Quarles, FRANCIS, a minor religious poet, belonged to a good Essex family, and was born at the manor-house of Stewards near Romford in 1592, being baptised on 8th May. He studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and at Lincoln's Inn, and was successively cup-bearer to the Princess Elizabeth, secretary to the famous Archbishop Ussher, and, like Middleton and Ben Jonson, Chronologer to the city of London (1639). He married in 1618 a wife who bore him eighteen children, and penned shortly after his death a touching short memoir, prefixed to Solomon's Recantation (1645). Quarles was a bigoted royalist and churchman, suffered losses and calumny in the cause, and died 8th September 1644. He wrote abundantly both in prose and verse, and his books were extraordinarily popular in their day. Nor are his Divine Emblems and Enchiridion entirely unworthy of their reputation. Pope's lines in the Dunciad are familiar to every one:
Or where the pictures for the page atone,
And Quarles is saved for beauties not his own.
But the clever gibe is not entirely justifiable, for the Emblems, in spite of verbose and dull if edifying moralising, helpless bad taste, not infrequent bathos, and ever present monotony, shows wealth of fancy, excellent good sense, felicity of expression, and occasionally a bright though intermittent flash of the true poetic fire. And the Enchiridion, a collection of short essays and meditations, affords many an example of compact and aphoristic prose, while its antithesis and word-play are often effective and sometimes fine.
His poetical works include A Feast for Wormes (1620); Hadassa, or the History of Queene Ester (1621); Argalus and Parthenia, his only long poem not directly religious (written apparently about 1622; first extant ed. 1629); Sions Elegies wept by Jeremie the Prophet (1624); Iob Militant (1624); Sions Sonets sung by Solomon the King (1625); Divine Poems, a collection containing many poems printed before (1630); The Historie of Samson (1631); various Elegiacal Poems (between 1630 and 1640); Divine Fancies: Digested into Epiyrammes, Meditations, and Observations (1632); the famous Emblems (1635), to which were added in 1638 Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man; Solomon's Recantation (1645); and The Shepeheards
Oracles delivered in Certain Elogues (1646). The prose includes the Enchyridion (1640); Observations concerning Princes and States upon Peace and Warre (1642); Judgement and Mercy for Afflicted Souls (1646); The Profest Royalist (1645); and The Virgin Widow, a worthless comedy (1649). The only complete edition is that by the Rev. A. B. Grosart in the 'Chertsey Worthies Library' (3 vols. 1880-81).