He was probably born about 1583, probably born and schooled at Northampton, probably a page to Lady Wenman, of Thame Park, and certainly a retainer of the family, probably at Oxford, probably a friend (as certainly a disciple of Spenser, probably a musician as well as a poet, almost certainly married, burying “Helinor ye wife of Willia Basse,” 23rd Sept., 1637, and probably died at Thame some time during 1653.

General

  Basse’s poetry is characterised by a pleasant homeliness of language and versification and by an enthusiastic love of country life. It derives an historical interest from Izaak Walton’s honourable mention of it, and from the homage paid to Shakespeare by its author. The long interval of fifty-one years between the production of the first and last poems bearing Basse’s signature has led Mr. J. P. Collier to conjecture that there were two poets of the same name, and he attributes to an elder William Basse the works published in 1602, and to a younger William Basse all those published later. The internal evidence offered by the poems fails, however, to support this conclusion.

  The fate of Basse is perhaps one of the most pathetic, paradoxically speaking, in the history of oblivion. Forgotten poets, or rather poets remembered by a very few, are plentiful. The number of quite forgotten poets it is obviously impossible to estimate. Evidently Basse does not belong to those, else we should not be speaking of him. But he is as near to them as a man may well be. A breath nearer and he had tumbled over into the pitchy darkness. His singularity is this, that whereas the nearly forgotten poet was usually somewhat of a figure in his own day, and had at least the pleasure of seeing his name on a title-page, Basse, though occasionally referred to by his contemporaries, and evidently of some account amongst them, was certainly not a figure, and his best work, that which he had so carefully filed and polished, has lain in manuscript for two hundred and forty years. So had they gone on lying had it not occurred to Messrs. Ellis and Elvey, who possess the manuscripts, to ask Mr. Warwick Bond to edit them, and to publish them in the sumptuous volume before me. It was a sweet, charitable act. Poor Basse! if he could only know. How would he exclaim, with Herrick (whom he probably lived long enough to read), “Like to a bride come forth my book at last!” Of course, his publishers will have sent him a copy!

  Basse, though an elaborate is a very tame and tedious rhymer, whose vein of Spenserian richness soon wore out, and left nothing but an awkward and voluble affectation behind it.

  On the whole, however, it is impossible to regard him as anything but a diluted Spenserian. His flat pastoral fertility is more curious than edifying, and prompts the suspicion that there must have been just a touch of friendly log-rolling about Walton’s praise of his lyric gift, since it is not greatly conspicuous in the pair of pieces mentioned, neither of which excels the “Angler’s Song.”

  One of the feebler of Spenser’s imitators, published “Three Pastoral Elegies of Anander, Anetor, and Muridella” (1602), and left at his death the manuscript of nine other “Eclogues.”… Basse is perhaps better known as the author of an “Elegy” on Shakespeare, and of an “Angler’s Song,” quoted in Walton’s “Compleat Angler.”

  His initials, “W. B.,” have led to some confusion with Browne, whose friend he was, to whose “Pastorals” he wrote commendatory verses, and whom he a good deal resembles in his own poems of the same kind, his “Urania,” his “Polyhymnia” (only surviving in fragments), and other pieces. But he is only a curiosity, and a very weak poet, though it may be a little stronger than any other outsider of the Browne-Wither group, Christopher Brooke, whose poems have also been printed.