It will be seen that I have arranged my singers with reference to their birth, not to the point of time at which this or that poem was written or published.

The poetic influences which work on the shaping fantasy are chiefly felt in youth, and hence the predominant mode of a poet's utterance will be determined by what and where and amongst whom he was during that season.

The kinds of the various poems will therefore probably fall into natural sequence rather after the dates of the youth of the writers than after the years in which they were written.
Wotton was better known in his day as a politician than as a poet, and chiefly in ours as the subject of one of Izaak Walton's biographies.
Something of artistic instinct, rather than finish, is evident in his verses.

Here is the best and the best-known of the few poems recognized as his: THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE.
How happy is he born and taught, That serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And silly truth his highest skill; Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Untied to the world with care Of prince's grace or vulgar breath; Who hath his life from humours freed; Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make accusers great; Who envieth none whom chance doth raise Or vice; who never understood How swords give slighter wounds than praise.
Nor rules of state, but rules of good; Who God doth late and early pray More of his grace than gifts to lend; And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend.
This man is free from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands And having nothing, yet hath all.
Some of my readers will observe that in many places I have given a reading different from that in the best-known copy of the poem.

I have followed a manuscript in the handwriting of Ben Jonson.[70] I cannot tell whether Jonson has put the master's hand to the amateur's work, but in every case I find his reading the best.
Sir John Davies must have been about fifteen years younger than Sir Fulk Grevill.