The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume I Part 8

was born in London, and educated at Pembroke Hall in Cambridge. The accounts of the birth and family of this great man are but obscure and imperfect, and at his first setting out into life, his fortune and interest seem to have been very inconsiderable.

After he had for some time continued at the college, and laid that foundation of learning, which, joined to his natural genius, qualified him to rise to so great an excellency, he stood for a fellows.h.i.+p, in compet.i.tion with Mr. Andrews, a gentleman in holy orders, and afterwards lord bishop of Winchester, in which he was unsuccessful.

This disappointment, joined with the narrowness of his circ.u.mstances, forced him to quit the university [1]; and we find him next residing at the house of a friend in the North, where he fell in love with his Rosalind, whom he finely celebrates in his pastoral poems, and of whose cruelty he has written such pathetical complaints.

It is probable that about this time Spenser's genius began first to distinguish itself; for the Shepherd's Calendar, which is so full of his unprosperous pa.s.sion for Rosalind, was amongst the first of his works of note, and the supposition is strengthened, by the consideration of Poetry's being frequently the offspring of love and retirement. This work he addressed by a short dedication to the Maecenas of his age, the immortal Sir Philip Sidney. This gentleman was now in the highest reputation, both for wit and gallantry, and the most popular of all the courtiers of his age, and as he was himself a writer, and especially excelled in the fabulous or inventive part of poetry; it is no wonder he was struck with our author's genius, and became sensible of his merit. A story is told of him by Mr. Hughes, which I shall present the reader, as it serves to ill.u.s.trate the great worth and penetration of Sidney, as well as the excellent genius of Spenser. It is said that our poet was a stranger to this gentleman, when he began to write his Fairy Queen, and that he took occasion to go to Leicester-house, and introduce himself by sending in to Mr.

Sidney a copy of the ninth Canto of the first book of that poem.

Sidney was much surprized with the description of despair in that Canto, and is said to have shewn an unusual kind of transport on the discovery of so new and uncommon a genius. After he had read some stanza's, he turned to his steward, and bid him give the person that brought those verses fifty pounds; but upon reading the next stanza, he ordered the sum to be doubled. The steward was no less surprized than his master, and thought it his duty to make some delay in executing so sudden and lavish a bounty; but upon reading one stanza stanza more, Mr. Sidney raised the gratuity to two hundred pounds, and commanded the steward to give it immediately, lest as he read further he might be tempted to give away his whole estate. From this time he admitted the author to his acquaintance and conversation, and prepared the way for his being known and received at court.

Tho' this seemed a promising omen, to be thus introduced to court, yet he did not instantly reap any advantage from it. He was indeed created poet laureat to Queen Elizabeth, but he for some time wore a barren laurel, and possessed only the place without the pension [2]. Lord treasurer Burleigh, under whose displeasure Spenser laboured, took care to intercept the Queen's favours to this unhappy great man. As misfortunes have the most influence on elegant and polished minds, so it was no wonder that Spenser was much depressed by the cold reception he met with from the great; a circ.u.mstance which not a little detracts from the merit of the ministers then in power: for I know not if all the political transactions of Burleigh, are sufficient to counterballance the infamy affixed on his name, by prosecuting resentment against distressed merit, and keeping him who was the ornament of the times, as much distant as possible from the approach of competence. These discouragements greatly sunk our author's spirit, and accordingly we find him pouring out his heart, in complaints of so injurious and undeserved a treatment; which probably, would have been less unfortunate to him, if his n.o.ble patron Sir Philip Sidney had not been so much absent from court, as by his employments abroad, and the share he had in the Low-Country wars, he was obliged to be. In a poem called, The Ruins of Time, which was written some time after Sidney's death, the author seems to allude to the discouragement I have mentioned in the following stanza.

O grief of griefs, O gall of all good hearts!

To see that virtue should despised be, Of such as first were raised for virtue's parts, And now broad-spreading like an aged tree, Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be; O let not these, of whom the muse is scorned, Alive or dead be by the muse adorned.

