Fanshawe’s version, which is spoken of in terms of warm admiration.  Now the only manuscript translation of Guarini’s play extant in English is that of Jonathan Sidnam, whose name gives us the very initials which appear upon the title-page of the printed play.[242] Since the preliminary verses may have been written any time between 1647 and 1655, the vague allusion to the date of composition will quite well fit 1630, the year given in the manuscript.  When, furthermore, we find J. S.’s work characterized by precisely the same use of short lines as we noted above in the case of Sidnam’s, the identification becomes a practical certainty.  The version, though, as the author was himself aware, it will not stand comparison with Fanshawe’s work, is not without merit, and is perhaps as good as the rather tedious original deserves.  As a specimen we may take a passage in which the author deliberately followed Tasso, Celia’s narration of her adventure with the centaur: 

    There, to a sturdy Oak, he bound me fast
    And re-enforct his base inhumane bonds
    With the then danglinst Tresses of my hair;
    Ingrateful hair, ill-nurtur’d wicked Locks! 
    The cruel wretch then took up from the foot
    Both my loose tender garments, and at once
    Rent them from end to end:  Imagine then
    Whether my crimson red, through shame was chang’d
    Into a pale wan tincture, yea or no. 
    I that was looking toward Heaven then,
    And with my cries imploring ayd from thence,
    Upon a suddain to the Earth let fall
    My shamefac’d eyes, and shut them close, as if
    Under mine eye-lids, I could cover all
    My naked Members. (I. iii.)

Of the various unfounded conjectures as to the author of this version, among which Shirley’s name has of course not failed to appear, certainly the most ingenious is that which has seen in it the work of Sir Edward Sherburne.  The suggestion appears to have been originally made by Coxeter, on what grounds I do not know.  ’There is no doubt of the authorship of this play,’ writes Professer Gollancz in his notes to Lamb’s Specimens, ’"J.  S.” is certainly an error for “E.  S.”  I have found in a MS. in the British Museum Sir E. Sherburne’s preface to this play.’  Professer Gollancz deserves credit for having unearthed the interesting document referred to,[243] but an examination of it at once destroys his theory.  It is a preface ‘To the Reader’ intended for a translation of the Filli, and another copy also is extant,[244] both being found among the papers of Sir Edward Sherburne, though in neither does his name actually occur.  In the course of the preface the writer quotes ’the Censure of my sometime highly valued, and most Ingenious friend S’r.  John Denham, to whom (some years before the happy Restauration of King Charles the 2^{d} being then at Paris) I communicated Some Part of this my Translation.  Who was not only pleasd to encourage