beth, and afterwards by the same monarch, in the year 1593, translated to the see of London. Our poet was born in 1576, and was, as well as his friend, educated at Cambridge, where he made a great proficiency in his studies, and was accounted a very good scholar. His natural vivacity of wit, for which he was remarkable, soon rendered him a devotee to the Muses; and his close attention to their service, and fortunate connection with a genius equal to his own, soon raised him to one of the highest places in the temple of poetical fame. As he was born near ten years before Mr. Beaumont, so he did also survive him by an equal number of years; the general calamity of a plague, which happened in the year 1625, involving him in its great destruction, he being at that time fortypine years of age. THOMAS OTWAY. He was the son of the Rev. Mr. Humphrey Otway, Rector of Woolbeding, in Sussex, and was born the 3d of March, in the year 1651. He received his education at Wickeham school, near Winchester, and became a commoner of Christ Church, in Oxford, in 1669. But, on his quitting the university, and coming to London, he turned player. His success as an actor was but indifferent, having made only one attempt in Mrs. Behn's tragedy of The Jealous Bridegroom; he was more valued for the sprightliness of his conversation and the acuteness of his wit; which gained him the friendship of the Earl of Plymouth, who procured him a Cornet's commission in the troops which then served in Flanders. Otway, like the rest of the wits of every age, was hut a bad economist; and therefore it is no wonder that we generally find him in very necessitous circumstances. This was particularly the case with him at his return from Flanders. He was, moreover, averse to the military profession, and it is therefore not extraordinary, all things considered, that Tom and his commission soon quarrelled and parted, never to meet again. After this, he had recourse to writing for the stage; and now it was that he found out the only employment that nature seems to have fitted him for. In comedy he has been deemed too licentious; which, however, was no great objection to those who lived in the profligate days of Charles II. But in tragedy few of our English poets |