These lines are certainly meant to reflect on Burleigh for neglecting him, and the Lord Treasurer afterwards conceived a hatred towards him for the satire he apprehended was levelled at him in Mother Hubbard's Tale. In this poem, the author has in the most lively manner, painted out the misfortune of depending on court favours. The lines which follow are among others very remarkable.

Full little knowest thou, that hast not try'd, What h.e.l.l it is in suing long to bide, To dole good days, that nights be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers, To have thy asking, yet wait many years.

To fret thy soul with crosses, and with care.

To eat thy heart, thro' comfortless despair; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.

As this was very much the author's case, it probably was the particular pa.s.sage in that poem which gave offence; for as Hughes very elegantly observes, even the sighs of a miserable man, are sometimes resented as an affront, by him who is the occasion of them. There is a little story, which seems founded on the grievance just now mentioned, and is related by some as a matter of fact [3] commonly reported at that time. It is said, that upon his presenting some poems to the Queen, she ordered him a gratuity of one hundred pounds, but the Lord Treasurer Burleigh objecting to it, said with some scorn of the poet, of whose merit he was totally ignorant, "What, all this for a song?"

The queen replied, "Then give him what is reason." Spenser for some time waited, but had the mortification to find himself disappointed of her Majesty's bounty. Upon this he took a proper opportunity to present a paper to Queen Elizabeth in the manner of a pet.i.tion, in which he reminded her of the order she had given, in the following lines.

I was promised on a time To have reason for my rhime, From that time, unto this season I received nor rhime, nor reason.

This paper produced the intended effect, and the Queen, after sharply reproving the treasurer, immediately directed the payment of the hundred pounds the had first ordered. In the year 1579 he was sent abroad by the Earl of Leicester, as appears by a copy of Latin verses dated from Leicester-house, and addressed to his friend Mr. Harvey; but Mr. Hughes has not been able to determine in what service we was employed. When the Lord Grey of Wilton was chosen Deputy of Ireland, Spenser was recommended to him as secretary. This drew him over to another kingdom, and settled him in a scene of life very different from what he had formerly known; but, that he understood, and discharged his employment with skill and capacity, appears sufficiently by his discourse on the state of Ireland, in which there are many solid and judicious remarks, that shew him no less qualified for the business of the state, than for the entertainment of the muses. His life was now freed from the difficulties under which it had hitherto struggled, and his services to the Crown received a reward of a grant from Queen Elizabeth of 3000 Acres of land in the county of Cork. His house was in Kilcolman, and the river Mulla, which he has more than once so finely introduced in his poems, ran through his grounds. Much about this time, he contracted an intimate friends.h.i.+p with the great and learned Sir Walter Raleigh, who was then a captain under the lord Grey. The poem of Spenser's, called Colin Clouts come home again, in which Sir Walter Raleigh is described under the name of the Shepherd of the Ocean, is a beautiful memorial of this friends.h.i.+p, which took its rise from a similarity of taste in the polite arts, and which he agreeably describes with a softness and delicacy peculiar to him. Sir Walter afterwards promoted him in Queen Elizabeth's esteem, thro' whose recommendation she read his writings. He now fell in love a second time with a merchant's daughter, in which, says Mrs. Cooper, author of the muses library, he was more successful than in his first amour. He wrote upon this occasion a beautiful epithalamium, with which he presented the lady on the bridal-day, and has consigned that day, and her, to immortality. In this pleasant easy situation our excellent poet finished the celebrated poem of The Fairy Queen, which was begun and continued at different intervals of time, and of which he at first published only the three first books; to these were added three more in a following edition, but the six last books (excepting the two canto's of mutability) were unfortunately lost by his servant whom he had in haste sent before him into England; for tho' he pa.s.sed his life for some time very serenely here, yet a train of misfortunes still pursued him, and in the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond he was plundered and deprived of his estate. This distress forced him to return to England, where for want of his n.o.ble patron Sir Philip Sidney, he was plunged into new calamities, as that gallant Hero died of the wounds he received at Zutphen. It is said by Mr. Hughes, that Spenser survived his patron about twelve years, and died the same year with his powerful enemy the Lord Burleigh, 1598. He was buried, says he, in Westminster-Abbey, near the famous Geoffery Chaucer, as he had desired; his obsequies were attended by the poets of that time, and others, who paid the last honours to his memory. Several copies of verses were thrown after him into his grave, and his monument was erected at the charge of the famous Robert Devereux, the unfortunate Earl of Ess.e.x. This is the account given by his editor, of the death of Spenser, but there is some reason to believe that he spoke only upon imagination, as he has produced no authority to support his opinion, especially as I find in a book of great reputation, another opinion, delivered upon probable grounds. The ingenious Mr.

