Enough t’ astoune the doltish Drone, and lumpish Lout amaze,
Thy Enterludes, thy gallant Layes, thy Rond’letts and thy Songes,
Thy Nosegay and thy Widowes’ Mite, with that thereto belonges....
... Descendinge then in riper years to stuffe of further reache,
Thy schooled Quill by deeper skill did graver matters teache,
And now to knit a perfect Knot; In winter of thine age
Such argument thou chosen hast for this thy Style full sage.
As far surmounts the Residue.
Newton’s account of his friend’s poetic evolution seems to assign his ‘enterludes’ to an early period of mainly secular verse; but if this preceded his Certayne Psalmes of 1550, which are surely of ‘graver matters’, it must have gone back to Henry VIII’s reign, far away from his Mastership. On the other hand, Hunnis was certainly contributing secular verse and devices to the Kenilworth festivities (cf. s.v. Gascoigne) only three years before Newton wrote. Mrs. Stopes suggests, with some plausibility, that the Amargana songs of England’s Helicon may come from an interlude. She also assigns to Hunnis, by conjecture, Godly Queen Hester, in which stress is laid on Hester’s Chapel Royal, and Jacob and Esau (1568, S. R. 1557–8), which suggests gardens.
LEONARD HUTTEN (c. 1557–1632).