Thou leav'st thy print in other works of thine,
But thy whole image thou in man hast writ;
There cannot be a creature more divine,
Except, like thee, it should be infinite:

But it exceeds man's thought, to think how high
God hath raised man, since God a man became;
The angels do admire this mystery,

And are astonished when they view the same:

Nor hath he given these blessings for a day,

Nor made them on the body's life depend; The soul, though made in time, survives for aye; And though it hath beginning, sees no end.

EDWARD VERE, EARL OF OXFORD.

This nobleman, so highly popular in the court of Elizabeth (1534-1604) and conspicuous on many memorable occasions-as in the trial of Mary Queen of Scots-is now known only for some verses in the miscellany, entitled the Paradise of Dainty Devices. He was famed in his own day for comedies, or courtly entertainments, none of which has been preserved. Stowe states that this nobleman was the first that brought to England from Italy embroidered gloves and perfumes, which Elizabeth no doubt approved of as highly as his sonnets or madrigals.

partly at Cambridge, and was designed for the law, but relinquished the study in his nineteenth year. About this period of his life, having carefully considered the controversies between the Catholics and Protestants, he became convinced that the latter were right, and became a member of the established church. The great abilities and amiable character of Donne were early distinguished. The Earl of Essex, the Lord Chancellor Egerton, and Sir Robert Drury, successively befriended and employed him; and a saying of the second of these eminent persons respecting him is recorded by his biographers-that he was fitter to serve a king than a subject. He fell, nevertheless, into trouble in consequence of secretly marrying the daughter of Sir George Moore, lord-lieutenant of the Tower. This step kept him for several years in poverty, and by the death of his wife, a few days after giving birth to her twelfth child, he was plunged into the greatest grief. At the age of forty-two, Donne became a clergyman, and soon attaining distinction as a preacher, he was preferred by James I. to the deanery of St Paul's; in which benefice he continued till his death in 1631, when he was buried honourably in Westminster Abbey.

THOMAS STORER.

The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, 1594, is deserving of notice as illustrating the tendency to adapt historical materials for the readers of poetry, and because it probably, in conjunction with Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, incited Shakspeare to the composition of his Henry VIII. In some parts the dramatist has followed Cavendish's narrative even in the language; and the following lines from Storer's poem seem also to have been present to his memory:

Look how the God of Wisdom marbled stands
Bestowing laurel-wreaths of dignity

In Delphos isle, at whose impartial hands

Hung antique scrolls of gentle heraldry,

And at his feet ensigns and trophies lie :

Such was my state when every man did follow

A living image of the great Apollo !

If once we fall, we fall Colossus like,

We fall at once like pillars of the sun;
They that between our stride their sails did strike,
Make us sea-marks where they their ships do run-
E'en they that had by us their treasure won.

Perchance the tenor of my mourning verse
May lead some pilgrim to my tombless grave,
Where neither marble monument, nor hearse,
The passenger's attentive view may crave,
Which honours now the meanest persons have;
But well is me where'er my ashes lie,

If one tear drop from some religious eye. Storer was a native of London; he was entered of Christchurch, Oxford, in 1587, and is supposed to have died about 1604.

JOHN DONNE.

JOHN DONNE was born in London in 1573, of a Catholic family; through his mother he was related to Sir Thomas More and Heywood the epigrammatist. He was educated partly at Oxford and

Monumental Effigy of Dr Donne.

The works of Donne consist of satires, elegies, religious poems, complimentary verses, and epigrams: they were collected and published after his death, in 1650, by his son. An earlier but imperfect collection was printed in 1633. His reputation as a poet, great in his own day, low during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth centuries, has latterly in some degree revived. In its days of abasement, critics spoke of his harsh and rugged versification, and his leaving nature for conceit. It seems to be now acknowledged that, amidst much rubbish, there is much real poetry, and that of a high order, in Donne. He is described by a recent critic as 'imbued to saturation with the learning of his age,' endowed with a most active and piercing intellect-an imagination, if not grasping and comprehensive, most subtile and far-darting-a fancy, rich, vivid,

6

and picturesque-a mode of expression terse, simple, and condensed-and a wit admirable, as well for its caustic severity, as for its playful quickness-and as only wanting sufficient sensibility and taste to preserve him from the vices of style which seem to have beset him.' Donne is usually considered as the first of a series of poets of the seventeenth century, who, under the name of the Metaphysical Poets, fill a conspicuous place in English literary history. The directness of thought, the naturalness of description, the rich abundance of genuine poetical feeling and imagery, which distinguish the poets of Elizabeth's reign, now begin to give way to cold and forced conceits, elaborate exercises of the intellect, a kind of poetry as unlike the former as punning is unlike genuine wit. To give an idea of these conceitsDonne writes a poem on a familiar popular subject, a broken heart. Here he does not advert to the miseries or distractions which are presumed to be the causes of broken hearts, but starts off into a play of conceit upon the phrase. He entered a room, he says, where his mistress was present, and

Love, alas!

