Edward Benlowes

On Chetham Library's copy of Theophila: http://chethamslibrary.blogspot.com/2015/08/theophila-and-curious-letter-m.html

Slideshare with human alphabets: https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/sotos1/human-alphabets-2

Menschenalphabet by Peter Flötner (1534) is alphabet used in "To my fancie upon Theophila"

Genesis woodcut that is interleaved in some copies -- mentioned here: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/tree-diagrams-the-most-important-data-viz-tool-in-history/#slide-10;

engravings pasted over woodcuts in Folger copy of Orlando Furioso: http://collation.folger.edu/2015/05/a-renaissance-best-seller-of-love-and-action/

emblem engravings pasted in: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/bib-desc.php?id=FBOa

George Saintsbury, intro in Minor Poets of the Caroline Periods

https://archive.org/stream/minorpoetsofcar01sain#page/312/mode/2up

“The earlier, larger, and better part of his poem is a really remarkable, and beyond all reasonable doubt a perfectly genuine, example of that glowing intensity of mystical devotion which plays, like a sort of Aurora, on the Anglican High Churchmanship of the seventeenth century, and has made it, to some, one of the most attractive phases of religious emotion to be found in all history. It may be prejudice or partisanship, but there seems to me some reason for connecting Bellows’ return to Anglican orthodoxy, as contrasted with Crashaw’s permanent estrangement, with the freedom from over-lusciousness which is remarkable in the lesser poet.”

Samuel Butler, Character of a small poet

http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/introductions/ButlerSamuel.html

Waller edition of Characters (1908): https://archive.org/stream/charactersandpa00butlgoog#page/n61/mode/2up

Characters in ms: BL Add. MS 32625, 32626

“He sets up Haberdasher of small Poetry, with a very small Stock, and no Credit.”

“Whatsoever he hears well said he seizes upon by poetical Licence; and one Way makes it his own, that is by ill repeating of it — This he believes to be no more Theft, than it is to take that, which others throw away. By this means his Writings are, like a Taylor’s Cushion, of mosaic Work, made up of several Scraps sewed together.”

“He is but a Copier at best, and will never arrive to practice by the Life: For bar him the Imitation of something he has read, and he has no Image in his thoughts.”

“For Similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best: For as Ladies wear black Patches, to make their Complexions seem fairer than they are; so when an Illustration is more obscure than the Sense that went before it, it must of Necessity make it appear clearer than it did: For Contraries are best set off with Contraries.”

writes too much —“For certainly it is more noble to take four or five Grains of Sense, and, like a Gold-Beater, hammer them into so many Leaves as will fill a whole Book; than to write nothing but Epitomies, which many wise Men believe will be the Ban and Calamity of Learning.”

“There was one, that lined a Hat-Case with a Paper of Benlowse’s Poetry — Prynne bought it by Chance, and put a new Demi-Castor into it. The first Time he wore it he felt only a singing in his Head, which within two Days turned to a Vertigo — He was let Blood in the Ear by one of the State-Physicians and recovered; but before he went abroad he writ a Poem of Rocks and Seas, in a Stile so proper and natural, that it was hard to determine, which was ruggeder.”

“There was a Tobacco-Man, that wrapped Spanish Tobacco in a Paper of Verses, which Bellows had written against the Pope, which by a natural Antipathy, that his Wit has to any Thing that’s Catholic, spoiled the Tobaco; for it presently turned Mundungus. This Author will take an English Word, and, like the Frenchman, that swallowed Water and spit it out Wine, with a little Heaving and Straining would turn it immediately into Latin, as plunderat ille Domos — Mille Hocopokiana, and a thousand such.”

ends with possible extended reference to Theophila, naming poets who produce women as mistresses, making absurd names for them