{435e} Spenser had already translated many sonnets
on philosophic topics of Petrarch and Joachim Du Bellay. Some of the
'Amoretti' were doubtless addressed by Spenser in 1593 to the lady who
became his wife a year later. But the sentiment was largely ideal, and,
as he says in Sonnet lxxxvii., he wrote, like Drayton, with his eyes
fixed on 'Idaea.'

'Emaricdulfe,' 1595.

An unidentified 'E.C., Esq.,' produced also in 1595, under the title of
'Emaricdulfe,' {436a} a collection of forty sonnets, echoing English and
French models. In the dedication to his 'two very good friends, John
Zouch and Edward Fitton Esquiers,' the author tells them that an ague
confined him to his chamber, 'and to abandon idleness he completed an
idle work that he had already begun at the command and service of a fair
dame.'

Sir John Davies's 'Gullinge Sonnets,' 1595.

To 1595 may best be referred the series of nine 'Gullinge sonnets,' or
parodies, which Sir John Davies wrote and circulated in manuscript, in
order to put to shame what he regarded as 'the bastard sonnets' in vogue.
He addressed his collection to Sir Anthony Cooke, whom Drayton had
already celebrated as the Mecaenas of his sonnetteering efforts. {436b}
Davies seems to have aimed at Shakespeare as well as at insignificant
rhymers like the author of 'Zepheria.' {436c} No. viii. of Davies's
'gullinge sonnets,' which ridicules the legal metaphors of the
sonnetteers, may be easily matched in the collections of Barnabe Barnes
or of the author of 'Zepheria,' but Davies's phraseology suggests that he
also was glancing at Shakespeare's legal sonnets lxxxvii. and cxxxiv.
Davies's sonnet runs:

My case is this. I love Zepheria bright,
Of her I hold my heart by fealty:
Which I discharge to her perpetually,
Yet she thereof will never me acquit[e].
For, now supposing I withhold her right,
She hath distrained my heart to satisfy
The duty which I never did deny,
And far away impounds it with despite.
I labour therefore justly to repleave [_i.e._ recover]
My heart which she unjustly doth impound.
But quick conceit which now is Love's high shreive
Returns it as esloyned [_i.e._ absconded], not to be found.
Then what the law affords I only crave,
Her heart for mine, in wit her name to have (_sic_).

Linche's 'Diella,' 1596.

'R. L., gentleman,' probably Richard Linche, published in 1596
thirty-nine sonnets under t