ABSTRACT
To the 110 less ingenious then itlgenuous Mr. John Dun Dunne is the Mouse (they say) and thou art Dunne: But no dunne Mouse thou art; yet thou art one That (like a Mouse) in steepe high-waies dost runne, To finde foode for thy Muse to prey upon. Whose pallat is so dainty in her taste, That she distasts the least unsavory Bit: But that's unlike a Mouse; for, he will wast, All in his way; and oft himself with it, Not much unlike some Poets of our Times, That spoile good paper with their byting Pen,
(ii) Davies must have read Donne's The seco"d Anniversary as soon as it came out for he alludes to it by its particular title Of the Progresse of the Soule, in a funeral elegy published in the same year. Davies's elegy was written on a girl of sixteen, Elizabeth Dutton, who died in 16u ('A Funerall Elegie, on the death of the most vertuous, and no less lovely, Mris Elizabeth Duttotl' in The Muses Sacrifice, or Divine Meditations, 1612, f.U7v-18r):
I must confesse a Priest of Phebus, late, Upon like Text so well did meditate, That with a sinlesse Envy I doe runne In his Soules Progresse, till it all be DONNE. But, he hath got the start in setting forth Before me, in the Travell of the WORTH: And me out-gone in Knowledge ev'ry way Of the Soules Progresse to her finall stay. But his sweet Sai"t did usher mine therein; (Most blest in that) so, he must needs beginne; And read upon the rude Anatomy Of,this dead World; that, now, doth putrifie.
