e chiefly felt in youth,
and hence the predominant mode of a poet's utterance will be determined
by what and where and amongst whom he was during that season. The kinds
of the various poems will therefore probably fall into natural sequence
rather after the dates of the youth of the writers than after the years
in which they were written.

Wotton was better known in his day as a politician than as a poet, and
chiefly in ours as the subject of one of Izaak Walton's biographies.
Something of artistic instinct, rather than finish, is evident in his
verses. Here is the best and the best-known of the few poems recognized
as his:

THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE.

How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And silly truth his highest skill;

Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied to the world with care
Of prince's grace or vulgar breath;

Who hath his life from humours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make accusers great;

Who envieth none whom chance doth raise
Or vice; who never understood
How swords give slighter wounds than praise.
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend.

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

Some of my readers will observe that in many places I have given a
reading different from that in the best-known copy of the poem. I have
followed a manuscript in the handwriting of Ben Jonson.[70] I cannot
tell whether Jonson has put the master's hand to the amateur's work, but
in every case I find his reading the best.

Sir John Davies must have been about fifteen years younger than Sir Fulk
Grevill. He was born in 1570, was bred a barrister, and rose to high
position through the favour of James I.--gained, it is said, by the poem
which the author called _Nosce Teipsum_,[71] but which is generally
entitled _On the Immortality of the Soul_, intending by _immortality_ the
spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence. It is
a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by
means