of all translations was the worst.  He said Donne was originally a poet; his grandfather on the mother’s side, was Heywood the epigramatist.  That Donne for not being understood would perish.  He affirmed, that Donne wrote all his best pieces before he was twenty years of age.  He told Donne, that his Anniversary was prophane, and fall of blasphemies, that if it had been written on the virgin Mary it had been tolerable.  To which Donne answered, that he described the idea of a woman but not as she was.  That Sir Walter Raleigh esteemed fame more than conscience; the best wits in England were employed in making his history.  Ben himself had written a piece to him on the Punic war, which he altered and put in his book.  He said there was no such ground for an heroic poem, as King Arthur’s fiction, and Sir Philip Sidney had an intention of turning all his Arcadia to the stories of King Arthur.  He said Owen was a poor pedantic school-master, sucking his living from the posteriors of little children, and has nothing good in him, his epigrams being bare narrations.  He loved Fletcher, Beaumont and Chapman.  That Sir William Alexander was not half kind to him, and neglected him because a friend to Drayton.  That Sir R. Ayton loved him dearly; he fought several times with Marston, and says that Marston wrote his father in Law’s preachings, and his father in law his comedies.”

Mr. Drummond has represented the character of our author in a very disadvantageous, though perhaps not in a very unjust light.  “That he was a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others, rather chusing to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which was one of the elements in which he lived; a dissembler of the parts which reigned in him; a bragger of some good that he wanted:  he thought nothing right, but what either himself or some of his friends had said or done.  He was passionately kind and angry; careless either to gain or to keep, vindictive, but if he was well answered, greatly chagrined; interpreting the best sayings and deeds often to the worst.  He was for any religion, being versed in all; his inventions were smooth and easy, but above all he excelled in translation.  In short, he was in his personal character the very reverse of Shakespear, as surly, ill-natured, proud and disagreeable, as Shakespear with ten times his merit was gentle, good-natured, easy and amiable.”  He had a very strong memory; for he tells himself in his discoveries that he could in his youth have repeated all that he had ever written, and so continued till he was past forty; and even after that he could have repeated whole books that he had read, and poems of some select friends, which he thought worth remembring.