Sir Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1610-1643), was a young man of twenty-one when Donne died, and succeeded his father in the year in which this poem was published. He had been educated at Trinity College, Dublin. 'His first years of reason', Wood says, 'were spent in poetry and polite learning, into the first of which he made divers plausible sallies, which caused him therefore to be admired by the poets of those times, particularly by Ben Jonson ... by Edm. Waller of Beaconsfield ... and by Sir John Suckling, who afterwards brought him into his poem called The Session of Poets thus,
He was of late so gone with divinity,
That he had almost forgot his poetry,
Though to say the truth (and Apollo did know it)
He might have been both his priest and his poet.'
But Falkland is best known through his friendship with Clarendon, whose account of him is classical: 'With these advantages' (of birth and fortune) 'he had one great disadvantage (which in the first entrance into the world is attended with too much prejudice) in his person and presence, which was in no degree attractive or promising. His stature was low, and smaller than most men; his motion not graceful; and his aspect so far from inviting, that it had somewhat in it of simplicity; and his voice the worst of the three, and so untuned, that instead of reconciling, it offended the ear, so that nobody would have expected music from that tongue; and sure no man was less beholden to nature for its recommendation into the world: but then no man sooner or more disappointed this general and customary prejudice: that little person and small stature was quickly found to contain a great heart, a courage so keen, and a nature so fearless, that no composition of the strongest limbs, and most harmonious and proportioned presence and strength, ever more disposed any man to the greatest enterprise; it being his greatest weakness to be too solicitous for such adventures: and that untuned voice and tongue easily discovered itself to be supplied and governed by a mind and understanding so excellent that the wit and weight of all he said carried another kind of lustre and admiration in it, and even another kind of acceptation from the persons present, than any ornament of delivery could reasonably promise itself, or is usually attended with; and his disposition and nature was so gentle and obliging, so much delighted in courtesy, kindness, and generosity, that all mankind could not but admire and love him.' The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon (Oxford, 1827) i. 42-50. Coming from him, Falkland's poem is an interesting testimony to the influence of Donne's poetry, presence, and character.
Jaspar Mayne (1604-72), author of The City Match, was a student and graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, a poet, dramatist, and divine. He wrote complimentary verses on the Earl of Pembroke, Charles I, Queen Henrietta, Cartwright, and Ben Jonson—all, like those on Donne, very bad. He was the translator of the Epigrams ascribed to Donne and published with some of his Paradoxes, Problemes, Essays, Characters in 1651.
Arthur Wilson (1595-1652), historian and dramatist, author of The Inconstant Lady and The Swisser, had in 1633 just completed a rather belated course at Trinity College, Oxford, whither he had gone after leaving the service of the third Earl of Essex. For Wilson's Life see D.N.B. and Feuillerat: The Swisser ... avec une Introduction et des Notes, Paris, 1904.
The 'Mr. R. B.' who wrote these lines is said by Mr. Gosse to be the voluminous versifier Richard Brathwaite (1588-1673), author of A Strappado for the Divell and other works, satirical and pious. He is perhaps the most likely candidate for the initials, which are all we have to go by. At the same time it is a little surprising that a poet whose name was so well known should have concealed himself under initials, the device generally of a young man venturing among more experienced poets. If he had not been too young in 1633, I should have ventured to suggest that the author was Ralph Brideoak, who proceeded B.A. at Oxford 1634, and in 1638 contributed lines to Jonsonus Virbius. He was afterwards chaplain to Speaker Lenthall, and died Bishop of Chichester. In the lines on Jonson, Brideoak describes the reception of Jonson's plays with something of the vividness with which the poet here describes the reception of Donne's sermons. He also refers to Donne:
Had learned Donne, Beaumont, and Randolph, all