the latter part of the sixteenth century. In this work are large enumerations of plants, as well for the medical as the culinary garden. Our author's general precepts have often an expressive brevity, and are sometimes pointed with an epigrammatic turn and a smartness of allusion. As thus, Saue wing for a thresher, when gander doth die; Sweet sause is as craftie as euer was frier.i Again, under the lessons of the housewife, Though cat, a good mouser, doth dwell in a house, Take heed how thou laiest the banek for the rats, And in the following rule of the smaller economics, Saue droppings and skimmings, however ye doo, In these stanzas on haymaking, he rises above his common manner. Prouiding them weapons, and other like pelfe: The battell is fought, ye haue gotten the daie." A great variety of verse is used in this poem, which is thrown into numerous detached chapters. The HUSBANDRIE is divided into the See Preface to the Buier of this Booke, ch. 5. fol. 14. In the same measure is the Comparison betweene Champion Countrie and Severall, ch. 52. fol. 108. [The Preface above cited, contained two stanzas thus worded, in the edition of 1570, I believe, only What lookest thou here for to have? several months. Tusser, in respect of his antiquated diction, and his argument, may not improperly be styled the English Varro*. Such were the rude beginnings in the English language of didactic poetry, which, on a kindred subject, the present age has seen brought to perfection, by the happy combination of judicious precepts with the most elegant ornaments of language and imagery, in Mr. Mason's ENGLISH GARDEN. SECTION LIV. William Forrest's poems. His Queen Catharine, an elegant manuscript, contains anecdotes of Henry's divorce. He collects and preserves ancient music. Puritans oppose the study of the classics. Lucas Shepherd. John Pullayne. Numerous metrical versions of Solomon's Song. Censured by Hall the satirist. Religious rhymers. Edward More. Boy-bishop, and miracle-plays, revived by queen Mary. Minute particulars of an ancient miracle-play. AMONG Antony Wood's manuscripts in the Bodleian library at Oxford, I find a poem of considerable length written by William Forrest, chaplain to queen Mary. It is entitled, "A true and most notable History of a right noble and famous Lady produced in Spayne entitled the second GRESIELD, practised not long out of this time in much part tragedous as delectable both to hearers and readers." This is a panegyrical history in octave rhyme, of the life of queen Catharine, the first queen of king Henry the Eighth. The poet compares Catharine to patient Grisild, celebrated by Petrarch and Chaucer, and Henry to * [Barnaby Googe, in his preface to the translation of Herebach's four books of Husbandrie, 1578, sets Fitzherbert and Tusser on a level with Varro and Columella and Palladius: but the sedate Stillingfleet would rather compare Tusser to old Hesiod, from the following considerations. They both wrote in the infancy of husbandry in their different countries: both gave good general precepts without entering into the detail, though Tusser has more of it than Hesiod: they both seem desirous to improve the morals of their readers as well as their farms, by recommending industry and œconomy: and, that which perhaps may be looked upon as the greatest resemblance, they both wrote in verse; probably for the same reason, namely, to propagate their doctrines more effectually. But here the resemblance ends: the Greek was a very fine poet, the Englishman an unskilful versifier. However, there is something very pleasing in our countryman's lines now and then, though of the rustic kind; and sometimes his thoughts are aptly and concisely expressed :-e. g. Reape well, scatter not, gather cleane that is shorne, Binde fast, shock apace, have an eye to thy corne, Lode safe, carry home, follow time being faire, Gove just in the barne, it is out of despaire. Mem. for Hist. of Husbandry in the Works of Benj. Stillingfleet, ii. 572.-PARK.] a In folio. MSS. Cod. A. Wood. Num. 2. They were purchased by the University after Wood's death. earl Walter her husband". Catharine had certainly the patience and conjugal compliance of Grisild; but Henry's cruelty was not, like Walter's, only artificial and assumed. It is dedicated to queen Mary*: and Wood's manuscript, which was once very superbly bound and embossed, and is elegantly written on vellum, evidently appears to have been the book presented by the author to her majesty. Much of its ancient finery is tarnished; but on the brass bosses at each corner is still discernible AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA. At the end is this colophon : "Here endeth the Historye of Grysilde the second, dulie meanyng Queene Catharine mother to our most dread soveraigne Lady queene Mary, fynysched the