FULK GREVILL.
Letter to Sir FRANCIS WALSINGHAM as to the printing of Sir PHILIP SIDNEY's Arcadia and other works.
Sir,
His day one [WILLIAM] PONSONBY, a bookbinder in Paul's Churchyard, came to me and told me that there was one in hand to print Sir PHILIP SIDNEY'S old Arcadia; asking me, "if it were done with your Honour's cons[ent] or any other's of his friends?" I told him, "To my knowledge, No." Then he advised me to give warning of it to the Archbishop [WHITGIFT] or Doctor COSEN; who have, as he says, a copy of it to peruse to that end.
Sir, I am loth to renew his memory unto you, but yet in this I must presume; for I have sent my Lady, your daughter, at her request, a correction of that old one, done four or five years since [i.e. in 1581 or 1582], which he left in trust with me: whereof there are no more copies [i.e. no other copy than this one]; and [it is] fitter to be printed than the first which is so common [i.e. in manuscript]. Notwithstanding even that to be amended by a direction set down under his own hand, how and why: so as in many respects, especially the care of printing of it, it is to be done with more deliberation.
Besides, he hath most excellently translated, among divers other notable works, Monsieur [DE MORNAY, Sieur] DE PLESSIS'S book against Atheism, which is since done by another. So as both in respect of love between PLESSIS and him, besides other affinities in their courses, but especially Sir PHILIP'S incomparable judgment: I think fit there be made stay of that mercenary book [i.e. that it be called in], so that Sir PHILIP might have all those religious works which are worthily due to his life and death.
Many other works [of Sir PHILIP SIDNEY], as [DU] BARTAS'S Spaniard; Forty of the Psalms translated into metre; &c.: which require the care of his friends not to amend, for I think it falls within the reach of no man living; but only to see to the paper and other common errors of mercenary printing.
