good friend master William Sanderson, who of all men was the greatest adventurer in that action, and tooke such care for the perfourmance theerof that he hath to my knowledge at one time disbursed as much money as any five others whatsoever out of his owne purse, when some of the companie have been slacke in giving in their adventure. And also knowing that I should loose the favour of M. Secretary Walsingham if I should shrink from his direction, in one small barke of 30 Tunnes whereof master Sanderson was owner, alone without farther comfort or company I proceeded on my voyage, and arriving at these straights followed the same eightie leagues, until I came among many Islands, where the water did ebbe and flowe sixe fadome up right, and where there had bene great trade of people to make traine. But by such thinges as there we found wee knew that they were not Christians of Europe that had used that trade; in fine, by searching with our boat we found small hope to passe any farther that way, and therefore retourning agayne recovered the sea and coasted the shore towards the South, and in so doing (for it was to late to search towardes the North) wee found another great inlet neere fortie leagues broad where the water entered in with violent swiftnesse. This we likewise thought might be a passage, for no doubt the North partes of America are all Islands by ought that I could perceive therein : but because I was alone in a small barke of thirtie tunnes and the yeere spent, I entred not into the same, for it was now the seventh of September, but coasting the shore towardes the South wee saw an incredible number of birds. Having divers fishermen aboord our barke they all concluded that there was a great skull of fish. We being unprovided of fishing furniture, with a long spike nayle made a hooke, and fastening the same to one of our sounding lines, before the bait was changed we tooke more than fortie great Cods, the fishe swimming so aboundantly thicke about our barke as is incredible to bee reported, of which with a small portion of salt that we had wee preserved some thirtie couple or thereabouts, and so returned for England. And having reported to M. Secretarie Walsingham the whole successe of this attempt, hee commanded me to present unto the most honourable Lorde high Treasurour of England some part of that fish: which when his Lordship saw and hearde at large the relation of this second attempt, I received favourable countenance from his honour, advising mee to prosecute the action, of which his Lordship conceived a very good opinion. The next yere, although divers of the adventurers fell from the action, as all the Westerne Marchants and most of those in London, yet some of the adventurers both honourable and worshipfull continued their willing favour and charge, so that by this meanes the next yere two shippes were appointed for the fishing and one pinnesse for the discoverie.

Departing from Dartmouth, through Gods mercifull favour I arrived at the place of fishing and there according to my direction I left the two ships to follow that busines, taking their faithful promise not to depart untill my returne unto them, which shoulde be in the fine of August, and so in the barke I proceeded for the discoverie: but after my departure in sixteene dayes the shippes had finished their voyage, and so presently departed for England, without regard of their promise. My selfe, not distrusting any such hard measure, proceeded for the discoverie and followed my course in the free and open sea betweene North and North west, to the

latitude of 67 degrees, and there I might see America west from me, and Desolation east ; then when I saw the land of both sides, I began to distrust that it would proove but a gulfe. Notwithstanding, desirous to knowe the full certainty, I proceeded, and in 68 degrees the passage enlarged, so that I could not see the westerne shore; thus I continued to the latitude of 73 degrees in a great sea, free from yce, coasting the westerne shore of Desolation. The people came continually rowing out unto me in their Canoes, twenty, forty, and one hundred at a time, and would give me fishes dryed, Salmon, Salmon peale, Cod, Caplin, Lumpe, Stonebase, and such like, besides divers kindes of birds, as Partrige, Fesant, Guls, Sea birds, and other kindes of flesh. I still laboured by signes to knowe from them what they knew of any sea towards the North; they still made signes of a great sea as we understood them; then I departed from that coast, thinking to discover the North parts of America. And after I had sayled towards the west 40 leagues I fel upon a great banke of yce; the winde being North and blew much, I was constrained to coast the same toward the South, not seeing any shore West from me, neither was there any yce towards the North, but a great sea, free, large, very salt and blew, and of an unsearcheable depth. So coasting towards the South I came to the place where I left the ships to fish, but found them not. Then being forsaken and left in this distresse, referring my selfe to the mercifull providence of God, I shaped my course for England, and unhoped for of any, God alone releeving me, I arrived at Dartmouth. By this last discoverie it seemed most manifest that the passage was free and without impediment toward the North, but by reason of the Spanish fleete and unfortunate time of M. Secretaries death, the voyage was omitted and never sithins attempted.

