ΤΟ

THE MOST NOBLE, HONOURABLE, AND WORTHY LORD,

WILLIAM, EARL OF PEMBROKE,

LORD HERBERT OF CARDIFF, MARMION, AND

ST. QUINTIN.

a

GREAT Earl, whose brave heroic mind is higher
And nobler than thy noble high degree;

Whose outward shape, though it most lovely be,
Doth in fair robes a fairer soul attire:

Who rich in fading wealth, in endless treasure
Of Virtue, Valour, Learning, richer art ;
Whose present greatness, men esteem but part
Of what by line of future hope they measure.
Thou worthy son unto a peerless mother,
Or nephew to great SIDNEY of renown,
Who hast deserv'dd thy coronet, to crown
With laurel crown, a crown excelling th' other :
I consecrate these rhymes to thy great name,
Which if thou like, they seek no other fame.

FRA. DAVISON.

a A slight account of the Earl will be found in p. xcii. b whose high and noble mind. edit. 1602.

c Thou nephew.—ibid.

d Thou deserv'st.-ibid.

e

e Subscribed in edit. 1602, "The devoted admirer of your Lordship's noble virtues,

"FRA. DAVISON,

humbly dedicates, his own, his brothers', and Anomos Poems, both in his own and their names."

TO THE READER.

BEING induced by some private reasons, and by the instant entreaty of special friends, to suffer some of my worthless poems to be published, I desired to make some written by my dear friends Anonymoi, and my dearer Brother, to bear them company: both without their consent, the latter being in the Low Country wars, and the rest utterly ignorant thereof. My friends' names I concealed; mine own and my brother's I willed the printer to suppress, as well as I had concealed the other: which he having put in without my privity, we must now undergo a sharper censure perhaps than our nameless works should have done, and I especially. For if their poems be liked, the praise is due to their invention if disliked, the blame, both by them and all men, will be derived upon me, for publishing that which they meant to suppress.

If thou think we affect fame by these kinds of writing, though I think them no disparagement even to the best judgments, yet I answer in all our behalves, with the princely shepherd Dorus,

"Our hearts do seek another estimation."

If thou condemn poetry in general, and affirm that it doth intoxicate the brain, and make men utterly unfit, either for more serious studies, or for any active course of life, I only say, Jubeo te stultum esse libenter. Since experience proves by examples of many, both dead and living, that divers delighted and excelling herein, being Princes or Statesmen, have governed and counselled as wisely; being soldiers, have commanded armies as fortunately; being lawyers, have pleaded as judicially and eloquently; being divines, have written and taught as profoundly; and being of any other profession, have discharged it as sufficiently as any other men whatsoever. If, liking other kinds, thou mislike the lyrical, because the chiefest subject thereof is love, I reply, that love, being virtuously intended, and worthily placed, is the whetstone of wit, and spur to all generous actions; and many excellent spirits, with great fame of wit, and no stain of judgment, have written excellently in this kind, and specially the ever praiseworthy Sydney. So as, if thou wilt needs make a fault, for mine own part,

"Haud timeo, si jam nequeo defendere crimen,

Cum tanto commune viro."

If any except against the mixing (both at the beginning and end of this book) of divers things written by great and learned personages, with our mean and worthless scribblings, I utterly disclaim it, as being done by the printer, either to grace the forefront with

Sir Philip Sydney's, and other names, or to make the book grow to a competent volume.

For these Poems in particular, I could allege these excuses that those under the name of " Anonymos" were written (as appeareth by divers things, to Sir Philip Sydney living, and of him dead) almost twenty years since, when poetry was far from that perfection to which it hath now attained ;-that my brother is by profession a soldier, and was not eighteen years old when he writ these toys;-that mine own were made, most of them six or seven years since, at idle times, as I journeyed up and down during my travels. But to leave their works to justify themselves, or the authors to justify their works, and to speak of mine own:— thy mislikes I contemn; thy praises (which I neither deserve nor expect) I esteem not, as hoping (God willing) ere long to regain thy good opinion, if lost; or more deservedly to continue it, if already obtained, by some graver work. Farewell.

FRA. DAVISON.