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In the same month one London publisher, Francis Smethwick, registered for his copies a number of books of the poetical kind which had been the property of his late father, including "Mr. Drayton's Poems," "Euphues's Golden Legacy," Meres's "Witt's Commonwealth," and also "Hamblett, a Play," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Love's Labour's Lost."
But more particular published for the Use of Schools. In 1636 it was again reprinted. The only part of Meres's work which is of interest now is what is here reprinted.
In addition to the Palladis Tamia, Meres was the author of a sermon published in 1597, a copy of which is in the Bodleian, and of two translations from the Spanish, neither of which is of any interest. Meres's Discourse is, like the rest of his work, mainly a compilation, with additions and remarks of his own.
Account of theories as to meaning of 'The thrice three muses, etc., V. i. 59. 3. What is a 'Bergomask dance'? 4. The date and occasion of the play: This play appears in Meres's list of 1598 and in the Quartos of 1600. Many critics have believed that the play was written on the occasion of some marriage in high life, but they do not agree as to whose it was.
We are surprised to find such a high place assigned to Warner, 'styled by the best wits of both our universities the English Homer, and a modern critic would probably substitute different names, notably those of Lodge and Campion, for those of Daniel and Drayton in a list of the chief lyric poets then in activity. In Meres's remarks on painters and musicians, there is nothing to detain us.
The first three the excerpt from Wilson's Art of Rhetoric, Sir Philip Sidney's Letter to his brother Robert, and the dissertation from Meres's Palladis Tamia are, if minor, certainly characteristic examples of pre-Elizabethan and Elizabethan literary criticism.
Short and hurried as this letter is, we feel it is one of those trifles which, as Plutarch observes, throw far more light on character than actions of importance often do. Between 1580 and the appearance of Meres's work in 1598 there was much activity in critical literature. This was succeeded in 1584 by James I.'s Ane Short Treatise conteining some rewles and cautelis to be observit.
Much of it is derived from the thirty-first chapter of the first book of Puttenham; with these distinctions, that Meres's includes the poets who had come into prominence between 1589 and 1598, and instituted parallels, biographical and critical, between them and the ancient Classics.
She began to have a reputation in scientific circles, and owing to her duties with Carus she could not come to the Stewarts' as often as she had formerly done. But she preserved her habit of dismissing the parlor-maid at the door and creeping up to the drawing-room like a thief in the night. On the day following Sir Cyril Meres's luncheon-party she arrived in her usual fashion.
The history of Meres's work, a dissertation from which is here extracted, is curious. In or about 1596, Nicholas Ling and John Bodenham conceived the idea of publishing a series of volumes containing proverbs, maxims, and sententious reflections on religion, morals, and life generally.
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