Dursey Island and rocks are off the south-west coast of Ireland; 'Yliaout,' according to Davis's own Eskimo vocabulary, is 'I meane no harm;' traine, train-oil; skull of fish, school; the capelin is a small fish like a smelt, the lumpe is the lump-fish, the stonebase the black bass; the partridges and pheasants were presumably ptarmigan.

Sir John Harington, or HARRINGTON (15611612), translator of Ariosto, and son of the John Harington already noticed (page 264), was a courtier of Elizabeth, and godson of the queen. He was born at Kelston, near Bath; from Eton passed in 1578 to Christ's College, Cambridge; and in 1599 served in Ireland under Essex, by whom, much to the queen's displeasure, he was knighted on the field. His Short View of the State of Ireland (first published in 1880) is modern in tone and much kindlier to the Irish people than was usual. He wrote a collection of epigrams, some Rabelaisian pamphlets, and a Brief View of the Church, in which he reprobates the marriage of bishops. His Ariosto (1591), in the measure of the original, is a paraphrase rather than a translation, and is easy rather than admirable. Some of his epigrams are pointed and some of them coarse. The first book of the Orlando Furioso (i.e. Roland Distraught) thus opens:

Of Dames, of Knights, of armes, of loves delight,
Of courtesies, of high attempts I speake,
Then when the Moores transported all their might
On Africke seas, the force of France to break :

Incited by the youthfull heate and spight
Of Agramant their King that vow'd to wreake
The death of King Trayano (lately slaine)
Upon the Romane Emperour Charlemaine.

I will no lesse Orlandos acts declare,
(A tale in prose ne verse yet sung or said,)
Who fell bestraught with love, a hap most rare,
To one that erst was counted wise and stayd:
If my sweet Saint that causeth my like care,
My slender muse afford some gracious ayd,

I make no doubt but I shall have the skill.
As much as I have promist to fulfill.

And this is how, in the last stanza of the poem (in forty-six books), Rogero kills fierce Rodomount:

And lifting his victorious hand on hie,

In that Turks face he stabd his dagger twise
Up to the hilts, and quickly made him die,
And rid himselfe of trouble in a trice:
Downe to the lake, where damned ghosts do lie,
Sunke his disdainfull soule, now cold as ise,
Blaspheming as it went, and cursing lowd,
That was on earth so loftie and so proud.

Of Treason.

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.

Of Fortune.

Fortune, men say, doth give too much to many,
But yet she never gave enough to any.

Against Writers that Carp at other Men's Books.
The Readers and the Hearers like my books,
But yet some Writers cannot them digest;
But what care I? for when I make a feast,

I would my Guests should praise it, not the Cooks.

Of a Precise Taylor.

A Taylor, thought a man of upright dealing,
True but for lying, honest but for stealing,
Did fall one day extreamly sick by chance,
And on the sudden was in wondrous trance;
The Fiends of hell mustring in fearful manner,
Of sundry coloured silkes displayed a banner
Which he had stolne, and wisht, as they did tell,
That he might find it all one day in hell.
The man, affrighted with this apparition,
Upon recovery grew a great Precisian :

He bought a Bible of the best translation,
And in his life he shewed great reformation;
He walked mannerly, he talked meekly,
He heard three lectures and two sermons weekely;
He vowed to shunne all companies unruly,
And in his speech he used no oath but Truly;
And zealously to keepe the Sabboth's rest,
His meat for that day on the ev'n was drest;
And least the custome which he had to steale
Might cause him sometimes to forget his zeale,
He gives his journyman a speciall charge,
That if the stuffe allowed fell out too large,
And that to filch his fingers were inclined,
He then should put the Banner in his minde.
This done (I scant can tell the rest for laughter)
A Captaine of a ship came three daies after,
And brought three yards of velvet and three-quarters,
To make Venetians downe below the garters.

