William Davenant

"The assembled souls of all that men held wise."

"Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know."

"For angling-rod he took a sturdy oake; For line, a cable that in storm ne'er broke; His hooke was such as heads the end of pole To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole; The hook was baited with a dragon's tale,— And then on rock he stood to bob for whale."

"I found [Davenant] of so quick a Fancy that nothing was propos'd to him, on which he could not suddenly produce a thought extremely pleasant and surprizing: and those first thoughts of his, contrary to the old Latine Proverb, were not always the least happy. And as his fancy was quick, so likewise were the products of it remote and new. He borrowed not of any other; and his imaginations were such as could not easily enter into any other Man."

"Charles II, still in exile, embittered by what he regarded as acts of treachery by Lord Baltimore, deposed him and appointed instead Sir William Davenant as royal governor, for Baltimore "did visibly adhere to the rebels in England, and admit all kinds of sectaries and schismatics and ill-affected persons into the plantation." Davenant sailed from France to try to seize Maryland but was himself captured by the English."