[96] In Cal. State Papers (Dom.), under Sept. 2, 1611, I find "Description by Ralph Colphab [Thomas Cariat] of Brasenose College, Oxford, of a philosophical feast the guests at which were Chris Brook, John Donne," and others in exactly the order given below, save for one error. "In Latin Rhymes." Dr. A. Clark in his Aubrey's Brief Lives, II, 50-51, gives the Latin verses from an old commonplace book in Lincoln College Library, "authore Rodolpho Calsabro, Aeneacense"; but prefers the attribution of another old copy, owned by Mr. Madan of Brasenose, "per Johannem Hoskyns, London." The translation by Reynolds, who died in 1614, is also given by Dr. Clark.
CHAPTER XI
BEAUMONT AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S DAUGHTER; RELATIONS WITH OTHER PERSONS OF NOTE
Glimpses of the more personal relations of Beaumont with the world of rank and fashion, and to some extent of his character, are vouchsafed us in the few non-dramatic verses that may with certainty be ascribed to him. Unfortunately for our purpose, most of those included in the Poems, "by Francis Beaumont, Gent.," issued by Blaiklock in 1640 and printed again in 1653, and among The Golden Remains "of those so much admired Dramatick Poets, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gents.," in 1660, are, as I have already said, by other hands than his: some of them by his brother, Sir John, and by Donne, Jonson, Randolph, Shirley, and Waller. Of the juvenile amatory lyrics, addresses, and so-called sonnets in these collections, it is not likely that a single one is by him; for in an epistle to Sidney's daughter, the Countess of Rutland, written when he was evidently of mature years and reputation,—let us suppose, about 1611, Beaumont says:
I would avoid the common beaten ways
To women usèd, which are love or praise.
As for the first, the little wit I have
Is not yet grown so near unto the grave
But that I can, by that dim fading light,
Perceive of what or unto whom I write.
Let others, "well resolved to end their days With a loud laughter blown beyond the seas,"—let such
Write love to you: I would not willingly
Be pointed at in every company,
As was that little tailor, who till death
Was hot in love with Queen Elizabeth.
And for the last, in all my idle days
I never yet did living woman praise
In prose or verse.
A sufficient disavowal, this, of the foolish love songs attributed to him by an uncritical posterity.