Nor is it griev’d, grave youth, the memory Of such a story, such a booke as hee, That such a copy through the world were read; _Henry yet lives, though he be buried_. It could be wish’d that every eye might beare His eare good witnesse that he still were here; That sorrowe ruled the yeare, and by that sunne Each man could tell you how the day had runne: O ’twere an honest boast, for him could say I have been busy, and wept out the day Remembring him. An epitaph would last Were such a trophee, such a banner placed Upon his corse as this: _Here a man lyes_ _Was slaine by Henrye’s dart, not Destinie’s_. Why this were med’cinable, and would heale, Though the whole languish’d, halfe the commonweale. But for a _Cobler_ to goe burn his cappe, And cry, The Prince, the Prince! O dire mishappe! Or a Geneva-bridegroom, after grace, To throw his spouse i’ th’ fire; or scratch her face To the tune of the Lamentation; or delay His _Friday_ capon till the _Sabbath_ day: Or an old Popish lady half vow’d dead To fast away the day in gingerbread: For him to write such annals; all these things Do open laughter’s and shutt up griefe’s springs. Tell me, what juster or more congruous peere Than Ale, to judge of workes begott of beere? Wherefore forbeare—or, if thou print the next, Bring better notes, or take a meaner text. ON MR. FRANCIS BEAUMONT, THEN NEWLY DEAD. (The following lines, which have hitherto been omitted in the bishop’s poems, are found in the collected dramas of the “twin stars that run Their glorious course round Shakespeare’s honoured sun.” Beaumont was born 1585, and was buried the ninth of March 1615, in the entrance of St. Bennet’s chapel, Westminster abbey.) He that hath such acuteness and such wit As would aske ten good heads to husband it; He that can write so well, that no man dare Refuse it for the best, let him beware: Beaumont is dead! by whose sole death appears Wit’s a disease consumes men in few yeares. WILLIAM LORD HOWARD, OF EFFINGHAM, the subject of the succeeding poem, was the eldest son of Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, (lord high admiral of England, and defeater of the Spanish Armada in the reign of Elizabeth, a nobleman of high estimation during greater part of the reign of her successor,) by Catharine, daughter of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon; celebrated for concealing the ring by which the life of the earl of Essex might have been saved, and upon whose death-bed discovery of the concealment Elizabeth told her, “God may forgive you, but I never can.” Lord Howard makes no conspicuous figure in the page of history: he was summoned by writ to several parliaments during his father’s life, whom he accompanied on his embassy to the court of Spaine (1604), but died before him 10th Dec. 1615, and was buried at Chelsea.