Most of this must be read _cum grano salis_. Davies elected his measure and stanza with evidently entire spontaneity; and it is an odd reversal of the simple matter of fact to ascribe the 'artificial restraints' chosen, to an absence 'of a fiery and teeming imagination,' when, as all observation demonstrates, the more fiery and fecund the imagination of a Poet, the more exquisitely obedient is he to the subtlest and most intricate movements of his measure--just as the bluest-blooded race-horse is a law to itself whereas your stolid dray-cart or plough-drawer needs the "artificial restraints" of all kinds of gear, and the constraint of whip and blow and vociferation. I can well suppose that but for the "Fairy Queen" Sir John Davies might have chosen its stanza, but just as to-day "In Memoriam" has taken to itself its form and music to the exclusion of every other--though a very ancient English measure--so Spenser's immortal poem precluded "Nosce Teipsum" following in the same. I cannot admit "artificial restraints" in the sense of needed restraints or aid. There was the stanza, and the genius of Sir John Davies appropriated it--since Spenser's, in all worship, could not be taken--and, like a great Vine, clad its natural slenderness and poorness of build with wealth of bright green leafage and clustered fruitage. The nicety and daintiness of workmanship, the involute and nevertheless firmly-completed and manifested imagery of "Nosce Teipsum" wherewith this nicety and daintiness are wrought, place Sir John Davies artistically among the finest of our Poets. Southey wrote decisively on this:--"Sir John Davies and Sir William Davenant, avoiding equally the opposite faults of too artificial and too careless a style, wrote in numbers which, for precision and clearness, and felicity and strength, have never been surpassed." For 'felicity' I should have said 'flexibility.'[50] [Footnote 50: To Southey's praise be it remembered, that he was the first emphatically to regret that there had been no collective edition of Sir John Davies's Works, as thus: "It may be regretted that he did not leave representatives who would have thought it a duty and an honour to publish all that could be collected of his writings; thus erecting the best and most enduring monument to his memory." (British Poets: Chaucer to Jonson: p. 686). Our edition of his Prose and Verse fulfils Southey's wish.] Again our examples of the mastery and perfection of workmanship must be brief; but take these:-- "Nor can her wide imbracements fillèd bee; For they that most, and greatest things embrace, Inlarge thereby their minds' capacitie, As streames inlarg'd, inlarge the channel's space. _All things receiu'd, doe such proportion take, As those things haue, wherein they are receiu'd_: So little glasses little faces make, And narrow webs on narrow frames be weau'd;