gracefule Lord' how the author left the work at death to be a 'testimonie
of gratitude, observance, and heart's honor to your honour.'
'Wherefore,' he explains, 'his legacie, laide at your Honour's feete, is
rather here delivered to your Honour's humbly thrise-kissed hands by his
poore delegate. Your Lordship's true devoted, Th. Th.'

Again, in 1616, when Thorpe procured the issue of a second edition of
another of Healey's translations, 'Epictetus Manuall. Cebes Table.
Theoprastus Characters,' he supplied more conspicuous evidence of the
servility with which he deemed it incumbent on him to approach a potent
patron. As this address by Thorpe to Pembroke is difficult of access, I
give it _in extenso_:

'To the Right Honourable, William Earle of Pembroke, Lord
Chamberlaine to His Majestie, one of his most honorable Privie
Counsell, and Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c.

'Right Honorable.--It may worthily seeme strange unto your Lordship,
out of what frenzy one of my meanenesse hath presumed to commit this
Sacriledge, in the straightnesse of your Lordship's leisure, to
present a peece, for matter and model so unworthy, and in this
scribbling age, wherein great persons are so pestered dayly with
Dedications. All I can alledge in extenuation of so many
incongruities, is the bequest of a deceased Man; who (in his
lifetime) having offered some translations of his unto your Lordship,
ever wisht if _these ensuing_ were published they might onely bee
addressed unto your Lordship, as the last Testimony of his dutifull
affection (to use his own termes) _The true and reall upholder of
Learned endeavors_. This, therefore, beeing left unto mee, as a
Legacie unto your Lordship (pardon my presumption, great Lord, from
so meane a man to so great a person) I could not without some impiety
present it to any other; such a sad priviledge have the bequests of
the _dead_, and so obligatory they are, more than the requests of the
_living_. In the hope of this honourable acceptance I will ever
rest,

'Your lordship's humble devoted,
'T. Th.'

With such obeisances did publishers then habitually creep into the
presence of the nobility. In fact, the law which rigorously maintained
the privileges of peers left them no option. The all