ANCIENT POEM S. 139 will hardly be found one rough, or inharmonious line ‡ : whereas the numbers of Jonson, Donne, and most of their contemporaries, frequently offend the ear, like the filing of a Jaw.-Perhaps this is in fome meajure to be accounted for from the growing pedantry of that age, and from the writers affecting to run their lines into one another, after the manner of the Latin and Greek poets. The following poem (which the elegant writer above quoted hath recommended to notice, as poffeffed of a delicacy rarely to be feen in that early state of our poetry) properly confifts of alexandrines of 12 and 14 fyllables, and is printed from two quarto black letter collections of Gascoigne's pieces; the firft intitled, "A hundreth fundrie flowres, "bounde up in one fmall pofie, &c. London, imprinted for "Richarde Smith" without date, but from a letter of H. W. (p. 202.) compared with the Printer's epift. to the Reader, it appears to bave been published in 1572, or 3. The other is intitled, "The Pofies of George Gascoigne, Esq; corrected, perfected, and augmented by the authour; 1575. "-Printed at Lond. for Richard Smith, &c." No year, but the epift. dedicat. is dated 1576. In the title page of this last (by way of printer's ↑, or bookfeller's device) is an ornamental wooden cut, tolerably well executed, wherein time is reprefented drawing the figure of Truth out of a pit or cavern, with this legend, OCCULTA VERITAS TEMPORE PATET [R. S.] This is mentioned because it is not improbable but the accidental fight of this or fome other title page containing the fame device, fuggefted to Rubens that well known defign of a fimilar kind, which he has introduced into the Luxemburg gallery ||, and which has been fo justly cenfured for the unnatural manner of its execution. The device abovementioned being not ill adapted to the fubject of this volume, is with fome fmall variations eopied in a plate, which to gratify the curiofity of the Reader is prefixed to Book III. IN The fame is true of most of the poems in the Mirrour of Magistrates, 1565, 4to, and even of Surrey's Poems, 1557. Henrie Binneman. LE TEMS DECOUVRE LA VERITE. |