He that precisely knew what was enuffe, Soon slipt away three-quarters of the stuffe ; His man, espying it, said in derision : 'Remember, master, how you saw the vision!' 'Peace, knave!' quoth he; I did not see one ragge Of such a coloured silke in all the flagge.'

The Nuga Antiquæ, from his papers, published in 1769 by a descendant, are far from being mere trifles. They are an olla podrida containing things of very various interest and importance— many letters of Sir John Cheke; letters and poems by the elder Harington; letters, verses, and translations by Queen Elizabeth; and poems by many hands. Among Sir John Harington's own contributions is a detailed record of his experiences and observations during the marchings, fightings, and parleyings of Essex's forces in Ireland; a long account of Queen Elizabeth's last illness; and an amazing description of a pageant at the court of James I., which turned out a series of lamentable fiascos because of the shamefully drunken condition of the royal guest, King Christian of Denmark; of the court ladies and gentlemen; and of the players, Faith, Hope, Charity, and Peace. There is also a delightfully incredible story of the preternatural sagacity of a seventeenth-century dog in a letter from its proud master to Prince Henry. This besides a series of lives of exemplary bishops of the Church of England from the same industrious pen.

The following extract from Harington's account of an interview with Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, during a 'cessation' in the fighting (when he had professed penitence and promised to renounce the title of O'Neill) shows the redoubtable arch-rebel and leader of the wild Irishry in an unusual light and quite an attractive character:

But staying at Dundalk till the 15th of this month, and no news certain of the earl's coming, I went to see the Newry, and from thence to Darlingford by the narrow water, and was hindred by waters that I could not come back to Sir William Warren before his first meeting with the Earl Tyrone, which was on the 17th day; [at] what time how far they proceeded I know not, but it appeard that the earl was left in good dysposition, because he kept his hour so well the next morning and, as I found after, Sir William had told him of me, and given such a report of me above my desert, that next day when I came the earl used far greater respect to me than I expected; and began debasing his own manner of hard life, comparing himself to wolves that fill their bellies sometime and fast as long for it; then excused himself to me that he could no better call to mind myself, and some of my friends that had done him some courtesy in England, and been oft in his company at my Lord of Ormond's; saying these troubles had made him forget almost all his friends.

After this he fell to private communication with Sir William, to the effecting of the matters begun the day before; to which I thought it not fit to intrude myself, but took occasion the while to entertain his two sons, by posing them in their learning and their tutors, which

were one Fryar Nangle, a Franciscan, and a younger scholer whose name I know not; and finding the two children of good towardly spirit, their age between thirteen and fifteen, in English cloths like a nobleman's sons; with velvet gerkins and gold lace; of a good chearful aspect, freckle-faced, not tall of stature, but strong, and well set; both of them [learning] the English tongue; I gave them (not without the advice of Sir William Warren) my English translation of 'Ariosto,' which I got at Dublin; which their teachers took very thankfully, and soon after shewed it the earl, who call'd to see it openly and would needs hear some part of it read. I turn'd (as it had been by chance) to the beginning of the 45th canto

Looke, how much higher Fortune doth erect

The clyming wight, on her unstable wheele, So much the nigher may a man expect

To see his head where late he saw his heele : On t'other side, the more man is oppressed,

And utterly ov'rthrowne by Fortune's lowre; The sooner comes his state to be redressed,

When wheele shal turne and bring the happy houreand some other passages of the book, which he seemed to like so well, that he solemnly swore his boys should read all the book over to him.

Then they fell to communication again, and calling me to him, the earl said that I should witness and tell my Lord Lieutenant, how against all his confederates' wills, Sir William had drawn him to a longer cessation, which he would never have agreed to, but in confidence of my lord's honourable dealing with him; for, saith he, now is my harvest time, now have my men their six weeks pay afore-hand, that they have nothing to do but fight; and if I omit this opportunity, and you shall prepare to invade me the mean time, I may be condemned for a fool.'