At one first blow did shiver it [his heart] as glass. Then, forcing on his mind to discover by what means the idea of a heart broken to pieces, like glass, can be turned to account in making out something that will strike the reader's imagination, he proceeds thus:

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite,
Therefore I think my breast hath all

Those pieces still, though they do not unite:
And now, as broken glasses shew

A hundred lesser faces, so

My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love can love no more.

There is here, certainly, analogy, but then it is an analogy which altogether fails to please or move: it is a mere conceit. Perhaps we should not be far from the truth, if we were to represent this style as a natural symptom of the decline of the brilliant school of Sackville, Spenser, and Shakspeare. All the recognised modes, subjects, and phrases of poetry introduced by them and their contemporaries, were now in some degree exhausted, and it was deemed necessary to seek for novelty of style and manner. This was found, not in a new vein of equally rich ore, but in a continuation of the workings through adjoining veins of spurious metal.

This peculiarity, however, did not characterise the whole of the writings of Donne and his followers. They are often direct, natural, and truly poetical— in spite, as it were, of themselves. Donne, it may be here stated, is usually considered as the first writer of satire, in rhyming couplets, such as Dryden, Young, and Pope carried to perfection. A copy of Donne's three first satires are in the British Museum, among the Harleian manuscripts, and bear the date 1593. The fourth was transcribed by Drummond in 1594, three years before the appearance of Hall's satires. Acting upon a hint thrown out by Dryden, Pope modernised some of Donne's satires. They are greatly deficient, like all this poet's works, in metrical harmony, which some of the minor poets carried to such perfection.

The specimens which follow are designed only to exemplify the merits of Donne, not his defects.

Address to Bishop Valentine, on the Day of the Marriage
of the Elector Palatine to the Princess Elizabeth.
Hail, Bishop Valentine! whose day this is;
All the air is thy diocese,

Valediction-Forbidding Mourning.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go;
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now-and some say, no;

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull, sublunary lovers' love-
Whose soul is sense-cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which alimented it.
But we're by love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is;
Inter-assured of the mind,

Careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls, therefore-which are one--
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no shew
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circles just,
And makes me end where I begun.

The Will.

Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies: I here bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see;
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; to ambassadors mine ears;
To women, or the sea, my tears;

Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore,
By making me serve her who had twenty more,
That I should give to none but such as had too much
before.

My constancy I to the planets give;
My truth to them who at the court do live;
Mine ingenuity and openness

To Jesuits; to Buffoons my pensiveness;
My silence to any who abroad have been;
My money to a Capuchin.
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me
To love there, where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have no good capacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics; All my good works unto the schismatics Of Amsterdam; my best civility And courtship to an university; My modesty I give to soldiers bare; My patience let gamesters share; Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me Love her that holds my love disparity,

Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

I give my reputation to those

Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;
To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness;
My sickness to physicians, or excess;

To Nature all that I in rhyme have writ!
And to my company my wit:

Thou, Love, by making me adore

Her who begot this love in me before,

Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do but restore.

To him for whom the passing bell next tolls

I give my physic books; my written rolls

Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give;

My brazen medals, unto them which live

In want of bread; to them which pass among
All foreigners, my English tongue :
Thou, Love, by making me love one
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion

For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying, because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth,
And all your graces no more use shall have

Than a sun-dial in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,

To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all' three.

[A Character from Donne's Satires.]
Towards me did run

A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun
E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came;
A thing which would have posed Adam to name.
Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies-
Than Afric monsters-Guiana's rarities-
Stranger than strangers. One who for a Dane
In the Danes' massacre had sure been slain,
If he had lived then; and without help dies
When next the 'prentices 'gainst strangers rise.
One whom the watch at noon scarce lets go by;
One to whom th' examining justice sure would cry:
'Sir, by your priesthood, tell me what you are?'
His clothes were strange, though coarse-and black,
though bare;

Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been
Velvet, but 'twas now-so much ground was seen-
Become tuff-taffety; and our children shall
See it plain rash awhile, then not at all.
The thing hath travelled, and saith, speaks all tongues;
And only knoweth what to all states belongs.
Made of the accents and best phrase of these,
He speaks one language. If strange meats displease,
Art can deceive, or hunger force my taste;
But pedants' motley tongue, soldiers' bombast,
Mountebanks' drug-tongue, nor the terms of law,
Are strong enough preparatives to draw

Me to bear this. Yet I must be content

With his tongue, in his tongue called compliment.

