01) OUR HYMNS :
studies at the Inns of Law in London. But his genius leading him to poetry rather than to law, he gave himself to the muses, and hecame known as a poet. During his long life his pen was seldom idle. The list of his works fills ahout thirteen columns in Dr. Bliss s edition of the " Fasti Oxonienses ! " Some of his pieces were political in their character, and brought him into serious troubles in the extended and eventful period during which he wrote reaching as it did from the reign of James the First to that of Charles the Second.
In his twenty-fifth year, Wither published a poetical satire on the abuses of the times, entitled " Abuses Stript and Whipt." For this James s Government threw him into the Marshalsea, where his sufferings and privations were very great. During his imprisonment, he wrote his " Satire to the King." This pro duction is believed to have assisted in obtaining his release. In 1619, he published "A Preparation to the Psalter," and in 1622, he had so far advanced in King James the First s favour, that he gave him a patent for his " Hymns and Songs of the Church," authorizing their insertion in the Psalter, during a period of fifty-one years. But his monopoly was resisted by those inte rested in the work of Sternhold and Hopkins. In 1632, he had his work " imprinted in the Netherlands," with the title, " The Psalms of David translated into Lyric Verse, accord ing to the scope of the original, and illustrated with a short argument, and a brief prayer, or meditation before and after sermon." And the same contest was resumed when Chas. I. granted him an exclusive licence.
In 1639, "Wither was captain of horse in the expedition against the Scots, But on the rise of the Commonwealth, the poet, who had already shown a leaning to the Puritans, sold his estate, and raised a troop of horse for the Parliament. " He was," says Wood, "made a captain, and soon after a major, having this motto on his colours, Pro Rege, Lege, Grege ; but being taken prisoner by the cavaliers, Sir John Denham, the poet (some of whose land at Egham, in Surrey, Wither had got
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