FIDESSA
MORE CHASTE THAN KIND
by
B. GRIFFIN, GENT.




BARTHOLOMEW GRIFFIN


The author of _Fidessa_ has gained undeserved notice from the fact
that the piratical printer W. Jaggard, included a transcript of one of
his sonnets in a volume that he put forth in 1599, under the name of
Shakespeare. It would be easy to believe, in spite of the doubtful
rimes characteristic of _Fidessa_, that sonnet three was not
Griffin's, for no singer in the Elizabethan choir was more skilful in
turning his voice to other people's melodies than was he. He has been
called "a gross plagiary;" yet it must be realised that the sonneteers
of that time felt they had a right, almost a duty, to take up the
poetic themes used by their models. Griffin shows great ingenuity in
the manipulation of the stock-themes, and the lover of Petrarch and
all the young Abraham-Slenders of the day must have been delighted
with the familiar "designs" as they re-appeared in _Fidessa_.

Bartholomew Griffin was buried in Coventry in 1602. In 1596 he