Restituta Volume 4; Or, Titles, Extracts, and Characters of Old Books in English Literature, Reviewed (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: -, .$. -4- -ii-- Licia: or Poemes of Love: in honour of the admirable and singular Fertues of his Lady. In the imitation of the best Latin Poets and others. Whereunto is added, the Rising to the Crowne of Richard the Third. Auxit Musarum numerum Sappho addita Musis, F(tlix si swcns, sic voluisset Amor. 4tO. pp. 92. This is all the title to an apparently unpublished and anonymous production, which is inscribed to the Lady of Sir Richard Mollineux, in terms that, if the knight had been prone to jealousy, might have rendered him an easy prey to the green-eyed monster. The author may perhaps have been a Cantabrigian, as he speaks of Harrington having shown in his Ariosto that he took up his abode in King's College. His epistle dedicatory bears date from his chamber, Sept. 4, 1593; and whether he may not hence have been one of those erratic law-students who " penn'd a stanza when he should engross," must rest in conjecture wholly. His love sonnets (52 in number) are neither to be classed atnong the best or worst of the period in which he wrote: the lady Licia, to whom they are addressed, being probably one of those supposititious inspirers who convey the transmitted ingenuity and artifices of poetic composition, rather than the natural impulses of passion and truth. Cupid and Venus, and Cynthia and Phoebus, and the vapid semi-demi-heroes and heroines of mythological fable, never fill the mind of a real lover. All the sonnets are not however of this unmeaning and school-boy texture; though most of them are in a strain of complimentary hyperbole: exempli gratia. Sonnet xxxiv. Pale are my lookes, forsaken of my lyfe; Cynders my bones, consumed with thy flame; Floodes are my teares, to end this burning stryfe; And yet I sigh, for to increase the same. I mourn...