OUR communications and intercourse with Italy, which began to prevail about the beginning of the sixteenth century, not only introduced the studies of classical lite­rature into England, but gave a new turn to our vernacular poetry. At this period, Petrarch still continued the most favo­rite poet of the Italians; and had established a manner, which was universally adopted and imitated by his ingenious countrymen. In the mean time, the courts both of France and England were distinguished for their elegance. Francis the first had changed the state of letters in France, by mixing gallantry with learning, and by admitting the ladies to his court in company with the ecclesiastics ^a. His carousals were celebrated with a brilliancy and a festivity unknown to the ceremonious shews of former princes. Henry the eighth vied with Francis in these gaieties. His ambition, which could not bear a rival even in diversions, [Page 2] was seconded by liberality of disposition and a love of ostentation. For Henry, with many boisterous qualities was magnificent and affable. Had he never murthered his wives, his politeness to the fair sex would remain unimpeached. His martial sports were unincumbered by the barbaric pomp of the antient chivalry, and softened by the growing habits of more rational manners. He was attached to those spectacles and public amusements, in which beauty assumed a principal share; and his frequent masques and tournaments encouraged a high spirit of romantic courtesy. Poetry was the natural accompaniment of these re­finements. Henry himself was a leader and a chief character in these pageantries, and at the same time a reader and a writer of verses. The language and the manners of Italy were esteemed and studied. The sonnets of Petrarch were the great models of composition. They entered into the genius of the fashionable manners: and in a court of such a complexion, Pe­trach of course became the popular poet. Henry Howard earl Surrey, with a mistress perhaps as beautiful as Laura, and at least with Petrarch's passion if not his taste, led the way to great im­provements in English poetry, by a happy imitation of Petrarch, and other Italian poets, who had been most successful in paint­ing the anxieties of love with pathos and propriety.

Lord Surrey's life throws so much light on the character and subjects of his poetry, that it is almost impossible to consider the one, without exhibiting a few anecdotes of the other. He was the son and grandson of two lords treasurers dukes of Nor­folk; and in his early childhood discovered the most promising marks of lively parts and an active mind.

While a boy, he was habituated to the modes of a court at Windsor-castle; where he resided, yet under the care of proper instructors, in the quality of a companion to Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond, a natural son of king Henry the eighth, and of the highest expectations.

This young nobleman, who also bore other titles and honours, was the child of Henry's affection: not so much on account of [Page 3] hi [...] hopeful abilities, as for a reason insinuated by lord Herbert, and at which those who know Henry's history and character will not be surprised, because he equally and strongly resembled both his father and mother.

A friendship of the closest kind commencing between these two illustrious youths, about the year 1530, they were both re­moved to cardinal Wolsey's college at Oxford, then universally frequented, as well for the excellence as the novelty of its insti­tution; for it was one of the first seminaries of an English uni­versity, that professed to explode the pedantries of the old bar­barous philosophy, and to cultivate the graces of polite litera­ture. Two years afterwards, for the purpose of acquiring every accomplishment of an elegant education, the earl accompanied his noble friend and fellow-pupil into France, where they re­ceived king Henry, on his arrival at Calais to visit Francis the first, with a most magnificent retinue. The frienship of these two young noblemen was soon strengthened by a new tie; for Richmond married the lady Mary Howard, Surrey's sister. Rich­mond, however, appears to have died in the year 1536, about the age of seventeen, having never cohabited with his wife ^b. It was long, before Surrey forgot the untimely loss of this amiable youth, the friend and associate of his childhood, and who nearly resembled himself in genius, refinement of manners, and liberal acquisitions.

The FAIR GERALDINE, the general object of lord Surrey's passionate sonnets, is commonly said to have lived at Florence, and to have been of the family of the Gera [...]i of that city. This is a mistake, yet not entirely without grounds, propagated by an easy misapprehension of an expression in one of our poet's odes, and a passage in Drayton's heroic epistles. She was un­doubtedly one of the daughters of Gerald Fitzgerald, earl of Kildare. But it will be necessary to transcribe what our author himself has said of this celebrated lady. The history of one [Page 4] who caused so memorable and so poetical a passion naturally ex­cites curiosity, and will justify an investigation, which, on many a similar occasion, would properly be censured as frivolous and impertinent.

These notices, it must be confessed, are obscure and indirect. But a late elegant biographer has, with the most happy sagacity, solved the difficulties of this little enigmatical ode, which had been before either neglected and unattempted as inexplicable, or rendered [...] more unintelligible by false conjectures. I readily adopt Mr. Walpole's key to the genealogy of the matchless Geraldine ^e.

Her poetical appellation is almost her real name. Gerald Fitzgerald, abovementioned, earl of Kildare in the reign of Henry the eighth, married a second wife, Margaret daughter of Thomas Gray, marquis of Dorset: by whom he had three daughters, Margaret, Elisabeth, and Cicely. Margaret was born deaf and dumb; and a lady who could neither hear nor answer her lover, and who wanted the means of contributing to the most endearing reciprocations, can hardly be supposed to have [Page 5] been the cause of any vehement effusions of amorous panegyric. We may therefore safely pronounce Elisabeth or Cicely to have been Surrey's favorite. It was probably Elisabeth, as she seems always to have lived in England.

Every circumstance of the sonnet evidently coincides with this state of the case. But, to begin with the first line, it will naturally be asked, what was lady Elisabeth Gerald's connection with Tuscany? The beginnings of noble families, like those of nations, often owe somewhat to fictitious embellishment: and our genealogists uniformly assert, that the family of Fitzgerald derives its origin from Otho, a descendant of the dukes of Tuscany: that they migrated into England under the reign of king Alfred, whose annals are luckily too scanty to contradict such an account, and were from England speedily transplanted into Ireland. Her father was an Irish earl, resident at his earl­dom of Kildare; and she was consequently born and nursed in Ireland. Her mother, adds the sonnet, was of princely paren­tage. Here is a no less exact correspondence with the line of the lady's pedigree: for Thomas, marquis of Dorset, was son of queen Elisabeth Gray, daughter of the duchess of Bedford, de­scended from the royal house of Luxemburgh. The poet ac­quaints us, that he first saw her at Hunsdon. This notice, which seems of an indifferent nature and quite extraneous to the ques­tion, abundantly corroborates our conjecture. Hundsdon-house in Hertfordshire was a new palace built by Henry the eighth, and chiefly for the purpose of educating his children. The lady Elisabeth Fitzgerald was second cousin to Henry's daughters the princesses Mary and Elisabeth, who were both educated at Huns­don ^f. At this royal nursery she therefore tasted of costly foode with kinges childe, that is, lived while a girl with the young princesses her relations, as a companion in their education. At the same time, and on the same plan, our earl of Surrey resided at Windsor-castle, as I have already remarked, with the young [Page 6] duke of Richmond. It is natural to suppose, that he sometimes visited the princesses at Hunsdon, in company with the young duke their brother, where he must have also seen the fair Geral­dine: yet by the nature of his situation at Windsor, which im­plied a degree of confinement, he was hindered from visiting her at Hunsdon so often as he wished. He therefore pathetically laments,

But although the earl first beheld this lady at the palace of Huns­don, yet, as we further learn from the sonnet, he was first struck with her incomparable beauty, and his passion com­menced, at Hampton-court.

That is, and perhaps on occasion of some splendid masque or carou­sal, when the lady Elisabeth Fitzgerald, with the princesses Mary and Elisabeth, and their brother Richmond, with the young lord Surrey, were invited by the king to Hampton-court.

In the mean time we must remember, that the lord Leonard Gray, uncle to lord Gerald Fitzgerald, was deputy of Ireland for the young duke of Richmond: a connection, exclusive of all that has been said, which would alone account for Surrey's acquaintance at least with this lady. It is also a reason, to say no more, why the earl should have regarded her from the first with a particular attention, which afterwards grew into the most passionate attachment. She is supposed to have been Maid of honour to queen Catharine. But there are three of Henry's queens of that name. For obvious reasons, however, we may venture to say, that queen Catharine Howard was Geraldine's queen.

It is not precisely known at what period the earl of Surrey began his travels. They have the air of a romance. He made the tour of Europe in the true spirit of chivalry, and with the [Page 7] ideas of an Amadis; proclaiming the unparalleled charms of his mistress, and prepared to defend the cause of her beauty with the weapons of knight-errantry. Nor was this adventurous journey performed without the intervention of an enchanter. The first city in Italy which he proposed to visit was Florence, the capital of Tuscany, and the original seat of the ancestors of his Geraldine. In his way thither, he passed a few days at the emperor's court; where he became acquainted with Cornelius Agrippa, a celebrated adept in natural magic. This visionary philosopher shewed our hero, in a mirror of glass, a living image of Geraldine, reclining on a couch, sick, and reading one of his most tender sonnets by a waxen taper ^g. His imagination, which wanted not the flattering representations and artificial in­centives of illusion, was heated anew by this interesting and af­fecting spectacle. Inflamed with every enthusiasm of the most romantic passion, he hastened to Florence: and, on his arrival, immediately published a defiance against any person who could handle a lance and was in love, whether Christian, Jew, Turk, Saracen, or Canibal, who should presume to dispute the superio­rity of Geraldine's beauty. As the lady was pretended to be of Tuscan extraction, the pride of the Florentines was flattered on this occasion: and the grand duke of Tuscany permitted a ge­neral and unmolested ingress into his dominions of the comba­tants of all countries, till this important trial should be decided. The challenge was accepted, and the earl victorious ^h. The shield which he presented to the duke before the tournament be­gan, is exhibited in Vertue's valuable plate of the Arundel family, and was actually in the possession of the late duke of Norfolk ⁱ.

These heroic vanities did not, however, so totally engross the time which Surrey spent in Italy, as to alienate his mind from letters: he studied with the greatest success a critical knowledge [Page 8] of the Italian tongue, and, that he might give new lustre to the name of Geraldine, attained a just taste for the peculiar graces of the Italian poetry.

He was recalled to England for some idle reason by the king, much sooner than he expected: and he returned home, the most elegant traveller, the most polite lover, the most learned nobleman, and the most accomplished gentleman, of his age. Dexterity in tilting, and gracefulness in managing a horse under arms, were excellencies now viewed with a critical eye, and practised with a high degree of emulation. In 1540, at a tour­nament held in the presence of the court at Westminster, and in which the principal of the nobility were engaged, Surrey was distinguished above the rest for his address in the use and exercise of arms. But his martial skill was not solely displayed in the parade and ostentation of these domestic combats. In 1542, he marched into Scotland, as a chief commander in his father's army; and was conspicuous for his conduct and bravery at the memorable battle of Flodden-field, where James the fourth of Scotland was killed. The next year, we find the career of his victories impeded by an obstacle which no valour could resist. The censures of the church have humiliated the greatest heroes: and he was imprisoned in Windsor-castle for eating flesh in Lent. The prohibition had been renewed or strengthened by a recent proclamation of the king. I mention this circumstance [...] not only as it marks his character, impatient of any controul, and careless of very serious consequences which often arise from a contempt of petty formalities, but as it gave occasion to one of his most sentimental and pathetic sonnets ^k. In 1544, he was field-marshal of the English army in the expedition to Bologne, which he took. In that age, love and arms constantly went together: and it was amid the fatigues of this protracted cam­paign, that he composed his last sonnet called the FANSIE of a wearied Lover ^l.

[Page 9] But as Surrey's popularity encreased, his interest declined with the king; whose caprices and jealousies grew more violent with his years and infirmities. The brilliancy of Surrey's character, his celebrity in the military science, his general abilities, his wit, learning, and affability, were viewed by Henry with dis­gust and suspicion. It was in vain that he possessed every advan­tageous qualification, which could adorn the scholar, the cour­tier, and the soldier. In proportion as he was amiable in the eyes of the people, he became formidable to the king. His rising reputation was misconstrued into a dangerous ambition, and gave birth to accusations equally groundless and frivolous [...] He was suspected of a design to marry the princess Mary; and, by that alliance, of approaching to a possibility of wearing the crown. It was insinuated, that he conversed with foreigners, and held a correspondence with cardinal Pole.

The addition of the escocheon of Edward the Confessor to his own, although used by the family of Norfolk for many years, and justified by the authority of the heralds, was a suffi­cient foundation for an impeachment of high treason. These motives were privately aggravated by those prejudices, with which Henry remembered the misbehaviour of Catharine Howard, and which were extended to all that lady's relations. At length, the earl of Surrey fell a sacrifice to the peevish injustice of a merci­less and ungrateful master. Notwithstanding his eloquent and masculine defence, which even in the cause of guilt itself would have proved a powerful persuasive, he was condemned by the prepared suffrage of a servile and obsequious jury, and beheaded on Tower-hill in the year 1547 ^m. In the mean time we should remember, that Surrey's public conduct was not on all occasions quite unexceptionable. In the affair of Bologne he had made a false step. This had offended the king. But Henry, when once offended, could never forgive. And when Hertford was sent into France to take the command, he could not refrain from [Page 10] dropping some reproachful expressions against a measure which seemed to impeach his personal courage. Conscious of his high birth and capacity, he was above the little attentions of caution and reserve; and he too frequently neglected to consult his own situation, and the king's temper. It was his misfortune to serve a monarch, whose resentments, which were easily provoked, could only be satisfied by the most severe revenge. Henry brought those men to the block, which other monarchs would have only disgraced.

Among these anecdotes of Surrey's life, I had almost forgot to mention what became of his amour with the fair Geraldine. We lament to find, that Surrey's devotion to this lady did not end in a wedding, and that all his gallantries and verses availed so little! No memoirs of that incurious age have informed us, whether her beauty was equalled by her cruelty; or whether her ambition prevailed so far over her gratitude, as to tempt her to prefer the solid glories of a more splendid title and ample for­tune, to the challenges and the compliments, of so magnani­mous, so faithful, and so eloquent a lover. She appears, however, to have been afterwards the third wife of Edward Clinton, earl of Lincoln. Such also is the power of time and accident over amorous vows, that even Surrey himself outlived the violence of his passion. He married Frances, daughter of John earl of Oxford, by whom he left several children. One of his daugh­ters, Jane countess of Westmoreland, was among the learned ladies of that age, and became famous for her knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages ⁿ.

Surrey's poems were in high reputation with his cotempora­ries, and for many years afterwards. He is thus characterised by the author of the old ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE, whose opinion remained long as a rule of criticism. ‘"In the latter end of the same kinges [Henry] raigne, spronge up a new company of courtly makers, of whom sir Thomas Wyat the [Page 11] elder and Henry earle of Surrey were the two CHIEFTAINES, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measured and stile of the Italian poesie, as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Ariosto, and Pe­trarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie from that it had bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meeter and stile ^o."’ And again, towards the close of the same chap­ter. ‘"Henry earle of Surrey, and sir Thomas Wyat, between whom I finde very little difference, I repute them (as before) for the two chief lanternes of light to all others that have since employed their pennes upon English poesie: their con­ceits were loftie, their stiles stately, their conveyance cleanly, their termes proper, their meetre sweete and well-propor­tioned, in all imitating very naturally and studiously their maister Francis Petrarcha ^p."’ I forbear to recite the testimo­nies of Leland, Sydney, Tuberville, Churchyard, and Drayton. Nor have these pieces, although scarcely known at present, been without the panegyric of more recent times. Surrey is praised by Waller, and Fenton; and he seems to have been a fa­vorite with Pope. Pope, in WINDSOR-FOREST, having com­pared his patron lord Granville with Surrey, he was immediately reprinted, but without attracting many readers ^q. It was vainly imagined, that all the world would eagerly wish to purchase the works of a neglected antient English poet, whom Pope had called the GRANVILLE of a former age. So rapid are the revo­lutions of our language, and such the uncer [...]ainty of literary fame, that Philips, Milton's nephew, who wrote about the year 1674, has remarked, that in his time Surrey's poetry was antiquated and totally forgotten ^r.

Our authors SONGES AND SONNETTES, as they have been stiled, were first collected and printed at London by Tottell, [Page 12] in 1557 ^s. As it happens in collections of this kind, they are of various merit. Surrey is said, by the ingenious author of the MUSES LIBRARY, to have been the first who broke through the fashion of stanzas, and wrote in the heroic couplet. But all Surrey's poems are in the alternate rhyme; nor, had this been true, is the other position to be granted. Chaucer's Prologues and most of the Canterbury Tales are written in long verse: nor was the use of the couplet resumed, till late in the reign of Elisabeth.

In the sonnets of Surrey, we are surprised to find nothing of that metaphysical cast which marks the Italian poets, his sup­posed masters, especially Petrarch. Surrey's sentiments are for the most part natural and unaffected; arising from his own feel­ings, and dictated by the present circumstances. His poetry is alike unembarrassed by learned allusions, or elaborate conceits. If our author copies Petrarch, it is Petrarch's better manner: when he descends from his Platonic abstractions, his refinements of passion, his exaggerated compliments, and his play upon oppo­site sentiments, into a track of tenderness, simplicity, and nature. Petrarch would have been a better poet had he been a worse scho­lar. Our author's mind was not too much overlaid by learning.

