AN ELEGY ON BEN JONSON. DARE not, learned Shade, bedew thy herse In prose, would be no injury in rhyme. That worth, which silent wonder scarce can reach. degree of Bachelor of Arts, and was admitted of Grays Inn the 6th August, 1615. In 1617 he joined with his mother Joan May and his cousin Richard May of Eslington, in alienating the estate of Mayfield to John Baker, Esq., whose descendants have ever since enjoyed it. May's attachment to Charles I. and his subsequent apostacy, his dramatic writings and translations, and his history of the parliament, are sufficiently known. He died—already deaddrunk-the 13th November, 1650. GILCHRIST. Thee to thyself; of all thy marble wears, O could we weep like thee! we might convey New breath, and raise men from their beds of clay Unto a life of fame; he is not dead, Who by thy Muses hath been buried. Thrice happy those brave heroes, whom I meet Thus rescued from the dust, they did ne'er see You that pretend to courtship, here admire He that would worthily set down his praise, Brave fall, had but the cause been likewise good, All do admire him in thy English style, DUDLEY DIGGS.9 TO THE IMMORTALITY OF MY LEARNED FRIEND, MASTER JONSON. PARLIED once with death, and thought to When thou advised'st me to keep the field; Breathe the reviving spirit of thy verse. I live, and to thy grateful Muse would pay In vain I then strive to encrease thy glory, GEORGE FORTESCUE.1 9 Dudley Digges, the son of sir Dudley Digges, master of the rolls, was born at Chilham in Kent in 1612. He became a commoner in University College, Oxford, in 1629, took his B. A. degree in 1631, the year following was made probationer-fellow of All Souls, as founder's-kin, and in 1635 was licensed M. A. He was a man of strong parts and considerable attainments, and was firmly attached to the service of the king. He died at an early age, of a malignant fever called the Camp disease, and was buried in the chapel of All Soul's College, October 1643. GILCHRIST. I am unable to mention any thing concerning George For AN ELEGY UPON THE DEATH OF BEN JONSON, THE MOST EXCELLENT OF ENGLISH POETS. HAT doth officious fancy here prepare?— care To find a virgin quarry, whence no hand E'er wrought a tomb on vulgar dust to stand, And thence bring for this work materials fit : Great Jonson needs no architect of wit; Who forc'd from art, receiv'd from nature more Than doth survive him, or e'er liv'd before. And, poets, with what veil soe'er you hide, Heaven at the death of princes, by the birth And can produce no light, but what is known, But those prodigious sights only create, Talk for the vulgar: Heaven, before thy fate, tescue, further than his having some commendatory verses prefixed to Rivers's Devout Rhapsodies, 4to. 1648; Sir John Beaumont's Bosworth Field, 8vo. 1629; and sir Thomas Hawkins's translation of some of Horace's Odes, 4th edition 8vo. 1638. GILCHRIST. That thou thyself might'st thy own dirges hear, Still hovers here below, and ne'er shall die, But you! whose comic labours on the stage, Hold combat! how will now your vessels sail, At which their lights grow pale? 'tis Jonson, there 2 William Habington, the son of Thomas Habington of Hendlip in Worcestershire by Mary Parker, sister to the lord Mounteagle to whom the mysterious letter was sent by which the Gunpowder Plot was discovered, was born at his father's seat on the 5th November, 1605. He was educated in the religion of his father at Paris and St. Omer's. He married Lucy, daughter of lord Powis, the Castara of his muse, and died on the 30th November, 1654. The poems of Habington, though aspiring to none of the higher classes of poetry, are tolerably musical in their numbers, and indicate a purity of morals and gentleness of manners in their author: they must have been at one period popular, since they passed through three impressions between 1635 and 1640. Indeed, his merits have been rewarded with unusual liberality, his comedy found a place in Dodsley's Collection of old Plays; his life of Edward IV. was admitted into bishop Kennet's compleat history of England, and the volume of poems before spoken of has been lately reprinted. GILCHRIST. |