bee still supported and uphelde, by which meanes (O ingrateful and
damned age) our Poets are soly or chiefly maintained, countenanced
and patronized.'

Of the author of this work, Francis Meres or Meers, comparatively little
is known. He sprang from an old and highly respectable family in
Lincolnshire, and was born in 1565, the son of Thomas Meres, of Kirton in
Holland in that county. After graduating from Pembroke College, Cambridge,
in 1587, proceeding M.A. in 1591 at his own University, and subsequently
by _ad eundem_ at Oxford, he settled in London, where in 1597, having
taken orders, he was living in Botolf Lane. He was presented in July 1602
to the rectory of Wing in Rutland, keeping a school there. He remained at
Wing till his death, in his eighty-first year, January 29, 1646-7. As
Charles FitzGeoffrey, in a Latin poem in his _Affaniae_ addressed to
Meres, speaks of him as '_Theologus et poeta_', it is possible that the
'F.M.' who was a contributor to the _Paradise of Dainty Devices_ is to be
identified with Meres. In addition to the _Palladis Tamia_, Meres was the
author of a sermon published in 1597, a copy of which is in the Bodleian,
and of two translations from the Spanish, neither of which is of any
interest.

Meres's _Discourse_ is, like the rest of his work, mainly a compilation,
with additions and remarks of his own. Much of it is derived from the
thirty-first chapter of the first book of Puttenham; with these
distinctions, that Meres's includes the poets who had come into
prominence between 1589 and 1598, and instituted parallels, biographical
and critical, between them and the ancient Classics. It is the notices of
these poets, and more particularly the references to Shakespeare's
writings, which make this treatise so invaluable to literary students.
Thus we are indebted to Meres for a list of the plays which Shakespeare
had produced by 1598, and for a striking testimony to his eminence at
that date as a dramatic poet, as a narrative poet, and as a writer of
sonnets. The perplexing reference to _Love's Labour's Won_ has never
been, and perhaps never will be, satisfactorily explained. To assume that
it is another title for _All's Well that Ends Well_ in an earlier form is
to cut rather than to solve the knot. It is quite possible that it refers
to a play that has perished. The references to the imprisonment of Nash
for writing the _Isle of Dogs_, to the unhappy deaths of Peele, Greene,
and Mar