Also one pretty thing I noted, that the paper being drawn for him to sign, and his signing it with O'Neal, Sir William (though with very great difficulty) made him to new write it, and subscribe, Hugh Tyrone. Then we broke our fasts with him, and at his meat he was very merry, and it was my hap to thwart one of his priests in an argument, to which he gave reasonable good ear and some approbation. He drank to my lord's health, and bade me tell him he loved him, and acknowledged this cessation had been very honourably kept. He made likewise a solemn protestation that he was not ambitious, but sought only safety of his life and freedom of his conscience, without which he would not live, though the Queen would give him Ireland.

The epigram on carping writers is in the metre of In Memoriam, and was published half a century before the poems in the same metre by Lord Herbert of Cherbury. There is a Life of Harington by Sir Clements Markham in the Roxburghe Club edition (1880) of Harington's tract on James's right to succeed Elizabeth.

Sir Henry Wotton-famed less as a poet than as a diplomatist and man of the world in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.-was born at the ancestral seat, Boughton Place, Maidstone, 30th March 1568. After receiving his education at Winchester and New and Queen's Colleges, Oxford, where he became the intimate of Donne, he spent the years 1588-95 on the Continent Bavaria, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and France - and made the acquaintance of Beza and Casaubon. He

then attached himself to the service of the Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, but on his friend's fall from favour withdrew to France and Italy. Having gained the friendship of King James of Scotland, when sent by the Duke of Florence to warn him of a plot to poison him, he was employed by James, on his ascending the English throne, as ambassador to Venice. A versatile and lively mind qualified Sir Henry in an eminent degree for this situation, of the duties of which we have his own idea in his well-known definition of an ambassador as 'an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.' This was originally written in Latin in a friend's album in Germany (though one would think it must have been conceived in English, the pun being essentially English); the publication of it by the scurrilous controversialist Scioppius lost him the king's favour for a time. But he was employed as ambassador at Venice in 1604-19 and 1621-24. A mission to Vienna (1620) was with the hopeless attempt of making the policy of James I. seem dignified in respect of the deadly struggle begun between his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, elected King of Bohemia, and the emperor: James I.'s cheap efforts at mediation were scouted by the emperor. At Venice, Wotton was the friend of scholars like Paolo Sarpi, a connoisseur in all matters of art, a collector of pictures, a bountiful, public-spirited, popular, and hospitable ambassador. A sudden change of court favour lost him the Venetian embassy; his salary was in arrears, he was deep in debt, and without income or appointment, when by the mediation of Prince Charles he was made Provost of Eton (1624), having just before published The Elements of Architecture. To qualify himself fully he took deacon's orders; and it was not without regretful longings for the great world he had left that he settled down to his duties at Eton, where he died in December 1639, in the seventy-second year of his age. While resident abroad, he embodied the result of his inquiries into political affairs in a work called The State of Christendom; or a most Exact and Curious Discovery of many Secret Passages and Hidden Mysteries of the Times. This, however, was not printed till eighteen years after his death, like his Life of Buckingham and his ' is 'parallel' between Essex and Buckingham. His writings were published in 1651, under the title of Reliquiæ Wottoniana, prefaced by Izaak Walton's exquisite biography in miniature. Dr Hannah says none of his pieces has been traced to an earlier date than 1602, but about 1586 he wrote a lost tragedy, Tancredo. He was a scholar and patron of men of letters, and his enthusiastic commendation of Milton's Comus—a copy of which the poet had sent to him stands to his credit. Sir Henry was an easy, amiable man, an angler, and an 'undervaluer of money,' as Walton, who used to fish and converse with him, says. Two of his poems are specially well known to lovers of seventeenthcentury verse:

The Character of a Happy Life (c. 1614).
How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill.

Whose passions not his masters are ;
Whose soul is still prepar'd for death,
Unti'd unto the World by care

Of publick fame or private breath.

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Nor vice hath ever understood;
How deepest wounds are given by praise,
Nor rules of State, but rules of good.
Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat ;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruine make Oppressors great.
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace then gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a Religious Book or Friend.

