Publications of tm). University of Pennsylvania ST-.UJ'S IN Philology Literature and Archaeology Vol. ti No. 4 THc LIFE AND WPlTiNGS OF Gi^OivGE Gascoigne WITH THREE POEMS HERETOFORE NOT REPRINTED BY FELIX E. SCHELLING Professor of ENCLiSii Literature in the llNiv^iR^r rv of Pennsylvania 5^ * GINN & COMPANY MAX NIEMEYER Agents for United States, Canada and England Agent for the Continent of Europe 7-r3 Tremont Place, Boston, U.S.A. Halle, a S., Germany THE GIFT OF Ai.'^.ri^-J^^. >.n \,.6:\a^,. Date Due ?' ■■ iJl - Oti _il m\ 2 1 J^^U- ^ r^^^ iifait^ 1970 J Y Cornell University Library PR 2278.S32 The life and writings of George Gascoign 3 1924 013 121 375 \. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania series in Philology Literature arid Archaeology Vol. II No. 4 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF George Gascoigne WITH THREE POEMS HERETOFORE NOT REPRINTED BY FELIX E. SCHELLING ■Professor of English Literature in the University of Pennsylvania GINN & COMPANY MAX NIEMEYER Agents for United States, Canada and England Agent for the Continent of Europe 7-13 Tremont Place, Boston, U.S.A. Halle, a S., Germany The Papers of this Series, prepared by Professors and others connected with the University of Pennsylvania, will take the form of Monographs on the subjects of Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, whereof about 200 or 250 pages will form a volume. The price to subscribers to the Series will be $1.50 per volume; to others than subscribers, $2.00 per volume. Each Monograph, however, is complete in itself and will be sold sepa- rately. It is the intention of the University to issue these Monographs from time to time as they shall be prepared. Each author assumes the responsibility of his own contribution. ©tnn & Company tTbe Btbeneeum ipress :tSoston "Q/l-^ CONTENTS. PAGE I. Early Years 3 II. Court, Friends, and Patrons 14 III. Earlier Works 23 IV. Dramatic Writings 36 V. Marriage and Campaign in Holland 50 VI. The Qi'een's Progress 63 VII. The Steele Glas and The Grief of Joye 72 VIII. Gascoigne and the Siege of Antwerp 82 IX. The Discourse of Discoverie and Later Prose 89 X. Last Days and Contemporary Esteem 100 Appendix : Poems of Gascoigne heretofore not reprinted 113 Bibliography 117 Index 125 Cornell University Library The original of this bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 31 21 375 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF GEORGE GASCOIGNE, I. EARLY YEARS. George Gascoigne was descended of an ancient and hon- orable family, originally of Yorkshire and afterwards, in its younger branches, of Bedfordshire and elsewhere.^ His grand- father, Sir William Gascoigne, of Cardington, was the de- scendant of a son of James Gascoigne,^ a cadet of the Gas- coignes of Gawthorpe or Gaukthorp Hall, Yorkshire, of whom Sir William Gascoigne, lord chief justice of the King's Bench from 1400 to 141 3 was the most illustrious.^ It is of this Sir William Gascoigne that tradition relates the story after- wards immortalized by Shakespeare.* In his account of the 1 The Complete Poems of George Gascoigne, ed. Hazlitt, Roxbourgh Library, I. xvi. 2 Third son of the Chief Justice (ibid, xvi.), who was married twice and left a numerous progeny. See in general Die. Nat. Biog. XXI. 36-47, Plumpton Corresp,, Camd. Soc. 34a et passim; the various references below; and The Antiquary, N. s. IX. 215. " YvMe.r'5 English Worthies, III. 413; C2.-!a^f^& Lives of the Chief Justices, I. 124, and Die. Nat. Biog., as above. All the Gascoignes appear to have been related, chiefly by descent from the Chief Justice. In Gascoigne's well-knovim portrait the poet is represented with the 'luce's head upon a pale on his breast, the armorial insignia of the great family of Gascoigne's of Yorkshire.' Hunter's New Illustrations ofSh., I. 353. See also Athen.Cantab., I. 566, and British Heraldry, 84. * Hen. IV., Pt. II., I., ii. Hall's Chronicles, ed. 1809, 46. See the story told ' with material additions ' by Elyot, The Governor, ed. Croft, II. 72 ; and Camp- bell's Lives of the Chief Justices, I. 132-134. The story has often been denied, Transact. Roy. Hist. Soc. II., Pt. I., 47. 4 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. notabilities of Bedfordshire, Thomas Fuller has the following, under the name of Sir William Gascoigne of Cardington : — Much wondering with myself how this northern name straggled into the south, I consulted one of his family and a good antequary;^ by whom I was informed that this William was the younger brother of Gauthorpe House in Yorkshire, and was settled at Cardington nigh Bedford, in this county, by marrying the inheritrix thereof.^ This Sir William was thrice sheriff of Bedfordshire, and latterly controller of the household of Cardinal Wolsey.^ Of Sir John Gascoigne, the poet's father, little is known, save that he inherited the patrimonial estates of Cardington, and married Margaret, daughter of Sir Robert Scargell, of Scargell, Yorkshire, leaving by her two sons and a daughter, the eldest of which was George, the poet> Through his mother's family, the poet was therefore connected with Martin Frobisher, the explorer.^ He was likewise kinsman to Sir Owen Hopton, Lieutenant of the Tower.® In the absence of 1 In another place, speaking of information as to the Lord Chief Justice, Fuller says: 'So I am informed by Mr. Richard Gascoigne, one descended from him, an accomplished antiquary in record heraldryl' Engl. Worthies, III. 413 Note; see also Fasti Oxon., ed. 1820, Pt. II., 15; Die. Nat. Biog., XXI. 40. 2 Engl. Worthies, I. 186. It is interesting to note that Margaret Gascoigne, heiress of Gawthorpe Hall, married, in Elizabeth's reign, Thomas Wentworth and was grandmother to the famous Earl of Strafford. 2 Negotiations of Thomas Wolsey, etc., Cartwright, Harleian Miscellany, IV. 539, Hunter's Chorus Vatum, Addit. MSS., 24, 487-493; in the British Museum. This Sir William was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold (Rutland Papers, Camd. Soc., 33), and appears to have been a man of considerable importance in his day. See Plumpton Correspondence, ibid., 221 passim. Towards the end of his life he fell into disgrace. (See The Antequary, N. S., IX. 215.) * The pedigree of this family is contained in several MSS. in the British Museum. Harl. MSS. 135, 807, 1531, and 2146. Hunter. ^ ' Because I vnderstoode that M. Fourboiser (a kinsman of mine) did pretend to trauaile in the same Discoverie, etc' Epistle affixed to Sir Humphrey Gilbert's A Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia, ed. 1576. " Dedication to the Glasse of Governement, Hazl. ed., II. i ; and also the Second Song oi the Grief of foye, ibid., II. 271. EARLY YEARS. 5 any evidence to the contrary, it is likely that the poet was born on his father's estate at Cardington, Bedfordshire^ and probably between 1530 and 1535.^ Gascoigne was educated at Cambridge,^ and probably at Trinity College then newly established ;* and Anthony a Wood's conjecture that he "had his education in both the Universities, chiefly as I conceive in Cambridge," ^ may be ^ Ibid. I. xvi. It is putting too much meaning into the words, " such Englishe as I stale in Westmoreland" (Hermit's Tale, Hazl. ed., II. 139), to make the latter county the place of his birth; while Chalmer's conjecture of Essex (Memoir, II. 448, Chalmer's English Poets), is probably due to his confounding Walthamstow in Essex, the place of Gascoigne's later residence, with the place of his birth. 2 The evidence on this point may be thus condensed : Allowing the average age of admission to the Universities during the reign of Elizabeth to have been about eighteen, the fact that Gascoigne went to Trinity College, Cambridge — which was not known under that title, but by that of King's Hall, before 1 546 — will give us the downward limit of 1528. Whilst, allowing a sojourn of two years, the poet's admission as a student of Grey's Inn in 1555 gives us the upward limit, 1535. Again, Stephen Nevynson, Gascoigne's tutor at Cambridge, did not commence M. A. until 1 548. As it is improbable that Nevynson tutored when himself only B. A., Gascoigne's relation to him must have been subsequent to that date : this raises our downward limit to 1 530. The chief reasons for assigning an earlier date, 1525 or before, rest (i) on the supposition that the author's words; — Since Adam was create, five thousand yeeres I gesse Five hundreth forty more and five; are to be taken as referring to the actual date of the occurrences detailed in the series of poems of which they form a part (Last Wyll and Testament, etc., Hazl., I. 127) ; and (2) on Underbill's story examined below. On the other hand, the reasons for assigning a later date, 1537, are (i) that as the first blossoming of Gascoigne's Muse was in 1562, and "as poets usually begin to write when young," Gascoigne was young in 1562. (2) Arber notices "an unsupported statement " that Gascoigne was forty years old when he died. * And Cantabridge shall haue the dignitie Whereof I was unworthy member once. The Steele Glas,eA. Arber, 77. ' Such Latyn as I forgat at Cantabridge.' The Hermit's Tale, Hazl. ed., II. 138. * Athen. Cantab., I. 374. ^ Athen. Oxon., I. 434. O GEORGE GASCOIGNE. dismissed as one of the cases in which the glory of his Alma Mater urged that able and venerable authority to begrudge to her rival every name of note, not actually to be found in her archives. Gascoigne took no degree. The editors of th.Q Atkencs Cantabrigienses "surmise" that after leaving the University he was originally of the Middle-temple, and removed thence to Gray's Inn.^ Although we have no record of him as a student of Gray's Inn until some years later, we learn that a lawyer of his name was in custody in 1 548, charged with being " a dicer and the confederate of one Allen, a disreputable conjurer." ^ The full text of this accusation is as follows : — I caused also Mr. Gastone, the lawyare who was also a great dicer, to be apprehendid; in whose howse Alene (the prophecyer) was mouche, and hadde a chamber ther, where were many thynges practised. Gaston hadde an old wiffe, who was leyde under the borde aUe nyght for deade, and when the woraene in the mornynge came too wynde her, they founde that ther was lyffe in her and so recovered her, and she lived about too years after. By the resworte of souche as came to seke for thynges stollen and lost, which they woulde hyde for the nonst, to bleare ther husbandes ies withalle, sayinge "the wyse man told them," of such Gastone hadde choyce for hymself and his frendes, younge lawers of the Temple.' In Notes and Queries,^ Mr. J. G. Nichols, editor of this volume for the Camden Society, commenting upon this pas- sage, refers to Sir Henry Gaston or Garton, knighted by Queen Mary,^ and doubts if Gaston and Gascoigne are inter- changeable. In this he is corrected by a later correspondent who quotes Fuller as mentioning eighteen variorum spellings of Gascoigne, and identifies Queen Mary's knight as " Sir 1 Athen. Cantab., I. 565. 2 Ibid., 374. ' Ed. Underbill's Autobiographical Anecdotes, Narratives of the Reformation Camd. Soc, 175, and Note, 335. * Series II., IX. Jan. 7, '60, 15. 5 Diary of a Resident of London, Camd. Soc, 334. EARLY YEARS. J Henry Gascoigne, second son of Sir William Gascoigne of Gawthorpe."! The other reason of Mr. Nichols that Gascoigne was too young, as his " flowers of poesy did not begin to bud until 1562, whereas poets generally show themselves at an early age," is better, but not conclusive, as Gascoigne may have written much before The Complaynt of Philomene. The familiar Elizabethan use of wife for woman^ forbids the inter- pretation that Gascoigne had contracted so curious a misal- liance at so early an age. And, finally, Gascoigne and his friends are called "younge lawers of the Temple," an expres- sion that comports well with his years and probable student- ship at this period. On the other hand, the improbability that a young man of gentle blood, but recently from the University, should so soon be found consorting with a disreputable con- jurer and, apparently, receiver of stolen goods, makes the story at least to a high degree unlikely. Be this as it may, from the " nominal index of the Registers of all Admittances, Ancients, and Barristers in the Society of Gray's Inn, down to 1671," we learn that four gentlemen of the name of Gascoigne were admitted to the Society during the sixteenth century: John in 1536, George in 1555, and the other two at dates after the death of the poet. None of these occur in the list of Barristers,^ but in the hst of Ancients called on 24 May 1557 is the name of "Gascoine,"* and among the precedential orders relating to Ancients is the following : — 1 Notes and Queries, Series II., IX. Feb. 25, '60, 152. See below the spelling Gascoyn, Gaskoigne, Gascoynge, Gaskoyn, etc., etc. Campbell, Lives, etc., I. 124, note 3. Gascoigne is the form used by the poet in his signature. Hazl., I. vi. 2 Among the numerous instances of this use of the word 'wife,' see Jul. C. iii. I. ; and Cor. ii. I. ; " Good morrow, good wife," says Falstaff to Dame Quickly, and then follows a play upon this and on the more usual modern signification. Merr. W. ii. II. 3 Hazl. MS. 1912 fol. 33. * ibid., fol. 204. GEORGE GASCOIGNE. ' 1555 Mr Barkinge, Mr Brand, Geo. Gascoigne, Tho. 1 561 Michelborne, and William Clopton benige 1565 called Ancients as of ye former Call paid 1 567 their respective fines for their Vacacions 1 624 past to compleate ye number of nine Vacacions of ye said former call.'i From this we may assume that Gascoigne had intermitted his studies at Gray's Inn for a number of years, and repenting at last "the lost time of my youth misspent"^ had returned to the society about 1565. Whether or not "an early disappoint- ment in love unfitted him for settled occupation " as recently stated,^ we have abundant evidence at hand that the unsettled condition of Gascoigne's life was notorious. Indeed the editor of the first and so-called spurious edition of his poems hesitates not to say : " I will now deliver unto you so many more of Master Gascoigne's Poems as have come to my hands, who hath never been dainty of his doings, and therefore I conceal not his name."* Moreover the young spendthrift was no stran- ger to "the counter" or debtor's prison.^ It was apropos of this that Gascoigne's younger contemporary Gabriel Harvey wrote as follows: — God helpe good fellowes when they cannot help themselves. Slender relief e in the predicamente of priuations, and fained habites. Miserable 1 ibid., f ol. 238. Young persons of distinction, says Fortescue, " were placed in the Inns of Court not so much to make the laws their study, much less to live by the profession, having large patrimonies of their own, but to form their manners and to preserve them from the contagion of vice." " I apprehend the course is this: after a certain number of years spent in the Inn, the Barristers by mere seniority become what are called ancients." Serj. Tabfourd in Haywood's Case, 68. Both quoted in Douthwaite's Gray's Inn &'c., 33, 34. 2 Epistle Dedicatorie to TAe Steele Glas, Hazl., II. 173. ' Die. Nat. Biog., XXI. 36. ' Quoted by Hazl., I. viii. 5 See The Steele Glas, Arber, 71. "To stay their steps, by Statute Staples staff," etc. " In Woodstreet, Breadstreet, and in Pultery (where such schoolmas- ters keep their counting house)." EARLY YEARS. 9 man, that must pearish: or be succoured by counterfeite, or importente sup- plies. 1 once bemoned the decayed and blasted estate of M. Gascoigne: who wanted not some commendable parts of conceit, and endeauor: but unhappy M. Gascoigne, how Lordly happy, in comparison of most-unhappy M. Greene.i In the following, we have mention of Gascoigne's imprison- ment, much as if it were no unusual matter, together with the debonair manner in which the wits of the time looked upon such trifles. Harvey's accusation that Tom Nashe had been in the counter for debt is thus met by that redoubtable master of raillery. Nay but, in plaine good fellowship, art thou so innocent and unconceiv- ing that thou should^t ere hope to dash mee quite out of request by telling mee of the Counter, and my hostess Penia.? I yeeld that I have dealt upon spare commodities of wine and capons in my dales, I have sung George Gascoignes Counter tenor; what then? Wilt thou peremptorily define that it is a place where no honest man, or Gentle- man of credit, euer came ? Heare what I say: a Gentleman is neuer thoroughly entred into credit till he hath beene there ; & that Poet, or nouice, be hee what he will, ought to suspect his wit, and remaine halfe in doubt that it is not authenticall, till it hath beene seene and allowd in vnthrifts consistory.^ What follows may be added as a more direct, if somewhat apocryphal piece of evidence that Gascoigne's youth was ungoverned. The sam day at nyght betwyn viij and ix was a grett fray in Redcrosse stret betw3m ij gentyllmen and ther men, for they dyd both mare [marry] one woman, and d)rvers wher hwitt; thes wher there names, master Boysse [Bowes] and Master Gaskyn [Gascoigne] gentyllmen.'' Of course there is no positive proof that this was the poet. This entry was made in the Diary of a Resident of London ' Harvey's Faure Letters and Certaine Sonnets, &'c., 1592, ed. Grosart, I. 170. ^ Nashe's Foure Letters Confuted, 1593, ed. Grosart, II. 253. See also a pos- sible allusion in The Deuils Answer to Pierce Pennilesse, Dekker's Works, ed. Grosart, II. 105. ^ Diary of a Resident of London, Camd. Soc., 293. lO GEORGE GASCOIGNE. under date of September 30, 1 562 ; and it is not a little curious that the widow, Elizabeth Breton, whom Gascoigne afterwards married and whose first husband was dead in January 1 5 59, was living with her children in Redcross Street at this very time.^ As we have already seen above, the form "Gaskyn" can offer no difficulty, as the spelling of the "resident" in question would warrant any assumption. Whetstone states in his Remembraunce of the wel imployed life and godly end, of Georg Gaskoigne Esquire : " he was Sir John G. Sonne and Heire Disinherited," and in the text puts the following words into Gascoigne's mouth :2 — First of my life, which some (amis) did knowe, I leue mine armes, my acts shall blase the same, Yet on a thorne, a Grape will neuer growe, no more a Churle, dooth breed a child of fame, but (for my birth) my birth right was not great my father did, his forward sonne defeat.^ Hazlitt doubts this and quotes the poem on the theme, sat cito, si sat bene, given to Gascoigne by his friend, Alexander Nevile, to show that Gascoigne " succeeded to his patrimony and squandered it." O. G[ilchrist] in Censura Literaria^ evi- dently held the same opinion and states : " he lived [at court] with a splendour of expence to which his means were inade- quate, and at length being obliged to sell his patrimony (which it seems was unequal) to pay his debts, he left the court." The passage to which Hazlitt refers reads as follows : — To prinke me vp and make me higher plaste, All came to late that taryed any time ; Pilles of prouision pleased not my taste They made my heeles to heauie for to clime: 1 Works of Nicholas Breton, Chertsey Worthies, Memorial-Introduction, I. xiii. 2 Die. Nat. Biog., XXI. 36. 