Barnfield

Barnfield, RICHARD, born at Norbury, Shropshire, in 1574, was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, and died, a country gentleman, at Stone, in Staffordshire, in 1627. His three little volumes of pastoral poetry, quaint, rhythmic, dainty, but over-luxuriant, cloying with too much sweetness, appeared in 1594, 1595, and 1598. The last contained the ode, 'As it fell upon a day,' and the sonnet, 'If Musique and sweet Poetrie agree,' which, printed by Jaggard in the Passionate Pilgrim (1599), were long attributed to Shakespeare. There are complete editions of his poems by Grosart (1876) and Arber (1882).