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LIFE OF

GEORGE WITHER.

BORN 1588.-DIED 1669.

GEORGE WITHER, the descendant of a family who had for several generations possessed the property of Manydowne, in Hampshire, was born in that county, at Bentworth, near Alton. About the age of sixteen he was sent to Oxford, where he had just begun to fall in love with the mysteries of logic, when he was called home by his father, much to his mortification, to hold the plough. He was even afraid of being put to some mechanical trade, when he contrived to get to London, and with great simplicity had proposed to try his fortune at court. To his astonishment, however, he found that it was necessary to flatter in order to be a courtier. To shew his independence he therefore wrote his "Abuses whipt and stript,” and instead of rising at court, was committed for some months to the Marshalsea. But if his puritanism excited enemies, his talents and frankness gained him friends. appears to have been intimate with the poet Brown, and to have been noticed by Selden. To the latter he inscribed his translation of the poem on the Nature of Man, from the Greek of Bishop Nemesius, an ancient father of the church. While in prison

He

* He was imprisoned for his “Abuses whipt and stript," yet this could not have been his first offence, as an allusion is made to a former accusation.

he wrote his Shepherd's Hunting, which contains perhaps the very finest touches that ever came from his hasty and irregular pen, and besides those prison eclogues, composed his Satire to the King, a justification of his former satires, which, if it gained him his liberation, certainly effected it without retracting his principles.

It is not probable that the works of Wither will ever be published collectively, curious as they are, and occasionally marked by originality of thought: but a detailed list of them is given in the British Bibliographer. From youth to age George continued to pour forth his lucubrations, in prophesy, remonstrance, complaint and triumph, through good and evil report, through all vicissitudes of fortune, at one time in command among the saints, and at another scrawling his thoughts in gaol, when pen and ink were denied him, with red ochre upon a trencher.

Soon after his liberation from prison he published the Hymns and songs of the Church, one edition of which is dedicated to King James, in which he declares that the hymns were printed under his majesty's gracious protection. One of the highest dignitaries of the church also sanctioned his performance; but as it was Wither's fate to be for ever embroiled, he had soon after occasion to complain that the booksellers, "those cruel bee-masters," as he calls them, "who burn the poor Athenian bees for their honey," endeavoured to subvert his copy-right, while some of the more zealous clergymen complained that he had interfered with their calling, and slanderous persons termed his hymns needless songs and popish rhymes. From any suspicion of popery his future labours were more than sufficient to clear him. James, it appears, encouraged him to finish a translation of the Psalms, and was kindly disposed towards him. Soon after the decease of his sovereign, on re

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