Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 2.djvu/15

 THOMAS MAY. 5


 * Art thou not gone! kill him that gazeth on her;
 * For all that see her sure must doat like me,
 * And treason for her, will be wrought against us.
 * Be sudden—to our tents—pray thee away,
 * The hell on earth is love that brings delay.

Thomas May,

A POET and historian of the 17th century, was descended of an ancient, but decayed family in the county of Sussex, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was educated a fellow commoner in Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. He afterwards removed to London, and lived about the court, where he contracted friendships with several gentlemen of fashion and distinction, especially with Endymion Porter esquire, one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber to King Charles I. while he resided at court be wrote five plays, which are extant under his name. In 1622, he published at London, in 8vo. a translation of Virgil's Georgics with annotations; and in 1635, a Poem on King Edward III. It was printed under the title of the Victorious Reign of Edward III. written in seven books, by his Majesty's command. In the dedication to Charles I. our author writes thus; "I should humbly have craved your Majesty's pardon for my omission of the latter part of King Edward's reign, but that the sense of mine own defects hath put me in mind of a most necessary suit, so beg forgiveness for that part which is here written. Those great actions of Edward III. are the arguments of this poem, which is here

•Langbaine's Lives of the Poets.

B 3 *' ended^