CHAPTER XII.
WITHER, HERRICK, AND QUARLES.
George Wither, born in 1588, therefore about the same age as Giles Fletcher, was a very different sort of writer indeed.

There could hardly be a greater contrast.

Fancy, and all her motley train, were scarcely known to Wither, save by the hearing of the ears.
He became an eager Puritan towards the close of his life, but his poetry chiefly belongs to the earlier part of it.

Throughout it is distinguished by a certain straightforward simplicity of good English thought and English word.

His hymns remind me, in the form of their speech, of Gascoigne.