VOL.  III.

MDCCLIII.

VOLUME III.

Contains the

LIVES

OF

Denham
Killegrew
Howard
Behn, Aphra
Etherege
Mountford
Shadwell
Killegrew, William,
Howard
Flecknoe
Dryden
Sedley
Crowne
Sackville, E. Dorset
Farquhar
Ravenscroft
Philips, John
Walsh
Betterton
Banks
Chudley, Lady
Creech
Maynwaring
Monk, the Hon. Mrs.
Browne Tom. 
Pomfret
King
Sprat, Bishop
Montague, E. Hallifax
Wycherley
Tate
Garth
Rowe
Sheffield, D. Buck. 
Cotton
Additon
Winshelsea, Anne
Gildon
D’Urfey
Settle

  The

  Lives

OF THE

  Poets.

* * * * *

Sir John Denham.

An eminent poet of the 17th century, was the only son of Sir John Denham, knight, of Little Horsley in Essex, and sometime baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, and one of the lords justices of that kingdom.  He was born in Dublin, in the year 1615[1]; but was brought over from thence very young, on his father’s being made one of the barons of the Exchequer in England 1617.

He received his education, in grammar learning, in London; and in Michaelmas term 1631 he was entered a gentleman commoner in Trinity College, Oxford, being then 16 years of age; where, as Wood expresses it, ’being looked upon as a slow dreaming young man, and more addicted to gaming than study, they could never imagine he could ever enrich the world with the issue of his brain, as he afterwards did.’

He remained three years at the university, and having been examined at the public schools, for the degree of bachelor of arts, he entered himself in Lincoln’s-Inn, where he was generally thought to apply himself pretty closely to the study of the common law.  But notwithstanding his application to study, and all the efforts he was capable of making, such was his propensity to gaining, that he was often stript of all his money; and his father severely chiding him, and threatening to abandon him if he did not reform, he wrote a little essay against that vice, and presented it to his father, to convince him of his resolution against it[2].  But no sooner did his father die, than being unrestrained by paternal authority, he reassumed the practice, and soon squandered away several thousand pounds.