# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lodge, Thomas (1558?-1625)

​LODGE, THOMAS (1558?–1625), author, second son of Sir Thomas Lodge [q. v.], lord mayor of London, was born about 1558. His father had houses in both London and West Ham, Essex, and either may have been his birthplace. He entered Merchant Taylors' School on 23 March 1570-1, and, proceeding to Oxford about 1573, he became servitor to Edward Hoby [q. v.], who was then a gentleman-commoner of Trinity College. Edmund and Robert Carey, sons of the Earl of Hunsdon (Rosalynde, ded.), were also early friends at the university. Lodge appears to have matriculated from Trinity College, and is doubtless the Thomas Lodge who was admitted to the degree of B.A. on 8 July 1577, and supplicated for that of M.A. on 3 Feb. 1580-1 (Oxford Univ. Reg., Oxford Hist. Soc., vol. ii. pt. iii. p. 69).
On 26 April 1578 Lodge was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn. His elder brother, William, was admitted to the same society on 30 July 1572. But Lodge seems to have soon abandoned the study of law for literature. According to Wood, he had written verses while at Oxford, and his efforts had attracted favourable notice. He obtained a ready entrance into literary society in London. With Robert Greene he was quickly on terms of close intimacy, and Barnabe Rich, Daniel, Drayton, Lyly, and Watson were probably among the personal acquaintances of his youth.
In 1579 his mother died, and he wrote 'An Epitaph,' which was licensed for publication 29 Dec. 1579, but is not known to be extant. Lady Lodge left him a certain portion of her property to defray his expenses as a law student, and he was to receive other portions on attaining his twenty-fifth year, provided that he continued his studies; if he ceased to be what a good student ought to be, the money was, at the will of his father, to be distributed among his brothers. Lodge persisted in his literary endeavours, and doubtless forfeited the legacy. He had already inherited 100l. under the will of his maternal grandmother, Lady Laxton, and he seems to have married before 1583, when, 'impressed with the uncertainty of human life,' he made a will (cf. Gent. Mag. 1834, pt. ii. p. 157). That his family viewed his conduct at the time with disfavour may be inferred from the absence of his name from his father's will in 1583.
In 1579 Stephen Gosson [q. v.] published his 'School of Abuse,' a well-known attack upon the drama. Early in the following year Lodge made what was practically his first appearance as an author in a bitter retort entitled 'A Defence of Plays.' The tone betrays much personal animosity; the classical drama is alone discussed, and the tract abounds in classical allusions. A few of the quotations from Horace, Ovid, Silius Italicus, and others, are translated into very halting English. A license seems to have been refused the book, and it was circulated privately. Gosson, who did not obtain a copy for a year after its issue, answered it in his 'Plays confuted in Five Actions' (1582), and Lodge briefly rejoined in the preface to his 'Alarum against Usurers' (1584), where he complained that he had been slandered 'without cause.'
Gosson, in his 'Plays confuted,' described Lodge as one who was 'hunted by the heavy hand of God and become little better than a vagrant, looser than liberty, lighter than vanity itself.' But Gosson had little personal knowledge of his assailant's history. He was under the erroneous impression that Lodge's christian name was 'William.' Nevertheless Collier tried to extract from Gosson's words, which he misquoted, proof that Lodge was at one time an impoverished actor. The only positive evidence adduced by Collier is seriously garbled and must be rejected. According to documents at Dulwich College, Philip Henslowe, the theatrical manager, became surety about 1587 for a poor man named Lodge, who owed money to one Topping, a tailor. Collier, ​who printed the documents in his 'Memoir of Alleyn,' pp. 42-7, represented that Henslowe wrote of the poor debtor as 'Thomas' Lodge, and described him as a 'player,' whereas no mention of Christian name or occupation was made in the manuscript. The debtor's identity is doubtful. There is no ground for identifying him with the poet (cf. Ingleby, Was Thomas Lodge an Actor? 1868; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. xi. 107, 415).