*

*

*

*

He names me, and comes to me. I whisper, God!
How have I sinned, that thy wrath's furious rod,
(This fellow) chooseth me? He saith: 'Sir,
I love your judgment-whom do you prefer

For the best linguist?' And I sillily
Said, that I thought, Calepine's Dictionary.
'Nay, but of men, most sweet sir?'-Beza then,
Some Jesuits, and two reverend men

Of our two academies, I named. Here

He stopt me, and said: 'Nay, your apostles wero
Pretty good linguists, and so Panurge was,
Yet a poor gentleman. All these may pass
By travel.' Then, as if he would have sold
His tongue, he praised it, and such wonders told,
That I was fain to say: If you had lived, sir,
Time enough to have been interpreter

6

To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood.'
He adds: If of court-life you knew the good,
You would leave loneness.' I said: 'Not alone
My loneness is, but Spartans' fashion.

To teach by painting drunkards doth not last
Now; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste;
No more can princes' courts-though there be few
Better pictures of vice-teach me virtue.'

He, like a high-stretched lutestring, squeaked: 'O, sir, 'Tis sweet to talk of kings!' 'At Westminster,

(Said I) the man that keeps the Abbey-tombs,
And, for his price, doth, with whoever comes,

Of all our Harrys and our Edwards talk,
From king to king, and all their kin can walk.
Your ears shall hear nought but kings-your eyes meet
Kings only-the way to it is King street.'

He smacked and cried: 'He's base, mechanic, coarse,
So are all your Englishmen in their discourse.
Are not your Frenchmen neat? Mine?-as you see,

I have but one, sir-look, he follows me.
Certes, they are neatly clothed. I of this mind am,
Your only wearing is your grogoram.'
'Not so, sir. I have more.' Under this pitch
He would not fly. I chafed him. But as itch
Scratched into smart-and as blunt iron ground
Into an edge hurts worse-so I (fool!) found
Crossing hurt me. To fit my sullenness,
He to another key his style doth dress,
And asks, What news? I tell him of new plays;
He takes my hands, and as a still which stays
A semibreve 'twixt each drop, he (niggardly,
As loath to enrich me so) tells many a lie-
More than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stows-
Of trivial household trash he knows. He knows
When the queen frowned or smiled, and he knows what
A subtle statesman may gather from that.

He knows who loves whom; and who by poison
Hastes to an office's reversion.

He knows who hath sold his land, and now doth beg
A licence, old iron, boots, shoes, and egg-
Shells to transport. Shortly boys shall not play
At spancounter, or blow point, but shall pay
Toll to some courtier. And-wiser than all us-
He knows what lady is not painted.

JOSEPHI HALL.

JOSEPH HALL, born at Bristow Park, in Leicestershire, in 1574, and who rose through various church tinguished as a prose writer than as a poet. His preferments to be bishop of Norwich, is more dissatires, which were published under the title of Virgidemiarum, in 1597-9, refer to general objects, and present some just pictures of the more remarkable anomalies in human character: they are also written in a style of greater vigour and volubility than most of the compositions of this age. His chief defect is obscurity, arising from remote allusions and elliptical expression. Bishop Hall died in 1656, at the age of eighty-two.

[Selections from Hall's Satires.]

A gentle squire would gladly entertain Into his house some trencher-chapelain:

Some willing man that might instruct his sons,
And that would stand to good conditions.
First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed,
While his young master lieth o'er his head.
Second, that he do, on no default,
Ever presume to sit above the salt.

Third, that he never change his trencher twice.
Fourth, that he use all common courtesies;
Sit bare at meals, and one half rise and wait.
Last, that he never his young master beat,
But he must ask his mother to define

How many jerks he would his breech should line.
All these observed, he could contented be
To give five marks and winter livery.

