A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Davies, Sir John
Davies, Sir John (1569-1626).—Lawyer and poet, s. of a lawyer at Westbury, Wiltshire, was ed. at Winchester and Oxf., and became a barrister of the Middle Temple, 1595. He was a member successively of the English and Irish Houses of Commons, and held various legal offices. In literature he is known as the writer of two poems, Orchestra: a Poem of Dancing (1594), and Nosce Teipsum (Know Thyself), in two elegies (I) Of Humane Knowledge (2) Of the Immortality of the Soul. The poem consists of quatrains, each containing a complete and compactly expressed thought. It was pub. in 1599. D. was also the author of treatises on law and politics.