so much a book, or, as he calls it, 'a comparative discourse of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian poets,' as a meagre catalogue raisonné, in which English authors from Chaucer's day to his own time are in a sentence or short paragraph characterised and linked with some Greek, classical Latin, or modern Latin poet to whom Meres thought they presented an analogy. Some of the remarks are sensible, some really pregnant, many jejune and pointless to a degree; occasionally there is only a mere scrap of biographical fact. Sir Philip Sidney is our rarest poet,' and the Arcadia 'his immortal poem.' Than Spenser's Faerie Queene 'he knows not what more excellent or exquisite poem may be written.' be quoted in full :

The next may

As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare. Witness

his Venus and Adonis; his Lucrece; his sugared sonnets among his private friends, etc.

As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds of the stage. For comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona; his Errors; his Love's Labour's Lost; his Love's Labour's Won [All's Well that Ends Well]; his Midsummer Night's Dream; and his Merchant of Venice. For tragedy his Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo [so in Meres: really the grammarian Aelius Stilo, who flourished about 100 B.C.] said that the muses would speak with Plautus's tongue if they would speak Latin; so I say that the muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase if they were to speak English.

But the paragraph immediately preceding says that Warner, in Albion's England, hath most admirably penned the history of his own country;' that Meres had heard the best wits of both universities style him the English Homer; and Meres adds that (this is Meres's own judgment), as Euripides is the most sententious among the Greek poets, so is Warner among our English poets'! The conclusion of the literary survey is :

As the poet Lycophron was shot to death by a certain rival of his, so Christopher Marlow was stabbed to death by a baudy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewd love.

Then follows a still more meagre list of English painters and English musicians, named as before with their classical prototypes: Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver, and John de Creetes in England, 'very famous for their painting,' correspond to Apelles, Zeuxis, and Parrhasius in Greece !

Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury, was published in 1598, being the second volume of a series of which the first (1597) was called Politeuphuia, Wit's Commonwealth (apophthegms, &c.). Two other little volumes completed the series, otherwise unimportant. Tamia is a Greek word for 'treasury.'

Gervase Markham (1568?-1637) has been reputed 'the first English hackney writer,' and was believed to have imported the first Arab horse into England. His industry as author, translator, and compiler was enormous, and his work was, some of it, distinctly meritorious, as well as advantageous to the kingdom. He served in the Low Country wars and in Ireland before, about 1593, he settled down to miscellaneous writing. In 1595 he published his poem (174 eight-line stanzas) on the battle of the Revenge; some of its phrases reappear in Tennyson's (more condensed) story. He versified the Song of Solomon, and wrote poems describing the feelings of St John and Mary Magdalene at the loss of their Lord; and he wrote a lengthy continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. He also translated from the Italian, and had a share in two dramas. But his principal work was in prose— much of it very pedestrian prose, though elsewhere quaint and not without merits of its own. The Discourse of Horsemanshippe (1593) was the first

of eight or nine separate publications (though constantly repeating themselves, according to his fashion) on horses and farriery. The Young Sportsman's Instructor is one of many books on archery, fowling, angling, cock-fighting, and hawking and hunting. Country Contentments (1611) passed through a dozen editions; its second part, The English Huswife, being also separately reissued. The English Husbandman (3 parts, 1613-15) and Cheap and Good Husbandry (1614; 13th ed. 1676) are two out of many books on farming and improving land. Then there was also a series of books on soldiering and military exercises. Even with this record, he left works which yet remain in MS. Country Contentments thus discourses 'Of Angling, the Vertue, Use and Antiquity':

Since Pleasure is a Rapture, or power in this last Age stoln into the hearts of men, and there lodged up with such careful guard and attendance, that nothing is more Supream, or ruleth with greater strength in their affections; and since all are now become the Sons of Pleasure, and every good is measured by the delight it produceth : what work unto men can be more thankful then a discourse of that pleasure which is most comely, most honest, and giveth the most liberty to Divine Meditation? and that without all question is the Art of Angling, which having ever been most hurtlesly necessary, hath been the sport or Recreation of Gods Saints, of most holy Fathers, and of many Worthy and Reverend Divines, both dead and at this time breathing.

For the use thereof (in its own true and unabused nature) carrieth in it neither covetousness, deceit, nor anger, the three main spirits which ever (in some ill measure) rule in all other pastimes; neither are alone predominant without the attendance of their several hand-maids, as Theft, Blasphemy, or Bloodshed; for in Dice-play, Cards, Bowls, or any other sport, where money is the goal to which mens minds are directed, what can mans avarice there be accounted other then a familiar Robbery, each seeking by deceit to couzen and spoyl others of the blisse of meanes which God hath bestowed to support them and their families? ...

But in this Art of Angling there is no such evil, no such sinful violence, for the greatest thing it coveteth is for much labour a little Fish, hardly so much as will suffice Nature in a reasonable stomach: for the Angler must intice, not command his reward, and that which is worthy millions to his contentment, another may buy for a groat in the Market. His deceit worketh not upon men, but upon those Creatures whom it is lawful to beguile for our honest Recreations or needful use; and for all rage and fury it must be so great a stranger to this civil pastime, that if it come but within view or speculation thereof, it is no more to be esteemed a pleasure: For every proper good thereof in the very instant faileth, shewing unto all men that will undergo any delight therein, that it was first invented, taught, and shall for ever be maintained by Patience only. And yet I may not say, only Patience; for her other three Sisters have likewise a commanding in this exercise, for Justice directeth and appointeth out those places where men may with liberty use their sport, and neither do injury to their Neighbours, nor incur the censure of incivility. Temperance layeth down the measure of the