"My Lord, though Belimperia seem thus coy Let reason hold you in your wonted joy; In time the savage Bull sustains the yoke, In time all Haggard Hawkes will stoop to lure, In time small wedges cleave the hardest Oake, In time the flint is pearst with softest shower, And she in time will fall from her disdain, And rue the sufferance of your deadly paine[67]." [64] _Sp. Trag._, Act IV. 190 (cp. _Euphues_, p. 146). [65] _Soliman and Perseda_, Act III. 130 (cp. _Euphues_, p. 100), and Act II. 199. [66] _Kyd's Works_ (Boas), p. 288, and ch. IX. [67] _Sp. Trag._, Act II. 1-8. Now these lines are practically a transcript of the opening words of the 47th sonnet in Watson's _Hekatompathia_ published in 1582. Remembering Lyly's penetrating observation that "the soft droppes of rain pearce the hard marble, many strokes overthrow the tallest oake[68]," and bearing in mind that the high priest of euphuism himself contributed a commendatory epistle to the _Hekatompathia_, we should expect that these Bulls and Hawkes and Oakes were choice flowers of speech, culled from that botanico-zoological "garden of prose"--the _Euphues_. But as a matter of fact Watson himself informs us in a note that his sonnet is an imitation of the Italian Serafino, from whom he also borrows other sonnet-conceits in the same volume, some of which are full of similar references to the properties of animals and plants. The conclusion is forced upon us therefore that Watson and Lyly went to the same source, or, if a knowledge of Italian cannot be granted to our author, that he borrowed from Watson. At any rate Watson cannot be placed amongst the imitators of _Euphues_. Like Pettie and Gosson he must share with Lyly the credit of creation. He was a friend of Lyly's at Oxford; they dedicated their books to the same patron, and they employed the same publisher. Moreover, the little we have of Watson's prose is highly euphuistic, and it is apparent from the epistle above mentioned that he was on terms of closest intimacy with the author of _Euphues_. In him we have another member of that interesting circle of Oxford euphuists, who continued their connexion in London under de Vere's patronage. [68] _Euphues_, p. 337. Watson again was a friend of the well-known poet Richard Barnefield, who though too young in 1578 to have been of the University coterie of euphuists, shows definite traces of their affectation in his works. The conventional illustrations from an "unnatural natural history" abound in his _Affectionate Shepherd_[69] (1594), and he repeats the jargon about marble and showers[70] which we have seen in Lyly, Watson and Kyd. Again in his _Cynthia_ (1594) there is a distinct reference to the opening words of _Euphues_ in the lines, "Wit without wealth is bad, yet counted good; Wealth wanting wisdom's worse, yet deemed as well[71]." His prose introduction betrays the same influence.