Sonnet IX., from Shakspeare's Passionate Pilgrim.
That the insertion of Griffin's sonnet in the Passionate Pilgrim was without Shakspeare's consent or knowledge, is in my opinion evident for many reasons.
I have long been convinced that the Passionate Pilgrim was published surreptitiously; and although it bears Shakspeare's name, the sonnets and ballads of which it is composed were several of them taken from his dramas, and added to by selections from the poems of his cotemporaries, Raleigh, Marlow, and others; that it was a bookseller's job, made up for sale by the publisher, W. Jaggard.
No one can believe that Shakspeare would have been guilty of such a gross plagiarism. Griffin's Fidessa bears date 1596: the first known edition of the Passionate Pilgrim was printed for W. Jaggard, 1599. It has no dedication to any patron, similar to Shakspeare's other poems, the Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece, and the Sonnets; and why it bears the title of the Passionate Pilgrim no one has ascertained.
But I am losing sight of the object I had in view when I took up my pen, which was, through the medium of "N. & Q.," to request any of its readers to furnish me with any particulars of B. Griffin, the author of Fidessa.
Mr. Singer supposes him to have been of a Worcestershire family; as he addresses his "poore pamphlet" for patronage to the gentlemen of the Innes of Court, he might probably have been bred to the law.
Perhaps your correspondents Cuthbert Bede, or Mr. Noake, the Worcestershire rambler, might in their researches into vestry registers and parish documents, find some notice of the family. I am informed there was a gentleman of the name resident in our college precincts early in the present century, that he was learned and respected, but very eccentric.
J. M. G.
Worcester.
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