Nor should we fail to thank the younger Evelyn, for such graphic sketches as he gives of Restoration-Dramatists, of Cowley, Dryden, Wycherley, “Sedley and easy Etherege;” a new world of wits, all of whose works we prize, without neglecting for their sakes the older Masters who “so did take Eliza, and our James.” Something that we could gladly say, will come in befittingly on after-pages of this volume, in the “Additional Note on Sir John Suckling’s ‘Sessions of the Poets,’” as printed in our _Merry Drollery, Compleat_, page 72. * * * * * Are we stumbling at the threshold, _absit omen!_ even amid our delight in perusing “the Time-Poets,” when we wonder at the precise meaning of the statement in our opening couplet? _One night the great ~Apollo~, pleas’d with ~Ben~,_ _Made the odd number of the Muses ten._ By whom additional? Who is the lady, thus elevated? We see only one solution: namely, that furnished by the conclusion of the poem. It was the _Faerie Queene_ herself whom the God lifted thus, in honour of her English Poets, to rank as the Tenth Muse, an equal with Urania, Clio, Euterpe, and their sisterhood. Yet something seems wanting, next to it; for we never reach a full-stop until the end of the 39th (or _query_, the 40th) line; and all the confluent nominatives lack a common verbal-action. Our mind, it is true, accepts intelligibly the onward rush of each and all (but later, “with equal pace each of them softly creeps”). It may be only grammatical pedantry which craves some such phrase, absent from the text, as— [_While throng’d around his comrades and his peers,_ _To list the ’sounding Music of the Spheres_:] But, since a momentary rashness prompts us here to dare so much, as to imagine the _hiatus_ filled, let us suppose that the lost sixteenth-line ran someway thus (each reader being free to try experiments himself, with chance of more success):— _Divine-composing ~Quarles~, whose lines aspire_ [_And glow, as doth with like etherial fire_] 16th. _The April of all Poesy in ~May~,_ _Who makes our English speak ~Pharsalia~;_ It is with some timidity we let this stand: but, as the text is left intact, our friends will pardon us; and foes we never quail to meet. As to BEN JONSON, see our “Sessions,” in Part iv. Of BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, we write in the note on final page of _Choyce Drollery_, p. 100. Of “Ingenious SHAKESPEARE” we need say no more than give the lines of Richard Barnfield in his honour, from the _Poems in diuers humors_, 1598:— A REMEMBRANCE OF SOME ENGLISH POETS. _Liue ~Spenser~ euer, in thy ~Fairy Queene~:_ _Whose like (for deepe Conceit) was neuer seene._ _Crownd mayst thou bee, vnto thy more renowne,_ _(As King of Poets) with a Lawrell Crowne._ _And ~Daniell~, praised for thy sweet-chast Verse:_ _Whose Fame is grav’d in ~Rosamonds~ blacke Herse._ _Still mayst thou liue: and still be honored,_ _For that rare Worke, ~The White Rose and the Red~._