The following is the poem abovementioned, in which he laments his imprisonment in Windsor-castle. But it is rather an elegy than a sonnet.

In the poet's situation, nothing can be more natural and striking than the reflection with which he opens his complaint. There is also much beauty in the abruptness of his exordial exclamation. The superb palace, where he had passed the most pleasing days of his youth with the son of a king, was now con­verted into a tedious and solitary prison! This unexpected vicis­situde of fortune awakens a new and interesting train of thought. The comparison of his past and present circumstances recals their juvenile sports and amusements; which were more to be regretted, as young Richmond was now dead. Having described some of these with great elegance, he recurs to his first idea by a beautiful apostrophe. He appeals to the place of his confine­ment, once the source of his highest pleasures: ‘"O place of bliss, renewer of my woe [...]! And where is now my noble friend, my companion is these delights, who was once your [Page 16] inhabitant! Echo alone either pities or answers my question, and returns a plaintive hollow sound!"’ He closes his com­plaint with an affecting and pathetic sentiment, much in the style of Petrarch. ‘"To banish the miseries of my present distress, I am forced on the wretched expedient of remem­bering a greater!"’ This is the consolation of a warm fancy. It is the philosophy of poetry.

Some of the following stanzas, on a lover who presumed to compare his lady with the divine Geraldine, have almost the ease and gallantry of Waller. The leading compliment, which has been used by later writers, is in the spirit of an Italian fiction. It is very ingenious, and handled with a high degree of elegance.

The versification of these stanzas is correct, the language po­lished, and the modulation musical. The following stanza, of another ode, will hardly be believed to have been produced in the reign of Henry the eighth.

In an Elegy on the elder sir Thomas Wyat's death, his character is delineated in the following nervous and manly quatraines.

The following lines on the same subject are remarkable.

There is great dignity and propriety in the following Sonnet on Wyat's PSALMS.

[Page 19] Probably the last lines may contain an oblique allusion to some of the king's amours.

Some passages in his Description of the restlesse state of a Lover, are pictures of the heart, and touched with delicacy.

Surrey's talents, which are commonly supposed to have been confined to sentiment and amorous lamentation, were adapted to descriptive poetry and the representations of rural imagery. A writer only that viewed the beauties of nature with poetic eyes, could have selected the vernal objects which compose the following exquisite ode ^h.

I do not recollect a more faithful and finished version of Martial's HAPPY LIFE than the following.

But Surrey was not merely the poet of idleness and gallantry. He was fitted both from nature and study, for the more solid and laborious parts of literature. He translated the second and fourth books of Virgil into blank verse ^m: and it seems probable, that [Page 21] his active situations of life prevented him from completing a design of translating the whole Eneid.

This is the first composition in blank verse, extant in the English language. Nor has it merely the relative and accidental merit of being a curiosity. It is executed with great fidelity, yet not with a prosaic servility. The diction is often poetical, and the versification varied with proper pauses. This is the de­scription of Dido and Eneas going to the field, in the fourth book.

The first stages of Dido's passion, with its effects on the rising city, are thus rendered.

The introduction of the wooden horse into Troy, in the same book, is thus described.

The shade of Hector, in the same book, thus appears.

This was a noble attempt to break the bondage of rhyme. But blank verse was now growing fashionable in the Italian poetry, the school of Surrey. Felice Figlinei, a Sanese, and Surrey's cotemporary, in his admirable Italian commentary on the ETHICS of Aristotle, entitled FILOSOSIA MORALE SOPRA IL LIBRI D' ETHICA D'ARISTOTILE, declaims against the barbarity of rhyme, and strongly recommends a total rejection of this Gothic ornament to his countrymen. He enforces his precept by his own example; and translates all Aristotle's quotations from Homer and Euripides into verse without rhyme. Gonsalvo Perez, the learned secretary to Philip of Spain, had also recently tran­slated Homer's Odyssey into Spanish blank-verse. How much the excellent Roger Ascham approved of Surrey's disuse of rhyme in this translation from Virgil, appears from the following pas­sage in his SCHOLEMASTER, written about the year 1566 ^u. ‘"The noble lord Thomas earle of Surrey, FIRST OF ALL ENGLISHMEN, in translating the fourth [and second] booke of Virgill: and Gonsalvo Perez, that excellent learned man, and secretarie to king Philip of Spayne ^w, in translating the ULYSSES of Homer out of the Greeke into Spanish, have both by good judgement avoyded the FAULT OF RYMING.—The spying of this fault now is not the curiositie of English eyes, but even the good judgement also of the best [Page 25] that write in these dayes in Italie.—And you, that be able to understand no more than ye find in the Italian tong: and never went further than the schoole of PETRARCH and ARIOSTO abroade, or else of CHAUCER at home, though you have pleasure to wander blindlie still in your foule wronge way, envie not others, that seeke, as wise men have done before them, the FAYREST and RYGHTEST way.—And therefore, even as Virgill and Horace deserve most worthie prayse, that they, spying the unperfitness in Ennius and Plautus, by trewe imitation of Homer and Euripides, brought poetrie to the same perfectnes in Latin as it was in Greeke, even so those, that by the same way would BENEFIT THEIR TONG and country, deserve rather thankes than disprayse ^x."’

The revival of the Greek and Roman poets in Italy, excited all the learned men of that country to copy the Roman versifica­tion, and consequently banished the old Leonine Latin verse. The same classical idea operated in some degree on the vernacular poetry of Italy. In the year 1528, Trissino published his ITA­LIA LIBERATA DI GOTI, or, ITALY DELIVERED FROM THE GOTHS, an heroic poem, professedly written in imitation of the Iliad, without either rhyme, or the usual machineries of the Gothic romance. Trissino's design was to destroy the TERZA RIMA of Dante. We do not, however, find, whether it be from the facility with which the Italian tongue falls into rhyme, or that the best and established Italian poets wrote in the stanza, that these efforts to restore blank-verse, produced any lasting effects in the progress of the Italian poetry. It is very probable, that this specimen of the Eneid in blank-verse by Surrey, led the way to Abraham Fleming's blank-verse translation of Virgil's Bucolics and Georgics, although done in Alexandrines, published in the year 1589 ^y.

Lord Surrey wrote many other English poems which were never [Page 26] published, and are now perhaps entirely lost. He translated the ECCLESIASTES of Solomon into English verse. This piece is cited in the Preface to the Translation of the Psalms, printed at London in 1567. He also translated a few of the Psalms into metre. These versions of Scripture shew that he was a friend to the refor­mation. Among his works are also recited, a Poem on his friend the young duke of Richmond, an Exhortation to the citizens of London, a Translation of Boccace's Epistle to Pinus, and a sett of Latin epistles. Aubrey has preserved a poetical Epitaph, written by Surrey on sir Thomas Clere, his faithful retainer and constant attendant, which was once in Lambeth-church ^y; and which, for its affection and elegance, deserves to be printed among the earl's poems. I will quote a few lines.

John Clerc, who travelled into Italy with Pace, an eminent linguist of those times, and secretary to Thomas duke of Nor­folk father of lord Surrey, in a dedication to the latter, pre­fixed to his TRETISE OF NOBILITIE printed at London in 1543 ^d, has mentioned, with the highest commendations, many translations done by Surrey, from the Latin, Italian, French, and [Page 27] Spanish languages. But these it is probable were [...]othing more than juvenile exercises.

Surrey, for his justness of thought, correctness of style, and purity of expression, may justly be pronounced the first English classical poet. He unquestionably is the first polite writer of love­verses in our language. It must, however, be allowed, that there is a striking native beauty in some of our love-verses written much earlier than Surrey's. But in the most savage ages and countries, rude nature has taught elegance to the lover.

WITH Surrey's Poems, Tottel has joined, in his editions of 1557 and 1565, the SONGES and SONNETTES of sir Thomas Wyat the elder ^a, and of Uncertain Auctours.

Wyat was of Allington-castle in Kent, which he magnificently repaired, and educated in both our universities. But his chief and most splendid accomplishments were derived from his travels into various parts of Europe, which he frequently visited in the quality of an envoy. He was endeared to king Henry the eighth, who did not always act from caprice, for his fidelity and success in the execution of public business, his skill in arms, literature, familiarity with languages, and lively conversation. Wood, who degrades every thing by poverty of style and improper represen­tations, says, that ‘"the king was in a high manner delighted with his witty jests ^b."’ It is not perhaps improbable, that Henry was as much pleased with his repartees as his politics. He is re­ported to have occasioned the reformation by a joke, and to have planned the fall of cardinal Wolsey by a seasonable story ^c. But he had almost lost his popularity, either from an intimacy with queen Anne Boleyn, which was called a connection, or the gloomy cabals of bishop Bonner, who could not bear his poli­tical superiority. Yet his prudence and integrity, no less than the powers of his oratory, justified his innocence. He laments his severe and unjust imprisonment on that trying occasion, in a sonnet addressed to sir Francis Bryan: insinuating his sollici­tude, that although the wound would be healed, the scar would [Page 29] remain, and that to be acquitted of the accusation would avail but little, while the thoughts of having been accused were still fresh in remembrance ^d. It is a common mistake, that he died abroad of the plague in an embassy to Charles the fifth. Being sent to conduct that emperor's embassador from Falmouth to London, from too eager and a needless desire of executing his commission with dispatch and punctuality, he caught a fever by riding in a hot day, and in his return died on the road at Shir­burn, where he was buried in the great conventual church, in the year 1541. The next year, Leland published a book of Latin verses on his death, with a wooden print of his head pre­fixed, probably done by Holbein ^e. It will be superfluous to transcribe the panegyrics of his cotemporaries, after the enco­mium of lord Surrey, in which his amiable character owes more to truth, than to the graces of poetry, or to the flattery of friendship.

We must agree with a critic above quoted, that Wyat co­operated with Surry, in having corrected the roughness of our poetic style. But Wyat, although sufficiently distinguished from the common versifiers of his age, is confessedly inferior to Surrey in harmony of numbers, perspicuity of expression, and facility of phraseology. Nor is he equal to Surrey in elegance of senti­timent, in nature and sensibility. His feelings are disguised by affectation, and obscured by conceit. His declarations of passion are embarrassed by wit and fancy; and his style is not intelli­gible, in proportion as it is careless and unadorned. His compli­ments, like the modes of behaviour in that age, are ceremonious and strained. He has too much art as a lover, and too little as a poet. His gallantries are laboured, and his versification negli­gent. The truth is, his genius was of the moral and didactic species: and his poems abound more in good sense, satire, and observations on life, than in pathos or imagination. Yet there [Page 30] is a degree of lyric sweetness in the following lines to his lute, in which, The lover complaineth of the unkindness of his love.

Our author has more imitations, and even translations, from the Italian poets than Surrey: and he seems to have been more fond of their conceits. Petrarch has described the perplexities of a lover's mind, and his struggles betwixt hope and despair, a subject most fertile of sentimental complaint, by a combination of contrarieties, a species of wit highly relished by the Italians. I am, says he, neither at peace nor war. I burn, and I freeze. I soar to heaven, and yet grovel on the earth. I can hold no­thing, and yet grasp every thing. My prison is neither shut, nor is it opened. I see without eyes, and I complain without a voice. I laugh, and I weep. I live, and am dead. Laura [...] to what a condition am I reduced, by your cruelty!

Wyat has thus copied this sonnet of epigrams.

It was from the capricious and over-strained invention of the Italian poets, that Wyat was taught to [...]orture the passion of love by prolix and intricate comparisons, and unnatural allusions. At one time his love is a galley steered by cruelty through stormy seas and dangerous rocks; the sails torn by the blast of tem­pestuous sighs, and the cordage consumed by incessant showers of tears: a cloud of grief envelopes the stars [...] reason is drowned, [Page 33] and the haven is at a distance ^p. At another ^q, it is a spring trickling from the summit of the Alps, which gathering force in its fall, at length overflows all the plain beneath ^r. Some­times, it is a gun, which being overcharged, expands the flame within itself, and bursts in pieces ^s. Sometimes it is like a pro­digious mountain, which is perpetually weeping in copious foun­tains, and sending forth sighs from its forests: which bears more leaves than fruits: which breeds wild-beasts, the proper em­blems of rage, and harbours birds that are always singing ^f. In another of his sonnets, he says, that all nature sympathises with his passion. The woods resound his elegies, the rivers stop their course to hear him complain, and the grass weeps in dew. These thoughts are common and fantastic. But he adds an image which is new, and has much nature and sentiment, al­though not well expressed.

This is a touch of the pensive. And the apostrophe which fol­lows is natural and simple.

And there is much strength in these lines of the lover to his bed.

But such passages as these are not the general characteristics of Wyat's poetry. They strike us but seldom, amidst an impracticable [Page 34] mass of forced reflections, hyperbolical metaphors, and complaints that move no compassion.

But Wyat appears a much more pleasing writer, when he moralises on the felicities of retirement, and attacks the vanities and vices of a court, with the honest indignation of an inde­pendent philosopher, and the freedom and pleasantry of Horace. Three of his poetical epistles are professedly written in this strain, two to John Poines ^v, and the other to sir Francis Bryan: and we must regret, that he has not left more pieces in a style of composition for which he seems to have been eminently qua­lified. In one of the epistles to Poines on the life of a cour­tier, are these spirited and manly reflections.

In pursuit of this argument, he declares his indisposition and inability to disguise the truth, and to flatter, by a variety of instances. Among others, he protests he cannot prefer Chaucer's TALE of SIR THOPAS to his PALAMON AND AR [...]ITE.

I mention this circumstance about Chaucer, to shew the esteem in which the KNIGHT'S TALE, that noble epic poem of the dark ages, was held in the reign of Henry eighth, by men of taste.

The poet's execration of flatterers and courtiers is contrasted with the following entertaining picture of his own private life and rural enjoyments at Allingham-castle in Kent.

In another epistle to John Poines, on the security and happi­ness of a moderate fortune, he versifies the fable of the City and Country Mouse with much humour.

This fable appositely suggests a train of sensible and pointed ob­servations on the weakness of human conduct, and the delusive plans of life.

These Platonic doctrines are closed with a beautiful applica­tion of virtue personified, and introduced in her irresistible charms of visible beauty. For those who deviate into vain and vicious pursuits,

With these disinterested strains we may join the following single stanza, called THE COURTIERS LIFE.

Wyat may justly be deemed the first polished English satirist. I am of opinion, that he mistook his talents when, in com­pliance with the mode, he became a sonnetteer; and, if we may judge from a few instances, that he was likely to have treated any other subject with more success than that of love. His abi­lities were seduced and misapplied in fabricating fine speeches to an obdurate mistress. In the following little ode, or rather epi­gram, on a very different occasion, there is great simplicity and propriety, together with a strain of poetic allusion. It is on his return from Spain into England.

Among Wyat's poems is an unfinished translation, in Alexan­drine verse, of the Song of Iopas in the first book of Virgil's Eneid ^u. Wyat's and Surrey's versions from Virgil are the first [Page 39] regular translations in English of an antient classic poet: and they are symptoms of the restoration of the study of the Roman writers, and of the revival of elegant literature. A version of David's Psalms by Wyat is highly extolled by lord Surrey and Leland. But Wyat's version of the PENITENTIAL PSALMS seems to be a separate work from his translation of the whole Psaltery, and probably that which is praised by Surrey, in an ode above quoted, and entitled, Praise of certain Psalmes of David, translated by Sir T. Wyat the elder ^w. They were printed with this title, in 1549. ‘"Certaine Psalmes chosen out of the Psalmes of David commonly called vij penytentiall Psalmes, drawen into Englishe meter by sir Thomas Wyat knyght, whereunto is added a prolog of the aucthore before every Psalme very pleasant and profettable to the godly reader. Imprinted at London in Paules Churchyarde at the sygne of the starre by Thomas Raynald and John Harryngton, cum previlegio ad imprimendum solum, MDXLIX."’ Leland seems to speak of the larger version.

But this version, with that of Surrey mentioned above, is now lost ^y: and the pious Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins are the only immortal translators of David's Psalms.

A similarity, or rather sameness of studies, as it is a proof, so perhaps it was the chief cement, of that inviolable friend­ship which is said to have subsisted between Wyat and Surrey. The principal subject of their poetry was the same: and they both treated the passion of love in the spirit of the Italian poets, [Page 40] and as professed disciples of Petrarch. They were alike devoted to the melioration of their native tongue, and an attainment of the elegancies of composition. They were both engaged in tran­slating Virgil, and in rendering select portions of Scripture into English metre.

TO the poems of Surrey and Wyat are annexed, as I have before hinted, in Tottell's editions, those of uncertain authors ^a. This latter collection forms the first printed poetical miscellany in the English language: although very early manu­script miscellanies of that kind are not uncommon. Many of these pieces are much in the manner of Surrey and Wyat, which was the fashion of the times. They are all anonymous; but probably, sir Francis Bryan, George Boleyn earl of Roch­ford, and lord Vaulx, all professed rhymers and sonnet-writers, were large contributors.

