and excellent Sir Phillip Sidney disdained not to follow in his Arcadia and elsewhere.”  This claim of invention, however, seems to have been an afterthought with Harvey, for, in the letters which passed between him and Spenser in 1579, he speaks of himself more modestly as only a collaborator with Sidney and others in the good work.  The Earl of Surrey is said to have been the first who wrote thus in English.  The most successful person, however, was William Webb, who translated two of Virgil’s Eclogues with a good deal of spirit and harmony.  Ascham, in his “Schoolmaster,” (1570,) had already suggested the adoption of the ancient hexameter by English poets; but Ascham (as afterwards Puttenham in his “Art of Poesie”) thought the number of monosyllabic words in English an insuperable objection to verses in which there was a large proportion of dactyles, and recommended, therefore, that a trial should be made with iambics.  Spenser, at Harvey’s instance, seems to have tried his hand at the new kind of verse.  He says,—­“I like your late Englishe Hexameters so exceedingly well, that I also enure my penne sometimes in that kinde....  For the onely or chiefest hardnesse, whych seemeth, is in the Accente, which sometime gapeth, and, as it were, yawneth ilfauouredly, coming shorte of that it should, and sometime exceeding the measure of the Number, as in Carpenter; the middle sillable being vsed shorte in Speache, when it shall be read long in Verse, seemeth like a lame Gosling that draweth one legge after hir:  and Heaven, being used shorte as one sillable, when it is in Verse stretched out with a Diastole, is like a lame dogge that holdes up one legge.  But it is to be wonne with Custome, and rough words must be subdued with Vse.  For why a God’s name may not we, as else the Greekes, have the kingdome of our owne Language, and measure our Accentes by the Sounde, reserving the Quantitie to the Verse?” The amiable Edmonde seems to be smiling in his sleeve as he writes this sentence.  He instinctively saw the absurdity of attempting to subdue English to misunderstood laws of Latin quantities, which would, for example, make the vowel in debt long, in the teeth of use and wont.

We give a specimen of the hexameters which satisfied so entirely the ear of Master Gabriel Harvey,—­an ear that must have been long by position, in virtue of its place on his head.

“Not the like Discourser, for Tongue and head:  to be found out; Not the like resolute Man, for great and serious affayres; Not the like Lynx, to spie out secretes and priuities of States; Eyed like to Argus, Earde like to Midas, Nosd like to Naso, Wingd like to Mercury, fitist of a Thousand for to be employed.”

And here are a few from “worthy M. Stanyhurst’s” translation of the “AEneid.”