But although Lodge is not known to have been an actor, he made a brief and unsuccessful attempt to write for the stage. At the commencement of his literary career he composed in monotonous blank verse a heavy tragedy in which he made liberal use of Plutarch and Sallust. Though perhaps produced in 1587, it was not published till 1594 (licensed for the press 24 May), when the title ran 'The Wounds of Civill War: lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla. As it hath beene publiquely plaide in London, by the Right Honourable the Lord high Admirall his Servants.' The characters of the two heroes are drawn with some power, but the comic scenes are contemptible, and the play as a whole is undistinguished. Lodge is also positively known to have collaborated with his friend Greene in another dramatic piece, 'A Looking Glasse for London and England,' which was printed in the same year (1594). It was acted by Lord Strange's company (8 and 27 March 1591-2, and 19 April and 7 June 1592), and was licensed for the press 5 March 1593-4 (Henslowe, Diary, pp. 23, 25, 28; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. ii. 23). The scriptural history of Nineveh is here applied to London. Such portions as can conjecturally be ascribed to Lodge prove more conclusively than the 'Wounds' that he had no dramatic gift. But it is suggested, and it is possible, that he wrote, either alone or conjointly with Greene, other dramatic pieces which are lost or unidentifiable. To his partnership with Greene have been assigned without any evidence the 'Laws of Nature' (Wood), 'The Contention between Liberalitie and Prodigalitie,' 1602 (ib.); 'Luminalia,' a masque, 1637 (ib.); and Alimony,' 1659 (ib.); as well as 'Henry VI,' pt. ii. (Fleay); 'James IV,' 1590(?) (ib.); 'George a Greene' (ib.); 'The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England' (ib.); and parts of the tragedy of 'Selimus' (ib.) Equally little weight can be given to Mr. Fleay's theory that Lodge was mainly responsible for 'Mucedorus' (1598), 'Richard III' (with Peele) (1594), 'King Leir and his Three Daughters' (1594), and 'A Warning for Fair Women'(1599). 'A Larum for London, or the Siege of Antwerp,' first published in 1600, has points of resemblance to 'The Looking Glasse,' and may partly be by Lodge; its scene is laid in 1576. Before 1589 Lodge had, he writes, taken an oath
To write no more of that whence shame doth grow
[Nor] tie my pen to pennie-knaves delight.
(Scillaes Metamorphosis, p. 28). 'Pennie-knaves' are the penny auditors at the playhouse, and the passage was doubtless the result of the frequent failure of the writer's dramatic ventures (Shakespeare Soc. Papers, iii. 145).
Lodge's youth was marked by much restlessness and unhappiness. In 1581, 'at the request of his friend Barnabe Rich, he had revised Rich's 'Adventures of Don Simonides,' a romance in the style of Lyly's 'Euphues.' In verses prefixed he wrote of 'the long distress' which had 'laid his Muse to rest.' At one period he seems to have lived somewhat riotously, and falling into pecuniary difficulties to have had recourse to usurers. In 1584 he turned his experiences to literary account by penning a tract called 'An Alarum against Usurers, containing tryed Experiences against worldly Abuses,' in which he offered youths much wise counsel after the manner of Lyly. With this tract was published the earliest of Lodge's prose romances, 'The Delectable Historie of Forbonius and Prisceria,' including an irregular sonnet and an eclogue in verse. The volume concluded with a metrical satire on contemporary society, entitled 'Truth's Complaint over England.' To Sir Philip Sidney he dedicated 'these primordia of my studies,' and Rich and John Jones prefixed commendatory verses.
Doubts respecting his fitness for the literary vocation seem in part to have led him to temporarily exchange 'bookes for armes.' But a military life quickly proved unsatisfactory, and about 1588 he made a voyage to the islands of Terceras and the Canaries with Captain Clarke, perhaps the 'John Clark' who was one of the commanders with Sir Richard Grenville and Lane in the Virginia voyage of 1585 (Lediard, Nav. Hist. p. 203b). No other Captain Clarke of the time seems known; no one of the name took part in the Earl of Cumberland's voyage to the Canaries in 1589. But despite the absence of details, the experience pleased Lodge, and he repeated it. In August 1591 he sailed, with Thomas Cavendish [q. v.] the circumnavigator, for South America, and visited the Straits of Magellan and Brazil. At Santos, in the latter country, he inspected the library of the Jesuits, and like his fellow-travellers suffered much privation (A Margarite of ​America, ded.) He seems to have been again in England early in 1593, and brought back no very good opinion of his commander, Cavendish.
