There had been good versifiers long before. Chaucer, for example, and even Gower, wearisome as he mainly is, made verses sometimes not only easy in movement, but in which the language seems strangely modern. That most dolefully dreary of books, “The Mirror for Magistrates,” and Sackville, more than any of its authors, did something towards restoring the dignity of verse, and helping it to recover its self-respect, while Spenser was still a youth. Tame as it is, the sunshine of that age here and there touches some verse that ripples in the sluggish current with a flicker of momentary illumination. But before Spenser, no English verse had ever soared and sung, or been filled with what Sidney calls “divine delightfulness.” Sidney, it may be conjectured, did more by private criticism and argument than by example. Drayton says of him:—
“The noble Sidney with this last arose,
That heroë for numbers and for prose,
That throughly paced our language as to show
The plenteous English hand in hand might go
With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce
Our tongue from Lilly’s writing then in use.”
But even the affectations of Lilly were not without their use as helps to refinement. If, like Chaucer’s frere,—
“Somewhat he lisped, for his wantonness,”
it was through the desire