don for it, when he had alreadie the graunt of it.-His conversation was extreme pleasant. Dr. Stubbins was one of his cronies; he was a jolly, fat Doctor, and a very good housekeeper: as Dr. Corbet and he were riding in Lob-lane in wet weather ('tis an extraordinarie deepe dirty lane) the coach fell, and Dr. Corbet said, that Dr. S. was up to the elbows in mud, and he was up to the elbows in Stubbins.—A. D. 1628, he was made Bishop of Oxford, and I have heard that he had an admirable grave and venerable aspect. One time as he was confirming, the country people pressing in to see the ceremonie, said he, Beare off there, or ile confirm ye with my staffe.'Another time, being to lay his hand on the head of a man very bald, he turns to his chaplaine, and said, 'Some dust, Lushington,' to keepe his hand from slipping. There was a man with a great venerable beard; said the Bishop, You behind the beard.' His chaplaine, Dr. Lushington, was a very learned and ingeniose man, and they loved one another. The Bishop would sometimes take the key of the wine-cellar, and he and his chaplaine would go and lock themselves in and be merry; then first he layes down his episcopal hood, 'There layes the Doctor; then he puts off his gowne, 'There layes the Bishop;' then 'twas, 'Here's to thee, Corbet ;'—' Here's to thee, Lushington'." THOMAS CAREW. THE Consummate elegance of this gentleman entitles him to very considerable attention. Sprightly, polished, and perspicuous, every part of his works displays the man of sense, gallantry, and breeding; indeed, many of his productions have a certain happy finish, and betray a dexterity both of thought and expression much superior to any thing of his contemporaries, and, on similar subjects, rarely surpassed by his succes-> Carew has the ease without the pedantry of Waller, and perhaps less conceit. He reminds us of the best manner of Lord Lyttelton. Waller is too exclusively considered as the first man who brought versification to any thing like its present standard. Carew's pretensions to the same merit are seldom sufficiently either considered or allowed. Though Love had long before softened us into civility, yet it was of a formal, sors. ostentatious, and romantic cast; and, with a very few exceptions, its effects upon composition were similar to those on manners. Something more light, unaffected, and alluring, was still wanting; in every thing but sincerity of intention it was deficient. Panegyric, declamatory and nauseous, was rated by those to whom addressed, on the principle of Rubens's taste for beauty, by its quantity, not its elegance. Satire, dealing in rancour rather than reproof, was more inclined to lash than to laugh us out of our vices; and nearly counteracted her intentions by her want of good manners. Carew and Waller jointly began to remedy these defects. In them, gallantry, for the first time, was accompanied by the Graces, the fulsomeness of panegyric forgot in its gentility, and the edge of satire rendered keener in proportion to its smoothness. Suckling says of our author, in his Sessions of the Poets, that the issue of his brain Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain. In Lloyd's Worthies*, Carew is likewise called " elaborate and accurate." However the fact might be, the internal evidence of his poems says no such thing. Hume has properly remarked, that Waller's pieces" aspire not to the sublime, still less to the pathetic." Carew, in his beautiful Masque, has given instances of the former; and in his Epitaph on Lady Mary Villiers, eminently of the latter. It appears, that in the former part of his life he had been intimate with the Earl of Clarendon, as his character is drawn in his Life and Continuation †. The most material circumstances are the following: "He was very much esteemed by the most eminent persons of the court, and well looked upon by the King himself, some years before he could obtain to be sewer to the King; and when the King conferred that place upon him, it was not without the regret of the whole Scotch nation, which united themselves in recommending another gentleman. Clarendon adds, what it would be injuring the cause of virtue to conceal, "But his glory was, that, after fifty years of his life, spent with less severity or exactness than it ought to have been, he died with the greatest remorse for that licence, and with the * P. 159, fol. edit. + Vol. I. p. 36. Sir W. Davenant has a copy of verses to Carew, p. 252, folio edit. greatest manifestation of Christianity that his best friends could desire." This proves, likewise, that he did not die young, as has been commonly represented. Phillips says of Carew, that " he was reckoned among the chiefest of his time for delicacy of wit and poetic fancy; by the strength of which his extant poems still maintain their fame amidst the curious of the present age." Theat. Poet, p. 174, edit. 1660. The Biographia Britannica and Dr. Percy place his death in 1039. The Biographia adds, that he was a member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, though he took no degree. RICHARD CRASHAW, A POET who deserves preservation for better reasons than his having accidentally attracted the notice of