Page:Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age (1896).djvu/21

Rh "Epigrammatum Libri Duo," originally published in 1595, and republished with additions in 1619, the year of his death. Francis Meres, in "Wit's Treasury," 1598, mentions Campion among the "English men, being Latin poets," who had "attained good report and honourable advancement in the Latin tongue." But many of the English lyrics must have been written, though they were not collected, towards the close of the sixteenth century. So early as 1593, George Peele made a complimentary reference to Campion in the prologue to the "Honour of the Garter." W[illiam] C[lerke] in "Polimanteia," 1595, speaks of "sweet Master Campion," obviously in reference to his English poems; and in Harleian MS. 6910, which was written circ. 1596, there are three English poems by Campion. We may therefore assume that many of his best songs were written in the last decade of the sixteenth century. In 1601 Campion and Philip Rosseter published jointly "A Book of b