are shorter, there are included three elegies
and an ode. Desportes is Lodge's chief master, but he had recourse to
Ronsard and other French contemporaries. How servile he could be may be
learnt from a comparison of his Sonnet xxxvi. with Desportes's sonnet
from 'Les Amours de Diane,' livre II. sonnet iii.

Thomas Lodge's Sonnet xxxvi. runs thus:

If so I seek the shades, I presently do see
The god of love forsake his bow and sit me by;
If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be;
If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry.
If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain
If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan
If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain,
He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon.
If so I walk the woods, the woods are his delight;
If I myself torment, he bathes him in my blood;
He will my soldier be if once I wend to fight,
If seas delight, he steers my bark amidst the flood.
In brief, the cruel god doth never from me go,
But makes my lasting love eternal with my woe.

Desportes wrote in 'Les Amours de Diane,' book II. sonnet iii.:

Si ie me sies l'ombre, aussi soudainement
Amour, laissant son arc, s'assiet et se repose:
Si ie pense a des vers, ie le voy qu'il compose:
Si ie plains mes douleurs, il se plaint hautement.
Si ie me plains du mal, il accroist mon tourment:
Si ie respan des pleurs, son visage il arrose:
Si ie monstre la playe en ma poitrine enclose,
Il defait son bandeau l'essuyant doucement.
Si ie vay par les bois, aux bois il m'accompagne:
Si ie me suis cruel, dans mon sang il se bagne:
Si ie vais a la guerre, it deuient mon soldart:
Si ie passe la mer, il conduit ma nacelle:
Bref, iamais l'inhumain de moy ne se depart,
Pour rendre mon amour et ma peine eternelle.

Drayton's 'Idea', 1594.

Three new volumes in 1594, together with the reissue of Daniel's 'Delia'
and of Constable's 'Diana' (in a piratical miscellany of sonnets from
many pens), prove the steady growth of the sonnetteering vogue. Michael
Drayton in June produced his 'Ideas Mirrour, Amours in Quatorzains,'
containing fifty-one 'Amours' and a sonnet addressed to 'his ever kind
Mecaenas, Anthony Cooke.' Drayton acknowledged his devotion to 'divine
Sir Philip,' but by his choice of title, style, and phraseology, t