, a name well known among the readers of old English poetry, and
, a name well known among the
readers of old English poetry, and revived, of late, by the
taste and judgment of some eminent poetical antiquaries,
was born at Bentworth, near Alton in Hampshire, June 11,
1588. He was the only son of George Wither of Bentworth (by Anne Serle), who was the second son of John
Wither of Manydowne near W r otton St. Lawrence in that
county, at which' seat Mr. Bigg Wither, the heir (not the heir male, hut the heir female, who has taken the name),
still resides. The poet was educated under John Greaves
of Colemore, a celebrated schoolmaster, whom he afterwards commemorated with gratitude in a poem published
in 1613. About 1604- he was sent to Magdalen college,
Oxford, under the tuition of John Warner, afterwards
bishop of Rochester. Here he informs us, in the proemium to his “Abuses stript and whipt,
” that he found the
v art of logic, to which his studies were directed, first dull
and unintelligible; but at the moment it began all at once
to unfold its mysteries to him, he was called home “to
Jiold the plough.
” He laments that he was thus obliged
to forsake “the Paradise of England
” to go “in quest of
care, despair, and discontent.
”