Note 438b — APPENDIX (continued 2)
Reading edition
Practically to the same category as these collections of sonnets belong the voluminous laments of lovers, in six, eight, or ten lined stanzas, which, though not in strict sonnet form, closely resemble in temper the sonnet-sequences. Such are Willobie’s Avisa, 1594; Alcilia: Philoparthen’s Loving Folly, by J. C., 1595; Arbor of Amorous Deuices, 1597 (containing two regular sonnets), by Nicholas Breton; Alba, the Months Minde of a Melancholy Lover, by Robert Tofte, 1598; Daiphantus, or the Passions of Love, by Anthony Scoloker, 1604; Breton’s The Passionate Shepheard, or The Shepheardes Loue: set downe in passions to his Shepheardesse Aglaia: with many excellent conceited poems and pleasant sonets fit for young heads to passe away idle houres, 1604 (none of the ‘sonets’ are in sonnet metre); and John Reynolds’s Dolarnys Primerose . . . wherein is expressed the liuely passions of Zeale and Loue, 1606. Though George Wither’s similar productions—his exquisitely fanciful Fidelia (1617) and his Faire-Virtue, the Mistresse of Phil’ Arete (1622)—were published at a later period, they were probably designed in the opening years of the seventeenth century.