CONSTABLE, HENRY, one of the most considerable of the Elizabethan sonneteers, was born about 1556, in Yorkshire, as it is supposed, and certainly of a Roman Catholic family. He was sent to St John's College, Cambridge, where in 1579 he took his degree of B.A. In the same year there appeared a volume entitled The Forest of Fancy by H. C., which has been attributed to Henry Chettle, but may with far more probability be assigned to Constable. This is a black-letter romance in prose and verse, of some slight literary value. Until 1592 we lose sight of the poet altogether, but in that year appeared his principal work, the book of sonnets called Diana. The only sonnets in the Italian form which had preceded them were those of Sidney, printed the year before, and as Constable had been writing those poems for many years he deserves credit as being one of the first to introduce this elegant form of verse among us. His sonnets are not merely quatorzains, like Shakespeare's ; he preserves the exact arrangement of rhymes, except that he usually closes with a couplet. So popular was Diana that in 1594 a second enlarged edition appeared. But all this time a cloud was gathering round the poet. As a Catholic and a pronounced admirer of the queen of Scots, he came under suspicion of plotting treason against Elizabeth. Almost immediately after ushering Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry into the world with four magnificent sonnets, in 1595, he was obliged, in October of that year, to fly for his life to France. After a short stay in Paris, he wintered at Rouen, and then set off on a long pilgrimage to Rome, Poland, the Low Countries, and Scotland. In 1600 we find him still an exile, this time in Spain. About the year 1601 he could endure the growing home-sickness no longer, and returned to England in disguise. He was discovered at once and committed to the Tower, where he languished until 1604, when he was released. Of the date of his death we know no more than can be gathered from the fact that he is spoken of as alive in 1606, and as apparently not long dead in 1616. Besides the Diana he was the author of four important poems which were printed in the 1600 edition of England's Helicon,. Two of these, the exquisite lyric of "Diaphenia like the Daffadowndilly," and the charming pastoral song of Venus and Adonis, hold a prominent place in our early literature, - the latter especially being believed to precede Shakespeare's epic in date of composition. Some very fine Spiritual Sonnets of Constable have been printed in our own day, and it is understood that certain compositions of this " ambrosiac muse," as Ben Jonson styled it, are still awaiting an editor. The style of Constable is fervid and full of colour. Mr Minto has well said that his words flow with happiest impulse "when his whole being is aglow with the rapture of beauty."