name, is drawn
with the same vigour:

_Melixos_; such a starved one,
As he had nothing left but skin and bone.
The shady substance of a living man,
Or object of contempt wheree'er he came.
Yet had hee able parts, and could discourse,
Presse moving reasons, arguments enforce,
Expresse his readings with a comely grace,
And prove himselfe a _Consul_ in his place!

_Id._, p. 12.

We have a still more highly-coloured, and indeed a terrific,
as well as original, picture, in the following animated
verses:

Next him, _Uptoomos_; one more severe,
Ne'er purple wore in this inferiour sphere:
Rough and distastefull was his nature still,
His life unsociable, as was his will.
_Eris_ and _Enio_ his two pages were,
His traine stern _Apuneia_ us'd to beare.
Terrour and thunder echo'd from his tongue,
Though weake in judgment, in opinion strong.
A fiery inflammation seiz'd his eyes,
Which could not well be temper'd any wise:
For they were bloud-shot, and so prone to ill,
As basiliske-like, where'ere they look, they kill.
No laws but Draco's with his humour stood,
For they were writ in characters of bloud.
His stomacke was distemper'd in such sort
Nought would digest; nor could he relish sport.
His dreames were full of melancholy feare,
Bolts, halters, gibbets, halloo'd in his eare:
Fury fed nature with a little food,
Which, ill-concocted, did him lesser good,

_Id._, p. 16.

But it is time to pause upon Braithwait. Whoever does not
see, in these specimens, some of the most powerful rhyming
couplets of the early half of the seventeenth century, if
not the model of some of the verses in Dryden's satirical
pieces, has read both poets with ears differently
constructed from those of the author of this book.]

As I am permitted to be desultory in my remarks, (and, indeed, I
craved this permission at the outset of them) I may here notice the
publication of an excellent _Catalogue of Books_, in 1658, 4to.;
which, like its predecessor, Maunsell's, helped to inflame the
passions of purchasers, and to fill the coffers of booksellers.
Whenever you can meet with this small volume