town from her Majesty for many years yet to come. He had bargained with the Lord Roche, and received part of the payment for the same, but his lordship had failed to make good the subsequent payment and had gone into rebellion; whereby Bryskett's interest in the abbey had again reverted to him, and he requests that he may be put into possession. From the Court at Whitehall 19 Nov. 1600.

Note by the Editor.-Lodowick Bryskett is mentioned in the Irish State Papers as early as 1590. On 1st Sept. 1594 the Lord Chancellor of Ireland wrote to Lord Burghley for the stay of the letters procured in favour of Lodowick Bryskett to be Clerk of the Council, which office is already passed to William Uscher. He says "Lodowick Bryskett's father was a natural Italian; he keeps a continual correspondence with Florence."

From this it is evident that the Irish Chancellor regarded him as undesirable on the ground of being an Italian. It may be inferred also that the captivity to which Bryskett alludes in his letter to Cecil of 1606 occurred abroad, and that he was probably made a prisoner of war, or arrested as a spy.

The "Discourse" itself throws further light on the author, so clearly indeed that it becomes manifest that he is not the same person as the "ancient servitor of the realm of Ireland," of Italian birth, above described. The work is entitled "A Discourse of Civill Life: containing the Ethike part of Morall Philosophie. Fit for the instructing of a Gentleman in the course of a virtuous life. By Lod: Br. Virtute Summa: Caetera Fortund.1 London, 1606." It opens with a short address to Cecil, the style of which has nothing very distinctive about it, and it is immaterial whether it is the work of Bryskett himself or of the author of the treatise, with whom it seems probable he had an understanding. An Address to the Reader follows, in a more distinctive style, in which the following account of the work is given:

The booke written first for my private exercise, and meant to be imparted to that honorable personage, qui nobis haec otia

1 The same motto is placed at the end of the "Pastorall Æglogue" attributed to Bryskett, which is included in Spenser's works.

2 Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy, August 1580 to August 1582; died 1593.

fecit, hath long layne by me, as not meaning (he being gone), to communicate the same to others. But partly through the persuasion of friends, and partly by a regard not to burie that which might profit many, I have been drawne to consent to the publishing thereof.

We have seen this device before, and it is characteristic ; so also is the following promise to the reader of more to

come :

As my meaning herein is thy good chiefly: so let thy favourable censure thankfully acknowledge my labor and goodwil, which may move me to impart after unto thee another treating of the Politike part of Morall Philosophie, which I have likewise prepared to follow this. . . .

The question naturally occurs why should Bryskett, who explains that he retired from active work in order to follow literary pursuits, have thought it necessary to keep back his writings, and why, as he "is stated to have been alive in 1611," did he publish nothing more? There is no trace of the further work promised, but I have little doubt that the ideas for it have been absorbed in some of the other works of the real author. It will be remembered that Spenser, at the end of his View of the State of Ireland, similarly announces a further work, and this, in my opinion, as I have already had occasion to notice, was part of this writer's method, in the absence of any other channel of announcement, of advertising his work.

The "Discourse " follows, headed "Written to the right Honorable Arthur, late Lord Grey of Wilton: By Lod: Bryskett," with an explanatory introduction. The author recalls to his lordship that "it pleased you upon the decease of maister John Chaloner, her Majesties Secretarie of this State, which you then governed as Lord Deputie of this Realme, to make choice of me to supply that place"; that his intention did not take effect, and that he then conferred on Bryskett a still greater favour in granting him "libertie without offence to resigne the office which I had then held seven yeares, as Clerke of this Councell, and to withdraw my selfe from that thanklesse toyle to the quietnes of my intermitted studies. . . . And

therefore being now freed by your Lordships meane from that trouble and disquiet of mind, and enjoying from your special favour the sweetnesse and contentment of my Muses; I have thought it the fittest meanes I could devise, to shew my thankfulnes, to offer to you the first fruites that they have yeelded me my translation of these choice grafts and flowers, taken from the Greeke and Latine Philosophie, and ingrafted upon the stocke of our mother English tongue . . . so unlooked for a present out of this barbarous countrie of Ireland to furnish this our English soile and clime withal."

The connection between Bryskett and Spenser comes in here. Spenser was Lord Grey's secretary, and was holding that post when Lord Grey was recalled in August 1582. In March 1581 he obtained from Bryskett by purchase (under a prevailing custom of those times) a clerkship in the Irish Court of Chancery held by the latter. In 1582 it appears that Bryskett obtained from Lord Grey the clerkship of the Munster Council, and sold this post again to Spenser in June 1588, who was by that time, no doubt, in Munster, having resigned his clerkship in Dublin. These facts seem irreconcilable with the abovequoted account of Bryskett's retirement.

