[20] This author, now little known but to the student of our rarer
early poets, was a native of Shrewsbury, and had served in the
army. He wrote a large number of poetical pieces, all now of
the greatest rarity; their names have been preserved by that
industrious antiquary Joseph Ritson, in his _Bibliographia
Poetica_. The principal one was termed "The Worthiness of
Wales," and is written in laudation of the Principality. He
was frequently employed to supply verses for Court Masques and
Pageantry. He composed "all the devises, pastimes, and plays
at Norwich" when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there; as
well as gratulatory verses to her at Woodstock. He speaks of
his mind as "never free from studie," and his body "seldom
void of toyle"--"and yet both of them neither brought greate
benefits to the life, nor blessing to the soule" he adds, in
the words of a man whose hope deferred has made his heart
sick!--ED.
[21] _Villanellas_, or rather "_Villanescas_, are properly country
rustic songs, but commonly taken for ingenious ones made in
imitation of them."--PINEDA.
[22] This practice of dedications had indeed flourished before; for
authors had even prefixed numerous dedications to the same
work, or dedicated to different patrons the separate
divisions. Fuller's "Church History" is disgraced by the
introduction of twelve title-pages, besides the general one;
with as many particular dedications, and no less than fifty or
sixty inscriptions, addressed to benefactors; for which he is
severely censured by Heylin. It was an expedient to procure
dedication fees; for publishing books by _subscription_ was an
art not then discovered.
[23] The price of the dedication of a play was even fixed, from five
to ten guineas, from the Revolution to the time of George I.,
when it rose to twenty--but sometimes a bargain was to be
struck--when the author and the play were alike indifferent.
Even on these terms could vanity be gratified with the coarse
luxury of panegyric, of which every one knew the price.
[24] This circumstance was so notorious at the time, that it
occasioned a poetical satire in a dialogue between Motteux and
his patron Henningham--preserved in that vast flower-bed or
dunghill, for it is both, of "Poems on Affairs of State," vol.
ii. 251. The patron, in his zeal to omit no possible
distinction that could attach to him, had given one
circumstance which no one but himself could have known, and
which he thus regrets:
"PATRON.
I must confess I was to blame
That one particular to name;
The rest could never have been known,
_I made the style so like thy own_.