Drayton, in his elegy To his dearly loved friend HENRY REY­NOLDS OF POETS AND POESIE, seems to have blended all the several collections of which Tottell's volume consists. After Chaucer he says,

[Page 42] Sir Francis Bryan was the friend of Wyat, as we have seen; and served as a commander under Thomas earl of Surrey in an expedition into Brittany, by whom he was knighted for his bravery ^c. Hence he probably became connected with lord Surrey the poet. But Bryan was one of the brilliant ornaments of the court of king Henry the eighth, which at least affected to be polite: and from his popular accomplishments as a wit and a poet, he was made a gentleman of the privy-chamber to that monarch, who loved to be entertained by his domestics ^d. Yet he enjoyed much more important appointments in that reign, and in the first year of Edward the sixth; and died chief justiciary of Ireland, at Waterford, in the year 1548 ^e. On the principle of an unbiassed attachment to the king, he wrote epistles on Henry's divorce, never published; and translated into English from the French, Antonio de Guevara's Spanish Disser­tation on the life of a courtier, printed at London in the year last mentioned ^f. He was nephew to John Bourchier, lord Berners, the translator of Froissart; who, at his desire, tran­slated at Calais from French into English, the GOLDEN BOKE, or Life of Marcus Aurelius, about 1533 ^g. Which are Bryan's pieces I cannot ascertain.

George Boleyn, viscount Rochford, was son of sir Thomas Boleyn, afterwards earl of Wiltshire and Ormond; and at Ox­ford discovered an early propensity to polite letters and poetry. He was appointed to several dignities and offices by king Henry the eighth, and subscribed the famous declaration sent to Pope Clement the seventh. He was brother to queen Anne Boleyn, with whom he was suspected of a criminal familiarity. The chief accusation against him seems to have been, that he was seen to whisper with the queen one morning while she was in [Page 43] bed. As he had been raised by the exaltation, he was involved in the misfortunes of that injured princess, who had no other fault but an un [...]uarded and indiscrete frankness of nature; and whose character has been blackened by the bigotted historians of the catholic cause, merely because she was the mother of queen Elisabeth. To gratify the ostensible jealousy of the king, who had conceived a violent passion for a new object, this amiable nobleman was beheaded on the first of May, in 1536 ^h. His elegance of person, and spritely conversation, captivated all the ladies of Henry's court. Wood says, that at the ‘"royal court he was much adored, especially by the female sex, for his admirable discourse, and symmetry of body ⁱ."’ From these irresistible allurements his enemies endeavoured to give a plausi­bility to their infamous charge of an incestuous connection. After his commitment to the Tower, his sister the queen, on being sent to the same place, asked the lieutenant, with a degree of eagerness, ‘"Oh! where is my sweet brother ^k?"’ Here was a specious confirmation of his imagined guilt: this stroke of natural tenderness was too readily interpreted into a licentious attachment. Bale mentions his RHYTHMI ELEGANTISSIMI ^l, which Wood calls, ‘"Songs and Sonnets, with other things of the like nature ^m."’ These are now lost, unless some, as I have insinuated, are contained in the present collection; a gar­land, in which it appears to have been the fashion for every FLOWERY COURTIER to leave some of his blossoms. But Boleyn's poems cannot now be distinguished.

The lord Vaulx, whom I have supposed, and on surer proof, to be another contributor to this miscellany, could not be the Nicholas lord Vaux, whose gown of purple velvet, plated with gold, eclipsed all the company present at the marriage of prince Arthur; who shines as a statesman and a soldier with uncom­mon lustre in the history of Henry the seventh, and continued [Page 44] to adorn the earlier annals of his successor, and who died in the year 1523. Lord Vaux the poet, was probably Thomas lord Vaux, the son of Nicholas, and who was summoned to parlia­ment in 1531, and seems to have lived till the latter end of the reign of queen Mary ⁿ. All our old writers mention the poetical lord Vaux, as rather posterior to Wyat and Surrey; neither of whom was known as a writer till many years after the death of lord Nicholas. George Gascoyne, who wrote in 1575, in his panegyric on the ENGLISH POETS, places Vaux after Surrey.

Puttenham, author of the ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE, having spoken of Surrey and Wyat, immediately adds, ‘"In the SAME TIME, or NOT LONG AFTER, was the lord Nicholas^o Vaux, a man of much facilitie in vulgar making ^p."’ Webbe, in his DISCOURSE OF ENGLISH POETRIE, published in 1586, has a similar arrangement. Great numbers of Vaux's poems are ex­tant in the PARADISE OF DAINTY DEVISES; and, instead of the rudeness of Skelton, they have a smoothness and facility of manner, which does not belong to poetry written before the year 1523, in which lord Nicholas Vaux died an old man ^q. The PARADISE OF DAINTY DEVISES was published in 1578, and he is there simply styled Lord Vaulx the elder: this was to distinguish him from his son lord William, then living. If lord Nicholas was a writer of poetry, I will venture to assert, that none of his performances now remain; notwithstanding the [Page 45] testimony of Wood, who says, that Nicholas, ‘"in his juvenile years was sent to Oxon, where by reading humane and ro­mantic, rather than philosophical authors, he advanced his genius very much in poetry and history ^r."’ This may be true of his son Thomas, whom I suppose to be the poet. But such was the celebrity of lord Nicholas's public and political character, that he has been made to monopolise every merit which was the property of his successors. All these difficulties, how­ever, are at once adjusted by a manuscript in the British Museum: in which we have a copy of Vaux's poem, beginning I lothe that I did love, with this title: ‘"A dyttye or sonet made by the lord Vaus, in the time of the noble quene Marye, representing the image of Death ^s."’ This sonnet, or rather ode, entitled, The aged lover renounceth love, which was more remembered for its morality than its poetry, and which is idly conjectured to have been written on his death-bed ^t, makes a part of the col­lection which I am now examining ^u. From this ditty are taken three of the stanzas, yet greatly disguised and corrupted, of the Grave-digger's Song in Shakespeare's HAMLET ^w. Another of lord Vaux's poems in the volume before us, is the ASSAULT OF CUPIDE UPON THE FORT IN WHICH THE LOVER'S HEART LAY WOUNDED ^x. These two are the only pieces in our col­lection, of which there is undoubted evidence, although no name is prefixed to either, that they were written by lord Vaux. From palpable coincidencies of style, subject, and other circum­stances, a slender share of critical sagacity is sufficient to point out many others.

These three writers were cotemporaries with Surrey and Wyat: but the subjects of some of the pieces will go far in ascertaining the date of the collection in general. There is one on the death [Page 46] of sir Thomas Wyat the elder, who died, as I have remarked, in 1541 ^y. Another on the death of lord chancellor Audley, who died in 1544 ^z. Another on the death of master Devereux, a son of lord Ferrers, who is said to have been a Cato for his counsel ^a; and who is probably Richard Devereux, buried in Berkyng church ^b, the son of Walter lord Ferrers, a distinguished statesman and general under Henry the eighth ^c. Another on the death of a lady Wentworth ^d. Another on the death of [...]r Antony Denny, the only person of the court who dared to in­form king Henry the eighth of his approaching dissolution, and who died in 1551 ^e. Another on the death of Phillips, an emi­nent musician, and without his rival on the lute ^f. Another on the death of a countess of Pembroke, who is celebrated for her learning, and her perfect virtues linked in a chaine ^g: probably Anne, who was buried magnificently at saint Pauls, in 1551, the first lady of sir William Herbert the first earl of Pembroke, and sister to Catharine Parr, the sixth queen of Henry the eighth ^h. Another on master Henry Williams, son of sir John Williams, afterwards lord Thame, and a great favorite of Henry the eighth ⁱ. On the death of sir James Wilford, an officer in [Page 47] Henry's wars, we have here an elegy ^k, with some verses on his picture ^l. Here is also a poem on a treasonable conspiracy, which is compared to the stratagem of Sinon, and which threatened immediate extermination to the British constitution, but was speedily discovered ^m. I have not the courage to explore the for­midable columns of the circumstantial Hollingshed for this occult piece of history, which I leave to the curiosity and conjectures of some more laborious investigator. It is certain that none of these pieces are later than the year 1557, as they were published in that year by Richard Tottell the printer. We may venture to say, that almost all of them were written between the years 1530 and 1550 ⁿ. Most of them perhaps within the first part of that period.

The following nameless stanzas have that elegance which results from simplicity. The compliments are such as would not disgrace the gallantry or the poetry of a polished age. The thoughts support themselves, without the aid of expression, and the affectations of language. This is a negligence, but it is a negligence produced by art. Here is an effect obtained, which it would be vain to seek from the studied ornaments of style.

Of the same sort is the following stanza on Beauty.

We are to recollect, that these compliments were penned at a time, when the graces of conversation between the sexes were unknown, and the dialogue of courtship was indelicate; when the monarch of England, in a style, which the meanest gen­tleman would now be ashamed to use, pleaded the warmth of his affection, by drawing a coarse allusion from a present of venison, which he calls flesh, in a love-letter to his future queen, Anne Boleyn, a lady of distinguished breeding, beauty, and modesty ^r.

In lord Vaux's ASSAULT OF CUPIDE, abovementioned, these are the most remarkable stanzas.

Puttenham speaks more highly of the contrivance of the alle­gory of this piece, than I can allow. ‘"In this figure [counter­fait action] the lord Nicholas^t Vaux, a noble gentleman, and much delighted in vulgar making ^u, and a man otherwi [...]e of no great learning, but having herein a marvelous facilitie, made a dittie representing the Battayle and Assault of Cupid so excellently well, as for the gallant and propre aplication of his fiction in every part, I cannot choose but set downe the greatest part of his ditty, for in truth it cannot be amended: When Cupid scaled, &c ^w."’ And in another part of the [...]ame book. ‘"The lord Vaux his commendation lyeth chiefly in the facilitie of his meetre, and the aptnesse of his descriptions, suche as he taketh upon him to make, namely in sundry of his songes, wherein he sheweth the COUNTERFAIT ACTION very lively and pleasantly ^x."’ By counterfait action the critic means fictitious action, the action of imaginary beings expres­sive of fact and reality. There is more poetry in some of the old pageants described by Hollingshed, than in this allegory of Cupid. Vaux seems to have had his eye on Sir David Lyndsey's GOLDEN TERGE ^y.

In the following little ode, much pretty description and imagination is built on the circumstance of a lady being named Bayes. So much good poetry could hardly be expected from a pun.

From the same collection, the following is perhaps the first example in our language now remaining, of the pure and un­mixed pastoral: and in the erotic species, for ease of numbers, elegance of rural allusion, and simplicity of imagery, excels every thing of the kind in Spenser, who is erroneously ranked as our earliest English bucolic. I therefore hope to be pardoned for the length of the quotation.

The illustrations in the two following stanzas, of the restless­ness of a lover's mind, deserve to be cited for their simple beauty, and native force of expression.

Nor can I omit to notice the sentimental and expressive metaphor contained in a single line.

Perhaps there is more pathos and feeling in the Ode, in which The Lover in despaire lamenteth his Case, than in any other piece of the whole collection.

These reflections, resulting from a retrospect of the vigorous and active part of life, destined for nobler pursuits, and unworthily wasted in the tedious and fruitless anxieties of unsuccessful love, are highly natural, and are painted from the heart: but their force is weakened by the poet's allusions.

T [...]is miscellany affords the first pointed English epigram that I remember; and which deserves to be admitted into the modern collections of that popular species of poetry. Sir Thomas More [Page 56] was one of the best jokers of that age: and there is some pro­bability, that this might have fallen from his pen. It is on a scholar, who was pursuing his studies successfully, but in the midst of his literary career, married unfortunately.

But the humour does not arise from the circumstances of the character. It is a general joke on an unhappy match.

These two lines are said to have been written by Mary queen of Scots with a diamond on a window in Fotheringay castle, during her imprisonment there, and to have been of her com­position.

But they belong to an elegant little ode of ten stanzas in the col­lection before us, in which a lover complains that he is caught by the snare which he once defied ^x. The unfortunate queen only quoted a distich applicable to her situation, which she re­membered in a fashionable sett of poems, perhaps the amusement of her youth.

The ode, which is the comparison of the author's faithful and painful passion with that of Troilus ^y, is founded on Chaucer's [Page 57] poem, or Boccace's, on the same subject. This was the most favorite love-story of our old poetry, and from its popularity was wrought into a drama by Shakespeare. Troilus's sufferings for Cressida were a common topic for a lover's fidelity and assi­duity. Shakespeare, in his MERCHANT OF VENICE, compares a night favorable to the stratagems or the meditation of a lover, to such a night as Troilus might have chosen, for stealing a view of the Grecian camp from the ramparts of Troy.

Among these poems is a short fragment of a translation into Alexandrines of Ovid's epistle from Penelope to Ulysses ^a. This is the first attempt at a metrical translation of any part of Ovid into English, for Caxton's Ovid is a loose paraphrase in prose. Nor were the heroic epistles of Ovid translated into verse till the year 1582, by George Tuberville. It is a proof that the classics were studied, when they began to be translated.

It would be tedious and intricate to trace the particular imita­tions of the Italian poets, with which these anonymous poems abound. Two of the sonnets^b are panegyrics on Petrarch and Laura, names at that time familiar to every polite reader, and the patterns of poetry and beauty. The sonnet on The diverse and contrarie passions of the lover ^c, is formed on one of Petrarch's sonnets, and which, as I have remarked before, was translated by sir Thomas Wyat ^d. So many of the nobility, and principal persons about the court, writing sonnets in the Italian style, is a circumstance which must have greatly contributed to circulate this mode of composition, and to encourage the study of the Italian poets. Beside lord Surrey, sir Thomas Wyat, lord Bo­leyn, lord Vaux, and sir Francis Bryan, already mentioned, Ed [...]und [Page 58] lord Sheffield, created a baron by king Edward the sixth, and killed by a butcher in the Norfolk insurrection, is said by Bale to have written sonnets in the Italian manner ^e.

I have been informed, that Henry lord Berners translated some of Petrarch's sonnets ^f. But this nobleman otherwise de­served notice here, for his prose works, which co-operated with the romantic genius and the gallantry of the age. He translated, and by the king's command, Froissart's chronicle, which was printed by Pinson in 1523. Some of his other tran­slations are professed romances. He translated from the Spanish, by desire of the lady of sir Nicholas Carew, THE CASTLE OF LOVE. From the French he translated, at the request of the earl of Huntingdon, SIR HUGH OF BOURDEAUX, which be­came exceedingly popular. And from the same language, THE HISTORY OF ARTHUR an Armorican knight. Bale says ^g, that he wrote a comedy called Ite in vineam, or the PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD, which was frequently acted at Calais, where lord Berners resided, after vespers ^h. He died in 1532.

I have also been told, that the late lord Eglintoun had a genuine book of manuscript sonnets, written by king Henry the eighth. There is an old madrigal, set to music by William Bird, supposed to be written by Henry, when he first fell in love with Anne Boleyn ⁱ. It begins,

[Page 59] It appears in Bird's PSALMES, SONGS, AND SONNETS, printed with musical notes, in 1611 ^k. Poetry and music are congenial; and it is certain, that Henry was skilled in musical composition. Erasmus attests, that he composed some church services ^l: and one of his anthems still continues to be performed in the choir of Christ-church at Oxford, of his foundation. It is in an ad­mirable style, and is for four voices. Henry, although a scho­lar, had little taste for the classical elegancies which now began to be known in England. His education seems to have been altogether theological: and, whether it best suited his taste or his interest, polemical divinity seems to have been his favorite science. He was a patron of learned men, when they humoured his vanities; and were wise enough, not to interrupt his plea­sures, his convenience, or his ambition.