There are further difficulties of chronology in connection with the suggestion which has been made that the colloquy at Bryskett's house took place at some time either just before or just after Lord Grey's recall. The suggestion overlooks the fact that Long, Primate of Armagh, who is represented as one of the party, was not made Primate until July 1584. As he died in 1589, the date of the colloquy must, if it is genuine, lie between these limits, when, as would appear, Bryskett was engaged in Munster. The determining passage, however, is in the "third day" of the Discourse, where allusion is made to "our late Lord Deputie" and "our present Lord Deputie," and it proceeds: "My Lord Grey hath plowed and harrowed the rough ground to his hand: but you know that he that soweth the seede, whereby we hope for harvest according to the goodnesse of that which is cast into the earth, and the

seasonablenesse of times, deserveth no lesse praise then he that manureth the land. God of his goodnesse graunt that when he also hath finished his worke, he may be pleased to send us such another Bayly to oversee and preserve their labours"; and then follows an allusion to "the quiet of the countrey since the forreine enemie had so bin vanquished, and the domesticall conspiracies discovered and met withall, and the rebels cleane rooted out." This passage suggests that by "our present Lord Deputie" Sir John Perrot, who succeeded Lord Grey after two years' government by Lords Justices, is intended. His term of office lasted from June 1584 to June 1588, and on a comparison of the tentative allusion to his government here with the disapproval of it expressed later by the author of the View,' the conclusion seems to follow that the treatise was written in the early part of it (1585 or 1586), before the quarrels, which led to his recall, had reached a head in England. On the other hand, the latter words are much more appropriate as a description of the events in England leading up to the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588 than to the events in Ireland in Lord Grey's time, and I think it probable that the allusion is really to them, in which case the date of the treatise is 1588-89. Of the origin of the machinery of the dialogue we are given a clue at p. 31, where Bryskett, in beginning to read his translation, says, "I will omit the introduction of the author to his dialogue . . . by which the persons introduced by him are fitted for his purpose . . . he hath divided his whole work into three dialogues [the "three days" of the Discourse]. . . . I must now presuppose that ye, whom I esteeme to be as those gentlemen introduced by this author, have likewise moved the same questions which they did, to wit, what maner of life a gentleman is to undertake and propose to himself, to attaine to that end in this world, which among wise men hath bene, and is accounted the best." My belief is

1 "After whom [the two Lords Justices] Sir John Perrot succeeding (as it were) into another mans harvest, founde an open way to what course he list. I did treade downe and disgrace all the English, and sett up and countenaunce the Irish all that he could."— View, Globe ed. p. 656.

that this "colloquy" is fictitious, and that the author's idea in devising it was to give a touch of lightness and human interest to a treatise which otherwise would have appeared too formidable (on his favourite principle, Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci), and that he used the opportunity to bring in Spenser in order to prepare the way for the publication of the Faerie Queene, being a work with a similar purpose. The first instalment, it will be remembered, appeared in 1590. The intention, however, was for some reason not carried out at the time. Similarly no opportunity seems to have been found until 1592 for publishing the "Harvey" Sonnet, which purports to be dated by Spenser from Dublin on 18th July 1586. A Sonnet addressed to "Lodwick," as to the non-completion of the second portion of the Faerie Queene, appeared among the Amoretti in 1595 (No. 33), which I believe to have had a similar following in 1596.1

purpose, the second portion

The phrase in the foregoing extract, "our Mother English tongue," indicates that the author was English, not Italian.

The occasion of the "Discourse" is then described:

The occasion of the discourse grew by the visitation of certaine gentlemen comming to me to my little cottage which I had newly built neare unto Dublin. . . Among which, Doctor Long, Primate of Ardmagh . . . Captain Thomas Norreis, Captain Warham St. Leger . . . and M. Edmond Spenser, late your Lordships Secretary [and others].

The colloquy follows, and they ask Bryskett why he resigned so good an appointment and withdrew from the service of the State? He replies, ill-health, desire for study, and the toil was "farre too high a price for the profit"-" so free am I from ambition or covetise."

He continues: all the time he spent by his father's direction in study he was employed in the knowledge and principles of " Physicke " (though he never practised it), and had since continued the study of its principles "as well for the use thereof to mine owne behoofe, as for the 1 Cf. p. 385 above.