University Microfilms International - Arizona Campus Repository

7
Yet all was fained, twas not from the hart,
They seemde to grieve, but yet they felt no care:
Twas I that Griefe (indeed) did beare in brest,
The others did but make a show in Jest.
Csig. G5)
In his annotations to The Blazon of Jealousie Tofte refers to Constable,
Watson, and Daniel as though they were his very close companions,
although he never elucidates the exact nature of his relationship to
them.
Tofte's works have been described, in varying degrees of detail,
by John Payne Collier, Mary Augusta Scott, and Franklin B. Williams. 10
The following brief account of the canon, excluding Ariosto's Satyres
which will be discussed in detail in the next section of the Introduction,
does not attempt to reiterate the analyses of Collier, Scott, and
Williams but to provide the reader with a concise survey of the scope
and interests of Tofte's literary endeavors.
Tofte's first book, a sonnet sequence entitled Laura. The Toyes
of a Traveller. Or the Feast of Fancie, was printed by Valentine Sims
in 1597, although it was begun while the poet was in Italy in 1592. 11
The book is divided into three parts, each containing forty numbered
"sonnets" alternately of ten and twelve lines. In a dedicatory epistle
to Lady Lucy Percy, sister of the Third Earl of Northumberland, Tofte
calls his collection "a few Toys of mine own travail: most part conceived
in Italy, and some of them brought forth in England." In the preliminary
verses dedicated "Alia bellissima sua Signora E. C.," who has not been
positively identified, he introduces his standard practice of incorporating
his nickname into his books: