Richard and Nicholas, and three daughters, Thamar, Anne, and Mary. He died 12 Jan. 1558-9, while his sons were still boys, and left by will to Nicholas the manor of Burgh-in-the-Marsh, near Wainfleet, Lincolnshire, forty pounds in money, 'one salt, all gilte, wt a cover … vj silver spones, and the gilte bedsted and bedd that I lye in at London,' with all its furniture (will printed in Dr. Grosart's pref. to Breton's Works, pp. xii-xvii). This property was to be applied by the child's mother to his 'mayntenaunce and fynding' until he was twenty-four years old, when he was to enter into full possession. William Breton left much to his wife on the condition that she should remain unmarried, but before 1568 she had become the wife of George Gascoigne, the poet, who died 7 Oct. 1577, and was thus for more than nine years Nicholas Breton's stepfather.
From the fact that Breton was a boy in 1559, the year of his father's death, the date of his birth may be conjecturally placed in 1545, but no sure information is at present accessible. From his 'Floorish vpon Fancie' we know that in 1577 Breton was settled in London and had lodgings in Holborn. The Rev. Richard Madox, chaplain to a naval expedition in 1582, whose unpublished diary is in Sloane MS. 1008, records under date 14 March 1582[-3] that while on the continent, apparently at Antwerp, he met 'Mr. Brytten, once of Oriel Colledge, wch made wyts will [i.e. the prose tract, 'The Wil of Wit, Wit's Will, or Wil's Wit,' entered on the Stationers' Register 7 Sept. 1580]. He speaketh the Italian well.' No university document supports the statement that Breton was educated at Oriel College, but in 'The Toyes of an Idle Head,' the appendix to his first published book, 'A Floorish vpon Fancie,' he refers to himself as 'a yong gentleman who . . . had spent some years at Oxford.' He also dedicates the 'Pilgrimage to Paradise' (1592) 'to the gentlemen studients and scholers of Oxforde.' On 14 Jan. 1592-3 he married Ann Sutton at St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate, the church of the parish in which stood his father's 'capitall mansion house.' On 14 May 1603, according to the St. Giles's parish register, a son Nicholas was born; on 16 March 1605-6 another son, Edward; and on 7 May 1607 a daughter, Matilda. In the burial register of the same church are recorded the deaths of Mary, daughter of 'Nicholas Brittaine, gent.,' on 2 Oct. 1603, and of Matilda, daughter of 'Nicholas Brittaine, gent.,' on 27 July 1625. But of Breton's own death no record has yet been found. His last published work bears the date 1626. The Captain Nicholas Breton, son of John Breton of Tamworth, who served under Leicester in the Low Countries in 1586, purchased an estate at Norton, Northamptonshire, and died there in 1624, has often been erroneously identified with the poet (Shaw, Staffordshire, i. 422; Bridges, Northamptonshire, i. 78; Phillipps, Theatrum Poetarum, 1800, p. 321).
These scanty facts are all that is known of the poet's life. His voluminous works in prose and verse were issued in rapid succession between 1577 and 1626. Among his early patrons, the chief was Mary, countess of Pembroke; he dedicated to her the 'Pilgrimage to Paradise,' 1592, to which is added the 'Countesse of Pembrooke's Love,' where he speaks of himself as 'Your Ladishipp's unworthy named Poet.' He also wrote for her his 'Auspicante Jehoua,' 1597, and the Countess of Pembroke's 'Passion.' Passages in 'Wit's Trenchmour' (1597) refer to the rejection of the poet's love-suit by a lady of high station, and it seems not improbable that Breton's intimacy with the Countess of Pembroke passed beyond the bounds of patron and poet. Whatever the character of the relationship, it ceased after 1601.
As a literary man Breton impresses us most by his versatility and his habitual refinement. He is a satirical, religious, romance, and pastoral writer in both prose and verse. But he wrote with exceptional facility, and as a consequence he wrote too much. His fertile fancy often led him into fantastic puerilities. It is in his pastoral lyrics that he is seen at his best. The pathos here is always sincere; the gaiety never falls into grossness, the melody is fresh and the style clear. His finest lyrics are in 'England's Helicon' and the collection of poems published by himself under the title of the 'Passionate Shepheard.' 'Wit's Trenchmour,' an angling idyll, is the best of his prose tracts, and had the author not yielded to the temptation of digressing from his subject in the latter half of the book, he might have equalled Izaak Walton on his own ground. Throughout his works runs a thorough sympathy with country life and rural scenery; the picturesque descriptions of country customs in his 'Fantasticks' and the 'Town and Country' are of value to the social historian. Breton's satire, most of which appeared under the pseudonym of Pasquil, is not very impressive; he attacks the dishonest practices and artificiality of town society, but writes, as a rule, like a disappointed man. Of the coarseness of contemporary satirists he knows nothing. He lacks the drastic power of Nash, who wrote under the same
