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‘R. L.,’ to whom Barnfield addressed the sonnet, is doubtless Richard Linche, author of a collection of sonnets called *Diella* which appeared in 1596. John Dowland, to whom Barnfield refers in line 5 of his sonnet, was the famous lutenist and musical composer, who had published a year before a valuable volume in folio, called ‘The First Book of Songes, and Ayres of foure partes with Tablature for the Lute’ (printed by Peter Short). The compliment to Spenser in lines 7–8 is repeated in Barnfield’s volume in the next poem but one, a piece which is entitled ‘A Remembraunce of some English Poets’ and opens with the line: ‘Live Spenser ever in thy Fairy Queene.’ Already, in 1595, Barnfield had proved his admiration for Spenser by publishing a poem in the Spenserian stanza, called ‘Cynthia’, which he described in his preface as ‘the first imitation of the verse of that excellent Poet Maister’ ¹ In a reprint of Barnfield’s volume under the abbreviated title ‘Lady Pecunia’, in 1605, only two of the eight ‘poems in diuers humours’ were included. Among the omitted pieces were the two poems which figured in *The Passionate Pilgrim*. From this omission of the two pseudo-Shakespearean pieces Collier argued that Barnfield was not their author; that the claim to them advanced in behalf of Shakespeare by the compiler of *The Passionate Pilgrim* was justifiable, and that they were dropped by Barnfield in 1605, in deference to an imaginary protest on the part of the compiler of Jaggard’s miscellany. Collier ignored the fact that not the two pseudo-Shakespearean pieces alone, but four other of the original eight ‘poems in diuers humours’ were excluded from the new edition of Barnfield’s volume. So wholesale an exclusion undermines Collier’s theory, apart from the internal evidence of poetic quality, which entirely negatives Shakespeare’s responsibility for the two pieces in question. Cf. Collier’s *Bibliographical Account*, i. 57–8; Grosart’s Introduction to Barnfield’s *Poems* (Roxburghe Club), pp. xxv seq. <!-- [Page 320](arke:01KG6QFYFMQ200M0N3C7S4KBHQ) --> THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM 31 Spenser in his Fayrie Queene. In the last line of Barnfield's sonnet, the words ‘One knight loves both’ (i.e. Dowland and Spenser) refer to Sir George Carey, who in 1596 succeeded his father as second Baron Hunsdon. To Sir George, Dowland dedicated his *First Book of Ayres* in 1597, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, was a friend and patroness of Spenser, who dedicated to her his ‘Muiopotmos’ (1590) by way of acknowledging her ‘great bounty’ to him as well as the tie of kindred between them. The fourth item in Barnfield's ‘Poems’ of 1598 was headed ‘An ode’. This is the concluding poem (No. XX), filling the last four pages, of *The Passionate Pilgrim* of 1599. The reproduction in the later volume is again verbatim, save for the substitution of roman letters for a few italics. Although Jaggard here employed a printed text, a private transcript of Barnfield's Ode seems to have strayed into circulation, and that was printed for the first time in *England’s Helicon*. There we find a greatly abbreviated version of Barnfield's Ode. The last thirty lines, which figure in both Barnfield's *Poems* and in *The Passionate Pilgrim*, are omitted, and after the twenty-sixth line there is introduced a concluding couplet which is not found in either of the preceding volumes. These two lines run: Even so, poor bird like thee, None alive will pity me. Of the twenty-six lines, which appear in all three books, the text in *England’s Helicon* varies little from that in the other collections. *England’s Helicon* in line 22 reads ‘Ruthless beasts they will not cheer you’, instead of ‘Ruthless Beares’, &amp;c., as in both the earlier printed versions. ¹ There was a crude sort of justice in the attribution of Barnfield's verse to another. Thoroughly well read in contemporary poetry, Barnfield had <!-- [Page 321](arke:01KG6QFYF71H4RHXABPRF4KNXB) --> 32 THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM No. XVII.

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