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of Lands,
And, having nothing, yet hath all.

On his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia (c. 1620).
You meaner Beauties of the Night,
That poorly satisfie our Eyes

More by your number than your light,

You Common people of the Skies;
What are you when the Sun shall rise?

You curious Chanters of the Wood,

That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your Voices understood

By your weak accents; what's your praise,
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You Violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known
Like the proud Virgins of the year,

As if the Spring were all your own;
What are you when the Rose is blown?

So, when my Mistriss shall be seen
In Form and Beauty of her mind,
By Vertue first, then Choice, a Queen,
Tell me if she were not designed

Th' Eclipse and Glory of her kind?

The last-quoted poem has been not unjustly described as an imperishable lyric.

Other poems often cited are 'On a bank as I sate a-fishing,' 'Tears at the Grave of Sir Albertus Morton,' and the couplet on the death of the latter's wife:

He first deceas'd; she for a little tri'd To live without him: lik'd it not, and di'd. His prose is perhaps hardly worthy of his varied powers; he began many things, and finished too few, being fastidious. But almost all his prosethough it is unequal in style, and some laboriously worded passages contain little better than

commonplace is enlivened by happy strokes of wit and real humour, quaint conceits (sometimes passing into artificiality), apt allusions, and the wisdom of a man of the world. Amongst his prose pieces are a Survey of Education (unfinished), a tedious panegyric of Charles I., 'characters,' and aphorisms on education. Characteristic was his advice to Milton, when he went to Italy, to 'keep his thoughts close, and his countenance loose,' and his recommendation to a young diplomatist 'that to be in safety himself and serviceable to his country' he should always speak the truth; 'and by this means, your truth will secure yourself, if you shall ever be called to any account ; and 'twill also put your Adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a loss in all their disquisitions and undertakings.' Other famous sayings of his are that at Hastings 'the English would not run away and the Normans could not ;' 'All that went for good and bad in Caesar was clearly his own;''Great deservers do grow intolerable presumers;' and that 'hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.'

Besides the Life by Walton prefixed to the Reliquiæ Wottoniana, there is a biographical sketch' by A. W. Ward (new ed. 1900). Dyce edited his poems in 1843, and Hannah in 1845, 1864, and 1875

Sir John Davies (1569–1626), lawyer, statesman, and poet, of good Wiltshire family, studied at Queen's College, Oxford. Between 1594 and 1596, while a student of the Middle Temple, he published Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing, in a Dialogue between Penelope and one of her Wooers, in which he represents Penelope as declining to dance with Antinous; whereon Antinous lectures her upon the antiquity and universality of that elegant exercise, whose merits are described in verses partaking of the flexibility and grace of the subject. This sudden rash half-capreol of his wit,' as he called it, is in a seven-line stanza, obviously imitating Spenser, and is a harmonious poem in the conceit that natural phenomena have rhythmical motions and may be said to dance. The following is a fairly representative passage : And now behold your tender nurse, the Ayre,

For what are breath, speech, ecchoes, musicke, winds, But dauncings of the ayre in sundry kinds? For when you breath, the ayre in order moves, Now in, now out, in time and measure trew; And when you speake, so well she dauncing loves, That doubling oft, and oft redoubling new, With thousand formes she doth herselfe endew: For all the words that from our lips repaire, Are nought but tricks and turnings of the ayre. Hence is her pratling daughter, Eccho, borne, That daunces to all voyces she can heare: There is no sound so harsh that shee doth scorne, Nor any time wherein shee will forbeare The ayrie pavement with her feet to weare:

And yet her hearing sence is nothing quick,
For after time she endeth every trick.

And thou, sweet Musicke, dauncing's onely life,
The eare's sole happinesse, the ayre's best speach,
Loadstone of fellowship, charming rod of strife,

The soft mind's Paradice, the sicke mind's leach,
With thine own tong thou trees and stones canst teach,
That when the aire doth dance her finest measure,
Then art thou born, the gods' and men's sweet
pleasure.

