Mathew Roydon

Mathew Roydon (sometimes spelled Matthew) (c. 1580 – 1622) was an English poet associated with the "The School of Night group of poets and writers.

Quotes

• A sweet attractive kinde of grace,
  A full assurance given by lookes,
  Continuall comfort in a face
  The lineaments of Gospell bookes.
  • An Elegie; or Friend's Passion for his Astrophill, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This piece was errantly ascribed to Edmund Spenser, and was printed in The Phœnix' Nest (1593), where it is anonymous. Todd has shown that it was written by Mathew Roydon.

• Was never eie did see that face,
  Was never eare did heare that tong,
  Was never minde did minde his grace,
  That ever thought the travell long;
  But eies and eares and ev'ry thought
  Were with his sweete perfections caught.
  • An Elegie; or Friend's Passion for his Astrophill, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Quotes about Mathew Roydon

• It is in the exceeding rapture of delight in the deepe search of knowledge, none knoweth better than thyselfe, sweet Mathew, that maketh men manfully indure th'extremes incident to that Herculean labour.
  • Dedication to George Chapman's The Shadow of Night (1594) in "Notices of Mathew Roydon", Egerton Brydges, ed., Restituta: Or, Titles, Extracts, and Characters of Old Books in English Literature, Revived (1815), p. 51.

• [He] hath shewed himselfe singular in the immortall Epitaph of his beloved Astrophell, besides many other most absolute Comike inventions.
  • Thomas Nashe, in the preface of Robert Greene's Menaphon (1589), quoted in The works of Thomas Nashe, ed. Ronald B. McKerrow, 5 vols, Oxford, 1958, vol. 3, p. 323.