Reference > Cambridge History > Cavalier and Puritan > Lesser Caroline Poets > Edward Benlowes
  Patrick Cary; William Hammond; Robert Heath; Thomas Beedome; Richard Flecknoe; Henry Hawkins; Thomas Flatman; Philip Ayres; Robert Baron Theophila or Love’s Sacrifice  

CONTENTS · VOLUME CONTENTS · INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.

IV. Lesser Caroline Poets.

§ 16. Edward Benlowes.


Benlowes, the elder and by much the longer lived, was born c. 1603, probably at the paternal seat of Brent hall, Essex, which he inherited. He entered St. John’s college, Cambridge, in 1620, afterwards making the grand tour. At one time of his life, he was a Roman Catholic, but died an English churchman: and it is not certain whether his Romanism was merely an episode or not. So, also, we have only Butler’s indirect testimony to the fact of Benlowes’s having actually served in the civil war: but he was certainly a strong royalist. It is also certain that he lost his fortune, the main cause assigned being overlavishness to friends and flatterers. Latterly, he lived at Oxford and died there (it is said from privation) in 1676. Butler had already selected him as the subject for his character A Small poet, which is full of the bitterest ridicule. Long afterwards, Pope wrote, but did not finally print, in the prologue to his Satires, the couplet
       
How pleased I see some patron to each scrub,
Quarles had his Benlowes, Tibbald has his Bubb,
with the note “A gentleman of Oxford who patronised all bad poets of that reign.” He left these lines out, but, in the Dunciad (III, 21), he returned to the subject in the line
       
Benlowes, propitious still to blockheads, bows,
with an enlarged note on Benlowes’s own bad poetry which Warburton amplified with ridicule of his titles.		   31

CONTENTS · VOLUME CONTENTS · INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
  Patrick Cary; William Hammond; Robert Heath; Thomas Beedome; Richard Flecknoe; Henry Hawkins; Thomas Flatman; Philip Ayres; Robert Baron Theophila or Love’s Sacrifice  
 
Loading
Click here to shop the Bartleby Bookstore.
Shakespeare · Bible · Saints · Anatomy · Harvard Classics · Lit. History · Quotations · Poetry
© 1993–2013 Bartleby.com · [Top 150]