1598, is on the familiar theme of Avarice in the place of Bounty. It is followed by "the Complaint of Poetrie for the Death of Liberality," and a combat between Conscience and Covetousness. Literature was but beginning then to pass out of the old state of dependence upon private patronage. The very old theme of the power of money is lightly and wittily treated-wisely too, for there is due recognition of its right place in the social world.

A few "Poems in divers Humours" are appended to this little book, including the sonnet beginning "If Music and Sweet Poetrie agree," and the ode beginning "As it fell upon a day," which were presently afterwards printed in a book improperly assigned to Shakespeare. Among these pieces of Barnfeild's is an elegy on the death of his aunt Elizabeth Skrymsher, who had taken the place of mother to him in his early years, and a piece of four stanzas, one in praise of each of the four poets, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, in which Shakespeare is thus honoured:

"And Shakespeare thou whose hony-flowing Vaine,
Pleasing the World, thy Praises doth obtaine,
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece, sweete and chaste,
Thy Name in Fame's immortall Booke haue plac't,
Liue euer you, at least in Fame liue euer:
Well may the Bodye dye, but Fame dies neuer."

'The Passionate Pilgrim."

The little book of thirty leaves, 16mo, that included two of Barnfeild's poems as Shakespeare's, was published in the next year (1599) as "The Passionate Pilgrime. By W. Shakespeare. At London Printed for W. Jaggard, and are to be sold by W. Leake, at the Greyhound in Paules Churchyard." Barnfeild's "Lady Pecunia and Poems in divers Humours" had been "printed by G. S. for Iohn Iaggard, and are to be sold at his shoppe neere Temple-barre, at the signe

of the Hand and Starre." Of the second edition of the "Passionate Pilgrim" no copy is known, nothing is known. There was a third edition in 1612, printed also by W. Iaggard, "wherevnto is newly added two Loue epistles" [really written by Heywood]. "The first from Paris to Hellen, and Hellens answere backe againe to Paris." This edition was issued also as "By W. Shakespeare;" but the title-page was cancelled, and another inserted, for the purpose of omitting Shakespeare's name. Even Marlowe's "Come live with me and be my love," in an imperfect form, was boldly printed here as a poem of Shakespeare's. Another piece, "Venus with Adonis sitting by her," with four lines wholly different and some smaller changes, was taken from Bartholomew Griffin's "Fidessa,” published in 1596. The publisher of this catch-penny book had, however, obtained two of the unpublished sonnets of Shakespeare; he inserted also, with verbal differences, three pieces that are in the 1598 edition of "Love's Labour's Lost," and a few pieces that had not appeared before, of which the authorship must be uncertain. Shakespeare had no part in the publishing of "The Passionate Pilgrim," and it must have been by his wish that his name was removed from the title-page of the third edition in 1612.

Bartholomew Griffin.

Of Bartholomew Griffin, from whom William Jaggard took a sonnet for his book ascribed to Shakespeare, it is only to be said that a person of that name, who was of the city of Coventry, gentleman, died there in December, 1602, that he had a wife named. Katherine, and that he had, as his will shows, an eldest son named Rice. In 1596 appeared the collection of sixty-twosonnets entitled "Fidessa, more chaste then kinde. By B. Griffin, gent. At London Printed by the Widdow Orwin, for Matthew Lownes. 1596." There are two short prose dedications, one to Mr. William Essex, of Lambourne,

Berkshire, the other to the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, to whom the author promises next term-term-time being the publishing season-" a Pastorall yet unfinished, that my purpose was to have added (for varietie sake) to this little volume of Sonnets." The sonnets are skilfully rhymed, and ingenious in the usual way. There are evidences of familiarity with other poets; the third sonnet, which was transferred to Jaggard's volume, has so much of Shakespeare in it that we may regard it as a fancy suggested by the reading of his "Venus and Adonis." There is evidence also that Bartholomew Griffin had read Daniel's sonnets to Delia. The lady to whom these sonnets were addressed in compliment was someone whom the poet could describe as blest from her cradle by a worthy mother, and "sweet model of a far-renowned sire."

William
Smith.

