individual of his age was a more enthusiastic lover, or a more munificent patron, of arts and literature.
The virtues of his private life, as well as these features of his public character, rest upon the authority of those who best knew him. To the "noble" and "honourable disposition," ascribed to him by Shakspeare, who affectionately declares, that he loves him "without end," we can add the respectable testimony of Chapman, Sir John Beaumont, and Wither, all intimately acquainted with him, and the second his particular friend.
Chapman, in one of his dedicatory sonnets, prefixed to his version of the Iliad, not only applies to him the epithet "learned," but declares him to be the "choice of all our country's noblest spirits[17:A];" and Beaumont, in an Elegy on his death, tells us that his ambition was to draw
"A picture fit for this my noble friend,
That his dear name may not in silence die."
In a beautiful strain of enthusiasm, he informs us, that his verses are calculated for posterity, and
——————————— "not for the present age;
For what man lives, or breathes on England's stage,
That knew not brave Southampton, in whose sight
Most plac'd their day, and in his absence night?"