sonnets of the
amorous kind. If to these we add Shakespeare's poems, and make allowance
for others which, only circulating in manuscript, have not reached us, it
is seen that more than two hundred love-sonnets were produced in each of
the six years under survey. France and Italy directed their literary
energies in like direction during nearly the whole of the century, but at
no other period and in no other country did the love-sonnet dominate
literature to a greater extent than in England between 1591 and 1597.

Of sonnets to patrons between 1591 and 1597, of which detached specimens
may be found in nearly every published book of the period, the chief
collections were:

II. Sonnets to patrons, 1591-7.

A long series of sonnets prefixed to 'Poetical Exercises of a Vacant
Hour' by King James VI of Scotland, 1591; twenty-three sonnets in Gabriel
Harvey's 'Four Letters and certain Sonnets touching Robert Greene'
(1592), including Edmund Spenser's fine sonnet of compliment addressed to
Harvey; a series of sonnets to noble patronesses by Constable circulated
in manuscript about 1592 (first printed in 'Harleian Miscellany,' 1813,
ix. 491); six adulatory sonnets appended by Barnabe Barnes to his
'Parthenophil' in May 1593; four sonnets to 'Sir Philip Sidney's soul,'
prefixed to the first edition of Sidney's 'Apologie for Poetrie' (1595);
seventeen sonnets which were originally prefixed to the first edition of
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,' bk. i.-iii., in 1590, and were reprinted in
the edition of 1596; {440} sixty sonnets to peers, peeresses, and
officers of state, appended to Henry Locke's (or Lok's) 'Ecclesiasticus'
(1597); forty sonnets by Joshua Sylvester addressed to Henry IV of France
'upon the late miraculous peace in Fraunce' (1599); Sir John Davies's
series of twenty-six octosyllabic sonnets, which he entitled 'Hymnes of
Astraea,' all extravagantly eulogising Queen Elizabeth (1599).

III. Sonnets on philosophy and religion.

The collected sonnets on religion and philosophy that appeared in the
period 1591-7 include sixteen 'Spirituall Sonnettes to the honour of God
and Hys Saynts,' written by Constable about 1593, and circulated only in
manuscript; these were first printed from a manuscript in the Harleian
collection (5993) by Thomas Park in 'Heliconia,' 1815, vol. ii. In 1595
Barnabe Barnes published a 'Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets,' and,
in dedicating the collection to Toby Matthew, bishop of