Sir John Beaumont, first baronet of Grace Dieu, was born about 1583 and died on 19 April 1627. He belongs to that large and fascinating company of English writers whose work has survived more quietly than their fame deserved. In his own lifetime and for generations afterward, he was known not merely as a poet but as a gentleman of substantial standing: a landowner in Leicestershire, a member of a distinguished legal…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Sir John Beaumont
Poet B
Francis Quarles
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 77%
Blended 77%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Francis Quarles, baptized on 8 May 1592 and buried on 8 September 1644, was among the most widely read English devotional poets of the seventeenth century. In his own lifetime and for many generations afterward, his name was familiar in households that might never have owned the works of John Donne, George Herbert, or John Milton. His poetry was not designed chiefly for fashionable literary circles. It sought instead…
“To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.”
In time
Sir John Beaumont
Francis Quarles
1583
1644
They overlapped for 36 years (1592–1627).
When Francis Quarles was born, Sir John Beaumont was about 9.
Francis Quarles was about 35 when Sir John Beaumont died.
On the map
About 180 km separate Grace Dieu, Leicestershire, England from Stratford, Essex, England. Both have ground in London.
Sir John Beaumont
Francis Quarles
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
religious
Sir John Beaumont: grace dieu, leicestershire, roman catholic recusant, charles i, francis beaumont, the metamorphosis of tobacco, bosworth field, michael drayton. Francis Quarles: essex, romford, christ's college cambridge, ursula woodgate, a feast for wormes, hadassa, job militant, sion's elegies.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
1595
Execution at Tyburn
Francis Quarles
1644
Final Years in Exile
Emotional landscapes
Sir John Beaumont: Sorrow, Tenderness, Despair. Francis Quarles: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.