IN 1609, UNDER THE IMPRINT of Melchisedeck Bradwood, there appeared in London a book of verses written in Italian and dedicated to one of the ladies of the court of Queen Anne. Its full title is Rime di Antimo Galli all' illustrissima Signora Elizabetta Talbot-Grey. I For the most part its contents are courtly pieces of small consequence, but the volume begins with a poem whose title catches the eye: Stanze fatte con l'occasione d'un balletto guidato da la Real Mta de la Regina de la gran Brettagna &c. Li 6. di Genaro del 1608. The masque that was produced by the queen at court in January 1608 was Ben Jonson's Masque of Beauty, which took place in the new Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. The actual performance was on the tenth of January, not the sixth, but it had been postponed from the earlier date for diplomatic reasons, and anyone wanting to write about it later on might well have preferred to link it with Twelfth Night rather than the undistinguished tenth. Here, then, apparently unknown to Jonson scholars, is a long poem-124 numbered stanzas of ottava rima-connected with one of the major Jacobean masques and indeed carrying within it passages which describe Jonson's ravishing show. About the author I have been able to discover very little. was certainly in England in 1608-1609 and again in 1613-1614, but whether his stay was continuous between these dates I do not know. is recorded only as the author of the Rime and of a group of amusing letters sent to Andrea Cioli, the First Secretary at Florence, during 1613 and the early part of 1614.2 Evidently he was a Tuscan, for he was associated throughout this period with Ottaviano Lotti, the Florentine agent in London. In May 1608 Lotti wrote to Cioli about him: He is a fine youth, about twenty-six years old and very good-looking, though without very much in the way of a living. is well lettered and can express himself excellently in both prose and verse: he is experienced in the world, has a nature that the very stones would love, is firm in judgment and both brave and honorable. '3 At this date, continued Lotti, his young acquaintance had been for some time in the country, staying at a house where there was a