Note 12 — SOME ACCOUNT OF MIDDLETON AND HIS WORKS.

The Silkewormes, and their Flies: Liuely described in verse, by T. M., &c. London, 1599. 4to, is certainly not by Middleton: according to some authorities, the writer’s name was Moffat.

In England’s Parnassus, or The Choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets, &c. 1600, 8vo, the following quotations are found:

“These two parts belong

Vnto true knowledge, words and teares haue force

To mooue compassion in the sauage mindes

Of brutish people reason-wanting kindes.

Tho. Middleton.” (p. 281, under “Teares.”)

“There neuer shall bee any age so cleere,

But in her smoothe face shall some faults appeare.

Th. Middl.” (p. 321, under “World.”)

But the compiler has given them to our author by mistake: both are taken from The Legend of Humphrey Duke of Glocester, written by Christopher Middleton; see the reprint of that poem in the tenth vol. of The Harleian Miscellany, p. 170 and p. 182. ed. Park.

Corona Minervæ. Or a Masque Presented before Prince Charles his Highnesse, The Duke of Yorke his Brother, and the Lady Mary his Sister, the 27th of February, at the Colledge of the Mvseum Minervæ. London, 1635. 4to, has been ascribed to Middleton by those who were not aware that he was dead at that period.

Lowndes (Bibliog. Manual) attributes to Middleton The pleasant comodie of Patient Grissell, 1607, and a short tract called Sir Robert Sherley sent Ambassadour, in the name of the King of Persia, to Sigismond the Third, &c. &c. 1609. 4to. The former piece was written by Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton (see Malone’s Shakespeare, by Boswell, vol. iii. p. 323); the latter (which is reprinted in The Harleian Miscellany, vol. v.) has no author’s name, and, as far as I can discover, contains nothing to indicate that it is by Middleton.