Trinity College in Cambridge, 1623,
of which he became a fellow; he commenced Master of Arts, and in this
degree was incorporated at Oxon[1], became famous (says Wood) for his
ingenuity, being the adopted son of Ben Johnson, and accounted one
of the most pregnant wits of his age. The quickness of his parts was
discovered early; when he was about nine or ten years old he wrote the
History of the Incarnation of Our Saviour in verse, which is preserved
in manuscript under his own hand writing. Randolph receives from
Langbaine the highest encomium. He tells his readers that they need
expect no discoveries of thefts, for this author had no occasion to
practice plagiary, having so large a fund of wit of his own, that he
needed not to borrow from others. Were a foreigner to form a notion of
the merit of the English poets from reading Langbaine, they would be
in raptures with Randolph and Durfey, and others of their class, while
Dryden, and the first-rate wits, would be quite neglected; Langbaine
is so far generous, that he does all he can to draw obscure men into
light, but then he cannot be acquitted of envy, for endeavouring to
shade the lustre of those whose genius has broke through obscurity
without his means, and he does no service to his country while he
confines his panegyric to mean versifiers, whom no body can read
without a certain degree of contempt.

Our author had done nothing in life it seems worth preserving, or at
least that cotemporary historians thought so, for there is little to
be learned concerning him. Wood says he was like other poets, much
addicted to libertine indulgence, and by being too free with his
constitution in the company of his admirers, and running into
fashionable excesses, he was the means of shortening his own days. He
died at little Haughton in Northamptonshire, and was buried in an isle
adjoining to the church in that place, on the 17th of March, 1634. He
had soon after a monument of white marble, wreathed about with laurel,
erected over his grave at the charge of lord Hatton of Kirby. Perhaps
the greatest merit which this author has to plead, is his attachment
to Ben Johnson, and admiration of him: Silius Italicus performed an
annual visit to Virgil's tomb, and that circumstance reflects more
honour upon him in the eyes of Virgil's admirers, than all the works
of that author. Langbaine has preserved a monument of Randolph's
friendship for Ben Johnson, in an ode he addressed to him, occ