George Whetstone (who wrote a biographical Remembraunce of him in 1577), and he died at Whetstone's house in October. Meres in his survey of the Elizabethan wits ranks Gascoigne very high among the best for comedies and elegies. Webbe, Puttenham, and Harvey likewise praise. He was looked upon as a plentiful rhymer, an inventive wit, and a resourceful translator, yet no pedant, pithy and full of English feeling. These qualities may still be claimed for him, yet his work lacks the form and finish that are needed to confer a lasting vitality. Recognition of his value as a pioneer will not prevent us from acquiescing in the main with Drayton's summary verdict:

Gascoigne and Churchyard, after them again,
In the beginning of Eliza's reign,
Accounted were great meterers many a day

But not inspired with brave fire; had they

Lived but a little longer, they had seen
Their works before them to have burned been.1

Among the smaller poets and satellites, if a luminary of such moderate size as Gascoigne can be presumed to have had any lesser lights, were Thomas Churchyard, George Whetstone, George Turberville, and Barnabe Googe.

Thomas Churchyard (1520-1604), a Shrewsbury man, was a contemporary of Skelton and More, and lived on through hot service in the Low Countries, in France, Lor

1 There are two rather indifferent collected editions of Gascoigne's works, one by Abel Geffs in 1587, another by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in 1869 (2 vols. Roxburgh Library, 4to). The Notes of Instruction were reprinted in Haslewood's Ancient Critical Essays, 1815, and The Steele Glass with Whetstone's Remembrance by Professor Arber in 1868. There are careful accounts of him in Cooper's Athena Cantabrigienses, and in the Dict. Nat. Biog., but these are superseded by the critical Life and estimate by Professor Schelling, of Philadelphia, 1893. See also F. J. Snell, The Age of Transition, 1905.

raine, Scotland, and elsewhere, until the reign of James I. So late as 1604 his Good Will, a poem on the death of Archbishop Whitgift, preserved-in a manner that must have seemed strange to the hearers of Herrick and of Donne, and the survivors of Marlowe and Spenser-the lolloping verse, the curious alliteration and the mechanical antitheses of the transitional poets of the court of Henry VIII.; he was, in fact, the old Palæmon of Spenser's Colin Clout

That sang so long until quite hoarse he grew.

George Whetstone (d. 1587), a native of London, was born nearly a quarter of a century after Churchyard, in 1544. He also fought against Spain in the Low Countries, where he met both Churchyard and Gascoigne, whose funereal example he followed in turning to letters for a livelihood. He wrote a large number of poems for the miscellanies, a play based upon one of Cinthio's Hecatommithi, and called Promos and Cassandra; while in 1582 he brought out his well-known and popular Heptameron of Civill Discourses, which was reissued in 1593 as Aurelia, the Paragon of Pleasure. Whetstone appears to have fought at Zutphen in 1582, and it may well be that he deserved military renown better than the laurel wreath with which Webbe was ready to credit him.

George Turberville (d. 1610), a descendant of an ancient Dorset family, was born in 1540, and accompanied Thomas Randolph on a mission to Muscovy in 1568. He wrote some metrical epistles from Muscovy, and in 1567-a year, that is, before he set out for Russia-he published his Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs, and Sonnets. This was followed by Tragical Tales, 1567, mostly out of Boccaccio. He translated the Egloges of Mantuan and the Epistles of Ovid, both published in his fruitful year, 1567. He used

blank verse in several of his epistles, but he was fonder of the octave measure, which he used without too much heaviness, though he was laughed at as antediluvian by the wits of 1600. Many of his so-called "sonnets" are love lyrics of varying metres.

The first tentative efforts of the Elizabethans are interesting to inquisitive students, but by ordinary readers have been relegated to the "dim and derided limbo of literature where poetasters flutter and twitter (as bats in a cave) like the ghosts of Penelope's suitors in Homer." Fortunately for us these croaking days are succeeded in the late seventies, culminating in 1579, by a joyous season of unexampled fecundity, a vocal chorus of singing-birds who answer each other from every brake and covert. Many exquisite notes and trills must have been lost before a system of registry was developed by means of the poetical miscellany in the second half of the sixteenth century. The following is a list of the seven best known of these anthologies (excluding The Mirror for Magistrates) between 1557 and 1602:

(1) Tottel's Miscellany, brought out by the well-known printer, Richard Tottel, under the title Songes and Sonettes written by the ryght honorable lorde Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, and other, in June, 1557, went through numerous editions, six at least in Elizabeth's reign; it included among its contributors, besides Wyatt and Surrey, Lord Vaux, and Nicholas Grimald. Grimald, an Oxford graduate and son of an Italian-born employé of Empson and Dudley, may have been the original editor. The first edition contained forty pieces by Wyatt, ninetysix by Surrey, forty by Grimald, ninety-five by Vaux, Bryan, Churchyard, and others; in the second edition, of July, 1557, thirty of Grimald's pieces were omitted, but other anonymous pieces were added, making the total up to 280 (in place of 271).

