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Elizabeth Sylvester later dedicated his Little Bartas (1614), and to Prince Charles The Parliament of Vertues Royall (1614-1615) and Maiden's Blush (1620). The dedicatory sonnet of the 1614-1615 poem ends with the following picturesque appeal:
"You you alone (Great Prince) with Pities Grace,
Have held my Chin above the Waters brinke :
Hold still, alas ! hold stronger or I sinke,
Or haile me up into som safer place,
Som Privie Groom, som Room within your doores
That, as my Heart, my Harpe may all be yours."
Peacham's assertion that Sylvester received "little or no reward, either for his paines or dedications,"[1] if true at all, can be true only of this later period ; the poet at least did not fail for lack of perseverance.
There is no reference to the poet George Chapman in either of the accounts, a fact which serves to illustrate the incompleteness of the data they furnish. In a letter of appeal written to the King in 1613, Chapman states that "serving above nine yeares the late Prince Henry in place of a sewer in ordinary," he had been "put from his place under Prince Charles." He adds that having "four years attended the late Prince, he was commanded to continue his Homer," the 1609 and 1611 editions of which are dedicated to Henry. Chapman's name should thus be joined to those of Coryat, Sylvester, Owen, Lydyat, Hall, Drayton, and Daniel in the list of unequal but not unrepresentative Jacobean men of letters who were under the Prince's patronage.[2]
THE COURT OF QUEEN ANNE
For the patronage of the Queen, evidence similar to that in Murray's records is supplied by a document with the heading, Accounts of the Queen's Household April-Jan.
