England's Antiphon

GASCOIGNE'S GOOD MORROW

 
  You that have spent the silent night
    In sleep and quiet rest,
  And joy to see the cheerful light
    That riseth in the east;
  Now clear your voice, now cheer your heart;
    Come help me now to sing;
  Each willing wight come bear a part,
    To praise the heavenly King.
 
 
  And you whom care in prison keeps,
    Or sickness doth suppress,
  Or secret sorrow breaks your sleeps,
    Or dolours do distress;
  Yet bear a part in doleful wise;
    Yea, think it good accord,
  And acceptable sacrifice,
    Each sprite to praise the Lord.
 
 
  The dreadful night with darksomeness
    Had overspread the light,
  And sluggish sleep with drowsiness
    Had overpressed our might:
  A glass wherein you may behold
    Each storm that stops our breath,
  Our bed the grave, our clothes like mould,
    And sleep like dreadful death.
 
 
  Yet as this deadly night did last
    But for a little space,
  And heavenly day, now night is past,
    Doth shew his pleasant face;
  So must we hope to see God's face
    At last in heaven on high,
  When we have changed this mortal place
    For immortality.
 

This is not so bad, but it is enough. There are six stanzas more of it. I transcribe yet another, that my reader may enjoy a smile in passing. He is "moralizing" the aspects of morning:

 
  The carrion crow, that loathsome beast,
    Which cries against the rain,
  Both for his hue and for the rest,
    The Devil resembleth plain;
  And as with guns we kill the crow,
    For spoiling our relief,
  The Devil so must we overthrow,
    With gunshot of belief.
 

So fares the wit, when it walks abroad to do its business without the heart that should inspire it.

Here is one good stanza from his De Profundis:

 
  But thou art good, and hast of mercy store;
    Thou not delight'st to see a sinner fall;
    Thou hearkenest first, before we come to call;
  Thine ears are set wide open evermore;
  Before we knock thou comest to the door.
    Thou art more prest to hear a sinner cry, ready.
    Than he is quick to climb to thee on high.
  Thy mighty name be praised then alway:
         Let faith and fear
         True witness bear
  How fast they stand which on thy mercy stay.
 

Here follow two of unknown authorship, belonging apparently to the same period.

THAT EACH THING IS HURT OF ITSELF

 
  Why fearest thou the outward foe,
    When thou thyself thy harm dost feed?
  Of grief or hurt, of pain or woe,
    Within each thing is sown the seed.
  So fine was never yet the cloth,
    No smith so hard his iron did beat,
  But th' one consuméd was with moth,
    Th' other with canker all to-freate. fretted away.
 
 
  The knotty oak and wainscot old
    Within doth eat the silly worm;⁵³
  Even so a mind in envy rolled
    Always within it self doth burn.
  Thus every thing that nature wrought,
    Within itself his hurt doth bear!
  No outward harm need to be sought,
    Where enemies be within so near.
 

Lest this poem should appear to any one hardly religious enough for the purpose of this book, I would remark that it reminds me of what our Lord says about the true source of defilement: it is what is bred in the man that denies him. Our Lord himself taught a divine morality, which is as it were the body of love, and is as different from mere morality as«the living body is from the dead.

  TOTUS MUNDUS IN MALIGNO POSITUS.

  The whole world lieth in the Evil One.

 
  Complain we may; much is amiss;
    Hope is nigh gone to have redress;
  These days are ill, nothing sure is;
    Kind heart is wrapt in heaviness.
 
 
  The stern is broke, the sail is rent, helm or rudder—the
    The ship is given to wind and wave; [thing to steer with.
  All help is gone, the rock present,
    That will be lost, what man can save? that which will be lost.
 
 
  When power lacks care and forceth not, careth.
    When care is feeble and may not, is not able.
  When might is slothful and will not,
    Weeds may grow where good herbs cannot.
 
 
  Wily is witty, brainsick is wise; wiliness is counted
    Truth is folly, and might is right; [prudence.
  Words are reason, and reason is lies;
    The bad is good, darkness is light.
 
 
  Order is broke in things of weight:
    Measure and mean who doth nor flee? who does not avoid
  Two things prevail, money and sleight; [moderation?
    To seem is better than to be.
 
