Dr. Giles Fletcher's "Licia." published in 1593: "Licia or Poemes of Love, in Honour of the admirable and singular vertues of his Lady, to the imitation of the best Latin Poets and others. Whereunto is added the Rising to the Crowne of Richard the third." The author of this was Giles Fletcher, LL.D. There were in Elizabeth's reign two brothers Fletcher, Richard and Giles, whose children are more interesting than they are themselves. Richard Fletcher became D.D., and Bishop successively of Bristol, Worcester, and London. He attended at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, angered the queen by his second marriage, smoked much tobacco, and was the father of John Fletcher. John Fletcher was, in the next reign, friend and fellow-writer, as a dramatist, with Francis Beaumont. Richard's brother, Giles Fletcher, became LL.D., was employed by Elizabeth as Commissioner in Scotland, Germany, and the Low Countries, was sent as ambassador to Russia, and published in 1591 a book “Of the Russe Common Wealth," with dedication to the queen. It was quickly suppressed, "lest it might give offence to a prince in amity with England." Dr. Giles Fletcher thought he had found in the Tartars the lost tribes of Israel. He became treasurer to St. Paul's, secretary to the City of London, and Master of the Court of Requests. He had two sons, Phineas and Giles Fletcher, afterwards known as poets. These, therefore, were first-cousins of John Fletcher the dramatist. Dr. Giles Fletcher's fifty-two sonnets to Licia are smoothly planned in the form then commonly used, of three quatrains of alternate rhyme with a closing couplet. He shows that he has read with enjoyment Italian and English sonnet-writers, and he has caught the trick of their A few other poems follow, including three elegies and a "Dialogue betwixt two Sea-Nymphs, Doris and Galatea, concerning Polyphemus; briefly translated out of Lucian." "The Rising to the Crown of Richard III." is told by Richard himself, after the manner of the Tragedies in "The Mirror for Magistrates," of which manner there was at this time a revival that set old Thomas Churchyard challenging against Charles Fitzgeoffrey his first right to the subject of "Shore's Wife." Dr. Giles Fletcher had read Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond ”—a poem of the same class, that had been published with his "Delia" in 1592-for his Richard III. begins his story by asserting that he has more cause for lament than Shore's wife or Fair Rosamond. Phineas and Giles Fletcher would have had their bent to verse encouraged by a father who, being a capable and energetic man in service of the State, took part without discredit in the choir of singers who were men of action too, and stepped to music in the great Elizabethan time. Barnabe Barnes published, in May, 1593, his "Parthenophil and Parthenophe," which is a way of naming "the Maid "Parthenophil and Parthenophe." and her Lover," as Sidney's Astrophel and Stella were names for "the Star and her Lover." It is a collection of a hundred and four sonnets, twenty-six madrigals, and a sestine exact in technical construction. These are followed by twenty-one elegies, a canzone, a translation of the first Idyll of Moschus, twenty odes, four more sestines, and a few sonnets of compliment. Barnabe Barnes was the fourth of nine children of Richard Barnes, Bishop of Durham, who died in 1587. A year before his father's death Barnabe entered Brasenose College, but he left Oxford without graduating. In 1591 Barnabe Barnes went with the Earl of Essex into Normandy, to join the French against the Prince of Parma. As a friend of Gabriel Harvey, whom he supported with a sonnet against Nash, Barnabe Barnes received in his own face some of the mud thrown in the Nash and Harvey gutter-war. While many of the sonnets in " Parthenophil and Parthenophe" are in the Barnabe form then commonly used, of three quatrains and a couplet, others vary the rhyming, and some-as the thirtieth, thirtysecond, thirty-third, and others-are accurately formed on Petrarch's model. In 1595 Barnabe Barnes published "A Divine Centvrie of Spirituall Sonnets," mainly Petrarchan in their form. Whether he sing of earthly or of heavenly love, the passion is conventional, but there is livelier imagery in the poems upon earthly love. After the death of Elizabeth, Barnabe Barnes published, in 1606, "Foure Bookes of Offices; enabling privat Persons for the speciall service of all good Princes