FRANCIS

See also:

• FRANCIS MERES (1565-1647)

MERES (1565-1647)  , English divine and author, was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565 . He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1587, and M.A. in 1591 . Two years later he was incorporated M.A. of Oxford . His kinsman, John Meres, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1596, and apparently helped him in the early part of his career . In 16o2 he became rector of Wing in Rutland, where he had a school . He died on the 29th of January 1647 . Meres rendered immense service to the history of Elizabethan literature by the publication of his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598) . It was one of a series of volumes of short pithy sayings, the first of which was Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth (1597), compiled by John Bodenham or by Nicholas Ling, the publisher . The Palladis Tamia contained moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and embraced sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, and a famous " Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latin, and Italian poets." This chapter enumerates the English poets from Chaucer to Meres's own day, and in each case a comparison with some classical author is instituted . The book was issued in 1634 as a school book, and has been partially reprinted in the Ancient Critical Essays (1811-1815) of Joseph Haslewood, Professor E . Arber's English Garner, and Gregory Smith's Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904) . A sermon entitled Gods Arithmeticke (1597), and two translations from the Spanish of Luis de Granada entitled Granados Devotion and the Sinners Guide (1598) complete the list of his works .