of base misdeem,
Under the ensign of whose tired pen,
Love's legions forth have masked, by others masked;
Think how I live wronged by ill-tongued men,
Not master of myself, to all wrongs tasked!
Oh thou that canst, and she that may do all things,
Support these languishing conceits that perish!
Look on their growth; perhaps these silly small things
May win this wordly palm, so you do cherish.
Homer hath vowed, and I with him do vow this,
He will and shall revive, if you allow this.

LICIA

OR

POEMS OF LOVE IN HONOR OF
THE ADMIRABLE AND SINGULAR
VIRTUES OF HIS LADY, TO THE
IMITATION OF THE BEST LATIN
POETS AND OTHERS

BY

GILES FLETCHER, LL.D.

GILES FLETCHER, LL.D.

Giles Fletcher, author of _Licia_, was one of that distinguished family
that included Richard Fletcher, the Bishop of London, and his son John
Fletcher, the dramatist. The two sons of Dr. Giles Fletcher were also
men of marked poetic ability: Phineas, the author of that extraordinary
allegorical poem, _The Purple Island_; and Giles, of _Christ's Victory
and Triumph_. There was a strong family feeling in this circle; Phineas
and Giles pay compliments to each other in their verse and show great
reverence and tenderness toward the memory of the poetic powers of their
father. But Giles Fletcher the elder was not thought of in his own time
as a poet. Educated at Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, where he was made
LL.D. in 1581, a member of Parliament in '85, employed in many public
services at home and abroad during a career that lasted until 1611, in
which year Dr. Fletcher died at the age of seventy-two, he was known as
a man of action, a man for public responsibility, rather than as the
retired scholar or riming courtier. Most important among the foreign
embassages undertaken by Fletcher was the one to Russia. The results
were of great import to England, commercially and otherwise, but the
book he wrote on his return was, for political reasons, suppressed.

It happened that the years of enforced idleness that followed the
suppression of this book came in the time when the young sonneteers at
London were all busy. He returned from his embassage in '89; the book
was suppressed in '91. _Licia_ was published in '93. The writing of
_Licia_ was "rather an effect than a cause of idleness;" he did it "only
to try his humor," he says apologetically in the dedicatory addresses.
"Whereas my thought