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

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

Bibliography

Edward Hodnett, Francis Barlow: First Master of English Book Illustration

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/m/memory-maps-brent-hall-by-richard-humphreys/

Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem edited by Bart Westerweel

research Roger Norton

Susan Dackerman, Painted Prints: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Painted-Prints-Revelation-Renaissance-Engravings/dp/0271022353