Not to be grieued with any playne sentence,
Rudely conuayed for lacke of eloquence."
The most important revelation in the whole of this interesting passage, that relating to the author's age, seems to have been studiously overlooked by all his biographers. If we can fix with probability the date at which these Eclogues were published, then this, one of the most regretted of the lacunæ in his biography, will be supplied. We shall feel henceforth treading on firmer ground in dealing with the scanty materials of his life.
From the length and favour with which the praises of the Ely Cathedral and of Alcock its pious and munificent bishop, then but recently dead, are sung in these poems (see p. lxviii.), it is evident that the poet must have donned the black hood in the monastery of Ely for at least a few years.
Warton fixes the date at 1514, because of the praises of the "noble Henry which now departed late," and the after panegyric of his successor Henry VIII. (Eclogue I.), whose virtues are also duly recorded in the Ship of Fools (I. 39 and II. 205-8), but not otherwise of course than in a complimentary manner. Our later lights make this picture of the noble pair appear both out of drawing and over-coloured:—
"Beside noble Henry which nowe departed late,
Spectacle of vertue to euery hye estate,
The patrone of peace and primate of prudence,
Which on Gods Church hath done so great expence.
Of all these princes the mercy and pitie,