The Book.

What further palliation can we find? Mr. Swinburne calls the book "a
worthless little volume of stolen and mutilated poetry, patched up
and padded out with dirty and dreary doggrel, under the senseless and
preposterous title of _The Passionate Pilgrim_." On the other hand,
Mr. Humphreys maintains that "Jaggard, at any rate, had very good
taste. This is partly seen in the choice of a title. Few books have so
charming a name as _The Passionate Pilgrim_. It is a perfect title.
Jaggard also set up a good precedent, for this collection was
published a year before _England's Helicon_, and, of course, very many
years before any authorized collection of Shakespeare's 'Poems' was
issued. We see in _The Passionate Pilgrim_ a forerunner of _The Golden
Treasury_ and other anthologies."

Now, as for the title, if the value of a title lie in its application,
Mr. Swinburne is right. It has little relevance to the verses in the
volume. On the other hand, as a portly and attractive mouthful of
syllables _The Passionate Pilgrim_ can hardly be surpassed. If not "a
perfect title," it is surely "a charming name." But Mr. Humphreys'
contention that Jaggard "set up a good precedent" and produced a
"forerunner" of English anthologies becomes absurd when we remember
that _Tottel's Miscellany_ was published in June, 1557 (just forty-two
years before _The Passionate Pilgrim_), and had reached an eighth
edition by 1587; that _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_ appeared in
1576; _A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions_ in 1578; _A Handfull
of Pleasant Delights_ in 1584; and _The Phoenix' Nest_ in 1593.