Edward Dyer

Sir Edward Dyer (October 1543 - May 1607) was an English poet and courtier.

Edward Dyer (1542-1607), The Praise of Nothing. Kessinger, 2010. CourtesyAmazon.com.

Life

Overview

Dyer, born at Sharpham Park, Somerset, and educated at Oxford, was introduced to the Court by the Earl of Leicester, and sent on a mission to Denmark, 1589. In his own day he had a reputation for his elegies among such judges as Sidney and Puttenham. For a long time there was doubt as to what poems were to be attributed to him, but about a dozen pieces have now been apparently identified as his. The best known is that on contentment beginning, "My mind to me a kingdom is."

Youth and education

Dyer was a son of Sir Thomas Dyer, knight, of Somersetshire, by his 2nd wife, the daughter of Lord Poynings (more probably a daughter of one of the bastard brothers of Thomas, lord Poynings, who died 18 May 1545). He was born at Sharpham Park, Somersetshire.

Wood states that he had in Oxford "some of his academical education," either at Balliol Colleg or at Broadgates Hall. Leaving the university without a degree, he travelled on the continent; and in 1566 he was at the court of Elizabeth.

Career

His patron in 1571 was the Earl of Leicester, over whom he seems to have exercised much influence. In 1572 he addressed a very curious letter of advice to Sir Christopher Hatton, who had fallen under the displeasure of the queen. Dyer himself had also incurred royal disfavour, for Gilbert Talbot, writing in 1573 to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury, says:

Dyer lately was sick of a consumption, in great danger; and, as your lordship knoweth, he hath been in displeasure these eleven years. It was made the queen believe that his sickness came because of the continuance of her displeasure towards him, so that unless she would forgive him he was not like to recover; and hereupon her majesty hath forgiven him, and sent unto him a very comfortable message’ (Nicolas, Memoir).

The writer of the letter also states that Leicester, with the connivance of Burghley, intrigued to make Dyer the queen's personal favorite in the place of Hatton.

In 1580 Gabriel Harvey in a letter to Spenser (Three Proper and Wittie, Familiar Letters) describes Sidney and Dyer as "the two very diamondes of her maiesties courte for many speciall and rare qualities." From Harvey's Letter-Book it appears that Spenser in 1579 obtained some of Harvey's poems and published them with a dedication "to the right Worshipfull Gentleman and famous Courtier Master Edwarde Diar, in a manner oure onlye Inglishe poett."

Early in 1584 Dyer was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Low Countries. In May 1585 he addressed a letter to Lord Burghley, whose patronage had been temporarily withdrawn. On 26 August 1586 articles of agreement were drawn up between Lord Burghley and "Edward Dyer of Weston, in the county of Somerset, esqr.," whereby Dyer was empowered, by the authority of the queen, to search and find out what manors, lands, &c., were concealed or detained from her majesty.

In May of the same year (1586) Dyer addressed a letter of advice to Leicester on the subject of the expedition for the relief of Grave. Sir Philip Sidney, his intimate friend, died in October 1586, and desired by his will that his books should be divided between Dyer and Fulke Greville. In Davison's ]Poetical Rhapsody, 1602, are "Two Pastorals" by Sidney "upon his meeting with his two worthy friends and fellow-poets, Sir Edward Dyer and Sir Fulke Greville."

By a warrant dated 30 March 1588 Dyer was granted by the queen all the lands which he had ascertained to have been concealed "before the 20th November, 1558, 1 Eliz., for five years next insuing" (Nicolas, from Lansd. MS. 56, f. 42). In 1589 he went on a diplomatic mission to Denmark. His method of dealing with the forfeited lands gave dissatisfaction to the queen, and in March 1592–3 he wrote to solicit Burghley's protection. There is extant a statement by Dyer of "The whole course of my proceedings, both before and since the granting of her majesty's warrant unto me" (Lansd. MS. 73, f. 37).

Oldys reports in his Diary that Dyer would never "fawn and cringe" at court. He soon came into favor with the queen again, for on the death of Sir John Wolley in 1596 he was appointed to the chancellorship of the order of the Garter, and was knighted. After this date little is heard of him. John Davies of Hereford, in the "Preface" to Microcosmos, 1603, addresses him as

Thou virgin knight, that dost thy selfe obscure

From world's unequal eyes;

and there is a sonnet to him in the same volume. Thomas Powell has some dedicatory verses to him in A Welch Bayte to Spare Prouender, 1603.

Dyer died in 1607, and in the burial register of St. Saviour's, Southwark, is the entry: "1607, May 11. Sr Edward Dyer, knight, in the chancel." Ben Jonson told Drummond that "Dyer died unmarried."

Writing

Dyer gained considerable fame as a poet in the last quarter of the 16th century. Puttenham in 1589 pronounced him to be "for elegy most sweet, solemn, and of high conceit;" and Meres in Wit's Treasury, 1598, mentions him as "famous for elegy."

