brusquely designated it Shakespeares Sonnets,' instead of following the more urbane collocation of words invariably adopted by living authors, viz. 'Sonnets by William Shakespeare.'

The use of initials in dedications of Elizabethan and Jacobean books.

In framing the dedication Thorpe followed established precedent. Initials run riot over Elizabethan and Jacobean books. Printers and publishers, authors and contributors of prefatory commendations were all in the habit of masking themselves behind such symbols. Patrons figured under initials in dedications somewhat less frequently than other sharers in the book's production. But the conditions determining the employment of initials in that relation were well defined. The employment of initials in a dedication was a recognised mark of a close friendship or intimacy between patron and dedicator. It was a sign that the patron's fame was limited to a small circle, and that the revelation of his full name was not a matter of interest to a wide public. Such are the dominant notes of almost all the extant dedications in which the patron is addressed by his initials. In 1598 Samuel Rowlands addressed the dedication of his 'Betraying of Christ' to his 'deare affected friend Maister H. W., gentleman.' An edition of Robert Southwell's 'Short Rule of Life' which appeared in the same year bore a dedication addressed 'to my deare affected friend M. [i.e. Mr.] D. S., gentleman.' The poet Richard Barnfield also in the same year dedicated the opening sonnet in his 'Poems in divers Humours' to his 'friend Maister R. L.' In 1617 Dunstan Gale dedicated a poem, 'Pyramus and Thisbe,' to the 'worshipfull his verie friend D. [i.e. Dr.] B. H.'1

There was nothing exceptional in the words of greeting which Thorpe addressed to his patron Mr. W. H.' They

'Many other instances of initials figuring in dedications under slightly different circumstances will occur to bibliographers, but all, on examination, point to the existence of a close intimacy between dedicator and dedicatee. R. S.'s [i.e. possibly Richard Stafford's] 'Epistle dedicatorie' before his Heraclitus (Oxford, 1609) was inscribed to his much honoured father S. F. S.' An Apologie for Women, or an Opposition to Mr. D. G. his assertion. . . by W. H. of Ex. in Ox. (Oxford, 1609), was dedicated to 'the honourable and right vertuous ladie, the Ladie M. H.' This volume, published in the same year as Shakespeare's Sonnets, offers a pertinent example of the generous freedom with which initials were scattered over the preliminary pages of books of the day.

Frequency of wishes for happiness' and eternity' in dedi. catory greet

Dedications of the time
There was a dedicatory

followed a widely adopted formula. usually consisted of two distinct parts. epistle, which might touch at any length, in either verse or prose, on the subject of the book and the writer's relations with his patron. But there was usually, in addition, a preliminary salutation confined to such a single sentence as Thorpe dis. played on the first page of his edition of Shakespeare's sonnets. In that preliminary sentence the dedicator habitually wisheth' his patron one or more of such blessings as health, long life, happiness, ings. and eternity. Al perseverance with soules happiness' Thomas Powell wisheth' the Countess of Kildare on the first page of his 'Passionate Poet' in 1601. 'All happines' is the greeting of Thomas Watson, the sonnetteer, to his patron, the Earl of Oxford, on the threshold of Watson's 'Passionate Century of Love.' There is hardly a book published by Robert Greene between 1580 and 1592 that does not open with an adjuration before the dedicatory epistle in the form: 'To Robert Greene wisheth increase of honour with the

full fruition of perfect felicity.'

Thorpe in Shakespeare's sonnets left the salutation to stand alone, and omitted the supplement of a dedicatory epistle; but this, too, was not unusual. There exists an abundance of contemporary examples of the dedicatory salutation without the sequel of the dedicatory epistle. Edmund Spenser's dedication of the 'Faerie Queene' to Elizabeth consists solely of the salutation in the form of an assurance that the writer 'consecrates these his labours to live with the eternitie of her fame.' Michael Drayton both in his 'Idea, The Shepheard's Garland' (1593), and in his 'Poemes Lyrick and Pastorall' (1609), confined his address to his patron to a single sentence of salutation.1 Richard Brathwaite in 1611 exclusively saluted the patron of his 'Golden Fleece' with 'the continuance of God's temporall blessings in this life, with the crowne of immortalitie in the world to come ;' while in like manner he greeted the patron of his 'Sonnets and Madrigals'

'In the volume of 1593 the words run: 'To the noble and valorous gentleman Master Robert Dudley, enriched with all vertues of the minde and worthy of all honorable desert. Your most affectionate and devoted Michael Drayton.'

in the same year with the prosperitie of times successe in this life, with the reward of eternitie in the world to come.' It is 'happiness' and 'eternity,' or an equivalent paraphrase, that had the widest vogue among the good wishes with which the dedicator in the early years of the seventeenth century besought his patron's favour on the first page of his book. But Thorpe was too self-assertive to be a slavish imitator. His addiction to bombast and his elementary appreciation of literature recommended to him the practice of incorporating in his dedicatory salutation some high-sounding embellishments of the accepted formula suggested by his author's writing.1 In his dedication of the 'Sonnets' to 'Mr. W. H.' he grafted on the common formula a reference to the immortality which Shakespeare, after the habit of contemporary sonnetteers, promised the hero of his sonnets in the pages that succeeded. With characteristic magniloquence, Thorpe added the decorative and supererogatory phrase, 'promised by our ever-living poet,' to the conventional dedicatory wish for his patron's 'all happiness' and 'eternitie.' 2

Thorpe, as far as is known, penned only one dedication before that to Shakespeare's 'Sonnets.' His dedicatory experience was previously limited to the inscription of Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600 to Blount, his friend in the trade. Three dedications by Thorpe survive

Five dedications by Thorpe.

