Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/380

 F. W. Cosens, Esq.; it consists of three long pastoral poems, of which the first is dedicated to Sir Richard Wenman; bears the date 1653, and was printed for the first time in J. P. Collier's 'Miscellaneous Tracts,' in 1872. To it is prefixed a poem addressed to Basse, by [q. v.], who compares the author to an 'aged oak,' and says:

Bathurst's verses were printed in Warton's pleasant 'Life of Bathurst' (1761), p. 288, with the inscription 'To Mr. W. Basse upon the intended publication of his poems, January 13, 1651.'

Basse is best known by his occasional verse, which has never been collected, and chiefly by his 'Epitaph on Shakespeare.' The poem is in the form of a sonnet, and was first attributed to Donne, among whose poems it was printed in 1633. In the edition of Shakespeare's poems issued in 1640 it is subscribed 'W. B.,' and Ben Jonson makes a distinct reference to it in his poem on Shakespeare prefixed to the folio of 1623, which proves it to have been written before that date. In a manuscript of the reign of James I in the British Museum (MS. Lansd. 777, fo. 676), the lines are signed 'Wm. Basse.' Nine other manuscript versions are extant, and in five of these Basse is described as the author. There are minute variations in the copies, and the readings have been carefully collated by Dr. Ingleby and Miss Toulmin Smith in Shakespeare's 'Centurie of Prayse' (pp. 136-9, New Shaksp. Soc.). Basse also wrote a commendatory poem for Michael Baret's 'Hipponomie, or the Vineyard of Horsemanship' (1618), and he has been identified with the 'W. B.' who contributed verses to Massinger's 'Bondman' (1624), although William Browne has also been claimed as their author. In Izaak Walton's 'Compleat Angler' the piscator remarks, 'I'll promise you I'll sing a song that was lately made at my request by Mr. William Basse, one that hath made the choice songs of the "Hunter in his Career" and of "Tom of Bedlam," and many others of note; and this that I will sing is in praise of Angling.' Basse's 'Angler's Song,' beginning 'As inward love breeds outward talk,' then follows. Of the other two songs mentioned by Walton, a unique copy of 'Maister Basse, his careere, or the new hunting. To a new Court tune,' is in the Pepys collection at Cambridge; it is reprinted in 'Wit and Drollery' (1682), p. 64, and in 'Old Ballads ' (1725), ii. 196. The tune is given in the 'Skene MS.' preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and a ballad in the Bagford collection in the British Museum, entitled 'Hubert's Ghost,' is written 'to the tune of Basse's Career.' Basse's second ballad, 'Tom of Bedlam,' has been identified by Sir Harris Nicolas in his edition of Walton's 'Angler,' with a song of the same name in Percy's 'Reliques,' ii. 357; but many other ballads bear the same title, and this identification is therefore doubtful. In 1636 Basse contributed a poem to the 'Annalia Dubrensia.'

Basse's poetry is characterised by a homeliness of language and versification and by an enthusiastic love of country life. It derives an historical interest from. Izaak Walton's honourable mention of it, and from the homage paid to Shakespeare by its author.

The long interval of fifty-one years between the production of the first and last poems bearing Basse's signature has led Mr. J. P. Collier to conjecture that there were two poets of the same name, and he attributes to an elder William Basse the works published in 1602, and to a younger William Basse all those published later. The internal evidence offered by the poems fails, however, to support this conclusion. 'Urania,' the last poem of the collection, bearing the date 1653, has all the metrical characteristics of the 'Sword and Buckler' of 1602; and Bathurst's verses prove that Basse followed his poetical career through many generations. A William Basse 'of Suffolk' entered Emmanuel College,. Cambridge, as a sizar in 1629, and took the degree of B.A. in 1632, and that of M.A. in 1636, but it is highly improbable that this student was the poet. There was a family named Basse, of Benhall, Suffolk, in the seventeenth century, of whom a William died in 1607, aged 85, and left a son Thomas and a grandson William, probably the Cambridge student; but it is impossible to identify the poet with any member of this family. The fact that his 'Great Brittaines Sunnesset' was published at Oxford, and his intimate relations with two great Oxfordshire houses, seem to connect the poet with Oxfordshire rather than with Suffolk.



BASSENDYNE or BASSINDEN, THOMAS (d. 1577), printer of the earliest translation of the New Testament published in Scotland, carried on the business of a printer, conjointly with that of bookbinder and