Drummond of Hawthronden, a n.o.ble wit of Scotland, had an intimate correspondence with all the genius's of his time who resided at London, particularly the famous Ben Johnson, who had so high an opinion of Mr. Drummond's abilities, that he took a journey into Scotland in order to converse with him, and stayed some time at his house at Hawthronden. After Ben Johnson departed, Mr. Drummond, careful to retain what past betwixt them, wrote down the heads of their conversation; which is published amongst his poems and history of the five James's Kings of Scotland. Amongst other particulars there is this. "Ben Johnson told me that Spenser's goods were robbed by the Irish in Desmond's rebellion, his house and a little child of his burnt, and he and his wife nearly escaped; that he afterwards died in King-street [4] by absolute want of bread; and that he refused twenty pieces sent him by the Earl of Ess.e.x [5], and gave this answer to the person who brought them, that he was sure he had no time to spend them."

Mr. Drummond's works, from whence I have extracted the above, are printed in a thin quarto, and may be seen at Mr. Wilson's at Plato's Head in the Strand. I have been thus particular in the quotation, that no one may suspect such extraordinary circ.u.mstances to be advanced upon imagination. In the inscription on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, it is said he was born in the year 1510, and died 1596; Cambden says 1598, but in regard to his birth they must both be mistaken, for it is by no means probable he was born so early as 1510, if we judge by the remarkable circ.u.mstance of his standing for a fellows.h.i.+p in compet.i.tion with Mr. Andrews, who was not born according to Hughes till 1555. Besides, if this account of his birth be true, he must have been sixty years old when he first published his Shepherd's Calendar, an age not very proper for love; and in this case it is no wonder, that the beautiful Rosalind slighted his addresses; and he must have been seventy years old when he entered into business under lord Grey, who was created deputy in Ireland 1580: for which reasons we may fairly conclude, that the inscription is false, either by the error of the carver, or perhaps it was put on when the monument was repaired.

There are very few particulars of this great poet, and it must be a mortification to all lovers of the Muses, that no more can be found concerning the life of one who was the greatest ornament of his profession. No writer ever found a nearer way to the heart than he, and his verses have a peculiar happiness of recommending the author to our friends.h.i.+p as well as raising our admiration; one cannot read him without fancying oneself transported into Fairy Land, and there conversing with the Graces, in that enchanted region: In elegance of thinking and fertility of imagination, few of our English authors have approached him, and no writers have such power as he to awake the spirit of poetry in others. Cowley owns that he derived inspiration from him; and I have heard the celebrated Mr. James Thomson, the author of the Seasons, and justly esteemed one of our best descriptive poets, say, that he formed himself upon Spenser; and how closely he pursued the model, and how n.o.bly he has imitated him, whoever reads his Castle of Indolence with taste, will readily confess.

Mr. Addison, in his characters of the English Poets, addressed to Mr.

Sacheverel, thus speaks of Spenser:

Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage, In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age; An age, that yet uncultivate and rude, Where-e'er the poet's fancy led, pursued Thro' pathless fields, and unfrequented floods, To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods.

But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of yore, Can charm an understanding age no more; The long spun allegories, fulsome grow, While the dull moral lyes too plain below.

We view well pleased at distance, all the sights, Of arms, and palfries, battles, fields, and fights, And damsels in distress, and courteous knights.

But when we look too near, the shades decay, And all the pleasing landscape fades away.

