Nicholas Breton

Poet, born in London, UK. He studied at Oxford and became a prolific writer of all kinds of verse, prose, and pamphlets. His best-known poem is ‘The Passionate Shepheard’ (1604). His prose Wits Trenchmour (1597) is a fishing idyll on which Izaak Walton drew for The Compleat Angler.

Nicholas Breton (also Britton or Brittaine) (1545?-1626), English poet and novelist, belonged to an old family settled at Layer Breton, Essex.

His father, William Breton, a London merchant who had made a considerable fortune, died in 1559, and the widow (née Elizabeth Bacon) married the poet George Gascoigne before her sons had attained their majority. Nicholas Breton was probably born at the "capitall mansion house" in Red Cross Street, in the parish of St Giles without Cripplegate, mentioned in his father's will. Breton found a patron in Mary, countess of Pembroke, and wrote much in her honour until 1601, when she seems to have withdrawn. the 19th letter of the second part contains a general complaint of many griefs, and proceeds as follows:

"bath another been wounded in the warres, fared hard, lain in a cold bed many a bitter storme, and beene at many a hard banquet?

Breton was a rather prolific author of considerable versatility and gift, popular with his contemporaries, and forgotten by the next generation. His work consists of religious and pastoral poems, satires, and a number of miscellaneous prose tracts.

Breton had little gift for satire, and his best work is to be found in his pastoral poetry. with some other of Breton's daintiest poems, among them the lullaby, "Come little babe, come silly soule,"—it is incorporated in A. Most of Breton's books are very rare and have great bibliographical value.

Breton's poetical works, the titles of which are here somewhat abbreviated, include:

The Workes of a Young Wit (1567) A Floorish upon Fancie (1577) The Pilgrimage to Paradise (1592) The Countess of Penbrook's Passion (manuscript), first printed by JO Halliwell-Phillipps in 1853 Pasquil's Fooles cappe, entered at Stationers' Hall in 1600 Pasquil's Mistresse (1600) Pasquil's Passe and Passeth Not (1600) Melancholike Humours (1600) Marie Magdalen's Love: a Solemne Passion of the Soules Love (1595), the first part of which, a prose treatise, is probably by another hand; the second part, a poem in six-lined stanza, is certainly by Breton A Divine Poem, including "The Ravisht Soul" and "The Blessed Weeper" (1601) An Excellent Poem, upon the Longing of a Blessed heart (1601) The Soules Heavenly Exercise (1601) The Soules Harmony (1602) Olde Madcappe newe Gaily mawfrey (1602) The Mother's Blessing (1602) A True Description of Unthankfulnesse (1602) The Passionate Shepheard (1604) The Souies Immortail Crowne (1605) The Honour of Valour (1605) An Invective against Treason; I would and I would not (1614) Bryton's Bowre of Delights (1591), edited by Dr Grosart in 1893, an unauthorized publication which contained some poems disclaimed by Breton The Arbor of Amorous Devises (entered at Stationers' Hall, 1594), only in part Breton's contributions to England's Helicon and other miscellanies of verse.

Of his twenty-two prose tracts may be mentioned Wit's Trenchmour (1597), The Wil of Wit (1599), A Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters (1603). B. (1606), A Mad World, my Masters, Adventures of Two Excellent Princes, Grimello's Fortunes (1604), Strange News out of Divers Countries (1622), etc.; Mary Magdalen's Lamentations (1604), and The Passion of a Discontented Mind (1601), are sometimes, but erroneously, ascribed to Breton.