These adventures stimulated Lodge's literary ambition afresh. After his return from his first voyage, he contributed verses in French to his friend Greene's 'Spanish Masquerado' (1589), and first made public claim to the title of poet by issuing a volume of verse. The volume, licensed for the press 22 Sept. 1589, was entitled 'Scillaes Metamorphosis; Enterlaced with unfortunate love of Glaucus. Whereunto is annexed the delectable discourse of the discontented Satyre; with sundrie other most absolute Poems and Sonnets.' The title-page was probably the composition of the publisher, Richard Jones. In the dedication to 'Master Rafe Crane and the rest of his most entire well-willers, the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court and Chauncerie,' Lodge obscurely suggests that his 'Imperfit Poems' had already been published by a needy pirate, 'owing to the base necessity of an extravagant mate,' and elsewhere he complains (p. 39) that 'some insolent poets' had set their own names to his verses. 'Glaucus and Scilla' is written in the same metre as Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis,' which was not published till 1593. The general resemblance is conspicuous enough to render it probable that Shakespeare was indebted to Lodge for the general plan of his poem. Writing in 1595 Lodge complained that he had been 'unjustly taxed' with plagiarism (Fig for Momus, 'To the Reader'), and the dates justify the theory of Shakespeare's indebtedness to Lodge rather than the reverse. 'Glaucus' is very graceful, and far superior in literary faculty to a succeeding series of detached poems in the same volume, which chiefly sets forth the poet's melancholy (cf. Shakespeare Soc. Papers, iii. 143). The 'sonnets' are not in the ordinary metrical form, and are clearly suggested by Watson. The work failed to sell, and was reissued with a new title-page, 'A most pleasant Historie of Glaucus and Scilla,' in 1610.
Meanwhile Lodge pursued another vein— that opened by Lyly, and already worked with success by his friend Greene. On the Canaries voyage he wrote his best-known romance: 'Rosalynde. Euphues Golden Legacie; found after his death in his cell at Silexedra. Bequeathed to Philautus sonnes noursed up with their father in England,' London, 1590; licensed for the press 6 Oct. 1590. He there describes himself as a soldier and a sailor, offering to his readers 'the fruits of his labors that he wrought in the ocean when everie line was wet with a surge, and everie passion countercheckt with by storm.' The book is dedicated to Lord Hunsdon, whose sons were his friends at Oxford. Lodge's languid prose is characterised by many of the affectations of 'Euphues,' and the long speeches and letters and abundance of moral reflection prove how closely Lodge followed Lyly's example. But the story, which was probably suggested by the mediaeval 'Tale of Gamelyn,' although tedious and artificial, has many pathetic episodes, and can be read with satisfaction. Some very beautiful lyrics are introduced, and at one place Lodge attempts a short poem in French (p. 47). Shakespeare directly drew from this romance the plot of 'As you like it,' inventing the characters of Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey, but adopting all the other personages in Lodge's tale. (Shakespeare altered their names, except in the cases of Phoebe, Adam, and Charles the Wrestler.) At the close of the work Lodge bids his patrons 'expect the Sailers Kalender,' apparently some account of his maritime adventures, of which nothing further is known. In the same year (1590) verses by him were prefixed to Peter Bales's 'Writing Scholemaster.'
Before setting out on his second voyage Lodge published in 1591 an historical romance of little interest, 'drawn out of the old and ancient antiquaries,' but worked out on euphuistic lines, and including one very charming song (p. 42) amid its 'many conceits of pleasure;' it was entitled 'The History of Robert, second Duke of Normandy, surnamed Robin the Divell,' and was dedicated to 'the Worshipful and true Mæcenas of learning, M. Thomas Smith, from my Chamber,' 2 May 1591. Later in the year, probably after Lodge had left England, appeared his 'Catharos. Diogenes in his Singularitie. Wherein is comprehended his merrie baighting fit for all mens benefits: Christened by him, A Nettle for Nice Noses, by T. L., of Lincolns Inne, Gent.,' 1591. The publisher, John Busbie, inscribed it to Sir John Hart as 'a small conceit penned by a gentleman, my dear friend.' It is a prose discussion on the immorality of Athens, in which Diogenes, Philoplutos, and Cosmosophos are the interlocutors; Athens stands for London; the tone recalls Sir Thomas Elyot's 'Pasquil the Plain.'
