S. W. R., in an Epitaph on Sidney, calleth him our English Petrarch; and Daniel regrates he was not a Petrarch, though his Delia be a Laura. So Sidney, in his Ast. and Stella, telleth of Petrarch, You that pure Petrarch long deceast Wooes with new-born Sighs. 5 The French have also set him before them as a Paragon; whereof we will still find that those of our English Poets who have approach'd nearest to him are the most exquisite on this Subject. When I say, approach him, I mean not in following his Invention, but in forging as good; and 10 when one Matter cometh to them all at once, who quintessenceth it in the finest Substance. Among our English Poets, Petrarch is imitated, nay, surpast in some Things, in Matter and Manner: In Matter, none approach him to Sidney, who hath Songs and Sonnats 15 in Matter intermingled: In Manner, the nearest I find to him is W. Alexander, who, insisting in these same Steps, hath Sextains, Madrigals and Songs, Echoes and Equivoques, which he hath not; whereby, as the one hath surpast him in Matter, so the other in Manner of Writting, or 20 Form. This one Thing which is followed by the Italians, as of Sanazarius and others, is, That none celebrateth their Mistress after her Death, which Ronsard hath imitated: After which Two, next (methinks) followeth Daniel, for Sweetness in Ryming Second to none. Drayton seemeth 25 rather to have loved his Muse than his Mistress; by I know not what artificial Similes, this sheweth well his Mind, but not the Passion. As to that which Spencer calleth his Amorelli, I am not of their Opinion who think them his; for they are so childish that it were not well to 30 give them so honourable a Father. Donne, among the Anacreontick Lyricks, is Second to none, and far from all Second. But as Anacreon doth not approach Callimachus, tho' he excels in his own. kind, nor Horace to Virgil, no more can I be brought to 35 think him to excel either Alexander's or Sidney's Verses. They can hardly be compared together, trading diverse Paths, the one flying swift but low, the other, like the Eagle, surpassing the Clouds. I think, if he would, he might easily be the best Epigrammatist we have found 40 in English, of which I have not yet seen any come near the Ancients. IO Compare Song, Marry and Love, &c., with Tasso's Stanzas against Beauty; one shall hardly know who hath the best. Drayton's Polyolbion is one of the smoothest Poems I 5 have seen in English, Poetical and well prosecuted; there are some Pieces in him I dare compare with the best Transmarine Poems. The 7th Song pleases me much. The 12th is excellent. The 13th also: The Discourse of Hunting passeth with any Poet. And The 18th, which is his Last in this Edition 1614. I find in him, which is in most part of my Compatriots, too great an Admiration of their Country, on the History 15 of which whilst they muse, as wondering, they forget some. times to be good Poets. Silvester's Translation of Judith, and the Battle of Yvory, are excellent. He is not happy in his Inventions, as may be seen in his Tobacco batter'd and Epitaphes. Who likes 20 to know whether he or Hudson hath the Advantage of Judith, let them compare the Beginning of the 4th Book, O Silver brow'd Diana, &c. And the End of the 4th Book, Her waved Locks, &c. The midst of the 5th Book, In Ragau's ample Plain one Morning met, &c. The 6th Book, 25 after the Beginning, Each being set anon, fulfilled out, &c. And after, Judas, said she, thy Jacob to deliver, now is the Time, &c. His Pains are much to be praised, and happy Translations, in sundry parts equalling the Original. NOTES FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626) PAGE 2. 14. John vii. 49. 31. Osorius (1506-1580), bishop of Sylves in Algarve, a Portuguese humanist and historian. 32. Joannes Sturmius (1507-1589), the Strassburg schoolmaster: he edited Cicero's works (1557 sq.) and four treatises of Hermogenes, and published several commentaries on their works. 34. Car of Cambridge, i. e. Nicholas Carr (1524-1568), the successor of Sir John Cheke as Regius Professor of Greek. 34. Roger Ascham (1515-1568), the author of the Scholemaster. PAGE 3. 4. Decem iam annos aetatem trivi in Cicerone. Echo ove. Erasmus, Colloq. 'Echo.' 19. Ovid, Metam. x. 243. PAGE 4. 10-13. Bacon has here adopted the conventional Scholastic psychology; e. g. 'In cerebro sub craneo sunt tres cellulae; prima est ymaginaria, secunda rationalis, tertia memorialis,' Joannes de Garlandia, Dictionarius (cf. E. Flügel, 'Bacon's Historia Literaria,' in Anglia, 1899, xxii. 273). The classification of the arts and sciences according to these three divisions of the mind had been initiated, or at least popularized, by the Spaniard Huarte in his Examen de Ingenios, 1575 (Englished by R. Carew in 1594), and was adopted before Bacon by Charron (De la Sagesse, 1601, bk. i. ch. 12, §6). PAGE 5. 27. Horace, A. P. 9 sq. PAGE 6. 30. In the De Augmentis a paragraph on dramatic poetry follows, thus translated by Gilbert Wats (1640, p. 107): 'Dramaticall or Representative Poesy, which brings the World upon the stage, is of excellent use, if it were not abused. For the Instructions and Corruptions of the Stage may be great: but the corruptions in this kind abound; the Discipline is altogether neglected in our times. For although in moderne Commonwealths Stage-plaies be but estimed a sport or pastime, unless it draw from the Satyre and be mordant, yet the care of the Ancients was that it should instruct the minds of men unto virtue. Nay, wise men and great Philosophers have accounted it as the Archer or musicall Bow of the mind. And certainly it is most true, and, as it were, a secret of nature, that the minds of men are more patent of affections and impressions Congregate than solitary.' PAGE 7. 11. The seuen, i. e. the seven wise men of Greece. 32. Virgil, Aen. iv. 178. PAGE 8. 6. Pallas. Thetis, according to Homer, ll. i. 401 sq. 11. ll. xii. 831; cf. Plutarch, De Musica, xl. 4. 13. Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. xviii. 20. Chrysippus (died B. c. 208) and other Stoic philosophers attempted to rationalize the ancient mythology by means of allegorical interpretation; cf. Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 15. 38 sq. For the early history of allegorical exegesis, see Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, ch. iii, and for its later influence, cf. my Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, p. 7 sq. 26 sq. Cf. Rabelais, Gargantua, prol.: 'Croiez vous en vostre foy qu'oncques Homere, escriuent L'Iliade & Odyssee, pensast es allegories lesquelles de luy ont calfreté Plutarche, Heraclides Ponticq, Eustatie, Phornute, & ce que d'iceulx Politian a desrobé? Si le croiez, vous n'approchez ne de pieds ne de mains à mon opinion.' BEN JONSON (1573 ?-1637) PAGE 10. 10-14. Cf. infra, 65. 15, and note. 16. These observations, which by 1619 had assumed the form of a dialogue between himself and Donne (cf. infra, 212. 12, and 214. 29), were among the papers destroyed by fire about 1623. Cf. 'An Execration upon Vulcan', in Underwoods: 'All the old Venusine, in Poetrie, And lighted by the Stagerite, could spie, |