Philomela to your Honour, and to christen it in your Ladyship's name, calling it the "Lady Fitzwater's Nightingale ;” as if I should insinuate a comparison 'twixt you and him of equal and honourable virtues: imitating herein Master ABRAHAM FRANCE, who titled the Lamentations of Amintas, under the name of the Countess of Pembroke's Ivie-Church. For herein your Ladyship had far more perfections than years, and more inward excellence than external beauty, yet so beautiful, as few so fair, though none more virtuous. I thought the legend of an honourable and chaste lady would be grateful to your Honour, whose mind is wholly delighted in chaste thoughts, keeping herein a perfect decorum to appropriate the nature of the gift to the content of the person. For such as offer incense to Venus, burn myrrh mixed with eringo; those that glory Pallas, give her a shield; Dians present a bow; witty poems are fit for wise heads; and examples of honour for such as triumph in virtue: so that seeing there hath few led more chaste than an Italian Philomela, I thought none only more fit to patronize her honours than your Ladyship, whose chastity is as far spread as you are either known or spoken of. If then my well meaning may not be misconstrued, but my presumption pardoned, and my labours favoured with your gracious acceptation, I have what I aimed at, and what I expected: in the hope of which courtesy, setting down my rest, I humbly take my leave.

Your Ladyship's,

in all dutiful service,

ROBERT GREENE.

ΤΟ

THE GENTLEMEN READERS,

HEALTH.

Ir the contents of lines could at life discover the colour of the face, you should, Gentlemen, see my ruddy cheeks manifest my open follies but seeing paper cannot blush, I will confess my fault, and so humbly crave pardon. I promised, Gentlemen, both in my MOURNING GARMENT and FAREWELL TO FOLLIES, never to busy myself about any wanton pamphlets again, nor to have my brain counted so addle, as to set out any matter that were amorous; but yet am I come, contrary to vow and promise, once again to the press with a labour of love, which I hatched long ago, though now brought forth to light. If the printer had not been, I would have had it thrust out as an orphan, without any name to father it: but at his earnest entreaty I was content to subscribe, though I abide your hard censures and angry frowns for a penance. Therefore sith the work was writ afore my vow, and published upon duty to so honourable and beautiful a Lady, I humbly sue for favour, and crave that will bear with this fault, and hold me every way excused; which courtesy if you grant me, I have more than I deserve, and as much as my desire every way can wish, and so farewell.

you

Yours,

ROBERT GREENE.

Advertisement.

THE origin and progress of the dispute between ROBERT GREENE and Dr. GABRIEL HARVEY, which gave occasion to the following Letters and Sonnets, has been discussed in the Preface to the new Edition of Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit, printed last year at the Private Press at Lee Priory, in Kent. It is there observed, and here indeed expressly stated in the First Letter, here reprinted, that the offence was committed by GREENE in his Quippe for an Upstart Courtier, or a Quaint Dispute between Velvet-Breeches and ClothBreeches', in which the author made a contemptuous allusion to the station and character of HARVEY's father, who was a rope-maker at Saffron-Walden, in Essex.

The agonizing pangs which this sarcasm (certainly unwarrantable if unprovoked) appears to have inflicted on the pride and vanity of HARVEY, vented themselves in torrents of abuse both on this and on future occasions, which seem to the Editor to throw an indelible stigma on the moral character of him who suffered his revengeful passions thus to carry him away.

There is, however, so much interesting matter in the present Tract, that while the reader is adjured to guard himself against the infection of the venom with which the memory of poor GREENE is here loaded, it cannot be unacceptable to the gratification of his literary curiosity, to furnish him with a production at once so rare and of so singular a cast.

Reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany..
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That HARVEY was a man of great learning, and of a profusion of pedantic rhetoric, will probably be conceived by all. That his intellect was vigorous, and his judgment comprehensive and generally sound, may also be asserted. But he But he appears to have been totally deficient as well in taste as in genius. He could therefore as little comprehend, as treat with favour, or even indulgence, the merits of men of more fancy, with less learning, than himself.

His self-sufficiency was so great as justly to expose him to ridicule: "If I never," says he, "deserve any better remembrance, let me rather be epitaphed The Inventor of the English Hexameter, whom learned M. Stanihurst imitated in his Virgil, and excellent Sir Philip Sidney disdained not to follow in his Arcadia and elsewhere, than be chronicled The Green Master of the Black Art; or the founder of ugly oaths; or the father of misbegotten Fortunatus; or the Scrivener of Crossbiters; or, as one of his own sectaries termed him, the Patriarch of Shifters!"

Again, in his 22d Sonnet he says:

"Some Tales to tell, would I a Chaucer were;
Yet would I not even now an Homer be:
Though Spenser me hath often Homer termed,
And Monsieur Bodine vow'd as much as he."

It is true that in the friendship and praises of Spenser he had much to make him vain: and the following Sonnet, which occurs at the close of the present tract, is repeated in this place in justice to his memory; for it is candid to confess, that it checks something of the antipathy which is continually rising in the Editor's mind against him.