ΔDōronῶρον εἰς τὰ ἐμβλήματα βασιλικά totum versum,’ in three books, dedicated to James I. The penmanship and the pen-and-ink drawings are very neat. Each emblem is subscribed by four Latin verses, and each quatrain embodies the substance of a passage from the ‘Basilicon Doron,’ which is supplied in a footnote in an English translation. At the end of the manuscript are the music and words of a madrigal by Peacham in four parts, entitled ‘King James his quier;’ the first words are ‘Wake softly with singing Oriana sleeping.’
Peacham's reputation was sufficiently high in 1611 to lead Thomas Coryate [q. v.] to include four pieces of burlesque verse by him in his ‘Odcombian Banquet.’ In the same year he contributed verses to Arthur Standish's ‘Commons' Complaint.’ Next year he gave further proof of his skill as an artist by publishing ‘Minerva Britanna; or a Garden of Heroical Devises, furnished and adorned with emblemes and impresa's of sundry natures, newly devised, moralized, and published by Henry Peacham, Mr of Artes,’ London, 1612 (cf. Brydges, Restituta, ii. 148). In 1613 he displayed his loyalty in his ‘Period of Mourning in memorie of the late Prince [Henry], disposed into sixe visions, with nuptiall Hymnes in honour of the marriage between Frederick, Count Palatine … and Elizabeth’ (reprinted in Waldron's ‘Literary Museum,’ 1789). It is dedicated to Sir John Swinnerton, lord mayor of London, and contains both Latin and English verse.
The next two years (1613–14) Peacham spent in foreign travel. He acted for part of the time as tutor to the three elder sons of the great art collector, Thomas Howard, second earl of Arundel [q. v.], but apparently during a portion of the tour he was unaccompanied. He was always a diligent sightseer, and he made himself familiar with the chief cities of Holland, France, Italy, and Westphalia. In Italy he studied music under Orazio Vecchi of Modena (Compleat Gentleman, p. 102). In France he paid frequent visits to the house of M. de Ligny, an accomplished soldier and scholar, near Artois (ib. ded.). He visited Breda and Antwerp, and made a long stay in Leyden. One of his published epigrams is entitled ‘A Lattin Distich, which a Frier of Shertogen Bosch in Brabant wrote in my Greek Testament, while I was busie perusing some Bookes in their Library’ (Thalia's Banquet, p. 108). Another epigram (ib. p. 83) he addressed to a jovial host at Utrecht, where he saw much of the engraver Crispin van de Pas (cf. ib. p. 15). Subsequently he visited the elector's court at Heidelberg. In 1614 he was present with the army of Sir John Ogle [q. v.] at the operations in Juliers and Cleves, and in the next year published, with dedications to that general, two works which he wrote while in the Low Countries. One was ‘A most true relation of the affaires of Cleves and Gulick … unto the breaking up of our armie in the beginning of December last past;’ the second was a rambling poem, in both Latin and English, called ‘Prince Henrie revived; or a poeme upon the Birth and in Honor of the Hopefull young Prince Henrie Frederick, First Sonne and Heire apparant to the most Excellent Princes, Frederick Count Palatine of the Rhine, and the Mirrour of Ladies, Princesse Elizabeth his wife,’ London, 1615, 4to.
In 1615 Peacham seems to have settled at Hoxton, London (cf. Compleat Gentleman), and to have finally adopted the literary profession. He endeavoured to attract patrons, and the Earl of Dorset and Lord Dover viewed his efforts with favour. Meanwhile he gained admission to literary society. To Drayton, Selden, Ben Jonson, as well as to the musicians Bird and Dowland, he addressed epigrams (cf. Thalia's Banquet), and his intimate friends included Sir Clement Edmondes [q. v.] and Edward Wright the mathematician. He quickly established some popular reputation. In 1615, when Edmond Peacham [q. v.], the rebellious rector of Hinton St. George, was charged with having written a libel on the king, he resorted, in his defence, to the impotent device of declaring that the obnoxious work was from the pen of Peacham the traveller and author. The statement was made at random. ‘The author’ Peacham was described as a minister of religion, and the rector's knowledge of him obviously rested on the merest hearsay (Spedding, Bacon). In 1620 Peacham published ‘Thalia's Banquet, Furnished with an hundred and odde dishes of newly devised Epigrammes. Whereunto (beside many worthy friends) are invited all that love inoffensive mirth and the muses, by H. P.,’ London, 1620. In epigram 70 he notes that he has a piece of music ready for the press, ‘a set of four or five partes.’
Two years later Peacham published the work by which he is best known, the ‘Compleat Gentleman, fashioning him absolute in the most necessary and commendable qualities concerning minde or bodie that may be required in a noble gentleman.’ The treatise was written for William Howard, Lord Arundel's youngest son, a boy of eight, to whom it is dedicated. The lad had not been Peacham's pupil; but they had met at Norwich, while the boy was a pupil of the