TO these SONGES and SONNETTES of UNCERTAIN AUC­TOURS, in Tottell's edition are annexed SONGES WRITTEN BY N. G.^a By the initials N. G. we are to understand Nicholas Grimoald, a name which never appeared yet in the poetical bio­graphy of England. But I have before mentioned him inciden­tally ^b. He was a native of Huntingdonshire, and received the first part of his academical institution at Christ's college in Cam­bridge. Removing to Oxford in the year 1542, he was elected fellow of Merton College: but, about 1547, having opened a rhetorical lecture in the refectory of Christ-church, then newly founded, he was transplanted to that society, which gave the greatest encouragement to such students as were distinguished for their proficiency in criticism and philology. The same year, he wrote a Latin tragedy, which probably was acted in the college, entitled, ARCHIPROPHETA, [...]ive JOHANNES BAPTISTA, TRA­GAEDIA, That is, The Arch-prophet, or Saint John Baptist, a tragedy, and dedicated to the dean Richard Cox ^c. In the year 1548 ^d, he explained all the four books of Virgil's Georgics in a regular prose Latin paraphrase, in the public hall of his college ^e. He wrote also explanatory commentaries or lectures on the An­dria of Terence, the Epistles of Horace, and many pieces of Cicero, perhaps for the same auditory. He translated Tully's Offices into English. This translation, which is dedicated to the learned Thirlby bishop of Ely, was printed at London, [Page 61] 1553 ^f. He also familiarised some of the purest Greek classics by English versions, which I believe were never printed. Among others was the CYROPAEDIA. Bale the biographer and bishop of Ossory, says, that he turned Chaucer's TROILUS into a play: but whether this piece was in Latin or English, we are still to seek: and the word Comedia, which Bale uses on this occasion, is without precision or distinction. The same may be said of what Bale calls his FAME, a comedy. Bale also recites his System of Rhetoric for the use of Englishmen ^g, which seems to be the course of the rhetorical lectures I have mentioned. It is to be wished, that Bale, who appears to have been his friend ^h, and therefore possessed the opportunities of information, had given us a more exact and full detail, at least of such of Grimoald's works as are now lost, or, if remaining, are unprinted ⁱ. Un­doubtedly this is the same person, called by Strype one Grimbold, who was chaplain to bishop Ridley, and who was employed by that prelate, while in prison, to translate into English, Laurentio Valla's book against the fiction of Constantine's DONATION, with some other popular Latin pieces against the papists ^k. In the ecclesiastical history of Mary's reign, he appears to have been imprisoned for heresy, and to have saved his life, if not his cre­dit, by a recantation. But theology does not seem to have been his talent, nor the glories of martyrdom to have made any part of his ambition. One of his plans, but which never took effect, was to print a new edition of Josephus Iscanus's poem on the TROJAN WAR, with emendations from the most correct manu­scripts ^l.

I have taken more pains to introduce this Nicholas Grimoald to the reader's acquaintance, because he is the second English poet after lord Surrey, who wrote in blank-verse. Nor is it his [Page 62] only praise, that he was the first who followed in this new path of versification. To the style of blank-verse exhibited by Surrey, he added new strength, elegance, and modulation. In the dis­position and conduct of his cadencies, he often approaches to the legitimate structure of the improved blank-verse: but we cannot suppose, that he is entirely free from those dissonancies and asp [...] ­rities, which still adhered to the general character and state of our diction.

In his poem on the DEATH OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO are these lines. The assassins of Cicero are said to relent,

[Page 63] Nor is this passage unsupported by a warmth of imagination, and the spirit of pathetic poetry. The general cast of the whole poem shews, that our author was not ill qualified for dramatic composition.

Another of Grimoald's blank-verse poems, is on the death of Zoroas an Egyptian astronomer, who was killed in Alexan­der's first battle with the Persians. It is opened with this nervous and animated exordium.

In the midst of the tumult and hurry of the battle, appears the sage philosopher Zoroas: a classical and elegant description of whose skill in natural science, forms a pleasing contrast amidst images of death and destruction; and is inserted with great propriety, as it is necessary to introduce the history of his catastrophe.

Our astronomer, finding by the stars that he is destined to die speedily, chuses to be killed by the hand of Alexander, whom he endeavours to irritate to an attack, first by throwing darts, and then by reproachful speeches.

Alexander is for a while unwilling to revenge this insult on a man eminent for wisdom.

I have a suspicion, that these two pieces in blank-verse, if not fragments of larger works, were finished in their present state, as prolusions, or illustrative practical specimens, for our author's course of lectures in rhetoric. In that case, they were written so early as the year 1547. There is positive proof, that they appeared not later than 1557, when they were first printed by Tottell.

I have already mentioned lord Surrey's Virgil: and for the sake of juxtaposition, will here produce a third specimen of early blank-verse, little known. In the year 1590, William Vallans published a blank-verse poem, entitled, A TALE OF TWO SWANNES, which, under a poetic fiction, describes the situation and antiquities of several towns in Hertfordshire. The author, a native or inhabitant of Hertfordshire, seems to have been connected [Page 66] with Camden and other ingenious antiquaries of his age. I cite the exordium.

Vallans is probably the author of a piece much better known, a history, by many held to be a romance, but which proves the writer a diligent searcher into antient records, entitled, ‘"The HONOURABLE PRENTICE, Shewed in the Life and Death of Sir JOHN HAWKEWOOD sometime Prentice of London, interlaced with the famous History of the noble FITZ­WALTER Lord of Woodham in Essex ^f, and ofthe poisoning of his faire daughter. Also of the merry Customes of DUN­MOWE, &c. Whereunto is annexed the most lamentable murther of Robert Hall at the High Altar in Westminster Abbey ^g."’

The reader will observe, that what has been here said about early specimens of blank-verse, is to be restrained to poems not [Page 67] written for the stage. Long before Vallans's TWO SWANNES, many theatrical pieces in blank-verse had appeared; the first of which is, The TRAGEDY OF GORDOBUCKE, written in 1561. The second is George Gascoigne's JOCASTA, a tragedy, acted at Grays-inn, in 1566. George Peele had also published his tragedy in blank-verse of DAVID and BETHSABE, about the year 1579 ^h. HIERONYMO, a tragedy also without rhyme, was acted before 1590. But this point, which is here only tran­siently mentioned, will be more fully considered hereafter, in its proper place. We will now return to our author Grimoald.

Grimoald, as a writer of verses in rhyme, yields to none of his cotemporaries, for a masterly choice of chaste expression, and the concise elegancies of didactic versification. Some of the couplets, in his poem IN PRAISE OF MODERATION, have all the smartness which marks the modern style of sententious poetry, and would have done honour to Pope's ethic epistles.

The maxim is enforced with great quickness and variety of illustration: nor is the collision of opposite thoughts, which the subject so naturally affords, extravagantly pursued, or indulged beyond the bounds of good sense and propriety. The following stanzas on the NINE MUSES are more poetical, and not less correct ^r.

It would be unpardonable to dismiss this valuable miscellany, without acknowledging our obligations to its original editor Richard Tottell: who deserves highly of English literature, for having collected at a critical period, and preserved in a printed volume, so many admirable specimens of antient genius, which would have mouldered in manuscript, or perhaps from their detached and fugitive state of existence, their want of length, the capriciousness of taste, the general depredations of time, in­attention, and other accidents, would never have reached the present age. It seems to have given birth to two favorite and celebrated collections of the same kind, THE PARADISE OF DAINTY DEVISES, and ENGLAND'S HELICON, which ap­peared in the reign of queen Elisabeth ^•. ²⁵².

IT will not be supposed, that all the poets of the reign of Henry the eighth were educated in the school of Petrarch. The graces of the Italian muse, which had been taught by Surrey and Wyat, were confined to a few. Nor were the beau­ties of the classics yet become general objects of imitation. There are many writers of this period who still rhymed on, in the old prosaic track of their immediate predecessors, and never ventured to deviate into the modern improvements. The strain of romantic fiction was lost; in the place of which, they did not substitute the elegancies newly introduced.

I shall consider together, yet without an exact observation of chronological order, the poets of the reign of Henry the eighth who form this subordinate class, and who do not bear any mark of the character of the poetry which distinguishes this period. Yet some of these have their degree of merit; and, if they had not necessarily claimed a place in our series, deserve examination.

Andrew Borde, who writes himself ANDREAS PERFORATUS, with about as much propriety and as little pedantry as Bucha­nan calls one Wisehart SOPHOCARDIUS, was educated at Win­chester and Oxford ^a; and is said, I believe on very slender proof, to have been physician to king Henry the eighth. His BRE­VIARY OF HEALTH, first printed in 1547 ^b, is dedicated to the [Page 71] college of physicians, into which he had been incorporated. The first book of this treatise is said to have been examined and approved by the University of Oxford in 1546 ^c. He chiefly practiced in Hampshire; and being popishly affected, was cen­sured by Poynet, a Calvinistic bishop of Winchester, for keep­ing three prostitutes in his house, which he proved to be his pa­tients ^d. He appears to have been a man of great superstition, and of a weak and whimsical head: and having been once a Carthusian, continued ever afterwards to profess celibacy, to drink water, and to wear a shirt of hair. His thirst of know­ledge, dislike of the reformation, or rather his unsettled dispo­sition, led him abroad into various parts of Europe, which he visited in the medical character. Wood says, that he was ‘"esteemed a noted poet, a witty and ingenious person, and an excellent physician."’ Hearne, who has plainly discovered the origin of Tom Thumb, is of opinion, that this facetious prac­titioner in physic gave rise to the name of MERRY ANDREW, the Fool on the mountebank's stage. The reader will not per­haps be displeased to see that antiquary's reasons for this conjec­ture: which are at the same time a vindication of Borde's cha­racter, afford some new anecdotes of his life, and shew that a Merry Andrew may be a scholar and an ingenious man. ‘"It is observable, that the author [Borde] was as fond of the word DOLENTYD, as of many other hard and uncooth words, as any Quack can be. He begins his BREVIARY OF HEALTH, Egregious doctours and Maysters of the eximious and archane science of Physicke, of your urbanite exasperate not your selve, &c. But notwithstanding this, will any one from hence infer or assert, that the author was either a pedant or a superficial scholar? I think, upon due consideration, he will judge the contrary. Dr. Borde was an ingenious man, and knew how to humour and please his patients, readers, and auditors. In [Page 72] his travells and visits, he often appeared and spoke in public: and would often frequent markets and fairs where a conflux of people used to get together, to whom he prescribed; and to induce them to flock thither the more readily, he would make humorous speeches, couched in such language as caused mirth, and wonderfully propagated his fame: and 'twas for the same end that he made use of such expressions in his Books, as would otherwise (the circumstances not considered) be very justly pronounced bombast. As he was versed in antiquity, he had words at command from old writers with which to amuse his hearers, which could not fail of pleasing, provided he added at the same time some remarkable explication. For in­stance, if he told them that [...] was an old brass medal among the Greeks, the oddness of the word, would, without doubt, gain attention; tho nothing near so much, as if withall he signified, that 'twas a brass medal a little bigger than an Obolus, that used to be put in the mouths of persons that were dead.—And withall, 'twould affect them the more, if when he spoke of such a brass medal, he signified to them, that brass was in old time looked upon as more honourable than other metals, which he might safely enough do, from Homer and his scholiast. Homer's words are &c. A passage, which without doubt HIERONYMUS MAGIUS would have taken notice of in the fourteenth chapter of his Book DE TINTINNABULIS, had it occurred to his memory when in prison he was writing, without the help of books before him, that curious Discourse. 'Twas from the Doctor's method of using such speeches at markets and fairs, that in aftertimes, those that imitated the like humorous, jocose language, were styled MERRY ANDREWS, a term much in vogue on our stages ^o."’

He is supposed to have compiled or composed the MERRY TALES of the mad men of Gotham, which, as were told by Wood, ‘"in the reign of Henry the eighth, and after, was accounted a book full [Page 73] of wit and mirth by scholars and gentlemen ^f."’ This piece, which probably was not without its temporary ridicule, and which yet mantains a popularity in the nursery, was, I think, first printed by Wynkyn de Worde. Hearne was of opinion, that these idle pranks of the men of Gotham, a town in Lincolnshire, bore a reference to some customary law-tenures belonging to that place or its neighbourhood, now grown obsolete; and that Blount might have enriched his book on ANTIENT TENURES with these ludicrous stories. He is speaking of the political design of REYNARD THE FOX, printed by Caxto [...]. ‘"It was an admi­rable Thing. And the design, being political, and to represent a wise government, was equally good. So little reason is there to look upon this as a poor despicable book. Nor is there more reason to esteem THE MERRY TALES OF THE MAD MEN OF GOTHAM (which was much valued and cried up in Henry the eighth's time tho now sold at ballad-singers stalls) as alto­gether a romance: a certain skillfull person having told me more than once, that he was assured by one of Gotham, that they formerly held lands there, by such Sports and Customs as are touched upon in this book. For which reason, I think par­ticular notice should have been taken of it in Blount's TE­NURES, as I do not doubt but there would, had that other­wise curious author been apprised of the matter. But 'tis strange to see the changes that have been made in the book of REYNARD THE FOX, from the original editions ^g!"’

Borde's chief poetical work is entitled, ‘"The first Boke of the INTRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE, the which doth teach a man to speake parte of al maner of languages, and to knowe the usage and fashion of al maner of countryes: and for to knowe the most parte of al maner of coynes of money, the [Page 74] whych is currant in every region. Made by Andrew Borde of phisyk doctor."’ It was printed by the Coplands, and is dedicated to the king's daughter the princess Mary. The dedi­cation is dated from Montpelier, in the year 1542. The book, containing thirty-nine chapters, is partly in verse and partly in prose; with wooden cuts prefixed to each chapter. The first is a satire, as it appears, on the fickle nature of an Englishman: the symbolical print prefixed to this chapter, exhibiting a naked man, with a pair of sheers in one hand and a roll of cloth in the other, not determined what sort of a coat he shall order to be made, has more humour, than any of the verses which follow ^h. Nor is the poetry destitute of humour only; but of every em­bellishment, both of metrical arrangement and of expression. Borde has all the baldness of allusion, and barbarity of versifi­cation, belonging to Skelton, without his strokes of satire and severity. The following lines, part of the Englishman's speech, will not prejudice the reader in his favour.

In the seventh chapter, be gives a fantastic account of his tra­vels ⁱ, and owns, that his metre deserves no higher appellation than ryme d [...]grell. But this delineation of the fickle Englishman is perhaps to be restricted to the circumstances of the author's [Page 75] age, without a respect to the national character: and, as Borde was a rigid catholic, there is a probability, notwithstanding in other places he treats o [...] natural dispositions, that a satire is de­signed on the laxity of principle, and revolutions of opinion, which prevailed at the reformation, and the easy compliance of many of his changeable countrymen with a new religion for lucrative purposes.

I transcribe the character of the Welshman, chiefly because he speaks of his harp.

[Page 76] I have before mentioned ‘"A ryght pleasant and merry History of the MYLNER OF ABINGTON ^m, with his wife and his faire, daughter and of two poor scholars of Cambridge,"’ a meagre epitome of Chaucer's MILLER'S TALE. In a blank leaf of the Bodleian copy, this tale is said by Thomas Newton of Cheshire, an elegant Latin epigrammatist of the reign of queen Elisabeth, to have been written by Borde ⁿ. He is also supposed to have published a collection of silly stories called SCOGIN'S JESTS, sixty in number. Perhaps Shakespeare took his idea from this jest-book, that Scogan was a mere buffoon, where he says that Falstaffe, as a juvenile exploit, ‘"broke Sco­gan's head at the court-gate ^o."’ Nor have we any better au­thority, than this publication by Borde, that Scogan was a graduate in the university, and a jester to a king ^p. Hearne, at the end of Benedictus Abbas, has printed Borde's ITINERARY, as it may be called; which is little more than a string of names, but is quoted by Norden in his SPECULUM BRITANNIAE ^q. Borde's circulatory peregrinations, in the quality of a quack-doctor, might have furnished more ample materials for an English topography. [Page 77] Beside the BREVIARY OF HEALTH, mentioned above, and which was approved by the university of Oxford, Borde has left the DIETARIE OF HEALTH, reprinted in 1576, the PROMPTUARIE OF MEDICINE, the DOCTRINE OF URINES, and the PRINCIPLES OF ASTRONOMICAL PROGNOSTICA­TIONS ^r: which are proofs of attention to his profession, and shew that he could sometimes be serious ^s. But Borde's name would not have been now remembered, had he wrote only pro­found systems in medicine and astronomy. He is known to posterity as a buffoon, not as a philosopher. Yet, I think, some of his astronomical tracts have been epitomised and bound up with Erra Pater's Almanacs.

Of Borde's numerous books, the only one that can afford any degree of entertainment to the modern reader, is the DIE­TARIE OF HELTHE: where, giving directions as a physician, concerning the choice of houses, diet, and apparel, and not suspecting how little he should instruct, and how much he might amuse, a curious posterity, he has preserved many anecdotes of the private life, customs, and arts, of our ancestors ^t. This work is dedicated to Thomas duke of Norfolk, lord treasurer under Henry the eighth. In the dedication, he speaks of his [Page 78] being called in as a physician to sir John Drury, the year when cardinal Wolsey was promoted to York; but that he did not chuse to prescribe without consulting doctor Buttes, the king's physi­cian. He apologises to the duke, for not writing in the ornate phraseology now generally affected. He also hopes to be excused, for using in his writings so many wordes of mirth: but this, he says, was only to make your grace merrie, and because mirth has ever been esteemed the best medicine. Borde must have had no small share of vanity, who could think thus highly of his own pleasantry. And to what a degree of taste and refinement must our antient dukes and lords treasurers have arrived, who could be exhilarated by the witticisms and the lively language of this facetious philosopher?

