A wholly baseless anecdote, condensed into a stinging epigram by Endymion Porter, asserted that The Lover's Melancholy was stolen by Ford from Shakespeare's papers.
He started authorship with a book of verse in 1888, after which time he led a reaction against realism and pessimism, and has turned back to a rich romantic idealism in his novels of Endymion (1889) and Hans Alienus (1892), and in his stories (1897) of the time of Charles XII.
In its neighbourhood was the burial cave of Endymion.
It is possible that Sarah Disraeli (the Myra of Endymion), or that "the most severe of critics but a perfect wife," may have had such dreams - hardly that they could have occurred to any mind but a devoted woman's.
Meanwhile he had another novel to sit down to - the poor though highly characteristic Endymion; which, to his great surprise and equal pleasure, was replaced on his table by a cheque for ten thousand pounds.
The Moon in Greek myths loved Endymion, and was bribed to be the mistress of Pan by the present of a fleece, like the Dawn in Australia, whose unchastity was rewarded by a gift of a red cloak of opossum skin.
Yet even this satisfaction had its tang of disappointment; for though Endymion was not wholly written in his last days, it was in no respect the success that Lothair was.