THE

POETICAL DECAMERON.

THE FIRST CONVERSATION.

BOURNE. Let us begin our conversations by an interesting and a much lauded poem, perhaps lauded beyond its merits.

ELLIOT. That is nothing very uncommon, whatever there may be remarkable in the poem : what is that little performance called? If the matter be uo heavier than the manner, it is likely to be light reading.

BOURNE. And so it is, though a great many stanzas are printed in a small compass.

MORTON. Come, the title; otherwise we shall have preface enough for a book ten times as large. At all events the preface, if we must have one, ought to follow the title: what is it?

BOURNE. It is Charles Fitzgeffrey's poem on the death of Sir Francis Drake; the production obviously of a very young man, but with a great deal about it that is both admirable and reprehensible. There are few pieces that have greater defects or more

striking beauties.

The title-page is this: "Sir

Francis Drake, his Honorable life's commendation, and his Tragicall Deathes lamentation." It was printed at Oxford, by Joseph Barnes, in the year 1596.

ELLIOT. You say that Fitzgeffrey was a very young man when he wrote it?

BOURNE. Yes; the dates supply the fact; but even without them there is internal evidence of the boyishness of the writer-a want of restraint of thought, and a fearlessness of expression so characteristic of a youth whose mind is beginning to partake of the same freedom that his body enjoys when first emancipated from scholastic trammels.

MORTON. Let us postpone criticism till we know more about the book. Let us read, and then criticise.

ELLIOT. At all events let us not, like modern reviewers (according to the vulgar notion of them), criticise without reading at all.

BOURNE. George Chapman, in his 'Exavunlos (1594), has one of the severest and boldest sentences I remember, not against critics by profession, but critics by choice-hypercritical readers, who read not to enjoy, but to find fault: "How then may a man stay his maruailing to see passion-driuen men reading but to curtoll a tedious houre, and altogether hide-bound with affection to great men's fancies, take upon them as killing censures as if they were

iudgements butchers; and as if the life of truth lay tottering in their verdicts."

ELLIOT. A hard hit, certainly; but it seems principally aimed at the flatterers of noble authors-at those who are altogether hide-bound with affection to great men's fancies.”

MORTON. Very true-I think I have seen some notice or other of this production by Fitzgeffrey.

BOURNE. He was often applauded by contemporary writers; but what you refer to is probably in the British Bibliographer. The article is here, Vol. II.

p. 116, and signed T. P.

MORTON. I believe it is; but I see that no quotations are supplied to enable us to judge of the merits or defects of the poem, excepting the Dedicatory Sonnet to the widow of Sir Francis Drake.

ELLIOT. It is something ludicrous to give us that as a specimen of the body of the work.

J

MORTON. The preface, however, dated from Broadgate Hall, Nov. 17, 1596, is quoted, and it seems curious. I do not perceive that your copy has any preface or introductory matter of the kind in prose: after the title comes the sonnet here quoted by T. P. "to the beavteous and vertuous Lady Elizabeth late wife to the highly renowmed Sir Francis Drake deceased;" and then follow some commendatory poems, but no preface: is not your copy imperfect?

BOURNE. Certainly not: you do not perceive that there must have been two editions of the book:

observe, the title, as inserted in the Brit. Bib. has these remarkable words, " Newly printed with additions:" my copy has them not, and it exactly corresponds with that in the British Museum. I wonder that this circumstance has never been remarked before. The preface was added at the time when the 66 poem was newly printed," as well as the complimentary lines by Tho. Mychelborne, with another citation or two from Latin poems on the death of Sir Francis Drake. Mine has only one Latin piece, "In Dracum redivivum Carmen." It has also verses by Richard and Francis Rous, and three stanzas subscribed D. W.

ELLIOT. Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica gives merely the first part of the title with the date, 1596.

BOURNE. And it says nothing of the commendatory poems by Rous and Mychelborne: this looks as if he had never seen the book.

ELLIOT. The omission is not very important.

BOURNE. NO: these solicited panegyrics are seldom of much value. Chapman, whom I before quoted, is rather severe upon the poets, his contemporaries, who rarely gave the most trifling piece to the world without such scraps of preliminary praise it is introduced into his play of Byron's Conspiracie, Act. 3. (1608).

"Be circumspect, for to a credulous eye He comes inuisible, vail'd with flatterie ;

And flatterers looke like friends, as wolues like

dogges:

And as a glorious Poeme fronted well

With many a goodly herrald of his praise,
So farre from hate of praises to his face,

That he praies men to praise him, and they ride
Before with trumpets in their mouths, proclaiming
Life to the holy furie of his lines;"

and so on for about eight or ten lines further. I do not recollect any poem or play by Chapman, which has verses prefixed by friends "proclaiming life to his holy fury." It is in omitting such pieces before prose works that Ritson's compilation is principally defective.

MORTON. The labour of one man, however learned, was unequal to the task which was new at the time he undertook it.

ELLIOT. Are not these questions about complimentary verses and variety of editions silly points of controversy?

BOURNE. Sometimes they are necessary matters: a man with the true spirit of a lover of old books would think them the most inviting questions in the world: some have devoted their lives and labours to nothing else.

ELLIOT. But can you give any satisfactory reason why we should do so? If you cannot, let us return to Fitzgeffrey's poem.