"But it is lamentable
To heare a Captayne so good and honorable,
So soone withdrawen by deathes crueltie,
Before his vertue was at moste hye degree.
If death for a season had shewed him fauour,
To all his nation he should haue bene honour."
"'The Towre of Vertue and Honor,' introduced as a song of one of the shepherds into these pastorals, exhibits no very masterly strokes of a sublime and inventive fancy. It has much of the trite imagery usually applied in the fabrication of these ideal edifices. It, however, shows our author in a new walk of poetry. This magnificent tower, or castle is built on inaccessible cliffs of flint: the walls are of gold, bright as the sun, and decorated with 'olde historyes and pictures manyfolde:' the turrets are beautifully shaped. Among its heroic inhabitants are Henry VIII., ['in his maiestie moste hye enhaunsed as ought a conquerour,' no doubt an allusion to the battle of the Spurs and his other exploits in France in 1513], Howard Duke of Norfolk, ['the floure of chiualry'], and the Earl of Shrewsbury, ['manfull and hardy, with other princes and men of dignitie']. Labour is the porter at the gate, and Virtue governs the house. Labour is thus pictured, with some degree of spirit:—
'Fearefull is labour without fauour at all,
Dreadfull of visage, a monster intreatable,
Like Cerberus lying at gates infernall;