"Whoever saw a colt, wanton and wild, Fie on the forgéd mint that did create New coin of words never articulate!" Hall abounds, as Marston does not, in direct criticisms of the English literature of his time, and his criticism is, after the manner of young omniscience, with little knowledge and no doubt. He laughed at the rising drama, crying— "Shame that the Muses should be bought and sold He laughed at what he called "pot fury of the dramatists" "One higher pitched doth set his soaring thought On crowned kings, that fortune hath low brought: As it might be the Turkish Tamburlaine: But while Hall attacked the "terms Italianate, bigsounding sentences and words of state" upon the stage, he paid homage to Spenser, then near the end of his career. He was burnt out of Kilcolman in October, 1598, left Cork with despatches dated on the ninth of December, and died in London on the sixteenth of January, 1599: "Renowned Spenser whom no earthly wight dares once to emulate, much less dares despight." But Hall paired in the next line Du Bartas with Ariosto: "Salust of France and Tuscan Ariost." The satirist in the golden time of Elizabethan vigour talked as usual of the good old times that were gone, when luxury was not, and our "Grandsires' words savoured of thrifty leeks But thou canst mask in garish gauderie, To suit a fool's far-fetchéd liverie. A French head joyn'd to necke Italian : Thy thighs from Germanie, and brest from Spain. Many in one, and one in severall. Then men were men; but now the greater part If we go back to Occleve, or farther back to Gower, we find that the note has always been the same; sound and true in the steady fixing of attention upon vices and follies to be conquered (since there is small hope for a people that will only praise itself), but with innocent delusion of a bygone golden age. Hall's golden age, however, is not bygone; it is to be found in Spain, if the test of it be a relish for "manly garlic." Edward Guilpin. Another book of satires that appeared in 1598 was the "Skialetheia, or a Shadow of Truth in Certaine Epigrams and Satyres," by Edward Guilpin or Gilpin, of which one perfect copy remains, and from which there are six quotations in "England's Parnassus." Nothing is known of Guilpin himself, except that he also was one of the young Cambridge scholars who amused themselves in 1598 with the publishing of satires. He says of himself in one of the seventy epigrams that form the first part of his book "I have sized in Cambridge, and my friends a season Some exhibition for me there disburst : Since that I have been in Good his weekly role And been acquaint with Monsieur Lyttleton, I have walked in Paul's and duly dined at noon, Six satires follow, with an introductory flourish in praise of the good use of epigram and satire. In his sixth satire Guilpin illustrates the variety of opinion by citing oppositions of critical opinions about Gower, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Sidney. In the fifth satire Guilpin prefers his cell at College to the city, and finds all he can wish for in his little study: Thomas "Here I converse with those diviner spirits Whose knowledge and admire the world inherits: With Nature's mystic harmony delight My ravished contemplation: I here see The now-old World's youth in an history: Here may I be grave Plato's auditor, To temper mine affections, gallantly Get of myself a glorious victory: And then, for change, as we delight in change, (For this my study is indeed my exchange) Here may I sit, yet walk to Westminster And hear Fitzherbert, Plowden, Brooke, and Dyer If my desire doth rather wish the fields, Some speaking painter, some poet, straightway yields A flower-bespangled walk, where I may hear Some amorous swain his passions declare To his sun-burnt love. Thus my books' little case, One book of epigrams, published in 1598, was by an Oxford man. This was the "Chrestoleros. Seven Bookes of Epigrames, written by T. B.," that is Thomas Bastard, who was born in 1566 at Blandford, in Dorsetshire. He was educated at Winchester School and New College, Oxford, whither he went with a scholarship, and where he was registered in August, 1586, as "Pleb. fil., æt. 20." In the next year (1587) Thomas Bastard contributed Latin verses to an Oxford collection made in honour of the memory of Philip Sidney. In 1588 he obtained a fellowship. In May, 1590, he was admitted B.A., and took his M.A. in 1606, being then in orders. Bastard's readiness at satire brought him into difficulty at Oxford, and in 1591, he was, says Anthony Wood, "in a manner forced to leave his fellowship." Bastard took orders, and, through the friendship of the Earl and Countess of Suffolk, became vicar of Bere Regis and rector of Aylmer, in Dorsetshire. Wood's record of Oxford worthies further tells us that "this poet and preacher, being towards his latter end crazed, and thereupon brought into debt, was at length committed to the prison in Allhallows parish in Dorchester, where, dying very obscurely, and in a mean condition, he was buried in the churchyard belonging to that parish on nineteenth April, 1618, leaving behind him many memorials of his wit and drollery." Thomas Bastard's "Chrestoleros" (serviceable trifling, is the meaning of that word), dedicated to Sir Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, contains two hundred and ninety epigrams, varying in length from two to sixteen lines, and distributed in seven books. Some of these epigrams are playful, some are loyal, some religious; some are addressed to the praise of Elizabeth, Essex, Sir Thomas Egerton, Mountjoy, Samuel Daniel, Dr. Reynolds. This is his epigram "Ad librum suum. "Lye not, my booke, for that were wickednes: Be not too idle, idle though thou be: Eschewe scurrilitie and wantonnesse, "Rayle not at any, least thy friends forsake thee: 66 Whitgift's Satire. If any aske thee what I doe professe, Say, that of which thou art the idlenesse." But Archbishop Whitgift found much offence in sudden outbreak of the idleness of wisdom. It was his way always to put his foot down upon what he thought to be an evil, and on the first of June, 1599, it was Epigram and ordered by John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London, as licensers, "That no satyres or epigrams be printed hereafter." Remaining copies of Marston's "Pigmalion," and "Scourge of Villanie," were presently burnt in obedience to the order that "Such bookes as can be found or are already taken, of the argumentes aforesaid, or any of the bookes above expressed, lett them bee presentlye brought to the Bishop of London to be burnte. J. CANTUAR. RIC. LONDIN." The Parnassus Plays of Cam bridge. But at St. John's College, Cambridge, satire made for itself in these years a stage, and more than one young member of the university was engaged, Christmas after Christmas, in the production of three successive comedies or moralities that touched, in the spirit of young Hall or Marston, the ills of life, as they affected the career of Cambridge scholars. When they went out into the world, they found their learning useless. When they sought advancement in the Church, they found their careers blocked by simony. These themes, with incidental satire of unpopular Cambridge officials, and much young talk about the writers of the day, not overlooking Shakespeare, give an interest. beyond their merits to the three parts of one parable. The First Part, called "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus," was first |