THE POETICAL WORKS OF RICHARD CRASHAW AND QUARLES' EMBLEMS. With Memoir and Critical Dissertation, BY THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN. THE TEXT EDITED BY CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE. EDINBURGH: JAMES NICHOL. M.DCCC.LXVI. 10. THE LIFE AND POETRY OF RICHARD CRASHAW. CONCERNING the life of this true and transcendent genius very little is known. He was born in London, in circumstances highly favourable to the development of his intellectual powers; for his father, although his works brought him no profit, was an able author, as well as an eminent preacher in the Temple, and on terms of intimacy with such men as Sir Randolph Crew and Sir Henry Yelverton, the latter one of the judges of King's Bench. Through their influence, young Richard was placed on the foundation of Charter House School, where Brook a celebrated master of the day, greatly contributed to his improvement. Our poet wrote afterwards a glowing panegyric on him in the shape of an epigram. On the 26th day of March 1632, Crashaw was elected a scholar of Pembroke Hall. He had probably visited that college before, for we find him lamenting the early death of one William Herrys, of Pembroke, which had occurred in October 1631. Herrys was a youth connected with a respectable family in Essex, and distinguished by the sweetness of his temper. Crashaw mourned his loss in five epitaphs, one of them written in Latin. It is a good sign of a student when he praises his teachers; and certainly Crashaw, on this theory, must have been one of the best of scholars, since he has liberally commended almost all his tutors-not only Brook, his early master, but Benjamin Laney, the master of Pembroke Hall, and Mr Tournay, the tutor in the same college. In 1633 he took his Bachelor's degree, and in 1634 he published, without |