He of this reign, he has feen fome Christmas Carols, intended for This carol, yet with many innovations, is retained at Queen's College in Oxford. Our author remarks, that the public pageantries of Henry the Eighth's reign evince a confiderable progress of claffical learning in England. As an inftance, he defcribes the fhews exhibited with great magnificence at the coronation of queen Anne Boleyn, in the year 1533. Towards the latter part of Henry's reign, much of the old cumbersome state began to be laid afide. This our author infers from a fet of new regulations given to the royal houshold by cardinal Wolfey, about the year 1526. At this period alfo, the fine arts, in general, began to receive great improvement. The twenty-feventh fection opens with a new epoch in the hiftory of English poetry. The reformation of the church, as our author obferves, produced, for a time, an alteration in the general fyftem of ftudy, and changed the character and fubjects of our poetical compofitions. Metrical tranflations of various parts of the facred fcripture, were now made; the chief of which is the verfification of the Pfalter by Sternhold and and Hopkins. Wyat and Surrey had before made translations of the Pfalms into metre; but Sternhold was the first whofe metrical verfion was used in the church of England. He was a native of Hampshire, and became groom of the robes to Henry the Eighth; in which department, we are told, either. his diligent fervices or knack at rhyming fo pleafed the king, that his majesty bequeathed him a legacy of one hundred marks. He continued in the fame office under Edward the Sixth, and is faid to have acquired fome degree of reputation about the court for his poetry. Contemporary with Sternhold, and his coadjutor, was John Hopkins, a clergyman and schoolmaster of Suffolk. He tranflated fifty-eight of the Pfalms, diftinguished by the initials of his name. Among the other contributors to this undertaking, the chief, at least in point of rank and learning, was William Whyttingham, promoted by the earl of Leicester to the deanery of Durham. At the beginning of the Reformation, the spirit of verfifying the Pfalms, and other parts of the Bible, appears to have been extremely prevalent. The practice was originally introduced into France by Clement Marot, a valet of the bed-chamber to king Francis the First, and a favourite poet of that country. The following anecdotes place in a strong light the extraordinary regard in which this fpecies of compofition was held at the court of France. They were the common accompaniments of the fiddle. They were fold fo rapidly, that the printers could not fupply the public with copies. In the feftive and fplendid court of. Francis the First, of a fudden nothing was heard but the pfalms of Clement Marot. By each of the royal family and the principal nobility of the court, a pfalm was chofen, and fitted to the ballad-tune which each liked beft. The dauphin prince Henry, who delighted in hunting, was fond of Ainfi qu'on oit le cerf bruire, or, Like as the hart defireth the water-brooks, which he conftantly fung in going out to the chace. Madame de Valentinois, between whom and the young prince there was an attachment, took Du fond de ma penfée, or, From the depth of my heart, O Lord. The queen's favourite was, Ne vueilles pas, O Sire, that is, O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation, which the fung to a fashionable jig. Antony king of Navarre fung, Revenge moy, pren le querelle, or, Stand up, O Lord, to revenge my quarrel, to the air of a dance of Poitou. It was on very different principles that pfalmody flourished in the gloomy court of Cromwell. This fafhion does not feem in the leaft to have diminished the gaiety and good humour of the court of Francis. In the two fubfequent fections our author takes notice of other metrical compofitions, founded on different parts of fcrip. fcripture. The principal of those are archbishop Parker's Pfalms, Crowley's puritanical Poetry, and Tye's Acts of the Apoftles, in rhyme. Mr. Warton very juftly depreciates this heterogeneous fpecies of compofition; which by mixing the ftyle of profe with verfe, and of verse with profe, destroys the character and effect of both. Our author informs us that the firft Chanfon à boire, or drinking-ballad, of any merit, in our language, appeared in the year 1551. He remarks that it has a vein of ease and humour, which we fhould not expect to have been inspired by the fimple beverage of those times. For the entertainment of our readers we shall give it at full length. 