INGENIOSO.
So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.
Edmund Spenser. Thomas Watson.
Henry Constable. Michael Drayton.
Thomas Lodge. John Davis.
Samuel Daniel. John Marston.
Kit Marlowe.
Good men and true; stand together; hear your censure. What's thy judgment of Spenser?
JUDICIO.
A sweeter[43] swan than ever sung in Po,
A shriller nightingale than ever bless'd
The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.
Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud,
While he did chant his rural minstrelsy:
Attentive was full many a dainty ear,
Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,
While sweetly of his Fairy Queen he sung;
While to the waters' fall he tun'd for fame,
And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name:
And yet for all this unregarding soil
Unlac'd the line of his desired life,
Denying maintenance for his dear relief;
Careless care to prevent his exequy,
Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.
INGENIOSO.
Pity it is that gentler wits should breed,
Where thickskin chuffs laugh at a scholar's need.
But softly may our honour's ashes rest,
That lie by merry Chaucer's noble chest.
But, I pray thee, proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud
of myself; as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with
thine.—Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel,[44] Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson.
JUDICIO.
Sweet Constable[45] doth take the wond'ring ear,
And lays it up in willing prisonment:
Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage
War with the proudest big Italian,
That melts his heart in sugar'd sonneting;
Only let him more sparingly make use
Of others' wit, and use his own the more,
That well may scorn base imitation.
For Lodge[46] and Watson,[47] men of some desert,
Yet subject to a critic's marginal;
Lodge for his oar in ev'ry paper boat,
He, that turns over Galen ev'ry day,
To sit and simper Euphues' Legacy.[48]
INGENIOSO.
Michael Drayton?
JUDICIO.
Drayton's sweet muse is like a sanguine dye,
Able to ravish the rash gazer's eye.
INGENIOSO. However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times, and that is this: he cannot swagger it well in a tavern, nor domineer in a hothouse. John Davis?[49]
JUDICIO.
Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes,
That jerk in hidden charms these looser times;
Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein,
Is graced with a fair and sweeping[50] train.