xxv day of June, the yeare of owre Lorde 1558. By the symple and unlearned Syr Wylliam Forrest preeiste, propria manu." The poem, which consists of twenty chapters, contains a zealous condemnation of Henry's divorce; and, I believe, preserves some anecdotes, yet apparently misrepresented by the writer's religious and political bigotry, not extant in any of our printed histories. Forrest was a student at Oxford, at the time when this notable and knotty point of casuistry prostituted the learning of all the universities of Europe, to the gratification of the capricious amours of a libidinous and implacable tyrant. He has recorded many particulars and local incidents of what passed in Oxford during that transaction. At the end of the poem is a metrical ORATION CONSOLATORY, in six leaves, to queen Mary. In the British Museum is another of Forrest's poems, written in two splendid folio volumes on vellum, called "The tragedious troubles of the most chast and innocent Joseph, son to the holy patriarch Jacob," and dedicated to Thomas Howard duke of Norfolkd. In the same repository is another of his pieces, never printed, dedicated to king Edward the Sixth, "A notable warke called The PLEASANT POESIE OF PRINCELIE PRACTISE, composed of late by the simple and unlearned sir Wil a b The affecting story of Patient Grisild seems to have long kept up its celebrity. In the books of the Stationers, in 1565, Owen Rogers has a licence to print ballat intituled the songe of pacyent Gressell vnto hyr make." Registr. A. fol. 132 b. Two ballads are entered in 1565,"to the tune of pacyente Gressell." Ibid. fol. 135 a. In the same year T. Colwell has licence to print " The History of meke and pacyent Gresell." Ibid. fol. 139 a. Colwell has a second edition of this history in 1568. Ibid. fol. 177 a. Instances occur much lower. [In poetic compliment to his royal patroness, Forrest wrote and printed "A new ballade of the Mari-golde." This is preserved in the archives of the Society of Antiquaries, and has been reprinted in the Harl. Miscell. Suppl. vol. ii.-PARK.] In the first chapter, he thus speaks of the towardliness of the princess Catharine's younger years: With stoole and needyl she was not to And other practiseingis for ladyes meete; He adds, that she was a pure virgin when d MSS. Reg. 18 C. xiii. It appears to have once belonged to the library of John Theyer of Cooper's-hill near Gloucester. There is another copy in University-college Library, MSS. G. 7. with gilded leaves. This, I believe, once belonged to Robert earl of Aylesbury. Pr. "In Canaan that country opulent." liam Forrest priest, much part collected out of a booke entitled the GOVERNANCE OF NOBLEMEN, which booke the wyse philosopher Aristotle wrote to his disciple Alexander the Greate." The book here mentioned is Ægidius Romanus de REGIMINE PRINCIPUM, which yet retained its reputation and popularity from the middle age. I ought to have observed before, that Forrest translated into English metre fifty of David's Psalms, in 1551, which are dedicated to the duke of Somerset, the Protectors. Hence we are led to suspect, that our author could accommodate his faith to the reigning powers. Many more of his manuscript pieces both in prose and verse, all professional and of the religious kind, were in the hands of Robert earl of Ailesbury h. Forrest, who must have been living at Oxford, as appears from his poem on queen Catharine, so early as the year 1530, was in reception of an annual pension of six pounds from Christ-church in that university, in the year 1555. He was eminently skilled in music; and with much diligence and expense, he collected the works of the most excellent English composers, that were his cotemporaries. These, being the choicest compositions of John Taverner of Boston, organist of Cardinal-college now Christ-church at Oxford, John Merbeck who first digested our present church-service from the notes of the Roman missal, Fairfax, Tye, Sheppard, Norman, and others, falling after Forrest's death into the possession of doctor William Hether, founder of the musical praxis and professorship at Oxford in 1623, are now fortunately preserved at Oxford, in the archives of the music-school assigned to that institution. In the year 1554, a poem of two sheets, in the spirit and stanza of Sternhold, was printed under the title, "The VNGODLINESSE OF THE HETHNICKE GODDES or The Downfall of Diana of the Ephesians, by J. D. an exile for the word, late a minister in London, MDLIV." I presume it was printed at Geneva, and imported into England with other books of the same tendency, and which were afterwards suppressed by a proclamation. The writer, whose arguments are as weak as his poetry, e MSS. Reg. 17 D. iii. In the Preface twenty-seven chapters are enumerated; but the book contains only twenty-four. See supr. vol. ii. p. 259. Not long before, Robert Copland, the printer, author of the Testament of Julien [or Jyllian] of Brentford, translated from the French and printed, "The Secrete of Secretes of Aristotle, with the governayle of princes and euerie manner of estate, with rules of health for bodie and soule." Lond. 1528. 