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and to what we saw would best become the nature of the thing handled or the quality of the words? Surely it is to be thought that if any one of sound judgment and learning should put forth some famous work containing divers forms of true verses, fitting the measures according to the matter, it would of itself be a sufficient authority, without any prescription of rules, to the most part of poets for them to follow and by custom to ratify. For sure it is that the rules and principles of poetry were not precisely followed and observed by the first beginners and writers of poetry, but were selected and gathered severally out of their works for the direction and behoof of their followers. And indeed he, that shall with heedful judgment make trial of the English words, shall not find them so gross or unapt, but they will become any one of the most accustomed sorts of Latin or Greek verses meetly, and run thereon somewhat currently.1

By way of illustrating his theories he tried his own. hand on the making of English hexameters, and gave as a specimen the following translation of the first line of Virgil's Bucolics :

Tîtyrus, happilỹ thōū līēst tūmbling undĕr ǎ beech tree! 2

His treatise deals with other matters besides the reform of versification; but, as may be supposed, he does not show many signs of judgment and good taste. He praises Spenser as "our late famous English poet" (he is referring to The Shepherd's Calendar, published in 1579), but he has an equal admiration for Gabriel Harvey; he exalts Lyly as an almost unrivalled genius, and has a very high opinion of Phaër's translation of Virgil.

George Puttenham, whose Art of English Poesy appeared in 1589, is a critic of far higher ability. He was himself a poet, and, according to his own account of himself, had written verses as early as the reign of Edward VI. He was also a courtier, and, having got rid of some of the rust of learning by mixing with polite society, he escaped the fallacies which for a time deluded even a genius so great as Spenser.

True, he acquiesced theoretically in the reasoning of 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 69.

1 Haslewood's Ancient Critical Essays, vol. ii. p. 66.

Ascham and his followers, and showed "how if all manner of sudden innovations were not very scandalous, specially in the laws of any language or art, the use of the Greek or Latin feet might be brought into our vulgar poesy, and with good grace enough." But he sees clearly with Castiglione what must be the true standard of diction in poetry :

This part in our maker or poet must be heedfully looked into, that it be natural, pure, and the most usual of all his country; and for the same purpose rather that which is spoken in the King's Court, or in the good towns and cities within the land, than in the marches or frontiers, or post towns, where strangers haunt for traffic's sake, or yet in the Universities where scholars use such peevish affectation of words out of the primitive languages, or finally in any uplandish village or corner of a realm; neither shall he follow the speech of a craftsman or carter or other of the inferior sort, though he inhabitant or bred in the best town or city in this realm, for such persons do abuse good speeches by strange accents or ill-shapen sounds and false orthography. But he shall follow generally the better brought-up sort, such as the Greeks call charientes-men civil and graciously behavioured and bred. Our maker therefore at these days shall not follow Piers Plowman, nor Gower, nor Lydgate, nor yet Chaucer, for their language is now out of use with us; neither shall he take the terms of Northern men, such as they use in daily talk, whether they be noblemen, or gentlemen, or best clerks, is all of no matter; nor in effect any speech used beyond the river of Trent, though no man can deny but theirs is the purer English Saxon at this day, yet it is not so courtly nor so curious as our Southern English is, no more is the far Western man's speech; ye shall therefore take the usual speech of the Court, and that of London, and of the shires lying about London within sixty miles, and not much above.2

Puttenham divided his treatise into three parts-(1) On Poets and Poesy; (2) On Proportion; (3) On Ornament. The second of these books shows a very remarkable power of observation, thought, and arrangement. He considers Poetical Proportion under the heads of Staff, Measure, Situation, Concord, and Figure, and almost 2 Ibid. p. 120.

1 Haslewood's Ancient Critical Essays, vol. i. p. 85.

everything that he says is well worth consideration. Especially interesting are his remarks on the cæsura in English verse, showing as they do that he, like Gascoigne, and indeed Spenser, was quite unaware of the metrical principle on which Chaucer wrote. He says:

Our ancient rhymers, as Chaucer, Lydgate, and others, used those cæsuras either very seldom or not at all, or else very licentiously, and many times made their metres (they called them riding rhyme) of such unshapely words as would allow no convenient cæsura, and therefore did let their rhymes run out at length, and never stayed but they came to the end, which manner though it were not to be misliked in some sort of metre, yet in every long verse the cæsura ought to be kept precisely, if it were but to serve as a law to correct the licentiousness of rhymers; besides that it pleaseth the ear better, and showeth more cunning in the maker by following the rule of his restraint.1