 
  Folly and falsehood prate apace;
    Truth under bushel is fain to creep;
  Flattery is treble, pride sings the bass,
    The mean, the best part, scant doth peep.
 
 
  With floods and storms thus be we tost:
    Awake, good Lord, to thee we cry;
  Our ship is almost sunk and lost;
    Thy mercy help our misery.
 
 
  Man's strength is weak; man's wit is dull;
    Man's reason is blind these things t'amend:
  Thy hand, O Lord, of might is full—
    Awake betimes, and help us send.
 
 
  In thee we trust, and in no wight;
    Save us, as chickens under the hen;
  Our crookedness thou canst make right—
    Glory to thee for aye. Amen.
 

The apprehensions of the wiser part of the nation have generally been ahead of its hopes. Every age is born with an ideal; but instead of beholding that ideal in the future where it lies, it throws it into the past. Hence the lapse of the nation must appear tremendous, even when she is making her best progress.

CHAPTER V

SPENSER AND HIS FRIENDS.

We have now arrived at the period of English history in every way fullest of marvel—the period of Elizabeth. As in a northern summer the whole region bursts into blossom at once, so with the thought and feeling of England in this glorious era.

The special development of the national mind with which we are now concerned, however, did not by any means arrive at its largest and clearest result until the following century. Still its progress is sufficiently remarkable. For, while everything that bore upon the mental development of the nation must bear upon its poetry, the fresh vigour given by the doctrines of the Reformation to the sense of personal responsibility, and of immediate relation to God, with the grand influences, both literary and spiritual, of the translated, printed, and studied Bible, operated more immediately upon its devotional utterance.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century, we begin to find such verse as I shall now present to my readers. Only I must first make a few remarks upon the great poem of the period: I mean, of course, The Faerie Queen.

I dare not begin to set forth after any fashion the profound religious truth contained in this poem; for it would require a volume larger than this to set forth even that of the first book adequately. In this case it is well to remember that the beginning of comment, as well as of strife, is like the letting out of water.

The direction in which the wonderful allegory of the latter moves may be gathered from the following stanza, the first of the eighth canto:

 
  Ay me! how many perils do enfold
    The righteous man to make him daily fail;
  Were not that heavenly grace doth him uphold, it understood.
    And steadfast Truth acquit him out of all!
    Her love is firm, her care continual,
  So oft as he, through his own foolish pride
    Or weakness, is to sinful bands made thrall:
  Else should this Redcross Knight in bands have died,
  For whose deliverance she this Prince doth thither guide.
 

Nor do I judge it good to spend much of my space upon remarks personal to those who have not been especially writers of sacred verse. When we come to the masters of such song, we cannot speak of their words without speaking of themselves; but when in the midst of many words those of the kind we seek are few, the life of the writer does not justify more than a passing notice here.

We know but little of Spenser's history: if we might know all, I do not fear that we should find anything to destroy the impression made by his verse—that he was a Christian gentleman, a noble and pure-minded man, of highest purposes and aims.

His style is injured by the artistic falsehood of producing antique effects in the midst of modern feeling.⁵⁴ It was scarcely more justifiable, for instance, in Spenser's time than it would be in ours to use glitterand for glittering; or to return to a large use of alliteration, three, four, sometimes even five words in the same line beginning with the same consonant sound. Everything should look like what it is: prose or verse should be written in the language of its own era. No doubt the wide-spreading roots of poetry gather to it more variety of expression than prose can employ; and the very nature of verse will make it free of times and seasons, harmonizing many opposites. Hence, through its mediation, without discord, many fine old words, by the loss of which the language has grown poorer and feebler, might be honourably enticed to return even into our prose. But nothing ought to be brought back because it is old. That it is out of use is a presumptive argument that it ought to remain out of use: good reasons must be at hand to support its reappearance. I must not, however, enlarge upon this wide-reaching question; for of the two portions of Spenser's verse which I shall quote, one of them is not at all, the other not so much as his great poem, affected with this whim.

The first I give is a sonnet, one of eighty-eight which he wrote to his wife before their marriage. Apparently disappointed in early youth, he did not fall in love again,—at least there is no sign of it that I know,—till he was middle-aged. But then—woman was never more grandly wooed than was his Elizabeth. I know of no marriage-present worthy to be compared with the Epithalamion which he gave her "in lieu of many ornaments,"—one of the most stately, melodious, and tender poems in the world, I fully believe.

