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141 more prone to easier and smoother studies than to pecking and hewing at logic, he exercised it much in English history and poetry, of which he gave several ingenious specimens."

Wood says that George Withers was sent to Magdalen in the year 1604, or thereabout, when, Wood adds, he made some proficiency, with much ado in academic learning. But it seems, according to the same authority, that Withers's "geny being addicted to things more trivial, he was taken home after he had spent about three years in the same house." Other, and later, authorities believe that owing to domestic and financial difficulties he was removed from college without obtaining a degree.

Wood, judging from a portrait of Withers, declares that he was of a quick and smart countenance. He seems to have gone back to Oxford for a short time in 1624, when he kept a victualling-house, and was much esteemed for his facetious company; and he is reported to have been able to make verses as fast as he could write them. The only verses by which he is remembered now, begin: "Should I, wasting in despair, die because a woman's fair?" Whether the words refer to Mrs. Withers, who, according to Aubrey, was also a great wit, and who could write verses too, is not recorded. As she was fair to Withers, it is