8 Arber, ed. 17. ' I. no. Ed. 1805. EARLY YEARS. I I Mee thought it best that boughes of boystrous oake Should first be shread to make my feathers gay, Tyll at the last a deadly dinting stroake Brought downe the bulk with edgetooles of decay: Of every farme I then let flye a lease, To feed the purse that payde for peeuishnesse, Tyll rent and all were falne in suche disease, As scarce coulde serue to mayntayn cleanlynesse: They bought the bodie, fine, ferme, lease and land: All were to little for the merchauntes hande.^ Whether this allusion is to patrimonial or other estates, it is certain, by his own confession, that he was deeply in debt and that he had squandered what estate he possessed like many an other young courtier, in reckless living and in long deferred hope of preferment. Soon after his coming up to London, Gascoigne appears to have sat in two successive parliaments — that of 4 and 5 Philip and Mary, and that of i Elizabeth — as burgess for his native county of Bedford.^ Other public employment of the poet will be mentioned below in its proper place. When, however, in 1572, Gascoigne offered himself once more as burgess, for Midhurst co. Sussex, the following objection was raised. The paper is endorsed Against Georg Gascoyn, y* he ought not to be To the righte Honnorable the Lordes of the Privie Cownsaile. Certeine objeccions why George Gascoigne oughte not to be admitted to be a Burgesse of the Parliament. Firste, he is indebted to a greate nomber of personnes for the w^i" cause he hathe absented him selfe from the Citie and hath lurked at Villages neere unto the same Citie by a longe time, and nowe beinge returned for a 1 Flowers, Hazl. ed., I. 69. "^ Athen. Cantab., I. 565. ' This document is preserved in the State Paper Office, Domestic Papers, Temp. Eliz., vol. LXXXI. No. 39. Attention was first called to it in the Gentle- man's Mag. 1851, Pt. II., 241-244. 12 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. Burgesse of Midehurste in the Countie of Sussex doethe shewe his face openlie in the dispite of all his Creditors. Item he is a a defamed person and noted as well for manslaughter as for other greate cryemes. Item he is a common Rymer and a deviser of slaunderous Pasquelles against divers personnes of greate callinge. Item he is a notorious RufEanne and especiallie noted to be bothe a Spie, an Atheist and Godles personne. For the v/<^^ causes he is not meete to be of the Cownsaile of High Courte of ye Parliament. After giving the substance of this document, the editors of the Athenae Cantabrigienses remark laconically: "Whatever truth there may have been in these allegations, it seems that he did not sit in parliament for Medhurst." ^ Mr. Hazlitt on the other hand, while admitting the gravity of the charges against Gascoigne, calls attention to their ex parte character, and notes that "the term ruffian introduced here, did not convey the same sense as it does at present, but like the Italian ruffiano, signified simply a bully, a roisterer." ^ Mr. Hazlitt concludes: "It is by no means improbable that some good ground existed for such imputations, but the facts were doubtless exaggerated and over coloured."^ It would indeed be eminently unfair not to notice here the keen sense of conscience and remorse for past sin and folly that forms one of the strongest traits of Gascoigne' s character, as depicted in his writings. While far from the terrible self- upraidings of such a man as Greene and while living no such tragedy as that unfortunate prodigal, Gascoigne shows, especi- ally in his later life, as sincere if a less passionate regret for his misdeeds and much the same hopeless remorse tor the irrevo- 1 Athen. Cantab., I. 374. 2 Hazl. ed. i., XXI. As to the expression ' a common Rymer,' see Collier, Bibliog. Account, III. 23. ^ ibid. EARLY YEARS. 1 3 cable past.^ Witness the following, from his dedication of The Droome of Doomes Day to the Earl of Bedford. I must needes confesse both vnto your honor and to the whole world, that amongst a number of imperfections I finde my selfe giltie of much time mispent, and of greater curiositie then was convenient, in penning and endightyng sundrie toyes and trifles. So that, lookyng backe with inward griefe towardes the beginning of my recklesse race, I fynde that both the tyme and my duetie doe challenge in me the fruites of repentaunce: to be shewed in some seryous travayle, which might both perticularly beare wit- nesse of my reformation, and generally become profitable unto others. After detailing how the admonitions of a friend led him to these serious thoughts, he continues : — I beganne straightwaye to consider that it is not suffycient for a man to haue a high flying hawke, unlesse he doe also accustome hir to stoupe to such quarries as are both pleasand and profitable. For if the best faulkener with his best flying falcon should yet continually beate the flockes of simple shiftlesse doues, or suffer his hauke to check alwayes at the carion crowe, the pleasure might perhaps content a vayne desyre, but the profite or com- moditie would skarcely quyte his cost. And in lyke maner, whosoeuer is (by the highest God) endued with anye haughty gifte, hee ought also to bestowe and employe the same in some worthie and profitable subjecte or travayle: least in his defaulte, he deserve the name of an unprofitable and carlesse stewarde, when his accoumpt is strictly cast.^ The facts of the case were probably these. Coming up to London, like many an other high-spirited and well-born young man, Gascoigne sought in the whirl and excitement of court life, a speedier road to fortune than that which awaited the laborious student of Gray's Inn. At court he soon found it easy enough to live beyond his means, and falling in with the humors of his time, was soon involved in extravagance and consequent debt. Under the circumstances, it would be absurd to attribute to him a degree of virtue, which we deny to far stronger men. 1 See Epistle Dedicatorie to The Steele Glas, Arber ed. 42. - Preface to tke Droome of Doomes Day, quoted by Brydges in his Restituta, IV. 301-2. 14 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. II. COURT, FRIENDS, AND PATRONS. Gascoigne was at no time of his life devoid of friends and patrons, as may be seen from his numerous dedications to per- sons of quality, and his frequent allusions to many others in the manner of one who had a right to claim at least some measure of equality. Somewhere about 1564 Gascoigne had traveled in several parts of England,^ particularly in Bedfordshire, where his old friends, the Dyves lived and where he had found a patron in Francis, Earl of Bedford.^ Mr. Hazlitt thinks that through the Dyves it was that Gascoigne was introduced to his greatest patron, Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton.^ In Gascoigne s Woodmanship written to Lord Grey upon the occasion of one of Gascoigne's visits to him, the city courtier relates: — Upon this occasion, the sayd L. Grey delighting (amongst many other good thinges) in chusing of his winter deare, and killing the same with his bowe, did furnish master Gascoigne with a croisebowe cum Pertinencijs and vouchsafe to use his company in the said exercise, calling him one of his wodmen. Now master Gascoigne shooting very often, could neuer hitte any deare, yea, and often times he let the heard passe by as though he had not seene them. Whereat when this noble Lord took some pas- time, and had often put him in remembrance of his good skill in choosing, and readinesse in killing of a winter deare, he thought good thus to excuse it in verse.^ 1 Hazl. ed. I. xviii, and Die. Nat. Biog., XXI. 36. 2 Hazl. ed. I. xviii. A Delicate Diet, etc., is dedicated to " the right worshipf uU his Synguler good friend Lewis Dyve of Broomham, in the countie of Bedforde, Esquyer," Gascoigne also wrote verses on Douglas Dyves, the wife of John Dyve whom he familiarly calls ' brother.' This John Dyve, afterwards Sir John was the father of Sir Lewis Dyve, a. considerable figure on the royalist side in the Commonwealth wars. Die. Nat. Biog., XVI. 301. s It is interesting to remember that a younger and greater poet, Spenser, found a kind patron in the same liberal nobleman a few years later. * Hazl. ed. I. 377. COURT, FRIENDS, AND PATRONS. IS Among Gascoigne's other patrons may be mentioned Sir William Cordell, Master of the Rolls, Sir Owen Hopton, Lieu- tenant of the Tower,! and Anthony Browne, Viscount Mon- tacute or Montagu,^ for the double marriage of whose son and daughter to the daughter and son of Sir William Dormer, Gascoigne wrote "a divise of a masque." Gascoigne has given us in his Voyage into Holland a momentary glance at, at least one of his more disreputable companions, Rowlande Yorke, an adventurer of the basest character.^ But Gascoigne was never entirely bad; and a lively conscience seems to have worked severe retribution on him at times for his misdeeds.* It was doubtless in the freer, if really less vicious, life of the young lawyers and literary men of his day that the poet found his nearest friends. We are presented with an agreeable glimpse of the literary feeling among the young students of Grey's Inn by what follows, prefatory to a series of poems entitled Gascoigne's memories. Hee had (in the myddest of his youth) determined to abandone all vaine delights and to return to Greyes Inne, there to undertake againe the studdie of the common Lawes. And being required by fine sundry Gentlemen to write in verse somewhat worthye to be remembered before he entered into their fellowshippe, he compiled these fiue sundrie sortes of metre vppon fiue sundrie theames which they deliuered unto him.^ Among these scholarly friends we can not but feel our poet more at home. It was under their influence that he did some of his best work, and not a few of his associates became men of mark in letters or the law. Christopher Yelverton, who wrote the Epilogue to Jocasta, was afterwards knighted and 1 See above, and Naunton's Fragmenta Regalia, Arber ed. 42. 2 Lord Montagu's seat was at Cowdray, Midhurst, co. Sussex, for which bor- ough of Midhurst, Gascoigne was returned to Parliament in 1572. Gentleman's Mag. 1851, Pt. II. 241. See above, p. 11. 8 See below, and Motley's United Netherlands, II. 156-7, 166, and 177. * See Preface to The Droome of Doomes Day, quoted above, p. 13. 5 Hazl., ed., I. 63. 1 6 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. became a judge.^ Whilst amongst the five, who set Gascoigne his poetical task, may be mentioned Francis Kinwelmarsh, Gascoigne's coadjutor in his translation of Jocasta^ and later a contributor to the Paradise of Dainty Devises, and Alexander Nevyle, the translator of CEdipus, friend of Googe, and after- wards secretary to Archbishop Parker .^ From the commenda- tory verses prefixed to Gascoigne's Works and from references in his works it is evident that he was well acquainted and highly esteemed among the literary men of his day. George Whetstone, versifier and playwright, wrote verses prefixed to The Posies, and remained Gascoigne's warm friend and admirer 1 Sir Christopher Yelverton, father of the more famous Sir Henry Yelverton, must have been considered a poet of considerable note before 1 560, as he is men- tioned with SackvUle and Norton by Jasper Heywood in the Introduction to the latter's translation of Seneca's Thyestes. See Collier Hist. Dram. Poetry, III. 10; Gascoigne, Hazl., ed., I. 348; and Warton, III. 302 and 227. The following fjom the metrical introduction, noted above, will show the contemporary estimate in which the Inns of Court were held as seats of the Muses. In Lyncolnes Inne, and Temples twayne, Grayes Inne, and many mo, Thou shalt them fynde, whose paynefuU pen Thy verse shall flourish so ; That Melpomen, thou wouldst well weene Had taught them for to wright, And all their workes with stately style And goodly grace to endight. There Sackvyldes Sonnets sweetly sauste, And f eately fyned bee : There Norton's Ditties do delight, There Yelverton's to flee, Well pewrde with pen : such yong men three As weene thou mightest agayne. To be begotte as Pallas was Of myghtie Jove his brayne, etc. 2 See Warton, III. 302 and Collier Bibliog. Ace, &c., I. 298. This name, Kin- welmarsh, appears elsewhere as Kinwelmershe, and even Kindlemarsh. 2 Warton, III. 511-12. See several of his poems published with those of Googe, Arber Engl. Reprints. COURT, FRIENDS, AND PATRONS. 1 7 in later life, as the eulogy of his Remembrance is quite sufficient to show.^ In the long list of commendatory verses prefixed to The Posies, edition of 1575, and capable of identification only by the initials of the authors affixed, the following have been identified: — T. Ch., Thomas Churchyard,^ whose luckless life of alternate trailing the pike and writing for bread offers a much prolonged parallel to Gascoigne's own; T. B., Thomas Bedingfield,* author of Cardanus Comfort, The Art of Riding, and The Florentine History of Machiavelli, to the first of which works Gascoigne prefixed commendatory verses; J. B., possibly John Bodenham,* collector of England's Helicon and Bel-ved^re, or the Garden of the Muses ; P. B., Peter Beverley of Staples Inn, author of The Tragecall and pleasaunt history of Ariodante and Genevra, 1565. For R. S., Mr. Hazlitt suggests 'Richard Stapylton, the reputed editor of the Phoenix Nest,' ^ whilst the editor of the Collectanea Anglo-Poetica, following Park in a note to Warton, with less probability refers the verses thus signed to Gascoigne's printer, Richard Smith.^ Other identifications have been attempted: A. W., Andrew Willet,'' B. C, Bar- tholomew Chappell,^ J. D., John (.') Dyall, G. H., Gabriel Har- 1 It is improbable that these verses were Whetstone's earliest printed work, as The Rock of Regard appeared in 1576. See Collier's Bibliog. Account, IV. 238. 2 Certainly not Sir Thomas Chaloner, the elder as has been suggested, who was already dead in 1 565. 3 Rather than the epigrammatist, Thomas Baistard. For an account of Beding- field and his works see Die. Nat. Biog., IV. 113. Gascoigne's commendatory verses to Cardanus Comfort are reprinted by Hazlitt in his ed. of the poet, II. 336. * Bodenham mentions Gascoigne and Kinwelmarsh, as authors from whom he has drawn. See Preface to Beloedlre and Collier, Bibliog. Account, I. 90. 5 Index and Notes, Hazl. ed., II. 355. Richard Standihurst has also been suggested. 6 Part VI. 421, Publ. Chetham Soc, 1877. Park's note is in Warton Hist of Engl. Poetry, III. 53. These verses are printed by Hazlitt, I. 26. ' See Coll. Anglo-Poetica, as above, 421. This identification is not particularly valuable as Willet died in 1621, aged fifty-nine, and hence could have been but thirteen years old at the publication of the Posies. See Cens. Lit., IV. 287. 8 Brydges says that Chappell published a devotional book as late as 1638. 1 8 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. vey, if so, which is at least doubtful, Harvey's earliest appear- ance in print. The other initials have not been identified, and doubtless represent, many of them, men as obscure as the French writing master, whose verses appear among the rest. To The Steele Glas we find commendatory verses by Nicho- las Bowyer and "Walter Rawely of the Middle Temple": N. R. I do not identify. Some little difficulty has been raised as to Raleigh's verses, and the following two objections have been urged against his authorship of them: "that the writer's name is spelt in an unusual manner, and that he describes himself as "of the Middle Temple," while Raleigh declared on his trial, that he had never "read a word of the law or statute before" he "was a prisoner in the Tower." ^ Both these objec- tions are easily answered: for the first, no serious student of Elizabethan literature need entertain it a moment; and the second is perhaps sufficiently answered by Naunton, who speaking of Raleigh's education, says : " his approaches to the University and Innes of Court . . were rather excursions than sieges or settings down, for he stayed not long in a place." ^ It is plain that " the writer of the verses had evidently formed an intimate friendship with Gascoigne," and Oldys says that Gascoigne's motto Tain Marti quain Mercurio, was subse- quently adopted by Raleigh.^ Finally the weight of authority is in favor of considering the verses Sir Walter's on the strength of internal evidence. It was probably during this earlier period of his life at Court that Gascoigne indulged in those questionable amours, of which he has had the bad taste to leave us a careful, if some- 1 Poems of Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Walter Raleigh and Others edited by the Rev. John Hannah, 1845. Introd. XXVI.; see Edwards' Life of Ralegh, I. 669. 2 Fragmenta Regalia, ed. Arber, 48. 8 See Life of Ralegh by William Oldys, Collected Works of Ralegh, ed. 1829, I. 22; Birch doubts his residence in the Inner Temple, ibid, 572. The Registers of the Temple offer no clew. COURT, FRIENDS, AND PATRONS. IQ what mystical, account. If we are to take the narrative of the adventures of Ferdinando Jeronimi "whom the reader may name Freeman Jones, for the better understanding of the same," ^ as referring to actual occurrences in the author's life — and there is much reason to believe that we should — we shall almost be compelled to join Mr. Fleay in his invective against " a man who openly boasts of his adulteries and who shrinks not from exposing himself to any charge, if he can only involve in it the unfortunate women who were his associates in wrong doing." ^ Mr. Fleay has succeeded apparently in identi- f)dng Leonora Bellavista or Elinor Belvoir, the heroine of the Adventures of Master Ferdinando Jeronimi, with Elinor Man- ners, daughter of George Manners, Lord Ross, heir to the barony of Belvoir and wife of John Bourchier, Earl of Bath: Valesqo, the name applied to Leonora's father-in-law, being " a sort of anagram for Val. Aq. So., the vale of Aqua Soils, the latinized form of Bath." As the Earl of Bath died in 1561, the events alluded to in this narrative must date before that year. 3 It is said that this narrative, as being a " slaunderous Pasquille against divers persons of great callinge," was brought to the notice of the Privy Counsel : doubtless in the Objeccions quoted above. Indeed it can not be denied that if we are to accept these poems as full of hidden personal allusion, they are certainly perilously near to libels pure and simple. Gascoigne celebrates his second mistress under the odd names of " Ferenda " and " Natura," often combining the two into a motto. He likewise alludes to her under cover of the name " Li via," "the hollow tree" and other obscure expres- sions.