BENLOWES, EDWARD

born July 12, 1602, Finchingfield, Essex, Eng. died Dec. 18, 1676, Oxford, Oxfordshire English poet of the metaphysical school and a patron of the arts. Though his family was Roman Catholic, Benlowes early become a vehement Protestant. He used the wealth from his large inherited estates to support his various artistic endeavours; he commissioned engravings to illustrate his own and his friends' poems, and he owned his own printing press. During the 1640s he composed Theophila, or Loves Sacrifice (printed 1652), a long poem describing, in some fine rhapsodic passages but with extravagant conceits, the progress of the soul toward mystic communion with God. Financially crippled by the English Civil Wars and litigation, he spent his declining years at Oxford, reading in the Bodleian Library and occasionally writing poetry.