The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust; And with this thought the blood forsakes the face; Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rue THE MEANS TO ATTAIN HAPPY LIFE. Martial, the things that do attain The happy life be these, I find; 3 The mean diet, no delicate fare; True wisdom joined with simpleness; Where wine the wit may not oppress. The faithful wife, without debate ; Ne wish for death, ne fear his might. 1 companion. 2 dear. A PRAISE OF HIS LOVE. [Wherein he reproveth them that compare their ladies with his.] Give place, ye lovers, here before That spent your boasts and brags in vain; My lady's beauty passeth more The best of yours, I dare well sayen, Than doth the sun the candle light And thereto hath a troth as just I could rehearse, if that I would, I know she swore with raging mind, There was no loss by law of kind That could have gone so near her heart; And this was chiefly all her pain; 'She could not make the like again.' Sith Nature thus gave her the praise, AN EPITAPH ON CLERE, SURREY'S FAITHFUL FRIEND AND FOLLOWER. Norfolk sprung thee, Lambeth holds thee dead; ON THE DEATH OF SIR THOMAS WYATT. A head where wisdom mysteries did frame, To live upright, and smile at fortune's choice. A hand that taught what might be said in rhyme; A mark, the which (unperfected for time) 1 Thomas Clere was first cousin of Anne Boleyn. 2 Didst choose. A tongue that served in foreign realms his king; Whose courteous talk to virtue did inflame An eye whose judgment none affect could blind, A heart where dread was never so imprest To hide the thought that might the truth advance; In neither fortune loft', nor yet represt, To swell in wealth, or yield unto mischance. A valiant corpse, where force and beauty met, Lived, and ran the race that nature set; Of manhood's shape where she the mould did lose. But to the heavens that simple soul is fled, Thus for our guilt this jewel have we lost; 1 exalted. GEORGE GASCOIGNE. [GEORGE GASCOIGNE was born circ. 1536; died 1577. The dates of his poems are: 1572. A hundred Sundry Flowers bound up in one small Posy. 1575. The Posies corrected, perfected, and augmented by the Author. 1576. The Steel Glass, with the Complaint of Philomene. 1587. The Pleasantest Works of George Gascoigne, newly compiled into one volume.] Amongst the poets that immediately preceded the great Elizabethan Period, which may be said to begin with the publication of The Shepherd's Calendar in 1580, Gascoigne occupied, and occupies, a notable place. Bolton indeed, in his Hypercritica, speaks slightingly of him: 'Among the lesser late poets George Gascoigne's Works may be endured'; but for the most part he is mentioned with high respect and praise. Raleigh commends The Steel Glass in what are his earliest known verses. Puttenham distinguishes him for 'a good metre and for a plentiful vein.' Webbe calls him 'a witty gentleman, and the very chief of our late rimers'; 'gifts of wit,' he says, ' and natural promptness appear in him abundantly.' Amongst other eulogists may be named Nash, Gabriel Harvey, Whetstone. He was a man of family and position, well known to and amongst the Inns of Court men,' who, in the Elizabethan age, as in that of Queen Anne, passed for the arch wits and critics as well as the first gentlemen of the day; and when campaigning in the Low Countries he met with adventures which added to his personal prestige. Thus he was a conspicuous figure in the society of his time, and for this reason, if for nothing else, his verses would win esteem and circulation. Gascoigne, then, is interesting as a poet who was popular during Shakspere's boyhood and Spenser's adolescence. But he is yet more important as one who did real service in the way of extending and improving the form of literature-as a pioneer of the |