Of Thomas Dekker, or Decker (about 1575-1638), “A priest in Apollo’s Temple, many yeares,” with his “Old Fortunatus,” both parts of his “Honest Whore,” his “Satiromastix,” and “Gull’s Hornbook,” &c.,—which take us back to all the mirth and squabbling of the day—we need add no word but praise. We believe that a valuable clue is afforded by the allusion in our text to the pamphlet “Dekker his Dreame,” 1620, (reprinted by J. O. Halliwell, 1860.) We may be certain that “The Time-Poets” was not written earlier than 1620, or any later than 1636 (or probably than 1632), and before Jonson’s death.
[Page 7.] “Rounce, Robble, Hobble, he that writ so big.”
In this 50th line the word “high” is evidently redundant (probably an error in printer’s MS., not erased when the true word “big” was added): we retain it, of course, though in smaller type; as in similar cases of excess. But who was “Rounce, Robble, Hobble?” Most certainly it was no other than Richard Stanyhurst (1547-1618), whose varied adventures, erudition, and eccentricities of verse combined to make him memorable. His Hexameter translation of the Æneis Books i-iv, appeared in 1583; not followed by any more during the thirty-five years succeeding. Gabriel Harvey praised him, in his “Foure Letters,” &c., although Thomas Nashe, in 1592, declares that “Master Stanyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foule, lumbring, boystrous, wallowing measure in his translation of Virgil. He had never been praised by Gabriel [Harvey] for his labour, if therein he had not been so famously absurd.” (Strange Newes.) This Æneid had a limited reprint in 1839. Warton in Hist. Eng. Poetry gives examples (misnaming him Robert) but Camden says “Eruditissimus ille nobilis Richardus Stanihurstus.” In his preface to Greene’s Arcadia, Nash quotes Stanyhurst’s description of a Tempest:—
Then did he make heauens vault to rebound
With rounce robble bobble, [N.B.]
Of ruffe raffe roaring,
With thicke thwacke thurly bouncing:
and indicates his opinion of the poet, “as of some thrasonical huffe-snuffe,” indulging in “that quarrelling kind of verse.” One more specimen, to justify our text, regarding “he that writ so big:” in the address to the winds, Æn., Bk. i., Neptune thus rails:—
Dare ye, lo, curst baretours, in this my Seignorie regal,
Too raise such racks iacks on seas and danger unorder’d?