JOHN DONNE Was born at London, in 1573, and educated at home till the eleventh year of his age. His academical residence then became divided for some time between Oxford and Cambridge, and his studies between poetry and law. He accompanied the earl of Essex in an expedition against Cadiz, was secretary for some time to Sir Thomas Egerton, lord keeper of the great seal, and having taken orders was promoted to be king's chaplain, preacher of the society in Lincoln's inn, and dean of St Paul's. He died in 1631. His biographer, Izaac Walton, represents his oratory in the pulpit as extremely edifying; and Dryden was of opinion that his satires "when translated into numbers, "and English," would be generally admired. As Pope has thus translated them, every reader is able to form his own judgment on the truth of this opinion. His poems were printed together in one volume 4to, 1633, and reedited by his son in 1635, 12mo, since which time they have undergone a variety of impressions. SONG. Go, and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, What wind Serves to advance an honest mind. If thou beest born to strange sights, Ride ten thousand days and nights, No where Lives a woman true and fair. If thou find'st one, let me know! Such a pilgrimage were sweet: Yet, do not! I would not go, Though at next door we might meet. Though she were true when you met her, And last till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two or three. 12 Negative Love. I NEVER stoop'd so low as they Know what gives fuel to their fire. JOSEPH HALL Was born at Bristow-park, in the county of Leicester, 1574, and having received a school-education at his native place, was sent, at the age of 15, to Emanuel college, Cambridge, where he was distinguished as a wit, a poet, and a rhetorician. In 1612 he took the degree of D.D.; was presented to the deanery of Worcester in 1616; promoted to the see of Exeter in 1627; and in 1641 translated to Norwich, of which he was deprived by sequestration in 1643. He then retired to a small estate, where he ended his life in 1656; plenus dierum, plenus virtutum. The various literary labours of his long life, and the persecutions to which he was exposed in his old age, are recited in every dictionary of biography. His only poetical compositions, entitled "Virgidemiarum," satires in six books, 1597, 1598, 1599, 12mo, (reprinted at Oxford, 1753, and in Anderson's Poets,) are, from their subject, by no means suited to the present publication; but it is hoped that the reader will excuse the insertion of one specimen from a work which must, even now, be considered as a model of elegance. The following satire is a ridicule on the fashion of attempting to subject our language to the rules of Greek and Latin prosody, a fashion introduced by Gabriel Harvey, encouraged by Sir Philip Sidney and others, and not discouraged by Spenser. The extract here made has a particular allusion to Stanyhurst's translation of part of the Æneid, which had before been ridiculed in similar terms by Nash. LIB. I. SAT. VI. ANOTHER And headstrong dactyls making music meet: The drawling spondees, pacing it below: Fie |