John Bale, a tolerable Latin classic, and an eminent biogra­pher, before his conversion from popery, and his advancement to the bishoprick of Ossory by king Edward the sixth, com­posed many scriptural interludes, chiefly from incidents of the New Testament. They are, the Life of Saint John the Bap­ [...]ist, written in 1538. Christ in his twelfth year. Baptism and Temptation. The Resurrection of Lazarus. The Council of the High-priests. Simon the Leper. Our Lord's Supper, and the Washing of the feet of his Disciples. Christ's Burial and Resurrection. The Passion of Christ. The Comedie of the three Laws of Nature, Moses, and Christ, corrupted by the Sodo­mites, Pharisees, and Papists, printed by Nicholas Bamburgh in 1538: and so popular, that it was reprinted by Colwell in 1562 ^u. God's Promises to Man ^w. Our author, in his Vocacyon to the Bishoprick of Ossory, informs us, that his COMEDY of John the Baptist, and his TRAGEDY of God's Promises, were acted by the youths upon a Sunday, at the market cross of Kilkenny ^x. What shall we think of the state, I will not say of the stage, but of common sense, when these deplorable dramas could be [Page 79] endured? Of an age, when the Bible was profaned and ridiculed from a principle of piety? But the fashion of acting mysteries appears to have expired with this writer. He is said, by him­self, to have written a book of Hymns, and another of jests and tales: and to have translated the tragedy of PAMMACHIUS ^y; the same perhaps which was acted at Christ's college in Cam­bridge in 1544, and afterwards laid before the privy council as a libel on the reformation ^z. A low vein of abusive burlesque, which had more virulence than humour, seems to have been one of Bale's talents: two of his pamphlets against the papists, all whom he considered as monks, are entitled the MASS OF THE GLUTTONS, and the ALCORAN OF THE PRELATES ^a. Next to exposing the impostures of popery, literary history was his favorite pursuit: and his most celebrated performance is his account of the British writers. But this work, perhaps originally undertaken by Bale as a vehicle of his sentiments in religion, is not only full of misrepresentations and partialities, arising from his religious prejudices, but of general inaccuracies, proceeding from negligence or misinformation. Even those more antient Lives which he transcribes from Leland's commentary on the same subject, are often interpolated with false facts, and imper­tinently marked with a misapplied zeal for reformation. He is angry with many authors, who flourished before the thirteenth century, for being catholics. He tells us, that lord Cromwell fre­quently screened him from the fury of the more bigotted bishops, on account of the comedies he had published ^b. But whether plays in particular, or other compositions, are here to be under­stood by comedies, is uncertain.

Brian Anslay, or Annesley, yeoman of the wine cellar to Henry the eighth about the year 1520, translated a popular French poem into English rhymes, at the exhortation of the [Page 80] gentle earl of Kent, called the CITIE OF DAMES, in three books. It was printed in 1521, by Henry Pepwell, whose prologue prefixed begins with these unpromising lines,

Another translator of French into English, much about the same time, is Andrew Chertsey. In the year 1520, Wynkyn de Worde printed a book with this title, partly in prose and partly in verse, Here foloweth the passyon of our lord Jesu Crist translated out of French into Englysch by Andrew Chertsey gentle­man the yere of our lord MDXX ^c. I will give two stanzas of Robert Copland's prologue, as it records the diligence, and some other performances, of this very obscure writer.

The Floure of God's Commaundements was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in folio, in 1521. A print of the author's arms, with [Page 81] the name CHERTSEY, is added. The Lucydayre is translated from a favorite old French poem called Li Lusidaire. This is a translation of the ELUCIDARIUM, a large work in dialogue, containing the sum of christian theology, by some attributed to Anselm archbishop of Canterbury in the twelfth century ^d. Chertsey's other versions, mentioned in Copland's prologue, are from old French manuals of devotion, now equally forgotten, Such has been the fate of volumes fayre and large! Some of these versions have been given to George Ashby, clerk of the signet to Margaret queen of Henry the sixth, who wrote a moral poem for the use of their son prince Edward, on the Active policy of a prince, finished in the author's eightieth year. The prologue begins with a compliment to ‘"Maisters Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate,"’ a proof of the estimation which that celebrated triumvirate still continued to maintain. I believe it was never printed. But a copy, with a small mutilation at the end, remains among bishop More's manuscripts at Cambridge ^e.

In the dispersed library of the late Mr. William Collins, I saw a thin folio of two sheets in black letter, containing a poem in the octave stanza, entitled, FABYL'S GHOSTE, printed by John Rastell in the year 1533. The piece is of no merit; and I should not perhaps have mentioned it, but as the subject serves to throw light on our early drama. Peter Fabell, whose appa­rition speaks in this poem, was called The Merrie Devil of Ed­monton, near London. He lived in the reign of Henry the seventh, and was buried in the church of Edmonton. Weever, in his ANTIENT FUNERAL MONUMENTS, published in 1631, says under Edmonton, that in the church ‘"lieth interred under a seemlie tombe without inscription, the body of Peter Fa­bell, as the report goes, upon whom this fable was fathered, that he by his wittie devises beguiled the devill. Belike he was some ingenious-conceited gentleman, who did use some [Page 82] sleighte trickes for his own disportes. He lived and died in the raigne of Henry the seventh, saith the booke of his merry Pranks ^f."’ The book of Fabell's Merry Pranks I have never seen. But there is an old anonymous comedy, written in the reign of James the first, which took its rise from this merry magician. It was printed in 1617, and is called the MERRY DEVIL OF EDMONTON, as it hath been sundry times acted by his majesties servants at the Globe on the Banke-side ^g. In the Pro­logue, Fabell is introduced, reciting his own history.

The play is without absurdities, and the author was evidently an attentive reader of Shakespeare. It has nothing, except the machine of the chime, in common with FABYLL'S GHOSTE. Fabell is mentioned in our chronicle-histories, and from his dealings with the devil, was commonly supposed to be a friar ^h.

In the year 1537, Wilfrid Holme, a gentleman of Hunting­ton in Yorkshire, wrote a poem called The Fall and evil Success of Rebellion. It is a dialogue between England and the author, on the commotions raised in the northern counties on account of the reformation in 1537, under Cromwell's administration. It was printed at London in 1573. Alliteration is here carried to the most ridiculous excess: and from the constraint of ad­hering inviolably to an identity of initials, from an affectation of coining prolix words from the Latin, and from a total ignoranc [...] of prosodical harmony, the author has produced one of the most obscure, rough, and unpleasing pieces of versification in our language. He seems to have been a disciple of Skelton. The poem, probably from its political reference, is mentioned by Hollinshed ⁱ. Bale, who overlooks the author's poetry in his piety, thinks that he has learnedly and perspicuously discussed the absurdities of popery ^k.

[Page 84] One Charles Bansley, about the year 1540, wrote a rhyming satire on the pride and vices of women now a days. I know not if the first line will tempt the reader to see more.

It was printed in quarto by Thomas Rainolde; but I do not find it among Ames's books of that printer, whose last piece is dated 1555. Of equal reputation is Christopher Goodwin, who wrote the MAYDEN'S DREME, a vision without imagina­tion, printed in 1542 ^l, and THE CHANCE OF THE DOLORUS LOVER, a lamentable story without pathos, printed in 1520 ^m. With these two may be ranked, Richard Feylde, or Field, au­thor of a poem printed in quarto by Wynkyn de Worde, called THE TREATISE OF THE LOVER AND JAYE. The prologue begins.

I must not forget to observe here, that Edward Haliwell, admitted a fellow of King's college Cambridge in 1532, wrote the Tragedy of Dido, which was acted at saint Paul's school in London, under the conduct of the very learned master John Rightwise, before cardinal Wolsey ⁿ. But it may be doubted, whether this drama was in English. Wood says, that it was written by Rightwise ^o. One John Hooker, fellow of Mag­dalene college Oxford in 1535, wrote a comedy called by Wood PISCATOR, or The Fisher caught ^p. But as latinity seems to have been his object, I suspect this comedy to have been in Latin, and to have been acted by the youth of his college.

The fanaticisms of chemistry seem to have remained at least till the dissolution of the monasteries. William Blomefield, otherwise Rattelsden, born at Bury in Suffolk, bachelor in [Page 85] physic, and a monk of Bury-abbey, was an adventurer in quest of the philosopher's stone. While a monk of Bury, as I pre­sume, he wrote a metrical chemical tract, entitled, BLOME­FIELD'S BLOSSOMS, or the CAMPE OF PHILOSOPHY. It is a vision, and in the octava stanza. It was originally written in the year 1530, according to a manuscript that I have seen: but in the copy printed by Ashmole ^q, which has some few improve­ments and additional stanzas, our author says he began to dream in 1557 ^r. He is admitted into the camp of philosophy by TIME, through a superb gate which has twelve locks. Just within the entrance were assembled all the true philosophers from Hermes and Aristotle, down to Roger Bacon, and the canon of Bridlington. Detached at some distance, appear those unskilful but specious pretenders to the transmutation of metals, lame, blind, and emaciated, by their own pernicious drugs and injudicious experiments, who defrauded king Henry the fourth of immense tr [...]asures by a counterfeit elixir. Among other wonders of this mysterious region, he sees the tree of philoso­phy, which has fifteen different buds, bearing fifteen different fruits. Afterwards Blomfield turning protestant, did not re­nounce his chemistry with his religion, for he appears to have dedicated to queen Elisabeth another system of occult science, entitled, THE RULE OF LIFE, OR THE FIFTH ESSENCE, with which her majesty must have been highly edified ^s.

Although lord Surrey and some others so far deviated from the dullness of the times, as to copy the Italian poets, the same taste does not seem to have uniformly influenced all the nobility of the court of king Henry the eighth who were fond of wri­ting verses. Henry Parker, lord Morley, who died an old man in the latter end of that reign, was educated in the best litera­ture which our universities afforded. Bale mentions his TRA­GEDIES and COMEDIES, which I suspect to be nothing more [Page 86] than grave mysteries and moralities, and which probably would not now have been lost, had they deserved to live. He mentions also his RHYMES, which I will not suppose to have been imi­tations of Petrarch ^t. Wood says, that ‘"his younger years were adorned with all kinds of superficial learning, especially with dramatic poetry, and his elder with that which was divine ^u."’ It is a stronger proof of his piety than his taste, that he sent, as a new year's gift to the princess Mary, HAM­POLE'S COMMENTARY UPON SEVEN OF THE FIRST PENI­TENTIAL PSALMS. The manuscript, with his epistle pre­fixed, is in the royal manuscripts of the British Museum ^w. Many of Morley's translations, being dedicated either to king Henry the eighth, or to the princess M [...]ry, are preserved in manuscript in the same royal repository ^x. They are chiefly from Solomon, Seneca, Erasmus, Athanasius, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Paulus Jovius. The authors he translated shew his track of reading. But we should not forget his attention to the classics, and that he translated also Tully's DREAM OF SCIPIO, and three or four lives of Plutarch, although not immediately from the Greek ^y. He seems to have been a rigid catholic, retired and studious. His declaration, or paraphrase, on the ninety-fourth Psalm, was printed by Berthelette in 1539. A theological commentary by a lord, was too curious and important a production to be neglected by our first printers.

JOHN HEYWOOD, commonly called the epigrammatist, was beloved and rewarded by Henry the eighth for his buffoone­ries. At leaving the university, he commenced author, and was countenanced by sir Thomas More for his facetious disposition. To his talents of jocularity in conversation, he joined a skill in music, both vocal and instrumental. His merriments were so irresistible, that they moved even the rigid muscles of queen Mary; and her sullen solemnity was not proof against his songs, his rhymes, and his jests. He is said to have been often invited to exercise his arts of entertainment and pleasantry in her pre­sence, and to have had the honour to be constantly admitted into her privy-chamber for this purpose ^a.

Notwithstanding his professional dissipation, Heywood appears to have lived comfortably under the smiles of royal patronage. What the FAIRY QUEEN could not procure for Spenser from the penurious Elisabeth and her precise ministers, Heywood gained by puns and conceits.

His comedies, most of which appeared before the year 1534, are destitute of plot, humour, or character, and give us no very high opinion of the festivity of this agreeable companion. They consist of low incident, and the language of ribaldry. But per­fection must not be expected before its time. He is called our first writer of comedies. But those who say this, speak without determinate ideas, and confound comedies with moralities and interludes. We will allow, that he is among the first of our [Page 88] dramatists who drove the Bible from the stage, and introduced representations of familiar life and popular manners. These are the titles of his plays. The PLAY called the four P. s, being a new and merry ENTERLUDE OF A PALMER, PARDONER, PO­TICARY, AND PEDLAR, printed at London in quarto, without date or name of the printer, but prob [...]bl [...] from the press of Berthelette or Rastell. The PLAY of LOVE, or a new and very mery ENTERLUDE of all maner of WEATHERS, printed in quarto by William Rastell, 1533, and again by Robert Wyer ^b. A mery PLAY betweene the PARDONER and the FRERE, the CURATE, and neybour PRATTE, in quarto, by William Rastell, dated the fifth day of April, 1533. The PLAY of Gentlenes and Nobilitie, i [...] two parts, at London, without date. The PINNER of Wakefield, a COMEDIE. Philotas Scotch, a COMEDIE. A mery PLAY betweene JOHAN JOHAN the husband, TYB the wife, and syr JOHAN the preeste, by William Rastell, in quarto, 1533.

His EPIGRAMS, six hundred in number ^c, are probably some of his jokes versified; and perhaps were often extemporaneou [...] sal­lies, made and repeated in company. Wit and humour are ever found in proportion to the progress of politeness. The miserable drolleries and the contemptible quibbles, with which these little pieces are pointed, indicate the great want of refinement, not only in the composition but in the conversation of our ancestors. This is a specimen, on a piece of humour of Wolsey's Fool, A saying of PATCHE my lord Cardinale's FOOLE.

The following is rather a humorous tale than an epigram, yet with an epigrammatic turn.

The other is on the phrase, wagging beards.

On the fashion of wearing Verdingales, or farthingales.

Our author was educated at Broadgate-hall in Oxford, so called from an uncommonly wide gate or entrance, and since [Page 91] converted into Pembroke college. These EPIGRAMS are men­tioned in Wilson's RHETORIKE, published in 1553.

Another of Heywood's works, is a poem in long verse, enti­tled, A DIALOGUE contayning in effect the number of all the PROVERBES in the English tongue compact in a matter concerning two marriages. The first edition I have seen, is dated 1547 ^x. All the proverbs of the English language are here interwoven into a very silly comic tale.

The lady of the story, an old widow now going to be married again, is thus described, with some degree of drollery, on the bridal day.

The work has its value and curiosity as a repertory of proverbs made at so early a period. Nor was the plan totally void of in­genuity, to exhibit these maxims in the course of a narrative, enlivened by facts and circumstances. It certainly was susceptible of humour and invention.

Heywood's largest and most laboured performance is the SPI­DER AND THE FLIE, with wooden cuts, printed at London by Thomas Powell, in 1556 ^b. It is a very long poem in the octave stanza, containing ninety-eight chapters. Perhaps there never was so dull, so tedious, and trifling an apologue: without fancy, meaning, or moral. A long tale of fictitious manners will always be tiresome, unless the design be burlesque: and then the ridiculous, arising from the contrast between the solemn and the light, must be ingeniously supported. Our author seems to have intended a fable on the burlesque construction: but we know not when he would be serious and when witty, whether he means to make the reader laugh, or to give him advice. We must indeed acknowledge, that the age was not yet sufficiently [Page 93] refined, either to relish or to produ [...]e, burlesque poetry ^c. Har­rison, the author of the DESCRIPTION OF BRITAINE, prefixed [Page 94] to Hollinshed's Chronicle, has left a sensible criticism on this poem. ‘"One hath made a boke of the SPIDER AND [Page 95] FLIE, wherin he dealeth so profoundly, and beyond all mea­sure of skill, that neither he himself that made it, neither any one that readeth it, can reach unto the meaning thereof ^d."’ It is a proof of the unpopularity of this poem, that it never was reprinted. Our author's EPIGRAMS, and the poem of PRO­VERBS, were in high vogue, and had numerous editions within the year 1598. The most lively part of the SPIDER and FLIE is perhaps the mock-fight between the spiders and flies, an awk­ward imitation of Homer's BATRACHOMUOMACHY. The pre­parations for this bloody and eventful engagement, on the part of the spiders, in their cobweb-castle, are thus described.

The beginning of all this confusion is owing to a fly entering the poet's window, not through a broken pane, as might be pre­sumed, but through the lattice, where it is suddenly entangled in a cobweb ^k. The cobweb, however, will be allowed to be sufficiently [Page 96] descriptive of the poet's apartment. But I mention this circumstance as a probable proof, that windows of lattice, and not of glass, were now the common fashion ^l.

John Heywood died at Mechlin in Brabant about the year 1565. He was inflexibly attached to the catholic cause, and on the death of queen Mary quitted the kingdom. Antony Wood remarks ^m, with his usual acrimony, that it was a matter of wonder with many, that, considering the great and usual want of principle in the profession, a poet should become a voluntary exile for the sake of religion.

