contained all too little of direct impression or reminiscence. The scheme for a complete account of the lives of English poets was not taken up again till towards the close of the century, and then Shakespeare and the Elizabethans were beyond the reach of living memory.
Nevertheless, during the course of the century poets began to find biographers. The patriotic impulse that had produced the Elizabethan Chronicles, and Camden’s Britannia, and Drayton’s Polyolbion moved Thomas Fuller to write his History of the Worthies of England (1662), which included the lives of many poets. In undertaking this work Fuller proposed to himself five ends ‘first, to give some glory to God; secondly, to preserve the memories of the dead; thirdly, to present examples to the living; fourthly, to entertain the reader with delight; and lastly (which I am not ashamed publicly to profess) to procure some honest profit to myself.’ He died a year before his book appeared, so he failed in the last of his aims. He did his best to make his subject attractive to readers. ‘I confess,’ he says, ‘the subject is but dull in itself, to tell the time and place of men’s birth, and deaths, their names, with the names and number of their books; and therefore this bare skeleton of time, place, and person must be fleshed with some pleasant passages. To this intent I have purposely interlaced… many delightful stories.’ He will always be valued for the facts that he records and for the many surprising turns of fanciful wit with which he relieves the monotony of his work. In endeavouring to make his biographies literary he had the advantage of a matchless model. For before Fuller wrote, Izaak Walton had produced two of his famous
