SAMUEL ROWLANDS.

[Died, 1634 ?]

THE history of this author is quite unknown, except that he was a prolific pamphleteer in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. Ritson has mustered a numerous catalogue of his works, to which the compilers of the Censura Literaria' have added some articles. It has been remarked by the latter, that his Muse is generally found in low company, from which it is inferred that he frequented the haunts of dissipation. The conclusion is unjust-Fielding was not a blackguard, though he wrote the adventures of Jonathan Wild. His descriptions of contemporary follies have considerable humour. I think he has afforded in the story of Smug the Smith a hint to Butler for his apologue of vicarious justice, in the case of the brethren who hanged a poor weaver that was bed-rid," instead of the cobbler who had killed an Indian,

66

"Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
Because he was an Infidel."

Hudibras, Part ii. Canto ii. 1. 420.

JOHN DONNE, D.D.

[Born, 1573. Died, 1631.]

He was

THE life of Donne is more interesting than his poetry. descended from an ancient family; his mother was related to Sir Thomas More, and to Heywood the epigrammatist. A prodigy of youthful learning, he was entered of Hart Hall, now Hertford College, at the unprecedented age of eleven: he studied afterwards with an extraordinary thirst for general knowledge, and seems to have consumed a considerable patrimony on his education and travels. Having accompanied the Earl of Essex in his expedition to Cadiz, he purposed to have set out on an extensive course of travels, and to have visited the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem. Though compelled to give up his design by the insuperable dangers and difficulties of the journey, he did not come

home till his mind had been stored with an extensive knowledge of foreign languages and manners, by a residence in the south of Europe. On his return to England, the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere made him his secretary, and took him to his house. There he formed a mutual attachment to the niece of Lady Ellesmere, and, without the means or prospect of support, the lovers thought proper to marry. The lady's father, Sir George More, on the declaration of this step, was so transported with rage, that he insisted on the chancellor's driving Donne from his protection, and even got him imprisoned, together with the witnesses of the marriage. He was soon released from prison, but the chancellor would not again take him into his service, and the brutal fatherin-law would not support the unfortunate pair. In their distress, however, they were sheltered by Sir Francis Wolley, a son of Lady Ellesmere by a former marriage, with whom they resided for several years, and were treated with a kindness that mitigated their sense of dependence.

Donne had been bred a Catholic, but on mature reflection had made a conscientious renunciation of that faith. One of his warm friends, Dr. Morton, afterwards Bishop of Durham, wished to have provided for him, by generously surrendering one of his benefices: he therefore pressed him to take holy orders, and to return to him the third day with his answer to the proposal. "At hearing of this" (says his biographer), "Mr. Donne's faint breath and perplexed countenance gave visible testimony of an inward conflict. He did not however return his answer till the third day; when, with fervid thanks, he declined the offer, telling the bishop that there were some errors of his life which, though long repented of, and pardoned, as he trusted, by God, might yet be not forgotten by some men, and which might cast a dishonour on the sacred office." We are not told what those irregularities were; but the conscience which could dictate such an answer was not likely to require great offences for a stumblingblock. This occurred in the poet's thirty-fourth year.

After the death of Sir F. Wolley, his next protector was Sir Robert Drury, whom he accompanied on an embassy to France. His wife, with an attachment as romantic as poet could wish for, had formed the design of accompanying him as a page. It was on this occasion, and to dissuade her from the design, that he

addressed to her the verses beginning, "By our first strange and fatal interview." Isaak Walton relates, with great simplicity, how the poet, one evening, as he sat alone in his chamber in Paris, saw the vision of his beloved wife appear to him with a dead infant in her arms, a story which wants only credibility to be interesting. He had at last the good fortune to attract the regard of King James; and, at his Majesty's instance, as he might now consider that he had outlived the remembrance of his former follies, he was persuaded to become a clergyman. In this capacity he was successively appointed chaplain to the king, lecturer of Lincoln's Inn, vicar of St. Dunstan's Fleet street, and dean of St. Paul's. His death, at a late age, was occasioned by consumption. He was buried in St. Paul's, where his figure yet remains in the vault of St. Faith's, carved from a painting for which he sat a few days before his death, dressed in his winding-sheet.

THOMAS PICKE.

