printed at Oxford in 1480 and 1481, of whom I shall make further mention in the following Pages.

Whether he came along with Corseles as an under Workman is difficult to determine."

JACQUES

JACQUES DE LA TAILLE.

MR. TODD, in his Life of Spenser, has made many ingenious remarks on the false taste of some of our Poets of that period, and particularly on that absurd propensity which distinguished many of them, to accommodate the English language to the metres of the ancients. The absurdity, however, did not escape the animadversions of the critics and satirists of those times. Bishop Hall terms such effusions "rhymeless numbers." In his Sixth Satire he thus speaks of them:

Whoever saw a colt wanton and wild,

Yoked with a slow-foot ox on fallow field,
Can right areed how handsomely besets
Dull spondees with the English dactylets.
If Jove speak English in a thundring cloud,
Thwick, thwack and riff raff roars he out aloud,
Fie on the forged mint that did create

New coin of words never articulate.

Strange as it may seem, there was not long since, an attempt to revive this foolery, but the very happy ridicule of the writers of the Poetry in the Periodical Work of the Antijacobin, extinguished it, it may be hoped for ever. Few can forget

the

the humourous effusion of the "Needy Knife Grinder."

The absurdity, however, was not confined to our countrymen. The French also had a similar ambition. By the kindness of the Bishop of Rochester, I am enabled to describe the following very singular and uncommon French book.

"LA MANIERE DE FAIRE DES VERS EN FRANÇOIS COMME EN GREC ET EN LATIN, Par feu JACQUES DE LA TAILLE, du pays de Beauce.

S. Paris par Frederic Morel 1573." 12mo.

This is a regular prosodical Treatise, and proceeds, after having laid down and adjusted the quantities of syllables, to treat of the different metres, and to exemplify them in French verses. These examples are very curious and amusing, though they prove, that the attempt to introduce the classical metres into a modern language, was as unsuccessful in France as it was with us.

It requires no common sagacity to find out that the following line is an Hexameter.

Dessus tous ǎnimaux Dieu forma l'homme malheureux.

When the discovery is made it is not easy to bring the ear to acknowledge that it is so. The same may be observed of the Pentameter.

Il nous faut ǎbolir toute superstition.

The

The following is an example of the long

Asclepiad.

Charle en France fera naître le siecle d'or.

This of the short Asclepiad.

Ō seigneur que je sēns de măl.

As a specimen of the long Iambic I subjoin

Celui perire qui se confie en son bien.

Of the Sapphic

O le seul, auteur de se monde parfait,
Pere qui aux cieux ta demeure choisis,
Fay que ton nom tant venerable partout
Sanctifié soit.

It is not unworthy of observation, that the Sapphic metre is that which seems best to accommodate itself to the form of both languages.

The author of this curious little volume died of the Plague in the year 1562, before he had compleated his twenty-first year. Young as he was, he had written five Tragedies besides other Poems, which were collected and published, together with the works of his Brother, who was named JOHN DE LA TAILLE, who also was a Poet in 1573 or 1574. .

It

It is important to state the time of his death, because it offers a question to those who are well versed in Old English Literature, whether the idea of adopting the ancient metres, which towards the end of the sixteenth century prevailed so much with our English Poets, might not be borrowed from this French writer.

FYLOSTRATO