What shoulde be the cause that our English speeche ... hath neuer attained to anie sufficient ripeness, nay not ful auoided the reproch of barbarousness in poetry? (227) ... What credite they might winne to theyr natiue speeche, what enormities they might wipe out of English Poetry ... if English Poetrie were truely reformed (229).
A traditional preface on the origin of poetry leads from divine inspiration through early bards to Ovid moralized, Horace, and Mantuan (231-239). After dismissing medieval rhymed Latin as “this brutish poetrie,” Webbe proceeds to a review of English achievement.
“I know no memorable worke written by any Poet in our English speeche vntill twenty yeeres past (239).
“Chawcer ... was next after [Gower].... Though the manner of hys stile may seeme blunte and course to many fine English eares at these dayes, yet ... a man shall perceiue ... euen a true picture of perfect shape of a right poet.... Neere in time ... was Lydgate ... comparable with Chawcer (241). The next ... Pierce Ploughman ... somewhat harsh and obscure, but indeede a very pithy wryter ... the first ... that obserued the quantity of our verse without the curiosity of ryme” (242). A review of the sixteenth century surrounds Surrey and Sidney with an array of second-rate poets.
Taking a fresh start with the division into “comicall, tragicall, historiall,” Webbe finds that Chaucer (251), even as Horace (250), mingled delight with profit. After a vague word for John Lyly (256) he returns to Golding’s translation of Ovid (262). “Somewhat like, but yet not altogether so poetical” is Chaucer, whom he seems to have on his conscience. “But nowe yet at the last,” and comparable with the best, is Spenser (263). A brief return to the ancients proceeds from Hesiod through Vergil to Tusser and Googe (265).
But Webbe still wishes that rhyme were not habitual. “Which rude kinde of verse ... I may not vtterly dissalowe [266]. I am perswaded the regard of wryters to this hath beene the greatest decay of that good order of versifying which might ere this haue beene established in our speeche” (274). He even finds in English a “rule of position” (281), and that -ly is short in adverbs, long in adjectives (282). Stubbornly he closes his stupid book with an appendix (290): “Heere followe the Cannons or general cautions of poetry, prescribed by Horace, first gathered by Georgius Fabricius Chemnicensis.”
Deaf to the tradition of English verse, Webbe is blind to the development of English poetry.
Puttenham’s more pretentious Arte of English Poesie (1589; reprinted in part by G. Gregory Smith, II, 1-193), after the obligatory rehearsal of ancient seers, reads history thus.