Chapter Darwin to Davies of D by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Davies, John (1565?-1618).—Called “the Welsh Poet,” was a writing-master, wrote very copiously and rather tediously on theological and philosophical themes. His works include Mirum in Modum, Microcosmus (1602), and The Picture of a Happy Man (1612), Wit’s Bedlam (1617), and many epigrams on his contemporaries which have some historical interest.

Davies, Sir John (1569-1626).—Lawyer and poet, son of a lawyer at Westbury, Wiltshire, was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and became a barrister of the Middle Temple, 1595. He was a member successively of the English and Irish Houses of Commons, and held various legal offices. In literature he is known as the writer of two poems Orchestra: a Poem of Dancing (1594), and Nosce Teipsum (Know Thyself), in two elegies (1) Of Humane Knowledge (2) Of the Immortality of the Soul. The poem consists of quatrains, each containing a complete and compactly expressed thought. It was published in 1599. Davies was also the author of treatises on law and politics.