English

• Baird, John D.. “Cowper, William (1731-1800).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

• Lindsay, Alexander. “Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

Educator (his tenure as Assistant Master of Eton College lasted from 1845 to 1872) and author of A Guide to Modern British History (New York: Holt, 1880-82), William Johnson became William Johnson Cory after his retirement. A brief biography appears in the third edition of Ionica, his translation of classical poems, as edited by Arthur C. Benson (London: G.

• Griffin, Dustin. “Collins, William (1721-1759).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

• Beer, John. “Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

• Burnett, Mark Thornton. “Chapman, George (1559/60-1634).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4, 1795. After attending Annan Academy and Edinburgh University, he taught mathematics for a time before finding his vocation as one of the foremost essayists, biographers, and historians of his century.

An illegitimate child, possibly of George Savile, marquess of Halifax (1633-95), Henry Carey earned a living as a writer of burlesques, poems, and occasionally music. A protégé of Addison, who liked his "Sally in our Alley," Carey succeeded best when he was most amusing.

Except for the elegy on Donne, which first appeared in Donne's Poems, 1633, the poems by Carew in this selection were first published shortly after his death, in Poems, 1640. A considerable number of them were set to music, and numerous manuscript versions of this song exist with considerable differences of text.