While Lodge was still at sea, his friend Greene published his closest imitation of Lyly, 'Euphues Shadow, the Battaile of the Sences: wherein youthfull folly is set downe in his right figure, and vaine fancies are proved to produce many offences. Hereunto is annexed the Deafe Man's Dialogue, contayning Philamis Athanatos: fit for all sortes to peruse, and the better sorte to practise,' 1592. Collier ​made a baseless suggestion that Greene, who, as editor, signs the dedication to Viscount Fitz-Walter, was the author of the book, which was licensed for the press 4 Feb. 1591-2 (cf. Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 202, 5th ser. i. 21-3).
Lodge's work excited some interest among men of letters if not among the reading public. Spenser is believed to have commended him in his 'Colin Clout's Come Home Again,' written in 1591, as 'pleasing Alcon,' who was advised by the poet to 'raise his tunes from lays to matters of more skill' (ll. 395-6). Alcon is the name of a character in the 'Looking Glasse for London,' by Lodge and Greene. Greene, in his latest work, 'A Groatsworth of Wit' (1592), referred to 'young Juvenal, that biting satirist, that lastly with me together writ a comedie,' and urged him to 'inveigh against vain men.' The exhortation, it has been frequently assumed, was addressed to Lodge. Lodge's satire is hardly pungent enough to justify the theory, and Nashe has a better claim to the appellation of 'biting Juvenal.' But in an address to 'the Gentlemen readers' in 'Euphues Shadow' Greene announced the early publication of 'what laboures Lodge's sea studies afford.' Accordingly, in 1593, after his return, was issued his chief volume of verse—forty sonnets and short pieces, with a longer narrative poem on the model of the tales in the 'Mirror for Magistrates.' The title runs: 'Phillis: honoured with Pastorall Sonnets, Elegies, and amorous delights. Whereunto is annexed the tragicall complaynt of Elstred. Iam Phæbus disiungit equos, iam Cinthia iungit.' It is dedicated to the Countess of Shrewsbury, 'the true Octavia of our time.' 'Phillis' was probably Lodge's endeavour to follow Spenser's advice to 'raise his tunes,' and he seems to acknowledge Spenser's kindly interest by eulogising him in the 'Induction,' under the name of 'learned Colin,' compared with whom he represents the other poets of his day as mists in the presence of a sun. The succeeding stanza commends Daniel, to whose 'Delia' the arrangement of the volume bears resemblance. One of the poems (Sonnet 25) was introduced into 'England's Helicon,' 1600, and is there, like two extracts from 'Rosalynde,' wrongly subscribed S[ir] E[dward] D[yer].
A second historical romance, of higher literary value than the first, followed, with the title 'The Life and Death of William Longbeard, the most famous and witty English Traitor, borne in the Citty of London. Accompanied with manye other most pleasant and prettie Histories,' 1593. It is interspersed with verses addressed by the hero to his 'faire lemman Maudeline.' The appendix collects tales of 'famous pirats' and stories of Francesco Sforza and 'Tyrsus the Tyrant.' The book is chiefly interesting because it probably supplied Lodge's friend Drayton with materials for his lost play, 'William Longbeard' (cf. Henslowe, Diary, pp. 95, 142). In the same year (1593) sixteen lyrics by Lodge— of which fourteen were not previously printed —were included in the poetical collection called 'The Phoenix Nest.' On 7 June 1594 a work, called 'A Spiders Webbe,' was licensed for the press to Nicolas Ling (Arber, Transcript, ii. 652). No copy is now known, but one was sold as a work by Lodge at the sale of one John Hutton's library in 1764. A more fortunate effort appeared a year later, after what Lodge calls 'a long silence.' It is entitled 'A Fig for Momus, containing pleasant varietie, included in Satyres. Eclogues, and Epistles, by T. L., of Lincolnes Inne, Gent. Che pecora si fa, il lupo selo mangia,' 1595 (licensed for the press 26 March). The poet, after a dedication to the Earl of Derby, explains to his readers that he delights in variety, that his satires, of which he has more in reserve, are 'by-pleasures,' intended to reprehend vice and no particular person, and that his epistles in verse are the first undertaken by an Englishman. The eclogues are the best features of the book. One is addressed to Samuel Daniel (p. 28). In another, a pastoral dialogue, inscribed 'To Rowland,' Golde (i.e.,Lodge himself) and a shepherd named Wagrin are the speakers, and the former deplores the cool reception accorded to his verse. An epistle to Drayton illustrates the closeness of their literary sympathies (cf. Gent. Mag. 1850, pt. ii. p. 132).