* Ferenda seems to have exercised an unusual influence over the poet and to have maintained her control for a con- 1 See ed. prin., Printer to the Reader, 3. - Historical Allusions in Sundry English Poets, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., I. Pt. II., 132, N. s. Since reprinted with amplification in his admirable Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama. I. 337-344- ' ibid., 132. * ibid. 20 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. siderable period of time. That Ferenda was fair, we have of course abundant proof: what lover has ever cheapened his own passion by declaring the truth about his mistress ? Upon hir cheekes the Lillie and the Rose Did entremeete with equall change of hewe, And in hir giftes no lacke I can suppose, But that at last (alas) she was vntrue.^ wherefore he is constantly likening her to " Cressides Kind." In birth moreover she appears to have been his equal : — A fayre yong impe of proper personage, Eke borne (as he) of honest parentage.^ Unfortunately it may well be doubted if her chastity equaled her birth. Whatever may have been the reason of her perfidy — and, amid much doubtful allusion to the "Admiral," "Noble face" and "Ippocrace," no reason is assigned, — it seems that Ferenda maintained her influence over her lover despite it.^ We iind him, far later in his life alluding to her as his "ladie peramownt,"* and apparently with much of the ardor of youth- ful passion. Although it might be supposed that an enquiry into the probable personality of Ferenda Natura would be likely to prove quite as abortive as the attempt to identify the " pale, darke ladie" of Shakespeare's " sugared sonnets," here too Mr. Fleay steps to our aid. Ferenda it appears was really " Helen Suavemberg, who married William Parr, Baron of Kendall and afterwards Marquis of Northampton. The hollow tree, his [Gascoigne's] special name for her, is a common metrical synonym for a boat, and Helen Suavemberg's arms were a lighter boat in fosse." ^ "The Admiral, I suppose," he adds, 1 1 Hazl. ed., I. loi. 2 ibid. 8 Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, I. Pt. II., 130, N. s. * The Grief of Joye, Second Song, Hazl. ed., II. 274. 5 Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, I. Pt. II. 130, N. s. COURT, FRIENDS, AND PATRONS. 21 "must have been Edward, Lord Clinton and Say; the Noble Face is probably another translation of Bel voir: but the whole of these allusions is too obscure for certainty." It would be unfair to leave this question without stating that in another place Mr. Fleay shows that this symbolism of allusion is per- fectly in accord with a method which Gascoigne pursues else- where of concealing real names under punning allusion and translation.! His whole spirit in this matter can be discerned in the following quotation with which the unfinished story of Freeman Jones concludes in its earlier form. Yet I will cease, as one that had rather leave it imperfect than make it to plaine . . . nothing doubting that you will easily understand my mean- ing, and that is as much as I desire.^ Into the further intricacies of these obscure intrigues we shall seek not to follow : leaving a consideration of his " Petro- nella de Alquemade," his " Petronella van Sconhouen" and his " Brydges " to the deeper critical acumen of the Germans.^ We shall not even seek to dispute Anthony a Wood's declara- tion : — " From thence he went to France to visit the fashons of the court, where he fell in love with a Scottish dame;"* although it is more than likely that unless really at the siege of Antwerp, Gascoigne was never nearer France than when at Delft with the Prince of Orange. Indeed in these matters we had far better take our author's word, where he states, by way of marginal gloss : " These thinges are mistical and not to bee vnderstoode but by Thauctour him selfe."® We must agree 1 Examples of this are: " another ox right lean " for Lennox, " the bridge with a stony arch " for Pierrepont, " one who dwells at Town's end " for Townshend. See Grief of Joye, Second Song, Hazl. ed., II. 2yi\, passim. See also the verses " Either a needelesse or a bootelesse comparison between two letters," printed in the Appendix. Mr. Fleay finds a possible allusion to Helen Suavemberg's second husband Thomas Gorge in the "gorged hawk." Hazl. ed., I. 96. 2 ed. 1572, 293. ^ Tke Grief of Joye, Second Song, ed. Hazl., II. 275. * Athen. Oxon., I. 435. * Dan Bartholmew of Bath, Hazl. ed., I. 115. 22 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. with Mr. Fleay that Gascoigne was involved in some difficulty, either on account of these amorous escapades themselves or because of his written allusions to them, and that in conse- quence he retired from the Court for a time. In The Epistle to the yong Gentlemen, prefixed to the edition of 1575, Gascoigne speaks thus of those who have reprehended his book. Then, to come vnto the matter, there are three sortes of men which (being wonderfully offended at his booke) have founde therein three maner of matters (say they) verie reprehensible. The men are these: curious Carpers, ignorant Readers, and graue Philosophers. The faults they finde are Indicare in the Creede, Chalk for Cheese, and the common infection of Loue. Of these three sorts of men and matters, I do but very little esteeme the two first. But I deeply regard the third. For of a verie troth there are one kinde of people nowadayes which will mislyke any thing, being bred (as I think) of the spawne of a Crab or Creuish, which in all streames and waters will swimme eyther sidewayes or flat backwards, &c. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Of this sort I make small accounte, bycause indeede they seeke a knotte in the Rushe, and woulde seeme to see verie farre in a Mylstone. There are also certaine others, who (hauing no skill at all) will yet be verie busie in reading aU that may bee read, and thinke it sufiicient if (Par- rot like) they can rehearse things without booke: when within booke they vnderstande neyther the meaning of the Authour, nor the sense of the figuratiue speeches. ... I will not say how much the areignment and diuorce of a Louer (being written in least) haue bene mistaken in sad earnest, &c. ... Of a truth (my good gallants) there are such as hauing only lerned to read English, do interpret Latin, Greke, French, and Italian phrases or metaphors, euen according to their owne motherly conception and childish skill. The which (bicause they take Chalke for Cheese) shall neuer trouble me, whatsoever fault they finde in my doings.^ 1 See Hazl. ed., I. 8 and 9. For the expression " chalk for cheese " of. the fol- lowing: To be annswered by distinctions, that chawlke may not beare the price of cheese, nor copper be currant to goe for payment. First Part of Pasquils Apologie, Works of Nashe, ed. Grosart, I. 237. EARLIER WORKS. 23 III. EARLIER WORKS. It is difficult to fix the period of Gascoigne's authorship, although it is certainly not necessary to follow Mr. Hazlitt in his wild conjecture that "all that we have received from his pen was committed to writing, and for the most part to the press, between the date of his return from Holland and that of his death, a period not much exceeding three years." ^ In the preface to The Steele Glas, dated April, 1575, the poet informs us : "I called to minde that twelve or thirtene yeares past I had begonne an Elegye or sorrowfull song called the Com- plainte of Phylomene, the which I began to devise riding by the high way betwene Chelmisford and London, and being overtaken with a sodaine dash of Raine, I changed my copy, and stroke over into the De ^rofundis, which is placed amongst my other Posies.'"^ This certainly points to a habit of writing already confirmed, as early as 1562, which the performance of his two dramas as early as 1566, and his assumption of middle age in the preface to the edition of 1575 only go to confirm.^ Nor need we be misled with the same slipshod editor by the dates of Gascoigne's earliest publications, as there can be no question that he followed the fashion of his age in handing his verses about for perusal among his associates long before there was thought of printing. Indeed Puttenham enumerates Gascoigne among the " courtly makers . . . who have written excellently well as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made publicke with the rest ; "* and the sup- posed editor of the surreptitious edition of 1572 remarks as to 1 Hazl. ed., I. xii. 2 Hazl. ed., II. 219. ^ibid., I. 7. * The Arte of English Poesie ; ed. Arber, 75. 24 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. certain "notable works" of the author not yet published, "these things, and especially the latter doth seem ... a work worthy of reading ; and the rather I judge so, because his fan- tasie is so occupied in the same as that, contrary to his wonted use, he hath hitherto withheld it from sight of any his familiars until it be finished." ^ It is probable that Gascoigne first appeared in print in 1566, for in that year he printed a sonnet with his name in full in commendation of The French Littleton, newly set forth by C. Holiband teaching in Paules Churchyarde by the signe of the Lucrece? In 1572 appeared the first and so-called "spurious edition" of Gascoigne's poems, under the title, A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bound up in one small Posie. Gathered partely (by translation) in the fyne outlandish Gardins of Euripides, Ovid, Petrarke, Ariosto, and others : and partely by invention, out of our owne fruitefull Orchardes in Englande : Y elding sun- drie sweete savours of Tragical, Comical, and Morall Dis- courses, bothe pleasaunt and profitable to the well smelling noses of learned Readers. Meritum petere, grave. At London, Im- printed for Richard Smith. The text is preceded by two letters by H. W. and G. T., who have been hastily iden- tified as Henry Wotton and George Turberville. These letters purport to explain that the poems, supposed to be the work of several authors, were given, H. W. to read, with the charge that he " should use them only for mine owne particular com- moditie and eftsoones safely deliuer the original copie to him againe, wherein I must confesse myself but halfe a marchant;" says H. W., "for the cqpie unto him I haue safely redeliuered; but the work (for that I thought it worthy to be published) I 1 G. T. to his very friend H. W. Hazl. I. 41. A gloss of the ed. 1572, p. 335, states that the verses beginning " Fair Bersabe," etc., " were the first verses that ever he wrote uppon like occasion." 2 Arber ed. Chronology, p. 5, where this sonnet is quoted. It is in better form than is usual with Gascoigne although of inferior merit. EARLIER WORKS. 2$ haue entreated my friend A. B. to imprint." ^ When we recall that Gascoigne, in the surreptitious publication of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Discourse of a Discoverie of a Voyage to Cataia, conducted himself in precisely the manner in which his friend, H. W., is made to act here,^ and when we consider that Mr. Fleay has shown that Gascoigne's work is full of allusion of the most personal character, involving, in what amounts to scandal, many of the prominent ladies of Elizabeth's court, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that Gascoigne himself procured the publication of this " spurious edition," choosing that it appear in his absence and under the guise of a surrepti- tious publication. The poet thus speaks of the matter in the first preface to a subsequent edition of the Posies : — It is verie neare two yeares past, since (I being in HoUande in seruice with the vertuous Prince of Orange) the most part of these Posies were im- printed ... I neuer receyued of Printer, or of any other, one grote or pennie for the first Copyes of these Posies. True it is that I was not unwillinge the same shoulde be imprinted.^ It seems not unlikely, from internal evidence, that Gascoigne did more than inspire the two letters of H. W. and G. T., and that he was actually the author of both.* The contents of this editio princeps include Supposes, Jocasta, The Adventures of Master F. /., here incomplete. The Devices of Sundrie Gentlemeji, under which are most of the poems afterwards distributed under the headings, Flowers, '^ H. W. to the Reader, Hazl. ed. I. xxxvii. 2 See below. ^ To the Reverend Divines, ed. of 1575, Hazl. ed. I. 1 . * Mr. Arber reaches a similar conclusion in these words : " This first edition was therefore prepared and anonymously published by its author ; not surrepti- tiously by the printer as sometimes supposed." Chronicle, 5. It may be added that a comparison of the letter signed G. T., especially with Gascoigne's Certayne Notes, will show a simularity in thought and treatment in not a few passages. Cf. the almost precisely parallel conduct of Barnaby Googe in the publication of his Eglogs, etc., ed. Arber, 24 and 26. 26 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. Hearbes and Weedes, Gascoignes Woodmanship, Gardening, and Voyage and Dan Bartholmew, this last broken off abruptly in the middle of the tenth stanza of the Reporter's conclusion with a few words of excuse and comment by " the editor." A collation of this edition with the following one of 1575 exhibits I. extremely few variorum readings ; 2. an attempt to bowdler- ize the more objectionable passages of The Adventures of Master F. I. including the entire omission of certain verses and prose passages ; 3. a further attempt to delocalize the same adventures by the substitution of foreign names for the English ones of the earlier form : e. g., Leonora for Elinor and Nell, Lord of Valesco for Lord of the Castle, Hercule Donaty of the initials H. D., and Hanibal de Cosimo for H. K., Florence for London. Moreover "from the riding tale of Bartello" as the original of these adventures appears for the first time in the later edition. 4. Three Poems of the editio princeps have been wholly omitted in the edition of 1575, they are : "« Translation of Ariosto Allegorized,"^ one sonnet, a short poem of ten lines in poulter's measure, which seems little more than a variant of The Straunge Passion of a Lover^ and lastly the appropriately named " Either a needelesse or a bootelesse comparison between two letters!' I have printed these three poems in an Appendix as they have not been republished since the now exceedingly scarce edition of 1572. But by far the most important omission of the edition of 1575 is that of much of the running commentary or gloss upon the text, the supposed production of "the editor." I have already had occasion to quote from this more than once ; and the glimpse which it affords us of the personality, the wit and the opinions of Gascoigne is as valuable as it is often entertain- ing. These notes usually take the form of a comment or apology upon the verses presented, thus : — 1 See Appendix. ^ But see Hazl. ed., I. 108. EARLIER WORKS. 2/ The meetres are but tough in many places, and yet are they true {cu7n licentia poetica) and I must needes confesse, that he hath more commonly bene ouer curious in delectation, then of haughtie style in his dilatations. ' And again: — This ballad, or howsoever I shall term it, percase you will not like, and yet in my judgment it hath great good store of deep invention, and for the order of the verse, it is not common. - Elsewhere we are informed that certain of the Posies " have verie sweet notes adapted unto them: the which I would you should also enjoy as well as myselfe."^ Although the edition of 1575 was not published until the return of the poet from his services in Holland, it represents so wholly his earlier work that it is iitting to treat it here. This edition, which forms the basis of Mr. Hazlitt's inadequate reprint, appeared under the title The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire. Corrected, perfected, arid augmented by the author. IS75- Tam Marti quam Mercurio. Printed at London for Richard Smith, and are to be solde at the northwest doore of Paules Church. The matter has been wholly rearranged under the fanciful headings, Flowers, Hearbes and Weedes. The alterations and omissions of this edition as compared with that of 1572 have already been sufficiently noted, it remains to mention the additions. And iirst, the little farce of the two introductory letters is given up, and three prefatory letters take their place, "to the reverende Divines unto whom these Posies shall happen to be presented," " to al yong gentlemen and generally to the youth of England" and lastly to "the led. 1572, p. 365. 2 ibid., 241. ' Hazl. ed., I. 9. Note in this connection the words of the printer of The Paradise of Dainty Devices : " Furthermore the ditties are both pretty and pleasant as well for the invention as metre, and will yield a far greater delight being as they are so aptly made to be set to any song in five parts, or sung to any instru- ment." Quoted by Morley. E. W. Nlll. 21$. 28 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. Readers generally." These prefaces are cleverly written and form admirable specimens of the sly humor and the graceful prose of their author. From them we learn that his poems had enjoyed great popularity in his absence, that they had been variously construed and interpreted to the delight of the young and the scandal of the grave, and that both constructions demanded a " corrected and perfected '' edition. With the courtier's jealousy on such a point, he denies that he has received money from the sale of his work, and with mock sub- mission to the judgment of his censors seeks to justify this second edition. The additions consist of a few marginal com- ments on the text of Supposes and Jocasta, the addition of two poems among Flowers, (the Arraignment and the lines beginning "You must not wonder"),^ the fine translation of the psalm, De Profundis, which appears to have been omitted inadvertently from the earlier edition, and a conclusion of Dan Bartholmew. These, with some half dozen autobiographical poems detailing his experiences in the Low Countries, form the sum of the new matter. The literary influences which brought forth these volumes of Gascoigne are not difficult to discover. Although Wyatt, Vaux and Grimald were long since dead, Tottel's Miscellany, already in its fifth edition in 1 567, was still a power among the poets, and it was not until some years later that newer and more novel collections of like character succeeded to popular favor. Barnaby Googe had already published his Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonnetts, Turberville, his Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs and Sonnets ; but, if we except such rhymsters as Churchyard and Tusser, there was little of merit outside of the Mirror for Magistrates and the translators. The lyric and erotic vein of Gascoigne must be regarded as a logical development along the line set by Wyatt and Surrey. His debt to the translators we I Hazl. I. 36, 51. EARLIER WORKS. 