lxxi
July 23, 1609. To Mr. Cheek for a booke of Emblems 1 .............. 3 li.
Of the gifts and pensions bestowed in the years 1610-1612 the only one which appears in this earlier record is Syl- vester's, the payment of which indicates that it ran over the year 1608. It is probable, however, that it was granted still earlier, as a reward, perhaps, for the collected edition of his translations from Du Bartas, which appeared in 1605-1607 with a remarkable apparatus of dedicatory sonnets in English, French and Itj^an, a chorus of the muses, and a series of cones, pillars ^and other geometrical forms of poetry in honor of the King. 2 After Henry's death, Sylvester published his Lachrima Lachrymarum (1612), entered in the Stationers' Register as "A Viall of house- hold teares ... by his highnes fyrst worst Poett and pensioner," 3 and containing in the third edition elegies by Donne, 4 Sir W. Cornwallis, Joseph Hall, Sir Edw. Herbert, Sir Henry Goodyer, Geo. Gerard, S. T. C. (Sir Thomas Chaloner), Henry Burton (Clerk of the Closet), and other members of a literary group which was composed in part of gentlemen of the Prince's household. To the Princess
This may have been a MS. copy of a book entitled Anagrammata et Chron-Anagrammata regia, nunc primum in hâc formâ in lucem emissa, Lon- don, 1613. The author was William Cheeke, who took the degree of B.A. from Oxford in 1595. (D. N. B.)
2 The opening of his translation of the Furies has a characteristic reference to the King's earlier version :
"... But yer we pass, our slender Bark Must here strike top-sails to a Princely Ark Which keeps these Straights : Hee hails us threatf ully, Star-board our helm ; come underneath his Lee.
Vouchsafe to togh us at your Royall Stern."
3 Arber's Transcripts, Vol. Ill, p. 230.
4 An earlier evidence of Donne's connection with this circle is given by the verses he contributed to Coryat's Crudities (1611). Coryat had been in the household and dedicated his volume to the Prince, who was in the joke of the mock-laudatory poems, and insisted on their publication. Donne also sent Prince Henry a copy of The Pseudo-Martyr, accompanied by a letter which is still preserved (MSS. of Marquis of Bath, Hist. MSS. Comm. Re- ports, III, p. 196).