Sonnets were in fashion during the few years before and after 1596, and there were many wherein cheerful men expressed poetical despair of winning what they did not seek. In 1596 there appeared "Chloris, or the Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepheard. By William Smith." This was a collection of fifty sonnets, following two sonnets that inscribed them all to Edmund Spenser, as "the most excellent and learned Shepherd, Colin Clout," among whose personal friends William Smith may, perhaps, be counted; for he addresses the great poet as "Colin my dear and most entire beloved." last sonnet refers again to Spenser :

"Colin, I know that in thy lofty wit

Thou wilt but laugh at these my youthful lines."

The

But when the young rhymester was in doubt of raging Envy, it pleased the great shepherdhood of Spenser, "the patron of my maiden verse to be." Where Spenser was kind to a young poet, let us not venture to slight the budding

hope, in which the youth himself saw but a little hope of fruit.

*

Richard

Linche.

R[ichard] L[inche ?] published, in 1596, "Diella, Certaine Sonnets, adioyned to the amorous Poeme of Dom Diego and Gineura. By R. L. Gentleman." It has been also suggested that the R. L. who wrote these sonnets was Dr. Robert Lylesse, born at Nottingham in 1550, who passed from Eton to King's College, Cambridge, graduated as M.A. in 1575, was proctor of the university in 1581, got into trouble with heads of the university, from which he was expelled in 1583, and lived afterwards in great repute as a physician. Richard Linche published, however, two translations from the Italian, in 1599 and 1601, "The Fovntaine of Ancient Fiction," and an "Historical Treatise of the Travels of Noah into Europe." The author of "Diella" may be the R. L. to whom Richard Barnfeild addressed his sonnet, "If Music and sweet Poetry agree." The sonnets to Diella make a fair love-passion of the customary kind. "The love of Dom Diego and Gineura" is told in six-lined stanzas from a tale in Geoffrey Fenton's "Tragical Discourses written out of French and Latin," † first published in 1567. As Diego and Ginevra ended their story by marrying, R. L. connects the tale with the sonnets by saying to Diella, "Then, dearest love, Ginevrize at the last."

"Alcilia."

There is a collection of love-verses under the name of "Alcilia, Philoparthen's Loving Follie," which first appeared in 1595. Only one copy of its first edition is known, and that is in the town library of Hamburg. It was given to Edward Stubbing by a Dr. Clapham, and has MS. corrections in Dr. Clapham's hand.

*

The

In Athena Cantabrigienses, by Charles Henry Cooper and Thompson Cooper. Dr. Grosart, who has edited "Diella" in his limited reprints, ascribes." Diella " to Linche.

"E. W." viii. 294.

F F-VOL. X

verses have at the end the initials of the writer, J. C., in succeeding editions; but Dr. Clapham, who used his pen on the Hamburg copy of the first edition, altered the C into a G. Sixty-three pieces in the beginning of the book are called sonnets, each being no more than a six-lined stanza of common verse, used to express one thought. Take one for an example:

"After long sicknes health brings more delight,

Seas seeme more calme by stormes once overblowne,
The daie more cheerful by the passéd night,

Each thing is by his contrarie best knowne.
Continual ease is pain; chaunge sometimes meeter:
Discords in Musicke make the Musicke sweeter."

Then, after three longer pieces, entitled "Love's accusation at the judgment seat of Reason," "Love deciphered," and "Love's Last Will and Testament," there are forty more of the six-lined stanzas to which the author gave the name of sonnets, these last being "written by the author after he began to decline from his passionate attachment, and in them he seemeth to please himself with describing the vanity of love, the frailty of beauty, and the sour fruit of repentance." He seemed to please others as well as himself, for the little collection was more than once reprinted, although not without fortification by the adding to them of "Pigmalion's Image" and some more pieces from other pens. The author of "Alcilia," whoever he may have been, was not John Chalkhill. At the end of his prefatory note in Latin verse he declares that he now has done with trifling,

"seria posthæc

(Ut Ratio monet) ac utiliora sequar."

The verses represent not all unworthily the echoes in the valley from young men whom Tityrus has taught to resound praise of Amaryllis. These little springs of music do not.