I KNOW not if sir Thomas More may properly be considered as an English poet. He has, however, left a few obsolete poems, which although without any striking merit, yet, as pro­ductions of the restorer of literature in England, seem to claim some notice here. One of these is, A MERY JEST how a SERGEANT would learne to play the FREERE. Written by Maister Thomas More in hys youth ^a. The story is too dull and too long to be told here. But I will cite two or three of the prefatory stanzas.

In these lines, which are intended to illustrate by familiar ex­amples, the absurdity of a serjeant at law assuming the business of a friar, perhaps the reader perceives but little of that festi­vity, which is supposed to have marked the character and the conversation of sir Thomas More. The last two stanzas deserve to be transcribed, as they prove, that this tale was designed to be sung to music by a minstrel, for the entertainment of company.

This piece is mentioned, among other popular story-books in 1575, by Laneham, in his ENTERTAINMENT AT KILLING­WORTH CASTLE in the reign of queen Elisabeth ^e.

In CERTAIN METERS, written also in his youth, as a pro­logue for his BOKE OF FORTUNE, and forming a poem of considerable [Page 99] length, are these stanzas, which are an attempt at per­sonification and imagery. FORTUNE is represented sitting on a lofty throne, smiling on all mankind who are gathered around her, eagerly expecting a distribution of her favours.

Another of sir Thomas More's juvenile poems is, A RUFULL LAMENTATION on the death of queen Elisabeth, wife of Henry the seventh, and mother of Henry the eighth, who died in childbed, in 1503. It is evidently formed on the tragical soliloquies, which compose Lydgate's paraphrase of Boccace's book DE CASIBUS VIRORUM ILLUSTRIUM, and which gave birth to the MIRROR OF MAGISTRATES, the origin of our historic dramas. These stanzas are part of the queen's complaint at the approach of death.

[Page 101] In the fourth stanza, she reproaches the astrologers for their falsity in having predicted, that this should be the happiest and most fortunate year of her whole life. This, while it is a natural reflection in the speaker, is a proof of More's contempt of a futile and frivolous science, then so much in esteem. I have been prolix in my citation from this forgotten poem: but I am of opinion, that some of the stanzas have strokes of nature and pathos, and deserved to be rescued from total oblivion.

More, when a young man, contrived in an apartment of his father's house a goodly hangyng of fyne painted clothe, exhibiting nine pageants, or allegoric representations, of the stages of man's life, together with the figures of Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity. Under each picture he wrote a stanza. The first is under CHILDHOODE, expressed by a boy whipping a top.

Next was pictured MANHOD, a comely young man mounted on a fleet horse, with a hawk on his fist, and followed by two grey­hounds, with this stanza affixed.

[Page 102] The personification of FAME, like RUMOUR in the Chorus to Shakespeare's HENRY THE FIFTH, is surrounded with tongues ^s.

Tapestry, with metrical legends illustrating the subject, was common in this age: and the public pageants in the streets were often exhibited with explanatory verses. I am of opinion, that the COMOEDIOLAE, or little interludes, which More is said to have written and acted in his father's house, were only these nine pageants ^t.

Another juvenile exercise of More in the English stanza, is annexed to his prose translation of the LYFE of John Picus Mirandula, and entitled, TWELVE RULES OF JOHN PICUS MIRANDULA, partely exciting partely directing a man in SPIRI­TUAL BATAILE ^u. The old collector of his ENGLISH WORKES has also preserved two shorte ballettes ^w, or stanzas, which he wrote for his pastyme, while a prisoner in the tower ^x.

It is not my design, by these specimens, to add to the [...]ame of sir Thomas More; who is reverenced by posterity, as the scho­lar who taught that erudition which civilised his country, and as the philosopher who met the horrours of the block with that fortitude which was equally free from ostentation and enthu­siasm: as the man, whose genius overthrew the fabric of false learning, and whose amiable tranquillity of temper triumphed over the malice and injustice of tyranny.

To some part of the reign of Henry the eighth I assign the TOURNAMENT OF TOTTENHAM, or The wooeing, winning, and wedding of TIBBE the Reeves Daug [...]ter there. I presume it will not be supposed to be later than that reign: and the sub­stance of its phraseology, which I divest of its obvious innova­tions, is not altogether obsolete enough for a highe [...] period. I am aware, that in a manuscript of the British Museum it is referred to the time of Henry the sixth. But that manuscript [Page 103] affords no positive indication of that date ^y. It was published from an antient manuscript in the year 1631, and reduced to a more modern style, by William Bedwell, rector of Tottenham, and one of the translators of the Bible. He says it was written by Gilbert Pilkington, supposed to have been rector of the same parish, and author of an unknown tract, called PASSIO DOMINI JESU. But Bedwell, without the least comprehension of the scope and spirit of the piece, imagines it to be a serious narra­tive of a real event; and, with as little sagacity, believes it to have been written before the year 1330. Allowing that it might originate from a real event, and that there might be some pri­vate and local abuse at the bottom, it is impossible that the poet could be serious. Undoubtedly the chief merit of this poem, although not destitute of humour, consists in the design rather than the execution. As Chaucer, in the RIME OF SIR THOPAS ^z, travestied the romances of chivalry, the TOURNAMENT [Page 104] OF TOTTENHAM is a burlesque on the parade and [...]op­peries of chivalry itself. In this light, it may be considered as a curiosity; and does honour to the good sense and discernment of the writer, who seeing through the [...]olly of these fashionable ex­ercises, was sensible at the same time, that they were too popular to be attacked by the more solid weapons of reason and argument. Even on a supposition that here is an allusion to real facts and characters, and that it was intended to expose some popular story of the amours of the daughter of the Reve of Tottenham, we must acknowledge that the satire is conveyed in an ingenious mode. He has introduced a parcel of clowns and rustics, the inhabitants of Tottenham, Islington, Highgate, and Hackney, places then not quite so polished as at present, who imitate all [Page 105] the solemnities of the barriers. The whole is a mock-parody on the challenge, the various events of the encounter, the exhibi­tion of the prize, the devices and escocheons, the display of arms, the triumphant procession of the conqueror, the oath before the combat, and the splendid feast which followed, with every other ceremony and circumstance which constituted the regular tournament. The reader will form an idea of the work from a short extract ^a.

It appears to me, that the author, to give dignity to his nar­rative, and to heighten the ridicule by stiffening the familiarity of his incidents and characters, has affected an antiquity of style. This I could prove from the cast of its fundamental diction and idiom, with which many of the old words do not agree. Perhaps another of the author's affectations is the alli­terative manner. For although other specimens of alliteration, in smaller pieces, are now to be found, yet it was a singularity. To those which I have mentioned, of this reign, I take this opportunity of adding an alliterative poem, which may be called the FALCON AND THE PIE, who support a DYALOGUE DE­SENSYVE FOR WOMEN AGAYNST MALICYOUS DETRAC­TOURS, printed in 1542 ^u. The author's name Robert Vaghane, [Page 107] or Vaughan, is prefixed to some sonnets which form a sort of epilogue to the performance.

For the purpose of ascertaining or illustrating the age of pieces which have been lately or will be soon produced, I here stop to [Page 108] recall the reader's attention to the poetry and language of the last century, by exhibiting some extracts from the manuscript ro­mance of YWAIN and GAWAIN, which has some great outlines of Gothic painting, and appears to have been written in the reign of king Henry the sixth ^w. I premise, that but few cir­cumstances happened, which contributed to the improvement of our language, within that and the present period.

The following is the adventure of the enchanted forest at­tempted by sir Colgrevance, which he relates to the knights of the round table at Cardiff in Wales ^x.

I add Sir Ywain's achievement of the same Adventure, with its consequences.

While sir Ywaine remains in this perilous confinement, a lady looks out of a wicket which opened in the wall of the gate­way, and releases him. She gives him her ring,

Here he is secreted. In the mean time, the Lord of the castle dies of his wounds, and is magnificently buried. But before the interment, the people of the castle search for sir Ywayne.

Sir Ywayne desires the damsel's permission to look at the lady of the deceased knight through a window. He falls in love with her. She passes her time in praying for his soul.

The damsel ^u, whose name is Lunet, promises sir Ywaine an interview with the Lady. She uses many arguments to the Lady, and with much art, to shew the necessity of her marrying again, for the defence of her castle.

[Page 124] He is conducted to her chamber.

[Page 125] After this interview, she is reconciled to him, as he only in self-defence has slain her husband, and she promises him marriage.

They agree to the marriage.

Sir Ywaine is victorious, who discovers himself to king Arthur after the battle.

The king stays here eight days, entertained with various sports.

I FEAR I shall be pronounced a heretic to modern criticism, in retracting what I have said in a preceding page, and in placing the NOTBROWNE MAYDE under some part of this reign. Prior, who, about the year 1718, paraphrased this poem, without improving its native beauties, supposes it to have been three hundred years old. It appears from two letters preserved in the British Museum, written by Prior to Wanley, lord Oxford's librarian, that Prior consulted Wanley about this antient ballad ^a. It is, however, certain, that Wanley, an antiquarian of unques­tionable skill and judgement in these niceties, whatever directions and information he might have imparted to Prior on this subject, could never have communicated such a decision. He certainly in these letters gives no such opinion ^b. This is therefore the hasty conjecture of Prior; who thought that the curiosity which he was presenting to the world, would derive proportionable value from its antiquity, who was better employed than in the petty labour of ascertaining dates, and who knew much more of modern than antient poetry.

The NOT-BROWNE MAYDE first appeared in Arnolde's CHRONICLE, or CUSTOMS OF LONDON, which was first printed about the year 1521. This is perhaps the most heterogeneous and multifarious miscellany that ever existed. The collector sets out with a catalogue of the mayors and sheriffs, the customs and charters, of the city of London. Soon afterwards we have [Page 136] receipts to pickle sturgeon, to make vinegar, ink, and gun­powder; how to raise parsley in an hour; the arts of brewery and soap-making; an estimate of the livings in London; an account of the last visitation of saint Magnus's church; the weight of Essex cheese, and a letter to cardinal Wolsey. The NOT-BROWNE MAYDE is introduced, between an estimate of some subsidies paid into the exchequer, and directions for buying goods in Flanders. In a word, it seems to have been this com­piler's plan, by way of making up a volume, to print together all the notices and papers, whether antient or modern, which he could amass, of every sort and subject. It is supposed, that he intended an antiquarian repertory: but as many recent mate­rials were admitted, that idea was not at least uniformly ob­served; nor can any argument be drawn from that supposition, that this poem existed long before, and was inserted as a piece of antiquity.

The editor of the PROLUSIONS infers ^c, from an identity of rhythmus and orthography, and an affinity of words and phrases, that this poem appeared after sir Thomas More's JEST OF THE SERJEANT AND FREER, which, as I have observed, was writ­ten about the year 1500. This reasoning, were not other argu­ments obvious, would be inconclusive, and might be turned to the opposite side of the question. But it is evident from the language of the NOTBROWNE MAYDE, that it was not written earlier than the beginning, at least, of the sixteenth century. There is hardly an obsolete word, or that requires a glossary, in the whole piece: and many parts of Surry and Wyat are much more difficult to be understood. Reduce any two stanzas to modern orthography, and they shall hardly wear the appearance of antient poetry. The reader shall try the experiment on the two following, which occur accidentally ^d.

The simplicity of which passage Prior has thus decorated and dilated.

What degree of credit this poem maintained among our earlier ancestors, I cannot determine. I suspect the sentiment was too refined for the general taste. Yet it is enumerated among the popular tales and ballads by Laneham, in his narrative of queen Elisabeth's entertainment at Kenilworth-castle in 1575 ^f. I have never seen it in manuscript. I believe it was never reprinted from Arnolde's Chronicle, where it first appeared in 1521, till so late as the year 1707. It was that year revived in a collec­tion called the MONTHLY MISCELLANY, or MEMO [...]RS FOR THE CURIOUS, and prefaced with a little essay on our antient poets and poetry, in which it is said to have been three hundred old. Fortunately for modern poetry, this republication suggested it to the notice of Prior, who perhaps from the same source might [Page 140] have adopted or confirmed his hypothesis, that it was coeval with the commencement of the fifteenth century.

Whoever was the original inventor of this little dramatic dia­logue, he has shewn no common skill in contriving a plan, which powerfully detains our attention, and interests the pas­sions, by a constant succession of suspence and pleasure, of anxiety and satisfaction. Betwixt hopes perpetually disappointed, and solicitude perpetually relieved, we know not how to determine the event of a debate, in which new difficulties still continue to be raised, and are almost as soon removed. In the midst of this vicissitude of feelings, a striking contrast of character is artfully formed, and uniformly supported, between the seeming unkind­ness and ingratitude of the man, and the unconquerable attach­ment and fidelity of the woman, whose amiable compliance un­expectedly defeats every objection, and continually furnishes new matter for our love and compassion. At length, our fears subside in the triumph of suffering innocence and patient sincerity. The Man, whose hard speeches had given us so much pain, suddenly surprises us with a change of sentiment, and becomes equally an object of our admiration and esteem. In the disentan­glement of this distressful tale, we are happy to find, that all his cruelty was tenderness, and his inconstancy the most invari­able truth; his levity an ingenious artifice, and his perversity the friendly disguise of the firmest affection. He is no longer an unfortunate exile, the profligate companion of the thieves and ruffians of the forest, but an opulent earl of Westmoreland; and promises, that the lady, who is a baron's daughter, and whose constancy he had proved by such a series of embarrassing proposals, shall instantly be made the partner of his riches and honours. Nor should we forget to commend the invention of the poet, in imagining the modes of trying the lady's patience, and in feigning so many new situations: which, at the same time, open a way to description, and to a variety of new scenes and images.

I cannot help observing here, by the way, that Prior has misconceived [Page 141] and essentially marred his poet's design, by softening the sternness of the Man, which could not be intended to admit of any degree of relaxation. Henry's hypocrisy is not charac­teristically nor consistently sustained. He frequently talks in too respectful and complaisant a style. Sometimes he calls Emma my tender maid, and my beauteous Emma; he fondly dwells on the ambrosial plenty of her flowing ringlets gracefully wreathed with variegated ribbands, and expatiates with rapture on the charms of her snowy bosom, her slender waist, and harmony of shape. In the antient poem, the concealed lover never abates his affectation of rigour and reserve, nor ever drops an expres­sion which may tend to betray any traces of tenderness. He retains his severity to the last, in order to give force to the conclusion of the piece, and to heighten the effect of the final declaration of his love. Thus, by diminishing the opposition of interests, and by giving too great a degree of uniformity to both characters, the distress is in some measure destroyed by Prior. For this reason, Henry, during the course of the dia­logue, is less an object of our aversion, and Emma of our pity. But these are the unavoidable consequences of Prior's plan, who presupposes a long connection between the lovers, which is at­tended with the warmest professions of a reciprocal passion. Yet this very plan suggested another reason, why Prior should have more closely copied the cast of his original. After so many mutual promises and protestations, to have made Henry more obdurate, would have enhanced the sufferings and the sincerity of the amiable Emma.

It is highly probable, that the metrical romances of RICHARD CUER DE LYON, GUY EARL OF WARWICK, and SYR BEVYS OF SOUTHAMPTON, were modernised in this reign from more an­tient and simple narrations. The first was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1528 ^h. The second without date, but about the same time, by William Copland. I mean that which begins thus,

With this colophon. ‘"Here endeth the booke of the most victoryous prynce Guy earle of Warwyk. Imprinted at Lon­don in Lothbury, over against saynt Margaret's church by Wyllyam Copland ⁱ."’ Richard Pinson prin [...]ed SIR BEVYS without date. Many quarto prose romances were printed be­tween the years 1510 and 1540 ^k. Of these, KYNGE APPOLYN OF THYRE is not one of the worst.

In the year 1542, as it seems, Robert Wyer printed, ‘"Here begynneth a lytell boke named the SCOLE HOWSE. wherein every man may rede a goodly Prayer of the condycyons of women."’ Within the leaf is a border of naked women. This is a satire against the female sex. The writer was wise enough to suppress his name, as we may judge from the following passage.

In the year 1521, Wynkyn de Worde printed a sett of Christ­mas Carols ^l. I have seen a fragment of this scarce book, and it preserves this colophon. ‘"Thus endeth the Christmasse carolles newly imprinted at London in the Flete-strete at the sygne of the sonne by Wynkyn de Worde. The yere of our Lorde, M. D. XXI ^m."’ These were festal chansons for enlivening [Page 143] the merriments of the Christmas celebrity: and not such religious songs as are current at this day with the common people under the same title, and which were substituted by those ene­mies of innocent and useful mirth the puritans. The boar's head soused, was antiently the first dish on Christmas day, and was carried up to the principal table in the Hall with great state and solemnity. Hollinshead says, that in the year 1170, upon the day of the young prince's coronation, king Henry the first ‘"served his sonne at the table as sewer, bringing up the BORES HEAD with trumpets before it according to the manner ⁿ."’ For this indispensable ceremony, as also for others of that season, there was a Carol, which Wynkyn de Worde has given us in the miscellany just mentioned, as it was sung in his time, with the title, ‘"A CAROL bryngyng in the bores head."’

