WITHER, George (1588-1667), appears in the Dunciad as “sleeping among the dull of ancient days, safe where no critics damn.” The once ardent poet’s slumbers were disturbed towards the close of the 18th century by George Ellis, who in his Specimens resuscitated some of Wither’s poetry, not to condemn but to praise. Thereafter he was speedily released from Pope’s limbo. Wordsworth prefixed a dozen of Wither’s most exquisite lines to his own poem To the Daisy ; Southey quoted him eulogistically; Brydges republished a selection of his poems, and searched out the facts of his life; Park made a list of his voluminous writings, over 100 in number, for The British Bibliographer; and, most fortunate stroke of all for Wither’s memory, Charles Lamb wrote upon him one of his most delightful essays, re-creating and immortalizing the old poet’s poetic spirit. Wither’s life was full of adventure. Born June 11, 1588, the son of a Hampshire gentleman, educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he entered at Lincoln’s Inn, conceived an ardent passion for poetry, put forward as a satirist in 1613 with Abuses Stript and Whipt, and was promptly lodged in the Marshalsea. It was the year of the Essex divorce case, when so plain a satirist, though he whipt abuses in the abstract, might easily have given offence. In prison he wrote The Shepherd's Hunting, the fourth eclogue of which contains his memorable praise of poetry. Wither’s Motto was published in 1618; Fair Virtue, or The Mistress of Philarete, the longest, freshest, and most captivating lover’s panegyric in the language, in 1622. When the civil war broke out, Wither took the side of the Parliament, sold his estate in Hampshire and raised a troop of horse, was taken prisoner and saved from death at the intercession of ...