tyr to it 1592, and Mr. Camden has
preserved this epitaph on him, which for its humour, I shall here give
a place.

Dead drunk, here Elderton does lie;
Dead as he is, he still is drie.
So of him it may well be said,
Here he, but not his thirst, is laid.

If after this our author did not finish his education at the
university of Cambridge, it is evident from the testimony of Sir Alton
Cohain, his intimate friend, who mentions him in his Choice Poems of
several Sorts, that he was for some time a student at Oxford; however,
he is not taken notice of by Wood, who has commemorated the most part
of the writers who were educated there. In 1588 it appears from his
poem, entitled Moses his Birth and Miracles, that he was a spectator
at Dover of the Spanish invasion, which was arrogantly stiled
Invincible, and it is not improbable that he was engaged in some
military employment there, especially as we find some mention made
of him, as being in esteem with the gentlemen of the army. He early
addicted himself to the amusement of poetry, but all who have written
of him, have been negligent in informing us how soon he favoured the
public with any production of his own. He was distinguished as a poet
about nine or ten years before the death of Queen Elizabeth, but at
what time he began to publish cannot be ascertained. In the year 1593,
when he was but 30 years of age, he published a collection of his
Pastorals; likewise some of the most grave poems, and such as have
transmitted his name to posterity with honour, not long after saw the
light. His Baron's wars, and England's heroical Epistles; his Downfals
of Robert of Normandy; Matilda and Gaveston, for which last he is
called by one of his contemporaries, Tragdiographus, and part of his
Polyolbion were written before the year 1598, for all which joined
with his personal good character; he was highly celebrated at that
time, not only for the elegance and sweetness of his expressions, but
his actions and manners, which were uniformly virtuous and honourable;
he was thus characterised not only by the poet; and florid writers of
those days, but also by divines, historians, and other Scholars of the
most serious turn and extensive learning. In his younger years he
was much beloved and patronized by Sir Walter Aston of Tixhall
in Staffordshire, to whom for his kind protection, he gratefully
dedicates many of his poems, whereof his Barons Wars was the first, in
the spring of his