An abundance of these amusing tracts eagerly bought up in their day, but which came in the following generation to the ballad-stalls, are in the present enshrined in the cabinets of the curious. Such are the revolutions of literature! [It is by no means uncommon to find them realise sums at the rate of a guinea a page; but it is to be solely attributed to their extreme rarity; for in many instances the reprints of such tracts are worthless.]
Poverty and the gaol alternated with tavern carouses or the place of honour among the wild young gallants at the playhouses. They were gentlemen or beggars as daily circumstances ordained. When this was the case with such authors as Greene, Peele, and Massinger, we need not wonder at finding “a whole knot” of writers in infinitely worse plight, who lived (or starved) by writing ballads and pamphlets on temporary subjects. In a brief tract, called “The Downfall of Temporising Poets,” published 1641, they are said to be “an indifferent strong corporation, twenty-three of you sufficient writers, besides Martin Parker,” who was the great ballad and pamphlet writer of the day. The shifts they were put to, and the difficulties of their living, is denoted in the reply of one of the characters in this tract, who on being asked if he has money, replies “Money? I wonder where you ever see poets have money two days together; I sold a copy last night, and have spent the money; and now have another copy to sell, but nobody will buy it.”—Ed.
Chatterton had written a political essay for “The North Briton,” which opened with the preluding flourish of “A spirited people freeing themselves from insupportable slavery:” it was, however, though accepted, not printed, on account of the Lord Mayor’s death. The patriot thus calculated the death of his great patron!
| £ | s. | d. | |||
| Lost by his death in this Essay | 1 | 11 | 6 | ||
| Gained in Elegies | £2 | 2 | |||
| —— in Essays | 3 | 3 | |||
| 5 | 5 | 0 | |||
| Am glad he is dead by | £3 | 13 | 6 | ||
This author, now little known but to the student of our rarer early poets, was a native of Shrewsbury, and had served in the army. He wrote a large number of poetical pieces, all now of the greatest rarity; their names have been preserved by that industrious antiquary Joseph Ritson, in his Bibliographia Poetica. The principal one was termed “The Worthiness of Wales,” and is written in laudation of the Principality. He was frequently employed to supply verses for Court Masques and Pageantry. He composed “all the devises, pastimes, and plays at Norwich” when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there; as well as gratulatory verses to her at Woodstock. He speaks of his mind as “never free from studie,” and his body “seldom void of toyle”—“and yet both of them neither brought greate benefits to the life, nor blessing to the soule” he adds, in the words of a man whose hope deferred has made his heart sick!—Ed.
Villanellas, or rather “Villanescas, are properly country rustic songs, but commonly taken for ingenious ones made in imitation of them.”—Pineda.