of many which desire nothing more, than to see more of his rare inventions. If I join to Master Harvey his two brethren, I am assured, though they be both busied with great and weighty callings (the one a godly and learned divine, the other a famous and skilful physician) yet if they listed to set to their helping hands to poetry, they would as much beautify and adorn it as any others.

If I let pass the uncountable rabble of rhyming ballad makers and compilers of senseless sonnets, who be most busy to stuff every stall full of gross devices and unlearned pamphlets, I trust I shall with the best sort be held excused. Nor though many such can frame an alehouse song of five or six score verses, hobbling upon some tune of a Northern jig or Robin Hood, or La lubber, etc., and perhaps observe just number of syllables, eight in one line, six in an other, and there withal an A to make a jerk in the end: yet if these might be accounted poets (as it is said some of them make means to be promoted to the laurel) surely we shall shortly have whole swarms of poets, and every one that can frame a book in rhyme, though for want of matter it be but in commendations of copper noses or bottle ale, will catch at the garland due to poets: those potticall poetical (I should say) heads, I would wish, at their worshipful commencements might in stead of laurel be gorgeously garnished with fair green barley, in token of their good affection to our English malt. One1 speaketh thus homely of them, with whose words I will content myself for this time, because I would not be too broad with them in mine own speech :

"In regard (he meaneth of the learned framing [of] the new poet's works which writ the Shepheard's Calendar) I scorn and spue out the rakehelly rout of our ragged rhymers (for so themselves use to hunt the letter) which without learning boast, without judgment jangle, without reason rage and fume, as if some instinct of poetical spirit had newly ravished them above the meanest of common capacity. And being in the midst of all their bravery, suddenly for want of matter, or of rhyme, or having forgotten their former conceit, they seem to be so pained and travailed in their remembrance, as it were a woman in childbirth, or as that same Pythia when the trance came upon her, os rabidum fera corda domans, etc."

(From A Discourse of English Poetry.) 1 Shepheard's Calendar, Epistle to Gabriel Harvey by E. K.

GEORGE PUTTENHAM

[The Art of English Poesie is ascribed by Edmund Bolton, in the reign of James I., to Puttenham, one of Queen Elizabeth's gentlemen pensioners. It is probable that George Puttenham was the author. Of the author's life and other works (most of them lost) there are many particulars in the book itself, which have been brought together by Mr. Arber in his edition (1869). The Partheniades, poems presented by the author as a New Year's gift to the Queen in 1579, are printed in Mr. Haslewood's edition (Ancient Critical Essays, 1811).]

"THE elegant, witty, and artificial book of The Art of English Poetry," as it is called by the first and chief witness who ascribes it to Puttenham, appeared anonymously in 1589, addressed to the Queen, with a publisher's dedication to Lord Burghley. It is a systematic work, different in scale from Webbe's Discourse, and still more from Gascoigne's informal Notes. The author was himself a poet of some experience, having at the age of eighteen written an Eclogue to King Edward VI., and followed that with a variety of other works-comedies and interludes, a "Romance or historical ditty of the Isle of Great Britain," " an Hympne to the Queenes Maiestie," besides the Partheniades. His essay is brisk and confident, as becomes the work of a man who has lived in Courts, and bestowed some of his time upon the tongues. The author, whoever he may have been, is certainly convinced that there never was a time that he has "positively said, "Tis so,' when it proved otherwise." He talks of all poetry as if it belonged to him, and deals out condescendingly "your iambus," "your trocheus," "your polysyllable." His purpose is to instruct "our courtly maker," as well as to delight all who have any interest in "courtly ditties." will read him is not beyond his hopes. the first book, alike, end with a decided is the best poet of the time: "Be it in Ode, Elegie, Epigram, or

That ladies in Court The first chapter and opinion that the Queen

any other kind of poeme, Heroick or Lyricke, wherein it shall please her Majestie to employ her penne."

There are three books: the first dealing with poetry in general, and discussing the different kinds, mainly in a pleasant easy way, which professes to be historical, and to show how the different kinds arose, but without any distressful anxiety about names and dates. The last chapter gives an account of the English poets, and acknowledges Sir Thomas Wyat the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, as "the first reformers of our English metre and style." It naturally covers much the same ground as Webbe's historical summary; it is much less free in its praises, and less tolerant.

