Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/71

 by Alleyn the actor in 1619, and the doctor appears to have been imprisoned (Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, p. 39). When issuing a revised edition of his 'Seneca' in 1620, with a new dedication in English to the Earl of Suffolk, he wrote that his business was great, and his distractions many. In 1622 he prefixed a commendatory letter to 'The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie,' Oxford, 4to, and claimed close acquaintance with the authoress. At the suggestion of another of his patients, Anne, countess of Arundel, he drew up a popular medical treatise called 'The Poore Mans Talent,' which he did not print. The manuscript at one time belonged to Mr. J. P. Collier, and it was first printed by the Hunterian Club in 1881. The dedication to Lady Arundel was in the author's autograph (cf. facsimile in the printed volume). His last literary undertaking was 'A Learned Summary upon the famous Poeme of William of Saluste,lord of Bartas. Translated out of the French by T. L., D[octor] M[edicus] P[hysicus],' 1625, fol. It is dedicated to Sir Julius Cæsar, and was licensed for the press 8 Nov. 1620 (, Transcripts, iv. 42).

Lodge while practising medicine in London lived first in Warwick Lane, afterwards in Lambert Hill, and finally in Old Fish Street in the parish of St. Mary Magdalen. He died in Old Fish Street in 1625, apparently in the Roman catholic communion. His second wife Jane, widow of Solomon Aldred, at one time a catholic agent of Walsingham in Rome, was granted administration of his effects 12 Oct. 1625. By his first wife Joan, whom he married in 1583, he had a daughter Mary.

Lodge does not claim for himself much popularity in his own day. Meres, in his 'Palladis Tamia,' 1598, includes him, not very reasonably, in a list of those contemporaries who were 'best for comedy,' and in the 'Return from Parnassus' (1602) he is classed with Watson as being 'of some desert.' His oar is declared to be in 'every paper boat,' and while turning over Galen every day, he is said to 'sit and simper Euphues Legacy,' p. 85. Drummond of Hawthornden studied his 'Phillis' with care. Mr. Fleay assumes that he is ridiculed as Churms in the comedy of 'Wily Beguiled.' Whatever the opinion of contemporaries, Lodge was singularly accomplished. He was well read in modern literature, and was no mean classical scholar. His friend W. R., who prefixed a commendatory epistle to the 1620 edition of the 'Seneca,' is justified in his praise of his principle of translation, which prevented him, 'parrot-like,' from losing 'himself literally in a Latin Echo,' while it enabled him to express the 'meaning in our proper English elegancies and phrase.' In his 'Romances' his prose is very ornate, but its graces are of a languid order, and the modern reader finds it tedious. It is as a lyric poet that Lodge is best deserving of remembrance. Phillipps, in his 'Theatrum Poetarum,' 1675, describes him as a writer 'of those pretty old songs and madrigals which are very much the strain of those times.' The 'Phillis' volume and the verse scattered through his romances, much of which was introduced into 'The Phoenix Nest' and 'England's Helicon,' show him to best advantage. The 'sugared sweetness' of his lyrics gives them rank beside the finest in the language; but Lodge was always to some extent an imitator. His romances closely followed those of Lyly and Greene. The influence of Kyd or Marlowe is discernible in his plays. In his lyrics he appears as the disciple of Sidney among English poets, and of Desportes and Ronsard among French poets. His dependence on Desportes is very remarkable, and he occasionally imitated him in the French poet's own language. 'Few men are able,' he wrote in his 'Margarite' (p. 79), 'to second the sweet conceits of Phillip Du Portes, whose poetical writings are ordinarily in everybody's hands' (cf. Wits Miserie, p. 53). Such attractive pieces as 'The Earth late choked with Flowers' (Scillaes Metamorphosis, p. 46),' Oh Night, oh jealous night' (Phœnix Nest),and 'The Lover's Vow' (Rosalynde) are all drawn directly from Desportes, though Lodge improves on his originals. Of Desportes's sonnet beginning 'Si je me siez à l'ombre aussi soudainement,' Lodge supplies three different renderings (cf. Rosalynde, p. 74, Scillaes Metamorphosis, p. 44, and Phillis, p. 53). Sonnet 33 of 'Phillis' was borrowed from Ronsard, but Lodge's dependence on Ronsard is less conspicuous. Such as it is, it excited the ridicule of Nashe, who in his 'Tarlton's News out of Purgatory,' 1590, introduced a parody of Lodge's 'Montanus Sonnet' (Rosalynde, p. 48, 'Phœbe sate,' &c.), and entitled it 'Ronsard's Description of his Mistress.' He was engaged in studying Du Bartas in the last year of his life (cf. Wits Miserie, pp. 70, 80, 88, for references to other French authors). Lodge's relations with the Italian poets were also close. In 'Margarite' he avowedly imitates, in a curious series of poems (pp. 76, &c.), the styles of Dolce, Pascale, and Martelli. Ariosto, Guarini, and Petrarch were also familiar to him.

The original editions of Lodge's works are very rare. All excepting his translations of Seneca, Josephus, and Du Bartas have been reprinted by the Hunterian Club, Glasgow 1878-82, with a biographical notice by Mr. Rh