It is agreed on all hands, that the distresses of our author helped to shorten his days, and indeed, when his extraordinary merit is considered, he had the hardest measure of any of our poets. It appears from different accounts, that he was of an amiable sweet disposition, humane and generous in his nature. Besides the Fairy Queen, we find he had written several other pieces, of which we can only trace out the t.i.tles. Among these, the most considerable were nine comedies, in imitation of the comedies of his admired Ariosto, inscribed with the names of the Nine Muses. The rest which are mentioned in his letters, and those of his friends, are his Dying Pelicane, his Pageants, Stemmata Dudleyana, the Canticles paraphrazed, Ecclesiastes, Seven Psalms, Hours of our Lord, Sacrifice of a Sinner, Purgatory, a S'ennight Slumber, the Court of Cupid, and h.e.l.l of Lovers. It is likewise said, he had written a treatise in prose called the English Poet: as for the Epithalamion Thamesis, and his Dreams, both mentioned by himself in one of his letters, Mr. Hughes thinks they are still preserved, tho' under different names. It appears from what is said of the Dreams by his friend Mr. Harvey, that they were in imitation of Petrarch's Visions.

To produce authorities in favour of Spenser, as a poet. I should reckon an affront to his memory; that is a tribute which I shall only pay to inferior wits, whose highest honour it is to be mentioned with respect, by genius's of a superior cla.s.s. The works of Spenser will never perish, tho' he has introduced unnecessarily many obsolete terms into them; there is a flow of poetry, an elegance of sentiment, a fund of imagination, and an enchanting enthusiasm which will ever secure him the applauses of posterity while any lovers of poetry remain.

We find little account of the family which Spenser left behind him, only that in a few particulars of his life prefixed to the last folio edition of his works, it is said that his great grandson Hugolin Spenser, after the restoration of king Charles II. was restored by the court of claims to so much of the lands as could be found to have been his ancestors; there is another remarkable pa.s.sage of which (says Hughes) I can give the reader much better a.s.surance: that a person came over from Ireland, in King William's time, to sollicit the same affair, and brought with him letters of recommendation, as a defendant of Spenser. His name procured him a favourable reception, and he applied himself particularly to Mr. Congreve, by whom he was generously recommended to the favour of the earl of Hallifax, who was then at the head of the treasury; and by that means he obtained his suit. This man was somewhat advanced in years, and might be the same mentioned before, who had possibly recovered only some part of his estate at first, or had been disturbed in the possession of it. He could give no account of the works of his ancestor, which are wanting, and which are therefore in all probability irrecoverably lost.

The following stanzas are said to be those with which Sir Philip Sidney was first struck.

From him returning, sad and comfortless, As on the way together we did fare, We met that villain (G.o.d from him me bless) That cursed wight, from whom I 'scaped whylear, A man of h.e.l.l that calls himself despair; Who first us greets, and after fair areeds Of tidings strange, and of adventures rare: So creeping close, as snake in hidden weeds, Inquireth of our states, and of our Knight'y deeds.

Which when he knew, and felt our feeble hearts Emboss'd with bale, and bitter-biting grief, Which love had launced with his deadly darts, With wounding words, and terms of foul reprief, He plucked from us all hope of due relief; That erst us held in love of ling'ring life; Then hopeless, heartless, 'gan the cunning thief Persuade us die, to stint all further strife: To me he lent this rope, to him a rusty knife.

The following is the picture.

The darksome cave they enter, where they find, That cursed man, low sitting on the ground, Musing full sadly in his sullen mind; His greasy locks, long growing and unbound, Disordered hung about his shoulders round, And hid his face; through which his hollow eyne, Look'd deadly dull, and stared as astound; His raw bone cheeks thro' penury and pine, Were shrunk into his jaws, as he did never dine,

His garments nought, but many ragged clouts, With thorns together pinn'd and patched was, The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts; And him beside, there lay upon the gra.s.s A dreary corse, whose life away did pa.s.s, All wallowed in his own, yet luke-warm blood, That from his wound yet welled fresh alas; In which a rusty knife fast fixed stood, And made an open pa.s.sage for the gus.h.i.+ng flood.

It would perhaps be an injury to Spenser to dismiss his Life without a few remarks on that great work of his which has placed him among the foremost of our poets, and discovered so elevated and sublime a genius. The work I mean is his allegorical poem of the Fairy Queen.

