put to their shifts), he was invited by his most noble patron, William Earl, afterwards Duke, of Newcastle, to take his fortune with him in the wars, an invitation which he readily accepted; "for that count had engaged him so much by his generous liberality towards him, that he thought he could not do a worthier act than to serve him, and so consequently his prince." Wood adds, "Shirley did much assist the Duke in the composure of certain plays which the Duke afterwards published ;" and Dyce cites, in confirmation, so far, of this statement, a drinking song, which, inserted in the Duke's comedy called The Country Captain, is printed among our author's poems. Upon the decline of the king's cause Shirley returned to London, where, among other friends, he found Thomas Stanley, author of the Lives of the Philosophers, who supported him for awhile. The acting of plays being prohibited, he resumed his old occupation of teaching in Whitefriars, where he "not only gained a comfortable subsistence, but educated many ingenious youths, who afterwards proved most eminent in divers faculties." The Restoration does not appear to have ameliorated the condition of Shirley any more than it bettered that of hundreds of other deserving men, and who had merited the gratitude of royalty. "After his Majesty's return to his kingdom," writes Wood, "several of his plays which he before had made were acted with good applause; but what office or employment he had conferred upon him, after all his sufferings, I cannot justly tell." The fact is, that he received no office or employment at all; and having, in 1659, in publishing his Honoria and Mammon, declared, "it is now made public to satisfy the importunity of my friends; I will only add, it is likely to be the last, for, in my resolve, nothing of this nature shall after this engage either my pen or invention." He adhered to this resolution, and continued to earn a livelihood by teaching his little school; while a degenerate race of playrights arose to delight with bombast and obscenity a tasteless and licentious age. "Our author," proceeds Wood, was a drudge for John Ogilby in his translation of Homer's Iliads and Odysses, and some of Virgil's works into English verse, with the writing of annotations on them. At length, after Shirley had lived in various conditions, and had seen much of the world, he, with his second wife Frances, were driven by the dismal conflagration that happened in London, an. 1666, from their habitation near to Fleet Street, into the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, in Middlesex, where being in a manner overcome with affrightments, disconsolations, and other miseries, occasioned by that fire and their losses, they both died within the compass of a natural day; whereupon their bodies were buried in one grave in the yard belonging to the said church of St.

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Giles's, on 29th October, 1666." To the blameless tenour of his life, adds Mr. Dyce, there is abundant contemporary testimony: gentle, modest, and full of sensibility, he seems to have conciliated the affection of all his associates. His orphan children were most probably thrown destitute on the world. The situation of butler in Furnival's. Inn was occupied by one of his sons in Wood's time.

ROBERT DAVENPORT.

(Born circa 1595.)

Robert Davenport, a dramatic poet of the reigns of James I. and Charles I., seems, from a passage in one of his productions, to have spent some time at sea; and this is all we know of his personal history. As a writer, he made his appearance in 1624, when, on the 10th April, he had license given him for his play, The Historie of Henry the First. On the 24th October, of the same year, his City Night Cap, or Crede quod habeas et habes, a tragedy, was licensed for the Cockpit Theatre. In 1625 he published two poems of a very grave caste, the one entitled A Crown for a Conqueror, from Rev. xx., the other, 66 Too late to call backe Yesterday, and To-morrow comes not yet. The words fancied in a dialogue, supposed betweene a lover and the day." Next appeared "a pleasant and witty comedy called a New Tricke to cheat the Devil" (1639), a production of very great merit. Before 1651 he produced another play, The Pirate; in 1655 was printed (it had been acted for some years previously,) "King John and Matilda, a tragedy, as it was acted with great applause by her Majestie's servants at the Cockpit in Drury Lane." This play was published by Andrew Pennycuicke, one of the performers, who tells us that he was the last male actor who performed the part of Matilda, women actors having been introduced upon the stage about the date when the play was first performed. Davenport is also stated to have been the author of the following plays :

The Fatal Brothers.

The Politic Queen.

The Pedlar.

Henry II.

And, in conjunction with Thomas Drue, The Woman's Mistaken.

THOMAS STORER.

(Died 1604.)

It was the observant remark of the antiquary Hearne, that our poets of earlier times, for the most part, kept close to truth, and did not think it for their credit and reputation to corrupt matter of fact with the additions of fancy and fable. It is for that reason, he adds, that Storer's book of the Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, written in English verse, and printed at London in 1599, was much esteemed and cried up. Oldys, in his catalogue of the Harleian Miscellany pamphlets, concurs in this sentiment of Hearne. The author of the book thus commended, Thomas Storer, was the son of John Storer, a Londoner, and was elected a student of Christchurch, Oxford, in 1587. He completed the degree of M.A. in 1594; at which time, says Wood, he was had in great renown for his most excellent vein in poesy, not only expressed in verses printed in several books made occasionally by the members of the University, but for that written in English verse, entitled The Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, Cardinall. He died at London, in November 1604. Most of the biographical incidents selected by Storer for this, his magnum opus, accord with Cavendish's prose life of the great cardinal. The value of the poem, therefore, which is praised for its elegant verse by Bishop Nicholson, is heightened by its fidelity as an historical record. Malone was of opinion that the work might have suggested a subject to Shakespeare for his play of Henry the Eighth.

ELIZABETH MELVILL.
(Born circa 1570.)

This poetess, who enjoyed the courtesy title of Lady Culross, and who is extolled by Alexander Hume as a most successful cultivator of sacred poetry, is the authoress of "Ane Godlie Dream, compylit in Scottish Meter, by M (rs.) M (elvill), gentelwoman in Culross. Edinb. 1603." A later edition bears this title, "A Godly Dream, by Elizabeth Melvill, Lady Culross, younger, at the request of a speciall friend. Aberdeen, imprinted by E. Raban, laird of letters, 1644."