Seest thou how gaily my young master goes,*
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes;
And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side;
And picks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide?
"Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he dined to-day?
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humphrey.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier;
An open house, haunted with great resort;
Long service mixt with musical disport.+
Many fair younker with a feathered crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest,
To fare so freely with so little cost,

Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say
He touched no meat of all this livelong day.
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess,
His eyes seemed sunk for very hollowness,
But could he have-as I did it mistake-
So little in his purse, so much upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.
Seest thou how side1 it hangs beneath his hip?
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip.
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.
The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.
What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain,
His grandame could have lent with lesser pain?
Though he perhaps ne'er passed the English shore,
Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.
His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head,
One lock amazon-like dishevelled,
As if he meant to wear a native cord,

If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin,
Close notched is his beard, both lip and chin;
His linen collar labyrinthian set,
Whose thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
What monster meets mine eyes in human show?
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin,
Did never sober nature sure conjoin.

Lik'st a strawn scarecrow in the new-sown field,
Reared on some stick, the tender corn to shield,
Or, if that semblance suit not every deal,
Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel.

This is the portrait of a poor gallant of the days of Elizabeth. In St Paul's Cathedral, then an open public place, there was a tomb, erroneously supposed to be that of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, which was the resort of gentlemen upon town in that day who had occasion to look out for a dinner. When unsuccessful in getting an invitation, they were said to dine with Duke Humphrey.

An allusion to the church-service to be heard near Duke Humphrey's tomb.

1 Long, or low.

MARSTON-CHURCHYARD-TUBERVILLE-WATSON

-CONSTABLE-BRETON.

Nearly contemporary with Hall's satires were those of JOHN MARSTON, the dramatist, known for his subsequent rivalry and quarrel with Ben Jonson. Marston, in 1598, published a small volume, Certayne Satires, and in 1599 The Scourge of Villany, &c. He survived till 1634. Little is known of this 'English Aretine,' but all his works are coarse and licentious. Ben Jonson boasted to Drummond that he had beaten Marston and taken his pistol from him. If he had sometimes taken his pen, he would have better served society.

Among the swarm of poets ranking with the earlier authors of this period, we may note the following as conspicuous in their own times. THOMAS CHURCHYARD (1520-1634) wrote about seventy volumes in prose and verse. He served in the army, 'trailed a pike,' in the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth, and received from Elizabeth-whom he had propitiated by complimentary addresses-a pension of eighteen-pence a day, not paid regularly. Churchyard is supposed to be the Palamon of Spenser's Colin Clout,

That sang so long until quite hoarse he grew. GEORGE TUBERVILLE (circa 1530-1594) was secretary to Randolph, Queen Elizabeth's ambassador at the court of Russia. So early as 1568, he had published songs and sonnets; but some of his works -as his Essays and Book of Falconry-were not published till after his death.-THOMAS WATSON (circa 1560-1592) was author of Hecatompathia or Passionate Century of Love, a series of sonnets of superior elegance and merit.-HENRY CONSTABLE (circa 1560-1612) was also author of a great number of sonnets, partly published in 1592 under the title of Diana. Almost every writer of this time ventured on a sonnet or translation. Some settled down into dramatists, and as such will be noticed hereafter; others became best known as prose writers. Dr Drake calculates that there were about two hundred poets in the reign of Elizabeth! This is no exaggeration; but it is to the last decade of the century that we must look for its brightest names.-NICHOLAS BRETON (1558-1624) was a prolific and often happy writer, pastoral, satirical, and humorous. Works of a Young Wit appeared in 1577; and a succession of small volumes proceeded from his pen; eight pieces with his name are in England's Helicon -a valuable poetical miscellany published in 1600, including contributions from Sidney, Spenser, Raleigh, Lodge, Marlowe, Watson, Greene, &c. Of Breton, little personally is known, but he is supposed to have been the son of a Captain Nicholas Breton of Tamworth, in Staffordshire, who had an estate at Norton in Northamptonshire.

[A Sweet Pastoral.-By Breton.] [From England's Helicon.] On a hill there grows a flower, Fair befal the dainty sweet! By that flower there is a bower,

Where the heavenly muses meet.
In that bower there is a chair,

Fringed all about with gold,
Where doth sit the fairest fair
That ever eye did yet behold.
It is Phillis, fair and bright,
She that is the shepherd's joy,
She that Venus did despite,

And did blind her little boy.

His

Thou gallant court, to thee farewell! For froward fortune me denies

Now longer near to thee to dwell. I must go live, I wot not where, Nor how to live when I come there. And next, adieu you gallant dames,

The chief of noble youth's delight! Untoward Fortune now so frames,

That I am banished from your sight,
And, in your stead, against my will,
I must go live with country Gill.
Now next, my gallant youths, farewell;
My lads that oft have cheered my heart!
My grief of mind no tongue can tell,

To think that I must from you part.
I now must leave you all, alas,
And live with some old lobcock ass!
And now farewell thou gallant lute,

With instruments of music's sounds!
Recorder, citern, harp, and flute,

And heavenly descants on sweet grounds.
I now must leave you all, indeed,
And make some music on a reed!

