Carew

Carew, THOMAS, poet, descended from an old family in Gloucestershire, was born about 1589, and after quitting Corpus Christi College, Oxford, without a degree, studied for a while in the Middle Temple. Between 1613 and 1619 he visited Italy, Holland, France; afterwards he rose into high favour with Charles I. Carew deserves mention chiefly as the precursor and representative of what may be called the courtier and conventional school of poetry, whose chief characteristic was scholarly ease and elegance, with a spice of indelicacy and even indecency. His poems, mostly lyrical, and treating of trifling subjects, are among the best of their kind, and exhibit much fancy and tenderness. He seems to have died in 1639. His poems appeared in 1640; recent editions are those by W. C. Hazlitt (1870) and J. W. Ebsworth (1894).