29 shall discuss further on. Gascoigne was little affected by the revived Chaucerianism of the Mirror for Magistrates ; he owes more to Turberville and Googe, and to such early Italianated prose writers as William Painter and Geoffrey Fenton. Omitting for the time the dramas and the autobiographical t verses of Gascoigne, we find these earlier works, whether erotic, religious or satirical, distinctly personal in tone, and remarkably diversified within a well defined and somewhat limited range. It is this that distinguishes Gascoigne from the lesser poets that simply followed the trend of the time. In fact the very superficiality of his culture rendered Gascoigne more distinctly national than his predecessors. His work shows little of the slavish adherence to foreign models, which marked the work of lesser men, and already exhibits much of the assimilation to English modes of thought and the strong ver- nacular expression which form the distinctive traits of the next generation. We feel that we have a vigorous individuality before us, which is never lost in the perception of mere objective beauty, but remains itself the inspiring theme of every utterance. We recognize, moreover, in Gascoigne the play of a versatile nature, restlessly seeking in thought, style and choice of subject the best means whereby to perpetuate a literary reputation and therein foreboding a new age. Nor is this all. Gascoigne reached certain well defined con- ceptions as to his art, remarkable for their simphcity and — common sense in an age largely given over to regrets after the lustreless bays of an ancient culture little understood. Gas- coigne is really our first, conscious purist ; a man possessed of decided opinions, especially on the subject of versification, a presentation of which he has fortunately left us in a little tract, entitled Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English, and in other places. Let us hear his own words : — 30 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. I have alwayes bene of opinion, thiat it is not umpossible eyther in Poemes or in prose too write both compendiously and perfectly in our Englishe tongue. And therefore although I chalenge not unto my selfe the name of an English Poet, yet may the Reader finde oute in my wrytings, that I have more faulted in keeping the olde English wordes {quamvis jam obsoleta) than in borrowing of other languages such Epithetes and Adjec- tives as smell of the Inkhorne. . . I have rather regarde to make our native language commendable in it selfe, than gay with the feathers of straunge birds.i In another place we are startled by this premonition of a famed Wordsviforthian dictum : " Use the same figures or tropes in verse which are used in prose ;"^ and again, "eschew straunge words or obsoleta et inusitata."^ I have elsewhere discussed the contents and nature of this earliest treatise on versification in our language at length.* It will therefore suffice here to confess that Gascoigne, no less than his might- ier successor, has not hesitated to practise what he has preached and to prove only too consistently at times that to him the language of poetry was identical with that of prose. The style of Gascoigne whether in verse or prose is singularly direct and free from the involutions and inversions which mark his latinized contemporaries. He is generally clear, and simple, except where intentionally allegorical or "mystical" as he calls it; remarkably consecutive, though easily diverted from his main purpose. His prose often exhibits greater elegance and grace than his verse, from the fact that the latter is apt to ramble and lose the sense of form and proportion in a profusion of detail.^ Gascoigne's verse, however, is far from devoid of 1 Epistle to the Reverend Divines, preface to ed. of 1 57 5. Hazl. ed., I. z. 2 Certain Notes, etc., ibid. 504. 8 Ed. Arber, 36. * See Poetic and Verse Criticism of the Reign of Elizabeth, 11-18, Vol. I. No I of this Series. 6 No better specimen of the grace of Gascoigne's prose could be cited than his preface to A Discourse of Discovery. Instances of profusion in detail may be found in Dan Bartholmew, Dulce Bellum or almost any of his longer poems. EARLIER WORKS. 3 I the quality of music, and displays a general smoothness and evenness of flow from his close regard for the number of syllables, from the correspondence of word and logical or rhetorical accent with the accentual scheme of his verse, from the regularity of his phrasing and from his constant employ- ment of alliteration and its resulting ease of utterance. ^ Gascoigne's diction often rises to dignity and real eloquence,^ and his figures are frequently original and well chosen. As is to be expected from the prevailing looseness of his structure of sentence, Gascoigne prefers set and fully expounded simile to the flash and inspiration of metaphor,^ although it cannot be denied that he is often peculiarly happy in the use of the latter. After the fashion of his age, he was likewise fond of extending an implied comparison until it reached allegory, as in the ' Ltdlabie of a Lover or the Arraignment,'^ whilst, as we have seen, many of his productions are literally bristling with personal allusion under symbolic and often far-fetched conceit or pun.^ Notwithstanding our author's strictures upon those that "do so hunte a letter to death," he is constantly alliterative, at times excessively so. When alliteration ceased to be a guiding principle of English versification, it was but natural that it should be abused. It may be added that Gascoigne's fondness for the jingle of " rimes, running in rattling rows " 1 Gascoigne runs easily, but he runs in harness; you feel at times that he Has counted his syllables to be sure. The proportion of end-stopped lines, even in the dramas, is overwhelming; the speeches all but invariably begin and end with the line. Even in The Steele Glas the freedom of the run-on line is sparingly employed, and the thought is invariably carried on to the conclusion of the next verse. 2 Note the noble translation of De Profundis, several of the poems entitled Gascoigne's Memories, and the latter part of The Steele Glas. ^ ^ See especially Dan Bartholmew, Hazl. ed., 114. * See Hazl. ed., I. 43 and 36. The latter poem is quite as excellent a specimen of sustained allegory as the famed Assault of Cupid by Lord Vaux. 5 See above, Note l, p. 21, and especially the later Grief of Joye. 32 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. was of a piece with his love of popular alliterative adages, which he at times carries to excess. It would be difficult to find an author who better exhibited in his writings the part which rime and alliteration played in the popular phraseology of the day.^ The verses of Gascoigne disclose not only all the regular sixteenth century phenomena of alliteration, parallel, alternate, transverse and whatsoever else the ingenuity Dr's Landman, Mertins, Schipper, or others may have discovered and named, but frequently all but realize King James's absurd rule: "Let all your verse be literall." e. g., /"itie is pvX from porter's ^lace and uUe Bellum, consist- ing of seven lines, there are two instances of two, three, and four alliterative correspondences and one of five, besides internal correspondences of sound. Ten lines of the Devise of a Masque, beginning "The barks are battered," Hazl. I. 83, exhibit eighteen instances of alliteration, four of them of three words and two of them of four. ° Certayne Notes, Hazl. ed., I. 502. EARLIER WORKS. 33 An examination of the metres used by Gascoigne in what is substantially the contents of the first edition of his poems, excluding, however, Jocasta and Supposes (the latter of which is in prose), gives the following results : — Of the one hundred and nine poems constituting the col- lection, sixty-one are decasyllabic, and but nine octosyllabic; two poems are written in septenaries, and one in alexandrines, whilst thirty-three exhibit the ambling trot of Poulter's measure," and the remaining three are compounded of lines of five accents and two. A rough comparison of these results with similar ones obtained from Surrey and Wyatt, shows in Gascoigne nearly a constant proportion with Surrey in the use of the popular five accent verse, an increasing fondness for Poulter's measure and a decided falling off in the use of octosyllables.^ An examination of the stanzaic structure of the same poem exhibits that, save in Poulter's and to conclude a stanza other- wise formed, Gascoigne uses the rimed couplet but once, and that in a short octosyllabic poem of eight lines. ^ The triplet does not occur in Gascoigne, nor the quatrain, except once, where he has arranged two Poulter's couplets thus.* Stanzas of six lines are frequent, and the arrangement of rimes, ab ab c c, generally decasyllabic (although sometimes octosyl- labic), is Gascoigne's favorite structure,* unless the rime royal ^ Omitting irregular and compound metres, the figures stand thus : — Whole No. of poems. 5 accents. 4 accents. 3 accents. Poulter's. Wyatt, 93 70 16 5 2 Surrey, 39 21 63 9 Gascoigne, 104 61 9 i 33 The rough percentage in the use of decasyllables being respectively 77, about 50 and 58, a decrease from 17 and 15 per cent, to about 8 per cent, in octosyl- lables, and an increase from 2 per cent., through 23 to 31 per cent, in Poulter's measure. 2 See Hazl. I. 365. ^ ibid., 430. * There are 23 poems in this stanza ; 15 decasyllabic, 7 octosyllabic, and one in alexandrines. Gascoigne describes these stanzas under the title ' Ballade ' in his Notes, Hazl. I. 506. (y 34 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. {ababbcc) dispute that claim.i Other stanzas axQ a b a b c d cd, which seems peculiarly successful in lines of seven stresses,^ ababccdd,^ and the odd ababbccdd, the latter decasyllabic* By far the most highly organized stan- zaic form of Gascoigne, however, is that which he uses in the translation of De Profundis and twice elsewhere. It is com- posed of eleven lines arranged thus abbaaccdeed, all decasyllabic except e e which are of two stresses.^ This is a very sonorous and digniiied stanza, and it is not a little remark- able that Dr. Schipper in his exhaustive Englische Metrik should not so much as have mentioned it. - Gascoigne has left less than thirty sonnets, none of them in the Petrarchan form. Nearly all are formed upon the model of what Dr. Schipper calls " das National-Englischen, Surrey- schen Sonett," i. e., a series of three alternately riming quatrains plus a concluding couplet {ababcdcd efef gg). By Gascoigne's time this had become the prevailing form and he himself remarks : " Some thinke that all poems (being short) may be called sonets . . . but yet I can best allow to call those sonets whiche are of fouretene lynes, every line conteyn- ing tenne syllables : " and he adds the arrangement of rimes just given.^ There appears to be but one departure from this scheme, the form aa bcbc dd efef gg. It will be noticed that this is quite a symetrical arrangement of rime, a couplet occur- 1 Twelve poems, many of them long are in Rime Royal ; see especially Duke Be Hum. 2 See Gascoigne's Good Night and Good Morrow, Hazl. I. 56 and 58. This stanza occurs three times in lines of five stresses. 3 This appears rather an unusual form, see Schipper, Englische Metrik, Part II., ii., 628. Gascoigne uses it twice in decasyllables, once in octosyllabic metre in the famous LuUabie, Hazl. I. 43. See also ibid., 457. * This is used only in one stanza, and is no more than a stanza of rime royal plus a couplet. See His Ryddle, Hazl. I. 47. 5 See Hazl. I. 60, 123 and 440 ; the poem at page 123 exhibits a slight varia- tion on the scheme noted above, thus : ababbccdeed, 525. ^ Certayne Notes, Hazl. I. 506. EARLIER WORKS. 35 ring at the beginning, the middle and the end of the stanza, the two quatrains disposed between. The sonnet in question is a very successful one for Gascoigne, the novel arrangement of rimes lending itself quite naturally to the thought expressed. In his poem on the theme, Sat cito, si sat bene, Gascoigne has used the sonnet as the stanzaic form for a continuous poem, linking one stanza with the next by the repetition of the last line as the first line of the succeeding sonnet. There are seven stanzas thus united and the effect is not unpleasant .^ A still more unusual linking of successive sonnets is found in The Adventures of Master F. I. In one instance a riming bob-wheel of two syllables connects the first with the second and the second with the third sonnet, this latter concluding with an extra verse of four accents by way of the subscription to a letter. The other case is similar except that the bob is of two accents and that three riming decasyllabic lines plus a bob follow the bob of the third sonnet.^ 1 Hazl. ed., I. 67. ^ These curious forms will be found in Hazl. I. 420 and 496. 36 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. IV. DRAMATIC WRITINGS.! The dramatic activity of Gascoigne extended over a period of about ten years from 1 566 onward, and embraces tragedy and comedy in the pseudo-classic manner, moral didactic drama, besides the lighter quasi-dramatic productions, such as the Device of a Masque, for the Viscount Montacute, the Queen's 'shewe,' Zabeta, and his personal address to the queen. The Hermit's Tale. Notwithstanding the apparent diversity of his dramas in subject, Gascoigne belongs strictly to that class of ' courtly makers ' that came most immediately under the influence of contemporary Italian literature ; that, observing the luxuriant growth of the coarse and untrained dramatic spirit of the vernacular Farce and Interlude, determined to refine the Drama of the day by a recourse to those models which Trissino, Dolce, Ariosto, and Martelli had followed with such success. Thus it was that men like Udall, Norton, Sackville, and Gascoigne turned to the Latin dramatists, and thus, to use the picturesque phrase of Mr. Symonds, "our English scholars went to school with Seneca beneath the ferule of Italian ushers." ^ This is not the place in which to expatiate on the Senecan drama, a dreary exotic happily incapable of acclimatization on English soil. Mr. Symonds has called attention to the fact that a certain intellectual kinship existed between the society of Italy in the sixteenth century and what be calls " Neronian Rome. There was the same taste for pedantic studies, the same appreciation of forensic oratory, the same tendency to ^ Part of this chapter has already appeared under the title Three Unique Eliza- bethan Dramas, Mod. Lang. Notes, May, 1892. ^ SKs Predecessors in the English Drama, 216. DRAMATIC WRITINGS. 37 verbal criticism, the same confinement of the higher literature to coteries."^ It was far otherwise in England. There the national spirit was no less strong than the popular passion for dramatic exibition. It is no uncommon error to estimate the proportional bulk of the vernacular and literary drama by what has come down to us. Aside from the fact that it is precisely the scholarly productions of courtier and student which would be most likely to be published and preserved, Mr. Fleay's revision of Collier's list of plays from 1559 to 1583 discloses a fair proportion of plays on vernacular subjects.^ It would, however, be perilous to draw a line dividing the drama into two schools, although Sydney's well known strictures upon the popular drama of his age and his acceptance of Gorboduc as a model for the future, point to a conscious and determined attempt on the part of Sackville and his associates to follow in the wake of the continental drama. There were several things, however, which prevented the break into two schools. Chief of these was the growth of a class of professional actors who were more and more employed in Court entertainments, from their superior histrionic attainments, and who thus acquired that patronage which enabled them to practice their art in the public Inn yards and theatres. These men played in both species of drama and, their sympathies being almost wholly with popular ideals, absorbed only so much of the narrow classic spirit as enabled them to infuse into the new drama the brilliant vitality of the Renaissance. Again, to the actor, play- writing was the absorbing work of his life, to the courtier, the demonstration of a theory ; practiced by Still, Sackville or Bacon, in the dawn of a life devoted to the church or public service, or at least, as by Gascoigne and his fellows of Gray's Inn, as the casual accomplishment of a gentleman. The tragedy, Jocasta, which purports to be translated from the Greek of Euripides, " and digested into Acte by George 1 ibid., 219. ^ History of the English Stage, 379. -^ 38 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. Gascoygne and Francis Kinwelmershe," was presented at Gray's Inn, as we learn by the title, in 1 566,^ and has been recorded by Collier as " the second dramatic performance in our language in blank verse." ^ Jocasta is a version of the Pkcenisscs and was the first attempt to follow up the classical path opened by Gorboduc? Warton was the first to call atten- tion to Jocasta, calling it " partly a paraphrase, and partly an abridgement of the Greek tragedy." " There are many omis- sions," he adds, "retrenchments and transpositions, [although] the chorus, the characters and the substance of the story are entirely retained and the tenor of the dialogue is often pre- served through whole scenes." * Warton devotes considerable space to a comparison of the work with a literal translation of the PhcenisscB and concludes : "Our translators thought the many mythological and historical allusions in the Greek chorus too remote and unintelligible to be exhibited in English."^ All this pointed to a supposed scholarly and intelligent attempt on the part of the joint authors to adapt the Greek drama to the exigencies of an English performance ; and Gascoigne was accordingly credited by Collier with " the first known attempt to introduce a Greek play upon the English stage. "^ Such an attempt as this, however, is improbable in view of the character of Gascoigne and the age ; '' and as Mr. Symond's has put it, "if Collier had paid attention to his own quotations from Jocasta, the point would have been clear." ® The Pkce- ^ Langbaine says tYiaX Jocasta was printed in 1556 in-quarto. This is probably a mistake. See Dramatic Poets, ed. 1691, 231. 2 Hist, of Dram. Poetry, III. 6-1 1. 8 Herford, Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Seventeenth Century, 150. * History of Engl. Poetry, III. 302. ^ ibid., 304. 6 Hist, of Dram. Poetry, III. 8. '' See G's confession as to his Greek. Adventures, etc., Hazl. ed., I. 429. ^ See Symonds, Sh^s Predecessors, 221. DRAMATIC WRITINGS. 