It happened that the years of enforced idleness that followed the suppression of this book came in the time when the young sonneteers at London were all busy. He returned from his embassage in '89; the book was suppressed in '91. _Licia_ was published in '93. The writing of _Licia_ was "rather an effect than a cause of idleness;" he did it "only to try his humor," he says apologetically in the dedicatory addresses. "Whereas my thoughts and some reasons drew me rather to have dealt in causes of greater weight, yet the present jar of this disagreeing age drives me into a fit so melancholy, as I had only leisure to grow passionate."
In case wise heads should think him to be treating "an idle subject and so frivolous," or that it has been "vainly handled and so odious," he sets forth the nobility of his view. "Howsoever, Love in this age hath behaved himself in that loose manner as it is counted a disgrace to give him but a kind look, yet I take the passion in itself to be of that honor and credit, as it is a perfect resemblance of the greatest happiness, and rightly valued at his just price (in a mind that is sincerely and truly amorous), an affection of greatest virtue and able of himself to eternise the meanest vassal." "For Love," he declares, "is a goddess (pardon me though I speak like a poet) not respecting the contentment of him that loves, but the virtues of the beloved; satisfied with wondering, fed with admiration; respecting nothing but his lady's worthiness; made as happy by love as by all favors; chaste by honor; far from violence; respecting but one, and that one in such kindness, honesty, truth, constancy, and honor, as were all the world offered to make a change, yet the boot were too small and therefore bootless. This is love, and far more than this, which I know a vulgar head, a base mind, an ordinary conceit, a common person will not nor cannot have. Thus do I commend that love wherewith in these poems I have honoured the worthy Licia."
The sonnet-cycle is inscribed "To the worthie kinde wise and virtuous ladie, the Ladie Mollineux; wife to the right worshipful Sir Richard Mollineux Knight." Nothing is known of this lady, except that her family may possibly have been very distantly connected with that of Fletcher. What the poet's feeling was towards his patroness he defines sufficiently. "Now in that I have written love sonnets, if any man measure my affection by my style, let him say I am in love.... Yet take this by the way; though I am so liberal to grant thus much, a man may write of love and not be in love, as well as of husbandry and not go to the plough, or of witches and be none, or of holiness and be flat profane."