virtue stooping to folly when the wooer was the Swan of Avon, beside
whom the bird that captivated Leda was as a featherless gosling?--and
the consequence had been Will Davenant, born in the year of our Lord
1605, Shakspeare standing as godfather at the baptism. A boy of lively
parts was Will, and good-fortune brought those parts to the notice of
the grave and philosophic Greville, Lord Brooke, whose dearest boast
was the friendship in early life of Sir Philip Sidney. The result of
this notice was a highly creditable education at school and
university, and an ultimate introduction into the foremost society of
the capital. Davenant, finding the drama supreme in fashionable
regard, devoted himself to the drama. He also devoted himself to the
cultivation of Ben Jonson, then at the summit of renown, assisting in
an amateur way in the preparation of the court pageants, and otherwise
mitigating the Laureate's labors. From 1632 to 1637, these aids were
frequent, and established a very plausible claim to the
succession. Thomas May, who shortly became his sole competitor, was a
man of elevated pretensions. As a writer of English historical poems
and as a translator of Lucan he had earned a prominent position in
British literature; as a continuator of the "Pharsalia" in Latin verse
of exemplary elegance, written in the happiest imitation of the
martyred Stoic's unimpassioned mannerism, he secured for British
scholarship that higher respect among Continental scholars which
Milton's Latin poems and "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" presently
after confirmed. Of the several English writers of Latin verse, May
stands unquestionably in the front rank, alongside of Milton and
Bourne,--taking precedence easily of Owen, Cowley, and Gray. His
dramatic productions were of a higher order than Davenant's. They have
found a place in Dodsley's and the several subsequent collections of
early dramas, not conceded to the plays of the latter. Masque-making,
however, was not in his line. His invention was not sufficiently