Lodge seems to have kept the threat, spoken under the pseudonym of Golde, to 'cease to ravel out his wits in rhyme.' Extracts from his poetry appeared in 'England's Parnassus,' 1600, where he is called 'D[octor] Lodge,' and at least thirteen complete poems—two not previously published—in 'England's Helicon,' 1600 (cf. Lodge, Miscellaneous Piece, Hunterian Club, pp. 6-20), but after 1595 he issued no more volumes of verse.
In 1596 Lodge produced three or perhaps four prose works, and they seem to be the fruits of his final efforts to make a livelihood out of literature. In the autumn he removed from London to Low Leyton, Essex, near some property owned by his family. The first work of this year was a moral conference between the hermit Anthony and three men of the world, entitled 'The Divel Conjured': it is dedicated, under date 15 April, to Sir John Fortescue, chancellor of the exchequer, to whom the writer complains that he is the ​victim of scandalous reports—a possible reference to rumours of his conversion to Roman Catholicism. The second, a romance of the Euphues pattern, was called 'A Margarite of America,' London (John Busbie), 1596, 4to. In the dedication to Lady Russell,' our English Sappho,' dated 4 May, Lodge explains that it was penned in the Straits of Magellan, the sole justification for the title. Verse is very freely interspersed throughout, and one piece,' With Ganymede now joins the shining sun,' is the earliest known example in English of a sestina. The third volume was 'Wits Miserie and Worlds Madnesse; discouering the Deuils Incarnat of this Age.' It is dedicated to Nicholas Hare, 'from my house at Low Laiton,' 15 Nov. 1596, and is a denunciation of various vices, lavishly illustrated from classical authors. Some brief criticism of his friends Spenser, Drayton, Daniel, and Nashe (p. 57) does justice to his literary taste. Chalmers argued, not quite satisfactorily, that the omission of all mention of Shakespeare led the latter to ridicule the work by placing quotations from it (p. 46) in the mouth of Falstaff (cf. Merry Wives, v. 5: ' Let the sky rain potatoes,' et seq; Chalmers, Supplemental Apology, p. 319). Collier suggested that in the same year (1596) Lodge produced a religious tract called 'Prosopopœia, containing the teares of … Marie, the Mother of God.' The dedication to the Countess of Derby is signed in some copies L. T., in others T. L. Internal evidence perhaps supports Lodge's claim. The tone is that of a pious catholic, and Lodge is known to have become a catholic in middle life. But Mr. Laing's suggestion that L. T. is the correct signature, and possibly stands for Laurence Twine, is worthy of consideration.
After 1596 Lodge sought new occupation, as well as change of religion. Abandoning the profession of literature, he began the study of medicine, and according to Wood graduated as a doctor of medicine at Avignon in 1600. After taking the degree he practised in London, and on 25 Oct. 1602 was incorporated M.D. at Oxford. In the same year he is said to have produced 'Paradoxes against Common Opinion debated in form of Declamations in place of publique censure, onelie to exercise young wittes in difficult matters' (Hazlitt, Bibl. Coll.) It is better known that he published in 1602 a very laborious volume (licensed as early as 26 June 1598)(Arber, iii. 119): 'The Famous and Memorable Workes of Josephus, a man of much Honour and Learning among the Jewes. Faithfully translated out of the Latin and French by Tho. Lodge, Doctor in Physicke.' It is dedicated to the Earl of Nottingham. Next year, when the plague was raging in London, Lodge dedicated to the lord mayor and aldermen of the city 'A Treatise of the Plague: containing the Nature, Signes, and Accidents of the same, with the certaine and absolute cure of the Feuers, Botches, and Carbuncles that raigne in these times. And above all things most singular Experiments and