The poems of Wyatt and Surrey were not published till long after the deaths of the authors, when they appeared, with many other pieces, in "Tottel's Miscellany". Other writers represented there are Nicholas Grimald, with his jog-trot metre, the "poulter's" or poulterer's measure of from twelve to fourteen syllables to the dozen—so were eggs sold by a custom of the trade. Surrey's retainer, Thomas Churchyard, a man very busy with sword and pen, was also a writer in the "Miscellany"; and indeed was a literary hack-of-all-work. There came, after the brief gleam of sunshine that fell on Wyatt and Surrey, another generation of wooden versifiers and translators, with whose names, Tusser the bucolic, Phaer, Golding, Googe, and Whetstone, it is hardly necessary to fill the page and burden the memory. They may be studied by the curious, but they wrought no deliverance. To generations which possess superabundance of versifiers and no great poets, these barren years are a kind of consolation. For reasons not to be discovered there are such periods in the literary life of all nations, as in England between Pope and Cowper.
The versifiers in "Tottel's Miscellany" keep harping unmelodiously on the strings of Surrey and Wyatt, many of their pieces are complimentary addresses to ladies, or laments on the deaths of friends. Poor conceits are twisted and tormented; there is hardly any promise of advance; we scarcely hear any of the bird-like musical notes with which the later part of the reign of Elizabeth sang so wondrously.
Gascoigne.
George Gascoigne (1525 (?)-1577) was an interesting character. He was a Cambridge man, a member of the Society of Gray's Inn, a poet who, like Scott, composed his verses in the saddle: a Member of Parliament who was opposed as "a common rhymer... noted for manslaughter... a notorious Ruffian," and even a spy, certainly he owed debts, and was disinherited by his father. He wrote on woodmanship, but was apt to forget to shoot at the deer that came within range of his cross-bow. As a captain in the Low Countries he and his command were surprised and taken by the Spaniards: he came home, published his Posies (1575) and, he says, got not a penny by the venture: he then wrote "The Steel Glass," a kind of satire, the mirror of the age, in blank verse, and next wrote in common ballad measure the long and amazingly prosaic "Complaint of Philomene".
In 1572 Gascoigne published "A Hundred Sundry Flowers, bound up in one small Posy". The long title sets forth that some of the flowers were culled in the gardens of Euripides, Ovid, Petrarch, and Ariosto, others are from English orchards. The native flowers are the sweeter and more fair. While our poets were turning into stiff measures the sonnets of Italy, Gascoigne could write so naturally and melodiously his own English, as in his "Lullaby of a Lover".
Sing lullaby, as women do,
Wherewith they bring their babes to rest,
And lullaby can I sing too,
As womanly as can the best.
Beneath the stiff borrowed phrases and metres there was always this native and tuneful spirit of unsophisticated song.
In 1575 he was a maker of words for the Masques at Leicester's famous reception of Elizabeth at Kenilworth (see the novel of that name, where Scott calmly introduces Shakespeare as already a successful dramatist). He satirized drunkards: we have already seen that he translated a tragedy, "Jocasta," from the Italian; he wrote a love story in rhyme of a personal kind, and his brief "Instructions" is the earliest English work, in no way indebted to Aristotle, on the Art of Poetry. As he also translated, we have seen, a comedy from the Italian, and a prose tale, a kind of work later fashionable, Gascoigne may be regarded as an intrepid explorer in many fields of literature. "He first beat the path to that perfection which our best poets have aspired to since his departure," says Nash (1589). "He brake the ice for our quainter poets that now write," says Tofte (1615). But the path as trodden by this pioneer continued to be rough. Gascoigne was an example of the versatility and literary ambition which many young gentlemen displayed in the age of Elizabeth; mingling poetry and study and serious thought with their gallant adventures in love, diplomacy, war, and travel.
His "Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse in English" is a very brief pamphlet. He quotes "my master, Chaucer" against alliterative "thunder in Rym, Ram, Ruff," but mentions no other poet. Be original, he says, if you sing of a lady do not applaud her "crystal eye" or "cherry lip," which Spenser did not disdain, for these things are trite and obvious. The great matter is "to avoid the uncomely customs of common writers," says this "common rhymer". Do not use "obscure and dark phrases in a pleasant sonnet". Do not wander out of your "Poulters measure" metre into lines of thirteen syllables. Give every word its natural emphasis: do not make treasure into treasure. Chaucer is to be followed as a master of prosody. You should write:—