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Wyat ; with reverence whom we still do name
Amongst our Poets, Brian had a share
With the two former, which accounted are
That times best makers, and the authors were
Of those small poems, which the title bear,
Of songs and sonnets, wherein oft they hit
On many dainty passages of wit.

Gascoine and Churchyard after them again
In the beginning of Eliza’s rain,
Accounted were great Meterers many a day,
But not inspired with brave fire, had they
Liv’d but a little longer, they had seen,
Their works before them to have buried been.

Grave moral Spencer after these came on
Then whom I am persuaded there was none
Since the blind Bard his Iliads up did make,
Fitter a task like that to undertake,
To set down boldly, bravely to invent,
In all high knowledge, surely excellent.

The noble Sidney with this last arose,
That Heroe for numbers, and for Prose.
That throughly pac’d our language as to show,
The plenteous English hand in hand might go
With Greek or Latine, and did first reduce
Our tongue from Lillies writing then in use;
Talking of Stones, Stars, Plants, of fishes, Flyes,
Playing with words, and idle Similies,
As th’ English, Apes and very Zanies be,
Of every thing, that they do hear and see,
So imitating his ridiculous tricks,
They spake and writ, all like mere lunatics.

Then Warner though his lines were not so trim’d,
Nor yet his Poem so exactly lim’d
And neatly jointed, but the Critic may
Easily reproove him, yet thus let me say;
For my old friend, some passages there be
In him, which I protest have taken me,
With almost wonder, so fine, clear, and new
As yet they haue bin equalled by few.

Neat Marlow bathed in the Thespian springs
Had in him those brave translunary things,
That the first Poets had, his raptures were,
All air, and fire, which made his verses clear,
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a Poets brain.

And surely Nashe, though he a Proser were
A branch of Lawrell yet deserves to bear,
Sharply Satyic was he, and that way
He went, since that his being, to this day
Few haue attempted, and I surely think
Those words shall hardly be set down with ink;
Shall scorch and blast, so as his could, where he,
Would inflict vengeance, and be it said of thee,

Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a Comic vain,
Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain,
As strong conception, and as Clear a rage,
As any one that trafiqu’d with the stage.

Amongst these Samuel Daniel, whom if I
May spake of, but to censure do deny,
Onely have heard some wisemen him rehearse,
To be too much Historian in verse;
His ryhmes were smooth, his meters well did close
But yet his maner better fitted prose:
Next these, learn’d Johnson, in this List I bring,
Who had drunk deep of the Pierian spring,
Whose knowledge did him worthily prefer,
And long was Lord here of the Theater,
Who in opinion made our learn’st to stick,
Whether in Poems rightly dramatic,
Strong Seneca or Plautus, he or they,
Should bear the Buskin, or the Sock away.
Others again here lived in my daes,
That have of us deserved no less praise
For their translations, then the daintiest wit
That on Parnassus thinks, he highst doth sit,
And for a chair may mongst the Muses call,
As the most curious maker of them all;
As reverent Chapman, who hath brought to us,
Musaeus, Homer and Hesiodus
Out of the Greek; and by his skill hath reared
Them to that height, and to our tongue endear’d,
That were those Poets at this day alive,
To see their books thus with us to survive,
They would think, hauing neglected them so long,
They had bin written in the English tongue.