ided to
a published sonnet of unrestrained fervour his conviction that
Southampton's eyes--'those heavenly lamps'--were the only sources of true
poetic inspiration. The sonnet, which is superscribed 'to the Right
Noble and Virtuous Lord, Henry, Earl of Southampton,' runs:

Receive, sweet Lord, with thy thrice sacred hand
(Which sacred Muses make their instrument)
These worthless leaves, which I to thee present,
(Sprung from a rude and unmanured land)
That with your countenance graced, they may withstand
Hundred-eyed Envy's rough encounterment,
Whose patronage can give encouragement
To scorn back-wounding Zoilus his band.
Vouchsafe, right virtuous Lord, with gracious eyes--
Those heavenly lamps which give the Muses light,
Which give and take in course that holy fire--
To view my Muse with your judicial sight:
Whom, when time shall have taught, by flight, to rise
Shall to thy virtues, of much worth, aspire.

Tom Nash's addresses.

Next year a writer of greater power, Tom Nash, betrayed little less
enthusiasm when dedicating to the earl his masterly essay in romance,
'The Life of Jack Wilton.' He describes Southampton, who was then
scarcely of age, as 'a dear lover and cherisher as well of the lovers of
poets as of the poets themselves.' 'A new brain,' he exclaims, 'a new
wit, a new style, a new soul, will I get me, to canonise your name to
posterity, if in this my first attempt I am not taxed of presumption.'
{385a} Although 'Jack Wilton' was the first book Nash formally dedicated
to Southampton, it is probable that Nash had made an earlier bid for the
earl's patronage. In a digression at the close of his 'Pierce
Pennilesse' he grows eloquent in praise of one whom he entitles 'the
matchless image of honour and magnificent rewarder of vertue, Jove's
eagle-borne Ganimede, thrice noble Amintas.' In a sonnet addressed to
'this renowned lord,' who 'draws all hearts to his love,' Nash expresses
regret that the great poet, Edmund Spenser, had omitted to celebrate 'so
special a pillar of nobility' in the series of adulatory sonnets prefixed
to the 'Faerie Queene;' and in the last lines of his sonnet Nash suggests
that Spenser suppressed the nobleman's name

Because few words might not comprise thy fame. {385b}

Southampton was beyond doubt the nobleman in question. It is certain,
too, that the Earl of Southampton was among the young men f