SIR JOHN HARRINGTON. [Born, 1561? Died, 1612?] THE poetry of Sir John Harrington's father is so polished and refined as almost to warrant a suspicion that the editor of the 'Nugæ Antiquæ' got it from a more modern quarter. The elder Harrington was imprisoned in the Tower, under Queen Mary, for holding a correspondence with Elizabeth; on whose accession his fidelity was rewarded by her favour. His son, the translator of Ariosto, was knighted on the field by the Earl of Essex, not much to the satisfaction of Elizabeth, who was sparing of such honours, and chose to confer them herself. He was created a Knight of the Bath in the reign of James, and distinguished himself, to the violent offence of the high church party, by his zeal against the marriage of bishops. HENRY PERROT. PERROT, I suspect, was not the author, but only the collector, of his book of epigrams entitled 'Springes for Woodcocks,' some of which are claimed by other epigrammatists, probably with no better right. It is indeed very difficult to ascertain the real authors of a vast number of little pieces of the 16th and 17th centuries, as the minor poets pilfer from each other with the utmost coolness and apparent impunity. SIR THOMAS OVERBURY [Born, 1581. Died, 1613.] WAS born in 1581, and perished in the Tower of London, 1613, by a fate that is too well known. The compassion of the public for a man of worth, "whose spirit still walked unrevenged amongst them," together with the contrast of his ideal Wife with the Countess of Essex, who was his murderess, attached an interest and popularity to his poem, and made it pass through sixteen editions before the year 1653. His 'Characters, or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons,' is a work of considerable merit; but unfortunately his prose, as well as his verse, has a dryness and quaintness that seem to oppress the natural movement of his thoughts. As a poet he has few imposing attractions: his beauties must be fetched by repeated perusal. They are those of solid reflection, predominating over, but not extinguishing, sensibility; and there is danger of the reader neglecting, under the coldness and ruggedness of his manner, the manly but unostentatious moral feeling that is conveyed in his maxims, which are sterling and liberal, if we can only pardon a few obsolete ideas on female education. SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Born, 1552. Died, 1618.] It is difficult exactly to estimate the poetical character of this great man, as many of the pieces that are ascribed to him have not been authenticated. Among these is 'The Soul's Errand,'* which possesses a fire of imagination that we would willingly ascribe to him; but his claim to it, as has been already mentioned, is exceedingly doubtful. The tradition of his having written it on the night before his execution is highly interesting to the fancy, but, like many fine stories, it has the little defect of being untrue, as the poem was in existence more than twenty years before his death.† Sir Walter was born at Hayes Farm, in Devonshire, and studied at Oxford. Leaving the university at seventeen, he fought for six years under the Protestant banners in France, and afterwards served a campaign in the Netherlands. He next dis*[Or, 'The Lie.'-Ante, p. 74.] †This bold and spirited poem has been ascribed to several authors, but to none on satisfactory authority. It can be traced to MS. of a date as early as 1593, when Francis Davison, who published it in his 'Poetical Rhapsody' [1608], was too young to be supposed, with much probability, to have written it; and as Davison's work was a compilation, his claims to it must be very doubtful. Sir Egerton Brydges has published it among Sir Walter Raleigh's poems, but without a tittle of evidence to show that it was the production of that great man. [The Lie' is ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh in an answer to it written at the time, and recently discovered in a MS. in the Chetham Library at Manchester. That it was written by Raleigh is now almost past a doubt.] tinguished himself in Ireland during the rebellion of 1580, under the lord-deputy, Lord Grey de Wilton, with whom his personal disputes eventually promoted his fortunes; for being heard in his own cause on returning to England, he won the favour of Elizabeth, who knighted him and raised him to such honours as alarmed the jealousy of her favourite Leicester. In the mean time, as early as 1579, he had commenced his adventures with a view to colonize America-surveyed the territory now called Virginia in 1584, and fitted out successive fleets in support of the infant colony. In the destruction of the Spanish Armada, as well as in the expedition to Portugal in behalf of Don Antonio, he had his full share of action and glory; and though recalled, in 1592, from the appointment of general of the expedition against Panama, he must have made a princely fortune by the success of his fleet, which sailed upon that occasion and returned with the richest prize that had ever been brought to England. The queen was about this period so indignant with him for an amour which he had with one of her maids of honour, that, though he married the lady (she was the daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton), her