having taken his degree of Bachelor of Arts, he entered himself of the Middle Temple, was sometime afterwards called to the bar, and sat in the last parliament of Queen Elizabeth. He was, in 1603, successively appointed, first, Solicitor, and then Attorney-General, in Ireland, by James the First, whose good opinion he had gained by his poem of Nosce Teipsum. He was afterwards made Serjeant at Law, was knighted, and subsequently appointed the King's Serjeant. He was next elected representative of the county of Fermanagh; and after a violent struggle between the Roman Catholic and Protestant parties, was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1616 he returned to England, and continued to practise as a barrister, being frequently associated as one of the judges of assize. He died in the year 1626, after having received a promise of being made Chief Justice of England, if he was not actually appointed, but before he entered upon the duties of the office.

The principal poem of Sir John Davies, both in the dignity and importance of the subject, and also in length, is his Nosce Teipsum; or, The Immortality of the Soul" one of the earliest philosophical poems in our language. It appears to have been the production of his younger days, the dedication to Queen Elizabeth bearing date in 1592, when he was not much more than twenty-two years of age; although there is no edition now known to exist prior to that of 1599. His biographers, however, generally affirm that it was not written until 1598; but this is an opinion irreconcileable with the date of the dedication, unless we suppose, that part of the poem, with the dedication, was written in 1592, and the remainder completed in 1598.

The poem commences with an introduction on the corruption of human reason, and the insufficiency of human knowledge, from which we quote the following lines on the rarity of self-knowledge, and the use of affliction in teaching it.

"For this, few know themselves: for merchants broke
View their estate with discontent and pain,

And seas are troubled, when they do revoke
Their flowing waves into themselves again.

And while the face of outward things we find,
Pleasing and fair, agreeable and sweet,
These things transport, and carry out the mind,
That with herself, the mind can never meet.

Yet if affliction once her wars begin,

And threat the feebler sense with sword and fire,
The mind contracts herself, and shrinketh in,

And to herself she gladly doth retire.

As spiders touch'd, seek their web's inmost part;
As bees in storms back to their hives return;
As blood in danger gathers to the heart;

As men seek towns, when foes the country burn.

If aught can teach us aught, affliction's looks
(Making us pry into ourselves so near)
Teach us to know ourselves beyond all books,
Or all the learned schools that ever were.

This mistress lately pluck'd me by the ear,
And many a golden lesson hath me taught;
Hath made my senses quick, and reason clear:
Reform'd my will and rectify'd my thought.

So do the winds and thunders cleanse the air:
So working leas settle and purge the wine:
So lopp'd and pruned trees do flourish fair:
So doth the fire the drossy gold refine."

He thus describes the manner in which the soul is united

to, and exercises her powers in, the body.

"But how shall we this union well express?
Naught ties the soul, her subtlety is such;
She moves the body, which she doth possess;
Yet no part toucheth, but by virtue's touch.

Then dwells she not therein, as in a tent;
Nor as a pilot in his ship doth sit;
Nor as the spider in his web is pent;
Nor as the wax retains the print in it;

Nor as a vessel water doth contain ;

Nor as one liquor in another shed;

Nor as the heat doth in the fire remain;
Nor as a voice throughout the air is spread;

But as the fair and cheerful morning light

Doth here and there her silver-beams impart,
And in an instant doth herself unite

To the transparent air, in all, and ev'ry part:

Still resting whole, when blows the air divide;

Abiding pure, when th' air is most corrupted;
Throughout the air, her beams dispersing wide;
And when the air is toss'd, not interrupted;

So doth the piercing soul the body fill,
Being all in all, and all in part diffus'd;
Indivisible, incorruptible still;

Not forc'd, encounter'd, troubled, or confus'd.

And as the sun above the light doth bring,
Though we behold it in the air below:
So from th' Eternal Light the soul doth spring,
Though in the body she her pow'rs do show.

But as the world's sun doth effect beget
Diff'rent, in divers places ev'ry day;

Here Autumn's temperature, there Summer's heat;
Here flow'ry Spring-tide, and there winter gray.

Here ev'n, there morn; here noon, there day, there night,
Melts wax, dries clay, makes flow'rs, some quick, some dead;
Makes the Moor black, the European white;

Th' American tawny, and th' East-Indian red:

So in our little world, this soul of ours
Being only one, and to one body ty'd,
Doth use, on divers objects, divers powers;
And so are her effects diversify'd."

He endeavours to establish the immortality of the soul, by various arguments, founded, amongst other things, upon the motions or aspirations of the soul towards eternity; from which we extract a few stanzas, as a specimen of both his poetry and his reasoning.

"And as the moisture, which the thirsty earth
Sucks from the sea, to fill her empty veins,
From out her womb at last doth take a birth,
And runs a lymph along the grassy plains:

Long doth she stay, as loth to leave the land,
From whose soft side she first did issue make:
She tastes all places, turns to ev'ry hand,
Her flow'ry banks unwilling to forsake:

Yet nature so her streams doth lead and carry,
As that her course doth make no final stay,
Till she herself unto the ocean marry,
Within whose wat'ry bosom first she lay.

E'en so the soul, which in this earthly mould
The Spirit of God doth secretly infuse,
Because at first she doth the earth behold,
And only this material world she views:

At first her mother-earth she holdeth dear,

And doth embrace the world, and worldly things;
She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,
And mounts not up with her celestial wings:

Yet under heav'n she cannot light on aught
That with her heav'nly nature doth agree;
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented be.

For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth,

Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find? Who ever ceas'd to wish, when he had health? Or having wisdom, was not vex'd in mind?

Then as a bee which among weeds doth fall,

Which seem sweet flow'rs, with lustre fresh and gay;
She lights on that and this, and tasteth all;
But pleas'd with none, doth rise, and soar away:

So, when the soul finds here no true content,
And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take,
She doth return from whence she first was sent,
And flies to him that first her wings did make.

Wit, seeking truth, from cause to cause ascends,
And never rests, till it the first attain:
Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends;
But never stays, till it the last do gain.

Now God the truth, and first of causes is;
God is the last good end, which lasteth still;
Being Alpha and Omega nam'd for this;
Alpha to Wit, Omega to the Will.

Since then her heav'nly kind she doth display,
In that to God she doth directly move;
And on no mortal thing can make her stay,
She cannot be from hence, but from above."

The peculiar aptness of Sir John Davies's similies induces us to throw a few of them together. Speaking of the Senses, he says,

"This power spreads outward, but the root doth grow

In th' inward soul, which only doth perceive;

For th' eyes and ears no more their objects know,
Than glasses know what faces they receive."

And of the capacity of the soul to contain such a mass of

things.

"Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to Spirits, by sublimation strange;
As fire converts to fire the things it burns;
As we our meats into our nature change."

This is his felicitous description of feeling:
"Much like a subtle spider, which doth sit

In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on ev'ry side."

And of the transient nature of human life.
"But since our life so fast away doth slide,
As doth an hungry eagle thro' the wind;
Or as a ship transported with the tide,

Which in their passage leave no print behind."

In answering an objection against the immortality of the soul, drawn from the apparent decay of its powers, he says,

"But they that know that wit can shew no skill,

But when she things in Sense's glass doth view,

Do know, if accident this glass do spill,

It nothing sees, or sees the false for true."

And to another objection, that if souls continue to exist, "why do they not return, and bring us news of that strange world," he replies,

"But as Noah's pigeon, which return'd no more,
Did shew, she footing found, for all the flood;
So when good souls, departed thro' death's door,
Come not again, it shews their dwelling good."

This poem does not develope any new or striking principles of philosophy, but the arguments are acute and forcible,