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and honor, and being indeed so worthy and commendable an art, or rather no art, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct not to be gotten by labor and learning, but adorned with both, and poured into the wit by a certain Enthousiasmos and celestial inspiration, as the author hereof elsewhere at large discourseth in his book called the English poet, which book being lately come into my hands, I mind also by God's grace, upon further advisement, to publish.’
E. K., whoever he was, never carried out his intention, and the book is no doubt lost; a loss to be borne with less equanimity than that of Cicero's treatise De Gloria, once possessed by Petrarch.
The passage I have italicized is most likely an extract, and reminds one of the long-breathed periods of Milton.
Drummond of Hawthornden tells us, ‘he [Ben Jonson] hath by heart some verses of Spenser's “Calendar,” about wine, between Coline and Percye’ (Cuddie and Piers).1 These verses are in this eclogue, and are worth quoting both as having the approval of dear old Ben, the best
1 Drummond, it will be remarked, speaking from memory, takes Cuddy to be Colin. In Milton's ‘Lycidas’ there are reminiscences of this eclogue as well as of that for May. The latter are the more evident, but I think that Spenser's
Cuddie, the praise is better than the price,suggested Milton's
But not the praise,Shakespeare had read and remembered this pastoral. Compare
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears.
But, ah, Mecaenas is yclad in clay,with
And great Augustus long ago is dead,
And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead,
King Pandion, he is dead;It is odd that Shakespeare, in his ‘apt in lead,’ is more Spenserian than Spenser himself, from whom he caught this ‘hunting of the letter.’
All thy friends are lapt in lead.
Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1876.
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