[76] From the invocation at the opening of Virgil’s Æneid (line 12), “Muse, bring to my mind the causes of these things: what divinity was injured . . . that one famous for piety should suffer thus.”
[77] The Chancellor, Michel de l’Hôpital, born in 1505, who joined to his great political services (which included the keeping of the Inquisition out of France, and long labour to repress civil war) great skill in verse. He died in 1573.
[78] Whose heart-strings the Titan (Prometheus) fastened with a better clay. (Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 35). Dryden translated the line, with its context—
“Some sons, indeed, some very few, we see
Who keep themselves from this infection free,
Whom gracious Heaven for nobler ends designed,
Their looks erected, and their clay refined.”
[79] The orator is made, the poet born.
[80] What you will; the first that comes.
[81] “Whatever I shall try to write will be verse.” Sidney quotes from memory, and adapts to his context, Tristium IV. x. 26.
“Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos,
Et quod temptabam dicere, versus erat.”
[82] His for “its” here as throughout; the word “its” not being yet introduced into English writing.
[83] Defects in the Drama. It should be remembered that this was written when the English drama was but twenty years old, and Shakespeare, aged about seventeen, had not yet come to London. The strongest of Shakespeare’s precursors had not yet begun to write for the stage. Marlowe had not yet written; and the strength that was to come of the freedom of the English drama had yet to be shown.