and life we can recover no particulars. He was highly esteemed by some
wits in that reign, as appears from a Poem called Steps to Parnassus,
which pays him the following well turned compliment.

Let Brewer take his artful pen in hand,
Attending muses will obey command,
Invoke the aid of Shakespear's sleeping clay,
And strike from utter darkness new born day.

Mr. Winstanley, and after him Chetwood, has attributed a play to our
author called Lingua, or the Contention of the Tongue and the Five
Senses for Superiority, a Comedy, acted at Cambridge, 1606; but Mr.
Langbaine is of opinion, that neither that, Love's Loadstone,
Landagartha, or Love's Dominion, as Winstanley and Philips affirm, are
his; Landagartha being written by Henry Burnel, esquire, and Love's
Dominion by Flecknoe. In the Comedy called Lingua, there is a
circumstance which Chetwood mentions, too curious, to be omitted here.
When this play was acted at Cambridge, Oliver Cromwel performed the
part of Tactus, which he felt so warmly, that it first fired his
ambition, and, from the possession of an imaginary crown, he stretched
his views to a real one; to accomplish which, he was content to wade
through a sea of blood, and, as Mr. Gray beautifully expresses it,
shut the Gates of Mercy on Mankind; the speech with which he is said
to have been so affected, is the following,

Roses, and bays, pack hence: this crown and robe,
My brows, and body, circles and invests;
How gallantly it fits me! sure the slave
Measured my head, that wrought this coronet;
They lie that say, complexions cannot change!