The second book is "Of Proportion Poetical," that is, of prosody. It may be gauged by two remarks: one, that "the meeter of ten sillables must have his Cesure fall upon the fourth sillable, and leave sixe behind him ;" the other, that while the verse

'Solomon, David's sonne, King of Jerusalem,"

is a very good Alexandrine, it would have been better if it had not begun with a dactyl, "which oddness is nothing pleasant to the ear." This book contains full receipts for poetical lozenges "the Fuzie or Spindle," and other devices.

and eggs,

The third book, "Of Ornament," deals with figures of speech, and is as long as the other two, with elaborate illustrations, chiefly from the author's own poems. Not the worst part of it is the careful rendering of all the Greek rhetorical terms into English. 66 Ironia, or the dry mock, Sarcasmus, or the bitter taunt," followed by the "fleering frump," "the broad flout," and "the privy_nip." The concluding chapters on Decorum, with their anecdotes of witty speeches and repartees, give evidence of much the same standard of wit as is observed by the company in Swift's Polite Conversation.

W. P. KER.

ENGLISH POETS

It appeareth by sundry records of books both printed and written, that many of our countrymen have painfully travailed in this part of whose works some appear to be but bare translations, other some matters of their own invention and very commendable, whereof some recital shall be made in this place, to the intent chiefly that their names should not be defrauded of such honour as seemeth due to them for having, by their thankful studies, so much beautified our English tongue, as at this day it will be found our nation is in nothing inferior to the French or Italian for copie of language, subtilty of device, good method and proportion in any form of poem, but that they may compare with the most, and perchance pass a great many of them. And I will not reach above the time of king Edward the third, and Richard the second for any that wrote in English metre: because before their times by reason of the late Norman conquest, which had brought into this realm much alteration both of our language and laws, and therewithal a certain martial barbarousness, whereby the study of all good learning was so much decayed, as long time after no man or very few entended to write in any laudable science: so as beyond that time there is little or nothing worth commendation to be found written in this art. And those of the first age were Chaucer and Gower, both of them, as I suppose, knights. After whom followed John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, and that nameless who wrote the satire called Piers Plowman; next him followed Harding the chronicler, then in king Henry VIII.'s times Skelton, (I wot not for what great worthiness) surnamed the poet laureate. In the latter end of the same king's reign sprang up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat the elder and Henry Earl of Surrey were the two chieftains; who, having travelled into Italy and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept

out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy, from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of our English metre and style. In the same time or not long after was the Lord Nicholas Vaux, a man of much facility in vulgar makings. Afterward, in King Edward the sixth's time, came to be in reputation for the same faculty Thomas Sternhold, who first translated into English certain Psalms of David, and John Heywood the epigrammatist who, for the mirth and quickness of his conceits more than for any good learning was in him, came to be well benefited by the king. But the principal man in this profession at the same time was Master Edward Ferrys, a man of no less mirth and felicity that way, but of much more skill and magnificence in his metre, and therefore wrote for the most part to the stage, in tragedy and sometimes in comedy or interlude, wherein he gave the king so much good recreation, as he had thereby many good rewards. In Queen Mary's time flourished, above any other, Doctor Phaer, one that was well learned, and excellently well translated into English verse heroical certain books of Virgil's Æneidos. Since him followed Master Arthur Golding, who with no less commendation turned into English metre the Metamorphosis of Ovid, and that other Doctor, who made the supplement to those books of Virgil's Eneidos, which Master Phaer left undone. And, in her Majesty's time that now is, are sprung up another crew of courtly makers, noblemen and gentlemen of her Majesty's own servants, who have written excellently well as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made publick with the rest, of which number is first that noble gentleman Edward Earl of Oxford, Thomas Lord of Buckhurst, when he was young, Henry Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Master Edward Dyar, Master Fulke Greville, Gascon, Britton, Turberville, and a great many other learned gentlemen, whose names I do not omit for envy, but to avoid tediousness, and who have deserved no little commendation. But of them all particularly this is mine opinion, that Chaucer, with Gower, Lydgate, and Harding, for their antiquity ought to have the first place, and Chaucer as the most renowned of them all, for the much learning appeareth to be in him above any of the rest. And though many of his books be but bare translations out of the Latin and French, yet are they well handled, as his books of Troilus and Cressida ;