Authoritie did gaine me,
I shall be judg'd his Love and so be shamed;
We see the faire condemn'd that never gamed,
And if I yeeld, 'tis honourable shame.
If not, I live disgrac'd, yet thought the same.

{77b} Watson makes this comment on his poem or passion on Time, (No.
lxxvii.): 'The chiefe contentes of this Passion are taken out of
Seraphine [_i.e._ Serafino], Sonnet 132:

Col tempo passa[n] gli anni, i mesi, e l'hore,
Col tempo le richeze, imperio, e regno,
Col tempo fama, honor, fortezza, e ingegno,
Col tempo giouentu, con belta more, &c.'

Watson adds that he has inverted Serafino's order for 'rimes sake,' or
'upon some other more allowable consideration.' Shakespeare was also
doubtless acquainted with Giles Fletcher's similar handling of the theme
in Sonnet xxviii. of his collection of sonnets called _Licia_ (1593).

{79} 'Excellencie of the English Tongue' in Camden's _Remaines_, p. 43.

{80} All these and all that els the Comick Stage
With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced,
By which mans life in his likest image
Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced . . .
And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made
To mock her selfe and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late;
With whom all joy and jolly meriment
Is also deaded and in dolour drent.--(ll. 199-210).

{81a} A note to this effect, in a genuine early seventeenth-century
hand, was discovered by Halliwell-Phillipps in a copy of the 1611 edition
of Spenser's _Works_ (cf. _Outlines_, ii. 394-5).

{81b}

But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen
Large streames of bonnie and sweete nectar flowe,
Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men
Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe,
Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell
Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell (ll. 217-22).

{83} Section IX. of the Appendix to this volume gives a sketch of each
of the numerous collections of sonnets which bore witness to the
unexampled vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet between 1591 and 1597.

{84} Minto, _Characteristics of English Poetry_, 1885, pp. 371, 382.
The sonnet, headed 'Phaeton to his friend Florio,' runs:

Sweet friend whose name agrees with thy increase
How fit arrival art thou of the Spring!
For when each branch hath left his flourishing,
And green-locked Summer's sha