And our deceased grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes;
Yet we can sing thee too, and make the lays
Which deck thy brow look fresher with thy praise.
* * * * *
Though these, your happy births, have silent past
More years than some abortive wits shall last;
He still writes new, who once so well hath sung:
That Muse can ne'er be old, which ne'er was young."

These verses are valuable as showing that Basse was living in 1651,
and that he was then an aged man. The Emanuelian of the same name, who
took his M.A. degree in 1636, might possibly be his son. At any rate,
the latter was a poet. There are some of his pieces among the MSS. in
the Public Library, Cambridge; and I have a small MS. volume of his
rhymes, scarcely soaring above mediocrity, which was presented to me
by an ancient family residing in Suffolk.

A poem by William Basse is inserted in the _Annalia Dubrensia_, 1636,
in praise of Robert Dover and his revival of the Cotswold Games; but
it is not clear to which of these poets we may ascribe it. Malone
attributes two rare volumes to one or other of these poets. The first,
a translation or paraphrase of Juvenal's tenth satire, entitled _That
which seems Best is Worst_, 12mo., 1617; the second, "A Miscellany of
Merriment," entitled _A Helpe to Discourse_, 2nd edit. 8vo., 1620:
but the former is more probably the work of William Barkstead. I may
mention that a copy of Basse's _Sword and Buckler, or Serving Man's
Defence_, 1602, is among Malone's books in the Bodleian.

Izaac Walton speaks of William Basse, "one that hath made the choice
songs of the _Hunter in His Career_, and of _Tom of Bedlam_, and many