While he was dean of Christ’s church, he made verses on a play acted before the King at Woodstock, called Technogamia, or the marriage of Arts, written by Barten Holiday the poet, who afterwards translated Juvenal.  The ill-success it met with in the representation occasioned several copies of verses, among which, to use Anthony Wood’s words, “Corbet dean of Christ’s-church put in for one, who had that day it seems preached before the King, with his band starched clean, for which he was reproved by the graver sort; but those who knew him well took no notice of it, for they have several times said, that he loved to the last boy’s play very well.”  He was elected, 1629, Bishop of Oxford, in the room of Dr. Hewson, translated to the See of Durham.  Upon the promotion of Dr. White to Ely he was elected bishop of Norwich.

This prelate married Alice, daughter of Dr. Leonard Hutton, vicar of Flower in Northamptonshire, and he mentions that village in a poem of his called Iter Boreale, or a Journey Northward.  Our author was in that celebrated class of poets, Ben Johnson, Dr. Donne, Michael Drayton, and others, who wrote mock commendatory verses on Tom Coryate’s [2] Crudities.  He concurred likewise with other poets of the university in inviting Ben Johnson to Oxford, where he was created Master of Arts.  There is extant in the Musaeum Ashmoleanum, a funeral oration in Latin, by Dr. Corbet, on the death of Prince Henry, Anno Dom. 1612;[3] This great man died in the year 1635, and was buried the upper-end of the choir of the cathedral church of Norwich.

He was very hospitable and a generous encourager of all public designs.  When in the year 1634 St. Paul’s cathedral was repaired, he not only contributed himself, but was very diligent in procuring contributions from others.  His works are difficult to be met with, but from such of his poems as we have had occasion to read, he seems to have been a witty, delicate writer, and to have had a particular talent for panegyric.  Wood says, a collection of his poems was published under the title of Poetica Stromata, in 8vo.  London 1647.  In his Iter Boreale, or Journey Northward, we meet with a fine moral reflexion on the burial place of Richard iii. and Cardinal Wolsey, who were both interred at Leicester; with which we shall present the reader as a specimen of his poetry.

  Is not usurping Richard buried here,
  That King of hate, and therefore slave of fear? 
  Dragg’d from the fatal Bosworth field where he,
  Lost life, and what he liv’d for,—­Cruelty: 
  Search, find his name, but there is none:  O Kings,
  Remember whence your power and vastness springs;
  If not as Richard now, so may you be,
  Who hath no tomb, but scorn and memory. 
  And tho’ from his own store, Wolsey might have
  A Palace or a College for his grave,
  Yet here he lies interred, as if that all
  Of him to be remembered were his fall. 
  Nothing but Earth on Earth, no pompous weight
  Upon him, but a pebble or a quoit. 
  If thou art thus neglected, what shall we,
  Hope after death, that are but shreds of thee!