Born in the reign of Henry VIII. Dyer lived till some years after King James’s accession to the English throne. He was a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, who, in his verses, celebrates their intimacy. Dyer was educated at Oxford, and was employed in several foreign embassies by Elizabeth. He studied chemistry, and was thought to be a Rosicrucian…. The popular poem, “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is,” with additions, is credited in some collections to William Byrd (1543–1623), an eminent composer of sacred music, and who published in 1588 a volume of “Psalms, Sonnets,” etc. Both Byrd and Joshua Sylvester seem to have laid claim to the best parts of Dyer’s poem. A collection of Dyer’s writings was printed as late as 1872.

  His friendship is like a gem added to my treasures.

  Maister Edward Dyar, for Elegie most sweete, solempne and of high conceit.

  Sir Edward Dyer, of Somersetshire (Sharpham Parke, etc.), was a great witt, poet, and acquaintance of Mary, countesse of Pembroke, and Sir Philip Sydney. He is mentioned in the preface of the “Arcadia.” He had four thousand pounds per annum, and was left fourscore thousand pounds in money; he wasted it almost all. This I had from captaine Dyer, his great grandsonne, or brother’s great grandson. I thought he had been the sonne of the Lord Chiefe Justice Dyer, as I have inserted in one of these papers, but that was a mistake. The judge was of the same family, the captain tells me.

  Sir Edward Dier, a person of good account in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, poetically addicted, several of whose pastoral Odes and Madrigals are extant, in a printed Collection of certain choice pieces of some of the most eminent poets of that time.

  A poet whose lot has been rather singular. His name is generally coupled with that of Sir Philip Sidney, and of the most fashionable writers of the age; and yet Bolton, who was almost a contemporary critic, professes “not to have seen much of his poetry.” Though a knight, in a reign when knighthood was nobility, the time of his birth is unknown…. The letters M. D. in the “Paradise of Dainty Devices” are presumed (says Mr. Ritson in his “Bibliographia”) to denote this Master Dyer. Of six pieces, preserved in “England’s Helicon,” only half of one appeared worth transcribing, as a specimen of his style.

  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 “England’s 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.

  Dyer gained considerable fame as a poet in the last quarter of the sixteenth 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.”

  The number of poems which can be confidently ascribed to Dyer is small, but some of them have real merit, and not only justify the reputation which he enjoyed in his day, but are interesting as mirrors of his character and feelings. Oldys says of him that “he would not stoop to fawn;” and this may well be believed of the writer of the famous lines “My mind to me a kingdom is.”

  He had a very great reputation in his time as a poet, but his remains are small, and only one of them, the famous and excellent, but not superexcellent,