The whole of the documents in the case will be found, clearly put, in Mr Arber’s _Introduction_. The first attribution is in Bolton (_v. infra_) some fifteen years later than the date of the book, and not quite positive (“as the Fame is”). But there is no other claimant who has anything to put in: and the almost diseased aversion of “persons of quality” (Puttenham was possibly a nephew of Sir Thomas Elyot’s, and a Gentleman-Pensioner of the Queen’s) to avowing authorship is well known. ----- The book is “to-deled” (as the author of the _Ancren Riwle_ would say) into three books—“Of Poets and Poesie,” “Of Proportion,” and “Of Ornament.” [Sidenote: _Its erudition._] It begins, as usual, with observations on the words poet and maker, references to the ancients, &c.; but this exordium, which is fitly written in a plain but useful and agreeable style, is commendably short. The writer lays it down, with reasons, that there may be an Art of English as of Latin and Greek poetry; but cannot refrain from the same sort of “writing at large” as to poets being the first philosophers, &c., which we have so often seen.[255] Indeed we must lay our account with the almost certain fact that all writers of this period had seen Sidney’s _Defence_ at least in MS. or had heard of it. He comes closer to business with his remarks on the irreption of rhyme into Greek and Latin poetry; and shows a better knowledge of leonine and other mediæval Latin verse, not merely than Webbe, but even than Ascham. A very long section then deals with the question—all-interesting to a man of the Renaissance—in what reputation poets were with princes of old, and how they be now contemptible (wherein Puttenham shows a rather remarkable acquaintance with modern European literature), and then turns to the subject or matter of poesy and the forms thereof, handling the latter at great length, and with a fair sprinkle of literary anecdote. At last he comes to _English_ poetry; and though, as we might expect, he does not go behind the late fourteenth century, he shows rather more knowledge than Webbe and (not without slips here and elsewhere) far more comparative judgment. It must, however, be admitted that, engaging as is his description of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate,” he does not show to advantage in the patronising glance in passing at “that other gentleman who wrote the late _Shepherd’s Calendar_,” contrasted with the description of the Queen our Sovereign lady, “whose Muse easily surmounteth all the rest in any kind on which it may please her Majesty to employ her pen.” But here the allowance comes in: the stoutest Tory of later days can never wholly share, though he may remotely comprehend, the curious mixture of religious, romantic, patriotic, amatory, and interested feelings with which the men of the sixteenth century wrote about Gloriana. ----- Footnote 255: