New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1882-01-15
Delivers In such apt and gracious words
That aged ears play truant of his tales.
Aud younger hearings are quite ravished,
@ au.nat md vnInhln 10 his discaurheN

earliest alleged representation OF Loves Lapors
Lost"
When Gascoigne was framing his instructive
notes. Gosson opening his abusive school, anu
Sidney celebrating bis eloquent apology, there was
growing up in Scotland young gentleman who
was 10 figure as tho third contributor to this itera
ture of poetic criticism lie had for his first tutor
an elderly scholar, who was proficient in Latin IN
his boyhood who had written Latin TRANSACTIONS OF
Eurpdes and of the Psalms, who had travelled IN
England France Portugal, Italy and VINO was
then as Professor Sharp is now, Principal OF 81
Andrews Such was old George Buchanan, greatest
of modern Latin poets. To the young gentleman
whom he endeavOred to educate, Nature had hoC
been bountiful. His person was ungalnly 10 a"k-
wardness his tongue was too large Tor his month";
and his mind, what there was of 1t, was shallow,
though his N emory was retentlve. After michael
de Montague. who had been pupil OF Buchanans
when he taught the Humanities at Bordeaux he
was n sorry pupil indeed. He was good-natured,
however and not without shrewdness. ana had an
annette for know ledge though his digestion thereof
was bad. lie studied hard, acquired what he
could and was proud of his pcdantry. Such was
James Stuart son of Henry Earl of Darnley and
Mary Queen of Scots, who in his eighteenth year,
two years after the death of Sidney, condescended
to enter the ranks of authorship with The Essays
of a Prentice IN the Divine Art of Poetry"
Our interest in this composition does not concern
itself with the prncely poesy of Jatobus sextus'
but with piece of prose imbedded therein. " Ane
Short Treatise Containing some Reuels and Cantells
to be Observt and Eschewit in SCottis Poesie'" III
ls difficult to read this composition with the gravity
that contribution to the literature Of poetic crti-
csn demands. That the pupil of Buchanan could
really suppose his cOuntrymen so ignorant OF the
simplest rules of verse-makng as his treatise I'M
l,Ia 4, tn
b,adisls, they had already had three or four gen
erations of poets beginning with Barbour and end
ing with Gavin Douglas. 1t not for their IN
strnction that he wrote but to show Oft his own
cevernesS If pedlntry built for Itself pyra-
mid it was in these Reuels and Cantelis, the dlc'
ton OF which is barharously provincial as 10 he
nearly unintelligible. They contain, however, one
CLEAN of sense and but one,-the admission that
there may be such qualification ill the calling
of the poet as a beginning of nature, without which
rules will be but band that will make orc within
a short space weary OF the whole art, "quhair as,
elf Nature he chief, and bent to 1t, rues Will be
ane help and staff to Nature"
The twenty years which elapsed before Jacobus
Sextus of Scotia becomes James the First OF Eng
land witnessed the publication of six additional
contributions TO the literature of poetic criticism.
These were: A Discourse of English Poetry by
William Webbe 1850; The Art of English Poetry,
Inv George Puttenham 1850; An Apology OF
Poetry, by Sir Joan Harrington Q59D A Com
parative Discourse of our English POETS by Francis
Meres N59S); Observations on the Art OF English
Poetry by Thomas Campion tl602l; and Defence
of RHYME by Samuel Daniel UG03). OF Webbe
a Cambridge man, and a friend OF Spensef ana
Harvey, 1t will be sufficient to say that
his discourse, like the letters of HaT
vey was largely discussion of metres with
l,la l,tu
translation of two of Vrgils Eclcgues INTO English
hexameters: of Puttenham, an Oxford man,
scholar. skilled in French, Italian, Spanish, as
well as in Greek and Latin, a traveller, who had
visited the courts Of France, Spain, Italy and the
Empire and volumnous writer of verse which has
perished it will be sufficient 10 say that his art
WAS an analysis of the origin and nature of poetry,
of its various forms of tragedy comedy satire, ana
of the manifold measures into which 1t had flowed,
like molten gold into mould, and into which 1t
had been pressed like solid gold in IA mint; Of
Harrington "a godson of Queen Elizabeth, Cam
bridge man. student Of LincOln's Inn and a trans
lator OF Ari0sto, that his apology was about many
things in general and nothing IN particular; OF
Meres, that his discourse was comparison of Eng
li,h poets and Greek, Latin aud Italian poets, and
was designed for the instruction of youth of Cam
pion. also a Cambridge man, n physician. poet
and a musician, that his observations were not
remarkable for their novelty their force aud OF
Daniel an ELEGANT sOnnetcer and u heavy chtonlccr
i'm verse of English civil wars. that his defence was
directed against the structures of CamplOn, who
had cxtoed the excellence of the reformed English
versifylng and proclaimed the pestilent here'y OF
the hexametcr. The ten works we have named are
curious bat rather wearisome reading, partly on
account of the measured manner in which they
were written, and partly ON account OF the defer
ence of their writers to the critical opinions OF the
anriens. Three of them possessed however. more
than temporary interest, and these arc Sldneys
Apology for Poetry, chivarous strain of eloouence
by which the hearts OF his admirers are stirred more
than with a trumpet; Mcress Paiatis Iamia, of
which his Comparative Discourse n part, and
which is rememb containing the earliest and
fullest enumeration of the plays of Shakespeare
and Daniels Defence, which fully justiiics the
praise of his contemporaries, -that he was "well
languaged, and stamps him master OF pure Eng
lish prose.
During the next two centuries there were not
many notable additions to the literature of poetic
criticism although largesse of fragncntaTy cOntr
buttons was occasionally scattered in that dlrec-
ton As in Bottoms Hypercrltica QGI0l; Ben
Jonson's Discoveries, before 1857; Drydeus
Prefaces, Dedicatory Epistles, etc. (l66t-93), of
which the most important were Defence of an
Essay on Dramatic Poetry u667, the Preface to
his Fables iGGgl An Essay on Heroic PLAYS lG72l,
the Preface to his TRANSACTIONS from Oyids Episies
1850, and An Essay Satire pretiXed to his
trausatons from Juvena 1898; Phillips's Thea
trum Poctarum uG7jl; Wnstanley's Lives Of the
Most Famous English Poets il6S7; Langbaines
Account of the English Dramatic Poets ilG9l;
Bysshe's Art of English Poetry u703l; Addlsons
Criticisms on Paradise Lost u7ll-l2); GildOns
Complete Art of Poetry u7lS; Jacobss Poctical
Register u723l; Haywards British Muse (1737l;
the CoXerr ShIels- Cbber Lives of the Poets 1888;
Warton's Observations on the Fairy Queen
Q762l, and History of English Poetry 177i@7Sl;