l and John Davies of
Hereford offered the Earl congratulation in more prolonged strains.
Daniel addressed to Southampton many lines like these:

The world had never taken so full note
Of what thou art, hadst thou not been undone:
And only thy affliction hath begot
More fame than thy best fortunes could have won;
For ever by adversity are wrought
The greatest works of admiration;
And all the fair examples of renown
Out of distress and misery are grown . . .
Only the best-compos'd and worthiest hearts
God sets to act the hard'st and constanst'st parts. {388a}

Davies was more jubilant:

Now wisest men with mirth do seem stark mad,
And cannot choose--their hearts are all so glad.
Then let's be merry in our God and King,
That made us merry, being ill bestead.
Southampton, up thy cap to Heaven fling,
And on the viol there sweet praises sing,
For he is come that grace to all doth bring. {388b}

Many like praises, some of later date, by Henry Locke (or Lok), George
Chapman, Joshua Sylvester, Richard Brathwaite, George Wither, Sir John
Beaumont, and others could be quoted. Beaumont, on Southampton's death,
wrote an elegy which panegyrises him in the varied capacities of warrior,
councillor, courtier, father, and husband. But it is as a literary
patron that Beaumont insists that he chiefly deserves remembrance:

I keep that glory last which is the best,
The love of learning which he oft expressed
In conversation, and respect to those
Who had a name in arts, in verse or prose.

Elegies on Southampton.

To the same effect are some twenty poems which were published in 1624,
just after Southampton's death, in a volume entitled 'Teares of the Isle
of Wight, shed on the Tombe of their most noble valorous and loving
Captaine and Governour, the right honorable Henrie, Earl of Southampton.'
The keynote is struck in the opening stanza of the first poem by one
Francis Beale:

Ye famous poets of the southern isle,
Strain forth the raptures of your tragic muse,
And with your Laureate pens come and compile
The praises due to this great Lord: peruse
His globe of worth, and eke his virtues brave,
Like learned Maroes at Mecaenas' grave.

V.--THE TRUE HISTORY OF THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.'

The publication of the sonnets in 1609.

In 1598 Francis Meres enumerated among Shakespeare's best known