Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/155

 and ‘Lady, your eye,’ 1598; ‘Now let us make a merry greeting,’ 1600; ‘Strike it up, neighbour,’ ‘Now ev'ry tree,’ and ‘The Nightingale,’ 1608. Specimens may be seen in E. T. Warren's great collection of ‘Catches,’ &c. (1763), and ‘Vocal Harmony,’ ‘Apollonian Harmony’ (1780), Willoughby's ‘Social Harmony’ (1780), Bland's ‘Ladies' Collection’ (1785), R. Webb's ‘Collection of Madrigals’ (1808), Page's ‘Festive Harmony’ (1804), ‘The Harmonist’ (c. 1810), Gwilt's ‘Madrigals and Motets’ (1815), Samuel Webbe's ‘Convito Armonico’ and C. Knight's ‘Musical Library’ (1834), Hawes's ‘Collection of Madrigals’ (1835), ‘The British Harmonist’ (1848), Cramer's ‘Madrigals’ (1855), Oliphant's ‘Ten Favourite Madrigals’ and Turle and Taylor's ‘People's Singing Book’ (1844), Hullah's ‘Vocal Scores’ (1846), Joseph Warren's ‘Chorister's Handbook’ (1856), ‘The Choir and Musical Record’ for August 1863, ‘Arion’ (1894), and the cheap publications of Novello, Stanley Lucas, Cassell, and Curwen. Weelkes and Wilbye are usually mentioned together by critics and historians; but a ‘certain characteristic stiffness’ (GROVE) makes Weelkes decidedly inferior as a composer to his contemporary.



WEEMSE, JOHN (1579?-1636), divine. [See .]

WEEVER, JOHN (1576–1632), poet and antiquary, a native of Lancashire, born in 1576, was admitted to Queens' College, Cambridge, as a sizar on 30 April 1594. His tutor was [q. v.] (College Register). He bathed freely, he relates, in what he described as ‘Nestor-old nymph-nursing Grant[a].’ He retained through life an affection for his college, but seems to have left the university without a degree.

Retiring to his Lancashire home about 1598, he studied carefully and appreciatively current English literature, and in 1599 he published a volume entitled ‘Epigrammes in the oldest Cut and newest Fashion. A twise seven Houres (in so many weekes) Studie. No longer (like the Fashion) not unlike to continue. The first seven. John Weever’ (London by V. S. for Thomas Bushell), 1599, 12mo. The whole work was dedicated to a Lancashire patron, Sir Richard Houghton of Houghton Tower, high sheriff of the county. A portrait engraved by Thomas Cecil is prefixed, and described the author as twenty-three at the date of publication, 1599. But Weever in some introductory stanzas informs the reader that most of the epigrams were written when he was only twenty. He speaks of his Cambridge education, and confesses ignorance of London. The epigrams, which are divided into seven parts (each called a ‘week,’ after the manner of the French religious poet Du Bartas), are in crude and pedestrian verse. But the volume owes its value, apart from its rarity, to its mention and commendation of the chief poets of the day. The most interesting contribution is a sonnet (No. 22 of the fourth week) addressed to Shakespeare which forcibly illustrates the admiration excited among youthful contemporaries by the publication of Shakespeare's early works—his narrative poems, his ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ and his early historical plays (cf. Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, New Shakspere Soc., 1879, p. 16). Hardly less valuable to the historian of literature are Weever's epigrams on Edmund Spenser's poverty and death, on Daniel, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Marston, Warner, Robert Allott, and Christopher Middleton. In his epigram on Alleyn, he asserts that Rome and Roscius yield the palm to London and Alleyn. A copy of this extremely rare volume is in the Malone collection at the Bodleian Library.

Subsequently Weever produced another volume of verse. This bore the title: ‘The Mirror of Martyrs; or, the life and death of that thrice valient Capitaine and most godly Martyre Sir John Oldcastle, knight, Lord Cobham,’ 1601, sm. sq. 8vo (London, by V. S. for William Wood). There are two dedications to two friends, William Covell, B.D., the author's Cambridge tutor, and Richard Dalton of Pilling. The work was, the author tells us, written two years before publication, and was possibly suggested by the controversy about Sir John Oldcastle that was excited in London in 1598 by the production of Shakespeare's ‘Henry IV.’ In that play the great character afterwards re-named Falstaff at first bore the designation of Sir John Oldcastle, to the scandal of those who claimed descent from the lollard leader or sympathised with his opinions and career (cf. Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, pp. 42, 165). Weever calls his work the ‘true Oldcastle,’ doubtless in reference to the current controversy. Weever displays at several points his knowledge of Shakespeare's recent plays. He vaguely reflects Shake-