And yet there is one dramatist of that fallen generation over whose
memory one cannot but linger, fancying what he would have become, and
wondering why so great a spirit was checked suddenly ere half
developed by a fever which carried him off, with several other Oxford
worthies, in 1643, when he was at most thirty-two (and according to
one account only twenty-eight) years old. Let which of the two dates
be the true one, Cartwright must always rank among our wondrous
youths by the side of Prince Henry, the Admirable Crichton, and
others, of whom one's only doubt is, whether they were not too
wondrous, too precociously complete for future development. We find
Dr. Fell, some time Bishop of Oxford, saying that 'Cartwright was the
utmost man could come to'; we read how his body was as handsome as
his soul; how he was an expert linguist, not only in Greek and Latin,
but in French and Italian, an excellent orator, admirable poet; how
Aristotle was no less known to him than Cicero and Virgil, and his
metaphysical lectures preferred to those of all his predecessors, the
Bishop of Lincoln only excepted; and his sermons as much admired as
his other composures; and how one fitly applied to him that saying of
Aristotle concerning OEschron the poet, that 'he could not tell what
OEschron could not do.' We find pages on pages of high-flown
epitaphs and sonnets on him, in which the exceeding bad taste of his
admirers makes one inclined to doubt the taste of him whom they so
bedaub with praise; and certainly, in spite of all due admiration for
the Crichton of Oxford, one is unable to endorse Mr. Jasper Mayne's
opinion, that


'In thee Ben Jonson still held Shakspeare's style';