And again later, when he lay dying, reflecting, as he did, that all things in his former life had "been vain, vain, vain," he requested that the _Arcadia_ should be burned. But he counted without the public, who in the person of a publisher took steps to make it common property the very year of Sidney's death. We have this from a letter written to Sir Francis Walsingham, Sidney's father-in-law, by Sir Foulk Greville, first Lord Brooke, who in his self-written epitaph styled himself "servant to Queen Elizabeth, councillor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney": "S^r, this day, one ponsonby, a booke-bynder in poles church-yard, came to me and told me that ther was one in hand to print S^r Philip Sydney's old arcadia, asking me yf it were done with your honors consent, or any other of his frendes? I told him, to my knowledge, no: then he aduysed me to give warninge of it, either to the archbishope or doctor Cosen, who haue, as he says, a copy to peruse to that end. "S^r, I am loth to renew his memory unto you, but yeat in this I must presume; for I haue sent my lady, your daughter, at her request, a correction of that old one, don 4 or 5 years sinse, which he left in trust with me; wherof there is no more copies, and fitter to be reprinted than the first which is so common: notwithstanding, even that to how and why; so as in many respects, espetially the care of printing of it; so as to be don with more deliberation." Ponsonby obtained a license to print the book, under the hand of the Archbishop of Canterbury, August 23, 1588, but not with the full consent and sympathy of the family, owing, we will hope, to a sentiment of proper respect for the poet's wishes. There was so much dissatisfaction with Ponsonby's "adventuring" that Collier thinks the book may have been called in or suppressed, a fact which would account for its great rarity. The hesitancy, however, seems to have been overcome in course of time, for the Countess herself edited the work for a later edition of Ponsonby's publishing. No mark or name of a printer is given in our copy, and Collier, when he gave it as his opinion that Richard Field did the work, seemed to have been unaware of the existence of the variation in the imprint, which occurs in the copy belonging to Trinity College Library, Cambridge, _London, Iohn Windet for william Ponsonbie_. Probably several had a hand in the printing. Only a close examination of the few existing copies could show whether or not they were all issued at the same time. We shall never know by name the "overseer of the print," who assumed the responsibility of arranging the poem, as is told in a note on the verso of the title-page: