nt. . . . One special virtue in our patrons of these
days I have promised myself you shall fit excellently, which is to give
nothing.' Finally Thorpe, changing his tone, challenges his patron's
love 'both in this and, I hope, many more succeeding offices.'

{394b} One gave an account of the East India Company's fleet; the other
reported a speech delivered by Richard Martin, M.P., to James I at
Stamford Hill during the royal progress to London.

{395a} _Calendar of State Papers_, Domestic Series, 1635, p. 527.

{395b} Two bore his name on the title-page in 1603; one in 1604; two in
1605; two in 1606; two in 1607; three in 1608; one in 1609 (_i.e._ the
_Sonnets_); three in 1610 (_i.e._ _Histrio-mastix_, _or the Playwright_,
as well as Healey's translations); two in 1611; one in 1612; three in
1613; two in 1614; two in 1616; one in 1618; and finally one in 1624.
The last was a new edition of George Chapman's _Conspiracie and Tragedie
of Charles Duke of Byron_, which Thorpe first published in 1608.

{395c} They were _Wits A.B.C. or a centurie of Epigrams_ (anon.), by R.
West of Magdalen College, Oxford (a copy is in the Bodleian Library);
Chapman's _Byron_, and Jonson's _Masques of Blackness and Beauty_.

{395d} Chapman and Jonson were very voluminous authors, and their works
were sought after by almost all the publishers of London, many of whom
were successful in launching one or two with or without the author's
sanction. Thorpe seems to have taken particular care with Jonson's
books, but none of Jonson's works fell into Thorpe's hands before 1605 or
after 1608, a minute fraction of Jonson's literary life. It is
significant that the author's dedication--the one certain mark of
publication with the author's sanction--appears in only one of the three
plays by Chapman that Thorpe issued, viz. in _Byron_. One or two copies
of Thorpe's impression of _All Fools_ have a dedication by the author,
but it is absent from most of them. No known copy of Thorpe's edition of
Chapman's _Gentleman Usher_ has any dedication.

{397} Many other instances of initials figuring in dedications under
slightly different circumstances will occur to bibliographers, but all,
on examination, point to the existence of a close intimacy between
dedicator and dedicatee. R. S.'s [_i.e._ possibly Richard Stafford's]
'Epistle dedicatorie' before his _Heraclitus_ (Oxford, 1609) was
inscribed 'to his much honoured father S. F. S.' _An Apologie