But now for the sonnet—the sixty-eighth of the Amoretti:

 
  Most glorious Lord of Life! that, on this day,
  Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,
  And having harrowed hell, didst bring away
  Captivity thence captive, us to win:
  This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin;
  And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die,
  Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
  May live for ever in felicity!
  And that thy love we weighing worthily,
  May likewise love thee for the same again;
  And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
  With love may one another entertain.
    So let us love, dear love, like as we ought:
    Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
 

Those who have never felt the need of the divine, entering by the channel of will and choice and prayer, for the upholding, purifying, and glorifying of that which itself first created human, will consider this poem untrue, having its origin in religious affectation. Others will think otherwise.

The greater part of what I shall next quote is tolerably known even to those who have made little study of our earlier literature, yet it may not be omitted here. It is from An Hymne of Heavenly Love, consisting of forty-one stanzas, written in what was called Rime Royal—a favourite with Milton, and, next to the Spenserian, in my opinion the finest of stanzas. Its construction will reveal itself. I take two stanzas from the beginning of the hymn, then one from the heart of it, and the rest from the close. It gives no feeling of an outburst of song, but rather of a brooding chant, most quiet in virtue of the depth of its thoughtfulness. Indeed, all his rhythm is like the melodies of water, and I could quote at least three passages in which he speaks of rhythmic movements and watery progressions together. His thoughts, and hence his words, flow like a full, peaceful stream, diffuse, with plenteousness unrestrained.

AN HYMN OF HEAVENLY LOVE

 
  Before this world's great frame, in which all things
    Are now contained, found any being place,
  Ere flitting Time could wag his eyas⁵⁵ wings
    About that mighty bound which doth embrace
    The rolling spheres, and parts their hours by space,
  That high eternal power, which now doth move
  In all these things, moved in itself by love.
 
 
  It loved itself, because itself was fair,
    For fair is loved; and of itself begot
  Like to itself his eldest son and heir,
    Eternal, pure, and void of sinful blot,
 
 
  The firstling of his joy, in whom no jot
  Of love's dislike or pride was to be found,
  Whom he therefore with equal honour crowned.
* * * * *
  Out of the bosom of eternal bliss,
    In which he reignéd with his glorious Sire,
  He down descended, like a most demisse humble.
    And abject thrall, in flesh's frail attire,
    That he for him might pay sin's deadly hire,
  And him restore unto that happy state
  In which he stood before his hapless fate.
* * * * *
  O blessed well of love! O flower of grace!
    O glorious Morning-Star! O Lamp of Light!
  Most lively image of thy Father's face!
    Eternal King of Glory, Lord of might!
    Meek Lamb of God, before all worlds behight! promised.
  How can we thee requite for all this good?
  Or what can prize that thy most precious blood? equal in value.
 
 
  Yet nought thou ask'st in lieu of all this love
    But love of us for guerdon of thy pain:
  Ay me! what can us less than that behove?⁵⁶
    Had he required life of⁵⁷ us again,
    Had it been wrong to ask his own with gain?
  He gave us life, he it restored lost;
  Then life were least, that us so little cost.
 
 
  But he our life hath left unto us free—
    Free that was thrall, and blessed that was banned; enslaved; cursed.
  Nor aught demands but that we loving be,
    As he himself hath loved us aforehand,
    And bound thereto with an eternal band—
  Him first to love that us⁵⁸ so dearly bought,
  And next our brethren, to his image wrought.
 
 
  Him first to love great right and reason is,
    Who first to us our life and being gave,
  And after, when we faréd had amiss,
    Us wretches from the second death did save;
    And last, the food of life, which now we have,
  Even he himself, in his dear sacrament,
  To feed our hungry souls, unto us lent.
 
 
  Then next, to love our brethren that were made
    Of that self mould, and that self Maker's hand,
  That⁵⁹ we, and to the same again shall fade,
    Where they shall have like heritage of land, the same grave-room.
    However here on higher steps we stand;
  Which also were with selfsame price redeemed,
  That we, however, of us light esteemed. as.
 
