[PW] Re: Quotation (from Tottel's Miscellany?)

[John P. Dyson]

Quoting Silvia Benvenuto <bradamanteml at gmail.com>:

> Dear list,
>
> a friend is translating a novel from English to Italian and finds the
> following quotation:
>
> "Did not the worms consume
> Her carrion to the dust?
> Did dreadful death forbear its fume
> For beauty, pride or lust?"
>
> The author does not provide a bibliographic reference, but simply
> writes: "Tottel asks of Helen in his Songs and Sonettes composed in
> 1557". We tried to locate this quotation in Tottel's Micellany, but we
> only found the complete poem cited in an article of the "Blackwood's
> Edinburgh Magazine" (found through Google Books; the title of the poem
> is "On the Vanity of Man's Life", first line: "Vain is the fleeting
> wealth"), reprinted in _The Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and
> Art_ edited by Robert Walsh, Eliakim Littell, J Jay Smith. According
> to this article the poem is included in Tottel's Miscellany - but we
> were unable to find it.
>
> Can anyone help us locate and identify this quotation?


"Of the vanitie of mans lyfe" is found on Fo[lio]. 106 of _Songes and 
Sonettes..._ (London, 1557). This book is also known as _Tottel's 
Miscellany_ and in the London, 1587, edition of it, the poem you seek 
is on fol. 101.

Cordiali saluti,

John Dyson
Spanish and Portuguese
Indiana University