Charles Webbe, whose life is usually dated approximately from 1650 to about 1680, occupies a small but intriguing place in the history of English Restoration poetry. He is remembered less through a substantial published body of work than through a handful of lyrics and, above all, through the persistent afterlife of one forceful poem of love and emotional extremity. The uncertainty surrounding even the spelling of hi…
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
Charles Webbe
Poet B
William Browne, of Tavistock
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 75%
Poems 86%
Blended 80%
Swap sides
Another related pair
William Browne of Tavistock, born about 1588 and traditionally thought to have died about 1650, is one of the most attractive and elusive figures in early seventeenth-century English poetry. He was not a major public presence on the scale of Ben Jonson, John Donne, or George Wither, nor did he leave behind the unusually full documentary record that allows historians to reconstruct the lives of some contemporaries. Ye…
“They believe the spirit which inspired the Reformation and the genius which dictated the Magna Charta possessed you.”
In time
Charles Webbe
William Browne, of Tavistock
1588
1680
They overlapped for 1 year (1650–1650).
When Charles Webbe was born, William Browne, of Tavistock was about 62.
Charles Webbe was about 0 when William Browne, of Tavistock died.
On the map
About 313 km separate Sidcup, London, England from Tavistock, Devon, England. Both have ground in England.
William Browne, of Tavistock
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
Charles Webbe only
From the biographies
Charles Webbe: restoration poetry, more love or more disdain, against indifference, emotional extremity, thirty years' war, commonwealth and protectorate, charles ii, henry purcell. William Browne, of Tavistock: devonshire, britannia's pastorals, the shepherd's pipe, george wither, exeter college, inner temple, pastoral writing, classical pastoral.
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.
1650
Battle of Dunbar
Charles Webbe
William Browne, of Tavistock
1630
Relocation to Devon
Emotional landscapes
Charles Webbe: Longing, Despair, Sorrow. William Browne, of Tavistock: Tenderness, Joy, Longing.