1 In 1610, in dedicating St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God to the Earl of Pembroke, Thorpe awkwardly describes the subject-matter as 'a desired citie sure in heaven,' and assigns to St. Augustine and his commentator Vives' a 'savour of the secular.' In the same year, in dedicating Epictetus his Manuall to Florio, he bombastically pronounces the book to be the hand to philosophy; the instrument of instruments; as Nature greatest in the least; as Homer's Ilias in a nutshell; in lesse compasse more cunning.' For other examples of Thorpe's pretentious, halfeducated and ungrammatical style, see p. 403, note 2.

* The suggestion is often made that the only parallel to Thorpe's salutation of happiness is met with in George Wither's Abuses Whipt and Stript (London, 1613). There the dedicatory epistle is prefaced by the ironical salutation 'To himselfe G. W. wisheth all happinesse.' It is further asserted that Wither had probably Thorpe's dedication to Mr. W. H.' in view when he wrote that satirical sentence. It will now be recognised that Wither aimed very gently at no identifiable book, but at a feature common to scores of books. Since his Abuses was printed by George Eld and sold by Francis Burton- the printer and publisher concerned in 1606 in the publication of 'W. H.'s' Southwell manuscript-there is a bare chance that Withe had in mind W. H.'s' greeting of Mathew Saunders, but fifty recently published volumes would have supplied him with similar hints.

of a date subsequent to the issue of the 'Sonnets.' One of these is addressed to John Florio, and the other two to the Earl of Pembroke.1 But these three dedications all prefaced volumes of translations by one John Healey, whose manuscripts had become Thorpe's prey after the author had emigrated to Virginia, where he died shortly after landing. Thorpe chose, he tells us, Florio and the Earl of Pembroke as patrons of Healey's unprinted manuscripts because they had been patrons of Healey before his expatriation and death. There is evidence to prove that in choosing a patron for the 'Sonnets,' and penning a dedication for the second time, he pursued the exact procedure that he had followed-deliberately and for reasons that he fully stated-in his first and only preceding dedicatory venture. He chose his patron from the circle of his trade associates, and it must have been because his patron was a personal friend that he addressed him by his initials, 'W. H.'

'W. H.'

cation of Southwell's poems in 1606.

Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' is not the only volume of the period in the introductory pages of which the initials 'W. H.' play a prominent part. In 1606 one who concealed himsigns dedi- self under the same letters performed for 'A Fourefould Meditation' (a collection of pious poems which the Jesuit Robert Southwell left in manuscript at his death) the identical service that Thorpe performed for Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600, and for Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' in 1609. In 1606 Southwell's manuscript fell into the hands of this 'W. H.,' and he published it through the agency of the printer, George Eld, and of an insignificant bookseller, Francis Burton. 'W. H.,' in his capacity of owner, supplied the dedication with his own pen under his initials. Of the Jesuit's newly recovered poems 'W. H.' wrote, 'Long have they lien hidden

1 Thorpe dedicated to Florio Epictetus his Manuall, and Cebes his Table, out of Greek originall by Io. Healey, 1610. He dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God. Englished by I. H., 1610, and a second

edition of Healey's Epictetus, 1616.

* Southwell's Foure-fould Meditation of 1606 is a book of excessive rarity, only one complete printed copy having been met with in our time. A fragment of the only other printed copy known is now in the British Museum. The work was reprinted in 1895, chiefly from an early copy in manuscript, by Mr. Charles Edmonds, the accomplished bibliographer, who in a letter to the Athenæum on November 1, 1873, suggested for the first time the identity of 'W. H.,' the dedicator of Southwell's poem, with Thorpe's 'Mr. W. H.'

in obscuritie, and haply had never seene the light, had not a meere accident conveyed them to my hands. But, having seriously perused them, loath I was that any who are religiously affected, should be deprived of so great a comfort, as the due consideration thereof may bring unto them.' 'W. H.' chose as patron of his venture one Mathew Saunders, Esq., and to the dedicatory epistle prefixed a conventional salutation wishing Saunders long life and prosperity. The greeting was printed in large and bold type thus :

To the Right Worshipfull and Vertuous Gentleman, Mathew Saunders, Efquire.

W.H. wifheth, with long life, a profperous achieuement of his good defires.

There follows in small type, regularly printed across the page, a dedicatory letter-the frequent sequel of the dedicatory salutation-in which the writer, 'W.H.,' commends the religious temper of 'these meditations' and deprecates the coldness and sterility of his own 'conceits.' The dedicator signs himself at the bottom of the page 'Your Worships unfained affectionate, W. H.''

The two books-Southwell's 'Foure-fould Meditation' of 1606, and Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' of 1609-have more in common than the appearance on the preliminary pages of the initials 'W. H.' in a prominent place, and of the common form of dedicatory salutation. Both volumes, it was announced on the title-pages, came from the same press-the press of George

A manuscript volume at Oscott College contains a contemporary copy of those poems by Southwell which 'unfained affectionate W.H.' first gave to the printing press. The owner of the Oscott volume, Peter Mowle or Moulde (as he indifferently spells his name), entered on the first page of the manuscript in his own handwriting an 'epistel dedicatorie' which he confined to the conventional greeting if happiness here and hereafter. The words ran: To the right worshipfull Mr. Thomas Knevett Esquire, Peter Mowle wisheth the perpetuytie of true felysitie, the health of bodie and soule with continwance of worshipp in this worlde, And after Death the participation of Heavenlie happiness dewringe all worldes for ever.'

D D