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with the honour of knighthood for the service he rendered to the royal cause at the siege of Gloucester. Of his military prowess, however, we have no further account; nor at what time he found it necessary, on the decline of the king's affairs, to retire again into France. Here he was received into the confidence of the queen, who in 1646 employed him in one of her unfortunate and ill-advised negotiations with the king, who was then at Newcastle.

During his residence at Paris, where he took up his habitation in the Louvre, with his old friend Lord Jermyn, Davenant wrote the first two books of his Gondibert, which were published in England, but without exciting much interest. Soon after he commenced projector; and hearing that vast improvements might be made in the loyal colony of Virginia by transporting good artificers, he embarked with a number of them at one of the ports of Normandy. This humane and apparently wise scheme ended almost immediately in the capture of his vessel on the French coast by one of the parliamentary ships of war, which carried him to the Isle of Wight, where he was imprisoned at Cowes Castle. After endeavouring to reconcile himself to this unfortunate and perilous situation, he resumed his pen, and proceeded with his Gondibert, but being in continual dread of his life, he made but slow progress.

His fears, indeed, were not without foundation. In 1650, when the parliament had triumphed over all opposition, he was ordered to be tried by the high commission court, and for this purpose vas removed to the Tower of London. His biographers are not agreed as to the means by which he was saved. Some impute it to the solictations of two aldermen of York, to whom he had been hospitable when they were his prisoners, and whom he suffered to escape; others inform us that Milton interposed. Both accounts, it is hoped, are true; and it is certain that after the Restoration he repaid Milton's inter£rence in kind, by preserving him from the resentment of the court. He remained, however, in prison for two years, and was treated wih some indulgence by the favour of lord keeper Whitlocke, whom hechanked in a letter written with peculiar elegance of style and compliment.

By degrees he obtained complete enlargement, and has nothing to regret but the wreck of his fortune. In this dilemma, le adopted a measure which, like a great part of his conduct throughout life, shows him to have been a man of an undaunted spiri, fertile in expedients, and possessed of no common resources of min. Indeed, of all schemes, this seemed the most unlikely to succed, and even the most dangerous to propose. Yet, in the very teet) of national prejudices or principles, and at a time when all dramatic entertainments were suspended, discouraged by the protetoral court, anathematised by the people, he conceived that if e could contrive to open a theatre, it would be sure to well filled. Viewing his difficulties with great precaution, he preeeded by slow steps, and an apparent reluctance, to revive what ws so generally obnoxious. Having, however, obtained the countдance of Whitlocke, Sir John Maynard, and other persons of rak, he opened a theatre in Rutland House, Charterhouse-yard, on he 21st of May, 1656, and performed a kind of nondescript enternments, as they were called, which were dramatic in every thing bt the names and

form; and some of them were called operas. When he found these relished and tolerated, he proceeded to more regular pieces; and with such advantages in style and manner, as, in the judgment of the historians of the stage, entitle him to the honour of being not only the reviver, but the improver, of the legitimate drama. These pieces he afterwards revised, and published in a more perfect state; and they now form the principal part of his printed works, although modern taste has long excluded them from the stage. On the Restoration, he received the patent of a playhouse, under the title of the Duke's Company, who first performed in the theatre in Portugal-row, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, and afterwards in that in Dorset Gardens. Here he acted his former plays and such new ones as he wrote after this period, and enjoyed the public favour until his death, April 7, 1668, in his sixty-third year. He was interred with considerable pomp two days after, in Westminster Abbey, near the place where the remains of May, his once rival, had been buried by the parliament. On his gravestone is inscribed, in imitation of Ben Jonson's short epitaph, "O rare Sir William Davenant !"

The life of Sir William Davenant occupies an important space in the history of the stage, to which he was in many respects a judicious benefactor, by introducing changes of scenery and decorations; but he assisted in banishing Shakespeare, to make way for dramas which are now intolerable. He appears to have been, in his capacity of manager, as in every part of life, a man of sound and original sense, firm in his enterprises, and intent to gratify the taste of the public, with little advantage to himself, as he died insolvent.

His dramatic works are

1. Albovine King of the Lombards: a tragedy.

2. Cruel Brother: a tragedy.

3. Distresses: a tragi-comedy. 1673.

4. First Day's Entertainment at Rutland House, by declamation and music, after the manner of the ancients.

5. The Fair Favourite: a tragi-comedy. 1673.

6. The Just Italian: a tragi-comedy.

7. Law against Lovers: a tragi-comedy, made up of Measure for Measure

and Much ado about Nothing.

8. Love and Honour: a tragi-comedy. 9. Man's the Master: a tragi-comedy. 10. Platonic Lovers: a tragi comedy. 11. Playhouse to be Let.

12. Siege of Rhodes, in two parts.

13. Siege a tragi-comedy.

14. News from Plymouth: a comedy.

15. Temple of Love: presented by Queen Henrietta, wife to King Charles I., and her ladies at Whitehall.

SIR WILLIAM KILLEGREW.

(1605-1693.)

