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
Henry King
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 76%
Blended 76%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Henry King, born on 16 January 1592 and dead on 30 September 1669, lived a life shaped by inherited ecclesiastical ambition, private bereavement, literary friendship, civil conflict, and religious restoration. He is remembered chiefly as the author of “The Exequy,” one of the most moving elegies in seventeenth-century English poetry, but that single poem can obscure the breadth of his career. King was a clergyman, ro…
In time
Charles Webbe
Henry King
1592
1680
They overlapped for 20 years (1650–1669).
When Charles Webbe was born, Henry King was about 58.
Charles Webbe was about 19 when Henry King died.
On the map
About 90 km separate Sidcup, London, England from Worminghall, Buckinghamshire, England. Both have ground in England.
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
culture
Charles Webbe: restoration poetry, more love or more disdain, against indifference, emotional extremity, thirty years' war, commonwealth and protectorate, charles ii, henry purcell. Henry King: worminghall, buckinghamshire, the exequy, john king, anne berkeley, english civil war, royal chaplain, archdeacon of colchester.
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.
1651
Battle of Worcester
Charles Webbe
Emotional landscapes
Charles Webbe: Longing, Despair, Sorrow. Henry King: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.