Lastly, where keepe the Winds their revelry,

Their violent turnings, and wild whirling hayes, But in the ayre's tralucent gallery?

translucent

To dance the hay' is to dance in a ring. Anticipations of thoughts in more than one modern author have been found in the verses on the tides that closely follow:

For loe, the Sea that fleets about the Land,
And like a girdle clips her solide waist,
Musicke and measure both doth understand:
For his great chrystall eye is alwayes cast
Up to the Moone, and on her fixed fast :
And as she daunceth in her pallid spheere
So daunceth he about the center heere.
Sometimes his proud greene waves in order set,
One after other flow into the shore,
Which when they have with many kisses wet,
They ebbe away in order as before;
And to make knowne his courtly love the more,
He oft doth lay aside his three-forkt mace,

And with his armes the timorous earth embrace. The poem on dancing is said to have been written in fifteen days. It was published in 1596; and the same year he showed a temper other than poetical by breaking his stick over the head of a fellow-Templar who had provoked him by mistimed raillery oddly enough the same wit to whom he had dedicated his Orchestra. Davies was promptly disbarred, and was not readmitted till after ample apologies in 1601. His next venture was a new departure for the gay but chastened wit - his famous Nosce Teipsum, or Poem on the Immortality of the Soul, which, first published in 1599, passed through four other editions in the author's lifetime. Davies accompanied the commissioners who brought to James VI. of Scotland the official announcement of Queen Elizabeth's death (not the unofficial Sir Robert Carey on his headlong ride); and James at once took the author of Nosce Teipsum into high favour. It was at this time that Bacon wrote to Davies the letter begging him to use his interest with the king in favour of concealed poets-whatever the term may have meant-of which the Bacon-Shakespeare faction make so much. James made Davies Solicitor-General and Attorney-General for Ireland, and knighted him ; having been Speaker of the Irish Parliament, and

shown great zeal in the plantation of Ulster, he returned to English law practice, sat for Newcastle in the House of Commons, and was King's Sergeant and newly appointed Chief-Justice at his death.

Davies, especially in Nosce Teipsum, represents, like Donne, a complete revolt against the lovelyrics and pastorals of the earlier Elizabethans, but has most in common with the didactic poet Fulke Greville, Sidney's friend, who had more of the stuff of poetry within him than Davies. Nosce Teipsum deals with subjects of profound interest in a philosophical rather than a poetical temper; many of the best passages are eloquent; the plan is compact, and the argument logical. Campbell said: 'In the happier parts of his poem we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. The judgment and fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poem seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction.' The versification of the poem (long quatrains) was afterwards copied by D'Avenant and Dryden, and used by Gray in the Elegy. Hallam said there was hardly a languid verse; but there are few passages that have as much claim to be called poetry as these reasons for the soul's immortality:

All moving things to other things doe move

Of the same kind, which shews their nature such;
So earth falls downe, and fire doth mount above,
Till both their proper elements doe touch.
And as the moysture which the thirstie earth
Suckes from the sea to fill her empty veins,
From out her wombe at last doth take a birth,
And runs a nymph along the grassie plaines;
Long doth shee stay, as loth to leave the land,
From whose soft side she first did issue make;
Shee tastes all places, turnes to every hand,
Her flowry bankes unwilling to forsake.

Yet nature so her streames doth lead and carry
As that her course doth make no finall stay,
Till she herselfe unto the sea doth marry,
Within whose watry bosome first she lay.

E'en so the soule, which in this earthly mold
The Spirit of God doth secretly infuse,
Because at first she doth the earth behold,
And onely this materiall world she viewes.

At first her mother-earth she holdeth deare,
And doth embrace the world and worldly things;
She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,
And mounts not up with her celestiall wings:
Yet under heaven she cannot light on ought
That with her heavenly nature doth agree;
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented bee.

For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth,
Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
Who ever ceasd to wish when he had health,
Or having wisdome was not vext in mind?
Then as a bee which among weeds doth fall,
Which seeme sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay,