Lewes remarks that it would naturally be concluded that the telescope was known to the ancients; but he adds that Merville, Vegetio and Fabrizio correctly explain the mistake, viz. that these tubes were without glasses, and were used to assist vision by shutting out other objects. A modern, seeing the tubes, infers the existence of a telescope; imagination supplies the lens.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

LITERATURE UNDER ELIZABETH.

And well I wot, my rhyme, albe unsmoothe,
Ne
says but what it means, ne means but sooth,
Ne harms the good, ne good to harmful person doth.
GILES FLETCHER, Brit. Poets, p. 825.

A man so every way

Deserving, no one action of his

In all his life time e'er degraded him
From the honour he was born to.

He bore his steerage true in every part,
Led by the compass of a noble heart.
WEBSTER, vol. iii. 340. Ed. Dyce.

Scena sonat, ludique vocant: spectate, Quirites,
Et fora Marte suo litigiosa vacent.

OVID, Fast. iv. 187.

Rusticus ad ludos populus veniebat in Urbem.

Ibid. iii. 783.

WHEN names, great in literature and of world-wide fame, are passed over, it is necessary to repeat again, for the information of the general reader, that this is a local history, pertaining specially to the valley of the Rea, where my Talking Friend and his time-honoured father have flourished for generations; then, to the neighbourhood, and particularly to the old county town of Shrewsbury, whose bells, when the wind set right, could be heard at Hanwood and on the Hanwood Banks. Indeed, everything that happened at Shrewsbury was sure to be known in the open valley, for, as we have seen, it was the high road to Trê Valdwyn, or Montgomery, as well as into North Wales generally, the usual way to Caux Castle, and a very common cross way, through Pitchford to Ludlow. The result was that all the news of

the county was retailed beneath my old Friend's shade, and in time he became a chronicler better informed even than the Shelton Oak. It must be added, at the same time, that he laid open his branches for information, and, strong heart of oak as he was, he dearly loved a gossip. Still, it could not lightly have been said of him, in his pride of place,—

Percontatorem fugito, nam garrulus idem est,
Nec retinent patulæ commissa fideliter aures;
Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum.

THOMAS CHURCHYARD.

One of the names especially familiar in the old town about this time was that of old Thomas Churchyard, whom 'some,' says Winstanley, 'conceive to be as much beneath a poet as above a rhymer, yet who shall consider the time he wrote in, viz. the beginning the reign of Queen Elizabeth, shall find his verses to be about with the best of that age'a very fair and just opinion.

There is no doubt but that Churchyard was born in Shrewsbury, and, as is supposed, somewhere about 1520. This is clear, for thus he writes in his 'Worthiness of Wales' (which was published in 1587):

Shall Sallop say their counteyman doth dote

To treate of things, and write what thinks him best?
No sure, such fault were double error plaine.

If in thy pen be any poet's sayne,

Or gifts of grace from skies did drop on thee,
Then Shrewsberie towne thereof just cause must be.

Both borne and bred in that same seate thou wast
(Of race right good, or else records do lye),
From whence to schoole wherever Churchyard past,
To native soile he ought to have an eye;

Speake well of all, and write what world may prove,
Let nothing go beyond thy countrie's love.

The researches of the historians of Shrewsbury are not able to throw much light upon his pedigree, neither is it clear whether he was a burgess or yeoman, though again he certainly claims to himself gentle birth :

So born I was to home and land by right,

But in a bag to count I brought the same

From Shrewsburie towne, a seat of ancient fame.

Perhaps, what is above said will be best illustrated from Antony à Wood, who, as Dr. Bliss tells us, derived it from his own account of himself:

'Thomas Churchyard was born of genteel parents in the ancient borough of Shrewsbury, and being much addicted to letters when a child, his father, who had a fondness for him, caused him to be carefully educated in grammar learning, and to sweeten his studies, was taught to play on the lute. When he came to the age of about seventeen, he left his father and relations, and with a sum of money then given to him, he went to seek his fortune; and his heels being equally restless with his head, he went to the royal court, laid aside his books for a time, and, so long as his money lasted, became a royster. At length, being reduced low in his purse, he was taken into the service of the most noble, learned, and poetical Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, lived with him as his servant four years in the latter end of King Henry VIII. In which time applying himself to his books, and to the exercising his muse in poetry, he was much countenanced by that most noble count; but that earl being untimely cut off, to the great regret of learned men of that time, in January 1546, the hopes of Churchyard's rising higher were in a manner buried in his grave.'

Previous to this it would seem that he was at Oxford, where he went after his first foreign travel, in which he took great pains in learning the modern tongues. In Flanders, it would appear, he learnt German and Flemish, and afterwards French in Guines. Chalmers supposed it to have been after the peace at Crespy, 1544, that Churchyard wrote these lines:

Aweary of those waiting woes,

Awhile he left the war;

And for dessire to learn the tongues,

He travelled very far ;

And had of every language part,
When homeward he did drawe;

And could rehearsal make full well

Of that abrode he sawe.

He returned in time to see the sad end of his early patron Surrey-with whose poems some of his own were intermixed -and so previous to Henry's death. After this, on the accession of Edward VI., he was engaged in the Scottish wars, and was taken prisoner-in his own words,

I taken was, as deastney had decreed.

And we may note how he speaks of the Duke of Somerset, as uncle to the 'renowned of grace,' noble King Edward VI. Advancing into Mary's reign we find that he was in Ireland with Antony St. Leger in 1551. All this time he was evidently a soldier of Fortune-'Tam Marti quam Mercurio'— as he himself said, still ready to 'trail the pike,' but always ready to tread homewards, where it would appear his welcome was not long-lived, in an 'age of much religion, but of little morality,' and when men's words were not much to be trusted

So people's love is like new besomes oft,

That sweeps all clean whilst broom is green and soft.

But for many points in his life, not to be found elsewhere and not easily reconciled by dates, the reader is referred to 'A Tragical Discourse of the Unhappy Man's Life,' which is, in reality, the story of his own misfortunes.

As far as I am able to make out, he must have been in Shrewsbury in 1559, when he would have been about forty years of age. Mention is made by the historians of Shrewsbury of a relief having been paid for him in 1558, and no doubt they are correct in their inference, as usual.

Meanwhile Churchyard's name as a poet was on the ascendant, and for some time 'The Tragedy of Tho. Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,' printed in the Myrroure for Magistrates,' was considered his, though in reality the author of it was Sir Thomas Challoner. The truth is, it was to 'SHORE'S WIFE' and 'WOLSEY' that he owed his literary fame. In the words of the 'Return from Parnassus

Hath not Shore's wife, although a light-skirts she,
Given him a chaste, long lasting memory?

Hence, when the 'Legende of Jane Shore' was added in 1563,