Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/412

 able both comicall and tragicall argument. Newly perused and amended by the first Author, W. Warner,’ London, 1597, 4to. This edition is dedicated to George Carey, second lord Hunsdon.

Warner also translated several plays of Plautus, but of these only one was published. This was ‘Menæchmi. A pleasant … Comedie, taken out of … Plautus … Written in English by W. W. London, by T. Creede,’ 1595, 4to (without pagination). Shakespeare's ‘Comedy of Errors,’ which was probably composed in 1592, owes much to Plautus's ‘Menæchmi,’ and Shakespeare may have had access to Warner's translation before it was published. It was reprinted in John Nichols's ‘Six Old Plays,’ 1779, i. 109 seq., and in J. P. Collier's ‘Shakespeare's Library,’ 1844 (new edit. by W. C. Hazlitt, 1875, pt. ii. vol. i. 1 et seq.).

Warner's chief work and his earliest experiment in verse was a long episodic poem in fourteen-syllable lines, which in its original shape treated of legendary or imaginary incidents in British history from the time of Noah till the arrival in England of William the Conqueror, but was continued in successive editions until it reached the reign of James I. In its episodic design it somewhat resembled Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses.’ Historical traditions are mingled with fictitious fabliaux with curious freedom. The first edition in four books—now a volume of the utmost rarity—appeared in 1586, under the title ‘Albion's England. Or Historical Map of the same Island: prosecuted from the Lives and Acts and Labors of Saturne, Jupiter, Hercules, and Æneas: Originalles of the Bruton, and the Englishman, and occasion of the Brutons their first aryvall in Albion. Containing the same Historie vnto the Tribute to the Romaines, Entrie of the Saxones, Invasion by the Danes, and Conquest by the Normaines. With Historicall Intermixtures, Inuention, and Varietie profitably, briefly and pleasantly, performed in Verse and Prose by William Warner. London, by George Robinson for Thomas Cadman,’ 1586, 4to (black letter). Thomas Cadman obtained a license for printing the book on 7 Nov. 1586 (, Stationers' Reg. ii. 458), but a pirate-publisher, Roger Ward, had been detected setting the manuscript in type in the previous October (, Typogr. Antiq. ed. Herbert, p. 1190). Warner dedicated the original edition of ‘Albion's England’ to Henry Carey, first lord Hunsdon. At the close of the volume is a prose ‘Breviate of the true historie of Aeneas,’ which reappeared in all later editions except the second. The work was brought down to the accession of Henry VII in the second edition, which included six books, and was called ‘The First and Second parts of Albion's England. The former reuised and corrected, and the latter newly continued and added, containing an Historical Map,’ London, 1589, 4to. A folding woodcut, exhibiting the lineages of Lancaster and York, forms the frontispiece in some copies. A third edition further extended the work to nine books, and concluded with the accession of Queen Elizabeth; this edition bore the title ‘Albion's England; the Third time Corrected and Augmented. Containing an History of the same Countrey and Kingdome, from the Originals of the inhabitants of the same. With the chief Alterations and Accidents therein happening, until her nowe Majesties most blessed Raigne. …,’ London, 1592, 4to. Of later editions (all in quarto) a fourth, ‘now revised and newly inlarged,’ appeared in 1596 in twelve books, with a folding pictorial plate of the genealogy of Lancaster and York inserted opposite page 161 (some title-pages bear the date 1597), and a fifth edition, with the addition of a thirteenth book and a prose ‘Epitome of the whole Historie of England,’ was issued in 1602. ‘A Continuance of Albion's England, by the first Author, W. W.,’ supplied three additional books (xiv, xv, xvi) in 1606. Finally a new edition, ‘with the most chief Alterations and Accidents … in the … Raigne of … King James. … Newly revised and enlarged. With a new epitome of the whole Historie of England,’ was issued, after Warner's death, in 1612. Here the books number sixteen, and the chapters one hundred and seven with the two prose appendices (the ‘Breviate’ and the ‘Epitome’).

‘Albion's England’ in its own day gained a very high reputation, which was largely due to the author's patriotic aims and sentiment. But his style, although wordy and prosaic, is unpretentious, and his narrative, which bears little trace of a study of Italian romance, and lacks the languor of current Italian fiction, occasionally develops an original vigour and dignity which partially justify the eulogies of the writer's contemporaries. Thomas Nash in his preface to Greene's ‘Menaphon’ (1589), after mentioning the greatest of English poets, remarked, ‘As poetry has been honoured in those before-mentioned professors, so it hath not been any whit disparaged by William Warner's absolute Albions.’ Meres in his ‘Palladis Tamia’ (1598) associated Warner with Spenser as one of the two chief English heroic poets. As a lyric poet he classed him with