When the craze first took form in England we do not exactly know. Ascham observes vaguely that “this misliking of rhyming beginneth not now of any newfangle singularity, but hath been long been misliked, and that of men of greatest learning and deepest judgment.”[224] [Sidenote: _Watson and Drant._] We all think that the persons who agree with us are men of great learning and deep judgment, so that matter may be passed over. But apparently the thing was one, and not the best, of the fruits of that study of the classics, and specially of Greek, which, beginning at Oxford, passed thence to Cambridge, and was taken up so busily in Ascham’s own college, St John’s. Thomas Watson,[225] the Bishop of Lincoln, above referred to, was Master of the College; Ascham himself, it is hardly necessary to say, was a fellow of it. And still descending in the collegiate hierarchy, it was an undergraduate of St John’s, Thomas Drant, who somewhat later drew up rules for Anglo-Classic versifying—rules that occupied Spenser and Harvey, with the result of producing some interesting letters and some very deplorable doggerel. Drant seems to have been the “legislator of Parnassus” to the innovators; but we have little work of his, and that little does not bear on the special subject. ----- Footnote 224: P. 147. The extraordinary confusion of mind of the time is illustrated by Ascham’s sheltering himself behind Quintilian! Footnote 225: Not to be confounded with Thomas Watson, the author of the _Hecatompathia_, who came later, and was an Oxford man. ----- Mischievous craze as it was, however,[226] it had the merit of turning the attention of Englishmen to really critical study of poetry, and it appears, more or less, as the _motif_ of most of the group of critical writings, from Gascoigne’s _Notes of Instruction_ to Daniel’s _Defence of Rhyme_, which we shall now discuss. ----- Footnote 226: Some authorities have been much too mild towards it. For instance, the late Mr Henry Morley, who says, “Thomas Drant, of course, did not suppose that his rules were sufficient.” This is charitable, but outside, or rather against, the evidence. ----- In the most interesting little treatise[227] which heads or initials[228] the now goodly roll of books in English criticism, George Gascoigne, though he was himself a Cambridge man, does not make any reference to the craze. [Sidenote: _Gascoigne._] The tract was written at the request of an Italian friend, Eduardo Donati. It is exceedingly short; but as full of matter, and very good matter, as need be. In duty bound Gascoigne begins with insistence on fine invention, without which neither “thundering in rym ram ruff, quoth my master Chaucer,” nor “rolling in pleasant words,” nor “abounding in apt vocables,” will suffice. But he passes over this very swiftly, as over trite and obvious expressions,[229] suitableness of phrase, &c., and attacks the great literary question of the time, Prosody. -----