39 nisscs has been the subject of more frequent translation and imitation than almost any of the plays of Euripides ; and this popularity was not only true of ancient times, as the parodies of Aristophanes, Strattis and Naevius, the free translation of Accius, the Thebaid of Statius and the Thebaid or Phcenissce of Seneca attest, but the vernacular literatures of Europe have abounded in versions from the Giocasta of Lodovico Dolce and the one before us to the plays of Racine, Schiller and Aliieri.^ Dolce's Giocasta^ which the author describes as gia di Euripide invenzione et hora nuova parto mio, appeared in 1549. Of the nature of this play I cannot speak at first hand ; but there is no reason to suppose that it differed materially from the bulk of its class or that it owed anything to Euripides except what came through the then ascendant influence of Seneca.^ As we have already seen, during the earliest years of the reign of Elizabeth, the popularity of Seneca was unexampled. Between 1559 and 1566 several English authors translated him,* among them Gascoigne's inti- mate, Alexander Nevyle, whose version of CEdipus was pub- lished in 1 560.^ The Thebais itself was translated by Thomas Norton, but probably too late to have had any effect upon Gas- coigne's work.® We are therefore not surprised to find that Gas- coigne's version of Euripides is a literal translation of Dolce's Italian version of Seneca's imitation of the Phcenissce, and that 1 For an account of these imitations of the Phcenissa, see Mahaffy, Hist, of Classical Greek Lit., I. 364. * This play is reprinted in Vol. VI. of the Teatro Antico Italiano. ' " Every tragic scene which the Italians of the Renaissance set forth upon the board of Rome or Florence or Ferrara," says Mr. Symonds, " was a transcript of Seneca." ShU Predecessors, 217. * Warton mentions the fragment of a translation of Hercules Oetceus, as pre- served among the Cotton MSS. in the Bodleian Library by no less a hand than Elizabeth's, about 1561. Hist, of Engl. Poetry, III. 318. See also Morley E. W., VIII. 219. 5 Warton, III. 311-312. 8 Ibid., 315 ; also see Morley's First Sketch of Engl. Lit., 327-28. 40 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. "the choral odes are in part original." ^ Besides the closeness of the English play to its Italian original, for which I must refer to Prof. Mahaffy and Mr. Symonds,^ both have called attention to the fact that the miSayoiyo^ or " gouvenour to the Queenes sonnes " is called dailo in Gascoigne's play, the regu- lar Venetian title for a tutor, and the word used by Dolce.^ Jocasta exhibits all the leading features of its species : " dis- sertation, reflective diatribes and lengthy choruses." From Gorboduc is derived its medium of expression, blank verse, and the dumb shows which precede each act. It is worthy of note that the dumb shows, which were the device by which the want of action in Gorboduc was remedied, are not so needful va. Jocasta, which is fuller of event. The versification, in which Gascoigne's work is not especially distinguishable from that of his coadjutor, is smooth, the lines prevailingly end-stopped, and characterized by much regularity. While the derivation of the tragedy forbids criticism of the plot or its conduct, we feel that the characters are at least as distinguishable as those of Gorboduc and that Prof. Mahaffy's estimate of Jocasta as "a motley and incongruous piece" is perhaps unnecessarily harsh. For the sake of comparison, I quote the following short pas- sage from Euripides and from Gascoigne. The former has often been compared with a speech of Hotspur's (also quoted below), which Professor Mahaffy considers Shakespeare's "only direct obligation to Greek tragedy."* Eyo) yop oiSev, ixrJTep, aTroKpyij/as ipu> ' S. ^i'- ^<^t- Biog. XXI. 328. DISCOURSE OF DISCOVERIE AND LATER PROSE. 93 for a time commanded.^ Sir Humphrey soon after returned to England in disgust, and, his petition still ungranted, lived in retirement at Limehouse, where Gascoigne found him as we have seen in the winter of 1574-75. The Discourse of a Discoiierie "was written partly in support of his still un- answered petition of November 1 566, and partly to quiet the fears of his elder brother," ^ as Gascoigne details. "While yet in manuscript it appears to have been the chief incentive to a letter being addressed by the queen to the Muscovy Company, near the close of 1574, calling upon them either to dispatch another expedition in this direction, or to transfer their privi- lege to other adventurers. The bearer of this letter was Frobisher, to whom a license was granted by the Company 3 February 1575 with divers gentlemen associated with him."^ Elizabeth's reluetance to grant Gilbert's request that he sail himself may be referred to two reasons, with little violation of the probable fact. First, existing diplomatic complications with Spain, which had grown largely out of voyages such as that contemplated by Sir Humphrey, may have prevented the queen from granting his petition. Indeed we know that such complications did exist later, in 1579, and actually had the effect of delaying Sir Humphrey in port, even after permission to sail granted by the Lords.* Secondly, it may be inferred from what has been said above in relation to the rights of the Muscovy Company and their choice of Frobisher that, the privilege of undertaking such a voyage having been previously bestowed on the Muscovy Company, it was not in Elizabeth's power to revoke the grant, except in the event of their refusal 1 ibid., 328 and Edwards' Life of Ralegh, 77 ; The Fighting Veres by Markham, 45 ; and English Seamen, I. 113. 2 Die. Nat. Biog., XXI. 328. ' ibid., XX. 282, sub Martin Frobisher ; and English Seamen, I. i ig. * Edward's Life of Ralegh, I. 78 ; see also an earlier protest against Sir Hum- phrey's scheme by the Company of Merchant Adventurers, Rec. Office MSS., Domestic, vol. XLII. No. 23, and English Seamen, I. 112. 94 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. to despatch such an expedition. They did not refuse, but sent Frobisher; and hence the queen was powerless to grant Gilbert's petition. It was all very well to send Frobisher : what Sir Humphrey wanted was permission to go himself. But as the Company's action amounted, in some sort, to an answer to his petition, a direct renewal of his request, at this moment, could not but lead to the royal displeasure. It was needful, however that the matter be kept in agitation, and hence some means must be found to further his personal request. Sir Humphrey was not a literary man, and the appearance of such a work as the Discourse of Discouerie as his own acknowledged publication was not to be thought of for a moment : although the work must be plainly capable of identification as his. In this juncture, who so fitting to choose for editor as George Gascoigne, a soldier, a personal friend of his young half-brother, Walter Raleigh, a kinsman of Martin Frobisher, a literary man, and a gentleman by birth .■" Perhaps young Walter Raleigh suggested his friend to Sir Humphrey ; perhaps, in conversation on the subject. Master Gascoigne bethought himself of a like surreptitious proceeding in the early publication of his own works, and inferred that a similar proceeding was the best applicable to this case. We have before us a sufficient reason, and the circumstances of all parties concerned are in perfect harmony with this explanation. Of course, when the matter was once decided upon, the Epistle must throw sand in the eyes of any who would be likely to inquire ; and, in confounding an apology for the author with what should have been an apology for his own conduct, Gascoigne intentionally drew the reader's attention from too close an inspection into the circumstances of the case. That this publication really produced some effect is noticeable from the fact that, once launched as an author, Sir Humphrey set forth another "discouerie," November 6, 1577, How her Majesty might annoy the King of Spain by fitting out a fleet of DISCOURSE OF DISCOVERIE AND LATER PROSE. 95 war-ships under pretence of a voyage of discovery, and so fall upon the enemy's shipping, destroy his trade in Newfoundland and the West Indies, and possess both Regions} At length, other difficulties and especially diplomatic difficulties per- mitting,2 "on ii June 1578 Gilbert obtained from the queen his long-coveted charter for discovery, to plant a colony, and to be governor."^ Fortunately we do not need to leave this question here ; there is a piece of evidence almost contemporary in Harvey's Pierces Supererogation : — Had he [Thomas Nashe] begun to Aretinize . . . when Gascoine [began] to sonnet, &c. . . . some parte of his phantastical bibble-bables and ca- pricious panges might have bene tollerated in a greene and wilde youth : but the winde is chaunged, and there is a busier pageant vpon the stage. M. Aschams Toxophilus long sithence shot at a fairer marke : and M. Gas- coigne himselfe, after some riper experience was glad to trye other conclu- sions in the Lowe Countryes : and bestowed an honorable commendation vpon Sir Humphrye Gilbertes gallant discourse of a discouery for a newe passage to the East Indyes.* As noted above, it is highly probable that Harvey was per- sonally acquainted with Gascoigne, and not impossibly the author of the commendatory Latin verses signed G. H., prefixed to the Posies. Such a man as Harvey considered Gascoigne's epistle "an honorable commendation," not a case of literary piracy and an unexampled betrayal of hospitality. Had Harvey known anything sinister about the matter, he would at least have been silent, as he was no enemy of Gascoigne's ; that Harvey was in a position to know can scarcely be questioned. In conclusion of this subject let me state that I do not claim for this explanation the force of a demonstration. It is simply an attempt to make clear a matter which, in the absence of 1 State Papers, Domestic CXVIII. 12. 2 Edward's Life of Ralegh, 78-80. 8 Hakluyt, III. 135-7 and Die. Nat. Biog. XXI. 328. * Works of Harvey, ed. Grosart, II. 96. g6 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. further evidence, is likely to remain in the long list of biograph- ical detail headed "uncertain." Two other pamphlets in prose followed A Discourse, of which first, The Droome of Doomes Daye : wherein the frailties and miseries of mans life are lively portrayed and learnedly set forth. Translated and collected by George Gascoigne. Tam Marte quam Mercuric, etc.^ The work, which appeared in May, 1576, is of considerable length, and is thus set forth on the page following the title : — This worke is divided into three parts the first whereof is entituled : The view of Worldly Vanities, exhorting us to contempne all pompes, pleasures, delights and vainties of this lyfe. And the second parte is named the Shame of Sinne, displaying and laying open the huge greatnesse and enor- mities of the same, by sundrie good examples and comparisons. And the third parte is called the Needles Eye, wherein wee are taught the right rules of a true Christian life, and the straight passage into everlasting felicitie.^ In the dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Bedford, the author tells how " tossing and retossing in my small library, amongst some bookes which had not often felt my fingers endes in xvi years before, I chaunced to light upon a small volume skarce comely covered and wel worse handled." He further informs us that the book was ."written in an old kynde of caracters, and so tome as it neyther had the beginning perspicuous nor the end perfect." He was therefore unable to give its author ; but translated it "for the general commoditie," and "thought mete to entytle it the Droom.e of Doomes Daye." The first part of the Droome is easily referable to Innocent III.'s De Contemptu mundi sive de miseria hiimance conditionis ; and a comparison of Gascoigne' s translation proves the poet to have been both careful and accurate in his work. Not so, how- 1 The Droome appeared in a second imprint in 1 586, " Imprinted by John Win- det for Gabriel Cawood," the original publisher. It has never been reprinted. Brydges mentions a third ed. without date. Restituta, IV. 306. Brydges, who did not know G.'s original, is quite eloquent on the learning and piety of the poet. ^ I. ed. 1575, first leaf. DISCOURSE OF DISCOVERIE AND LATER PROSE. 97 ever, the other two parts, the originals of which I fail to find in the writings of Innocent. It is likely that Gascoigne's orig- inal contained the work of several authors, although there is evident design in the collection and succession of the three tracts. It is a curious coincidence that Innocent's De contemp- tu mimdi should have been translated and published indepen- dently in the very same year of the appearance of the Droome, by one H. Kenton, and entitled. The Mirror of Mans Lyfe. Kenton mentions his original without naming the author.^ In The Droome of Doomes Daye, Gascoigne evidently found the passage that suggested the selection of his next translation,^ which he called A Delicate Diet for Daintie mouthde Drunk- ards, wherein the fowle abuse of common carowsing and quaffing with hartie draughts is honestly admonished? This work, which may be described as one of the earliest temperance tracts in the language, is dedicated " to the right worshipful, his singular good friend Lewes Dyve of Broomeham," and is a translation of the epistle of Saint Augustine, De Ebritate. The translation is at times free and very spirited, the now broken courtier evi- dently writing from that conviction which comes with dearly bought experience. I can not forbear a short passage, which for swing and ease of style is alone enough to confute the plati- tudes concerning the late development of English prose : — Such is the very nature and property of sinne generally (but of this sinne especially) that where it once getteth the maistry and upper hand by con- tinuall custome, it hardeneth the heart, blindeth the eyes, amaseth the un- derstanding, bewitcheth the sences, benoometh the members, duUeth the 1 Both Kenton's and Gascoigne's translations are in the British Museum. In- nocent's (Lothario Conti's) treatise has been edited by Achterfeldt, Bonn, 1855. 2 "What is more filthie than a drunlcard.' Whose breathe stinketh, and his body trembleth. Promising many things and bewraying all things, his minde beinge altered and his face transformed. For there is no secret kept where drunk- enesse reigneth;" etc. Ed. 1586, 34. There is no pagination in the ed. of 1576. ' A Delicate Diet is dated Aug. 22, 1 576, and was published by G.'s old publisher, Richard Jones. The preface is interesting for an account of his earlier works. 98 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. wits, provoketh unto beastlinesse, discourageth from vertuous exercises, maketh lovely to seem lothesome, hasteneth crooked age, fostereth infirmi- ties, defyleth the body openly and woundeth the soul unseen.^ The Delicate Diet was Gascoigne's last prose work, as he ap- pears thereafter to have been engaged upon his presentation poem, The Grief of Joy e. There remain two works which have been ascribed to Gas- coigne. An Almanac and Prognostications, London, 157^^ i^ mentioned as the poet's by the editor of the Athence Canta- brigiensis, on what authority I have been unable to discover.^ I'he other work calls for more remark. It is entitled, The Wyll of the Deuill, with his ten detestable commandments : directed to his obedient and accursed children, and the Rewarde promised to all suche as obediently wyl endeuer themselves to fulfil them.. Very necessarie to be read and well considered of all Christians? This tract was printed by Richard Jones, but the title exhibits no date. As Jones published between 1 567 and 1 594,* it may have appeared in Gascoigne's lifetime. From Maidment, who argues against the assignment of the authorship of the Wyll to Gascoigne, we learn that the matter rests upon the slender au- thority of a sales catalogue.^ Better reasons than Maidment's are found in the design and execution of the work, both of which are altogether inferior to Gascoigne ; in the hot spirit of anti-popery, no where else discoverable in Gascoigne ; and in the language and versification, which point to an earlier 1 A Delicate Diet, ed. 1576, II. ^ I. 376. Possibly because of the apochryphal story of G.'s intimacy with Allen ? See above, 6. 8 The book is extremely rare, and was reprinted from the copy in the Advo- cate's Library, Edinburgh, by Maidment in a private ed. of forty copies, in 1828. * Fleay, Hist, of the Stage, 383. * Introd. to his reprint of the Wyll, first page. Paterson's Cat. Bibl., Beau- clerk, 1781. I., No. 4137. DISCOURSE OF DISCOVERIE AND LATER PROSE. 99 period.^ The editor of the Dictionary of National Biography comes to the same conclusion and assigns the Wyll of the Deuill to Humphrey Powell. Gascoigne may have been fath- ered with this production from the distant parallel between the Wyll and The Steele Glas, already noted above. '■ Cf. " the trusty friends of the devil," Emserus, Ekius and Faber, the " Ham- mer of the Heretics," all mentioned in the Wyll, and all dead before 1545. Bishop Gardiner is likewise one of " the friends.'' Here is a specimen : — Yet thou shalt die forever yet never be dead. Thy meat shall be toades, thy drinke boyling lead, Take no thought for the Bloode that Christ for thee shed, And straight to my kingdome thou shalt be led. lOO GEORGE GASCOIGNE. X. LAST DAYS AND CONTEMPORARY ESTEEM. The beginning of the year 1577 found Gascoigne once more received at court and reinstated in the favor and employ of his sovereign. Moreover two or three years of literary industry, upon the basis of his earlier poetical reputation, had made him the foremost author of his day. Unfortunately Gascoigne did not long survive his altered fortunes. As early as May, 1576, he mentions his " weake "plight for health," which at that time prevented him from attending " the dayly proofes " of his Droome of Doomes Daye} His prefaces exhibit the fact that, during the last years of his life, much of his time was spent " among my books here at my poore house in Walthamstow." ^ This, it will be remembered, was the property of his wife, and, as appears from the will of her former husband, was a home of substantial comfort. Here doubtless it was that young Nicholas Breton took up the broken career of the now failing poet, to carry into another and far greater age the versatility and not a few of the mannerisms of his step-father. From George Whetstone's A Remembraunce of the wel im- ployed life, and godly end of George Gascoigne Esquire may be gleaned a few facts as to the poet's last illness, which was apparently lengthy and attended with much wasting and pain. Whetstone defends his friend from the aspersions of those who "knew his life amis," denies that his "wanton layes, in- ductions were to vice," and calls them " the woes of loove, and not the wayes to love," especially dwelling on the moral tone of Gascoigne's later productions. The poet is made to say: — 1 Preface and Printer's Note, quoted by Arber, Steele Glas, 9. ^ Steele Glas, Epistle Dedicatorie, Arber, 45. LAST DAYS AND CONTEMPORARY ESTEEM. lOI I left this vaine, to path the vertuous waies : The lewd I checkt, in Glas of government, ******** I wrought a Glasse. wherein eche man may see, Within his minde, what canckred vices be.