Majesty committed him, with his fair partner, to the Tower. The queen forgave him, however, at last, and rewarded his services with a grant of the manor of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, where he built a magnificent seat. Raleigh's mind was not one that was destined to travel in the wheel-ruts of common prejudice. It was rumoured that he had carried the freedom of his philosophical speculation to an heretical height on many subjects; and his acceptance of the church-lands of Sherborne, already mentioned, probably supplied additional motives to the clergy to swell the outcry against his principles. He was accused (by the Jesuits) of atheism—a charge which his own writings sufficiently refute. Whatever were his opinions, the public saved him the trouble of explaining them; and the queen, taking it for granted that they must be bad, gave him an open and no doubt edifying reprimand. To console himself under these circumstances, he projected the conquest of Guiana, sailed thither in 1595, and, having captured the city of San Joseph, returned and published an account of his voyage. In the following year he acted gallantly under the Earl of Essex at Cadiz, as well as in what was called the "Island Voyage.' On the latter occasion he failed of complete success only through the jealousy of the favourite. His letter to Cecil, in which he exhorted that statesman to the destruction of Essex, forms but too sad and notorious a blot in our hero's memory; yet even that offence will not reconcile us to behold the successor of Elizabeth robbing Raleigh of his estate to bestow it on the minion Carr, and, on the grounds of a plot in which his participation was never proved, condemning to fifteen years of imprisonment the man who had enlarged the empire of his country and the boundaries of human knowledge. James could estimate the wise, but shrank from cordiality with the brave. He released Raleigh from avaricious hopes about the mine of Guiana, and, when disappointed in that object, sacrificed him to motives still baser than avarice. On the 29th of October, 1618, Raleigh perished on a scaffold, in Old Palaceyard, by a sentence originally iniquitous, and which his commission to Guiana had virtually revoked. JOSHUA SYLVESTER, [Born, 1563. Died, 1618.] WHO in his day obtained the epithet of the Silver-tongued, was a merchant adventurer, and died abroad at Middleburgh, in 1618. He was a candidate, in the year 1597, for the office of secretary to a trading company at Stade; on which occasion the Earl of Essex seems to have taken a friendly interest in his fortunes. Though esteemed by the court of England (on one occasion he signs himself the pensioner of Prince Henry),† he is said to have been driven from home by the enmity which his satires excited. This seems very extraordinary, as there is nothing in his vague and dull declamations against vice that needed to have ruffled the most thin-skinned enemies; so that his travels were probably made more from the hope of gain than the fear of persecution. *A voyage that was aimed principally at the Spanish Plate fleets. [He had a yearly pension of twenty pounds from Prince Henry. See 'Extracts from Accounts of Revels at Court,' Introduction, p. xvii. For other new facts about Sylvester, see Mr. Collier's Introduction to his Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare,' 8vo. 1846.] He was an eminent linguist, and writes his dedications in several languages, but in his own he often fathoms the bathos, and brings up such lines as these to king James:— "So much, O king, thy sacred worth presume I on, His works are chiefly translations, including that of 'The Divine Weeks and Works' of Du Bartas. His claim to the poem of 'The Soul's Errand,' as has been already mentioned, is to be entirely set aside. SAMUEL DANIEL. [Born, 1562. Died, Oct. 1619.] SAMUEL DANIEL was the son of a music-master, and was born at Taunton, in Somersetshire. He was patronised and probably maintained at Oxford by the noble family of Pembroke. At the age of twenty-three he translated Paulus Jovius's Discourse of Rare Inventions.' He was afterwards tutor to the accomplished and spirited Lady Anne Clifford, daughter to the Earl of Cumberland, who raised a monument to his memory, on which she recorded that she had been his pupil. At the death of Spenser he furnished, as a voluntary laureat, several masks and pageants for the court, but retired, with apparent mortification, before the ascendant favour of Jonson.* While composing his dramas he lived in Old-street, St. Luke's, which was at that time thought retirement from London; but at times he frequented the city, and had the honour of ranking Shakspeare and Selden among his friends. In his old age he turned husbandman, and closed his days at a farm in Somersetshire. * The latest editor of Jonson [Gifford] affirms the whole conduct of that great poet towards Daniel to have been perfectly honourable. Some small exception to this must be made when we turn to the derision of Daniel's verses, which is pointed out by the editor himself, in Cynthia's Revels.' This was unworthy of Jonson, as the verses of Daniel at which he sneers are not contemptible, and as Daniel was confessedly an amiable man, who died 'beloved, honoured, and lamented." N |