nounced in their favour, and the applause of the vulgar was the ready ratification of the decision of the learned. These, together with some miscellaneous poems, constituted his claim to the laureateship when Ben Jonson died in 1637. For sixteen months the office remained in abeyance. The Queen interested herself in behalf of Davenant, and he obtained the appointment on the 13th of December, 1638.
Thomas May, the translator of "Lucan," who had expected it from the favour of the King, was sorely nettled; and in after years, the quondam royalist, when writing his parliamentary history, could not altogether forget his paltry disappointment. "As for Mr. Davenant," observes his biographer, "he continued very steadfast in his old road, adhered to his old principles and his old friends, writing from time to time new poems, exhibiting new plays, and having the chief direction and management of the Court diversions, so long as the disorders of those times would permit."
The following tribute to Davenant's poetical merits is from the pen of Sir John Suckling:
TO MY FRIEND,
WILL. DAVENANT,
ON HIS OTHER POEMS.
Thou hast redeemed us, Will, and future times
Shall not account unto the age's crimes
Dearth of pure wit: since the great lord of it,
Donne, parted hence, no man has ever writ
So near him, in 's own way. I would commend
Particulars; but then, how should I end
Without a volume? Every line of thine
Would ask (to praise it right) twenty of mine.
The struggle between the Crown and the Commons was now rapidly approaching a crisis, and Davenant's station about the Court rendered him too conspicuous an
