When he writes anagrams he uses to lay the outsides of his verses even (like a bricklayer) by a line of rhyme and acrostic, and fill the middle with rubbish.  In this he imitates Ben Jonson, but in nothing else.

There was one that lined a hatcase with a paper of Benlowes’ poetry; Prynne bought it by chance and put a new demi-castor into it.  The first time he wore it he felt only a singing in his head, which within two days turned to a vertigo.  He was let blood in the ear by one of the State physicians, and recovered; but before he went abroad he wrote a poem of rocks and seas, in a style so proper and natural that it was hard to determine which was ruggeder.

There is no feat of activity nor gambol of wit that ever was performed by man, from him that vaults on Pegasus to him that tumbles through the hoop of an anagram, but Benlowes has got the mastery in it, whether it be high-rope wit or low-rope wit.  He has all sorts of echoes, rebuses, chronograms, &c., besides carwitchets, clenches, and quibbles.  As for altars and pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that way; for he has made a gridiron and a frying-pan in verse, that, beside the likeness in shape, the very tone and sound of the words did perfectly represent the noise that is made by those utensils, such as the old poet called sartago loquendi.  When he was a captain he made all the furniture of his horse, from the bit to the crupper, in beaten poetry, every verse being fitted to the proportion of the thing, with a moral allusion of the sense to the thing; as the bridle of moderation, the saddle of content, and the crupper of constancy; so that the same thing was both epigram and emblem, even as a mule is both horse and ass.

Some critics are of opinion that poets ought to apply themselves to the imitation of Nature, and make a conscience of digressing from her; but he is none of these.  The ancient magicians could charm down the moon and force rivers back to their springs by the power of poetry only, and the moderns will undertake to turn the inside of the earth outward (like a juggler’s pocket) and shake the chaos out of it, make Nature show tricks like an ape, and the stars run on errands; but still it is by dint of poetry.  And if poets can do such noble feats, they were unwise to descend to mean and vulgar.  For where the rarest and most common things are of a price (as they are all one to poets), it argues disease in judgment not to choose the most curious.  Hence some infer that the account they give of things deserves no regard, because they never receive anything as they find it into their compositions, unless it agree both with the measure of their own fancies and the measure of their lines, which can very seldom happen.  And therefore, when they give a character of any thing or person, it does commonly bear no more proportion to the subject than the fishes and ships in a map do to the scale.  But let such know that poets as well as kings ought rather to consider what is fit for them to give than others to receive; that they are fain to have regard to the exchange of language, and write high or low according as that runs.  For in this age, when the smallest poet seldom goes below more the most, it were a shame for a greater and more noble poet not to outthrow that cut a bar.