| ||
TO MY WORTHY FRIEND,
Captaine John Smith.
To act the earnest of thy name hast hand
And heart; who canst with skill designe the Fort,
The Leaguer, Harbour, City, Shore, and Port:
Put forth to try and beare away the prize,
From Cæsar and Blaize Monluc: Can it be,
That Men alone in Gonnels fortune see
Thy worth advanc'd? no wonder since our age,
Is now at large a Bedlem or a Stage.
3. A leaguer was a siege camp (from Dutch leger, "camp"; cf. German Lager, broadly
"camp"). Below, "ruffe" was a variant spelling of "rough." Also below: for Blaise de
Montluc (c. 1502–1577), whose Commentaires (Bordeaux, 1592) was inspired by Caesar's
"Commentaries," see the Biographical Directory; "Gonnels fortune" refers to Richard
Gunnell's Fortune Theatre (see sig. A2vn, above); "Bedlem" was Bethlehem Hospital,
then just outside Bishopsgate, London, which in 1377 "began to be used by "distracted
persons'" (William Kent, ed., An Encyclopaedia of London [London, 1937], 34) — in short,
a madhouse.
4. Richard James was Sir Robert Bruce Cotton's scholarly librarian (see the Biographical
Directory). A holographic copy of the verses, headed "To Captaine Jhon [sic]
Smith on the edition of his owne life," survives in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS
*James 35, p. 8), with no significant variants.
| ||