But his verse was never collected. During his lifetime, and early in the next century, critics were at a loss to know on what work his fame rested. Edmund Bolton in Hypercritica says that he "had not seen much of Sir Edward Dyer's poetry;" and William Drummond, coupling his name with Raleigh's, observes: "Their works are so few that have come to my hands, I cannot well say anything of them." Rawl. MS. Poet. 85 contains a few poems ascribed, with more or less authority, to Dyer.

His most famous poem is his description of contentment, beginning "My mind to me a kingdom is" (set to music in William Byrd's Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs, 1588), of which several early manuscript copies are extant. Some poems in ‘England's Helicon,’ 1600, are subscribed ‘S[ir] E[dward] D[yer];’ but nearly all of them belong to Lodge. The sonnet entitled "The Shepherd's Conceit of Prometheus" (which is undoubtedly Dyer's), with Sidney's "Reply" — printed in Englands Helicon — had previously appeared among the poems appended to the 1598 Arcadia.

In Chetham MS. 8012, pp. 143–53, is a lengthy "Epitaph, composed by Sir Edward Dyer, of Sir Philip Sidney;" but in Rawl. MS. Poet. 85 it is ascribed to Nicholas Breton. A whimsical prose-tract, The Prayse of Nothing, 1585, 4to, of which a unique copy is preserved in the Tanner Collection, has been attributed to Dyer (privately reprinted by Mr. J.P. Collier).

Collier claimed for him another unique book, Sixe Idillia; that is, Sixe Small or Petty Poems, or Æglogues chosen out of the right famous Sicilian Poet, Theocritus, and translated into English verse,’ Oxford, 1588, 8vo. But this is an error, for the inscription at the back of the title plainly shows that the book was dedicated to, not written by, "E.D."

Critical introduction

by Mary Augusta Ward

Sir Edward Dyer, "for Elegy most sweete, solempne and of high conceit," according to a contemporary judgment, makes the last in importance, though the first in date, of that trio of poet-friends celebrated in Sidney’s well-known Pastoral:

‘Join hearts and hands, so let it be:

Make but one mind in bodies three.’

Very little authentic verse of his is now extant, nor is it probable that he produced much. On the other hand he has been freely credited with verses that do not belong to him, especially with certain poems that are now known to be by Lodge. Grosart has collected 12 pieces which may be attributed to him with a fair amount of certainty. Of these "A Fancy" is interesting as having provoked a much better poem on the same model by Lord Brooke, and a later imitation by Robert Southwell. It is however too rambling and unequal for quotation.

Dyer is now remembered by one poem only, the well-known "My mind to me a kingdom is," which though fluent and spirited verse, probably owes most of its reputation to the happiness of its opening. The little poem "To Phillis the Fair Shepherdess" is in the lighter, less hackneyed Elizabethan vein, and makes a welcome interlude among the "woeful ballads" which immediately surround it in Englands Helicon, where it first appeared.

Still, when all is said, Dyer, a man of action and affairs rather than of letters, is chiefly interesting for his connection with Sidney and Greville; and that stiff pathetic engraving of Sidney’s funeral, which represents him as pall-bearer side by side with Lord Brooke, throws a light upon his memory that none of his poems have power to shed.

Recognition

Dyer was in 1596 made chancellor of the Order of the Garter, and knighted.

Some of Dyer's letters have been printed by Sir Harris Nicolas. George Whitney, in A Choice of Emblems, 1586, has laudatory notices of Dyer. From a manuscript copy of Abraham Fraunce's Lawiers Logike, 1588, it appears that Fraunce had intended to dedicate his poem (under the title of The Shepheardes Logike) to the "ryght worshypful Mr. Edward Dyer."

Publications

Poetry

• The Prayse of Nothing. London: H. Iackson, 1585.

Collected editions

• Writings in Verse and Prose (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart). Blackburn, UK: privately published, 1872.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Love Is Love a poem written by Sir Edward Dyer

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Bullen, Arthur Henry (1888) "Dyer, Edward" in Stephen, Leslie Dictionary of National Biography 16 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 283-284  . Wikisource, Web, 2017.

External links

Poems

• Dyer, Sir Edward (1543-1607) ("My mind to me a kingdom is") at Representative Poetry Online
• "Devyde my times, and rate my wretched houres", "Another of the Same"
• Sir Edward Dyer at the Poetry Foundation
• Dyer in The English Poets: An anthology: "My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is," "To Phillis the Fair Shepherdess"
  • Extracts from Six Idillia: "Helen's Epithalamion," "The Prayers of Theocritus for Syracuse"
• Sir Edward Dyer at PoemHunter (12 poems)
• Sir Edward Dyer at Poetry Nook (15 poems)

Audio / video

• Edward Dyer at YouTube

About

• Sir Edward Dyer in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Sir Edward Dyer (1543-1607) at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• The Real Sir Edward Dyer at Shakespeare Authorship Question
• Critical Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward
• Dyer, Sir Edward in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Dyer, Edward

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