entice, son-in-law, and successor of Vautrollier, the
great printer. In his shop he learned not only much technical detail of
his art, but refreshed his education--or, rather, went through another
course, reading with a new inspiration and a kindled enthusiasm.

I have shown elsewhere how very much his mental development owed to
books published by Vautrollier and Field,[142] sole publishers of many
Latin works, including Ovid, of Puttenham's "Art of Poetrie," of
Plutarch's "Lives," and many another book whose spirit has been
transfused into Shakespeare's works. We know that he had tried his hand
at altering plays, at rewriting them, and making them popular; we know
that he had translated them upon the stage before 1592, because of
Greene's notice then published by Chettle, of "the upstart crow."[143]
And he probably had written some. But his first firm step on the
staircase of fame was taken in the publication of his "Venus and Adonis"
by his friend Richard Field in April, 1593, and his first grip of
success in his dedication thereof to the young Earl of Southampton. The
kindness of his patron between 1593 and 1594 had ripened his admiration
into love; and the dedication of the "Rape of Lucrece" in the latter
year placed the relations of the two men clearly before the world. A
careful study of the two dedications leads to the conviction that the
"Sonnets" could only have been addressed to the same[144] patron. A
study of the poems and sonnets together shows much of the character,
training, and culture of the author--love of nature, delight in open-air
exercise and in the chase, sympathy with the Renaissance culture, and a
moral standard of no common order.

In his first poem he shows how preoccupation preserves Adonis from
temptation; in the second how the spiritual chastity of Lucrece is
triumphant over evil. The one poem completes the conception of the
other, and both lead into the sonnets. In these the author explains much
of his thought and circumstance--

"Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view;
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new."

"Oh, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That doth not better for my life provide
Than public means, which public manners breeds."[145]

Southampton did not only chide with Fortune, but took her place. Through