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side, London, in 1591, and educated at Cambridge, he became in 1629 Vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire. During the Civil War and the Commonwealth he lived at Westminster, but at the Restoration went back to his green Devonshire parish, an old man of almost seventy, tired and sick, no doubt, of the convivial life he had spent among the London taverns. He died in 1674. There is a cheerful grace, a light and happy sparkle in the poetry of Herrick; many of his lyrics are matchless. To Blossoms, To Daffodils, Cather the Rosebuds while ye may-names like these suggest the sources whence his verses draw their many-coloured beauty. Flowers, birds, fruit, gems, pretty women, and little children are his favourite themes.

FRANCIS QUARLES, born in 1592 in Essex, having occupied some courtly positions, became Chronologer to the City of London. Though a keen Royalist, suffering the loss of his dear books and manuscripts in that cause, his poetical works, which form an extravagant specimen of the Metaphysical school, have something of the Puritan tone about them. He died in 1644.

GEORGE HERBERT, Rector of Bemerton in Wiltshire, and younger brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was born at Montgomery Castle, Wales, in 1593. Before entering the Church he lived a gay life at court. He, too, wrote in the strained style of Donne's school; but his chief work, The Temple, a collection of sacred poems, is filled with solemn, saintly music. His pure and active life came to an untimely end in 1632.

JAMES SHIRLEY, born in London in 1596, was the last of the Elizabethan dramatists. Possessing less fire and force than the rest, he excels them in purity of thought and expression. The true poet shines out in many passages of his plays. He gave up the curacy of St. Albans, when he embraced the Roman Catholic faith; and, after a vain attempt to get up a school in that town, he went to London to write for bread. The great fire of 1666 burned him out of house and home; and a little after, in one of the suburbs of London, his wife and he died on the same day.

RICHARD CRASHAW was a Fellow of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and took holy orders. In France he became a Roman

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Catholic, and, having passed to Italy, was made a Canon of Loretto. His religious poetry, and his translations from Latin and Italian, are of the first order, though somewhat marred by the affectations of the time. This scholarly poet died in Italy about 1650.

SIR JOHN SUCKLING, born in 1609, came at eighteen into a great fortune. Having served under the Swedish banner in the Thirty Years' War, he returned to England, to shine as a brilliant but passing meteor in the court of Charles the First. More desirous, perhaps, to win the fame of a skilful gamester and richly dressed gallant than of a literary man, he yet, in the quieter hours of a feverish life, produced some beautiful lyrics, brilliant outpourings of a poetic genius that could not be repressed. Detected in a plot to set Strafford free, he fled to France, where he died before 1642, having, it is thought, committed suicide by poison. His Ballad on a Wedding, and many of his songs are exquisite specimens of their kind.

PROSE WRITERS.

THOMAS WILSON was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and afterwards Dean of Durham, who wrote about 1553 a System of Rhetoric and Logic, considered to be the first critical work upon the English tongue. He strongly recommends the use of a simple English style.

WILLIAM CAMDEN, the antiquary and writer of history, was born in London in 1551, and received his higher education at Oxford. Much of his earlier life was spent in connection with Westminster School, in which he was successively Second and Head-master. He afterwards became Clarencieux King-at-arms. The Britannia is his great work. Written in Latin, it is especially devoted to a description of the antiquities of his native land. He wrote, besides other works, Latin narratives of Queen Elizabeth's reign and the Gunpowder Plot. He died in 1623.

RICHARD HAKLUYT and SAMUEL PURCHAS were two English clergymen, who, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., compiled books of travel and geographical discovery. Hakluyt's chief work, of which the third volume was completed in 1600, comprised an account

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of all the Principal Voyages undertaken within the previous 1500 years. He was an associate and helper of Sir Walter Raleigh in the work of colonizing North America. The chief work of the other writer, bearing the quaint title of Purchas his Pilgrims, appeared in 1625. Another volume, entitled Purchas his Pilgrimage, had been already published. Hakluyt died in 1616; Purchas, about 1628. KING JAMES I. of England got rid of his superfluous learning in the shape of certain literary works. Among his productions three are specially remembered, but rather for the amusement than the delight which they afford. His Dæmonologie defends his belief in witches in a most erudite dialogue. His Basilicon Doron was written in Scotland to leaven Prince Henry's mind with his own notions and opinions. His Counterblast to Tobacco lifts a strenuous but often very comical voice against the growing use of that plant. Poems, too, in both English and Latin came from this royal pen.

