[593:A] To form a complete enumeration of the songs of the Elizabethan era, it would be necessary not only to consult all the dramatic writers of this age, but to acquire a perfect series of the very numerous Collections of Madrigals which were published during the same period.
CHAPTER IV.
CURSORY VIEW OF POETRY, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE DRAMA, DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE.
The space which elapsed between the birth and the death of Shakspeare, from April 1564 to April 1616, a period of fifty-two years, may be pronounced, perhaps, the most fertile in our annals, with regard to the production of poetical literature. Not only were the great outlines of every branch of poetry chalked out with skill and precision, but many of its highest departments were filled up and finished in a manner so masterly as to have bid defiance to all subsequent competition. Consequently if we take a survey of the various channels through which the genius of poetry has been accustomed to diffuse itself, it will be found, that, during this half century, every province had its cultivators; that poems epic and dramatic, historic and didactic, lyric and romantic, that satires, pastorals, and sonnets, songs, madrigals, and epigrams, together with a multitude of translations, brightened and embellished its progress.
On a subject, however, so productive, and which would fill volumes, it is necessary, that, in consonancy with the limits and due keeping of our plan, the utmost solicitude for condensation be observed. In this chapter, accordingly, which, to a certain extent, is meant to be introductory to a critical consideration of the miscellaneous poems of Shakspeare, the dramatic writers are omitted; a future section of the work being appropriated to a detail of their more peculiar labours for the stage.
After a few general observations, therefore, on the poetry of this era, it is our intention to give short critical notices of the principal bards who flourished during its transit; and with the view of affording some idea of the extensive culture and diffusion of poetic taste, an
alphabetical table of the minor poets, accompanied by slight memoranda, will be added. An account of the numerous Collections of Poetry which reflect so much credit on this age, and a few remarks and inferences, more particularly with respect to Shakspeare's study of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries in miscellaneous poetry, will complete this portion of our subject.
The causes which chiefly contributed to produce this fertility in poetical genius may, in a great measure, be drawn from what has been already remarked under the heads of superstition, literature, and romance.