Note 20 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS:

This author, now little known but to the student of our rarer early poets, was a native of Shrewsbury, and had served in the army. He wrote a large number of poetical pieces, all now of the greatest rarity; their names have been preserved by that industrious antiquary Joseph Ritson, in his Bibliographia Poetica. The principal one was termed “The Worthiness of Wales,” and is written in laudation of the Principality. He was frequently employed to supply verses for Court Masques and Pageantry. He composed “all the devises, pastimes, and plays at Norwich” when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there; as well as gratulatory verses to her at Woodstock. He speaks of his mind as “never free from studie,” and his body “seldom void of toyle”—“and yet both of them neither brought greate benefits to the life, nor blessing to the soule” he adds, in the words of a man whose hope deferred has made his heart sick!—Ed.