1612, he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, but never proceeded any farther in academical advancement. In 1615, he removed to London, and entered Gray's Inn as a student of law; but his taste for belles-lettres studies prevailing over all considerations of permanent advantage from a regular profession, he abandoned his legal pursuits to devote himself to those which were more congenial to his mind. Through association with eminent wits and courtiers, he soon acquired such reputation as to obtain the countenance of Charles the First and his royal consort, under whose particular patronage he published his first volume of poems. From the period of this publication he became a resident at court; and under the same royal favor which countenanced and encouraged his first literary performance, he produced, in succession, five plays; two of which, The Heir, and The Old Couple, are comedies, and the other three, Cleopatra, Antigone, and Agrippiana, tragedies. May was, however, more successful as a translator of Latin poetry, than as an original writer, and his version of Lucan's Pharsalia is really a meritorious performance. He added to the original poem two books in order to bring the events down to the death of Julius Cæsar. These were written in both the Latin and the English languages.

As most of May's poems were produced at the command of Charles the First, and were dedicated to that monarch, it is natural to infer that a pretty close intimacy must have existed between the king and the poet; yet when the civil wars broke out, the latter joined the parliament, and soon after became their secretary and historiographer. This position imposed upon him the duty of writing The History of the Parliament of England, which began November the third, 1640. The work is, in reality, a history of the civil war which arose while that parliament was sitting, rather than of the proceedings of the parliament itself. It gave great offence to the royalists, by whom both the author and his performance were loudly abused. As a composition, it is inelegant, but the candor displayed in it has been pronounced much greater than the royalists were willing to allow; it, therefore, still holds a permanent place in the history of the times. On the thirteenth of November, 1650, May retired to rest in his usual health, and was found, the next morning, dead in his bed. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Camden, and a monument was erected to his memory.

JOHN HAYWARD was educated at the university of Cambridge, where he took the degree of doctor of laws; but his birth-place is not known, nor has the time when his birth occurred been preserved. He early became an historian, and in 1599, published The First Part of the Life and Reign of Henry the Fourth, which he dedicated to the Earl of Essex. Some passages in this work gave such offence to Queen Elizabeth, that she caused the auth undergo a severe and very tedious imprisonment. He was, however. ronized by James the First, and at the desire of Prince Henry he and in 1613, published, The Lives of the Three Norman Kings of F

William the First, William the Second, and Henry the First. In 1619, Hayward was knighted by James the First, having previously been made historiographer of Chelsea College. At his death, which occurred on the twenty-seventh of June, 1627, he left in manuscript a history of The Life and Reign of King Edward VI., with The Beginning of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, which was published in 1630.

Sir John Hayward wrote with considerable smoothness, but in too dramatic a style, imitating Livy and other ancient historians in the practice of putting speeches into the mouths of the characters. Besides his historical works, he wrote several pieces on religious subjects, which possess very considerable merit.

RICHARD KNOLLES was born in Northamptonshire, and educated at Oxford, but at what college is uncertain. After having taken his degrees he was chosen fellow of Lincoln College, and thence elected master of a free school at Sandwich, in Kent, where he remained until his death, which occurred in 1610.

As a public teacher Knolles was very celebrated, and from year to year sent many pupils to the universities who afterward became eminent scholars; but his genius and literary efforts were by no means restricted to the regior of his school. Besides producing Grammatica Latina, Græcæ, and Hebraicæ, for the especial use of his pupils, he wrote a History of the Turks, which Johnson, in the 'Rambler,' praises as exhibiting all the excellencies that narration can admit. His style,' says the learned critic, though somewhat obscured by time, and sometimes vitiated by false wit, is pure, nervous, elevated, and clear. Nothing could have sunk this author into obscurity but the remoteness and barbarity of the people whose story he relates.' In addition to his history, Knolles wrote the Lives and Conquests of the Ottoman Kings and Emperors, to the year 1610, and a brief Discourse of the Greatness of the Turkish Empire. From the History of the Turks we select the following passage :-

THE TAKING OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE TURKS.

