beast he
understood the Puritans; and by the false Duessa, the Queen of Scots.
Samuel Daniel was a good honest man, had no children, and was no poet,
and that he had wrote the civil wars without having one battle in all
his book. That Drayton's Poly-olbion, if he had performed what he
promised to write, the Deeds of all the Worthies, had been excellent.
That Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas was not well done, and that
he wrote his verses before he understood to confer; and those of
Fairfax were not good. That the translations of Homer and Virgil in
long Alexandrines were but prose. That Sir John Harrington's Ariosto
of all translations was the worst. He said Donne was originally
a poet; his grandfather on the mother's side, was Heywood the
epigramatist. That Donne for not being understood would perish. He
affirmed, that Donne wrote all his best pieces before he was twenty
years of age. He told Donne, that his Anniversary was prophane, and
fall of blasphemies, that if it had been written on the virgin Mary
it had been tolerable. To which Donne answered, that he described the
idea of a woman but not as she was. That Sir Walter Raleigh esteemed
fame more than conscience; the best wits in England were employed in
making his history. Ben himself had written a piece to him on the
Punic war, which he altered and put in his book. He said there was
no such ground for an heroic poem, as King Arthur's fiction, and Sir
Philip Sidney had an intention of turning all his Arcadia to
the stories of King Arthur. He said Owen was a poor pedantic
school-master, sucking his living from the posteriors of little
children, and has nothing good in him, his epigrams being bare
narrations. He loved Fletcher, Beaumont and Chapman. That Sir William
Alexander was not half kind to him, and neglected him because a friend
to Drayton. That Sir R. Ayton loved him dearly; he fought several
times with Marston, and says that Marston wrote his father in Law's
preachings, and his father in law his comedies."

Mr. Drummond has represented the character of our author in a very
disadvantageous, though perhaps not in a very unjust light. "That he
was a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of
others, rather chusing to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every
word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which was
one of the elements in which he lived; a dissembler of the parts which
reigned in him; a bragger of some goo