Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, Selected Poetry by George Wither, and Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock)

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Large Paper Edition, limited to 250 copies
Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh.

Thou that wouldst find the habit of true passion, And see a mind attired in perfect strains ... Look here on Breton's work. --BEN JONSON.
The praises of poetry have been often sung in ancient and in modern times; strange powers have been ascribed to it of influence over animate and inanimate auditors; its force over fascinated crowds has been acknowledged; but before Wither, no one ever celebrated its power at home, the wealth and the strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor. Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from this art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion, and that the Muse has a promise of both lives,--of this, and of that which was to come. --CHARLES LAMB.


There are few issues attended with greater uncertainty than the fate of a poet, and of the three represented herein it may be said that they survive but tardily in public interest. Such a state of things, in spite of all pleading, is quite beyond reason; hence the purport of this small Anthology is at once obvious.
A group of poets graced with rarest charm and linked together by several and varied circumstances, each one figures here in unique evidence and bold relief of individuality. They are called of the order Spenserian; servants at the altar to the Pastoral Muse; and, in the reckoning of time, belong to that glorious age of great Elizabeth. Nicholas Breton (or Britton, as it is pronounced) and William Browne were both contributors to England's Helicon , of 1614, and Browne and Wither each submitted verses for The Shepherd's Pipe , a publication of the same year. The former two were, in turn, under the patronage of that most cultured family, the Herberts, Breton being a protégé of Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother, whom Browne (and not Ben Jonson, as is commonly said) eulogised thus in elegy. George Wither, being Browne's intimate friend, was presumably not unappreciated by the kinsfolk of George Herbert. Thus do they appear as in a bond of spiritual union.