[Page 144] This carol, yet with many innovations, is retained at Queen's college in Oxford. Other antient Christmas carols occur with Latin Burthens or Latin intermixtures. As thus,

The Latin scraps were banished from these jocund hymns, when the Reformation had established an English liturgy. At length appeared, ‘"Certaine of David's Psalmes intended for Christmas Carolls fitted to the most sollempne tunes every where fami­liarlie used, by William Slatyer, printed by Robert Yong 1630 ^s."’

It was impossible that the Reformation of religion could escape without its rhyming libels. Accordingly, among others, we have, ‘"An Answer to a papystical exhortation, pretending to avoyd false doctrine, under that colour to mayntayne the same,"’ printed in 1548, and beginning,

In the year 1533, a proclamation was promulged, prohibiting evil-disposed persons to preach, either in public or private, ‘"After their own braine, and by playing of enterludes, and printing of false fond bookes, ballades, rhymes, and other lewd treatyses in the English tongue, concerning doctrines in matters now in question and controversie, &c ^u."’ But this popular mode of attack, which all understood, and in which the idle and unlearned could join, appears to have been more powerful than royal interdictions and parliamentary censures.

In the year 1540, Thomas lord Cromwell, during the short [Page 145] interval which Henry's hasty passion for Catharine Howard per­mitted between his commitment and execution, was insulted in a ballad written by a defender of the declining cause of popery, who certainly shewed more zeal than courage, in reproaching a disgraced minister and a dying man. This satire, however un­seemly, gave rise to a religious controversy in verse, which is preserved in the archives of the antiquarian society.

I find a poem of thirty octave stanzas, printed in 1546, called the DOWFAL OF ANTICHRISTES MAS, or Mass, in which the nameless satirist is unjustly severe on the distresses of that inge­nious class of mechanics who got their living by writing and or­namenting service-books for the old papistic worship, now grow­ing into decay and disuse; insinuating at the same time, in a strain of triumph, the great blow their craft had received, by the diminution of the number of churches in the dissolution of the monasteries ^w. It is, however, certain, that this busy and lucrative occupation was otherwise much injured by the inven­tion and propagation of typography, as several catholic rituals were printed in England: yet still they continued to employ [Page 146] writers and illuminators for this purpose. The finest and the latest specimen of this sort I have seen, is Cardinal Wolsey's LECTIONARY, now preserved at Christ-church in Oxford, a prodigious folio on vellum, written and embellished with great splendor and beauty by the most elegant artists, either for the use of his own private chapel, or for the magnificent chapel which he had projected for his college, and peculiarly charac­teristic of that prelate's predominant ideas of ecclesiastic pomp.

Wynkyn de Worde printed a TRETISE OF MERLYN, or his prophesies in verse, in 1529. Another appeared by John Haw­kyns, in 1533. Metrical and prosaic prophesies attributed to the magician Merlin, all originating from Geoffrey of Mon­mouth's historical romance, and of oriental growth, are nume­rous and various. Merlin's predictions were successively accom­modated by the minstrel-poets to the politics of their own times. There are many among the Cotton manuscripts, both in French and English, and in other libraries ^x. Laurence Minot above-cited, who wrote about 1360, and in the northern dialect, has applied some of them to the numerous victories of Edward the third ^y. As thus.

[Page 149] The same boar, that is, Edward the third, is introduced by Minot as resisting the Scottish invasion in 1347, at Nevil's cross near Durham ^p.

Also in Edward's victory over the Spaniards in a sea-fight, in 1350, a part of Minot's general subject.

I have seen one of Merlin's PROPHESIES, probably translated from the French, which begins thus.

The public pageantries of this reign are proofs of the grow­ing familiarity and national diffusion of classical learning. I [Page 152] will select an instance, among others, from the shews exhibited with great magnificence at the coronation of queen Anne Boleyn, in the year 1533. The procession to Westminster abbey, began from the Tower; and the queen, in passing through Grace­church street, was entertained with a representation of mount Parnassus. The fountain of Helicon, by a bold fiction unknown to the bards of antiquity, ran in four streams of Rhenish wine from a bason of white marble. On the summit of the moun­tain sate Apollo, and at his feet Calliope. On either side of the declivity were arranged four of the Muses, playing on their respective [Page 153] musical instruments. Under them were written epi­grams and poesies in golden letters, in which every Muse praised the queen, according to her character and office. At the Conduit in Cornhill appeared the three Graces; before whom, with no great propriety, was the spring of Grace perpetually running wine. But when a conduit came in the way, a religious allusion was too tempting and obvious to be omitted. Before the spring, however, [...]ate a poet, describing in metre the properties or func­tions of every Grace: and then each of these four Graces allotted [Page 154] in a short speech to the queen, the virtue or accomplish­ment over which she severally presided. At the Conduit in Cheapside, as my chronicler says, she was saluted with ‘"a rich pageaunt full of melodie and song."’ In this pageant were Pallas, Juno, and Venus: before them stood Mercury, who pre­sented to her majesty, in the name of the three goddesses, a golden ball or globe divided into three parts, signifying wisdom, riches, and felicity. At entering saint Paul's gate, an antient portal leading into the church-yard on the east, and long since destroyed, three ladies richly attired showered on her head wafers, in which were contained Latin distichs. At the eastern side of saint Paul's Church-yard, two hundred scholars of saint Paul's School, addressed her in chosen and apposite passages from the Roman poets, translated into English rhymes. On the leads of saint Martin's church stood a choir of boys and men, who sung, not spiritual hymns, but new balads in praise of her ma­jesty. On the conduit without Ludgate, where the arms and angels had been refreshed, was erected a tower with four turrets, within each of which was placed a Cardinal Virtue, symboli­cally habited. Each of these personages in turn uttered an ora­tion, promising to protect and accompany the queen on all occa­sions ^l. Here we see the pagan history and mythology predomi­nating in those spectacles, which were once furnished from the Golden Legend. Instead of saints, prophets, apostles, and con­fessors, we have Apollo, Mercury, and the Muses. Instead of religious canticles, and texts of scripture, which were usually introduced in the course of these ceremonies, we are entertained with profane poetry, translations from the classics, and occasional verses; with exhortations, not delivered by personified doctors of the church, but by the heathen divinities.

[Page 155] It may not be foreign to our purpose, to give the reader some distinct idea of the polite amusements of this reign, among which, the Masque, already mentioned in general terms, seems to have held the first place. It chiefly consisted of music, dancing, gaming, a banquet, and a display of grotesque personages and fantastic dresses. The performers, as I have hinted, were often the king, and the chief of the nobility of both sexes, who under proper disguises executed some preconcerted strategem, which ended in mirth and good humour. With one of these shews, in 1530, the king formed a scheme to surprise cardinal Wolsey, while he was celebrating a splendid banquet at his palace of Whitehall ^m. At night his majesty in a masque, with twelve more masquers all richly but strangely dressed, privately landed from Westminster at Whitehall stairs. At landing, several small pieces of canon were fired, which the king had before ordered to be placed on the shore near the house. The cardinal, who was sepa­rately seated at the banquet in the presence-chamber under the cloth of state, a great number of ladies and lords being seated at the side-tables, was alarmed at this sudden and unusual noise: and immediately ordered lord Sandys, the king's chamberlain, who was one of the guests, and in the secret, to enquire the reason. Lord Sandys brought answer, that thirteen foreign no­blemen of distinction were just arrived, and were then waiting in the great hall below; having been drawn thither by the re­port of the cardinal's magnificent banquet, and of the beautiful ladies which were present at it. The cardinal ordered them immediately into the banquetting-room, to which they were conducted from the hall with twenty new torches and a concert of drums and fifes. After a proper refreshment, they requested in the French language to dance with the ladies, whom they kissed, and to play with them at mum-chance ⁿ; producing at the same time a great golden cup filled with many hundred crowns. Having played for sometime with the ladies, they de [...]ignedly [Page 156] lost all that remained in the cup to the cardinal; whose sagacity was not easily to be deceived, and who now began, from some circumstances, to suspect one of them to be the king. On finding their plot in danger, they answered, ‘"If your grace can point him out, he will readily discover himself."’ The cardinal pointed to a masque with a black beard, but he was mistaken, for it was sir Edward Nevil. At this, the king could not forbear laughing aloud: and pulling off his own and sir Edward Nevil's masque, convinced the cardinal, with much arch complaisance, that he had for once guessed wrong. The king and the masquers then retired into another apartment to change their apparel: and in the meantime the banquet was re­moved, and the table covered afresh with perfumed clothes. Soon afterwards the king, with his company, returned, and took his seat under the cardinal's canopy of state. Immediately two hundred dishes of the most costly cookery and confectionary were served up; the contrivance and success of the royal joke afforded much pleasant conversation, and the night was spent in dancing, dice-playing, banketting and other triumphs ^o. The old chronicler Edward Hall, a cotemporary and a curious observer, acquaints us, that at Greenwich, in 1512, ‘"on the daie of the Epiphanie at night, the king with eleven others was disguised after the maner of Italie, called a Maske, a thing not seene before in England: they were apparalled in garments long and broad, wrought all with gold, with visors and caps of gold. And after the banket doone, these maskers came in, with six gentlemen disguised in silke, bearing staffe-torches and desired the ladies to danse; some were content, and some refused; and after they had dansed and communed togither, as the fashion of the maske is, they tooke their leave and de­parted, and so did the queene and all the ladies ^p."’

I do not find that it was a part of their diversion in these en­tertainments to display humour and character. Their chief aim [Page 157] seems to have been, to surprise, by the ridiculous and exag­gerated oddity of the visors, and by the singularity and splendor of the dresses. Every thing was out of nature and propriety. Frequently the Masque was attended with an exhibition of some gorgeous machinery, resembling the wonders of a modern pan­tomime. For instance, in the great hall of the palace, the usual place of performance, a vast mountain covered with tall trees arose suddenly, from whose opening caverns issued hermits, pilgrims, shepherds, knights, damsels, and gypsies, who being regaled with spices and wine danced a morisco, or morris-dance. They were then again received into the mountain, which with a symphony of rebecs and recorders closed its caverns; and tumbling to pieces, was replaced by a ship in full sail, or a castle besieged. To be more particular. The following device was shewn in the hall of the palace at Greenwich. A castle was reared, with numerous towers, gates, and battlements; and fur­nished with every military preparation for sustaining a long siege. On the front was inscribed Le fortresse dangereux. From the windows looked out six ladies, cloathed in the richest russet sattin, ‘"laid all over with leaves of gold, and every one knit with laces of blew silk and gold, on their heads coi [...]s and caps all of golde."’ This castle was moved about the hall; and when the queen had viewed it for a time, the king entered the hall with five knights, in embroidered vestments, spangled and plated with gold, of the most curious and costly workmanship. They assaulted the castle; and the six ladies, finding them to be champions of redoubted prowess, after a parley, yielded their perilous fortress, descended, and danced with their assailants. The ladies then led the knights into the castle, which imme­diately vanished, and the company retired ^q. Here we see the representation of an action. But all these magnificent mum­meries, which were their evening-amusements on festivals, not­withstanding a parley, which my historian calls a communication, [Page 158] is here mentioned, were yet in dumb shew ^r, and without dia­logue.

But towards the latter part of Henry's reign, much of the old cumbersome state began to be laid aside. This I collect from a set of new regulations given to the royal houshold about the year 1526, by cardinal Wolsey. In the Chapter For keeping the Hall and ordering of the Chapel, it is recited, that by the frequent intermission and disuse of the solemnities of dining and supping in the great hall of the palace, the proper officers had almost forgot their duty, and the manner of conducting that very long and intricate ceremonial. It is therefore ordered, that when his majesty is not at Westminster, and with regard to his palaces in the country, the formalities of the Hall, which ought not en­tirely to fall into desuetude, shall be at least observed, when he is at Windsor, Beaulieu, or Newhall ^s, in Essex, Richmond, Hamp­ton-court, Greenwich, Eltham, and Woodstock. And that at these places only, the whole choir of the chapel shall attend. This attempt to revive that which had began to cease from the nature of things, and from the growth of new manners, per­haps had but little or no lasting effect. And with respect to the Chapel, my record adds, that when the king is on journies or progresses, only six singing boys and six gentlemen of the choir shall make a part of the royal retinue; who ‘"daylie in absence of the [...]esidue of the chapel shall have a Masse of our Ladie bi [...]ore noon, and on Sondaies and holidaies, masse of the day besides our Lady-masse, and an anthempne in the afternoone: [Page 159] for which purpose, no great carriage of either vestiments or bookes shall require ^t."’ Henry never seems to have been so truly happy, as when he was engaged in one of these progresses: in other words, moving from one seat to another, and enjoying his ease and amusements in a state of royal relaxation. This we may collect from a curious passage in Hollinshead; who had pleased and perhaps informed us less, had he never deserted the dignity of the historian. ‘"From thence the whole court remooved to Windsor, then beginning his progresse, and exercising himselfe dailie in shooting, singing, dansing, wrestling, casting of the barre, plaieing at the recorders, flute, virginals, in setting of songes, and making of ballades.—And when he came to Oking^u there were kept both justes turneies ^w."’ I make no apology for these seeming digressions. The manners and the poetry of a country are so nearly connected, that they mutually throw light on each other.

The same connection subsists between the state of poetry and of the arts; to which we may now recall the reader's attention with as little violation of our general subject.

We are taught in the mythology of the antients, that the three Graces were produced at a birth. The meaning of the fable is, that the three most beautiful imitative arts were born and grew up together. Our poetry now beginning to be divested of its mo­nastic barbarism, and to advance towards elegance, was accompa­nied by proportionable improvements in Painting and Music. Henry employed many capital painters, and endeavoured to invite Raphael and Titian into England. Instead of allegorical tapestry, many of the royal apartments were adorned with historical pic­tures. Our familiarity with the manners of Italy, and affecta­tion of Italian accomplishments, influenced the tones and enriched [Page 160] the modulation of our musical composition. Those who could read the sonnets of Petrarch must have relished the airs of Palestrina. At the same time, Architecture, like Milton's lion pawing to get free, made frequent efforts to disentangle itself from the massy incumbrances of the Gothic manner; and began to catch the correct graces, and to copy the true mag­nificence, of the Grecian and Roman models. Henry was himself a great builder; and his numerous edifices, although constructed altogether on the antient system, are sometimes in­terspersed with chaste ornaments and graceful mouldings, and often marked with a legitimacy of proportion, and a purity of design, before unattempted. It was among the literary plans of Leland, one of the most classical scholars of this age, to write an account of Henry's palaces, in imitation of Procopius, who is said to have described the palaces of the emperor Justinian. Frequent symptoms appeared, that perfection in every work of taste was at no great distance. Those clouds of ignorance which yet remained, began now to be illuminated by the approach of the dawn of truth.

THE reformation of our church produced an alteration for a time in the general system of study, and changed the character and subjects of our poetry. Every mind, both learned and unlearned, was busied in religious speculation; and every pen was employed in recommending, illustrating, and familiari­sing the Bible, which was now laid open to the people.

The poetical annals of king Edward the sixth, who removed those chains of bigottry which his brother Henry had only loosened, are marked with metrical translations of various parts of the sacred scripture. Of these the chief is the versification of the Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins: a performance, which has acquired an importance, and consequently claims a place in our series, not so much from any merit of its own, as from the circumstances with which it is connected.

It is extraordinary, that the protestant churches should be in­debted to a country in which the reformation had never begun to make any progress, and even to the indulgence of a society which remains to this day the grand bulwark of the catholic theology, for a very distinguishing and essential part of their ritual.

About the year 1540, Clement Marot, a valet of the bed­chamber to king Francis the first, was the favorite poet of France. This writer, having attained an unusual elegance and facility of style, added many new embellishments to the rude state of the French poetry. It is not the least of his praises, that La Fontaine used to call him his master. He was the inventor [Page 162] of the rondeau, and the restorer of the madrigal: but he became chiefly eminent for his pastorals, ballads, fables, elegies, epi­grams, and translations from Ovid and Petrarch. At length, being tired of the vanities of profane poetry, or rather privately tinctured with the principles of Lutheranism, he attempted, with the assistance of his friend Theodore Beza, and by the en­couragement of the professor of Hebrew in the university of Paris, a version of David's Psalms into French rhymes. This translation, which did not aim at any innovation in the public worship, and which received the sanction of the Sorbonne as containing nothing contrary to sound doctrine, he dedicated to his master Francis the first, and to the Ladies of France. In the dedication to the Ladies or les Dames de France, whom he had often before addressed in the tenderest strains of passion or com­pliment, he seems anxious to deprecate the raillery which the new tone of his versification was likely to incur, and is embar­rassed how to find an apology for turning saint. Conscious of his apostacy from the levities of life, in a spirit of religious gallantry, he declares that his design is to add to the happiness of his fair readers, by substituting divine hymns in the place of chansons d' amour, to inspire their susceptible hearts with a passion in which there is no torment, to banish that fickle and fantastic deity CUPID from the world, and to fill their apartments with the praises, not of the little god, but of the true Jehovah.

