Most gracious and dread Sovereign,

...Thirteen years your Highness's servant, but yet nothing. Twenty friends that though they say they will be sure, I find them sure too slow. A thousand hopes, but all nothing. A hundred promises, but yet nothing. Thus casting up an inventory of my friends, hopes, promises and times, the sum total amounteth to just nothing. My last will is shorter than mine invention. But three legacies I bequeath, Patience to my creditors, Melancholy without measure to my friends, and Beggary without shame to my family...

The last and the least, that if I be born to have nothing, I may have protection to pay nothing, which suit is like his, who having followed the court ten years, for recompense of his service committed a robbery, and took it out in a pardon.

John Lyly to Queen Elizabeth 1598

Portrait of a poet

I espied afar off a certain kind of an overworn gentleman attired in velvet and satin, but it was somewhat dropped and greasy, and boots on his legs, whose soles waxed thin and seemed to complain of their master, which treading thrift under his feet had brought them unto that consumption. He walked not as other men in the common beaten way, but came compassing circumeirca, as if we had been devils, and he would draw a circle about us, and at every third step he looked back as if he were afraid of a bailey or a sergeant....

A poet is a waste-good and an unthrift, that he is born to make the taverns rich and himself a beggar. If he have forty pound in his purse together, he puts it not to usury, neither buys land nor merchandise with it, but a month's commodity of wenches and capons. Ten pound a supper, why 'tis nothing, if his plough goes and his ink-horn be clear. Take one of them with twenty thousand pounds and hang him. He is a king of his pleasure, and counts all other boors and peasants that, though they have money at command, yet know not like him how to domineer with it to any purpose as they should. But to speak plainly, I think him an honest man, if he would but live within his compass, and generally no man's foe but his own.

ROBERT GREENE, A Quip for an Upstart Courtier 1592

An author's complaint

I tossed my imagination a thousand ways, to see if I could find any means to relieve my estate: but all my thoughts consorted to this conclusion, that the world was uncharitable, and I ordained to be miserable. Thereby I grew to consider how many base men that wanted those parts which I had, enjoyed content at will, and had wealth at command: I called to mind a cobbler, that was worth five hundred pound, an hostler that had built a goodly inn, and might dispend forty pound yearly by his land, a carman in a leather pilch, that had whipped out a thousand pound out of his horse tail: and have I more wit than all these (thought I to myself)? am I better born? am I better brought up? yea, and better favoured? and yet am I a beggar? What is the cause? how am I crossed? or whence is this curse?

Even from hence, that men that should employ such as I am, are enamoured of their own wits, and think whatever they do is excellent, though it be never so scurvy: that learning (of the ignorant) is rated after the value of the ink and paper: and a scrivener better paid for an obligation, than a scholar for the best poem he can make; that every gross-brained idiot is suffered to come into print, who if he set forth a pamphlet of the praise of pudding-pricks, or write a treatise of Tom Thumme, or the exploits of Untrusse, it is bought up thick and threefold, when better things lie dead. How then can we choose but be needy, when there are so many drones amongst us? or ever prove rich, that toil a whole year for fair looks?

Gentle Sir Philip Sidney, thou knewest what belonged to a scholar, thou knewest what pains, what toil, what travail, conduct to perfection: well couldst thou give every virtue his encouragement, every art his due, every writer his desert: 'cause none more virtuous, witty, or learned than thyself. But thou art dead in thy grave, and hast left too few successors of thy glory, too few to cherish the sons of the Muses, or water those budding hopes with their plenty, which thy bounty erst planted.

Believe me, gentlemen, for some cross mishaps have taught me experience, there is not that strict observation of honour, which hath been heretofore. Men of great calling take it of merit, to have their names eternized by poets; and whatsoever pamphlet or dedication encounters them, they put it up their

sleeves, and scarce give him thanks that presents it. Much better is it for those golden pens to raise such ungrateful peasants from the dunghill of obscurity, and make them equal in fame to the worthies of old, when their doting self-love shall challenge it of duty, and not only give them nothing themselves, but impoverish liberality in others.

This is the lamentable condition of our times, that men of art must seek alms of cormorants, and those that deserve best, be kept under by dunces, who count it a policy to keep them bare, because they should follow their books the better: thinking belike, that, as preferment hath made themselves idle that were erst painful in meaner places, so it would likewise slacken the endeavours of those students that as yet strive to excel in hope of advancement. A good policy to suppress superfluous liberality. But, had it been practised when they were promoted, the yeomanry of the realm had been better to pass than it is, and one drone should not have driven so many bees from their honeycombs.

THOMAS NASHE, Pierce Penilesse 1592

A Pot-poet

Is the dregs of wit; yet mingled with good drink_may have some relish. His inspirations are more real than others; for they do but feign a god, but he has his by him. His verses run like the tap, and his invention, as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose afire together. The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a sixpence or two in reward of the baser coin, his pamphlet. His works would scarce sell for three halfpence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman: for which the printer maintains him in ale a fortnight. His verses are like his clothes, miserable centos and patches, yet their pace is not altogether so hobbling as an almanac's. The death of a great man or the burning of a house furnish him with an argument, and the nine Muses are out straight in mourning gown, and Melpomene cries "Fire, Fire." His other poems are but briefs in rhyme, and like the poor Greeks' collections to redeem from captivity. He is a man now much employed in

commendations of our navy, and a bitter inveigher against the Spaniard. His frequentest works go out in single sheets, and are chanted from market to market, to a vile tune and a worse throat, whilst the poor country wench melts like her butter to hear them. And these are the stories of some men of Tyburn or a strange monster out of Germany, or, sitting in a bawdyhouse, he writes God's judgment. He ends at last in some obscure painted cloth, to which himself made the verses, and his life, like a can too full, spills upon the bench. He leaves twenty shillings on the score, which my hostess loses.

JOHN EARLE, Micro-cosmographie 1628

A worthy poet

[Had the writer Shakespeare in mind while penning the following ?]

A worthy poet is the purest essence of a worthy man: he is confident of nature in nothing but the form and an ingenious fitness to conceive the matter. So he approves nature as the motive, not the foundation or structure of his worthiness. His works do every way pronounce both nourishment, delight and admiration to the reader's soul: which makes him neither rough, effeminate, nor windy: for by a sweet contemperature of tune and ditty he entices others to goodness, and shows himself perfect in the lesson. He never writes upon a full stomach and an empty head, or a full head and an empty stomach. For he cannot make so divine a receptable stoop to the sordid folly of gall or envy without strength: or strength of brain stoop, and debase itself with hunting out the body's succour. He is not so impartial as to condemn every new fashion, or tax idle circumstance; nor so easy as to allow vices, and account them generous humours. So he neither seeks to enlarge his credit of bitterness by a snarling severity; nor to augment his substance by insinuating courtship. He hath more debtors in knowledge among the present writers than creditors among the ancient poets. He is possessed with an innocent liberty, which excludes him from the slavish labour and means of setting a gloss upon frail commodities. Whatsoever therefore proceeds from him, proceeds without a meaning to supply the worth, when the work is ended, by the addition of preparative verses at the beginning, or the dispersed hire of acquaintance to extol things indifferent. Neither does he passionately affect high