^ Whetstone also fails not to deny the reports of Gascoigne's misconduct "among the drunken Dutch," nor to notice that Gascoigne's " slender gain a further witnes is," that the "rumours lewd which impayred his desart" in this respect were false. Gascoigne is made to say: "my wealth is small," and to bestow it, justly enough, upon his loving wife, "whose face I fain would see." The dying poet refers, likewise, to her Majesty's "rewardes beyond desarts " and conjures his son with his last blessing to serve God and discharge his father's debt of gratitude to the Queen. George Gascoigne's death took place at Stamford, Lincoln- shire, October 7, 1577, in the presence, possibly in the house, of George Whetstone, whither the poet had probably gone to benefit his health. Whetstone celebrated his friend, as Mr. Gosse says, "in the old dreadful manner." Perhaps Whet- stone's epitaph of Gascoigne may be sufficient as a specimen: — For Gaskoygnes death, leave to mone or morne You are deceived, alive the man is stil : Alive ? O yea, and laugheth death to scorne, In that, that he, his fleshly lyfe did kil. For by such death, two lyves he gaines for one, His soule in heaven dooth hve in endles joye His woorthy woorkes, such fame in earth have sowne As sack nor wrack, his name can there destroy. But you will say, by death he only gaines, And now his lyfe, would many stand in stead : O dain not Freend, (to countercharge his paynes) 1 Arber ed., 19. 102 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. If now in heaven, he have his earned meade. For once in earth, his toyle was passing great : And we devourd the sweet of all his sweat. Nemo ante obitum beaius?- " George Whetstone had wealthy relations, at Walcot (four miles distant from Stamford) . . . which parishes to Bernack, where the family of Whetstones usually buried and where a monument of the Elizabethan style of architecture still re- mains." ^ Gilchrist therefore conjectures "that George Gas- coigne dying at Stamford was carried to Bernack by his friend . . . and interred there in the family vault." ^ The same dili- gent inquirer, upon searching the parish register at Waltham- stow, found no entry prior to 1650, and in the parish of Bernack found no register at all.* Gascoigne's portrait, subscribed with his favorite motto. Tarn Marti quam Mercurio, appears on the back of the title- page of the first edition of The Steele Glas, and exhibits a handsome man of soldier-like bearing. The editor of the Dic- tionary of National Biography states that there is an engraved portrait of Gascoigne by Fry ; ^ this I have not seen. George Gascoigne was held in high contemporary estima- tion. Aside from the large number of commendatory verses prefixed to his Posies and to The Steele Glas, there is other abundant evidence of this. I have arranged some of the more important allusions to Gascoigne, as nearly chronologically as circumstances would permit, omitting the commendatory verses collected in Hazlitt's edition, and Whetstone's Remembraunce . The earliest posthumous mention of Gascoigne is found in the induction succeeding Thomas Blener Hasset's Complaynt 1 Arber ed., 29. 2 Brydges says that he " searched the registers of Stamford (which are unusually perfect) for the name of George Gascoigne " in vain. — Cen. Lit., II. 5. 5 Athen. Oxon. ed. 1813, II. 437. ' Cens. Lit., II. 238. 6 Die. Nat'l Biog., XXI. 39. LAST DAYS AND CONTEMPORARY ESTEEM. IO3 of Cadwallader, written in the year of Gascoigne's death. The passage, which is interesting on other accounts, runs as fol- lows : — 'O what brave beames of goodly tymber might be found amongst Churchyardes Chippes, if he had not affected the ryming order of his pre- decessors ? Which Meeter made not onely hym inferiour vnto Horace, but it also made a great inequalitie to be betwixt Buchurst and Homer: betwixt Phaer and Virgill : betwixt Turberville and Tibullus, betwixt Golding and Ovid : betwixt George Gascoigne and S,eneca.i In the next year, as Warton puts it, Gabriel Harvey celebrates Gascoigne "as one of the English poets who have written about women "; 2 and in 1579, Edward Kirk recognized Gas- coigne as "the verie' chefe of our late rymers " in his Glosse to the month of November of The Shepherd's Calendar: — Philomele, the Nightingale : whome the Poetes faine once to haue bene a Ladye of great beauty, till rauished by hir sisters husbande, she desired to be turned into a byrde of hir name, whose complaintes be very wel set forth of Ma. George Gaskin, a wittie gentleman, and the verie chefe of our late rymers, who, and if some parts of learning wanted not (albee it is wel knowen he altogyther wanted not learning) no doubt would haue attayned to the excellencie of those famous Poets. [Presumably certain of the ancients mentioned previously.] For gifts of wit and naturall promptnesse appeare in hym aboundantly.' William Webbe places Gascoigne after Skelton in an enu- meration of the chief English poets, and says that the former was " as painefull a Souldier in the affayres of hys Prince and country, as he was a wytty Poet in his wryting." Webbe con- 1 Second Part of The Mirror for Magistrates, ed. 1578, fol. 40. Blener Hasset also alludes to Gascoigne in his Epistle, The author to his friend, ibid., "let Gascon and Churchyarde be forgotten." ^ History of English Poetry, III. 309. Speaking of the books which should form a lady's library, Harvey writes : — Chaucerusque adsit, Surreius et inclytus adsit Gascoignoque aliquis sit, mea Corda, locus. Xa(/)e vel Gratulationum Valdensium, 1578, Lib. IV. 22. ^ Works of Spenser, ed. Collier, I. 134. 104 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. eludes, "whose commendations because I found in one of better judgement then my self, I wyl sette downe hys wordes and suppresse myne own," and he quotes Kirk in full, as above.i Puttenham, too, besides including Gascoigne in an enumeration of the " crew of courtly makers," commends him for " a good meeter and for a plentifull vayne." ^ In the same year, 1589, young Thomas Nash, just returned from his travels, writes an address To the Gentlemen Students as a preface to his friend's, Robert Greene's, Menaphon, wherein he speaks thus : — Whoever ray private opinion condemneth as fatiltie, Master Gascoigne is not to bee abridged of his deserved esteeme, who first beate the path to that perfection which our best poets haue aspired to since his departure, whereto he did ascend, by comparing the Italian with the English, as Tullie did Graeca cum Latinisfi Nash alludes to Gascoigne elsewhere* In his later Eng- lish writings, too, Gabriel Harvey is full of mention of Gas- coigne, especially in Pierce Supererogation, e.g. "and shew him his well fauored face in a cristall as true as Gascoigne' s Steele Glas"; ^ " Had he begun to Aretinize when . . . Gas- coigne [began] to sonnet, Tourberville to madrigal, Drant to versify, etc.;"® "his gayest flowrishes are but Gascoigne's weedes;'"' "In Grafton ... in Gascoigne . . . Warner, and 1 Discourse of English Poetrie, 1 586, ed. Arber, 33. 2 The Arte of English Poetrie, 1589, ed. Arber, 75. 8 Works of Robert Greene, ed. Grosart, VI. 20; where Nash apparently alludes obscurely to Gascoigne, under his motto, Tarn Marti quam Mercurio, with this consoling quotation, qui bene vult irolav, debet ante irlveiv, 23. * See the quotation above from Pour Letters Confuted, ed. Grosart, II. 253; To the Geiitlemen Readers, Strange Newes, ibid., 181, where Nash applies Gas- coigne's motto, Tarn Marti, &=(:., to himself ; and again, Pierce Penilesse his Sup- plication, ibid., 27. 6 Works of Harvey, ed. Grosart, II. 73. * ibid., 96. See also Works of Harvey, as above, II. 57, and I. 146, in which note an allusion to Gascoigne's Supposes. ' ibid., II. 115. LAST DAYS AND CONTEMPORARY ESTEEM. 105 Daniel; in an hundred such vulgar writers, many things are commendable, divers things are notable, some things are excel- lent." 1 Finally, we hear that Senior Immerito himself . . . "was one that could very well abide Gascoigne's Steele Glas."^ Besides a bare mention of his name between 1580 and 1600, in such books as The Touchstone of Wit, by Edward Hake, The Eiicmie of Idlenesse, by William Fulwood, Wits Qommon- zuealth, Bodenham's BelvMere, and other contemporary works, Francis Meres mentions Gascoigne in his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, 1598, three times, and praises him as "among the best poets for comedy," and "most passionate among us to bewail and bemoan the perplexities of loue." ^ It may be added that Meres' juxtaposition of names is instructive : "elo- quent and witty J. Lilly, Lodge, Gascoigne, Greene, Shake- speare, etc.;" and again, "Drayton, Shakespeare, Whetstone, Gascoigne, etc." * It will be seen that the bulk of these quotations are favor- able to the old poet. But he does not seem long to have with- stood the changing tastes of the newer age, and we find Sir John Davies, as early as 1 597, satirizing a " new f angled youth," for inconsistency in giving praise to "old George Gascoigne's rimes." ^ Drayton, too, satirizes Gascoigne and Churchyard (the juxtaposition of the two names seems inevi- table) : — ^ ibid., 290. 2 ibid., I. l8o. ' Five Sections of Meres' Wits Treasury, Sh. Allusion Books, New Sh. Soc., Pt I. 162. * ibid., xxiii and 151. 5 The epigram concludes : — He takes tobacco, and doth wear a lock And wastes more time at dressing than a wench : Yet this new fangled youth, made for these times Doth, aboue all, praise old George Gascoigne's rhymes. New Sh. Soc. Pub., " Forewords," VI. Ixix. I06 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. Gascoine and Churchyard after them again, In the beginning of Eliza's reign, Accounted were great meterers many a day, But not inspired with braue fire; had they Lived but a httle longer, they had seen There works before them to have buried been.^ Indeed, Bolton, in his Hypercritica, does not hesitate to say, " among the lesser late poets George Gascoigne's works may be endured." ^ Lastly, as late as 1615, we have a return to the earlier esti- mate of Gascoigne's talents in what follows, quoted from the translation of an Italian work of Benedetto Varchi, by R. T. Gent, entitled The Blazon of Jealousy : — Though this newe age hath brought more neat and tierce wits into the world, yet must not old George Gascoigne and Turberuile . . . with some others be altogether rejected: since they first brake the ice for our quainter poets, who now write, that they may more safely swin through the main ocean of sweete poesy.' It may be suspected that " R. T. Gent " had his thoughts, if not his eye, on the passage of Nash, cited above, when he penned this " censure." Gascoigne's personal character has been sufficiently dis- cussed. But one word remains. I have called Mr. Fleay the poet's posthumous foe,* not because I would take sides against the righteous zeal, much less against the remarkable powers of research of a scholar to whom all workers in this field owe an incalculable debt, but because, having given the old poet a bad name by the unearthing of certain ancient scandals, Mr. 1 Elegies, To my dearly loved friend Henry Reynolds, Esq., Of Poets and Poesie, Anderson, Works of the British Poets, III. 548. 2 Haselwood, Ancient Critical Essays, II. 250. 2 Quoted in Hawkins' Origins of the Stage, III. 1. See also a like allusion in Howes' Stow's Annals, ed. 1515, 811. * See above, pp. 18-22, and Biographical Chronicle of the Engl. Drama, sub voce. LAST DAYS AND CONTEMPORARY ESTEEM. ID/ Fleay immediately proceeds to accept everything that can pos- sibly be brought against Gascoigne as proved. Mr. Fleay believes the story of Gascoigne' s early intimacy with "the prophecyer " and receiver of stolen goods, which I have shown to be highly improbable ;i he accepts the ex parte statements of the objections against Gascoigne, "yt he ought not to be Burges," possibly no more than a political slander, as proved in every particular; doubtless to all the heinous crimes therein enumerated, spying, manslaughter, and atheism ; 2 he apparently assumes that the inquiry before the Mayor of London, which was probably settled amicably, is a proof of Gascoigne's de- signed depredations on the estate of his step-children ; ^ and he arraigns Gascoigne as "a coward, who took advantage of his absence from England to print his scurrilous libels with misleading signatures," when, in point of fact, it is more than likely from the custom of the time, and from Mr. Fleay' s own admission as to the probable date of the occurrences of some of these "scurrilous libels," that they were well known, long before their publication, in manuscript.* Mr. Fleay further insinuates that Gascoigne's' fortune was ill-gotten, and that he " of course pocketed the proceeds " of his publication of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Discourse ; ^ as to the former, of which it is sufficient to state that the insinuation is unnecessary; while the latter is certainly, at the least, wholly gratuitous. George Gascoigne was, without question, given to loose living in his youth, which was all the worse that he was not a little boastful of his exploits. He was immoral in an unmoral age; he was perhaps not over scrupulous in an age notorious for its un 1 ibid., I. 237. See above, pp. 6-7. 2 ibid., 238. * ibid. * ibid., 242. 5 ibid. Mr. Fleay's words are, " He was disinherited ; spent a fortune — whence obtained we know not," 237 and 238. I08 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. scrupulousness ; but Gascoigne was sincerely penitent, if ever man has been penitent, and it becomes us not to judge too harshly "the lost time of a youth mispent." George Gascoigne was not what Harvey or Kirk would have called a learned man.^ His knowledge of Latin — "such lattyn as I forgatt at Cantabridge " — was good in an age in which it was a reproach not to know Latin well.^ Whetstone in a marginal note states that his friend "had the Latin, Italian, French, and Dutch languages;"^ and there is no question that Gascoigne posed as a linguist before the Queen, who was a very good judge of such matters. If the French and Italian versions of The Hermit's Tale are really Gascoigne' s, they certainly prove him to have been uncommonly expert in an idiomatic use of both these tongues. However, it must be stated that Gascoigne nowhere shows a mastery of foreign literature, such, for instance, as Sir Thomas Wyatt displays; indeed it may be affirmed that, notwithstanding his imita- tion of Italian comedy, tragedy, and novel, Gascoigne is less Italianate than most of his contemporaries, and this because, for the most part, a strong individuality prevailed to keep him distinctly English. No better example of this could be offered than The Glasse of Government, in which, with German and Dutch Calvinistic models before him, Gascoigne contrived to produce a product still quite English in its moral and religious tone. Many passages show him to have been no careless student of the earlier literature of England, and we may feel sure that his position as a purfist in language was both con- ^ 1 See Kirk's strictures above, 103. 2 Hazl., II. 139. Elsewhere he says: "Gentlewoman, you speak Greeke, the whiche I haue forgotten, and mine instructors are farre from me at present to expound your wordes." ibid., I. 429. This evidently means that G. knew no Greek. ' Remembraurue, Arber's Steele Glas, 19. LAST DAYS AND CONTEMPORARY ESTEEM. ICQ scious and consistent. ^ It was certainly fortunate for the in- fluence which Gascoigne exerted upon his age that he " smacks so little of the inkhorne." Whilst drawing his models and inspiration from a diversity of sources,^ it is not difi&cult at times to trace the origin of a design, or the immediate influence, under which a given work was produced. Thus the subject and general treatment of Jocasta are suggested in the prevailing taste for Seneca ; the versification and conduct of the play, in minor matters such as the dumb shows, by the recent success of Gorboduc. The Steele Glas arises from the popular use of the word as a title for satirical or moral prose disquisition, the renewed popularity of Piers Plowman, and possibly from the favor with which Edward Hake's new English Satyrs in verse had been recently received. Indeed, despite Gascoigne's own laudation of the learned brayne Which joyneth reading with experience, Professor Morley very justly remarks that " ' the learned brayne ' of the poet was exercised rather exclusively, at the time of the writing of the Glas, in culling allusions from the Memorable Say- ings and Doings collected by Valerius Maximus."^ In short nearly all the works of Gascoigne point to the characteristic of a clever, but far from scholarly, adaptation of material, hap- pened upon by chance, to the immediate task in hand. No method, however, could have been happier than this in view of the age to come, as neither the scholarly spirit which sought 1 See especially the passage on Chaucer in the letter of " G. T.,'' prefixed to the ed. of 1572, and "if quicknes of invention, proper vocables, apt epythetes, and store of monasillables may help a pleasant brayne to be crowned with Lawrell, I doubt not but both our countrymen and countrie-language might be entronised amonge the old foreleaders unto the mount Helicon." 