The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) eBook

Theodore Watts-Dunton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 363 pages of information about The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753).

The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) eBook

Theodore Watts-Dunton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 363 pages of information about The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753).

From a Comedy of Mr. Cartwright’s called the Ordinary, I shall quote the following Congratulatory Song on a Marriage, which is amorous, and spirited.

  I.
  While early light springs from the skies,
  A fairer from your bride doth rise;
  A brighter day doth thence appear,
  And make a second morning there. 
  Her blush doth shed
  All o’er the bed
  Clear shame-faced beams
  That spread in streams,
  And purple round the modest air.

  II. 
  I will not tell what shrieks and cries,
  What angry pishes, and what fies,
  What pretty oaths, then newly born,
  The list’ning bridegroom heard there sworn: 
  While froward she
  Most peevishly
  Did yielding fight,
  To keep o’er night,
  What she’d have proffer’d you e’re morn.

  III. 
  For, we know, maids do refute
  To grant what they do come to lose. 
  Intend a conquest, you that wed;
  They would be chastly ravished;
  Not any kiss
  From Mrs. Pris,
  ’If that you do
  Persuade and woo: 
  No, pleasure’s by extorting fed.

  IV. 
  O may her arms wax black and blue
  Only by hard encircling you: 
  May she round about you twine
  Like the easy twisting vine;
  And while you sip
  From her full lip
  Pleasures as new
  As morning dew,
  Like those soft tyes, your hearts combine.

[Footnote 1:  Memoirs, p. 422.]

[Footnote 2:  Atheniae Oxon. p. 274.]

[Footnote 3:  ibid. vol. ii. col. 34.]

[Footnote 4:  Athen.  Oxon. col. 35.]

[Footnote 5:  Preface to his Poems in 8vo.  London, 1651.]

[Footnote 6:  Wood.]

* * * * *

GEORGE SANDYS,

A younger son of Edwin, Archbishop of York, was born at Bishops Thorp in that county, and as a member of St. Mary’s Hall, was matriculated in the university in the beginning of December 1589; how long he remained at the university Wood is not able to determine.  In the year 1610 he began a long journey, and after he had travelled through several parts of Europe, he visited many cities, especially Constantinople, and countries under the Turkish empire, as Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land[1].  Afterwards he took a view of the remote parts of Italy, and the Islands adjoining:  Then he went to Rome; the antiquities of that place were shewn him by Nicholas Fitzherbert, once an Oxford student, and who had the honour of Mr. Sandys’s acquaintance.  Thence our author went to Venice, and from that returned to England, where digesting his notes, he published his travels.  Sandys, who appears to have been a man of excellent parts, of a pious and generous disposition, did not, like too many travellers, turn his attention upon the modes of dress, and the fashions of the several courts which is but a poor acquisition; but he studied

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The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.