Of the myriad minor poets writing in the middle third of the seventeenth century, none enjoyed a higher contemporaneous reputation than William Cartwright. Ben Jonson is said to have proclaimed, "My son Cartwright writes all like a man." When Cartwright died in 1643, King Charles I is reported to have shed a tear and dressed in black. Accompanying the posthumous publication of Cartwright's works in 1651 were a record fifty-four commendatory poems, including tributes by Henry Lawes, Henry Vaughan, James Howell, Izaak Walton, Alexander Brome, John Birkenhead, Jasper Mayne, Katherine Philips, and John Fell. Some historians of literature have relegated Cartwright to a "representative" role--exemplifying an eclectic blend of Metaphysical wit and Cavalier polish that characterized the transitional interval between Jacobean refulgence and the dawning of the Restoration. However, anyone who patiently reads the quantities of verse published in the 1630s, 1640s, and 1650s will recognize Cartwright's talent as far...