Note 414 — TO MY HONOURED FRIEND MASTER THOMAS MAY,

"Carew was the younger brother of a good family, and of excellent parts, and had spent many years of his youth in France and Italy; and, returning from travel, followed the court, which the modesty of that time disposed men to do sometime, before they pretended to be of it; and he was very much esteemed by the most eminent persons in the court, and well looked upon by the king himself, some years before he could obtain to be sewer to the king; and when the king conferred that place upon him, it was not without the regret even of the whole Scotch nation, which united themselves in recommending another gentleman to it; and of so great value were those relations held in that age, when majesty was beheld with the reverence it ought to be. He was a person of a pleasant and facetious wit, and made many poems, especially in the amorous way, which, for the sharpness of the fancy, and the elegancy of the language in which that fancy was spread, were at least equal, if not superior, to any of that time; but his glory was, that after fifty years of his life, spent with less severity or exactness than it ought to have been, he died with the greatest remorse for that license, and with the greatest manifestation of Christianity, that his best friends could desire."—"Life of Clarendon," edit. 1759, i. 36. He died in the year 1639. [But see Hazlitt's edit. of Carew, Introductory Memoir.]