An unidentified ‘E.C., Esq.,’ produced also in 1595, under the title of ‘Emaricdulfe,’ [436a] a collection of forty sonnets, echoing English and French models. In the dedication to his ‘two very good friends, John Zouch and Edward Fitton Esquiers,’ the author tells them that an ague confined him to his chamber, ‘and to abandon idleness he completed an idle work that he had already begun at the command and service of a fair dame.’
Sir John Davies’s ‘Gullinge Sonnets,’ 1595.
To 1595 may best be referred the series of nine ‘Gullinge sonnets,’ or parodies, which Sir John Davies wrote and circulated in manuscript, in order to put to shame what he regarded as ‘the bastard sonnets’ in vogue. He addressed his collection to Sir Anthony Cooke, whom Drayton had already celebrated as the Mecænas of his sonnetteering efforts. [436b] Davies seems to have aimed at Shakespeare as well as at insignificant rhymers like the author of ‘Zepheria.’ [436c] No. viii. of Davies’s ‘gullinge sonnets,’ which ridicules the legal metaphors of the sonnetteers, may be easily matched in the collections of Barnabe Barnes or of the author of ‘Zepheria,’ but Davies’s phraseology suggests that he also was glancing at Shakespeare’s legal sonnets lxxxvii. and cxxxiv. Davies’s sonnet runs:
My case is this. I love Zepheria bright,
Of her I hold my heart by fealty:
Which I discharge to her perpetually,
Yet she thereof will never me acquit[e].
For, now supposing I withhold her right,
She hath distrained my heart to satisfy
The duty which I never did deny,
And far away impounds it with despite.
I labour therefore justly to repleave [i.e. recover]
My heart which she unjustly doth impound.
But quick conceit which now is Love’s high shreive
Returns it as esloyned [i.e. absconded], not to be found.
Then what the law affords I only crave,
Her heart for mine, in wit her name to have (sic).
Linche’s ‘Diella,’ 1596.
‘R. L., gentleman,’ probably Richard Linche, published in 1596 thirty-nine sonnets under the title ‘Diella.’ [437a] The effort is thoroughly conventional. In an obsequious address by the publisher, Henry Olney, to Anne, wife of Sir Henry Glenham, Linche’s sonnets are described as ‘passionate’ and as ‘conceived in the brain of a gallant gentleman.’
Griffin’s ‘Fidessa,’ 1596. Thomas Campion, 1596.
To the same year belongs Bartholomew Griffin’s ‘Fidessa,’ sixty-two sonnets inscribed to ‘William Essex, Esq.’ Griffin designates his sonnets as ‘the first fruits of a young beginner.’ He is a shameless plagiarist. Daniel is his chief model, but he also imitated Sidney, Watson, Constable, and Drayton. Sonnet iii., beginning ‘Venus and young Adonis sitting by her,’ is almost identical with the fourth poem—a sonnet beginning ‘Sweet Cytheræa, sitting by a brook’—in Jaggard’s piratical miscellany, ‘The Passionate Pilgrim,’ which bore Shakespeare’s name on the title-page. [437b] Jaggard doubtless stole the poem from Griffin, although it may be in its essentials the property of some other poet. Three beautiful love-sonnets by Thomas Campion, which are found in the Harleian MS. 6910, are there dated 1596. [437c]
William Smith’s ‘Chloris,’ 1596.
William Smith was the author of ‘Chloris,’ a third collection of sonnets appearing in 1596. [437d] The volume contains forty-eight sonnets of love of the ordinary type, with three adulating Spenser; of these, two open the volume and one concludes it. Smith says that his sonnets were ‘the budding springs of his study.’ In 1600 a license was issued by the Stationers’ Company for the issue of ‘Amours’ by