of uertuous disposition, honest conversation, and well gouerned cariage;
which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and
corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man, and
when cheating and craftines is counted the cleanest wit, and soundest
wisedome.'[28] Fuller also, in a similar strain, says, 'He was a pious
poet, his conscience having the command of his fancy, very temperate in
his life, slow of speech, and inoffensive in company.'

In conclusion I have to thank Mr. H.M. Sanders, of Pembroke College,
Oxford, for help and advice, and Professor Raleigh and Mr. R.W. Chapman
for help and criticism while the volume was in the press. Above all, I
am at every turn indebted to Professor Elton's invaluable _Michael
Drayton_,[29] without which the work of any student of Drayton would be
rendered, if not impossible, at least infinitely harder.

CYRIL BRETT.
ALTON, STAFFORDSHIRE.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Elegy viij, _To Henery Reynolds, Esquire_, p. 108.]

[Footnote 2: Sir Aston Cokayne, in 1658, says that he went to Oxford,
while Fleay asserts, without authority, that his university was probably
Cambridge.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. the motto of _Ideas Mirrour_, the allusions to
_Ariosto_ in the _Nymphidia_, p. 129; and above all, the _Heroical
Epistles_; Dedic. of _Ep._ of _D._ of _Suffolk to Q. Margaret_: 'Sweet
is the _French_ Tongue, more sweet the _Italian_, but most sweet are
they both, if spoken by your admired self.' Cf. _Surrey to Geraldine_,
ll. 5 sqq., with Drayton's note.]