BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

xxix

The abstract accounts here given, from the narrow limits of my plan, must be superficial, and calculated rather to excite curiosity than to gratify it; they do not affect to convey any fresh information, or to abound in anecdotes hitherto unnoticed: it is hoped, however, that they will be deemed necessary by common readers, and no unacceptable relative appendage to the several extracts.

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT,

THE best of whose works is his Bosworth Field, which merits re-publication for the easy flow of its numbers, and the spirit with which it is written. In the early part of his life he dedicated many of his hours to various translations, which, together with other pieces, were all collected and published after his death by his son. He was descended from an ancient family at Grace-Dieu, in Leicestershire, and was admitted, at fourteen years of age, a gentleman commoner of Broadgate Hall, Oxon. In 1596 he removed from hence to one of the inns of court, but soon quitted the study of the law, and, retiring to his native place, married one of the Fortescue family. He was knighted in 1626 by King Charles, and died in 1628. His poems were ushered into the world by complimentary verses from Tho. Nevill, Th. Hawkins, Ben. Jonson, M. Drayton, and Ph. King.

WILLIAM BROWNE.

THE basest metals are frequently, in the ore, the most beautiful, and catch the eye the soonest. The Italian writers were his models; and he was either too young or too injudicious to resist the contagion of forced allusions and conceits, and the rest of that trash which an incorrect age not only endured but

practised and approved. His descriptions are sometimes puerile, and at other times over-wrought; one while lost in a profusion of colours, and at another bald and spiritless: yet he seems to have been a great admirer, and no inattentive observer, of the charms of nature, as his works abound in minute rural imagery, though indiscriminately selected. From the verses prefixed to his book he should seem to have written very early in life. Had it been otherwise, and chaste and wholesome models been thrown in his way, much might have been expected from his natural powers. The praise he has received from Selden, Davies, Jonson, and Drayton, and the notice he obtained from Milton, are real honours that almost counterbalance oblivion; at least, they prove that he did not deserve it. The memoirs of his life are imperfect; he appears to have been born at Taystock, in Devonshire; to have spent some time both at Exeter College, Oxon, and the Middle Temple; he afterwards became a retainer to the house of Pembroke. The passage that Winstanley quotes as a specimen of his man.. ner is injurious to his merits, and by no means characteristic of Browne; it even blemishes the unsatisfactory narratives of that miserable biographer. The following testimony Drayton has left of him:

Then the two Beaumonts and my Browne arose,
My dear companions, whom I freely chose

My bosom friends; and, in their several ways,
Rightly born poets-

Of Poets and Poesy:

The verses prefixed to Massinger's Duke of Milan, signed W. B. I cannot agree with Mr. Reed in supposing to mean William Browne. I will conclude this article with a poetical picture which Browne has left us of himself: it is in his usual fantastic manner:

Among the rest, a shepherd (though but young,
Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill
His few years could, began to fit his quill.
By Tavy's speedy stream he fed his flock,
Where when he sat to sport him on a rock,
The water-nymphs would often come unto him,
And for a dance with many gay gifts woo him,
Now posies of this flow'r, and then of that,
Now with fine shells, then with a rushy hat,

With coral or red stones brought from the deep
To make him bracelets or to mark his sheep.
Willy he hight, who by the ocean's queen

More cheer'd to sing than such young lads had been,
Took his best-framed pipe, and thus gan move

His voice of Walla, Tavy's fairest love.

Book ii. Song 3.

WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT.

A POET worthy of notice, though unequal to that profusion of praise with which his contemporaries have loaded him. The wits of his day seem to have vied with each other in saying fine things of him, as may be seen from the prefatory verses to his works in 1651. But, setting aside panegyric, his proficiency in polite letters deservedly places him in the first rank among the wits of his age; and, from what we may now judge from what he has left, we may trust the testimonies of his biographers as to his being both an orator and a philosopher. Good-sense and solidity are the most prominent features of his poetry; in elegance, or even neatness of style, he is deficient. The place of his birth is uncertain. Lloyd, in his memoirs, attributes it to Burford in Oxfordshire; Wood, to Northway in Gloucestershire: the former places his birth in 1615, and the latter in 1611. He was, however, elected from Westminster a student of Christ-church, Oxford, in 1628; and, dying during his proctorship, Nov. 29, 1643, was buried, according to Wood, "towards the upper end of the south isle joyning to the choire of the cathedral of Christ-church." Towards Government he appears to have been particularly well-affected, and to have suffered but few public occasions to pass without exhibiting a specimen of his loyalty. Whether his Latin compositions have ever been collected, I know not; the following pieces are all that I am able to point out; the list, I have no doubt, might be considerably enlarged. In the "Musarum Oxoniensium Charisteria," &c. 1638, he has a copy of long and short verses. In the "Britanniæ Natalis," Oxon. 1630, a copy of lambics. In the "Britannici Perigæum," Oxon. 1638, another copy of Iambics. In the "Protelia Anglo-Batava," Oxon. 1641, a copy of Alcaics; in the "Mus. Oxoniensium Ericanpia," &c. 1643, another copy of Alcaics; these were