Sir William Temple in his essay on poetry, says, "that the religion of the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient poetry with an agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to give that of christianity a place also in their poems; but the true religion was not found to become fict.i.tious so well as the false one had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed, rather to debase religion than heighten poetry. Spenser endeavoured to supply this with morality, and to make instruction, instead of story the subject of an epic poem. His execution was excellent, and his flights of fancy very n.o.ble and high. But his design was poor; and his moral lay so bare, that it lost the effect. It is true, the pill was gilded, but so thin that the colour and the taste were easily discovered.--Mr. Rymer a.s.serts, that Spenser may be reckoned the first of our heroic poets.

He had a large spirit, a sharp judgment, and a genius for heroic poetry, perhaps above any that ever wrote since Virgil, but our misfortune is, he wanted a true idea, and lost himself by following an unfaithful guide. Tho' besides Homer and Virgil he had read Ta.s.so, yet he rather suffered himself to be misled by Ariosto, with whom blindly rambling on marvels and adventures, he makes no conscience of probability; all is fanciful and chimerical, without any uniformity, or without any foundation in truth; in a word his poem is perfect Fairy-Land. Thus far Sir William Temple, and Mr. Rymer; let us now attend to the opinion of a greater name. Mr. Dryden in his dedication of Juvenal, thus proceeds: The English have only to boast of Spenser and Milton in heroic poetry, who neither of them wanted either genius or learning to have been perfect poets, and yet both of them are liable to many censures; for there is no uniformity in the design of Spenser; he aims at the accomplishment of no one action; he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without subordination or preference: Every one is valiant in his own legend; only we must do him the justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is the character of prince Arthur, s.h.i.+nes throughout the whole poem, and succours the rest when they are in distress. The original of every knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth; and he attributed to each of them that virtue which he thought was most conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of flattery, tho' it turned not much to his account. Had he lived to finish his poem in the remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but could not have been perfect because the model was not true. But prince Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit to accomplish his design.

For the rest, his obsolete language, and ill choice of his stanza, are faults both of the second magnitude; for notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice, and for the last he is more to be admired, that labouring under such disadvantages, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he has professedly imitated, has surpa.s.sed him among the Romans, and only Waller among the English."

Mr. Hughes in his essay on allegorical poetry prefixed to Spenser's works, tells us, that this poem is conceived, wrought up, and coloured with stronger fancy, and discovers more the particular genius of Spenser, than any of his other writings; and having observed that Spenser in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh calls it, a continued allegory, or dark conceit, he gives us some remarks on allegorical poetry in general, defining allegory to be a fable or story, in which, under imaginary persons or things, is shadowed some real action or instructive moral, or as I think, says he, it is somewhere very shortly defined by. Plutarch; it is that, in which one thing is, related, and another thing understood; it is a kind of poetical picture, or hieroglyphick, which by its apt resemblance, conveys instruction to the mind, by an a.n.a.logy to the senses, and so amuses the fancy while it informs the understanding. Every allegory has therefore two senses, the literal and mystical, the literal sense is like a dream or vision, of which the mystical sense is the true meaning, or interpretation. This will be more clearly apprehended by considering, that as a simile is a more extended metaphor, so an allegory is a kind of continued simile, or an a.s.semblage of similitudes drawn out at full length.

The chief merit of this poem, no doubt, consists in that surprising vein of fabulous invention, which runs through it, and enriches it every where with imagery and descriptions, more than we meet with in any other modern poem. The author seems to be possessed of a kind of poetical magic, and the figures he calls up to our view rise so thick upon us, that we are at once pleased and distracted with the exhaustless variety of them; so that his faults may in a manner be imputed to his excellencies. His abundance betrays him into excess, and his judgment is over-born by the torrent of his imagination. That which seems the most liable to exception in this work is the model of it, and the choice the author has made of so romantic a story. The several books rather appear like so many several poems, than one entire fable. Each of them has its peculiar knight, and is independent of the rest; and tho' some of the persons make their appearance in different books, yet this has very little effect in concealing them.

