Seneca among the Latines.  There were yet others who mounted nothing so high as any of them both, but in base and humble stile by maner of Dialogue, vttered the priuate and familiar talke of the meanest sort of men, as shepheards, heywards and suchlike, such was among the Greekes Theocritus:  and Virgill among the Latines, their poemes were named Eglogues or shepheardly talke.  There was yet another kind of Poet, who intended to taxe the common abuses and vice of the people in rough and bitter speaches, and their inuectiues were called Satyres, and them selues Satyricques.  Such were Lucilius, Iuuenall and Persius among the Latines, & with vs he that wrote the booke called Piers plowman.  Others of a more fine and pleasant head were giuen wholly to taunting and scoffing at vndecent things, and in short poemes vttered pretie merry conceits, and these men were called Epigrammatistes.  There were others that for the peoples good instruction, and triall of their owne witts vsed in places of great assembly, to say by rote nombers of short and sententious meetres, very pithie and of good edification, and thereupon were called Poets Mimistes:  as who would say, imitable and meet to be followed for their wise and graue lessons.  There was another kind of poeme, inuented onely to make sport, & to refresh the company with a maner of buffonry or counterfaiting of merry speaches, conuerting all that which they had hard spoken before, to a certaine derision by a quite contrary sence, and this was done, when Comedies or Tragedies were a playing, & that betweene the actes when the players went to make ready for another, there was great silence, and the people waxt weary, then came in these maner of counterfaite vices, they were called Pantomimi, and all that had before bene sayd, or great part of it, they gaue a crosse construction to it very ridiculously.  Thus haue you how the names of the Poets were giuen them by the formes of their poemes and maner of writing.

  CHAP.  XII.

In what forme of Poesie the gods of the Gentiles were praysed and honored.

The gods of the Gentiles were honoured by their Poetes in hymnes, which is an extraordinarie and diuine praise, extolling and magnifying them for their great powers and excellencie of nature in the highest degree of laude, and yet therein their Poets were after a sort restrained:  so as they could not with their credit vntruly praise their owne gods, or vse in their lauds any maner of grosse adulation or vnueritable report.  For in any writer vntruth and flatterie are counted most great reproches.  Wherfore to praise the gods of the Gentiles, for that by authoritie of their owne fabulous records, they had fathers and mothers, and kinred and allies, and wiues and concubines:  the Poets first commended them by their genealogies or pedegrees, their mariages and aliances, their notable