If we resolve the enigma, by acknowledging that this learned and curious writer has not been the only critic who has proved himself to be the most woful of poetasters, this decision will not account for the mysterious silence of the writer in allowing an elaborate volume, the work of a great portion of a life, to be cast out into the world unnamed and unowned.
I find it less difficult to imagine that some stray manuscript, possibly from the relics of Sidney, or perhaps the lost one of Spenser, might have fallen into the hands of some courtly critic, or “the Gentleman Pensioner,” who inlaid it with many of his own trivialities: the discrepancy in the ingenuity of the writing with the genius of the writer in this combination of learning and ineptitude would thus be accounted for; at present it may well provoke our scepticism.
[1] “The Arte of English Poesie, contrived in three bookes—the first of Poets and Poesie, the second of Proportion, the third of Ornament,” 1589, 4to.
[2] Ames appears first to have called him Webster Puttenham. Possibly Ames might have noted down the name from Carew, as Master Puttenham, which by an error of the pen, or the printer, was transformed into the remarkable Christian name of Webster. I cannot otherwise account for this misnomer. Steevens, in an indistinct reference to a manuscript, revealed it to be George; and probably was led to that opinion by the knowledge of a manuscript work in the Harleian Collection by a George Puttenham. It is a defence of Elizabeth in the matter of the Scottish Queen. Ellis, our poetic antiquary, has distinguished our author as “Webster, alias George.” All this taken for granted, the last editor, probably in the course of his professional pursuits, falls on a nuncupative will, dated 1590, of a George Puttenham; already persuaded that such a name appertained to the author of the “Art of English Poetry,” he ventured to corroborate what yet remained to be ascertained. All that he could draw from the nuncupative will of this George Puttenham is, that he “left all his goods, movable and immovable, moneys, and bonds,” to Mary Symes, a favourite female servant; but he infers that “he probably was our author.” Yet, at the same time, there turned up another will of one Richard Puttenham, “a prisoner in her Majesty’s Bench.” Richard, therefore, may have as valid pretensions to “The Arte of English Poesie,” as George, and neither may be the author. This matter is trivial, and hardly worth an inquiry.
Haslewood, laborious but unfortunately uneducated, is the editor of an elegant reprint of this “Arte of English Poesie.” A modern reader may therefore find an easy access to a valuable volume which had been long locked up in the antiquary’s closet.
[3] See page 157 of “The Arte of English Poesie.”
[4] The following letter is an evidence of the uncertain accounts respecting this author among the most knowing literary historians. Here, too, we find that Webster, or George, or Richard, is changed into Jo!—
“What authority Mr. Wood has for Jo. Puttenham’s being the author of the ‘Art of English Poetry’ I do not know. Mr. Wanley, in his ‘Catalogue of the Harley Library,’ says that he had been told that Edmund Spenser was the author of that book, which came out anonymous. But Sir John Harrington, in his preface to ‘Orlando Furioso,’ gives so hard a censure of that book, that Spenser could not possibly be the author.”—“Letter from Thomas Baker to the Hon. James West,” printed in the “European Magazine,” April, 1788.
