gives some account of the progress he made in the third book of
Gondibert, and offers some criticisms upon the nature of that kind of
poetry; but why, says he, should I trouble you or myself, with these
thoughts, when I am pretty certain I shall be hanged next week. This
gaiety of temper in Davenant, while he was in the most deplorable
circumstances of distress, carries something in it very singular, and
perhaps could proceed from no other cause but conscious innocence; for
he appears to have been an inoffensive good natured man. He was
conveyed from the Isle of Wight to the Tower of London, and for some
time his life was in the utmost hazard; nor is it quite certain by
what means he was preserved from falling a sacrifice to the prevailing
fury. Some conjecture that two aldermen of York, to whom he had been
kind when they were prisoners, interposed their influence for him;
others more reasonably conjecture that Milton was his friend, and
prevented the utmost effects of party rage from descending on the head
of this son of the muses. But by whatever means his life was saved, we
find him two years after a prisoner of the Tower, where he obtained
some indulgence by the favour of the Lord Keeper Whitlocke; upon
receiving which he wrote him a letter of thanks, which as it serves to
illustrate how easily and politely he wrote in prose, we shall here
insert. It is far removed either from meanness or bombast, and has as
much elegance in it as any letters in our language.


My Lord,

"I am in suspense whether I should present my thankfulness to your
lordship for my liberty of the Tower, because when I consider how much
of your time belongs to the public, I conceive that to make a request
to you, and to thank you afterwards for the success of it, is to give