2 G.'s versatility was recognized by his contemporaries; see the commendatory verses of N. R. to the The Steele Glas. 8 See Morley's Library of English Literature, Shorter Poems, note, igr. no GEORGE GASCOIGNE. to build up an imitation of the ancients on English soil, nor a slavish adherence to modern foreign models, however admir- able, could bring about the national spirit, out of which alone a great literature can arise. The position of George Gascoigne in the history of English literature presents many considerations. As a lyric and erotic poet he continued the line of development set by Surrey and Wyatt, infusing into his verse a more thoroughly English spirit, and adhering to such older practices as alliteration and a profuse employment of idiomatic phrases and proverbs. The smoothness of Gascoigne's verse shows that he gave not a little attention to musical effect, and this, together with fre- quent happiness of phrase and figure, his sincerity and direct- ness, occasional passion and genuine force and originality, seem to me suflficient to account for the estimation in which the poet was held by his contemporaries. I cannot but feel that Spenser, who " could very well abide Gascoigne's Steele Glas," was somewhat more affected by the old poet than Mr. Palgrave in his essay on The Predecessors of Spenser would have us believe. To mention but one instance, there had been no such conscious attention to the musical effect of words since the time of Chaucer, no such smooth fluidity of manner. Both these are characteristics of Spenser, although, to be sure, in an infinitely higher degree. As a narrative poet Gascoigne's powers are even more pro- nounced. He has motion, wit and vivacity, and, if the current • does eddy and swirl backward at times, it must be remembered that this was as much the spirit of the age as of the man. Gascoigne has been likened to Byron, and the comparison is not absurd, allowing for the differences of their times and the disparity of their poetical gifts. Besides the qualities of mo- tion, wit and vivacity, just mentioned, which were assuredly Byron's, Gascoigne has a similarly pervasive sense of his own personality, a like facile, careless and happy flow of verse, a LAST DAYS AND CONTEMPORARY ESTEEM. I I I similarly fluent, reckless, trivial, and flippant vein. If we add to this certain obvious similarities in the characters and lives of the two poets, the comparison is at an end ; for nothing could offer a greater contrast than the scornful, merry cyni- cism of Don Juan and the contrite and moralizing repentance of many later passages of Gascoigne. As a satirist, the direct- ness, sincerity and force of the poet have already been suiifi- ciently set forth. A special interest attaches to The Steele Glas from its versification and its position amongst the earliest products of its class. Again, aside from the fortuitous promi- nence which belongs to such a drama as The Glasse of Govern- ment, for its unique position, Gascoigne's services to the drama are comprised in the adoption of Sackville's innovation of blank verse, and the introduction and admirable use of dramatic prose dialogue. Nor are the prose writings of Gascoigne of less interest. The courtly phrase ai5d clever wit and innuendo of many of the prefaces, the terseness and common sense of the little tract on versification, the vivacity of the prose narrative. The Adven- tures of Master F. J., and the genuine eloquence of not a few passages of the later tracts and translations combine to show a grasp and facility in the use of prose, which is widely at vari- ance with the involved periods of Gascoigne's contemporaries, the Latinists, and very much counter to that commonplace of the history of literature, that dates all excellence in English prose style from a time subsequent to the Restoration. I would hence claim for George Gascoigne a position of peculiar significance in the history of English literature: (i) from his versatility in choice and his successful adoption of several forms and modes of literary expression, before his time unknown to the literature ; (2) from his uniform treatment of his material, in an English spirit, alike removed from the pedantry of the scholar and the over-culture of contemporary foreign modes; and (3) from his consistent cultivation, inverse 112 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. and especially in prose, of a simple and direct yet graceful and idiomatic style. I grant that the second of these qualities was as much the result of the limitations of the poet's culture as of distinctive personal characteristics, and I admit that his writings are far from free of that alliteration and antithesis, that periphrasis and labored ease which, in later prose authors of the period, is popularly called euphuism; but when all has been said, whether as poet, dramatist, translator, moralist, satirist, or writer and editor of prose fiction or religious tract, we have in Gascoigne a merit of a very decided and distinctive kind, a merit that should warrant us in concluding with Nash : " Master Gascoigne is not to be abridged of his deserved esteeme, who first beate the path to that perfection which our best poets have aspired to since his departure." APPENDIX. THREE POEMS OF GASCOIGNE HERETOFORE NOT REPRINTED.i A TRANSLATION OF ARIOSTO ALLEGORIZED.^ When worthy Bradamant, had lookdd long in vain, To see hir absent love and lord, Ruggier, return againe : Upon hir lothdd bed hir lustlesse limbes did cast, And in deceitful dreames she thought she saw him come at last. But when with open armes she ran to him embrace, With open eyes she found it false, and thus complained hir case. That which me pleased (quod she) was dreames which fancy drewe, But that which me torments (alas) by sight I find it true. My joye was but a dreame, and soone did fade away. But my tormenting cruel cares, cannot so soon decaye. Why heare I not and see, since now I have my sences ? That which is faindd fading dreames apperdd by pteces, [sic] s Or whereto serve mine eyes, if sights they so mistake. As seeme to see ech joy in sleepe, and woo when they awake. The sweete and slumbering sleape, did promise joye and peace. But these unpleasaunt sights do rayse such warres as never cease. The sleape I felt was false, and seemed to ease my grief, But that I see is all to true, and yieldes me no relief. If truth anoy me then, and fayned fancyes please me, God graunt I never heare or see, true thing for to disease me. If sleaping yeeld me joy, and waking worke me woe, God graunt I sleape, and never wake, to ease my torment so. 1 These poems are not included in the ed. of 1575, that of 1587, nor reprinted by Hazlitt. I print from the ed. of 1572, the British Museum copy. 2 This translation begins on p. 294. The original is canto 33, stanzas 59-64. 8 Pretences. 114 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. happy slumbring soules, when one dead drowsy sleepe Six monthes (of yore) in silence shutte, with closed eyes did keepe. Yet can I not compare, such sleepe to be like death, Nor yet such waking, as I wake, to be like vital breath. For why my lot doth fall, contrary to the rest, 1 deem it death when I awake, and life while I do rest. Yet if such sleepe be like to death in any wise O gentle death come quick at call, and close my dreary eyes. Thus said the worthy dame, whereby I gather this, No care can be compared to that, where true love parted is. LENVOIE. So Lady if you had but halfe hke care of mee, That worthy Bradamant had then her own Ruggier to see : My readie will should be so prest to come at call. You should have no such sight or dreame to trouble you withall. Then when you list commaund, and I will come in hast, There is no hap shall hold me backe, good will shall roon so fast. Si fortunatus infoelix. SONNET. 1 When stedfast friendship, (bound by holy othe) Did parte perforce my presence from thy sight. In dreames I might behold how thou wert loth With troubled thoughts to part from thy delight. When Popler walks enclosed thy pensive mind. My painted shadow did thy woes receive : Thine evening walks by Thames in open wind. Did long to see my sayling boat arive. But when the dismold \sic\ day did seek to part From London walles thy longing mind for me, The sugred kisses (sent to thy dear hart) With secret smart in broken sleepes 1 see. Wherefore in tears I drench a thousand fold, Till these moist eyes thy beauty may behold. Si fortunatus infoelix. ip. 311. APPENDIX. J J t EITHER A NEEDLESSE OR A BOOTLESSE COMPARISON BETWENE TWO LETTERS.i Of aU the letters in the christs crosse rowe, I feare (my sweete) thou lovest B the best, And though there be good letters many mo, As A. O. G. N. C. S. and the rest, Yet such a liking bearest thou to B. That few or none thou thinkest like it be. And much I muse what madriesse should thee move, To let the cart before the comely horse : Must A give place, to B. for his behove ? Are letters now so chaijgdd from their course ? Then must I learne (tho' much unto my paine,) To read (anew) my christ crosse rowe againe. When first I learnd, A. was in high degree, A captaine letter, and a vowell too : Such one as was alwayes a help to B. And lent him sound and taught him what to doo. For take away the vowels from their place. And how then can the consonants have grace ? Yet if thou like a consonant so well. Why should not G. seem better far than B ? G. spelleth God, that high in heaven doth dwell. So spell we gold and all good things with G. B. serves to spell bold, bawoy [sic] brain sick, bolde, Black, browne and bad, yea worse than may be told. In song the G. cliffe keepes the highest place. Where B. sounds alwayes (or too sharp or) flat ; In G. sol, re, ut, trebles have trimme grace. B serves the base and is content with that. Believe me (sweete) G. giveth sound full sweete. When B. cries buzz, as is for bases meete. But now percase thou wilt one G. permit. And with that G. thou meanest B. to joyne : Alas, alas, me thinkes it were not fit, ^ P- 333- Il6 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. (To cloke thy faults) such fine excuse to coyne. Take double G. for thy most loving letter, And cast off B. for it deserves no better. Thus have I played a little with thy B. Whereof the brand is thine, and mine the blame. The wight who woundes thy wandring will is he, And I the man that seeke to salve thy name : The which to thinke, doth make me sigh sometime, Tho' thus I strive to jest it out in ryme. Meritum petere^ grave. BIBLIOGRAPHY. A. MANUSCRIPTS. 1. 1568. MS. fol. 38 leaves. Jocasta. A tragedy written in Greke by Euripides, translated and digested into Acte by G. G. and Fraunces Kynwelmershe of Grays Inne, 1566. From the Guilford Library, lately in the Corser Collection at Stand. Hazlitt says that G.'s autograph is appended to Acts II, III, and V, and that the MS. differs somewhat from the text of the quartos. See CoH. Anglo-Poet. V. 452. 2. 1575. MS. Reg. MS. 1 8 A. xlviii, 27. The tale of Hemetes the heremyte pronounced before the Queenes Majesty att Wood- stocke. This MS., now in the Brit. Mus., consists of 62 leaves. The frontispiece is a drawing representing the presentation of the work, other drawings follow. The Tale of Hemetes was first printed by Nichols in 182 1, see below. Mr. Fleay suggests that the Tale was published with the Princelye Pleasures, in 1576 ; this is plainly a mistake. Biog. Chron. of the Engl. Drama, I, 237. 3. 1576. MS. 4°. Reg. MS. 18A. Ixi. 275. The Grief of Joye, Certayn Elegies, wherein the doubtful Delightes of Mans Lyfe are displaied. Written to the Queenes most excellent Majestie, i Jan. 1577. This MS., now in the Brit. Mus., consists of 38 folios. It was first printed by Hazlitt. B. COLLECTED EDITIONS. I. [1572.1 4°. B. L. A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres bounde up in one small Poesie, ... pp. 445, R- Smith. This first ed. is of very great rarity. The prefatory letter bears date, Aug., 1572. For contents see above p. 24. 2- 1575- 4°- ^- L. The Posies of G. G. Esquire. Corrected, perfected and augmented by the Authour. pp. 488, R. Smith. The Epistle dedicatorie is dated Jan. 2, 1575. Some copies of this ed. contain The Glasse of Government without pagination. Certayne Il8 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. Notes, etc., appears also first in this ed. Some copies bear the name of H. Bynneman for R. Smith. For contents see p. 28. 3. 1587. 4°. B. L. The pleasauntest workes of G. G. Esquyre : Newlye compyled into one Volume, that is to say : His Flowers, Hearbes, Weedes, the Fruites of warre, the Comedie called Supposes, the Tragedie of Jocasta, the Steele glasse, the Complaint of Phylo- mene, the Storie of Ferdinando Jeronimi and the pleasure at Kenel- worth Castle, pp. 326, A. Jeffes. Copies of this ed. differ as to the title : The whole workes of G. G. . . . The contents and the pagination also differ in some copies, some containing besides the matter above The Glasse of Government and in one case The Droome. According to Lowndes, Supposes is found occasionally bound up as a separate ed. 4. 1868-70. 2 vols. 4°. The complete Poems of G. G. . . . Now first collected and edited from the early printed copies, and from MSS., with a Memoir and Notes by W. C. Hazlitt. The Rox- burgh Library. C. EDITIONS OF SEPARATE WORKS. 1566. 8°. The French Littleton, Newly set forth by C. Holiband, ... At the beginning is a sonnet entitled : G. Gascoigne Squire in commendation of this booke. This is G.'s earliest published work. 1575. 4°. B. L. The Glasse of Government. A tragicall Com- edie, . . . Done by G. G. Seen and allowed . . . H. M[iddleton] for C. Barker. The dedication, which is dated April 26, 1575, is usually wanting. There appear to have been two impressions of The Glass in this year ; the earlier is without pagination, without the appended table of Errata, and differs in the Colophon. See Hazl. Handbook of E. Engl. Lit., 222, and Brit. Mus. Cat. 24, 253. 1575. 4°. The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting, . . . Trans- lated and collected . . . out of the best approved Authors. Prefixed to this work is a poem of some length entitled G. G. in commenda- tion of the noble Arte of Venerie. Several other poems interspersed through the work are probably his. This book usually appears with The Booke of Faulconrie or Hawking by G. Turberville, published in the same year. BIBLIOGRAPHY. I 1 9 1576. 4°. B. L. The Steele Glas. A Satire compiled by G. G. Esquire. Togither with the Complaynte of Phylomene. An Elegie deuised by the same Author, pp. 132, Richard Smith. Without pagination. The Preface is dated April 12, 1576. The back of the title of this ed. contains a portrait of G., reproduced by Marshall Stace in The British Bibliographer, I, 73, and also in Hazl. ed., II, 72. The Steele Glas was reprinted for the collected ed. of 1587. 1576. 4°. B. L. A Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia. Written by Sir Humfrey Gilbert, Knight. H. Middleton for R. Jhones. The title and the Epistle bear date April 12, 1576. This work was edited by G., who contributed an Epistle, G. G. Esquire, to the Reader, and A Prophetical Sonet, upon the com- mendable travile, etc. The copy in the Phila. Library is without pagination. The epistle has never been reprinted. 1576. 4°. B. L. The Droome of Doomes Day, . . . trans- lated and collected by G. G., pp. 272, J. Cawood. The dedication is dated May 2, 1576. The copy in the Brit. Mus. is without pagina- tion. 1576. 12°. A Delicate Diet for Daintie Mouthde Droonkardes, wherein the fowle abuse of common carousing and quaffing with hartie draughts is honestly admonished, by G. G. Esquire. R. Jhones. The dedication contains the date Aug. 22, 1576. The copy of this ed. in the Brit. Mus. is without pagination. 1576. 4°. The Princelye Pleasures at the Courte at Kenelworth, ... pp. 29, R. Jhones. Only one copy, an imperfect one, is known to exist. It is now in the Midland Institute. It was reprinted in the ed. of 1587. See p. 63. 1576. 4°. Cardanus Comfort, . . . translated by Thomas Bed- ingfield. G. G. to the Reader of this Book. This sonnet does not occur in the earlier ed. of 1573- 1579. 8°. The pleasant Tale of Hemetes the Heremite, . . . Newly recognised both in Latin and English by Abraham Fleming, annexed to his A Paradoxe, etc., pp. 44, H. Denham. See p. 71. 1581. The Arraignment of a Lover, published separately as a broad-sheet ballad, by H. Carre. "Lycensed unto him, another Ballad of Beauties Barr, where thauctor stode." Stat Reg. Sept. 1581. ed. Collier, II, 120. I20 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. 1586. 4°. B. L. The Droome of Doomes Day ... as above, pp. 272, J. Windet for G. Cawood. Besides these two editions Herbert mentions a third without date. See Coll. Anglo-Poetica, V, 444, and Brydges, Restituta, V, 306. 161 1. 4°. The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting, . . . hereto- fore pubhshed by G. Turberville Gentleman, corrected ... by another hand. T. Purfoot. The poems of the ed. of 1575 are here reprinted and the various portraits of Elizabeth removed for the substitution of those of James. See Introd. to Reprint of Turber- ville's Works, ed. 1587. Edinburg, 50 copies. 1773. Oxford. 3 vols. 8°. Supposes: a Comedy written in the Italian tongue by Ariosto, Englished by G. G. Esq. of Gray's Inn. Reprinted in Hawkins, The Origin of the English Drama, III, 1-86. 1788-1804. 3 vols. 4°. The Princelye Pleasures at the Court at Kenel worth, . . . First reprinted from the ed. of 1587 in Nichols' The Progresses Processions, Festivities and Pageants of Queen Elizabeth, I, 485. Nichols subsequently reprinted the printer's note to the ed. of 1575, in his third vol. preface, ix. See p. 63. Also, The Tale of Hemetes the Heremyte. . . . First reprinted from the MS. in the Brit. Mus. ibid., 553. 1789. 8°. A Delicate Diet, as above, pp. 24. Reprinted from the ed. of 1576 by F. G. Waldron, limited ed. This reprint contains at the end the verses A Description of the World, attributed to G. 1790. 3 vols. 8°. I. The Straunge Passion of a Lover, 2. G.'s LuUabye, 3. The Dole of Disdain, reprinted in Ellis, Specimens of Early English Literature, II, 147, and in subsequent edd. of the same. 1792. 8°. A Delicate Diet. . . . Reprinted by Waldron, in The Literary Museum. The pagination is separate, and apparently the same impression as the ed. of 1789 above. 1805-09. 10 vol. 8°. The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting. Described with long quotations in Censura Literaria, by Brydges. Repeated in the second ed. of 1815. 1807-12. 8°. The Grief of Joye, Certain Elegies, etc.. Reprinted in part (especially the Dedication) in Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, II, 294-303. Two vols, of this ed. were reprinted in 1814. 1808. The Steele Glas, [Bishop Percy's Selection of] Poems in Blank Verse (not Dramatique) prior to Milton's Paradise Lost. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 121 Never published : the impression all but four copies having been burnt. Arber, who refers to Collier, Bibl. Cat. II, 408. 18 10. 8°. The Poems of G. G. with Whetstone's Remembrance, prefixed by a life of the former poet by Chalmers. British Poets, II, 445-573- Chalmers' life is adequate, even if his estimate is over appreciative. 18 16. 8°. The Droome of Doomes Daye, as above. Described at length with extensive quotations by Brydges, Restituta, IV, 299-307- 1815. 4°. Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or rime in English, ed. by J. Haslewood. Ancient Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy, II, 1-12. 200 copies. This tract appeared first in the ed. of 1575, bound in after Weedes, with- out pagination. 18 19. 8°. Specimens of the British Poets by Campbell, contains the Arraignment of a Lover and a few passages from the Grief of Joye, II, 146-50. 1819. Phila. vol. 22. 12". Life and Select Poems of G. G. The Works of the British Poets, ed. Sanford. 1821. 8°. G.'s Princely Pleasures, with the Masque intended to have been presented before Queen Elizabeth, at Kenilworth Castle in 1575. With an introductory Memoir and Notes, by J. H. Burn. This ed. contains a portrait of G. 182 1. 4°. The same, published as a part of Kenilworth Illus- trated; . . . Embellished with engravings, Chiswick Press. 182 1. 