JOSEPH HALL, Bishop of Norwich, was born in Leicestershire in 1574. Distinguished as the author of vigorous poetical satires, he deserves yet greater praise for his sermons and other prose writings. His Contemplations on Historical Passages of the Old and New Testament and his Occasional Meditations form his chief works. He died at a good old age in 1656.

ROBERT BURTON, a native of Lindley in Leicestershire, was born in 1578. Though Rector of Segrave in his own shire, he lived chiefly at Christ-church College, Oxford, where he wrote his famous work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Democritus Junior. This strangely quaint and witty book, which is crammed with learned quotations, and with curious gleanings from works that few men ever read, became a public favourite at once. Laurence Sterne has been convicted of stealing brilliants from Burton to mingle with the tinsel and the paste of his own sentimentalities. A short poem on Melancholy, containing twelve stanzas, opens the "Anatomy." Burton's life was chequered with deep melancholy moods, to relieve which he wrote his famous book. He died in 1640.

THOMAS DEKKER, a wild and penniless dramatist who produced

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above twenty plays, wrote, among other prose works, The Gull's Hornbook, a satirical guide to the follies of London life, which was published in 1609. Dekker died about 1638.

LORD HERBERT of Cherbury was born in 1581 at Eyton in Shropshire, and was educated at Oxford. Though noted for his deistic works, of which the chief is entitled De Veritate, he deserves our kindly remembrance for his Life and Reign of Henry VIII., published in 1649. Memoirs of his own Life were printed more than a century after his death, which took place in 1648.

JAMES USSHER, Archbishop of Armagh, was born in Dublin in 1581. While Professor of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin, he became noted as a theologian and controversialist. A treatise, called The Power of the Prince and Obedience of the Subject, written in the reign of Charles I., fully displayed his Royalist opinions. In 1641 he was obliged by the war in Ireland to take refuge at Oxford, and, after many changes of abode, he died in 1656 at Ryegate in Surrey. He won his chief fame, as a chronologer, by the publication (1650-54) of the Annals, a view of general history from the Creation to the Fall of Jerusalem.

JOHN SELDEN, born in 1584 near Tering in Sussex, earned the distinguished praise from Milton of being "the chief of learned men reputed in this land." Educated at Oxford, he studied law in the London schools. Besides several histories and antiquarian works written in Latin, he was the author of an English book called A Treatise on Titles of Honour, which, published in 1614, is still highly valued by heralds and genealogists. His History of Tithes (1618) excited the rage of the clergy and drew a rebuke from the King. As a member of the Long Parliament, he took a leading part in the politics of the day, but was opposed to the Civil War. Appointed in 1643 Keeper of the Records in the Tower, he continued to write until his death in 1654. Some time after his death his secretary, who had been acting the Boswell to this Puritan Johnson, published the Table-talk that had dropped from his learned lips during twenty years.

THOMAS HOBBES was born at Malmesbury in 1588. Some years of his earlier life were spent in travelling on the Continent

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as tutor to Lord Cavendish, afterwards Earl of Devonshire. After a residence at Chatsworth, he was obliged to hide himself and his Royalist doctrines at Paris in 1640; and there some years later he became mathematical tutor to the Prince of Wales. He published four works, dealing with politics and moral philosophy, which gave deep offence to the friends of religion and constitutional governThe principal of these works he called Leviathan (1651); and the key-note of his whole system, there developed, is the doctrine that all our notions of right and wrong depend on selfinterest alone. Works of a different kind from the pen of Hobbes are his Translation of Homer in Verse, and his Behemoth, a History of the Civil Wars. He died in December 1679.

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IZAAK WALTON, who wielded pen and fishing-rod with equal love and skill, was born at Stafford in 1593. He kept a linen draper's shop in Cornhill, and then in Fleet Street, London; retired from business in 1643, and lived afterwards for forty years to enjoy his favourite pursuit. His memory is dear to every lover of our literature for the delightful book he has left us, redolent of wild-flowers and sweet country air-The Complete Angler, or Contemplative Man's Recreation (1653). The Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, George Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson, written with beautiful simplicity, remain also as fruits of honest Izaak's old age. He died in 1683 at the age of ninety.

JAMES HOWELL, born in Caermarthenshire about 1596, spent much of his life travelling on the Continent-as agent for a glasswork-as tutor to a young gentleman-and as a political official. Returning home, he was made in 1640 clerk to the Council; was imprisoned in the Fleet by order of the Parliament; became historiographer-royal in 1660, and died six years later. His Familiar Letters (1645), giving, in lively, picturesque language, sketches of his foreign observations, mingled with philosophical remarks, have gained for him the reputation of being the earliest contributor to our epistolary literature. He wrote altogether about forty works.