Of this author I have been able to obtain no further information than that he belonged to the Inner Temple, and translated a great number of John Owen's Latin epigrams into English. His songs, sonnets, and elegies bear the date of 1631. Indifferent as the collection is, entire pieces of it are pilfered.

GEORGE HERBERT.

[Born, 1593. Died, 1632-3.]

"HOLY George Herbert," as he is generally called, was prebendary of Leighton Ecclesia, a village in Huntingdonshire. Though Bacon is said to have consulted him about some of his writings, his memory is chiefly indebted to the affectionate mention of old Isaak Walton.

JOHN MARSTON.

[Died, 1634.]

THIS writer was the antagonist of Jonson in the drama, and the rival of Bishop Hall in satire,* though confessedly inferior to them both in their respective walks of poetry. While none of his biographers seem to know anything about him, Mr. Gifford (in his Memoirs of Ben Jonson') conceives that Wood has unconsciously noticed him as a gentlemen of Coventry, who married Mary, the daughter of the Rev. W. Wilkes, chaplain to King James, and rector of St. Martin, in Wiltshire. According to this notice, our poet died at London in 1634, and was buried in the church belonging to the Temple. These particulars agree with what Jonson said to Drummond respecting this dramatic opponent of his, in his conversation at Hawthornden, viz. that Marston wrote his father-in-law's preachings, and his fatherin-law Marston's comedies. Marston's comedies are somewhat dull; and it is not difficult to conceive a witty sermon of those days, when puns were scattered from the pulpit, to have been as lively as an indifferent comedy. Marston is the Crispinus of Jonson's Poetaster,' where he is treated somewhat less contemptuously that his companion Demetrius (Dekker); an allusion is even made to the respectability of his birth. Both he and Dekker were afterwards reconciled to Jonson; but Marston's reconcilement, though he dedicated his 'Malcontent' to his propitiated enemy, seems to have been subject to relapses. It is amusing to find Langbaine descanting on the chaste purity of Marston as a writer, and the author of the Biographia Dramatica' transcribing the compliment immediately before the enumeration of his plays, which are stuffed with obscenity. To this disgraceful characteristic of Marston an allusion is made in 'The Return from Parnassus,' where it is said,

6

"Give him plain naked words stripp'd from their shirts,

That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine."

*He wrote The Scourge of Villany,' three books of satires, 1599. He was also author of The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image,' and certain Satires, published 1598, which makes his date as satirist nearly coeval with that of Bishop Hall.

GEORGE CHAPMAN.

[Born, 1557. Died, 1634.]

GEORGE CHAPMAN was born at Hitching-hill,* in the county of Hertford, and studied at Oxford. From thence he repaired to London, and became the friend of Shakspeare, Spenser, Daniel, Marlowe, and other contemporary men of genius. He was patronised by Prince Henry, and Carr Earl of Somerset. The death of the one, and the disgrace of the other, must have injured his prospects; but he is supposed to have had some place at court, either under King James or his consort Anne. He lived to an advanced age; and, according to Wood, was a person of reverend aspect, religious, and temperate. Inigo Jones, with whom he lived on terms of intimate friendship, planned and erected a monument to his memory over his burial-place, on the south side of St. Giles's church in the fields; but it was unfortunately destroyed with the ancient church.†

Chapman seems to have been a favourite of his own times; and in a subsequent age his version of Homer excited the raptures of Waller, and was diligently consulted by Pope. The latter speaks of its daring fire, though he owns that it is clouded by fustian. Webster, his fellow-dramatist, praises his "full and heightened style," a character which he does not deserve in any favourable sense; for his diction is chiefly marked by barbarous ruggedness, false elevation, and extravagant metaphor. The drama owes him very little; his 'Bussy d'Ambois' is a piece of frigid atrocity, and in 'The Widow's Tears,' where his heroine Cynthia falls in love with a sentinel guarding the corpse of her husband, whom she was bitterly lamenting, he has dramatised one of the most puerile and disgusting legends ever fabricated for the disparagement of female constancy.‡

*William Browne, the pastoral poet, calls him "the learned shepherd of fair Hitching-hill."

† [This is a mistake. It is still to be seen against the exterior south wall of the church.]

[Chapman would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he has not abundantly shown himself to be one; for his Homer is not so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written."-Charles Lamb.]