Pope. He has originality in many parts, and as a translator is entitled to the highest applause. Of this, Milton was sensible, as every reader of his Sospito d'Herode will instantly perceive. With a peculiar devotional cast, he possessed one of those ineffable minds which border on enthusiasm, and, when fortunately directed, occasionally produce great things *. But he had too much religion to devote his whole strength to poetry; he trifled for amusement, and never wrote for fame. To his attainments, which were numerous and elegant, all his biographers have borne witness. He was educated at the Charter House, after previously sharing the beneficence of Sir H. Yelverton and Sir Randolph Crew †, and afterwards became scholar of Pembroke, and from thence fellow of Peter House, Cambridge. For reasons best known to himself, which it would at all times have been impertinent, and is now fruitless to inquire after, he renounced the religion of the Church of England, and died, in the year 1650, canon of Loretto, to use the words of Cowley, both a "poet and a saint." *Henry More, the platonic philosopher, one of the first men of this or any other country, is an instance in point. His poetry is very moderate; but his prose works highly deserve republication for their acuteness, imagination, and style. + Lloyd's Memoirs, p. 618. See his Verses on the Death of Crashaw. SIR JOHN DAVIES, A MAN of low extraction, who, by dint of natural abilities, made his way to great worldly, as well as literary eminence. The extent of his honours was, to be appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench; but he died suddenly before he was sworn in. Wood says, "He was held in great esteem by the noted scholars of his time; among whom were, William Camden, Sir Jo. Harrington, the poet, Ben Jonson, Jo. Selden, Facete Hoskyns, R. Corbet of Christ Church, and others, who esteemed him to be a person of a bold spirit, of a sharp and ready wit, and completely learned, but in truth more a scholar than a lawyer." He has preserved a list of his publications, which, exclusive of his poetry, are very numerous. His Nosce Teipsum is the earliest philosophical poem this country has produced; the language is pure, demonstrative, and neat to a degree. The authoress of the Muses' Library has well remarked, "There is a peculiar happiness in his similies, being introduced to illustrate more than adorn, which renders them as useful as entertaining, and distinguishes his from those of every other author*" The following instance, which is most happy, will sufficiently prove the truth of Mrs. Cowper's re" mark: "But as Noah's pigeon, which return'd no more, This poem was republished in 1714, by Tate, and addressed * This remark is taken by Cibber, in the Lives' of the Poets, without any acknowledgment. SAMUEL DANIEL. THE dialogue between Ulysses and the Syren, from one of this gentleman's plays, which Dr. Percy has given us, will give the reader no very exalted opinion of the author's abilities; the same specimen is quoted in the Muses' Library, though not singly: it is neat and unaffected. But Daniel has a right to the merit of still higher excellence. Though very rarely sublime, he has skill in the pathetic, and his pages are disgraced with neither pedantry nor conceit. We find, both in his poetry and prose, such a legitimate and rational flow of language as approaches nearer the style of the 18th than the 16th century, and of which we may safely assert, that it will never become obsolete. He certainly was the Atticus of his day. It seems to have been his error to have entertained too great a diffidence of his own abilities. Constantly contented with the sedate propriety of good sense, which he no sooner attains than he seems to rest satisfied, though his resources, had he but made the effort, would have carried him much further. In thus escaping censure, he is not always entitled to praise. From not endeavouring to be great, he sometimes misses of being respectable. The constitution of his mind seems often to have failed him in the sultry and exhausting regions of the Muses; for, though generally neat, easy, and perspicuous, he too frequently grows slack, languid, and enervated. In perusing his long historical poem we grow sleepy at the dead ebb of his narrative, notwithstanding being occasionally relieved with some touches of the pathetic. Unfortunate in the choice of his subject, he seems fearful of supplying its defects by digressional embellishment; instead of fixing upon one of a more fanciful cast, which the natural coolness of his judgment would necessarily have corrected, he has cooped himself up within the limited and narrow pale of dry events; instead of casting his eye on the general history of human nature, and giving his genius a range over her immeasurable fields, he has confined himself to an abstract diary of fortune; instead of presenting us with pictures of truth from the effects of the passions, he has versified the truth of action only; he has sufficiently, therefore, shown the historian, but by no means the poet. For, to use a sentiment of Sir Wm. Davenant's, "Truth narrative and past is the idol of historians (who worship a dead thing), |