Preservatives in the same, gathered by the Observation of divers worthy Travailers, and selected out of the writings of the best learned Phisitians in this age. By Thomas Lodge, Doctor in Phisicke,' London, printed for Edward White and N. L., 1603,4to. Soon afterwards Lodge seems to have fallen under suspicion as a Roman catholic and fled the country. A letter addressed 9 March 1605-6 by one W. Jenison to 'Mr. Thomas Lodge, Doctor in Physicke,' suggests that Lodge at the time was out of England, in order to escape persecution as a recusant, and that his wife remained in London to protect his interests (Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1603-10, p. 298; Gosse, Memoir). On 17 Jan. 1610 he wrote thanking Sir Thomas Edmondes [q. v.], the English ambassador in Paris, for having enabled him to return home in peace and quietness (MS. Addit. 4164, No. 52; Miscellaneous Pieces, pp. 28-9). He prospered as a physician, but is said to have been chiefly patronised by coreligionists. In 1609 Heywood, in his 'Troia Britannica,' mentions him in a list of the chief physicians of the day, and he similarly figures in a satiric poem on London doctors of 1620 (Hazlitt, Inedited Poetical Miscellanies, notes, sig. f f). In 1612 he set up a monument in the church of Rolleston, Nottinghamshire, to the memory of a younger brother, Nicholas, lord of that manor. Nicholas had left by will two gold bracelets to the doctor's wife. In 1614 he gave another proof of his industry by issuing 'The Workes, both Morrall and Natural, of Lucius Annæus Seneca, translated by T. Lodge, D. of Phis., London, printed by William Stansby,' fol., dedicated in Latin to Lord-chancellor Ellesmere. A letter dated 1618, in which he prescribes for the weak eyes of a patient, Sir Stephen Powle, is extant in the Bodleian Library (Tanner MS. clxix. 19).
Lodge probably continued till his death a frequent visitor to the continent. On 10 Jan. 1616 a passport was granted him and Henry Sewell, gent., to travel 'into the Archduke's country to recover such debts as are due unto them there, taking with him two servants, and to return agayne within five months.' On his return he seems to have been distracted by pecuniary difficulties. Proceedings for an unpaid debt were taken against 'Dr. T. Lodge' ​by Alleyn the actor in 1619, and the doctor appears to have been imprisoned (Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, p. 39). When issuing a revised edition of his 'Seneca' in 1620, with a new dedication in English to the Earl of Suffolk, he wrote that his business was great, and his distractions many. In 1622 he prefixed a commendatory letter to 'The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie,' Oxford, 4to, and claimed close acquaintance with the authoress. At the suggestion of another of his patients, Anne, countess of Arundel, he drew up a popular medical treatise called 'The Poore Mans Talent,' which he did not print. The manuscript at one time belonged to Mr. J. P. Collier, and it was first printed by the Hunterian Club in 1881. The dedication to Lady Arundel was in the author's autograph (cf. facsimile in the printed volume). His last literary undertaking was 'A Learned Summary upon the famous Poeme of William of Saluste,lord of Bartas. Translated out of the French by T. L., D[octor] M[edicus] P[hysicus],' 1625, fol. It is dedicated to Sir Julius Cæsar, and was licensed for the press 8 Nov. 1620 (Arber, Transcripts, iv. 42).
Lodge while practising medicine in London lived first in Warwick Lane, afterwards in Lambert Hill, and finally in Old Fish Street in the parish of St. Mary Magdalen. He died in Old Fish Street in 1625, apparently in the Roman catholic communion. His second wife Jane, widow of Solomon Aldred, at one time a catholic agent of Walsingham in Rome, was granted administration of his effects 12 Oct. 1625. By his first wife Joan, whom he married in 1583, he had a daughter Mary.
