I know my body of so frail a kind,

As force without, fevers within, can kill :
I know the heavenly nature of my mind;
But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will.

I know my soul hath power to know all things;
Yet is she blind and ignorant in all;

I know I am one of Nature's little kings;
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

I know my life's a pain and but a span ;

I know my sense is mocked with every thing:
And, to conclude, I know myself a MAN,
Which is a proud, and yet a wretched, thing.

Nosce Teipsum deservedly brought Davies a high poetical reputation. It did more. Dedicated to the Queen, and accompanied by Hymns to Astræa, it procured him the opportunity of providing Elizabeth with an "entertainment" when she made a progress to Harefield, the seat of the Chancellor, Lord Ellesmere; and through the influence of the latter Davies, after making a public apology for his offence, was restored to his position at the Bar and to his seniority. In 1601 he was returned to Parliament as member for Corfe Castle, and spoke strongly against the Monopolies. After the death of the Queen, in 1603, he was sent to announce at Edinburgh the accession of James I., and his new sovereign, who knew what good writing was, embraced him as the author of Nosce Teipsum. In the same year he was appointed SolicitorGeneral in Ireland, under Lord Mountjoy, the new Viceroy, and was knighted at Dublin. Being now occupied completely with State affairs, he ceased to write poetry, so that it becomes unnecessary to follow his career in detail. He married, while in Ireland, Eleanor, daughter of Lord Audley, a woman whose native eccentricity gradually grew into insanity. Returning to England in 1619, he sat in the House of Commons as M.P. for Newcastleunder-Lyne, and, being raised to the English Bench, was appointed Lord Chief Justice in succession to Crewe, who had been deprived of his position; but before Davies could enter on his office, he died on the 8th of December 1626.

With what intelligence Davies apprehended the art and grace of Vida's Latin style, and with what originality he developed it in English, may be seen from the structure of his earliest didactic poem, Orchestra. He imagines Antinous, the suitor of the chaste Penelope, endeavouring, in the absence of Ulysses, to persuade the Queen to dance by all the devices of fanciful rhetorical argument, showing how the principles of dancing are inherent in the constitution of Nature. Penelope replies with objections, which furnish Antinous with fresh starting-points for ingenious reasoning. Finally, all his efforts proving vain, he calls upon Love, who descends from heaven with a magic glass, in which Antinous shows the Queen, as an argument of irresistible force, a vision of the future, namely, the elegant revels of Cynthia and her Court, with which refined compliment the poem is brought to an abrupt conclusion.

Orchestra is professedly no more than a graceful tour de force of pagan invention. Nosce Teipsum is a much greater work. The subject is the nature of the human soul; and Mr. Grosart, Davies's editor, is at pains to prove that the matter, as well as the form of the poem, is original. Such anxiety is uncalled for. Every great didactic poem that the world preserves is founded on a basis of science provided by some philosophic predecessor. Lucretius derived his didactic materials from the science of Democritus and Epicurus; Virgil took his from Hesiod; Pope found the line of philosophic reasoning, such as it is, in the Essay on Man, in Bolingbroke, Leibnitz, Pascal, and many others. What is wanted of the didactic poet is, that he should so completely assimilate the philosophy of his subject as to be able to present it in a lucid and persuasive form, and with all the ornament proper to the art of poetry. There can neither be any doubt that, before setting to work on his poem, Davies had deeply studied the subject as a whole in the most authoritative text-books of philosophy and theology, nor that in some of these, notably Nemesius' De Natura Hominis, he found the suggestion of the organic ideas on

On the other hand, the

which his composition is built. order and method of the argument, the beauty of the illustrations, and the harmony and dignity of the versification are his own, and in view of the profundity and difficulty of his subject, it will be generally allowed that the poet's mastery of his materials raises Nosce Teipsum, as far at least as the art is concerned, to the same rank as the De Rerum Natura: in imagination, of course, neither Davies nor any other didactic poet can compare with Lucretius.

