This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 edition. Excerpt: ...V. ELIZABETHAN POETS. 231 practice has been in some measure successful, through the example of a distinguished poet, and through translations from the ancients in measures closely corresponding with their own. In this there is doubtless the advantage of presenting a truer mirror of the original. But as most imitations of Latin measures, in German or English, begin by violating their first principle, which assigns an invariable value in time to the syllables of every word, and produce a chaos of false quantities, it seems as if they could only disgust any one acquainted with classical versification. In the early English hexameters of the period before us, we sometimes perceive an intention to arrange long and short syllables according to1 the analogies of the Latin tongue. But this would soon be found impracticable in our own, which, abounding in harsh terminations, cannot long observe the law of position. 76. It was said by Ellis, that nearly one hundred names of poets belonging to the reign of Eliza-Xumber of beth might be enumerated, besides many that poets in have left no memorial except their songs. 11118 ageThis however was but a moderate computation. Drake has made a list of more than two hundred, some few of whom, perhaps, do not strictly belong to the Elizabethan period." But many of these are only known by short pieces in such miscellaneous collections as have been mentioned. Yet in the entire bulk of poetr', England could not, perhaps, bear comparison with Spain or France, to say nothing of Italy. She had come, in fact, much later to cultivate poetry as a general accomplishment. And, consequently, we find much less of the mechanism of style, than in the contemporaneous verse of other languages. The English sonnetteers deal...