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Extract from Harvey’s Reply.

But Master Collin Cloute is not euery body, and albeit his olde companions, Master Cuddy & Master Hobbinoll, be as little be holding to their Mistresse Poetrie as euer you wist, yet he peraduenture, by the meanes of hir speciall fauour, and some personall priuiledge, may happely line by Dying Pellicanes, and purchase great landes and lordshippes with the money which his Calendar and Dreames haue and will affourde him. Extra iocum, I like your Dreames passingly well; and the rather, bicause they sauour of that singular extraordinarie veine and inuention whiche I euer fancied moste, and in a manner admired onelye in Lucian, Petrarche, Aretine, Pasquill, and all the most delicate and fine conceited Grecians and Italians, (for the Romanes to speake of are but verye ciphars in this kinde,) whose chiefest endeuour and drifte was to haue nothing vulgare, but, in some respecte or other, and especially in liuely hyperbolicall amplifications, rare, queint, and odde in euery pointe, and, as a man woulde saye, a degree or two, at the leaste, aboue the reache and compasse of a common scholars capacitie.  In whiche respecte notwithstanding, as well for the singularitie of the manner as the diuinitie of the matter, I hearde once a diuine preferre Saint Iohns Reuelation before al the veriest metaphysicall visions and iolliest conceited dreames or extasies that euer were deuised by one or other, howe admirable or super excellent soeuer they seemed otherwise to the worlde.  And truely I am so confirmed in this opinion, that when I bethinke me of the verie notablest and moste wonderful propheticall or poeticall vision that euer I read, or hearde, meseemeth the proportion is so vnequall, that there hardly appeareth anye semblaunce of comparison:  no more in a manner (specially for poets) than doth betweene the incomprehensible wisedome of God and the sensible wit of man.  But what needeth this digression betweene you and me?  I dare saye you wyll holde your selfe reasonably wel satisfied, if youre Dreames be but as well esteemed of in Englande as Petrarches Visions be in Italy; whiche, I assure you, is the very worst I wish you.  But see how I haue the arte memoratiue at commaundement.  In good faith, I had once again nigh forgotten your Faerie Queene:  howbeit, by good chaunce, I haue nowe sent hir home at the laste, neither in better nor worse case than I founde hir.  And must you of necessitie haue my iudgement of hir indeede?  To be plaine, I am voyde of al iudgement, if your nine Comoedies, whervnto, in imitation of Herodotus, you giue the names of the nine Muses, (and in one mans fansie not vnworthily), come not neerer Ariostoes comoedies, eyther for the finesse of plausible elocution or the rarenesse of poetical inuention, than that Eluish Queene doth to his Orlando Furioso; which, notwithstanding, you wil needes seeme to emulate, and hope to ouergo, as you flatly professed yourself in