commanded from the Court, and from his Royall Companie. Translated into English by the foresaid Author." The "Alba" celebrated here in many stanzas of common verse seems to be punningly associated with some unknown Caryl of Warrington. In the third part of "Alba" Tofte tells how he once went with his lady to see "Love's Labour Lost": "Love's Labor Lost, I once did see a Play Yclepéd so, so called to my paine, Yet was I drawn to it against my will." Three stanzas more tell how "This play no play, but plague was unto me." Robert Tofte published, also in 1598, a translation of the first three books of Boiardo's "Orlando Inamorato," and in 1599, "Of Marriage and Wiuing. An Excellent pleasant and Philosophicall Controversie, between the two famous Tassi now liuing, the one Hercules the Philosopher, the other Torquato the Poet. Done into English by R. T. Gentleman." In the next reign a translation by Tofte of the Satires of Ariosto was published in 1608, ascribed by error to Gervase Markham. John There is an undated "Shepheardes Complaint. A passionate Eclogue, written in English Hexameters: Wherevnto are annexed other conceits, brieflie expressing the effects of Loues impressions, and the iust punishment of aspiring beautie. By J. D." That is, John Dickenson, who published in 1594 a euphuistic prose book with verse intermixed, "Arisbas, Euphues amidst his slumbers: Or Cupid's Iourney to Hell. Decyphering a Myrror of Constancie, a Touchstone of tried. affection, begun in chaste desires, ended in choise delights; And emblasoning Beauties glorie, adorned by Natures bountie. With the Triumph of True Love, in the foyle of false Fortune." Another of Dickenson's books, published in 1598, was a story told in Greene's manner: "Greene in Conceipt, New raised from his graue to write the Tragique Historie of faire Valeria of London." Chester's Martyr." "Love's Martyr," by Robert Chester, first published in 1601, is the book to which, in an appended collection of pieces by "several modern Writers," Shakespeare contributed his poem of "The Phoenix Love's and Turtle." Robert Chester, son of an Edward Chester, of Royston, was twelve years old when his father died in January, 1579. He was a justice of the peace for Herts, and Sheriff of Herts in 1599. He was knighted by King James on the twenty-third of July, 1603. He married, and had six sons and six daughters, and he died, owner of several manors besides that of Royston, on the third of May, 1640. He was thirty-four years old when he published his poem, which was no more than it professed to be, an allegory of the truth of love: not of his own love for Anne Capell, who became his wife; nor of the love of Queen Elizabeth towards the Earl of Essex, then in Ireland; but of the consummation of a perfect love. Nature, Rosalin, has formed a perfect woman, who is perfect Love-the Phoenix-and desires that a new Phoenix may spring from her. The Council of the Gods bids Nature take this Phoenix to Paphos, where the faithful Turtle Dove will mate with her. On the way they fly over Britain to the Mediterranean, and we are told of London and of British history, of King Arthur and the glories of our island-glories of man. In Paphos we are told of the wonders of plants, beasts, birds-glories of Nature-all being a little incoherent, but distinctly entertaining. So we reach the Turtle, faithful in mourning for his single mate. Phoenix and Turtle join as perfect lovers, and together build the pyre on which they burn in Love's flame and are made one : "Upon an altar would I offer Love, And sacrifice my soul, poor Turtle Dove." So the poem ends. Shakespeare's Turtle and Phoenix." "Hereafter follow diverse Poetical Essaies on the former Subiect; viz: the Turtle and Phoenix. Done by the best and chiefest of our moderne writers, with their names subscribed to their particular workes: never before extant. And (now first) consecrated by them all generally, to the loue and merite of the true-noble Knight, Sir Iohn Salisberie. Dignum lauda virum, Musa vetat mori." Here first a Chorus Vatum invokes aid from Apollo in giving a round to "an honourable friend": "Instruct us how to rise, In weighty Numbers, well pursu'd, And varied from the Multitude." Shakespeare begins the session with a poem on the Phoenix and Turtle that laments the death of Love and Constancy John "Here the Anthem doth commence : Love and Constancy is dead, "So they loved as love in twain Two distincts, division none, Number there in love was slain." John Marston followed with "a narration and description of a most exact and wondrous creature, arising out of the Phoenix and Turtle Dove's ashes." This offspring is Perfection, where all is mind, as far from spot as possible defining. Next comes George Chapman's contribution, which he calls "Peristeros; or the male Turtle." As that bird of love found all in one, so that her firmness clothed him in variety: George "Like him I bound th' instinct of all my powers In her that bounds the empire of desert, And Time nor Change (that all things else devours Can change me more from her than her from merit ; Last comes Ben Jonson with some pieces of large scope, chief of them the noble epode Ben Jonson. beginning: "Not to know Vice at all, and keep true state, Is Virtue, and not Fate: Next to that Virtue, is, to know Vice well, He then passes on to noble praise of a pure love. "Acolastus his Afterwitte," a poem by Samuel Nicholson, represents Acolastus, the Prodigal, discoursing of love with Eubulus, whose note is, 66 Forget, my God, the folly of my youth, How I, misled, have led my doting days, And scorned to set my footing in Thy ways; For pardoning him that was so deep a debtor." "Acolastus his Afterwitte." Acolastus complains of the evil days that made him a "false slave to false delights," and is ready to kill himself, when he is stayed by the wise counsel of Eubulus : "Look, study, sigh for grace and fly from evil, The afterwit of Acolastus is the tale of a love-passion set forth as the Tragi-comedy of Fools. Little more is known of the author than that he was a graduate of Cambridge, and that a sermon of his on Christ's death for Man was published in 1602 as "God's New-yeeres gift sent vnto England." The chief interest of "Acolastus his Afterwitte,” which the author says he had written in his youth, is the considerable number of lines imitated or adopted by him from lines of the poets that he read, especially from Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece." Nicholas Nicholas, son of William Breton, a London merchant, and stepson of George Gascoigne, the poet,* inherited from his father a manor in Lincolnshire, Burgh-inthe-Marsh, near Wainfleet. He studied in Oxford, where there is no record of him under any conceivable form of the spelling of his name. He says himself, in his "Floorish upon Fancie," published in 1577, that he had spent some years at Oxford. In an unpublished diary the Rev. Richard Madox,† chaplain to a naval expedition, says under the fourteenth of March, 1582: "I dined with Mr. Carlile at his brother Hudson's who is governor of Antwerp.. . . There was Mr. Brytten, once of Oriel College, who made 'Wit's Will.' He speaketh the Italian well." Breton's books in Elizabeth's reign were: "A Floorish upon Fancie and The Toyes of an Idle Head,” a considerable collection of his earlier poems published in 1577 and 1582; in 1578, "The Pain of Pleasure; in 1580, "Wit's Will; in 1584, "A Handfull of wholesome Hearbes;" in 1586, "Sir Philip Sidney's Epitaph;" in *E. W." viii. 274. + Sloane MS. 5008. Quoted from Dr. Grosart's "Memorial" to his edition of the works of Nicholas Breton, first collected by him in the Chertsey Worthies Library, in two substantial volumes of small print, double-columned, 1875-79. Many Elizabethan writers who have survived only in one, two, or three copies of their works, were printed by Dr. Grosart between 1875 and 1881, in thirty-seven 4to volumes, as "Occasional Issues," in limited editions of from thirty to fifty copies. Use is made in the narrative of these editions, which will be found, with helpful works of other writers, specified more fully in the Bibliography at the end of the eleventh volume of "E. W." |