as prepared for private circulation by Dr. Grosart in 1878, in
his series of 'Occasional Issues.' It was also printed in the same year
as one of the publications of the New Shakspere Society. Matthew Roydon
in his elegy on Sir Philip Sidney, appended to Spenser's _Colin Clouts
Come Home Againe_, 1595, describes the part figuratively played in
Sidney's obsequies by the turtle-dove, swan, phoenix, and eagle, in
verses that very closely resemble Shakespeare's account of the funereal
functions fulfilled by the same four birds in his contribution to
Chester's volume. This resemblance suggests that Shakespeare's poem may
be a fanciful adaptation of Roydon's elegiac conceits without ulterior
significance. Shakespeare's concluding 'Threnos' is imitated in metre
and phraseology by Fletcher in his _Mad Lover_ in the song 'The Lover's
Legacy to his Cruel Mistress.'

{187} Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 186.

{188a} There is an admirable discussion of the question involved in the
poet's heraldry in _Herald and Genealogist_, i. 510. Facsimiles of all
the documents preserved in the College of Arms are given in _Miscellanea
Genealogica et Heraldica_, 2nd ser. 1886, i. 109. Halliwell-Phillipps
prints imperfectly one of the 1596 draft-grants, and that of 1599
(_Outlines_, ii. 56, 60), but does not distinguish the character of the
negotiation of the earlier year from that of the negotiation of the later
year.

{188b} It is still customary at the College of Arms to inform an
applicant for a coat-of-arms who has a father alive that the application
should be made in the father's name, and the transaction conducted as if
the father were the principal. It was doubtless on advice of this kind
that Shakespeare was acting in the negotiations that are described below.

{189} In a manuscript in the British Museum (_Harl. MS._ 6140, f. 45) is
a copy of the tricking of the arms of William 'Shakspere,' which is
described 'as a pattent per Will'm Dethike Garter, principale King of
Armes;' this is figured in French's _Shakespeareana Genealogica_, p. 524.

{190} These memoranda, which were as follows, were first written without
the words here enclosed in brackets; those words were afterwards
interlineated in the manuscript in a hand similar to that of the original
sentences:

'[This John shoeth] A patierne therof under Clarent Cookes hand in
paper. xx. years past. [The Q. officer and cheffe of the towne]

[A Justice of peace] A