Meanwhile, in 1595, the versatile Gervase Markham inscribed to Southampton, in a sonnet, his patriotic poem on Sir Richard Grenville's glorious fight off the Azores. Markham's Markham was not content to acknowledge with Barnes sonnet, 1595. the inspiriting force of his patron's eyes, but with

blasphemous temerity asserted that the sweetness of his lips, which stilled the music of the spheres, delighted the ear of Almighty God. Markham's sonnet runs somewhat haltingly thus :

Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill,

Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen,
Bright lamp of virtue, in whose sacred skill
Lives all the bliss of ear-enchanting men,

From graver subjects of thy grave assays,

Bend thy courageous thoughts unto these lines-
The grave from whence my humble Muse doth raise
True honour's spirit in her rough designs-
And when the stubborn stroke of my harsh song
Shall seasonless glide through Almighty ears
Vouchsafe to sweet it with thy blessed tongue
Whose well-tuned sound stills music in the spheres ;
So shall my tragic lays be blest by thee
And from thy lips suck their eternity.

Subsequently Florio, in associating the earl's name with his great Italian-English dictionary-the 'Worlde of Wordes' more soberly defined the earl's place in the republic of letters when he wrote: As to me and many more the glorious and gracious sunshine of your honour hath infused light and life.'

Florio's address, 1598.

The most notable contribution to this chorus of praise is to be found, as I have already shown, in Shakespeare's 'Sonnets.' The same note of eulogy was sounded by men of letters until Southampton's death. When he was released from prison on James I's accession in April 1603, The conhis praises in poets' mouths were especially abungratulations of the poets dant. Not only was that grateful incident celein 1603. brated by Shakespeare in what is probably the latest of his sonnets (No. cvii.), but Samuel Daniel and John Davies of Hereford offered the Earl congratulation in more

prolonged strains. Daniel addressed to Southampton many

lines like these:

The world had never taken so full note

Of what thou art, hadst thou not been undone :

And only thy affliction hath begot

More fame than thy best fortunes could have won ;
For ever by adversity are wrought

The greatest works of admiration;
And all the fair examples of renown
Out of distress and misery are grown

Only the best-compos'd and worthiest hearts

God sets to act the hard'st and constanst'st parts.1

Davies was more jubilant :

Now wisest men with mirth do seem stark mad,
And cannot choose--their hearts are all so glad.
Then let's be merry in our God and King,
That made us merry, being ill bestead.
Southampton, up thy cap to Heaven fling,
And on the viol there sweet praises sing,

For he is come that grace to all doth bring."

Many like praises, some of later date, by Henry Locke (or Lok), George Chapman, Joshua Sylvester, Richard Brathwaite, George Wither, Sir John Beaumont, and others could be quoted. Beaumont, on Southampton's death, wrote an elegy which panegyrises him in the varied capacities of warrior, But it is as a litecouncillor, courtier, father, and husband.

rary patron that Beaumont insists that he chiefly deserves remembrance :

I keep that glory last which is the best,
The love of learning which he oft expressed
In conversation, and respect to those

Who had a name in arts, in verse or prose.

'Daniel's Certaine Epistles, 1603: see Daniel's Works, ed. Grosart, i. 216 seq. "See Preface to Davies's Microcosmos, 1603 (Davies's Works, ed. Grosart, i. 14). At the end of Davies's Microcosmos there is also a congratulatory sonnet addressed to Southampton on his liberation (ib. p. 96), beginning:

Welcome to shore, unhappy-happy Lord,
From the deep seas of danger and distress.
There like thou wast to be thrown overboard
In every storm of discontentedness.

Elegies on Southamp

To the same effect are some twenty poems which were published in 1624, just after Southampton's death, in a volume entitled 'Teares of the Isle of Wight, shed on the Tombe of their most noble valorous and loving Captaine and Governour, the right honorable Henrie, Earl of Southampton.' The keynote is struck in the opening stanza of the first poem by one Francis Beale :

ton.

Ye famous poets of the southern isle,

Strain forth the raptures of your tragic muse,
And with your Laureate pens come and compile
The praises due to this great Lord: peruse
His globe of worth, and eke his virtues brave,
Like learned Maroes at Mecænas' grave.

V.

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THOMAS THORPE

tion of the

sonnets in 1609.

AND MR. W. H

IN 1598 Francis Meres enumerated among Shakespeare's best known works his 'sugar'd sonnets among his private friends.' None of Shakespeare's sonnets are known to have been in print when Meres wrote, but they were doubtless in circulation in manuscript. In 1599 two of them were printed for the first time by the piratical publisher, William Jaggard, in The publica- the opening pages of the first edition of 'The Passionate Pilgrim.' On January 3, 1599-1600, Eleazar Edgar, a publisher of small account, obtained a license for the publication of a work bearing the title, 'A Booke called Amours by J. D., with certein other Sonnetes by W. S.' No book answering this description is extant. In any case it is doubtful if Edgar's venture concerned Shakespeare's Sonnets.' It is more probable that his 'W. S.' was William Smith, who had published a collection of sonnets entitled 'Chloris' in 1596.1 On May 20, 1609, a license for the publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets' was granted by the Stationers' Company to a publisher named Thomas Thorpe, and shortly afterwards the complete collection as they have reached us was published by Thorpe for the first time. To

''Amours of J. D.' were doubtless sonnets by Sir John Davies, of which only a few have reached us. There is no ground for J. P. Collier's suggestion that J. D. was a misprint for M. D., i.e. Michael Drayton, who gave the first edition of his sonnets in 1594 the title of Amours. That word was in France the common designation of collections of sonnets (cf. Drayton's Poems, ed. Collier, Roxburghe Club, p. xxv).

the volume Thorpe prefixed a dedication in the following

terms:

TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF
THESE INSUING SONNETS

MR. W. H., ALL HAPPINESSE
AND THAT ETERNITIE

PROMISED

BY

OUR EVER-LIVING POET

WISHETH

THE WELL-WISHING

ADVENTURER IN

SETTING

FORTH

T. T.

The words are fantastically arranged. In ordinary grammatical order they would run: The well-wishing adventurer in setting forth [i.e. the publisher] T[homas] T[horpe] wisheth Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet.'

Few books of the sixteenth or seventeenth century were ushered into the world without a dedication. In most cases it was the work of the author, but numerous volumes, besides Shakespeare's 'Sonnets,' are extant in which the publisher (and not the author) fills the rôle of dedicator. The cause of the substitution is not far to seek. The signing of the dedication was an assertion of full and responsible ownership in the publication, and the publisher in Shakespeare's lifetime was the full and responsible owner of a publication quite as often as the author. The modern conception of copyright had not yet been evolved. Whoever in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century was in actual possession of a manuscript was for practical purposes its full and responsible owner. Literary work largely circulated in manuscript.1 Scriveners made a precarious livelihood by multiplying written copies, and an enterprising publisher had many opportunities of becoming the owner of a popular book without the author's sanction or knowledge. When a volume in the reign of Elizabeth or James I was published independently of the author, the publisher exercised

See note to p. 88 supra.