Note 403b — APPENDIX

Most of his dedications are penned in a loose diction of pretentious bombast which it is difficult to interpret exactly. When dedicating in 1610—the year after the issue of the Sonnets—Healey’s Epictetus his Manuall ‘to a true fauorer of forward spirits, Maister John Florio,’ Thorpe writes of Epictetus’s work: ‘In all languages, ages, by all persons high prized, imbraced, yea inbosomed. It filles not the hand with leaues, but fills ye head with lessons: nor would bee held in hand but had by harte to boote. He is more senceless than a stocke that hath no good sence of this stoick.’ In the same year, when dedicating Healey’s translation of St. Augustine’s Citie of God to the Earl of Pembroke, Thorpe clumsily refers to Pembroke’s patronage of Healey’s earlier efforts in translation thus: ‘He that against detraction beyond expectation, then found your sweete patronage in a matter of small moment without distrust or disturbance, in this work of more weight, as he approoued his more abilitie, so would not but expect your Honours more acceptance.’