 
  And were they not, yet since that loving Lord
    Commanded us to love them for his sake,
  Even for his sake, and for his sacred word,
    Which in his last bequest he to us spake,
    We should them love, and with their needs partake; share their
  Knowing that, whatsoe'er to them we give, [needs.
  We give to him by whom we all do live.
 
 
  Such mercy he by his most holy rede instruction.
    Unto us taught, and to approve it true,
  Ensampled it by his most righteous deed,
    Shewing us mercy, miserable crew!
    That we the like should to the wretches⁶⁰ shew,
  And love our brethren; thereby to approve
  How much himself that loved us we love.
 
 
  Then rouse thyself, O earth! out of thy soil,
    In which thou wallowest like to filthy swine,
  And dost thy mind in dirty pleasures moyle, defile.
    Unmindful of that dearest Lord of thine;
    Lift up to him thy heavy clouded eyne,
  That thou this sovereign bounty mayst behold,
  And read through love his mercies manifold.
 
 
  Begin from first, where he encradled was
    In simple cratch, wrapt in a wad of hay, a rack or crib.
  Between the toilful ox and humble ass;
    And in what rags, and in what base array
    The glory of our heavenly riches lay,
  When him the silly⁶¹ shepherds came to see,
  Whom greatest princes sought on lowest knee.
 
 
  From thence read on the story of his life,
    His humble carriage, his unfaulty ways,
  His cankered foes, his fights, his toil, his strife,
    His pains, his poverty, his sharp assays, temptations or trials.
    Through which he passed his miserable days,
  Offending none, and doing good to all,
  Yet being maliced both by great and small.
 
 
  And look at last, how of most wretched wights
    He taken was, betrayed, and false accused;
  How with most scornful taunts and fell despites
    He was reviled, disgraced, and foul abused;
    How scourged, how crowned, how buffeted, how bruised;
  And, lastly, how 'twixt robbers crucified,
  With bitter wounds through hands, through feet, and side!
* * * * *
  With sense whereof whilst so thy softened spirit
    Is inly touched, and humbled with meek zeal
  Through meditation of his endless merit,
    Lift up thy mind to th' author of thy weal,
    And to his sovereign mercy do appeal;
  Learn him to love that lovéd thee so dear,
  And in thy breast his blessed image bear.
 
 
  With all thy heart, with all thy soul and mind,
    Thou must him love, and his behests embrace; commands.
  All other loves with which the world doth blind
    Weak fancies, and stir up affections base,
    Thou must renounce and utterly displace,
  And give thyself unto him full and free,
  That full and freely gave himself to thee.
* * * * *
  Thenceforth all world's desire will in thee die,
    And all earth's glory, on which men do gaze,
  Seem dust and dross in thy pure-sighted eye,
    Compared to that celestial beauty's blaze,
  Whose glorious beams all fleshly sense do daze
    With admiration of their passing light,
  Blinding the eyes and lumining the sprite.
 
 
  Then shalt thy ravished soul inspiréd be
    With heavenly thoughts far above human skill, reason.
  And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainly see
    The Idea of his pure glory present still
    Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill
  With sweet enragement of celestial love,
  Kindled through sight of those fair things above.
 

There is a companion to the poem of which these verses are a portion, called An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, filled like this, and like two others on Beauty and Love, with Platonic forms both of thought and expression; but I have preferred quoting a longer part of the former to giving portions of both. My reader will recognize in the extract a fuller force of intellect brought to bear on duty; although it would be unwise to take a mind like Spenser's for a type of more than the highest class of the age. Doubtless the division in the country with regard to many of the Church's doctrines had its part in bringing out and strengthening this tendency to reasoning which is so essential to progress. Where religion itself is not the most important thing with the individual, all reasoning upon it must indeed degenerate into strifes of words, vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them—such, namely, as like the hoarded manna reveal the character of the owner by breeding of worms—yet on no questions may the light of the candle of the Lord, that is, the human understanding, be cast with greater hope of discovery than on those of religion, those, namely, that bear upon man's relation to God and to his fellow. The most partial illumination of this region, the very cause of whose mystery is the height and depth of its truth, is of more awful value to the human being than perfect knowledge, if such were possible, concerning everything else in the universe; while, in fact, in this very region, discovery may bring with it a higher kind of conviction than can accompany the results of investigation in any other direction. In these grandest of all thinkings, the great men of this time showed a grandeur of thought worthy of their surpassing excellence in other noblest fields of human labour. They thought greatly because they aspired greatly.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a personal friend of Edmund Spenser. They were almost of the same age, the former born in 1552, the latter in the following year. A writer of magnificent prose, itself full of religion and poetry both in thought and expression, he has not distinguished himself greatly in verse. There is, however, one remarkable poem fit for my purpose, which I can hardly doubt to be his. It is called Sir Walter Raleigh's Pilgrimage. The probability is that it was written just after his condemnation in 1603—although many years passed before his sentence was carried into execution.

