Page:Tixall Poetry.djvu/32

 Sir Walter Aston, and these his children; Lady Aston, second wife of his grandson, the third lord; and Edward Thimelby, second brother of Sir John Thimelby, of Irnham—these persons were the authors, and collectors of the poetry, now published in this volume.

We will now proceed to a more particular consideration of some of the individuals here enumerated.

(1.) All the biographers of Drayton, (who was one of the most eminent poets in the golden reign of Queen Elizabeth, and in that of her successor,) take notice of the liberal patronage which he enjoyed, from Sir Walter Aston of Tixall, in Staffordshire. This, Drayton himself very gratefully acknowledges, in the prefaces, and dedications, to many of his works. As these, from their voluminousness, and antiquity, are but little in the hands of the generality of modern readers, I have thought it an act of justice, to the memory of Sir Walter Aston, and to the honour of his descendants, to collect together these testimonies of Drayton, which the reader will find in the Appendix. From an attentive perusal of them, together with the lines in the title-page of this work, as well as from the long and cordial intimacy which subsisted between the poet and his patron, I am induced to think, that Drayton composed several of his poems at Tixall. Sir Walter Aston appears to have imbibed, at an early age, a decided taste for literature and poetry; for we find, that Drayton dedicated to him, his "Epistle of the Black Prince," in his collection of "Heroical Epistles," in 1598; most of which appear to have been published separately, some years before. At this time, Sir Walter Aston was about eighteen years old. In another dedication of his collected poems, published about the year 1619, he calls them "the workes of that maiden reigne, in the spring of our