whom he had a daughter, who was married to Ferdinand Lord Hastings, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon. Sir John's widow turned out an enthusiast and a prophetess. A volume of her ravings was published in 1649, for which the revolutionary government sent her to the Tower, and to Bethlehem Hospital. THOMAS GOFFE. [Born, 1592. Died, 1627.] THIS writer left four or five dramatic pieces, of very ordinary merit. He was bred at Christ's Church, Oxford. He held the living of East Clandon, in Surrey, but unfortunately succeeded not only to the living, but to the widow of his predecessor, who, being a Xantippe, contributed, according to Langbaine, to shorten his days by the "violence of her provoking tongue." He had the reputation of an eloquent preacher, and some of his sermons appeared in print. SIR FULKE GREVILLE, [Born, 1554. Died, 1628.] WHO ordered this inscription for his own grave-—“ Servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sydney"—was created knight of the bath at James's coronation, afterwards appointed sub-treasurer, chancellor of the exchequer, and made a peer, by the title of Baron Brooke, in 1621. He died by the stab of a revengeful servant in 1628.* SIR JOHN BEAUMONT. [Born, 1582. Died, 1628.] SIR JOHN BEAUMONT, brother of the celebrated dramatic poet, was born at Grace-Dieu, the seat of the family, in Leicestershire. * [It seems to me that Dryden has formed his tragic style more upon Lord Brooke than upon any other author.-Southey, MS. Note in Lord Brooke's Works, 1633.] Two years He studied at Oxford and at the inns of court; but, forsaking the law, married and retired to his native seat. before his death he was knighted by Charles I. 6 He wrote 'The Crown of Thorns,' a poem, of which no copy is known to be extant; 'Bosworth Field,' and a variety of small original and translated pieces. Bosworth Field' may be compared with Addison's Campaign,' without a high compliment to either. Sir John has no fancy, but there is force and dignity in some of his passages; and he deserves notice as one of the earliest polishers of what is called the heroic couplet.* MICHAEL DRAYTON. [Born, 1570? Died, 1631.] MICHAEL DRAYTON was born in the parish of Atherston, in Warwickshire. His family was ancient; but it is not probable that his parents were opulent, for he was educated chiefly at the expense of Sir Godfrey Godere. In his childhood, which displayed remarkable proficiency, he was anxious to know what strange kind of beings poets were; and on his coming to college he importuned his tutor, if possible, to make him a poet. Either from this ambition, or from necessity, he seems to have adopted no profession, and to have generally owed his subsistence to the munificence of friends. An allusion which he makes, in the poem of 'Moses' Birth and Miracles,' to the destruction of the Spanish Armada, has been continually alleged as a ground for supposing that he witnessed that spectacle in a military capacity; but the lines, in fact, are far from proving that he witnessed it at all. On the accession of King James I. he paid his court to the new sovereign with all that a poet could offer his congratulatory verses. James, however, received him but coldly; and though he was patronized by Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of. *["Earth helped him with a cry of blood." This line is from The Battle of Bosworth Field,' by Sir John Beaumont (brother to the dramatist), whose poems are written with much spirit, elegance, and harmony, and have deservedly been reprinted in Chalmers's Collection of English Poets. Wordsworth, Notes to the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.] Dorset, he obtained no situation of independence, but continued to publish his voluminous poetry amidst severe irritations with his booksellers.† Popular as Drayton once was, in comparison of the present neglect of him, it is difficult to conceive that his works were ever so profitable as to allow the bookseller much room for peculation. He was known as a poet many years before the death of Queen Elizabeth. His 'Poly-olbion,' which the learned Selden honoured with notes, did not appear till 1613. In 1626 we find him styled poet laureat; but the title at that time was often a mere compliment, and implied neither royal appointment nor butt of canary. The Countess of Bedford supported him for many years. At the close of his life we find him in the family of the Earl of Dorset, to whose magnanimous countess the Aubrey MSS. ascribe the poet's monument over his grave in Westminster Abbey. The language of Drayton is free and perspicuous. With less depth of feeling than that which occasionally bursts from Cowley, he is a less excruciating hunter of conceits, and in harmony of expression is quite a contrast to Donne. A tinge of grace and romance pervades much of his poetry; and even his pastorals, which exhibit the most fantastic views of nature, sparkle with elegant imagery. The 'Nymphidia' is in his happiest characteristic manner of airy and sportive pageantry. In some historic sketches of The Barons' Wars' he