s and some reasons drew me rather to have dealt in
causes of greater weight, yet the present jar of this disagreeing age
drives me into a fit so melancholy, as I had only leisure to grow
passionate."

In case wise heads should think him to be treating "an idle subject and
so frivolous," or that it has been "vainly handled and so odious," he
sets forth the nobility of his view. "Howsoever, Love in this age hath
behaved himself in that loose manner as it is counted a disgrace to give
him but a kind look, yet I take the passion in itself to be of that
honor and credit, as it is a perfect resemblance of the greatest
happiness, and rightly valued at his just price (in a mind that is
sincerely and truly amorous), an affection of greatest virtue and able
of himself to eternise the meanest vassal." "For Love," he declares, "is
a goddess (pardon me though I speak like a poet) not respecting the
contentment of him that loves, but the virtues of the beloved; satisfied
with wondering, fed with admiration; respecting nothing but his lady's
worthiness; made as happy by love as by all favors; chaste by honor; far
from violence; respecting but one, and that one in such kindness,
honesty, truth, constancy, and honor, as were all the world offered to
make a change, yet the boot were too small and therefore bootless. This
is love, and far more than this, which I know a vulgar head, a base
mind, an ordinary conceit, a common person will not nor cannot have.
Thus do I commend that love wherewith in these poems I have honoured the
worthy Licia."

The sonnet-cycle is inscribed "To the worthie kinde wise and virtuous
ladie, the Ladie Mollineux; wife to the right worshipful Sir Richard
Mollineux Knight." Nothing is known of this lady, except that her family
may possibly have been very distantly connected with that of Fletcher.
What the poet's feeling was towards his patroness he defines
sufficiently. "Now in that I have written love sonnets, if any man
measure my affection by my style, let him say I am in love.... Yet take
this by the way; though I am so liberal to grant thus much, a man may
write of love and not be in love, as well as of husbandry and not go to
the plough, or of witches and be none, or of holiness and be flat
profane."

What "shadowings" the poet may intend he refuses to confide to us. "If
thou muse what my Licia is, take her to be some Diana, at the least
chaste; or some Minerva; no Venus, fairer far. It may be she is
Lea