(2) The Paradyse of Daynty Devices, published by Henry Disle in 1576; it contained poems which, as in Tottel, were mostly signed, and among the known contributors were Lord Vaux; Francis Kinwelmersh, a friend and collaborator of George Gascoigne; and the two musicians, William Hunnis and Richard Edwardes, Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal; Edwardes was reputed the best fiddler, the best mimic, and the best sonneteer of the age. This miscellany became almost as popular as its predecessor.

(3) A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions, made by Thomas Proctor, and brought out by Richard James in 1578; the writers in this are indicated by a few initials only.

(4) The Phonix Nest, brought out by John Jackson in 1593. The poems in this, which are mostly anonymous, are edited by R. S., of the Inner Temple. Among the known contributors are Thomas Lodge, Nicholas Breton, George Peele, and Sir Walter Raleigh, and there are many exquisite poems by anonymous writers. Later still in date

are:

(5) England's Helicon, published by John Flasket in 1600. This was a delightful collection of pastoral poetry planned by John Bodenham and edited by an anonymous A. B., most of the contributions being fortunately signed. Helicon was issued in a revised form in 1614. A better anthology than this did not appear in Britain before The Golden Treasury. Among the contributors are Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, Lodge, Greene, Peele, Shakespeare, Breton, and Bamfield.

(6) England's Parnassus, brought out by N. Ling and others in 1600, and edited by R. A., is rather a treasury of quotations, the references to which are often wrongly given, than a miscellany proper.

(7) Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, published by John Baily in 1602, and edited by Francis, the son of Secretary

Davison. This is exceptionally valuable for the amount of unprinted verse it contains.1

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1 In addition to these, there were a number of minor miscellanies, such as Clement Robinson's Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584), containing the ballad of "Lady Greensleeves " and the wooing song 'Maid, will ye love me, yea or no?"; Anthony Munday's Banquet of Dainty Conceits (1588); The Passionate Pilgrim, absurdly ascribed by a too enterprising publisher to William Shakespeare; Wit's Commonwealth; and Bodenham's Belvedere. The seven collections named above are, however, perhaps the most important, as they are certainly the most easily referred to, having been reprinted as Seven English Miscellanies under the editorship of J. Payne Collier in 1867. The three volumes of Park's Heliconia, 1815, contain Nos. 3, 4, and 6 in the list above, in addition to Robinson's Handful of Delights. Nos. 5 and 7 have been admirably edited by A. H. Bullen. In addition to the above, A. H. Bullen has collected two delightful volumes of lyrics from the Elizabethan songbooks, brought out by such well-known musicans as William Byrd, John Dowland, Thomas Campion, Philip Rosseter, Robert Jones, Thomas Ford, N. Yonge, and the madrigalists Weelkes, Morley, Wilbye, Ravenscroft, and others. William Byrd's three song-books came out respectively in 1588, 1589, and 1611. The three song-books of the excellent lutenist John Dowland appeared similarly in 1597, 1600, and 1603. Thomas Weelkes was organist successively at Winchester and Chichester, and the composer of a rich diversity of Ballets, Madrigals, and Fantastick Airs. The verses in his song-books are never heavy or laboured, but always "bright, cheerful, and arch." Thomas Morley, a pupil of Byrd, is noted as the author of the first systematic Introduction to Practical Music (1597) ever printed in England. John Wilbye is generally regarded as the primus inter pares of the glorious band of English madrigal writers. "Love me not for comely grace" is one of the exquisite songs to which he gave a worthy musical setting in his Second Set" of Madrigals (1608-9). Thomas Ravenscroft was a rare collector of "rounds, catches, and canons," given to the world in Pammelia, Deuteromelia, and Melismata. Jones and Rosseter were alike famous as lutenists and teachers, Ford and Yonge as composers and students of foreign music. Yonge was a singing man at Paul's, and a clever collector of strange

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