ON THE PORTRAIT OF SHAKSPEARE.
(UNDER THE FRONTISPIECE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF HIS WORKS: 1623.)
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakspeare cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature, to outdo the life:
Oh, could he but have drawn his wit,
As well in brass, as he hath hit
His face; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in 'brass:
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture but his book.
VERE, STORRER, &c.
In the same age of fertile, seething mind which produced Jonson and the rest of the Elizabethan giants, there flourished some minor poets, whose names we merely chronicle: such as Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, born 1534, and dying 1604, who travelled in Italy in his youth, and returned the 'most accomplished coxcomb in Europe,' who sat as Grand Chamberlain of England upon the trial of Mary Queen of Scots, and who has left, in the 'Paradise of Dainty Devices,' some rather beautiful verses, entitled, 'Fancy and Desire;'—as Thomas Storrer, a student of Christ Church, Oxford, and the author of a versified 'History of Cardinal Wolsey,' in three parts, who died in 1604;—as William Warner, a native of Oxfordshire, born in 1558, who became an attorney of the Common Pleas in London, and died suddenly in 1609, having made himself famous for a time by a poem, entitled 'Albion's England,' called by Campbell 'an enormous ballad on the history, or rather the fables appendant to the history of England,' with some fine touches, but heavy and prolix as a whole;—as Sir John Harrington, who was the son of a poet and the favourite of Essex, who was created a Knight of the Bath by James I., and who wrote some pointed epigrams and a miserable translation of Ariosto, in which heeffectually tamed that wild Pegasus; —as Henry Perrot, who collected, in 1613, a book of epigrams, entitled, 'Springes for Woodcocks;'—as Sir Thomas Overbury, whose dreadful and mysterious fate, well known to all who read English history, excited such a sympathy for him, that his poems, 'A Wife,' and 'The Choice of a Wife,' passed through sixteen editions before the year 1653, although his prose 'Characters,' such as the exquisite and well-known 'Fair and Happy Milkmaid,' are far better than his poetry;—as Samuel Rowlandes, a prolific pamphleteer in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., author also of several plays and of a book of epigrams;—as Thomas Picke, who belonged to the Middle Temple, and published, in 1631, a number of songs, sonnets, and elegies;—as Henry Constable, born in 1568, and a well-known sonneteer of his day;—as Nicholas Breton, author of some pretty pastorals, who, it is conjectured, was born in 1555, and died in 1624;—and as Dr Thomas Lodge, born in 1556, and who died in 1625, after translating Josephus into English, and writing some tolerable poetical pieces.