to those 'airy nothings' which more or less haunt every fancy? Or has he not sat down rather to exercise the subtlety of his wit, than to discharge the fullness of his bosom?"[663:A]
Yet has Watson, with these vital defects, been pronounced by Mr. Steevens superior as a sonneteer to Shakspeare[663:B]; a preference which we shall have occasion to consider in the chapter appropriated to the minor poems of our great dramatist.
Beside the "Hekatompathia," Watson published, in 1581, a Latin translation of the Antigone of Sophocles; in 1582, "Ad Olandum de Eulogiis serenissimæ nostræ Elizabethæ post Anglorum prœlia cantatis, Decastichon;" in 1586, a Paraphrase in Latin verse of the "Raptus Helenæ," of Coluthus; in 1590, an English Version of Italian Madrigalls, and "Melibœus, a Latin Eclogue on the Death of Sir Francis Walsingham," 4to.; in 1592, he printed "Amintæ Gaudia," in hexameter verses, 4to.; and beside other fugitive pieces, two poems of his are inserted in the "Phœnix Nest," 1593, and in "England's Helicon," 1600.
Watson has been highly praised by Nash[663:C], by Gabriel Harvey[663:D], and by Meres; the latter asserting that "as Italy had Petrarch, so England had Thomas Watson."[663:E] He is supposed to have died about the year 1595, for Nash, in his "Have with you to Saffron Walden," printed in 1596, speaks of him as then deceased, adding, that "for all things he has left few his equals in England."
38. Willobie, Henry. From the Preface of Hadrian Dorrell, to the first edition of Willobie's "Avisa" in 1594, in which he terms the author, "a young man, and a scholar of very good hope," there is foundation for conjecturing that our poet was born about the year 1565. It appears also from this prefatory matter that, "being desirous
to see the fashions of other countries for a time, he not long sithence departed voluntarily to her majestie's service," and that Dorrell, in his friend's absence, committed his poem to the press.[664:A] He gave it the following title, "Willobie his Avisa; or the true picture of a modest Maide and of a chast and constant wife. In hexameter[664:B] verse. The like argument whereof was never heretofore published:" 4to. A second edition was published by the same editor in 1596, with an Apology for the work, dated June 30, and concluding with the information, that the author was "of late gone to God." A fourth impression "corrected and augmented," consisting of 72 leaves 4to., made its appearance in 1609[664:C], with the addition of "the victorie of English Chastitie never before published," and subscribed "Thomas Willoby, frater Henrici Willoby nuper defuncti."
Mr. Haslewood conjectures from Dorrell's calling Willobie his chamber-fellow, and then dating his Preface from his chamber in
Oxford; and from a passage in the "Avisa" itself, that our author was educated in that university, and that he was a native of Kent.[665:A] We are told likewise by Dorrell, in his "Apologie," that his friend had written a poem entitled "Susanna," which still remained in manuscript.
The "Avisa," which consists of a great number of short cantos, is written to exemplify and recommend the character of a chaste woman, under all the temptations to which the various situations incident to her life, expose her. "In a void paper," says the editor, "rolled up in this book, I found this very name Avisa, written in great letters, a pretty distance asunder, and under every letter a word beginning with the same letter, in this forme:—
| A. | V. | I. | S. | A. |
| Amans. | Vxor. | Inviolata. | Semper. | Amanda. |