English poetry.

DAVIDSON, JOHN (1837-1909).--Poet and playwright, _b._ at Barrhead,
Renfrewshire, _s._ of a Dissenting minister, entered the chemical
department of a sugar refinery in Greenock in his 13th year, returning
after one year to school as a pupil teacher. He was afterwards engaged in
teaching at various places, and having taken to literature went in 1890
to London. He achieved a reputation as a writer of poems and plays of
marked individuality and vivid realism. His poems include _In a Music
Hall_ (1891), _Fleet Street Eclogues_ (1893), _Baptist Lake_ (1894), _New
Ballads_ (1896), _The Last Ballad_ (1898), _The Triumph of Mammon_
(1907), and among his plays are _Bruce_ (1886), _Smith: a Tragic Farce_
(1888), _Godfrida_ (1898). D. disappeared on March 27, 1909, under
circumstances which left little doubt that under the influence of mental
depression he had committed suicide. Among his papers was found the MS.
of a new work, _Fleet Street Poems_, with a letter containing the words,
"This will be my last book." His body was discovered a few months later.

DAVIES, JOHN (1565?-1618).--Called "the Welsh Poet," was a
writing-master, wrote very copiously and rather tediously on theological
and philosophical themes. His works include _Mirum in Modum_,
_Microcosmus_ (1602), and _The Picture of a Happy Man_ (1612). _Wit's
Bedlam_ (1617), and many epigrams on his contemporaries which have some
historical interest.

DAVIES, SIR JOHN (1569-1626).--Lawyer and poet, _s._ of a lawyer at
Westbury, Wiltshire, was _ed._ at Winchester and Oxf., and became a
barrister of the Middle Temple, 1595. He was a member successively of the
English and Irish Houses of Commons, and held various legal offices. In
literature he is known as the writer of two poems, _Orchestra: a Poem of
Dancing_ (1594), and _Nosce Teipsum_ (Know Thyself), in two elegies (1)
Of Humane Knowledge (2) Of the Immortality of the Soul. The poem consists
of quatrains, each containing a complete and compactly expressed thought.
It was _pub._ in 1599. D. was also the author of treatises on law and
politics.

DAVIS, or DAVYS, JOHN (1550?-1605).--Navigator, known as D. of Sandridge
to distinguish him from another of the same name. He was one of the most
enterprising of the Elizabethan sailors, who devoted themselves to the
discovery of the North-west Passage. Davis Strait was discovered by, and
named after, him. He made many voyages, in the last of which he met