 
    Give me my scallop-shell⁶² of Quiet;
  My staff of Faith to walk upon;
  My scrip of Joy, immortal diet;
  My bottle of Salvation;
  My gown of Glory, hope's true gage;
  And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.
  Blood must be my body's balmer,—
  No other balm will there be given—
  Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,
  Travelleth towards the land of Heaven;
  Over the silver mountains,
  Where spring the nectar fountains—
  There will I kiss
  The bowl of Bliss,
  And drink mine everlasting fill
  Upon every milken hill:
  My soul will be a-dry before,
  But after, it will thirst no more.
  Then by that happy blissful day,
  More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
  That have cast off their rags of clay,
  And walk apparelled fresh like me:
  I'll take them first,
  To quench their thirst,
  And taste of nectar's suckets, sweet things—things to suck.
      At those clear wells
      Where sweetness dwells,
  Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
  And when our bottles and all we
  Are filled with immortality,
  Then the blessed paths we'll travel,
  Strowed with rubies thick as gravel.
  Ceilings of diamonds! sapphire floors!
  High walls of coral, and pearly bowers!—
  From thence to Heaven's bribeless hall,
  Where no corrupted voices brawl;
  No conscience molten into gold;
  No forged accuser bought or sold;
  No cause deferred; no vain-spent journey;
  For there Christ is the King's Attorney,
  Who pleads for all without degrees, irrespective of rank.
  And he hath angels, but no fees.
  And when the grand twelve million jury
  Of our sins, with direful fury,
  'Gainst our souls black verdicts give,
  Christ pleads his death, and then we live.
  Be thou my speaker, taintless Pleader,
  Unblotted Lawyer, true Proceeder!
  Thou giv'st salvation even for alms,—
  Not with a bribéd lawyer's palms.
  And this is my eternal plea
  To him that made heaven, earth, and sea,
  That, since my flesh must die so soon,
  And want a head to dine next noon,—
  Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread,
  Set on my soul an everlasting head:
  Then am I ready, like a palmer fit,
  To tread those blest paths which before I writ.
  Of death and judgment, heaven and hell
  Who oft doth think, must needs die well.
 

This poem is a somewhat strange medley, with a confusion of figure, and a repeated failure in dignity, which is very far indeed from being worthy of Raleigh's prose. But it is very remarkable how wretchedly some men will show, who, doing their own work well, attempt that for which practice has not—to use a word of the time—enabled them. There is real power in the poem, however, and the confusion is far more indicative of the pleased success of an unaccustomed hand than of incapacity for harmonious work. Some of the imagery, especially the "crystal buckets," will suggest those grotesque drawings called Emblems, which were much in use before and after this period, and, indeed, were only a putting into visible shape of such metaphors and similes as some of the most popular poets of the time, especially Doctor Donne, indulged in; while the profusion of earthly riches attributed to the heavenly paths and the places of repose on the journey, may well recall Raleigh's own descriptions of South American glories. Englishmen of that era believed in an earthly Paradise beyond the Atlantic, the wonderful reports of whose magnificence had no doubt a share in lifting the imaginations and hopes of the people to the height at which they now stood.