William, the eldest son of Sir Robert Killegrew, knt., chamberlain to the queen, was born at the manor of Hanworth, near Hamp

ton Court, in May 1605. He became a gentleman-commoner in St. John's College in Midsummer term, 1622; after continuing there about three years, he travelled on the continent; and after his return, was made governor of Pendennis Castle and Falmouth Haven in Cornwall, and the commander of the militia in the western part of that county. After this he was called to attend King Charles I. as one of the gentlemen-ushers of his privy chamber, in which employment he continued till the breaking out of the Great Rebellion. He had the command of one of the two great troops of horse that guarded the king's person during the whole course of the civil war; was in attendance on the king when the court resided at Oxford; was created doctor of civil laws 1642; and upon the ruin of the king's affairs, suffered for his attachment to him, and compounded with the republicans for his estate.

Upon the restoration of Charles II. he was the first of his father's servants that the king took any notice of, who made him gentlemanusher of his privy chamber, the same place he had enjoyed under the deceased king. Upon Charles's marriage he was created his majesty's first vice-chamberlain, in which station he continued twenty-two years. He died 1693, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His works are

1. Ormasdes; or, Love and Friendship: tragi-comedy.

2. Pandora; or, the Converts: comedy.

3. Siege of Urbino: tragi-comedy.

4. Selindra tragi-comedy.

All printed together in folio, Oxon. 1666.

5. A Poem set to music by Henry Lawes.

6. The Artless Midnight Thoughts of a Gentleman at Court; who for many years built on sand, which every blast of cross fortune has defaced; but now he has laid new foundations on the rock of his salvation, &c. London, 1684. Besides 233 thoughts in it, there are some small pieces of poetry.*

7. Midnight and Daily Thoughts, in verse and prose. London, 1694.

THOMAS RANDOLPH.

(1605-1634.)

"Thomas Randolph, one of the most pregnant young wits of his time, flourishing in the University of Cambridge. The quick conceit and clear poetic fancy discovered in his extant poems seemed to promise something extraordinary from him, had not his indulgence to the too-liberal converse with the multitude of his applauders drawn him to such an immoderate way of living, as in all probability shortened his days." The poet thus praised and thus lamented by Edward Phillips was born at Newnham, near Daventry, of a good family, 15th

* "Cibber says, that besides 233 thoughts in it, there are some small pieces of poetry. If he has really given us 233 thoughts in one volume, we may recommend Sir William as a worthy object of imitation; or rather admire the improvement introduced into the book-manufactory since, of making volumes without any thoughts at all."-SOUTHEY.

June, 1605, and educated as one of the king's scholars at Westminster School. From thence he was chosen into Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1623, of which he became a fellow, took his degree of master of arts, and afterwards received the same honour at the University of Oxford. He very early began to exercise his poetical talents, having, it is said, at the age of nine or ten years written The History of the Incarnation of our Saviour in verse. As he grew up, the ingenuity of his poetical performances procured him the esteem of all who had any pretensions to wit, particularly of Ben Jonson, who adopted him for one of his sons. His lively and agreeable conversation engaged him into too much company, and sometimes among none of the best or most peaceable persons; so that once, in a jovial and drunken meeting, a quarrel arising, he had the misfortune to lose the little finger of his left hand. On this accident he wrote a copy of verses, printed in his works. The scantiness of his patrimony, or his own extravagance, soon brought him to poverty; and his irregular and too-free mode of living, among his companions and admirers, in all probability shortened his life. After living some time with his father at Little Houghton, in Northamptonshire, he went to the house of William Stafford of Blatherwick, in the same county; where he died in March 1634, aged not quite 30 years. The 17th of the same month he was buried in an aisle adjoining to Blatherwick church, among the Stafford family; and soon after Sir Christopher Hatton caused, at his own charge, a monument of white marble, wreathed about with laurel, to be erected over his grave; the inscription on which, in Latin and English verse, was made by the poet's friend Peter Hausted, of Cambridge. He appears to have been a man of the greatest good-humour, and a facetious companion: his poems abound with wit; and, though generally jocose, he is upon many occasions sententiously grave and moral. Like many of his profession, he seems to have been free, generous, and totally regardless of the world.

JOHN MILTON.*

(1608-1674.)

The life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with such minute inquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton's elegant abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the uniformity of this edition,

John Milton was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took, I know not; his descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose.

His grandfather John was keeper of the forest of Shotover; a zealus papist, who disinherited his son because he had forsaken the religion of his ancestors.

* Johnson.

His father John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his support to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his skill in music, many of his compositions being still to be found; and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew

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rich, and retired to an estate. He had probably more than common literature, as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he had two sons: John, the poet; and Christopher, who studied the law, and adhered, as the law taught him, to the king's party, for which he was awhile persecuted; but having, by his brother's interest, obtained permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by chamber-practice, that, soon after the accession of King James, he was knighted and made a judge; but his constitution being too weak for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became necessary.

He had likewise a daughter Anne, whom he married with a considerable fortune to Edward Phillips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the Crown Office to be secondary. By him she had two sons, John and Edward, who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only authentic account of his domestic

manners.

John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread

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