Lodge does not claim for himself much popularity in his own day. Meres, in his 'Palladis Tamia,' 1598, includes him, not very reasonably, in a list of those contemporaries who were 'best for comedy,' and in the 'Return from Parnassus' (1602) he is classed with Watson as being 'of some desert.' His oar is declared to be in 'every paper boat,' and while turning over Galen every day, he is said to 'sit and simper Euphues Legacy,' p. 85. Drummond of Hawthornden studied his 'Phillis' with care. Mr. Fleay assumes that he is ridiculed as Churms in the comedy of 'Wily Beguiled.' Whatever the opinion of contemporaries, Lodge was singularly accomplished. He was well read in modern literature, and was no mean classical scholar. His friend W. R., who prefixed a commendatory epistle to the 1620 edition of the 'Seneca,' is justified in his praise of his principle of translation, which prevented him, 'parrot-like,' from losing 'himself literally in a Latin Echo,' while it enabled him to express the 'meaning in our proper English elegancies and phrase.' In his 'Romances' his prose is very ornate, but its graces are of a languid order, and the modern reader finds it tedious. It is as a lyric poet that Lodge is best deserving of remembrance. Phillipps, in his 'Theatrum Poetarum,' 1675, describes him as a writer 'of those pretty old songs and madrigals which are very much the strain of those times.' The 'Phillis' volume and the verse scattered through his romances, much of which was introduced into 'The Phoenix Nest' and 'England's Helicon,' show him to best advantage. The 'sugared sweetness' of his lyrics gives them rank beside the finest in the language; but Lodge was always to some extent an imitator. His romances closely followed those of Lyly and Greene. The influence of Kyd or Marlowe is discernible in his plays. In his lyrics he appears as the disciple of Sidney among English poets, and of Desportes and Ronsard among French poets. His dependence on Desportes is very remarkable, and he occasionally imitated him in the French poet's own language. 'Few men are able,' he wrote in his 'Margarite' (p. 79), 'to second the sweet conceits of Phillip Du Portes, whose poetical writings are ordinarily in everybody's hands' (cf. Wits Miserie, p. 53). Such attractive pieces as 'The Earth late choked with Flowers' (Scillaes Metamorphosis, p. 46),' Oh Night, oh jealous night' (Phœnix Nest),and 'The Lover's Vow' (Rosalynde) are all drawn directly from Desportes, though Lodge improves on his originals. Of Desportes's sonnet beginning 'Si je me siez à l'ombre aussi soudainement,' Lodge supplies three different renderings (cf. Rosalynde, p. 74, Scillaes Metamorphosis, p. 44, and Phillis, p. 53). Sonnet 33 of 'Phillis' was borrowed from Ronsard, but Lodge's dependence on Ronsard is less conspicuous. Such as it is, it excited the ridicule of Nashe, who in his 'Tarlton's News out of Purgatory,' 1590, introduced a parody of Lodge's 'Montanus Sonnet' (Rosalynde, p. 48, 'Phœbe sate,' &c.), and entitled it 'Ronsard's Description of his Mistress.' He was engaged in studying Du Bartas in the last year of his life (cf. Wits Miserie, pp. 70, 80, 88, for references to other French authors). Lodge's relations with the Italian poets were also close. In 'Margarite' he avowedly imitates, in a curious series of poems (pp. 76, &c.), the styles of Dolce, Pascale, and Martelli. Ariosto, Guarini, and Petrarch were also familiar to him.
The original editions of Lodge's works are very rare. All excepting his translations of Seneca, Josephus, and Du Bartas have been reprinted by the Hunterian Club, Glasgow 1878-82, with a biographical notice by Mr. ​Edmund Gosse, and a valuable volume of 'Miscellaneous Pieces;' the references given in this article are to this series of reprints. The following list of abbreviated titles supplies the chief bibliographical details. All were printed in London, and are in quarto unless otherwise described.
* 'Defence of Plays,' 1580 (?), small 8vo, without title or imprint; the only copies known are in Mr. Christie Miller's library at Britwell Court and in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; reprinted by the Shakespeare Society, 1853.
* 'An Alarum against Usurers,' by T. Este for Sampson Clarke, 1584 (Bodleian and Britwell), reprinted by Shakespeare Society with No. 1.
* 'Scillaes Metamorphysis,' by Richard Jhones, 1589 (Bodleian and Dyce Library, South Kensington); with new title-page as 'A most pleasant Historic of Glaucus and Scilla,' 1610, 4to (Mr. Locker-Lampson's Libr., Rowfant); reprinted by S. W. Singer, 1819.
* 'Rosalynde,' by Thomas Orwin for T. G. and John Busbie, 1590 (Britwell); 1592 (Bodleian and Huth Libraries); 1598 (Rowfant); 1604 (Britwell); 1609 (Bodleian and Brit. Mus.); 1612 (Brit, Mus.); 1614 (Brit. Mus.); 1623 (Britwell, Dyce Libr.); 1634 (Brit, Mus.); 1642 (ib.); reprinted in 1802 (ed. Waldron, with illustrations by Harding), in Collier's 'Shakespeare Library,' 1843 and 1875, and in Cassell's 'National Library,' 1886.