2

Puttenham makes it a hard-and-fast rule to place the cæsura "in a verse of ten upon the fourth, leaving six to follow"; but if he had studied Surrey more carefully he would have seen that the fine ear of that poet had taught him that the place of the cæsura should be varied, and move mainly between the fourth syllable and the seventh.3

Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry (1581) is not so much a treatise on Prosody as an Apology for the Art as a whole, having been written mainly in consequence of Stephen Gosson's attack on the stage. He proves that the purpose of poetry is moral and didactic; shows the high estimation in which poets have always been held; defines the various orders of poetry; points out the distinction between Poetry, on the one hand, and Divinity, Philosophy, and History on the other; after which he passes on to the subdivisions of poetry, and then examines the objections brought against the art. The concluding portion of his treatise, devoted to an examination of the contemporary state of English poetry, and of the language in general, contains some very interesting observations, and especially a criticism on the style of the Euphuists:

1 Haslewood's Ancient Critical Essays, vol. i. p. 62.
2 Ibid. p. 62.
3 Ibid. See ante, pp. 93, 94.

Now for similitudes in certain printed discourses, I think all herbarists, all stories of beasts, fowls, and fishes are rifled up, that they may come in multitudes to wait upon any of our conceits, which certainly is as absurd a surfeit to the ears as is possible. For the force of a similitude not being to prove anything to a contrary disputer, but only to explain to a willing hearer; when that is done the rest is a most tedious prattling, rather overswaying the memory from the purpose whereto they were applied, than any whit improving the judgment, already either satisfied, or by similitudes not to be satisfied.1

These extracts will indicate sufficiently the nature of the critical questions which were occupying men's thoughts at this period. Had their minds been more definitely made up about the ends of life and art, as we shall presently see that Marlowe's mind was made up about the principles of dramatic action, there would have been no need to discuss refinements about the true modes of expression. As it was, in default of obvious subjects of poetry, invention was chiefly occupied in discovering novelties of form to disguise the lack of matter. Groups and schools of metrical composers, making experiments in the art of poetry, sprang up in all directions, from the doctor of Oxford or Cambridge who lectured his common room on the rules of prosody, down to the manufacturer of love-pamphlets who sought to gain a living in London by studying the caprices of the public taste. But four main groups stand out clearly in the midst of these varieties: (1) The university scholars who attempted to reform the national poetry on classical lines; (2) The imitators of Petrarch and of the Italian Concetti makers; (3) The Courtiers who expressed the feelings of chivalrous society in Euphuistic forms; (4) The men of letters who embodied the spirit of the Renaissance in pastoral romance or classical mythology.

1. The first of these groups was headed by Gabriel Harvey. The eldest of the four sons of a rope-maker of Saffron Walden; he was born about 1547, and was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, passing to Pem

1 Apologie for Poetrie (Arber), p. 68.

broke Hall, where he became tutor. His character was of a kind not infrequently found in societies where men are accustomed "to measure themselves by themselves," and where the only measure recognised is the abstract one of learning. His vanity and pushing arrogance were so extreme, that many members of his College combined to prevent him from proceeding to his degree of Master; but he had a strong following among the younger men, of whom none was more ardent in his behalf than Spenser.

Harvey was an effective lecturer on rhetoric in his University. He tells us himself that he was of the school of Bembo, whose Ciceronianus he enthusiastically admired, though in time he had the good sense to perceive the superiority of the principles of Erasmus.1 Carried away by his love for the classics, and not understanding the true genius of his own language, he set himself to work out an idea of linguistic reform, which had first been started by Ascham. "This matter," the latter had said in his Schoolmaster" maketh me gladly remember my sweet time spent at Cambridge, and the pleasant talk which I oft had with M. Cheke and M. Watson of this fault, not only in the old Latin poets, but also in our new English rhymers at this day. They wished, as Virgil and Horace were not wedded to follow the faults of former fathers (a shrewd marriage in greater matters), but, by right imitation of the perfit Grecians, had brought poetry also to perfitness in the Latin tongue, that we Englishmen likewise would acknowledge and understand rightfully our rude beggarly rhyming, brought first into Italy by Goths and Huns, when all good verses and all good learning were destroyed by them and after carried into France and Germany and art received into England by men of excellent wit indeed, but of small learning and less judgment in that behalf." 2

Ascham argued that, though hexameters might not be suitable to the genius of English, the trimeter iambic, if properly treated, could readily be naturalised in the language. These ideas Harvey did his best to reduce to

1 Gabriel Harvey's Works (Grosart), vol. i. p. xxiii.
2 The Schoolmaster (Mayor's edition), p. 176.

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