And now, you stately stamping steeds,

And gallant geldings fair, adieu !
My heavy heart for sorrow bleeds,

To think that I must part with you:
And on a strawen pannel sit,
And ride some country carting tit!
And now farewell both spear and shield,
Caliver, pistol, arquebuss,

See, see, what sighs my heart doth yield
To think that I must leave you thus;
And lay aside my rapier blade,
And take in hand a ditching spade!

And you farewell, all gallant games,
Primero and Imperial,
Wherewith I used, with courtly dames,
To pass away the time withal:
I now must learn some country plays
For ale and cakes on holidays!
And now farewell each dainty dish,

With sundry sorts of sugared wine!
Farewell, I say, fine flesh and fish,

To please this dainty mouth of mine! I now, alas, must leave all these,

And make good cheer with bread and cheese!

And now, all orders due, farewell!

My table laid when it was noon;

My heavy heart it irks to tell

My dainty dinners all are done:

With leeks and onions, whig and whey,
I must content me as I may.

And farewell all gay garments now,
With jewels rich, of rare device!
Like Robin Hood, I wot not how,
I must go range in woodman's wise;

Clad in a coat of green, or gray,
And glad to get it if I may.

What shall I say, but bid adieu

To every dream of sweet delight, In place where pleasure never grew, In dungeon deep of foul despite, I must, ah me! wretch as I may, Go sing the song of wellaway!

LODGE-BARNFIELD.

THOMAS LODGE, one of the most graceful and correct of the minor poets and imaginative writers of this period, appeared as an author in 1580. He then published a Defence of Stage Plays in Three Divisions, to which Stephen Gosson replied by a work quaintly styled Plays Confuted in Five Actions. Gosson speaks of Lodge as a vagrant person visited by the heavy hand of God.' Of the nature of this visitation we are not informed, but Lodge seems to have had a very varied life. He was of a respectable family in Lincolnshire, where he was born about 1556, and entered Trinity College, Oxford, as a servitor, under Sir Edward Hobby, in 1573. After leaving college, he is supposed to have been on the stage. But he afterwards joined in the expeditions of Captain Clarke and Cavendish, and wrote his Rosalynde to beguile the time during his voyage to the Canaries. He next appears as a law-student. In his Glaucus and Scilla (1589), Catharos Diogenes (1591), and a Fig for Comus (1595), he styles himself of Lincoln's Inn, Gent. His next work, A Margarite of America (1596), was written, he says, 'in those straits christened by Magellan, in which place to the southward, many wondrous isles, many strange fishes, many monstrous Patagons, withdrew my senses.' From the law, Lodge turned to physic. He studied medicine, Wood says, at Avignon, and he practised in London, being much patronised by Roman Catholic families, till his death by the plague in 1625. Lodge wrote several pastoral tales, sonnets, and light satires, besides two dramas; one of them in conjunction with Greene. His poetry is easy and polished, though abounding in conceits and gaudy ornament. His Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie, contains passages of fine description and delicate sentiment, with copies of verses interspersed. From this romantic little tale Shakspeare took the incidents of his As you Like It, following Lodge with remarkable closeness. The great dramatist has been censured for some anachronisms in his exquisite comedy-such as introducing a lioness and palmtree into his forest of Arden; but he merely copied Lodge, who has the lion, the myrrh-tree, the fig, the citron, and pomegranate. In these romantic and pastoral tales, consistency and credibility were utterly disregarded.

RICHARD BARNFIELD (born about 1570) resembled Lodge in the character of his writings and in the smoothness and elegance of his verse. He was also a graduate of Oxford. His works are- -Cynthia, with Certain Sonnets, and the Legend of Cassandra (1595); the Affectionate Shepherd, &c. (1596); The Encomium of Lady Pecunia (1598), &c. But Barnfield is chiefly known from the circumstance that some of his pieces were ascribed to Shakspeare, in a volume entitled "The Passionate Pilgrim, by W. Shakespeare' (1599). The use of Shakspeare's name was a trick of the bookseller. The small volume contains two of Shakspeare's sonnets, some verses taken from his Love's Labour Lost (published the year before), some pieces known to be by Marlowe and Raleigh,_and others taken from Barnfield's Encomium of Lady

Pecunia.