'I cannot eat, but little meat, My ftomach is not good; But fure I think, that I can drink I ftuffe my skin fo full within, Backe and fide go bare, go bare, Both foot and hand go colde; But, belly, God fend thee good ale inoughe, I love no roft, but a nut-browne tofte, A little bread fhall do me ftead, Moche bread I noght defire. No frost no fnow, no winde, I trowe, I am fo wrapt, and throwly lapt Backe and fide, &c. And Tib my wife, that as her life Loveth well good ale to feeke, Full oft drinkes fhee, till ye may fee The teares run downe her cheeke. Then doth fhe trowle to me the bowle Even as a mault-worm fholde; And, "faith, fweet heart, I tooke my part Backe and fide, &c. Now let them drinke, till they nod and winke, Even as good fellows fhould do: They fhall not miffe to have the bliffe Good ale doth bringe men to. And And al goode fowles that have fcoured bowles, God fave the lives, of them and their wives, Backe and fide, &c.' In fections thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, and thirty-three, we are prefented with an account of various poetical compofitions, the chief of which is the Mirrour of Magiftrates. This piece is faid to be the production of several authors; but its principal inventor, and moft diftinguished contributor was Thomas Sackville, the firft lord Buckhurst, and the firft earl of Dorfet. Section thirty-fourth is chiefly occupied with an account of the life and writings of Richard Edwards, principal poet, player, mufician, and buffoon, to the courts of Mary and Elizabeth; and the thirty-fifth fection gives a detail of remarkable circumftances in the life of Tuffer, with an examination of his Husbandrie, one of our earlieft didactic poems. The hiftorian obferves, that This author's general precepts have often an expreffive brevity, and are fometimes pointed with an epigrammatic turn and a fmartnefs of allufion. As thus, Saue wing for a thresher, when gander doth die; Much spice is a theefe, fo is candle and fire ; Again, under the leffons of the housewife. 6 Though cat, a good moufer, doth dwell in a house, Take heed how thou laiest the bane for the rats, Saue droppings and skimmings, however ye doo, • In these stanzas on haymaking, he rifes above his common manner. Go mufter thy feruants, be captain thy felfe, With toiling, and raking, and fetting on cox, In the thirty-fixth section the author gives an account of the poems of William Forrest. One of those, a MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is a panegyrical history in octave rhyme, of the life of queen Catherine, the first queen of Henry the Eighth. Mr. Warton informs us, that this poem, which confifts of twenty chapters, contains a zealous condemnation of Henry's divorce; and, he believes, preserves fome anecdotes, yet apparently mifrepresented by the writer's religious and political bigotry, not extant in any of our printed hiftories. About the middle of the fixteenth century, there appears to have exifted in England a great prejudice against the study of the claffics. Mr. Warton mentions a poem of two sheets, entitled, The Ungodlineffe of the Hethnicke Goddes, or the Downfall of Diana of the Ephefians, the writer of which, whofe arguments and poetry are equally weak, attempts to prove, that the cuftom of training youths in the Roman poets encouraged idolatry and pagan fuperftition. But, fays our author, the claffics were at length condemned by a much higher authority. In the year 1582, one Christopher Ocland, a fchoolmafter of Cheltenham, publifhed two poems in Latin hexameters, one entitled Anglorum Prælia, the other Elizabetha. To these poems, which are written in a low style of Latin verfification, is prefixed an edict from the lords of privy council, figned, among others, by Cowper bishop of Lincoln, lord Warwick, lord Leicester, fir Francis Knollys, fir Chriftopher Hatton, and fir Francis Walfingham, and directed to the queen's ecclefiattical commiffioners, containing the following paffage. "Forafmuche as the subject or matter of this booke is fuch, as is worthie to be read of all men, and especially in common schooles, where diuers heathen poets are ordinarily read and taught, from which the youth of the realme doth rather receiue infection in manners, than aduancement in uertue: in place of fome of which poets, we think this booke fit to read and taught in the grammar fchooles: we haue therefore thought, as wel for the encouraging the faid Ocklande and others that are learned, to bestowe their trauell and ftudies to fo good purposes, as alfo for the benefit of the youth and the removing of fuch lafciuious poets as are commonly read and taught in the faide grammar-fchooles (the matter of this booke being heroicall and of good instruction) to praye and require you vpon the fight hereof, as by our fpecial order, to write your letters vnto al the biflops throughout this realme, requiring them to giue commaundement, that in al the gramer and free fchooles within their feuerall diocefies, the faid booke de Anglorum Præliis, and peaceable government of hir majeftie, [the Elizabetha,] may be in place of fome of the heathen poets receyued, and publiquely read |