Doctor_, has a story of a glover who kept no gloves that were not
"Best." But when the facts came to be narrowly inquired into, it was found
that the ingenious tradesman had no less than five qualities--"Best,"
"Better than Best," "Better than better than Best," "Best of All," and the
"Real Best." Such language is a little delusive, and when I read the
epithets of praise which are sometimes lavished, not by the same persons,
on Breton and Watson, I ask myself what we are to say of Spenser and
Shakespere.

Davies has no doubt also suffered from the fact that he had a contemporary
of the same name and surname, who was not only of higher rank, but of
considerably greater powers. Sir John Davies was a Wiltshire man of good
family: his mother, Mary Bennet of Pyt-house, being still represented by
the Benett-Stanfords of Dorsetshire and Brighton. Born about 1569, he was a
member of the University of Oxford, and a Templar; but appears to have been
anything but a docile youth, so that both at Oxford and the Temple he came
to blows with the authorities. He seems, however, to have gone back to
Oxford, and to have resided there till close of middle life; some if not
most of his poems dating thence. He entered Parliament in 1601, and after
figuring in the Opposition during Elizabeth's last years, was taken into
favour, like others in similar circumstances, by James. Immediately after
the latter's accession Davies became a law officer for Ireland, and did
good and not unperilous service there. He was mainly resident in Ireland
for some thirteen years, producing during the time a valuable "Discovery of
the Causes of the Irish Discontent." For the last ten years of his life he
seems to have practised as serjeant-at-law in England, frequently serving
as judge or commissioner of assize, and he died in 1626. His poetical work
consists chiefly of three things, all written before 1600. These are _Nosce
Teipsum_, or the immortality of the soul, in quatrains, and as light as the
unsuitableness of the subject to verse will allow; a singularly clever
collection of acrostics called _Astraea_, all making the name of Elizabetha
Regina; and the _Orchestra_, or poem on dancing, which has made his fame.
Founded as it is on a mere conceit--the reduction of all natural phenomena
to a grave and regulated motion which the author calls dancing--it is one
of the very best poems of the school of Spenser, and in harmony of metre
(the seven-lined stanza) and gr