* 'Robert, second Duke of Normandy,' for N. L. and John Busbie, 1591 (Britwell).
* 'Catharos,' by William Hoskins and John Danter for John Busbie, 1591, 4to (Brit. Mus., Bodleian, Rowfant, and Ellesmere Libr.)
* 'Euphues Shadow,' by Abell Jeffes, for John Busbie, 1592 (Brit. Mus., Capell collection at Trin. Coll., Cambridge, Britwell, and Peterborough Cathedral Library).
* 'Phillis,' for John Busbie, 1593 (Brit. Mus.; Britwell, with an induction, belonging to some other unknown edition; Drummond's Books at Edinburgh Univ. and Capell coll.,Trin. Coll., Cambr.)
* 'William Longbeard,' by Rychard Yardley and Peter Short, 1593 (Bodleian and Rowfant); reprinted in Collier's 'Illustrations of Old English Literature,' vol. ii. 1860.
* 'The Wounds of Civill War,' by John Danter, 1594 (Bodleian, Brit. Mus., Britwell, Rowfant, and Dyce Library); reprinted in 'Dodsley's Old Plays,' 1825 and 1874.
* 'A Looking Glass for London,' by Lodge and Greene, by Thomas Creede, 1594 (Duke of Devonshire's Library); 1598 (Bodleian, Brit. Mus., Rowfant); 1602 (Bodleian, Brit, Mus.); 1617 (ib., Huth and Dyce Library); reprinted in Greene's 'Dramatic Works,' ed. Dyce, 1831.
* 'A Fig for Momus,' for Clement Knight, 1595 (Bodleian, Rowfant, and Britwell); reprinted by Sir Alexander Boswell at the Auchinleck Press, 1817.
* 'The Divel Coniured,' by Adam Islip, for William Mats, 1596 (Bodleian, Britwell, Huth, Capell, and Brit. Mus.)
* 'A Margarite of America,' for John Busbie, 1596 (Brit. Mus. and Bodleian).
* 'Wits Miserie,' by Adam Islip, for Cuthbert Burby, 1596 (Britwell, Huth, Capell, and Bodleian).
* 'Prosopopeia,' for E. White, 1596 (Lambeth Libr., Edinb. Univ., Bodl. Libr.)
* 'Paradoxes,' by Simon Waterson, 1602.
* 'Works of Josephus … at the charges of G. Bishop, S. Waterson, P. Short, and Tho. Adams,' 1602, fol. (Britwell and Brit. Mus.), 1609, 1620, 1632, 1655, 1670; revised ed. 1683 and 1693.
* 'A Treatise of the Plague,' for Edward White and N. L., 1603 (Brit, Mus., Edinb. Univ. Libr., Rowfant, Huth, and Bodleian).
* 'The Workes of Seneca,' by William Stansby, 1614, fol. (Britwell), 1620, and 1632.
* 'A Learned Summary of Du Bartas,' 1625, fol. (Brit. Mus.)
[Mr. Gosse's attractive essay on Lodge, which forms the introduction to the Hunterian Club edition of Lodge's works, is reissued in his Seventeenth Century Studies. See also Laing's introduction to the reprint of Lodge's Defence of Plays by Shakespeare Society, 1853; Hunter's Chorus Vatum, i. 77 (Addit. MS. 24487); Jusserand's English Novels in the Time of Shakespeare; A. H. Bullen's Lyrics from Elizabethan Romances, and his edition of England's Helicon; Corser's Collectanea; Hazlitt's Bibl. Collections; Hunter's New Illustrations of Shakespeare, i. 333; Collier's Bibliographical Cat., his Hist. of Dramatic Poetry, and his arts. in Gent. Mag. 1850 pt. ii. p. 605, 1851 pt. i. p. 155; Symonds's Predecessors of Shakespeare; Saintebury's Elizabethan Lit.; Fleay's Biog. Chron. of English Drama; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 382-385; Anglia, x. 235-89; bibliographical details kindly supplied by R. E. Graves, esq.]
S. L.