8°. The same. Reprinted by F. Marshall, annexed to vol. 6 of The British Stage. Adlard mentions a 12°. of the Princely Pleasures of this same year. See also Lowndes. 182 1. 4°. The same, and also the Tale of Hemetes, as above, reprinted from the first ed. of Nichols' Progresses, etc. See ed. of 1788-1804. 1824-25. Coventry. 8°. Kenilworth Festivities, comprising . . . G.'s Masque represented . . with prefaces glossarial and explan- atory notes. Warwick and Leamington. This is composed of Burn's ed. of 182 1 including Lanham and G., bound together with a new title. 183 1. 8°. Select Works of the British Poets, . . . edited by Robert Southey. 122 GEORGE GASCOIGNE. 1868. 8°. I. Certayne Notes of Instruction in English verse. 2. The Steele Glas. 3. The Complaynt of Philomene. Preceded by Whetstone's Remembrance. Edited by E. Arber. English Re- prints. 1870. 8°. The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle, . . . Reprinted from the ed. of 182 1, 12°, London. This reprint is con- tained in Amye Robsart and the Earl of Leycester, a critical inquiry . . . including an account of the entertainments . . . from the works . . . of G. G. by G. Adlard ; preceded by a brief account of G. chiefly derived from Chalmers'. 1871. .' The Steele Glas, edited by Dr. Furnivall. Printed for private circulation. N. d. The Steele Glas. Reprinted in modernized form, with notes and comment by Professor H. Morley in Cassell's Library of Engl. Lit., Shorter Poems, 184-198. This work is subsequent to Mr. Arber's Reprint, which is mentioned therein. 1893. 8°. Boston. Three Poems of G. G. not heretofore re- printed. Appendix to The Life and Writings of G. G. by F. E. Schelling. D. WORKS ATTRIBUTED TO GASCOIGNE. N. d. 8° ? The Wyll of the Devill with his detestable Com- mandments, . . . R. Jhones, who published between 1567 and 1594. This was probably a reprint of a far earlier ed. See p. 98. 1570. An Almanac and Prognostications. See Athenae Canta- brigiensis i, 376. I can find no other authority. 1576. 4°. Five poems signed " My lucke is losse," The Paradyse of Dajmty Deuises . . . H. Disle. These poems are S. Bernardes Verses, A iii. Beware of had I wist, A iiij. Donee eris etc., 30, Where reason makes request, 31, and What joy to a contented mind, 41. These verses were not reprinted in all the subsequent edd. of The Paradise. See Brydges ed. 1810, p. xxii, where they are attributed to Bamaby Rich. [1577?] 8° The Spoyle of Antwerpe, Faithfully reported by a true Englishman, who was present at the same. R. Jhones. Seep. 83. 1580. 4°. I. A Complaint. 2. A Replye. 3. A Description of the World. These three poems appeared in this ed. of The Paradise, BIBLIOGRAPHY. 123 and in the later edd. of 1585, 1592, and 1600, in which last the Description was signed "G. Gaske." See pp. 81 and 88. All these poems have been reprinted by Brydges, as above, and the Description by Waldron in his ed. of the Delicate Diet, 1789 and 1792. 1607. 4°. A poem of twelve lines beginning, " Those which of olde were skilled in Augurie," copied on the fly leaf of the Brit. Mus. copy of The Whole Works, etc., 1587, apparently commendatory of a work entiled Gradualia : sen Cantiorum Sacrarum . . . Liber Secundus, etc., by William Byrde, Organist to the King [James]. A Description of the World and G.'s sonnet on the French Littleton follow in the same hand. These verses are the work of G.'s name- sake of the Middle Temple. 1828. 8°. The Wyll of the Devill. Reprinted from a copy of Jhones' ed. in the Advocates Library, Edinburgh, by Maidment. 40 copies. 1863. 4°. The same, reprinted in Illustrations of Early English Popular Literature by J. P. Collier. 187 1. 8°. The same, reprinted with Jyl of Brentford's Testa- ment, by R. Copland, ed. by F. J. Furnivall. 1872. 8°. The Spoyle of Antwerpe, etc., preceded by A Larum for London. Reprinted with introduction and Notes by Richard Simpson, in vol. i of The School of Shakespeare. INDEX. Accius, 39. Acolastus of Gnapheus, 46. Actors, influence ot, on the growth of the drama, 37. Adages, of Erasmus, 62. Adventures of Master F. I., 19, 25, 26, 35. "I- AUegory, 9, 31, 48. Allen, a supposed intimate of G., 6, 107. Alliteration, 31-32, no. Allusions, Contemporary, to G., 2, 9-12 passim, 82, 95, loi, 103-105. Almanac and Prognostications, attrib- uted to G., 98, T22. Antwerp, the Siege of, 21, 70, 82-88. Aqua Solis, see Bourchier. Arber, E., quoted 75, 78. Ariosto, 24, 36, 42, 47. Ariosto Allegorized, Translation of, 26, 112-113. Aristophanes, 39. Arraignment of a Lover, 28, 31, 119- 121. Arraignment of Paris, Source of Peele's, 80. Ascham's Toxophilus, 95. Asotus of Macropedius, 45. Athenae Cantabrigienses, quoted, 6, 12, 98. Augustine, Saint, de Ebritate, translated by G., 97. Autobiographical allusions, see Gas- coigne quoted. Bacon, John, 50. Bacon, Sir Francis, 37. Badger, beadle of Oxford, 64. Bath, Earl of, see Bourchier. Bartello, an assumed original of G., 26. Beavois, 56. Bedford, Francis, Earl of, 13, 14, 96. Bedfordshire, G. represents, in Parlia- ment, II. Bellavista, Leonora, see Elinor Man- ners. Belvoir, Elinor, see Elinor Manners. Beloe's Anecdotes, 78. Belvedere or the Garden of the Muses, by J. Bodenham, 17, 105. Bernack, probable burial place of G., 102. Beverley, Peter, 17. Bibliography of G., 11 7-1 23. Blank Verse, G. follows Sackville in dramatic, 42, 72, iii; used mfocasta, 40; in The Steele Glas, 76. Blazon of fealousy, quoted^ 106. Blener-Hasset, T., his Co7nplaint of Cadwallader, quoted, 102. Bolton, Edmund, his Hypercritica, quoted, 106. Bourchier, John, Earl of Bath, 19, 26. Bowyer, N., commendatory verses of, 18 Breton, Elizabeth, G.'s wife, 10, 50, 51, lOI. Breton, Nicholas, 50, 52, 53, loo. Breton, William, 50, 51. Breyll, G. at, 54, 55. Browne, Anthony, Viscount of Mon- tagu, 15. Byron, Lord, no. Cambridge, G.'s sojourn at Trinity Hall, 5. 126 INDEX. Campaign in Holland, 54-62. Captivi of Plautus, 42. Cardanus Comfort, by T. Bedingfield, 17, 119. Certayne Notes of Instruction, G.'s treatise on versification, 29, 121, 122. Chalmers, A., quoted, 76. Chappell, B., 17. Chester, Col, E.. 58, 59. Churchyard, T., 17, 28, 103, 105, 106. Cicero, 104. Clinton and Say, Edward Lord, 21. Collected Editions of G., 117-118. Collectanea Anglo-Poetica, quoted, 17. Collier, J. P., 37; quoted, 38, 42, 71. Commendatory Verses on G's works, 17, 18, 102. Complaynt of Philomene, G.'s Elegy, 7, 23. 72, 74. 78, 119. 123. Complaynt of the Greene Knight, 62. Complete Works of G. G., The, 118. Confide of Concience, by Woode, 47. Contemporary Esteem, 102-112. Cordell, Sir William, Master of the Rolls, 15. Cosimo, Hanibal de, 26. Court, Friends, and Patrons, 14-22. Dan Bartholmew of Bath, 26, 28, 52, 80. Daniel, Samuel, 104. Davies, John, of Hereford, 105. De la Marck, 54, 55. Delft, G. goes to, 57. Delicate Diet for Dainty Mouthde Droonkards, A, 85, 97-98, 119, 120. De Profundis, G.'s translation of, 23, 28, 34. Device of a Masque, 36, 48. Devices of Sundrie Gentlemen, 25. Diary of a Resident of London, quoted, 9- Dictionary of National Biography, quoted, 85, 92, 99. Diction of G's., see Style, Prose Style. Discourse of Discoverie, by Gilbert, 25 89-96, 107, 119. Disobedient Child, The, by T. Ingleland, 47- Dolce, Lodovico, 36, 39, 40. Dole of Disdain, 120. Dominus iis opus habet, 77. Donaty, Hercule, 26. Don fuan, ill. Donne, John, 76. Dormer, Sir William, 15. Dramatic Cycle of the Prodigal Son, see Glasse of Government. Dramatic Writings, 36-49. Drant, Thomas, 104. Drayton, Michael, 105. Droom.e of Doom.es Day, quoted, 13; 86, 96-97, 100, 119, 120, 121. Dulce Bellum Inexpertis, 61, 62, 68, 77. Dryden's Absolom. and Achitqphel, 75. Dyall, John (?), 17. Dyve, Douglas, 14. Dyve, John, 14. Dyve, Lewes, of Broomeham, 97. Earlier Works, 23-35. Early Years, 3-13. Eastward Ho! 47. Education of G., 5-8. Either a needelesse or bootelesse Com- parison, 26, 115-116. Elizabeth, Queen, 11, 25, 39, 45; at Woodstock, 48, 68-71, io8; at Kenil- worth, 49, 63-68; conduct towards William of Orange, 54, 61 ; progress in 1576, 63-71; addressed by G., 65- 71 passim; receives New Year's gifts of G., 68, 79, 80, 82; employs G. in the royal service, 79, 82, 83; 87; Gilbert's petition as to a north-west passage, 92, 93, 95; G.'s gratitude to E., 101; 106. England's Helicon, 17. English Satyrs, see Hake. INDEX. 127 English spirit of G., 29, 30, 108, no, III. Epitaph on G., 10 1. Eunuchus of Terence, 42. Famagasta, Siege of, 48. Farewell to Fansie, 62. Farmer, R., on Supposes and the Shrew, 43- Fenton, Geoffrey, 29. Ferdinando Jeronimi, see Adventures of Master F. J. Ferenda Natura, motto under which G. celebrates his mistress, 19, 20. Ferrers, George, 64, 65. Figurative language, G.'s use of, 31. Fleay, F. G., on the personal allusions of G.'s works, 19-22 passim, 25, 37, 92, 106-7. Fleming, A., plagiarizes the Hertnits Tale, 71, 119. Flowers, title of poems of G., 25, 27, 28, 62. Fray in Redcrosse Street, 9. Freeman Jones, see Adventures of Mas- ter F. J. French Littleton, The, G.'s verses pre- fixed to, 24, 118. Frobisher, Martin, kinsman of G., 4, 90. 93. 94- Fruit of Fetters, 62. Fruits of the War, see Dulce Bellum Inexpertis. Fuller, Thomas, quoted, 4, 6. Fulwood, W., his Enemie of Idlenesse, 105. Gammer Gurton's Needle, 42. Gascoigne, George, of the Middle Tem- ple, 88, note. Gascoigne, George, the poet, quoted, 10, II, 13-15 passim, 22, 25, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63-66 passim, 69, 73, 74. 77. 79. 80. 90. 96. Gascoigne, James, 3. Gascoigne, Sir John, of Cardington, 4, 10. Gascoigne, Robert, 82. Gascoignes Gardening, 25. Gascoigne, Sir William, of Cardington, 3-4- Gascoigne, Sir William, of Gawthorpe Hall, 3, 7, 53. Gascoigne, William, son of the poet, 52, loi. Gascoignes Woodm-anship, quoted, 14, 25- Gaston, Sir Henry, 6, 7. GUbert, Sir Humphrey, 25, 55, 89, 90, 92-95, 107. GUbert, Sir John, 89, 90. Gilchrist, O., quoted, 10, 57, 102. Ginguene, P. L., quoted, 42. Giocasta of Dolce, 39. Classe of Government, 44-47, 87, 108, III, iiS. Glosses of editio princeps, i\, 26, 27. Golding, Arthur, 103. Goldingham, Henry, his 'shew' The Lady of the Lake, 64, 66. Googe, Bamaby, his Eglogs, 28, 29. Gorboduc, 37, 38, 40, 109. Gosse, Edmund, quoted, loi. Grafton, R., 104. Gray's Inn, G. a student of, 6 ; index of Registers of, 7, 15 ; literary society at, 15, 16. Greene, Robert, 12; quoted, 104; 105. Grey, Arthur Lord, of Wilton, G.'s patron, 14, 72, 92. Grief of Joye, The, 72, 78, 81, 82, 98, 117, 120, 121. Grimald, Nicholas, 28, 73. Grosart, A. B., quoted, 50-53 passim. Hake, Edward, \C^s,Newes out of Pawles Churchyarde, 73, 78, 109; his Touch- stone of Wit, 105. 128 INDEX. Hall, Bishop, 76. Hallam, Henry, 72. Hampton Court, 83. Harvey, Gabriel, quoted, 8; 9, 17, 18, 53 ; quoted, 95, 103, 104, 105 ; 108. Hazlitt, W. C, quoted and alluded to, 10, 12, 14, 17, 23, 27, 45, 48, 51, 63, 68, 69, 78, 79, 91, 102. Hearbes, G.'s poems, 25, 27, 62. Herford, C. H., quoted, 45-47. Historical position of G. in English Literature, 110-112. Heton, Thomas, governor of the Eng- lish House at Antwerp, quoted, 85. Hogarth's Industry and Idleness, 47. Hopton, Sir Owen, Lieutenant of the Tower, 4, 15. Horace, 78, 103. How her Majesty might annoy the King of Spain, etc., Gilbert's pamphlet, 94, 95- Hox Tuesday Play, 68. Hundreth Sundrie Floures, A, title of G.'s works, 8, 24-27, 117. Hunnis, W., 64. Imprisonment for debt, G.'s, 8, 9, 70. Influence of the translators on G., 29. Innocent III.'s de Contemptu Mundi translated by G., 96, 97. Inquiry before the Lord Mayor, 51, 107. Italian influences in the drama, 36, 39, 42. James I. of England, 32. Jocasta, G.'s drama, 15, l6, 25, 28, 33, 37-41, 76, 109, 117. ' Kenton's Mirror for Man's Life, 97. Kinwelmersh, Francis, 16, 38. Kirk, Edward, quoted, 103, 104, 108. Landman, Dr., 32. Laneham, Robert, his Account of the Festivities at Kenilworth, quoted, 64- 68 passim. Later Prose of G., 89-99. Learning of G., 48, 70, 108-1 10. Lewis of Nassau, 58, 60. Leyden, Siege of, 58-60. Liecester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, em- ploys G. to aid his matrimonial de- signs, 49, 65 ; 63, 67. Literary influences affecting G., 28-30, 36, 39.42, 108-110. Livia, see Ferenda. Lullabie of a Lover, 31, 120. Lyly, John, 43, 49, 105. Lyrical quality of G.'s poetry, 28, no. Macchiavelli, Niccolo, 42. Mahaffy, Prof. J. P., quoted, 40. Maidment, see Wyll of the Devil. Malone, E., quoted, 43. Manners, Elinor, 19, 26. Manners, George, Lord Ross, 19. Manuscripts of G., 117. Marriage of G., 50-54. Maiston, John, 76. Martelli, Lodovico, 36. Mary Tudor, Queen, 6. Medhurst, G., not permitted to sit for, 1 2. Menaphon, see Greene. Meres, Francis, Wits Treasury, quoted, 105. Metres of G., see Versification. Middleburgh, Siege of, 56, 58. Middle Temple, G., supposed a student of the, 6, 18. Minto, Prof. W., quoted, 75, 80. Mirror for Magistrates, 28, 29, 73. Mantagues and Capulets, Allusion to, 48. Mountdragon, 56, 58. Mookerheyde, Battle of, 58, 60. Morley, Prof. Henry, quoted, 75, 109. Motley, Henry, quoted, 54-62 passim. Muscovy Company, 93. Naevius, 39. INDEX. 129 Narrative poetry of G., 15, 26, 28, 52, 61, 62, 68, 77, no. Naunton's Fragmenta Regalia quoted, 18. Nash, Thomas, quoted, 9, 95, quoted 104, 106, 112. Nevile, Alex., tutor to G., 10, 16, 39. Nichols, J., quoted 68. Nichols, J, G., on the spelling of G., 6, 7. NoUe Arte ofVenerie, 81, 118, 120. Norton, Thomas, 36, 39. Notes and Queries, quoted, 6, 7. Objections against G.'s becoming a burgess, 11, 19, 107. (Ediptcs, translated by Nevile, i6, 39. Oldys, W., quoted 18. Ortelius, Tables of, 90. Ovid, 24, 103. Packet of Mad Cap Letters, by Breton, 53- Painter, W., 29. Palgrave, F. T., quoted 74, 75; 76, no. Paradise of Dainty Devises, 16. Park, T., quoted 17. Parker, Archbishop, 16. Parliamentary career of G., 11. Parr, William, Baron of Kendall, later Marquis of Northampton, 20. Pedigree and family of G., 3-5. Performance of G's plays, 38, 41, 45. Personal allusions in G's Work, 18-22, 32. Ti- Personal character of G., ^-i'^ passim, 15, 106-108. Personal note in G's writings, 29, no. Petrarch, 24. Phaer, Thomas, 103. Philip II. of Spain, 55, 56, 61. PJuxnissia, of Euripides, 38, 39. Pierce Supererogation, 95, 104. Piers Plowman, 78, 109. Pleasantest Works of G. G., 63, 1 18. Poems of G. not heretofore reprinted, Appendix, 113-115, 122. Portraits of G., 102. Posies, G's poems entitled, 16, 17; quoted 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 89, 95, 102, 117. Poulter's Measure, 33, 48, 78. Powell, Humphrey, see Wyll of the Devil. Princelye, Pleasures at Kenilworth, 63- 68, 69, 85, \\^-\2z, passim. Progress of Queen Elizabeth, 63-71. Prose dialogue, Earliest English dra- matic, 43. Prose style of G., 30, 31, in, n2. Purist, G. a conscious, 29, 30, 108, no. Puttenham, G., quoted 23, 104. Raleigh, Sir Walter, commendatory verses on G., 18; 94. Ralph Roister Doister, 42. Remembraunce of G., by Whetstone, 10, 17, 100, 102, 121, 122. Rime Royal, a favorite metre of G., 34, 80. Romerswael, G., serves in the naval battle of, 58. SackvUle, Thomas, 36, 37, 42, 73, in. Sat cito, sat bene, G's poem, 10, 35. Satirist, G's claims as a,.73-78, in. Scargell, Sir Robert, 4. Schipper, Dr. J. 32, 34. School Drama, The, 45. Seneca, 36, 39, 103, 109. Senecan influence in the drama, 36, 38- ^o passim, 44. Shakespeare, 3, 20; quoted 40; 41, 44, 105. Sheffield, Captain, 60. Shepherd's Calendar, 103. Sidney, Sir Philip, 37. Simpson, R., quoted, 85, 86. Skelton, J., 73, 78, 103. I30 INDEX. Smith, Richard, G's printer, 17, 24. Sonnet, G's use and theory of the, 34, 35- Sonnet of G. not heretofore reprinted, 114. Sources of G's satires, 77. Spenser, Edmund, 105, no. Spoyle of Antwerfe, quoted, 83-88, 122. Stamford, G. dies at, 102. Stanzaic Structure of G., 33-35. Stapylton, Richard, supposed author of the Phoenix Nest, 17. Steele Glas, The, 13, 18, 23, 47, 72-78, 81, 99, 102, 104, 105, 109, no. III, 119, 120, 122. Still, Bishop, 37. Straunge Passion of a Lover, 26, 120. Strattis, 39. Studentes of Stymmelius, 46. Style of G. in verse and prose, 30-32, 87, 88, no. III. Suavemberg, Helen, see Ferenda. Supposes, G's, drama, 25, 28, 33, 41-44, 120. Surreptitious publications of G., 24, 25, 94-96. Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, 28, 33, 76, no. Symonds, J. A., quoted, 36, 38, 42. Tale of Hermetes the Heremyte, 36, 48- 49, 68-70, 82, 108, 117, 119, 120, 121. Taming of a Shrew, 42-44. Taming of the Shrew, Sources of the, 42-44. Tam Marti quam Mercurio, G's motto, 18, 102. Tergoes, G. engaged at the sieges of, S5- 56, 92- Thebaid of Statius, 39. Thebais of Seneca, see Phaenisste. TibuUus, 103. Tolman, Prof., quoted, 43, 44. TottePs Miscellany, 28, 76. Translations of G., 96-98. Treslong, 55. Trissino, G. G., 36. Turberville, George, 24; his Epytaphs, etc., 28; 29, 103, 104, 106. Tusser, Thomas, 28. Tyrwhitt, T., quoted, 43. Udall, Nicholas, 36. Valdez, 58, 60. Valerius Maximus, his Memorable Say- ings, 109. Valesquo, see Bourchier. Valkenburgh, fort of, 58-60. Vallans, W., his Tale of Two Swans, 72. Vanities of Bewtie, 80. Vaux, Thomas Lord, 28. Versatility, G.'s literary, 29, 47, 48. Versification, 30, 31, 32-35, 40, 80, no. Virgil, 103. Voyage into Holland, 15, 26, 61. Walsingham, Sir Francis, 70; his Jour- nal quoted, 82, 83, 86, 88. Walthamstow, G.'s residence at, 50, 51, 52, 100, 102. Ward, A. W., quoted, 42. Warner, William, 104. Warton, Thomas, 17; quoted, 38, 72, 103. Webbe, W., quoted, 108. Weedes, title of G.'s poems, 25, 27, 62. Whetstone, George, quoted, 10, 16, 48, 100, loi, 105. Whole Workes of G. G., see Pleasant- est Workes. Willet, Andrew, 17. William of Orange, 21, 25, 54, 56-58 passim, 61, 87. Wifs Comm-onwealth, 105. Wolsey, Cardinal, 4. Wood, Anthony a, quoted, 5, 21. Woodstock, 48, 68-71, 82. Words worthian dictum as to poetry, anticipated by G., 30. Works ascribed to G., 81, 85-86, 88, 98-99, 122-123. Wotton, Henry, 24. Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 28, 33, 73, 78, 108, no. INDEX. 1 3 I Wyll of the Devil, 77, 98-99, 122-123. Yelverton, Christopher, 15. Yorke, Rowland, 15. Zabeta, G.'s Masque, 36, 49, 64-67 passim. Zeraerts, Jerome van 't, 55. Pufjjfcations of the University of Pennsylvania Series IN PHILOLOGY, LITERATURE, and ARCH/' ;LOGY. ■VOI^UME I. By mail, postpaid, $2.50. 1. Poetic and Ve- 3 Criflcism of the Reign of Elizabeth. "; • Felix E. Sche; MX' A *' . Assistant I'roftssor of Englisli Liti-rati, e. fioo. 2. A Fn^-gmeut of le Babylonian "Dibbarra" Epic. By ?. ' ■ ;- TROW, Jr.. Ph.D.. Professor of Arabic ^■ n ■ of American Archasology and Linguistics. ^ Archaeological E.;tes in Northern Morocco. By Talcott Wn_ . ;.s, A.M., Secr.jli -y of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. •' a. On the Aristit'-!'' i Dative, /a On a Passage in Aristotle' i £•• ';. By William A. ^amberton, A.M., Professor of the Greek L >. : and Litt rature. A Hebrew lowl Inscription. By Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph.D., Pr ^ . .or of Arabic. .i-^en!:, for I'nitcd States, Caradu, and En^i,^!iir./ nil'.N & ^' . -ANY, 7-13 TuF-MoNT Pl- :,' I- KsroN, U.S.A.