No More Learning

They were the sons of Robert Brooke, Alderman of and once M. P. for
York, and his wife Jane Maltby. The Alderman had other sons who
followed in his footsteps and figure among the Freemen of York, but
Christopher and Samuel earned a wider reputation. At Lincoln's Inn,
Christopher wrote verses and cultivated the society of the wits. Wood
mentions as his friends and admirers Selden and Jonson, Drayton and
Browne, Wither and Davies of Hereford. Browne sings his praises in the
second song of the second book of _Britannia's Pastorals_, and in _The
Shepherds Pipe_ (1614) urges him to sing a higher strain. His poems,
which have been collected and edited by the late Dr. Grosart, include
an Elegy on Prince Henry, and a long poem of no merit, _The Ghost of
Richard the Third_ (_Miscellanies_ of the _Fuller Worthies Library_,
vol. iv, 1872). In 1614 he became a bencher and Summer Reader at
Lincoln's Inn. He died February 7, 1627/8.

l. 4. _By Hilliard drawne.
_ Nicholas Hilliard (1537-1619), the first
English miniature painter. He was goldsmith, carver, and limner to
Queen Elizabeth, and engraved her second great seal in 1586. He drew a
portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, at eighteen, and executed miniatures
of many contemporaries. He also wrote a treatise on miniature
painting. Mr. Laurence Binyon thinks it is quite possible that the
miniature from which Marshall, about 1635, engraved the portrait of
Donne as a young man, was by Hilliard. It is, he says, quite in his
style.

l. 13. _From out her pregnant intrailes. _ The ancients attributed
winds to the effect of exhalations from the earth. Seneca,
_Quaestiones Naturales_, v. 4, discusses various causes but mentions
this first: 'Sometimes the earth herself emits a great quantity of
air, which she breathes out of her hidden recesses . . . A suggestion
has been made which I cannot make up my mind to believe, and yet
I cannot pass over without mention.