written during his proctorship. In the same collection are a copy of long and short verses, signed Tho. Cartwright, ex æde Ch. perhaps a relation of our author's. In "Death Repeal'd, by a thankful memorial sent from Christ-church in Oxford, celebrating the noble Deserts of the Right Hon. Paule late Lord Viscount Bayning," a copy of long verses and Iambics. In the "Mus. Oxon. pro Rege suo Soteria," 1633, a copy of Iambics. In the "Vitis Carolina Gemma altera," &c. 1633, a short copy of Alcaics. In the edition, 1651, of Cartwright's Poems and Plays, there are some verses wanting in the copy on the death of Sir B. Grevill, p. 303; the deficiency may be supplied from a copy, published with many others on the same occasion at Oxford, printed in 1644; they are there signed W. C. the initials of Cartwright's name. There is likewise, in the same pamphlet, another copy with the same signature, but whether by him or no is uncertain.

RICHARD CORBET,

GENEROUS, witty, and eloquent. James the First, who was struck with him, made him Dean of Christ-church; he was afterwards successively Bishop of Oxford and Norwich. He appears, from Wood, to have been of that poetical party who, by inviting B. Jonson to come to Oxford, rescued him from the arms of a sister university, who has long treated the Muses with indignity, and turned a hostile and disheartening eye on those who have added most celebrity to her name *. We do

* Spenser, whose college disappointments forced him from the university. Milton is reported to have even received corporal punishment there. Dryden has left a testimony, in a prologue spoken at Oxford, much against his own university. The incivility, not to give it a harsher appellation, which Mr. Gray met with, is well known. That Alma Mater has not remitted her wonted illiberality is to be fairly presumed from a passage in her present most poetic son, Mr. Mason:

A

.... Science there

Sat musing and to those that lov'd the lore
Pointed, with mystic wand, to truths involv'd
In geometric symbols, scorning those

Perchance too much who woo'd the thriftless muse.

English Garden.

not find that Ben expressed any regret at the change of his situation: companions, whose minds and pursuits were similar to his own, are not always to be found in the gross atmosphere of the muddy Cam, though easily met with on the inore genial banks of the Isis.

Largior hic campos æther.....

VIRG.

Corbet's verses have considerable humour, feeling, and neatness. His Poetica Stromata, 1647, 8, were written when very young, and not designed for publication. His Iter Boreale seems a sort of imitation of Horace's Brandusian Journey. Davenant has " A Journey into Worcestershire," p. 215, fol. edit. in a similar vein. Corbet's name appears amongst the list of wags who prefixed mock commendatory verses to Coryate's Crudities. He was, in 1582, born at Ewel in Surrey, educated at Westminster, and thence elected a student of Christ-church, Oxford, and died in 1635. The following anecdotes are extracted from Aubrey's MSS. in the Ashmolean Museum, verbatim. They form a clue to Corbet's character, and as such deserve preservation." After he was D. of Divinity, he sang ballads at the Crosse at Abingdon; on a marketday he and some of his comerades were at the taverne by the Crosse (which, by the way, was then the finest of England, I remember it when I was a freshman, it was admirable curious Gothicque architecture, and fine figures in the nitches, 'twas one of those built by King- * for his queen). The ballad-singer complayned he had no custome, he could not put off his ballads. The jolly Dr. puts off his gowne, and puts on the ballad-singer's leathern jacket, and being a handsome man, and a rare full voice, he presently vended a great many, and had a great audience. After the death of Dr. Goodwin, he was made Deane of Christ-church. He had a good interest with great men, as you may finde in his poems; and that with the then great favourite the Duke of Bucks, his excellent wit ever 'twas of recommendation to him. I have forgot the story, but at the same time Dr. Fell thought to have carried it, Dr. Corbet put a pretty trick on him to let him take a journey to Lon

* Camden says it was erected (as was reported) in the reign of Henry VI. by the fraternity of St. Cross, which he instituted. See Camden, by Gibson, p. 138.