WOTTON, SIR HENRY

born March 30, 1568, Boughton Malherbe, Kent, Eng. died December 1639, Eton, Buckinghamshire English poet, diplomat, and art connoisseur who was a friend of Donne and Milton. Of his few surviving poems, You Meaner Beauties of the Night, written to Elizabeth of Bohemia, is the most famous. Izaak Walton's Life of Wotton was prefixed to the Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651), the volume in which most of Wotton's writings first appeared. Wotton was knighted in 1604, served as ambassador to Venice intermittently from 1604 to 1623, and was a member of Parliament in 1614 and 1625. In 1624 he became provost of Eton and in 1627 he took holy orders. Long residence in Venice developed in Wotton a taste for architecture and painting far more sophisticated than that of his contemporaries. In The Elements of Architecture (1624) he expresses his views clearly and briefly.