The author of _Fidessa_ has gained undeserved notice from the fact
that the piratical printer W. Jaggard, included a transcript of one of
his sonnets in a volume that he put forth in 1599, under the name of
Shakespeare. It would be easy to believe, in spite of the doubtful
rimes characteristic of _Fidessa_, that sonnet three was not
Griffin's, for no singer in the Elizabethan choir was more skilful in
turning his voice to other people's melodies than was he. He has been
called "a gross plagiary;" yet it must be realised that the sonneteers
of that time felt they had a right, almost a duty, to take up the
poetic themes used by their models. Griffin shows great ingenuity in
the manipulation of the stock-themes, and the lover of Petrarch and
all the young Abraham-Slenders of the day must have been delighted
with the familiar "designs" as they re-appeared in _Fidessa_.
Bartholomew Griffin was buried in Coventry in 1602. In 1596 he
dedicated his "slender work" _Fidessa_ to William Essex of Lamebourne
in Berkshire. He adds an address to the Gentlemen of the Inns of
Court, whom he begs to "censure mildly as protectors of a poor
stranger" and "judge the best as encouragers of a young beginner." Of
the poet little further is known. From the sonnets themselves we learn
that Fidessa was "of high regard," the child of a beautiful mother and
of a renowned father; she sprang in fact from the same root with the
poet himself, who writes "Gent." after his name on the title-page. She
had been kind to him in sickness and had "yielded to each look of his
a sweet reply." After giving these slight hints, he pushes forth from
the moorings of realism and sets sail on the ocean of the sonneteer's
fancy, meeting the usual adventures. His sonnets, while showing
versatility and ingenuity, lack spontaneous feeling and have serious
defects in form; yet these defects are in part offset by their
conversational ease and dramatic vividness.