Sir John Harington was a courtier, a well-connected landowner and builder, and an opinionated member of the Church of England. His writing was an occasional activity, and it always had close links with his other pursuits. He wrote a treatise describing an improvement to the lavatory, for instance, which is both a contribution to the sanitation of the great house and a satire on the pride and hypocrisy of certain of his contemporaries. He wrote tracts on Ireland, on who should succeed Elizabeth on the throne, and on the marriage of the clergy. Even his 1591 translation of the Italian romance epic Orlando Furioso was done at the queen's behest, and he draws from his Italian original all kinds of morals for English manners and English government in his printed commentary on the poem. His epigrams, his major contributions in original verse, concentrate on the follies of his immediate...