Note 6 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY AND RETROSPECTIVE.

Benlowes is a warning to “illustrated poets.” It pleased him to have his main book (Theophila, or Love’s Sacrifice: London, 1652, folio) splendidly decorated by Hollar and others; and the consequence is that copies of it are very rare, and generally mutilated when found. I congratulate myself on having first read Benlowes and William Woty, a minor poet of a century later, on the same day. To study Theophila and The Blossoms of Helicon in succession is quite a critical gaudy.