Let us make haste, already they are met;
The echoing hills their joyful shouts repeat.

* * * * *


JOHN CROWNE

Was the son of an independent minister, in that part of North America,
which is called Nova Scotia. The vivacity of his genius made him soon
grow impatient of the gloomy education he received in that country;
which he therefore quitted in order to seek his fortune in England; but
it was his fate, upon his first arrival here, to engage in an employment
more formal, if possible, than his American education. Mr. Dennis, in
his Letters, vol. i. p. 48, has given us the best account of this poet,
and upon his authority the above, and the succeeding circumstances are
related. His necessity, when he first arrived in England, was extremely
urgent, and he was obliged to become a gentleman usher to an old
independent lady; but he soon grew as weary of that precise office, as
he had done before of the discipline of Nova Scotia. One would imagine
that an education, such as this, would be but an indifferent preparative
for a man to become a polite author, but such is the irresistable
force of genius, that neither this, nor his poverty, which was very
deplorable, could suppress his ambition: aspiring to reputation, and
distinction, rather than to fortune and power. His writings soon made
him known to the court and town, yet it was neither to the savour of the
court, nor to that of the earl of Rochester, that he was indebted to the
nomination the king made of him, for the writing the Masque of Calypso,
but to the malice of that noble lord, who designed by that preference to
mortify Mr. Dryden.