The first part of the poem is occupied with a consideration of the nature of the soul. After examining several erroneous opinions on the subject, Davies states his own conclusion:

The soul a substance and a spirit is,

Which God Himself doth in the body make;
Which makes the Man; for every man from this

The nature of a man and name doth take.

And though this spirit be to the body knit,

As an apt mean her powers to exercise,

Which are life, motion, sense, and will, and wit,
Yet she survives although the body dies.

This conclusion he establishes by argument and illustration, proving in due course that the soul is a thing independent of the body, and that the number of individual souls is not limited from eternity, but that each is created by God, concurrently with the production of new bodies, by natural generation. He is hence led to consider an objection raised by divines, who desire to clear the Creator of all appearance of accountability for the corruption of the human soul:

How can we say that God the soul doth make,
But we must make Him author of her sin ?
Then from man's soul she doth beginning take,
Since in man's soul corruption did begin.

But this opinion he shows to be opposed both to reason and revelation; and as to the difficulty of God's foreknowledge coexisting with man's free-will, he deals

with it in the following passage, which is a good example of his great power of reasoning ingeniously in verse :-Lastly the soul were better so to be

Born slave to sin, than not to be at all:
Since (if she do believe) One sets her free,
That makes her mount the higher for her fall.

Yet this the curious wits will not content;

They yet will know (sith God foresaw this ill)
Why His high Providence did not prevent
The declination of the first man's will.

If by His Word He had the current stayed
Of Adam's will, which was by nature free,
It had been one as if His Word had said,
I will henceforth that Man no man shall be.

For what is Man without a moving mind,

Which hath a judging wit and choosing will?
Now if God's power should her election bind,
Her motions then would cease and stand all still.

And why did God in Man this soul infuse,

But that he should his Maker know and love?
Now if Love be compelled and cannot choose,
How can it grateful or thankworthy prove?

Love must free-hearted be and voluntary,

And not enchanted, or by fate constrained;
Nor like that love which did Ulysses carry
To Circe's isle, with mighty charms enchained.

Besides, were we unchangeable in will,

And of a wit that nothing could misdeem;
Equal to God, whose Wisdom shineth still,
And never errs, we might ourselves esteem.

So that if Man would be unvariable,

He must be God, or like a rock or tree;
For even the perfect angels were not stable,
But had a fall more desperate than we.

Then let us praise that Power which makes us be
Men as we are, and rest contented so;

And knowing Man's fall was curiosity,
Admire God's counsels, which we cannot know.

And let us know that God the Maker is
Of all the souls in all the men that be:
Yet their corruption is no fault of His,

But the first man's that broke God's first decree.

He then goes on to show how the soul is united to the body, and how it controls the different faculties of sense. This is naturally the most fanciful and decorative part of the poem. Davies shows the finest art in inventing illustrations to elucidate his doctrine. Here, for example, is an image illustrating the power of touch, which at once conveys the general idea to the understanding

Lastly the feeling power, which is life's root,
Through every living part itself doth shed,
By sinews, which extend from head to foot,
And, like a net, all o'er the body spread.

Much like a subtle spider, which doth sit
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide:
If ought do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on every side.

The operations of Fantasy-" mere hand-maid of the mind "-in storing the impressions of outward objects in the sensitive memory are thus described :—

The ledger-book lies in the brain behind,

Like Janus' eye which in his poll was set:

The lay-man's tables, the store-house of the mind,
Which doth remember much, and much forget.

Here Sense's apprehension end doth take;

As, when a stone is into water cast,
One circle doth another circle make,
Till the last circle touch the bank at last.

Finally the supreme command of the soul over the society of the faculties is illustrated in a passage which deserves to be quoted at length, as exemplifying in a brief space the poet's splendid power of reasoning, as well as the terseness of his expression, the beauty of his imagery, his accurate selection of philosophical terms, and his harmonious versification :

Our Wit is given Almighty God to know,

Our Will is given to love Him being known :

But God could not be known to us below

But by His works, which through the sense are shown.