Surviv'd thy fate, and sung thy funeral,
Their notes had been too low: take this from me
None but thyself could write a verse for thee.
This last line echoes Donne (p. [204], l. 24). Most of Donne's eulogists were young men.
Brathwaite's wife died in 1633, and, perhaps following Donne, he for some years wrote Anniversaries upon his Panarete. W. C. Hazlitt suggests Brome as the author of the lines on Donne, which is not likely.
The Epitaph which follows R. B.'s poem is presumably by him also.
Endymion Porter (1587-1649) may have had a common interest with Donne in the Spanish language and literature, for the former owed his early success as an ambassador and courtier to his Spanish descent and upbringing. He owes his reputation now mainly to his patronage of art and poetry and to the songs of Herrick. For his life see D.N.B. and E. B. de Fonblanque's Lives of the Lords Strangford, 1877.
Daniel Darnelly, the author of the long Latin elegy added to the collection in 1635, was, according to Foster (Alumni Oxonienses, vol. i. 1891), the son of a Londoner, and matriculated at Oxford on Nov. 14, 1623, at the age of nineteen. He proceeded B.A. in 1627, M.A. 1629⁄30, and was incorporated at Cambridge in 1634. He is described in Musgrave's Obituary as of Trinity Hall. In 1632 he was appointed rector of Curry Mallet, Somersetshire, and of Walden St. Paul, Herts., 1634. This would bring him into closer touch with London, and probably explains his writing an elegy for the forthcoming second edition of Donne's Poems. He was rector of Teversham, Cambridgeshire, from 1635 to 1645, when his living was sequestered. He died on the 23rd of November, 1659.
The heading of this poem shows that it was written at the request of some one, probably King. In l. 35 Nilusque minus strepuisset the reference is to the great cataract. See Macrobius, Somn. Scip. ii. 4.
Of Sidney Godolphin (1610-43) Clarendon says, 'There was never so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room; so large an understanding and so unrestrained a fancy in so very small a body: so that the Lord Falkland used to say merrily, that he was pleased to be found in his company, where he was the properer man; and it may be the very remarkableness of his little person made the sharpness of his wit, and the composed quickness of his judgement and understanding the more notable.' The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, i. 51-2. He was killed at Chagford in the civil war. Professor Saintsbury has not included this poem in his collection of Godolphin's poems, Caroline Poets, ii. pp. 227-61.