Mathew Roydon

His friendship with Sidney he commemorated in his Elegie, or Friends passion for his Astrophill, a poem on Sidney's death. It was first published in the Phoenix Nest, 1593, and was printed with Spenser's Astrophel in Spenser's Colin Clout, 1595; and it reappears in later editions of Spenser's works. Another of his literary friends, Chapman, dedicated to him his Shadow of Night in 1594, and Ovid's Banquet of Sence in 1595. In the former dedication Chapman recalls how he first learned from Roydon of the devotion to learning of the Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, and George Carey. He wrote of Roydon, It is in the exceeding rapture of delight in the deepe search of knowledge, none knoweth better than thyselfe, sweet Mathew, that maketh men manfully indure th'extremes incident to that Herculean labourJohn Davies of Hereford addressed to Roydon highly complimentary verse in the appendix to his Scourge of Folly, 1611. Robert Armin, when dedicating his Italian Taylor and his Boy (1609) to Lady Haddington, the Earl of Sussex's daughter Elizabeth, refers to Roydon as 'a poetical light... which shines not in the world as it is wisht, but yet the worth of its lustre is known.' In Thomas Nashe's Address to the gentlemen students of both universities, prefixed to Robert Greene's Arcadia (1587), Roydon is mentioned with Thomas Achlow and George Peele as leading London poets. Francis Meres, in his Palladis Tamia (1598), describes Roydon as worthy of comparison with the great poets of Italy. Apart from his elegy on Sidney, the only other compositions by Roydon in print are some verses before Thomas Watson's Sonnets (1581), and before Sir George Peckham's True Reporte (1583). Martin Garrett writes that Roydon "was associated at various times with Spenser, Marlowe, and Chapman", and quotes Nashe, prefacing Greene's Menaphon (1589), in saying that Roydon "hath shewed himselfe singular in the immortall Epitaph of his beloved Astrophell, besides many other most absolute Comike inventions". According to Garrett: Martin Garrett, Sidney: The Critical Heritage (1996) p.105-6.