[248]. All three are included in Mr. Arber’s Reprints, where the desirable, or desired, biographical and bibliographical apparatus will be duly found.
[249]. It is, however, excessive to represent James as a mere copyist of Gascoigne.
[250]. Who also caught at James’s “tumbling verse” as a convenient stigmatisation for the true English equivalenced liberty.
[251]. Occleve—no genius, but a true man enough—deserves exception perhaps best.
[252]. The Germans—in this, as in other matters, more hopelessly to seek in English now than, teste Porson, they were a century ago in Greek—have followed Webbe, as indeed Warton had strangely done; and of course some Englishmen have followed the Germans. Lydgate himself knew better, though some of the shorter poems attributed to him are metrically, as well as in other ways, not contemptible.
[254]. The whole of the documents in the case will be found, clearly put, in Mr Arber’s Introduction. The first attribution is in Bolton (v. infra) some fifteen years later than the date of the book, and not quite positive (“as the Fame is”). But there is no other claimant who has anything to put in: and the almost diseased aversion of “persons of quality” (Puttenham was possibly a nephew of Sir Thomas Elyot’s, and a Gentleman-Pensioner of the Queen’s) to avowing authorship is well known.
[255]. Harington, a person of humour, and a typical Englishman, perstringes this as well as other things in his fling at the Art.
[256]. Here as elsewhere we may note evidences of possible revision in the book. That there was some such revision is certain; for instance, Ben Jonson’s copy (the existence of which is not uninteresting) contains a large cancel of four leaves, not found in other copies known. For this and other points of the same kind, see Mr Arber’s edition.
[257]. “Reviewing” was as yet in its infancy—a curiously lively one though, with Nash and others coming on. Puttenham seems to have understood its little ways rather well.