Prince Arthur is indeed the princ.i.p.al person, and has therefore a share given him in every legend; but his part is not considerable enough in any one of them. He appears and vanishes again like a spirit, and we lose sight of him too soon to consider him as the hero of the poem. These are the most obvious defects in the fable of the Fairy Queen. The want of unity in the story makes it difficult for the reader to carry it in his mind, and distracts too much his attention to the several parts of it; and indeed the whole frame of it would appear monstrous, were it to be examined by the rules of epic poetry, as they have been drawn from the practice of Homer and Virgil; but as it is plain, the author never designed it by these rules, I think it ought rather to be called a poem of a particular kind, describing in a series of allegorical adventures, or episodes, the most noted virtues and vices. To compare it therefore with the models of antiquity, would be like drawing a parallel between the Roman and Gothic architecture.

In the first, there is doubtless a more natural grandeur and simplicity; in the latter, we find great mixtures of beauty and barbarism, yet a.s.sisted by the invention of a variety of inferior ornaments; and tho' the former is more majestic in the whole, the latter may be very surprizing and agreeable in its parts.

[Footnote 1: Hughes's Life of Spencer, prefixed to the edition of our author's works.]

[Footnote 2: Hughes ubi supra,]

[Footnote 3: Winst. p. 88.]

[Footnote 4: Dublin]

[Footnote 5: The General of the English army in Ireland.]

JASPER HEYWOOD,

the son of the celebrated epigramatist, was born in London, and in the 12th year of his age, 1517, was sent to the University, where he was educated in grammar and logic. In 1553 he took a degree in Arts, and was immediately elected Probationer fellow of Merton College, where he gained a superiority over all his fellow students in disputations at the public school. Wood informs us, that upon a third admonition, from the warden and society of that house, he resigned his fellows.h.i.+p, to prevent expulsion, on the 4th of April, 1558; he had been guilty of several misdemeanors, such as are peculiar to youth, wildness and rakishness, which in those days it seems were very severely punished.

Soon after this he quitted England, and entered himself into the society of Jesus at St. Omer's [1]; but before he left his native country, he writ and translated (says Wood), these things following.

Various Poems and Devices; some of which are printed in a book called the Paradise of Dainty Devices, 1574, 4to.

Hercules Furens, a Tragedy, which some have imputed to Seneca, and others have denied to be his, but it is thought by most learned men to be an imitation of that play of Euripides, which bears the same name, and tho, in contrivance and economy, they differ in some things, yet in others they agree, and Scaliger scruples not to prefer the Latin to the Greek Tragedy [2].

Troas, a Tragedy of Seneca's, which the learned Farnaby, and Daniel Heinsius very much commend; the former stiling it a divine tragedy, the other preferring it to one of the same name by Euripides, both in language and contrivance, but especially he says it far exceeds it in the chorus. In this tragedy the author has taken the liberty of adding several things, and altering others, as thinking the play imperfect: First as to the additions, he has at the end of the chorus after the first act, added threescore verses of his own invention: In the beginning of the second act he has added a whole scene, where he introduces the ghost of Achilles rising from h.e.l.l, to require the sacrifice of Polyxena! to the chorus of this act he added three stanza's. As to his alterations, instead of translating the chorus of the third act, which is wholly taken up with the names of foreign countries, the translation of which without notes he thought would be tiresome to the English reader, he has subst.i.tuted in its stead another chorus of his own invention. This tragedy runs in verses of fourteen syllables, and for the most part his chorus is writ in verse of ten syllables, which is called heroic.

Thyestes, another tragedy of Seneca's, which in the judgment of Hiensius, is not inferior to any other of his dramatic pieces. Our author translated this play when he was at Oxford; it is wrote in the same manner of verse as the other, only the chorus is written in alternate rhime. The translator has added a scene at the end of the fifth act, spoken by Thyestes alone; in which he bewails his misery, and implores Heaven's vengeance on Atreus. These plays are printed in a black letter in 4to. 1581.

Langbain observes, that tho' he cannot much commend the version of Heywood, as poetically elegant, as he has chosen a measure of fourteen syllables, which ever sounds harsh to the ears of those that are used to heroic poetry, yet, says he, I must do the author this justice, to acquaint the world, that he endeavours to give Seneca's sense, and likewise to imitate his verse, changing his measure, as often as his author, the chorus of each act being different from the act itself, as the reader may observe, by comparing the English copy with the Latin original.