A little before day, the Turks approached the walls and begun the assault, where shot and stones were delivered upon them from the walls as thick as hail, whereof little fell in vain, by reason of the multitude of the Turks, who, pressing fast unto the walls, could not see in the dark how to defend themselves, but were without number wounded or slain; but these were of the common and worst soldiers, of whom the Turkish king made no more reckoning than to abate the first force of the defendants. Upon the first appearance of the day, Mahomet gave the sign appointed for the general assault, whereupon the city was in a moment, and at one instant, on every side most furiously assaulted by the Turks; for Mahomet, the more to distress the defendants, and the better to see the forwardness of the soldiers, had before appointed which part of the city every colonel with his regiment should assail : which they valiantly performed, delivering their arrows and shot upon the defendants so thick, that the light of day was therewith darkened; others in the meantime courageously mounting the scaling-ladders, and coming even to handy-strokes with the defendants upon the wall, where the foremost were for the most part violently

borne forward by them which followed after. On the other side, the Christians with no less courage withstood the Turkish fury, beating them down again with great stones and weighty pieces of timber, and so overwhelmed them with shot, darts, and arrows, and other hurtful devices from above, that the Turks dismayed with terror thereof, were ready to retire.

Mahomet, seeing the great slaughter and discomfiture of his men, sent in fresh supplies of his janizaries and best men of war, whom he had for that purpose reserved as his last hope and refuge; by whose coming on his fainting soldiers were again encouraged, and the terrible assault began afresh. At which time the barbarous king ceased not to use all possible means to maintain the assault; by name calling upon this and that captain, promising unto some whom he saw forward golden mountains, and unto others in whom he saw any sign of cowardice, threatening most terrible death; by which means the assault became most dreadful, death there raging in the midst of many thousands. And albeit that the Turks lay dead by heaps upon the ground, yet other fresh men pressed on still in their places over their dead bodies, and with divers event either slew or were slain by their enemies.

In this so terrible a conflict, it chanced Justinianus the general to be wounded in the arm, who, losing much blood, cowardly withdrew himself from the place of his charge, not leaving any to supply his room, and so got into the city by the gate called Romana, which he had caused to be opened in the inner walls; pretending the cause of his departure to be for the binding up of his wound, but being, indeed, a man now altogether discouraged.

The soldiers there present, dismayed with the departure of their general, and sore charged by the janizaries, forsook their stations, and in haste fled to the same gate whereby Justinianus was entered; with the sight whereof the other soldiers, dismayed, ran thither by heaps also. But whilst they violently strive all together to get in at once, they so wedged one another in the entrance of the gate, that few of so great a multitude got in; in which so great a press and confusion of minds, eight hundred persons were there by them that followed trodden under foot, or thrust to death. The emperor himself, for safeguard of his life, flying with the rest in that press as a man not regarded, miserably ended his days, together with the Greek empire. His dead body was shortly after found by the Turks among the slain, and known by his rich apparel, whose head being cut off, was forthwith presented to the Turkish tyrant, by whose commandment it was afterward thrust upon the point of a lance, and in great derision carried about as a trophy of his victory, first in the camp, and afterward up and down the city.

The Turks, encouraged with the flight of the Christians, presently advanced their ensigns upon the top of the uttermost wall, crying Victory; and by the breach entered as if it had been a great flood, which, having once found a breach in the bank, overfloweth, and beareth down all before it; so the Turks, when they had won the utter wall, entered the city by the same gate that was opened for Justinianus, and by a breach which they had before made with their great artillery, and without mercy cutting in pieces all that came in their way, without further resistance became lords of that most famous and imperial city In this fury of the barbarians perished many thousands of men, women, and children, without respect of age, sex or condition. Many, for safeguard of their lives, fied into the temple of Sophia, where they were all without pity slain, except some few reserved by the barbarous victors to purposes more grievous than death itself. The rich and beautiful ornaments and jewels of that most sumptuous and magnificent church (the stately building of Justinianus the emperor) were, in the turning of a hand, plucked down and carried away by the Turks; and the church itself, built for God to be honoured in, for the present converted into a stable for their horses, or a place for the execution of their abominable and unspeakable filthiness; the image of the crucifix was also by them taken down, and a Turk's cap put upon the head thereof, and so set up and shot at DD

with their arrows, and afterward, in great derision, carried about in their camp, as it had been in procession, with drums playing before it, railing and spitting at it, and calling it the God of the Christians, which I note not so much done in contempt of the image, as in despite of Christ and the Christian religion.

