Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624). Linche Richard

against the middle—by employing a 12 (2×6)-line stanza composed of couplets, with the last couplet having a double rhyme probably designed to echo the concluding couplet of the Shakespearean sixain.

[29] Thomas Lodge, Scillaes Metamorphosis in Elizabethan Minor Epics, ed. Donno, p. 35, stanza 71.

[30] Yet Dom Diego seems not to have been previously identified as a minor epic. The late C. S. Lewis, a few pages before his brilliant discussion of Hero and Leander as an epyllion, refers to Lynche's poem as a "stanzaic novella." See Lewis' English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford, 1954), p. 479, pp. 486–488.

[31] For a complete list of Burton's books in the Bodleian and Christ Church libraries, numbering 581 and 473 items respectively, see "Lists of Burton's Library," ed. F. Madan, Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings & Papers, I, Part 3 (1925; printed 1926), 222–246.

[32] No. 376 in Ronald B. McKerrow, Printers' & Publishers' Devices in England & Scotland 1485–1640 (London, 1913), p. 144. According to McKerrow, the bird in this handsome device, with the word "wick" in its bill, is probably a smew, with a pun intended on the name of the owner of the device, Smethwick.

[33] For these notes I am indebted to an excellent article, "The library of Robert Burton," ed. F. Madan, p. 185 especially, in the Oxford Bibliographical Society volume listed above.

[34] No. 240 in McKerrow, Printers' Devices, p. 92. "Framed device of a lion passant crowned and collared, a mullet for difference, on an anchor; with Desir n'a repos, and the date 1586."

[35] A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers, ed. R. B. McKerrow (London, 1910), p. 151.

[36] Ibid., p. 199.

[37] Arber, A Transcript, IV, 149.

[38] Contributing to the unattractive appearance of the Bodleian copy of Mirrha, which Grosart consulted, is the close cropping of its upper margins.

[39] The poems of William Barksted, ed. Grosart (Manchester, 1876), p. x.

[40] Barksted, p. xiv.

[41] Henry Plomer, A Short History of English Printing (London, 1900), p. 163.

[42] The Oxford and Folger copies, of which only the first is listed in the STC. There is a third, imperfect copy at Trinity College, Cambridge, from the Edward Capell collection. According to Mr. L.W. Hanson, Keeper of Printed Books at the Bodleian, the tipping of the type in the Bodleian copy represents a fault at binding.

[43] Though the printer's name is not given, the printer's device, a fleur-de-lis, no. 251 in McKerrow, was used by Okes about this time.

[44] Grosart, p. xiii, n. 17, stanza 20, line 7, which has "adoration[e]" in both the original and Grosart's "corrected" version, and p. xiii, n. 19, stanza 41, line 6, "graces" in both copies.

[45] The printer was Thomas Creede, as revealed by the printer's device, no. 299 in McKerrow, p. 117: "Framed device of Truth being scourged by a hand from the clouds. Between her feet the initials T. C. The motto Viressit vulnere veritas."

[46] The presence of these dedicatory verses in the Huntington copy has been noted by Franklin Williams in his Index of Dedications and Commendatory Verses (London, 1962), p. 193.

[47] The Folger copy, here reproduced, is complete except for Sig. £4 (pp. 214), which have been supplied from another copy.

[48] This error goes back to the first entry in A Catalogue of the Library of Henry Huth (London, 1880), which says the second edition is the same as the first.

[49] The first word of the next stanza is changed from "And" in the 1613 edition to "Then" in the second impression.

[50] Rather surprisingly, in view of its silent emulation of Marlowe's poem, Philos and Licia pays lavish tribute to Sidney. But since tributes to Sidney were common in the period, this one may be no more than a conventional recognition of his greatness.

[51] Occasionally, though, it introduces odd off-rhymes such as "forth" and "mouth" (p. 5), "vaines" and "streames" (p. 6), "either" and "fairer" (p. 8).