Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The Passionate Pilgrim was first published in the tiny Quarto 1599 reproduced in the present volume. Elizabethan lovers of song must have associated Shakspere’s poems with the White Greyhound in Paul’s Churchyard, for at the house bearing that sign, Venus and Adonis in 1593, and Lucrece in 1594, made their appearance; now, six years after its original publication, the demand for Shakspere’s earliest poem continued brisk, so that Leake, the owner of the Greyhound, deemed it necessary to issue the Venus in a new edition – that edition of which two copies, and no more, remain; one of these drawn from a recess of Tunes wallet in the autumn of 1867, by Mr. Charles Edmonds, when examining certain old books at Lamport Hall, Nottinghamshire, and reprinted under his editor-ship in 1870. Any one with a fancy for writing a very Imaginary Conversation, yet with an undoubted foundation in fact, may choose this year 1599 for the time, and the Greyhound for the scene. Enter Master W. Jaggard, a visibly piratical person, with hat plucked over his brows, who draws Leake mysteriously aside, and informs him that he, Jaggard, has come by certain of those sugared sonnets of Shakspere, lately mentioned by Meres as existing among the writer’s private friends. Will Leake put his name upon the title-page and sell the pamphlet at the Greyhound, whither young amorists come to exchange their sixpences for passions in verse? A few pieces on the subject of Venus and Adonis may well pass for Shakspere’s, if indeed some of them are not really his; other scraps may be added from various quarters, and the name of the mellifluous and honey-tongued poet may be inscribed upon the title-page. Here the writer of our imagined Imaginary Conversation will do well to represent Leake as alarmed lest such a freedom may kindle the indignation of Master Shakspere; whereupon Jaggard must protest that Will is a gentle spirit, and cite the words of one who had formerly given Shakspere cause
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