Thus, by God's blessing, it befell thee


Nec turpem senectam
Degere, nec cithara carentem.


I would, Father, that I could get at the verity about thy poems.
Those recommendatory verses with which thou didst grace the Lives of
Dr. Donne and others of thy friends, redound more to the praise of
thy kind heart than thy fancy. But what or whose was the pastoral
poem of "Thealma and Clearchus," which thou didst set about printing
in 1678, and gavest to the world in 1683? Thou gavest John
Chalkhill for the author's name, and a John Chalkhill of thy kindred
died at Winchester, being eighty years of his age, in 1679. Now
thou speakest of John Chalkhill as "a friend of Edmund Spenser's,"
and how could this be?

Are they right who hold that John Chalkhill was but a name of a
friend, borrowed by thee out of modesty, and used as a cloak to
cover poetry of thine own inditing? When Mr. Flatman writes of
Chalkhill, 'tis in words well fitted to thine own merit:


Happy old man, whose worth all mankind knows
Except himself, who charitably shows
The ready road to virtue and to praise,
The road to many long and happy days.