ARTHUR WILSON was born at Yarmouth, Norfolk, of a genteel family, in 1596. In the fourteenth year of his age he was sent to France to pursue his studies, and after having remained in that country two years he returned to England, and was placed with Sir Henry Spiller, as one of his clerks in the Exchequer office. In Sir Henry's family he remained for some time, but was at length dismissed thence for having written some satirical verses on one of the maid-servants. After his dismissal he devoted a year to reading and poetry, and then, in 1613, entered, as secretary, into the service of Robert, Earl of Essex, whom he attended in various missions upon the continent for many years. Having, through some misunderstanding with the Earl's lady, been dismissed from his services also, he retired, in 1631, to Oxford, and became gentleman commoner of Trinity College, where he remained nearly two years, during which he was scrupulously observant of the orders of the university. He next became steward to the Earl of Warwick, in whose service he died in the month of October, 1652. Wilson's only literary performance of importance is, The Life and Reign of James the First, which he left in manuscript, and which was published in 1653, the year after the author's death. He also left, in manuscript, a comedy of some merit, entitled The Inconstant Lady.

RICHARD BAKER, with whom we shall conclude our survey of the historical writers of this period, was born at Sissingherst, Kent, in 1568. When in the seventeenth year of his age he entered Hart-hall College, Oxford, and at the end of three years, left the university, went to London, and entered the Inns of Court to study law. He was, however, a man of too considerable quality to follow a profession, and he therefore relinquished his studies in order to travel upon the continent for the improvement of his education. In 1594, he was created master of arts at Oxford, and in the first year of the reign of James the First, was knighted. He married the laughter of Sir George Manwaring of Ightfield, in Shropshire; and having imprudently become security for some of that family's debts, his property, though very considerable, was stripped from him, and to satisfy the balance of the obligation, he was thrown into Fleet prison, where, after lingering for several years, he finally died, on the eighteenth of February, 1645.

While in prison, Sir Richard Baker wrote Meditations and Disquisitions on portions of Scripture, translated Balzac's Letters and Malvezzi's Discour ses on Tacitus, and composed two pieces in defence of the theatre. His principal work, however, is A Chronicle of the Kings of England, from the time of the Romans' Government unto the Death of King James. This work, which appeared in 1641, the author complacently declares to be 'collected with so great care and diligence, that if all other chronicles were lost,

this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages memorable or worthy to be known.' Notwithstanding such high pretensions, the 'Chronicle,' in matter, must be regarded as an injudicious performance, and not worthy of much reliance. The style, however, is very superior, and is described in a letter written to him by his former college friend, Sir Henry Wotton, as full of sweet raptures and of researching conceits; nothing borrowed, nothing vulgar, and yet all flowing from you, I know not how, with a certain equal facility.'

With Hobbes the metaphysician, and Lord Herbert, our present remarks will close.

THOMAS HOBBES was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Malmersbury, in Wiltshire, on the fifth of April, 1588. His mother's alarm at the approach of the Spanish Armada, which was then near the coast, is said to have hastened his birth, and was probably the cause of a constitutional timidity with which he was affected through life. Having made considerable progress in the learned languages at school, he entered, in 1603, Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he spent, in diligent application, five years; and at the expiration of that time he became private tutor to the son of William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire. In 1610, Hobbes attended Lord Cavendish in his travels through France, Italy, and Germany, and after their return to England he continued to reside with him as his secretary. It was during his residence with the Earl of Devonshire, that he became intimate with Lord Bacon, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Jonson. His patron and his pupil both dying, the former, in 1626, and the latter two years after, Hobbes again visited Paris, but in 1631, he undertook to superintend the education of the young Earl of Devonshire, with whom he set off, three years after, on a tour through France, Italy, and Savoy. At Pisa he became intimate with Galileo, the astronomer, and elsewhere held communication with other celebrated characters.

After his return to England in 1637, Hobbes resided in the Earl's family at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire. He now designed to devote himself to study, but he was soon interrupted by the political contentions of the times. Being a zealous royalist, he found it necessary, in 1640, to retire to Paris, where he lived on terms of intimacy with Decartes, and other learned men, whom the patronage of Cardinal de Richelieu had, at that time, drawn together. While at Paris, he engaged in a controversy about the quadrature of the circle, and in 1647, he was appointed mathematical instructor to Charles, Prince of Wales, who then resided in the French capital.

Previously to this time Hobbes had commenced the publication of those works which he sent forth in succession, with the view of curbing the spirit of freedom in England, by showing the philosophical foundation of despotic monarchy. The first of them was originally printed in Latin at Paris, in