reaches a manner beyond himself the pictures of Mortimer and the queen, and of Edward's entrance to the castle, are splendid and spirited. In 'his' Poly-olbion,' or description of Great Britain, he has treated the subject with such topographical and minute detail as to chain his poetry to the map; and he has unfortunately chosen a form of verse which, though agreeable when interspersed with other measures, is fatiguing in long continuance by itself: still it is impossible to read the poem without admiring the richness of his local associations, and the beauty and variety of the fabulous allusions which he scatters around him. Such indeed is the pro * [Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of Dorset-the poet and lord high treasurer-are one and the same person.] [He received a yearly pension of ten pounds from Prince Henry, to whom he dedicated his Poly-olbion.' See extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court,' Introduction, p. xvii.] fusion of romantic recollections in the 'Poly-olbion,' that a poet of taste and selection might there find subjects of happy description, to which the author who suggested them had not the power of doing justice; for Drayton started so many remembrances that he lost his inspiration in the effort of memory. In 'The Barons' Wars,' excepting the passages already noticed, where the we unhappily exchange only the geographer for the chronicler. On a general survey, the mass of his poetry has no strength or sustaining spirit adequate to its bulk. There is a perpetual play of fancy on its surface; but the impulses of passion, and the guidance of judgment, give it no strong movements nor consistent course. In scenery or in history he cannot command selected views, but meets them by chance as he travels over the track of detail. His great subjects have no interesting centre, no shade for uninteresting things. Not to speak of his dull passages, his description is generally lost in a flutter of whimsical touches. His Muse had certainly no strength for extensive flights, though she sports in happy moments on a brilliant and graceful wing.* EDWARD FAIRFAX. [Died, 1632?] EDWARD FAIRFAX, the truly poetical translator of Tasso, was the second son of Sir Thomas Fairfax, of Denton, in Yorkshire. His family were all soldiers; but the poet, while his brothers were seeking military reputation abroad, preferred the quiet enjoyment of letters at home. He married and settled as a private gentleman at Fuyston, a place beautifully situated between the ["Drayton's 'Poly-olbion' is a poem of about 30,000 lines in length, written in Alexandrine couplets, a measure, from its monotony, and perhaps from its frequency in doggrel ballads, not at all pleasing to the ear. It contains a topographical description of England, illustrated with a prodigality of historical and legendary erudition. Such a poem is essentially designed to instruct, and speaks to the understanding more than to the fancy. The powers displayed in it are, however, of a high cast. Yet perhaps no English poem, known as well by name, is so little known beyond its name." -Hallam, Lit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 496-7.] family seat at Denton and the forest of Knaresborough. Some of his time was devoted to the management of his brother Lord Fairfax's property, and to superintending the education of his lordship's children. The prose MSS. which he left in the library of Denton sufficiently attest his literary industry. They have never been published, and, as they relate chiefly to religious controversy, are not likely to be so; although his treatise on witchcraft, recording its supposed operation upon his own family, must form a curious relic of superstition. Of Fairfax it might, therefore, well be said "Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind 6 Of his original works in verse, his History of Edward the Black Prince' has never been published; but Mr. A. Chalmers ('Biog. Dict.,' art. Fairfax) is, I believe, as much mistaken in supposing that his Eclogues have never been collectively printed, as in pronouncing them entitled to high commendation for their poetry. A more obscurely stupid allegory and fable can hardly be imagined than the fourth Eclogue, preserved in Mrs. Cooper's 'Muse's Library:' its being an imitation of some of the theological pastorals of Spenser is no apology for its absurdity. When a fox is described as seducing the chastity of a lamb, and when the eclogue writer tells us that "An hundred times her virgin lip he kiss'd, As oft her maiden finger gently wrung," who could imagine that either poetry, or ecclesiastical history, or sense or meaning of any kind, was ever meant to be conveyed under such a conundrum ? The time of Fairfax's death has not been discovered; it is known that he was alive in 1631; but his translation of the 'Jerusalem' was published when he was a young man, was inscribed to Queen Elizabeth, and forms one of the glories of her reign. *[Collins.] [The fourth Eclogue alone is in print; nor is a MS. copy of the whole known to exist.] |