Jonathan; intended to be an Heroic Poem, but the first Book of it is only extant.  He wrote all these Poems in the Ottavo Rima of Tasso, or a Stanza of eight lines, six interwoven, and a Couplet in Base.  His Plays and Poems were all printed together in folio, under the title of Recreations with the Muses, 1637, and dedicated to the King.

The earl of Stirling lived in friendship with the most eminent wits of his time, except Ben Johnson, who complained that he was neglected by him; but there are no particulars preserved concerning any quarrel between them.

My lord seems to have often a peculiar inclination to punning, but this was the characteristic vice of the times.  That he could sometimes write in a very elegant strain will appear by the following lines, in which he describes love.

  Love is a joy, which upon pain depends;
  A drop of sweet, drowned in a sea of sours: 
  What folly does begin, that fury ends;
  They hate for ever, who have lov’d for hours.

[Footnote 1:  Crawford’s Peerage of Scotland.]

[Footnote 2:  Crawford, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 3:  Langbaire.]

* * * * *

Joseph hall, Bishop of Norwich.

This prelate was born, according to his own account, July 11, 1574, in Bristow-Park, within the parish of Ashby de la Zouch, a town in Leicestershire.[1] His father was an officer under Henry Earl of Huntingdon, president of the North, who from his infancy had devoted him to the service of the church; and his mother, whom he has celebrated for her exemplary and distinguished piety, was extremely sollicitous that her favourite son would be of a profession, she herself held so much in veneration.  Our author, who seems to have been very credulous in his disposition, rather religious than wise, or possessing any attainments equal to the dignity to which he rose, has preserved in his Specialities, some visions of his mother’s, which he relates with an air of seriousness, sufficient to evidence his own conviction of their reality; but as they appear to have been the offspring of a disordered imagination, they have no right to a place here.

In order to train him up to the ministry, his father at first resolved to place him under the care of one Mr. Pelset, lately come from Cambridge to be the public preacher at Leicester, who undertook to give him an education equally finished with that of the university, and by these means save much expence to his father:  This resolution, however, was not executed, some other friends advising his father to send him to Cambridge, and persuaded him that no private tuition could possibly be equal to that of the academical.  When our author had remained six years at Cambridge, he had a right to preferment, and to stand for a fellowship, had not his tutor Mr. Gilby been born in the same county with him, and the statutes not permitting two of the