WILLMOTT in his 'Lives of the English Sacred Poets' (vol. first, 1834, vol. second, 1839), begins his fine-toned little Notice thus: 'After an anxious search in all the accessible sources of information, I am able to tell little of one of whom every lover of poetry must desire to know much. The time of his birth and of his decease is involved in equal mystery.'[3] Our 'all' is still 'little' as compared with what we yearn for; but we do not need to begin so dolorously as our predecessor, for we have discovered both the 'time of his _birth_ and of his _decease_.' He was born in London in 1612-3; this date being arrived at from the register-entry of his age on admission to the University, viz. 18 in 1630-1 (as hereafter stated). SHAKESPEARE was then retired to his beloved Stratford; MILTON was in the sixth year of his cherub-beauty. His father being 'Preacher at the Temple' at the date would have determined LONDON to have been his birthplace; but his admission to Pembroke and his own signature at Peterhouse, 'Richardum Crashaw, _Londinensem_,' prove it. Who was his mother I have failed to find. The second Mrs. WILLIAM CRASHAW, celebrated in a remarkable contemporary poetical tractate printed (if not published) by her bereaved husband (of which more anon and elsewhere, as _supra_), could not have been the Poet's mother, as she was not married to CRASHAW (_pater_) until 1619. We should gladly have exchanged the 'Honour of Vertue or the Monument erected by the sorrowfull Husband and the Epitaphs annexed by learned and worthy men, to the immortall memory of that worthy Gentle-woman Mrs. ELIZABETH CRASHAWE. Who dyed in child-birth, and was buried in Whit-Chappel: Octob. 8. 1620. In the 24 yeare of her age'--for a page on the first Mrs. Crashaw. Yet is it pleasant to know the motherless little lad received such a new mother as this tribute pictures. In 1620 he was in his ninth year. Thus twice a broad shadow blackened his father's house and his home. Little more than a year had he his 'second' mother.