He adds, that the golden age would now be restored, when we should see, the peasant at his plough, the carman in the streets, and the mechanic in his shop, solacing their toils with psalms and canticles: and the shepherd and sheperdess, reposing in the shade, and teaching the rocks to echo the name of the Creator.

Marot's Psalms soon eclipsed the brilliancy of his madrigals and sonnets. Not suspecting how prejudicial the predominant rage of psalm-singing might prove to the antient religion of Europe, the catholics themselves adopted these sacred songs as serious ballads, and as a more rational species of domestic merri­ment. Thy were the common accompaniments of the fiddle. They were sold so rapidly, that the printers could not supply the public with copies. In the festive and splendid court of Francis the first, of a sudden nothing was heard but the psalms of Clement Marot. By each of the royal family and the principal nobility of the court a psalm was chosen, and fitted to the ballad-tune which each liked best. The dauphin prince Henry, who delighted in hunting, was fond of Ainsi qu'on oit le cerf bruire, or, Like as the Hart desireth the water-brooks, which he constantly sung in going out to the chase. Madame de Valenti­nois, between whom and the young prince there was an attach­ment, took Du fond de ma pensée, or, From the depth of my heart, O Lord. The queen's favorite was, Ne uveilles pas, O Sire, that is, O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation, which she sung to a fashionable jig. Antony king of Navarre sung, Revenge moy, pren le querelle, or, Stand up, O Lord, to revenge my quarrel, to [Page 164] the air of a dance of Poitou ^b. It was on very different princi­ples that psalmody flourished in the gloomy court of Cromwell. This fashion does not seem in the least to have diminished the gaiety and good humour of the court of Francis.

At this period John Calvin, in opposition to the discipline and doctrines of Rome, was framing his novel church at Ge­neva: in which the whole substance and form of divine worship was reduced to praying, preaching, and singing. In the last of these three, he chose to depart widely from the catholic usage: and, either because he thought that novelty was sure to succeed, that the practice of antiphonal chanting was superstitious, or that the people were excluded from bearing a part in the more solemn and elaborate performance of ecclesiastical music, or that the old papistic hymns were unedifying, or that verse was better remembered than prose, he projected, with the advice of Luther, a species of religious song, consisting of portions of the psalms intelligibly translated into the vernacular language, and adapted to plain and easy melodies, which all might learn, and in which all might join. This scheme, either by design or acci­dent, was luckily seconded by the publication of Marot's metri­cal psalms at Paris, which Calvin immediately introduced into his congregation at Geneva. Being set to simple and almost mo­notonous notes by Guillaume de Franc, they were soon estab­lished as the principal branch in that reformer's new devotion, and became a characteristical mark or badge of the Calvinistic worship and profession. Nor were they sung only in his churches. They exhilarated the convivial assemblies of the Calvinists, were commonly heard in the streets, and accompanied the labours of the artificer. The weavers and woollen manufacturers of Flanders, many of whom left the loom and entered into the ministry, are said to have been the capital performers into this science. At length Marot's psalms formed an appendix to the catechism of Geneva, and were interdicted to the catholics under the most [Page 165] severe penalties. In the language of the orthodox, psalm-singing and heresy were synonimous terms.

It was Calvin's system of reformation, not only to strip reli­gion of its superstitious and ostensible pageantries, of crucifixes, images, tapers, superb vestments, and splendid processions, but of all that was estimable in the sight of the people, and even of every simple ornament, every significant symbol, and decent ceremony; in a word, to banish every thing from his church which attracted or employed the senses, or which might tend to mar the purity of an abstracted adoration, and of a mental in­tercourse with the deity. It is hard to determine, how Calvin could reconcile the use of singing, even when purged from the corruptions and abuses of popery, to so philosophical a plan of worship. On a parallel principle, and if any artificial aids to devotion were to be allowed, he might at least have retained the use of pictures in the church. But a new sect always draws its converts from the multitude and the meanest of the people, who can have no relish for the more elegant externals. Calvin well knew that the manufacturers of Germany were no judges of pictures. At the same time it was necessary that his congrega­tion should be kept in good humour by some kind of pleasurable gratification and allurement, which might qualify and enliven the attendance on the more rigid duties of praying and preach­ing. Calvin therefore, intent as he was to form a new church on a severe model, had yet too much sagacity to exclude every auxiliary to devotion. Under this idea, he permitted an exercise, which might engage the affections, without violating the simpli­city of his worship: and sensible that his chief resources were in the rabble of a republic, and availing himself of that natural propensity which prompts even vulgar minds to express their more animated feelings in rhyme and music, he conceived a mode of universal psalmody, not too refined for common capa­cities, and fitted to please the populace. The rapid propagation of Calvin's religion, and his numerous proselytes, are a strong proof of his address in planning such a sort of service. France [Page 166] and Germany were instantly infatuated with a love of psalm­singing: which being admirably calculated to kindle and diffuse the flame of fanaticism, was peculiarly serviceable to the pur­poses of faction, and frequently served as the trumpet to rebel­lion. These energetic hymns of Geneva, under the conduct of the Calvinistic preachers, excited and supported a variety of po­pular insurrections; they filled the most flourishing cities of the Low-countries with sedition and tumult, and fomented the fury which defaced many of the most beautiful and venerable churches of Flanders.

This infectious frenzy of sacred song soon reached England, at the very critical point of time, when it had just embraced the reformation: and the new psalmody was obtruded on the new English liturgy by some few officious zealots, who favoured the discipline of Geneva, and who wished to abolish, not only the choral mode of worship in general, but more particularly to suppress the TE DEUM, BENEDICTUS, MAGNIFICAT, JUBI­LATE, NUNC DIMITTIS, and the rest of the liturgic hymns, which were supposed to be contaminated by their long and antient connection with the Roman missal, or at least in their prosaic form, to be unsuitable to the new system of worship.

Although Wyat and Surrey had before made translations of the Psalms into metre, Thomas Sternhold was the first whose metrical version of the Psalms was used in the church of Eng­land. Sternhold was a native of Hampshire, and probably edu­cated at Winchester college. Having passed some time at Oxford, he became groom of the robes to king Henry the eighth. In this department, either his diligent services or his knack at rhyming so pleased the king, that his majesty bequeathed him a legacy of one hundred marks. He continued in the same office under Edward the sixth, and is said to have acquired some degree of reputation about the court for his poetry. Being of a serious disposition, and an enthusiast to reformation, he was much of­fended at the lascivious ballads which prevailed among the cour­tiers: and, with a laudable design to check these indecencies, undertook [Page 167] a metrical version of the Psalter, ‘"thinking thereby, says Antony Wood, that the courtiers would sing them instead of their sonnets, but did not, only some few excepted ^c."’ Here was the zeal, if not the success, of his fellow labourer Clement Marot. A singular coincidence of circumstances is, notwith­standing, to be remarked on this occasion. Vernacular versions for general use of the Psalter were first published both in France and England, by laymen, by court-poets, and by servants of the court. Nor were the respective translations entirely completed by themselves: and yet they translated nearly an equal number of psalms, Marot having versified fifty, and Sternhold fifty-one. Sternhold died in the year 1549. His fifty-one psalms were printed the same year by Edward Whitchurch, under the fol­lowing title. ‘"All such Psalms of David as Thomas Stern­holde late grome of the kinges Maiestyes robes did in his ly [...]e tyme drawe into Englysshe metre."’ They are without the musical notes, as is the second edition in 1552. He probably lived to prepare the first edition for the press, as it is dedicated by himself to king Edward the sixth.

Cotemporary with Sternhold, and his coadjutor, was John Hopkins: of whose life nothing more is known, than that he was a clergyman and a schoolmaster of Suffolk, and perhaps a graduate at Oxford about the year 1544. Of his abilities as a teacher of the classics, he has left a specimen in some Latin stanzas prefixed to FOX'S MARTYROLOGY. He is rather a better English poet than Sternhold; and translated fifty eight of the psalms, distinguished by the initials of his name.

Of the rest of the contributors to this undertaking, the chief, at least in point of rank and learning, was William Whytting­ham, promoted by Robert earl of Leicester to the deanery of Durham, yet not without a strong reluctance to comply with the use of the canonical habiliments. Among our reli­gious exiles in the reign of Mary, he was Calvin's principal [Page 168] favorite, from whom he received ordination. So pure was his faith, that he was thought worthy to succeed to the congrega­tion of Geneva, superintended by Knox, the Scotch reformer; who, from a detestation of idols, proceeded to demolish the churches in which they were contained. It was one of the natural consequences of Whyttingham's translation from Knox's pastorship at Geneva to an English deanery, that he destroyed or removed many beautiful and harmless monuments of antient art in his cathedral. To a man, who had so highly spiritualised his religious conceptions, as to be convinced that a field, a street, or a barn, were fully sufficient for all the operations of chris­tian worship, the venerable structures raised by the magnificent piety of our ancestors could convey no ideas of solemnity, and had no other charms than their ample endowments. Beside the psalms he translated ^d, all which bear his initials, by way of in­novating still further on our established formularly, he versified the Decalogue, the Nicene, Apostolic, and Athanasian Creeds, the Lord's Prayer, the TE DEUM, the Song of the three Children, with other hymns which follow the book of psalmody. How the Ten Commandments and the Athanasian Creed, to say no­thing of some of the rest, should become more edifying and better suited to common use, or how they could receive im­provement in any respect or degree, by being reduced into rhym [...], it is not easy to perceive. But the real design was, to render that more tolerable which could not be entirely removed, to accommodate every part of the service to the psalmodic tone, and to clothe our whole liturgy in the garb of Geneva. All these, for he was a lover of music, were sung in Whytting­ham's church of Durham under his own directions. Heylin says, that from vicinity of situation, he was enabled to lend con­siderable assistance to his friend Knox in the introduction of the presbyterian hierarchy into Scotland. I must indulge the reader with a stanza or two of this dignified fanatic's divine poetry [Page 169] from his Creeds and the Decalogue. From the Athanasian Creed.

From the Apostolic Creed.

The Ten Commandments are thus closed.

These were also versified by Clement Marot.

Twenty-seven of the psalms were turned into metre by Thomas Norton ^e, who perhaps was better employed, at least as a poet, in writing the tragedy of GORDOBUCKE in conjunction with lord Buckhurst. It is certain that in Norton's psalms we see none of those sublime strokes which sir Philip Sydney disco­vered in that venerable drama. He was of Sharpenhoe in Bed­fordshire, a barrister, and in the opinion and phraseology of the Oxford biographer, a bold and busy Calvinist about the begin­ning of the reign of queen Elisabeth. He was patronised by the Protector Somerset; at whose desire he translated an epistle addressed by Peter Martyr to Somerset, into English, in 1550. Under the same patronage he probably tran [...]lated also Calvin's Institutes.

[Page 170] Robert Wisdome, a protestant fugitive in the calamitous reign of queen Mary, afterwards archdeacon of Ely, and who had been nominated to an Irish bishoprick by king Edward the sixth, rendered the twenty-fifth psalm of this version ^f. But he is chiefly memorable for his metrical prayer, intended to be sung in the church, against the Pope and the Turk, of whom he seems to have conceived the most alarming apprehensions. It is probable, that he thought popery and mahometanism were equally dangerous to christianity, at least the most powerful and the sole enemies of our religion. This is the first stanza.

Happily we have hitherto survived these two formidable evils! Among other orthodox wits, the facetious bishop Corbet has ridiculed these lines. He supposes himself seized with a sudden impulse to hear or to pen a puritanical hymn, and invokes the ghost of Robert Wisdome, as the most skilful poet in this mode of composition, to come and assist. But he advises Wisdome to steal back again to his tomb, which was in Carfax church at Oxford, silent and unperceived, for fear of being detected and intercepted by the Pope or the Turk. But I will produce Cor­bet's epigram, more especially as it contains a criticism written in the reign of Charles the first, on the style of this sort of poetry.

The entire version of the psalter was at length published by John Day, in 1562, attached for the first time to the common prayer, and entitled, ‘"The whole Booke of Psalmes collected into English metre by T. Sternhold, J. Hopkins, and others, conferred with the Ebrue, with apt Notes to [...]ing them withall."’ Calvin's music was intended to correspond with the general par­simonious spirit of his worship: not to captivate the passions, and seduce the mind, by a levity, a variety, or a richness of modulation, but to infuse the more sober and unravishing ecstasies. The music he permitted, although sometimes it had wonderful effects, was to be without grace, elegance, or ele­vation. These apt notes were about forty tunes, of one part only, and in one unisonous key; remarkable for a certain uni­form strain of sombrous gravity, and applicable to all the psalms in their turns, as the stanza and sense might allow. They also appear in the subsequent impressions, particularly of 1564, and 1577. They are believed to contain some of the original melo­dies, composed by French and German musicians. Many of them, particularly the celebrated one of the hundredth psalm, are the tunes of Goudimel and Le Jeune, who are among the first composers of Marot's French psalms ^h. Not a few were probably [Page 172] imported by the protestant manufacturers of cloth, of Flanders, and the Low Countries, who fled into England from the perse­cution of the Duke de Alva, and settled in those counties where their art now chiefly flourishes. It is not however un­likely, that some of our own musicians, who lived about the year 1562, and who could always tune their harps to the reli­gion of the times, such as Marbeck, Tallis, Tye, Parsons, and Munday, were employed on this occasion; yet under the restric­tion of conforming to the jejune and unadorned movements of the foreign composers. I [...]resume much of the primitive har­mony of all these antient tunes is now lost, by additions, varia­tions, and transpositions.

This version is said to be conferred with the Ebrue. But I am inclined to think, that the translation was altogether made from the vulgate text, either in Latin or English.

It is evident that the prose psalms of our liturgy were chiefly consulted and copied, by the perpetual assumption of their words and combinations: many of the stanza [...] are literally nothing more than the prose-verses put into rhyme. As thus,

Whyttingham however, who had travelled to acquire the lite­rature then taught in the foreign universities, and who joined in the translation of Coverdale's Bible, was undoubtedly a scholar, and an adept in the Hebrew language.

It is certain that every attempt to clothe the sacred Scripture in verse, will have the effect of misrepresenting and debasing the dignity of the original. But this general inconvenience, arising from the nature of things, was not the only difficulty which our versifiers of the psalter had to encounter, in common [Page 173] with all other writers employed in a similar task. Allowing for the state of our language in the middle of the sixteenth century, they appear to have been but little qualified either by genius or accomplishments for poetical composition. It is for this reason that they have produced a translation entirely destitute of ele­gance, spirit, and propriety. The truth is, that they undertook this work, not so much from an ambition of literary fame, or a consciousness of abilities, as from motives of piety, and in compliance with the cast of the times. I presume I am com­municating no very new criticism when I observe, that in every part of this translation we are disgusted with a languor of versifi­cation, and a want of common prosody. The most exalted effusions of thanksgiving, and the most sublime imageries of the divine majesty, are lowered by a coldness of conception, weak­ened by frigid interpolations, and disfigured by a poverty of phraseology. Thomas Hopkins expostulates with the deity in these ludicrous, at least trivial, expressions.

What writer who wished to diminish the might of the su­preme Being, and to expose the style and sentiments of Scripture, [Page 174] could have done it more skilfully, than by making David call upon God, not to consume his enemies by an irresistible blow, but to give them a rap? Although some shadow of an apology may be suggested for the word rap, that it had not then acquired its present burlesque acceptation, or the idea of a petty stroke, the vulgarity of the following phrase, in which the practice or profession of religion, or more particularly God's covenant with the Jews, is degraded to a trade, cannot easily be vindicated on any consideration of the fluctuating sense of words.

Nor is there greater delicacy or consistency in the following stanza.

The psalmist says, that God has placed the sun in the heavens, ‘"which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber."’ Here is a comparison of the sun rising, to a bridegroom; who, according to the Jewish custom, was ushered from his chamber at midnight, with great state, preceded by torches and music. Sternhold has thus metrified the passage ⁿ.

The translator had better have spared his epithet to the bride­groom; which, even in the sense of ready-dressed, is derogatory to [Page 175] the idea of the comparison. But ready-trimm'd, in the language of that time, was nothing more than fresh-shaved. Sternhold as often impairs a splendid description by an impotent redundancy, as by an omission or contraction of the most important circum­stances.

The miraculous march of Jehovah before the Israelites through the wilderness in their departure from Egypt, with other marks of his omnipotence, is thus imaged by the inspired psalmist. ‘"O God, when thou wentest forth before the people, when thou wentest through the wilderness: the earth shook, and the heavens dropped at the presence of God; even as Sinai also was moved at the presence of God, who is the God of Israel. Thou, O God, sentedst a gracious rain upon thine inheritance, and refreshedst it when it was weary.—The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of an­gels; and the Lord is among them, as in the holy place of Sinai."’ Sternhold has thus represented these great ideas.