There may be an appearance of irreverence in the way in which he contrasts the bribeless Hall of Heaven with the proceedings at his own trial, where he was browbeaten, abused, and, from the very commencement, treated as a guilty man by Sir Edward Coke, the king's attorney. He even puns with the words angels and fees. Burning from a sense of injustice, however, and with the solemnity of death before him, he could not be guilty of conscious irreverence, at least. But there is another remark I have to make with regard to the matter, which will bear upon much of the literature of the time: even the great writers of that period had such a delight in words, and such a command over them, that like their skilful horsemen, who enjoyed making their steeds show off the fantastic paces they had taught them, they played with the words as they passed through their hands, tossing them about as a juggler might his balls. But even herein the true master of speech showed his masterdom: his play must not be by-play; it must contribute to the truth of the idea which was taking form in those words. We shall see this more plainly when we come to transcribe some of Sir Philip Sidney's work. There is no irreverence in it. Nor can I take it as any sign of hardness that Raleigh should treat the visual image of his own anticipated death with so much coolness, if the writer of a little elegy on his execution, when Raleigh was fourteen years older than at the presumed date of the foregoing verses, describes him truly when he says:

 
  I saw in every stander-by
  Pale death, life only in thy eye.
 

The following hymn is also attributed to Raleigh. If it has less brilliance of fancy, it has none of the faults of the preceding, and is far more artistic in construction and finish, notwithstanding a degree of irregularity.

 
  Rise, oh my soul, with thy desires to heaven;
    And with divinest contemplation use
  Thy time, where time's eternity is given;
    And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse,
      But down in darkness let them lie:
      So live thy better, let thy worse thoughts die!
 
 
  And thou, my soul, inspired with holy flame,
    View and review, with most regardful eye,
  That holy cross, whence thy salvation came,
    On which thy Saviour and thy sin did die!
      For in that sacred object is much pleasure,
      And in that Saviour is my life, my treasure.
 
 
  To thee, O Jesus, I direct my eyes;
    To thee my hands, to thee my humble knees,
  To thee my heart shall offer sacrifice;
    To thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees—
      To thee myself,—myself and all I give;
      To thee I die; to thee I only live!
 

See what an effect of stately composure quiet artistic care produces, and how it leaves the ear of the mind in a satisfied peace!

There are a few fine lines in the poem. The last two lines of the first stanza are admirable; the last two of the second very weak. The last stanza is good throughout.

But it would be very unfair to judge Sir Walter by his verse. His prose is infinitely better, and equally displays the devout tendency of his mind—a tendency common to all the great men of that age. The worst I know of him is the selfishly prudent advice he left behind for his son. No doubt he had his faults, but we must not judge a man even by what he says in an over-anxiety for the prosperity of his child.

Another remarkable fact in the history of those great men is that they were all men of affairs. Raleigh was a soldier, a sailor, a discoverer, a politician, as well as an author. His friend Spenser was first secretary to Lord Grey when he was Governor of Ireland, and afterwards Sheriff of Cork. He has written a large treatise on the state of Ireland. But of all the men of the age no one was more variously gifted, or exercised those gifts in more differing directions, than the man who of them all was most in favour with queen, court, and people—Philip Sidney. I could write much to set forth the greatness, culture, balance, and scope of this wonderful man. Renowned over Europe for his person, for his dress, for his carriage, for his speech, for his skill in arms, for his horsemanship, for his soldiership, for his statesmanship, for his learning, he was beloved for his friendship, his generosity, his steadfastness, his simplicity, his conscientiousness, his religion. Amongst the lamentations over his death printed in Spenser's works, there is one poem by Matthew Roydon, a few verses of which I shall quote, being no vain eulogy. Describing his personal appearance, he says:

 
  A sweet, attractive kind of grace,
    A full assurance given by looks,
  Continual comfort in a face,
    The lineaments of Gospel books!—
      I trow, that countenance cannot lie
      Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.
 
 
  Was ever eye did see that face,
    Was ever ear did hear that tongue,
  Was ever mind did mind his grace
    That ever thought the travel long?
      But eyes and ears, and every thought,
      Were with his sweet perfections caught.
 

His Arcadia is a book full of wisdom and beauty. None of his writings were printed in his lifetime; but the Arcadia was for many years after his death one of the most popular books in the country. His prose, as prose, is not equal to his friend Raleigh's, being less condensed and stately. It is too full of fancy in thought and freak in rhetoric to find now-a-days more than a very limited number of readers; and a good deal of the verse that is set in it, is obscure and uninteresting, partly from some false notions of poetic composition which he and his friend Spenser entertained when young; but there is often an exquisite art in his other poems.

The first I shall transcribe is a sonnet, to which the Latin words printed below it might be prefixed as a title: Splendidis longum valedico nugis.