and Policies." This was followed in the next year (1607) by a tragedy, called "The Divel's Charter," on Pope Alexander VI. and Lucretia Borgia. Barnes died in December, 1609. William Percy. A familiar friend, to whom Barnabe Barnes dedicated his "Parthenophil and Parthenophe," and who addressed a madrigal to the author of "Parthenophil," was William Percy, who published in 1594 thirteen leaves containing twenty "Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia." They are of the usual three-quatrain-and-couplet form. He wrote also comedies and pastorals, with their songs, and one book of epigrams. These survive in a MS. belonging to the Duke of Northumberland. It is in the library at Alnwick Castle. He wrote also plays, of which a MS. is in the library of the Duke of Devonshire.* William Percy was third son of the eighth Earl of Northumberland. His father, charged with a plot for freeing Mary Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in the Tower, where he killed himself in June, 1585. William Percy's mother survived until October, 1596. William Percy himself lived obscurely at Oxford. There he died, in Penny-farthing Street, in May, 1648. * In 1824 Joseph Haslewood edited two of them for the Roxburghe Club, "The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants, or the Bearing Down the June, a Comedie. The Faery Pastorall or Forrest of Elues. By W. P. Esq." William Shakespeare published in 1593 his poem of "Venus and Adonis," and in 1594 his poem of "Lucrece." Marlowe's fragment of "Hero and Leander," though not published until 1598, by which time George Chapman had finished his continuation, was first entered for publication at Stationers' Hall on the twenty-eighth of September, 1593, nearly four months after Marlowe's death. This was the most beautiful poem, outside Shakespeare's work, that dealt with the passion of love in forms derived from classical mythology. Next in degree of interest was Lodge's poem, "Scillaes Metamorphosis." how the poet, "Scillaes Metamorphosis," published in 1589, which has been named in its place," but left to be described in this connexion. The poem, in the six-lined stanza known as common metre," tells Walking alone (all onely full of griefe) was consoled by the sea-god, Glaucus, "who rose from foorth the channel with a sorrowing crie " "And as I sat vnder a willow tree, The louely honour of faire Thetis bower Repos'd his head vpon my faintful knee : And when my teares had ceast their stormie shower Other sea-nymphs then rose, with sweet music, from "the channel's glide," and sang complaints of love. These prelude the complaint of Glaucus, that dwells on the repulse from the nymph Scilla, when all other nymphs were kind to him. At last Scilla banished her suitor to the western seas, where he might shroud his head within some river and see her no more. He fleeted west and found the Isis, where he weeps now on the shore, now on the stream, consorts with hapless men and yields them comfort, though his wound be cureless. The nymphs were grieved with Glaucus. Then his mother, Thetis, came and sought to * "E. W." x. 62. cheer him, though with piteous eye. At last she prayed for aid to Venus, who came in her pomp with Cupid. Venus referred all to the power of her son Cupid, who cured Glaucus with a stroke of dart in the old wound, that took all sense of wounded love away. Glaucus, heartwhole, was made happy by Venus, and the nymphs who played in flocks about him. Then it was seen that, afar, fair Scilla floated on the stream. None had good-will for her. She came ashore, clasped Glaucus in her arms "Glaucus, my loue (quoth she) looke on thy louer, Smile gentle Glaucus on the nimph that likes thee; It is a classical treatment of the theme of Henryson's "Robine and Makyne": If you will not when you may, when you will I can say Scilla fled at last, and all followed her over the sea to the waters about Sicily, where nay. 66 Fury and Rage, Wan-hope, Dispaire and Woe, Each of them is painted emblem-wise before "These fiue at once the sorrowing nimph assaile, Are changed with wonder into hideous sands, And hard as flint become her snow-white hands." So Scilla's Metamorphosis is into a stormy isle shunned by the seamen, and the story warns ladies "That nimphs must yeeld, when faithfull louers straie not, Least, through contempt, almightie loue compell you A cursed plague for women's proud backsliding." With the diffuseness proper to these love-poems, that |