4to. To what I have before said of Robert Copland as a poet, may be added, that he prefixed an English copy of verses to the Mirrour of the Church of saynt Austine of Abyngdon, &c. Printed by himself, 1521. 4to. Another to Andrew Chertsey's Passio Domini, ibid. 1521. 4to. (See P. 80 of this volume.) He and his brother William printed several romances before 1530. MSS. Reg. 17 A. xxi. [See also the Conventual Library of Westminster in Gen. Catal. "Some Psalms in English verse, by W. Forest." Cod. MSS. Eccl. Cath. Westmonas.-PARK.] h Wood, Ath. Oxon. i. 124. Fox says, that he paraphrased the Pater Noster in English verse, Pr. "Our Father which in heaven doth sit." Also the Te Deum, as a thanksgiving hymn for queen Mary, Pr. "O God, thy name we magnifie." Fox, Mart. p. 1139. edit. vet. i MSS. Le Neve. From a long chapter in his Katharine, about the building of Christ-church and the regimen of it, he appears to have been of that college. Bl. lett. 12mo. attempts to prove, that the customary mode of training youths in the Roman poets encouraged idolatry and pagan superstition. This was a topic much laboured by the puritans. Prynne, in that chapter of his HISTRIOMASTIx, where he exposes "the obscenity, ribaldry, amourousnesse, HEATHENISHNESSE, and prophanesse of most play-bookes, Arcadias, and fained histories that are now so much in admiration," acquaints us, that the infallible leaders of the puritan persuasion in the reign of queen Elizabeth, among which are two bishops, have solemnly prohibited all christians, "to pen, to print, to sell, to read, or school-masters and others to teach, any amorous wanton Play-bookes, Histories, or Heathen authors, especially Ovid's wanton Epistles and Bookes of love, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Martiall, the Comedies of Plautus, Terence, and other such amorous bookes, savoring either of Pagan Gods, Ethnicke rites and ceremonies, of scurrility, amorousnesse, and prophanesse1." But the classics were at length condemned by a much higher authority. In the year 1582, one Christopher Ocland, a schoolmaster of Cheltenham, published two poems in Latin hexameters, one entitled ANGLORUM PRÆLIA, the other ELIZABETHA". To these poems, which are written in a low style of Latin versification, is prefixed an edict from the lords of privy council, signed, among others, by Cowper bishop of Lincoln, Lord Warwick, Lord Leicester, sir Francis Knollys, sir Christopher Hatton, and sir Francis Walsingham, and directed to the queen's ecclesiastical commissioners, containing the following passage: "Forasmuche as the subject or matter of this booke is such, as is worthie to be read of all men, and especially in common schooles, where diuers HEATHEN POETS are ordinarily read and taught, from which the youth of the realme doth rather receiue infection in manners, than aduancement in uertue: in place of some of which poets, we thinke this Booke fit to be read and taught in the grammar schooles: we haue therefore thought good, for the encouraging the said Ocklande ' Pag. 913. 916. m Londini. Apud Rad. Neubery ex assignatione Henrici Bynneman typographi. Anno 1582. Cum priv. 12mo. The whole title is this, "ANGLORUM PRÆLIA ab A.D. 1327, anno nimirum primo inclytissimi principis Edwardi eius nominis tertii, usque ad A.D. 1558, carmine summatim perstricta. Item De pacatissimo Anglia statu, imperante Elizabetha, compendiosa Narratio. Authore Christophoro Oclando, primo Scholæ Southwarkiensis prope Londinum, dein Cheltennamensis, quæ sunt a serenissima sua majestate fundatæ, moderatore. Hæc dua poemata, tam ob argumenti grauitatem, quam carminis facilitatem, nobilissimi regiæ majestatis consiliarii in omnibus regni scholis præle. genda pueris præscripserunt. Hijs Alexandri Neuilli Kettum, tum propter argumenti similitudinem, tum propter oratio nis elegantiam, adiunximus. Londini," &c. Prefixed to the Anglorum Prælia is a Latin elegiac copy by Thomas Newton of Cheshire to the Elizabetha, which is dedicated by the author to the learned lady Mildred Burleigh, two more; one by Richard Mulcaster the celebrated master of Merchant-taylors' school, the other by Thomas Watson an elegant writer of sonnets. Our author was a very old man, as appears by the last of these copies. Whence, says bishop Hall, Sat. iii. B 4. Or cite olde Oclande's verse, how they did wield The wars, in Turwin or in Turney field. [Newton has a Latin copy of Commendatory verses before Robbard's Translation of Ripley's Compound of Alchymy, 1591. -PARK.] |