being the early and munificent patron of Shakespeare. In 1593, the
Poet published his _Venus and Adonis_, with a modest and manly
dedication to this nobleman, very different from the usual high-flown
style of literary adulation then in vogue; telling him, "If your
Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to
take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some
graver labour." In the dedication, he calls the poem "the first heir
of my invention." Whether he dated its birth from the writing or the
publishing, does not appear: probably it had been written some time;
possibly before he left Stratford. This was followed, the next year,
by his _Lucrece_, dedicated to the same nobleman in a strain of more
open and assured friendship: "The warrant I have of your honourable
disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of
acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours."

It was probably about this time that the event took place which Rowe
heard of through Sir William Davenant, that Southampton at one time
gave the Poet a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a
purchase which he knew him to be desirous of making. Rowe might well
scruple, as he did, the story of so large a gift,--equal to nearly
$30,000 in our time; but the fact of his scruples being overruled
shows that he had strong grounds for the statement. The sum may indeed
have been exaggerated; but all we know of the Earl assures us that he
could not but wish to make a handsome return for the _Venus and
Adonis_; and that whatever of the kind he did was bound to be
something rich and rare; while it was but of a piece with his approved
nobleness of character, to feel more the honour he was receiving than
that he was conferring by such an act of generosity. Might not this be
what Shakespeare meant by "the _warrant_ I have of your honourable
disposition"? That the Earl was both able and disposed to the amount