In this 50th line the word “high” is evidently redundant (probably an error in printer’s MS., not erased when the true word “big” was added): we retain it, of course, though in smaller type; as in similar cases of excess. But who was “_Rounce, Robble, Hobble_?” Most certainly it was no other than RICHARD STANYHURST (1547-1618), whose varied adventures, erudition, and eccentricities of verse combined to make him memorable. His Hexameter translation of the _Æneis_ Books i-iv, appeared in 1583; not followed by any more during the thirty-five years succeeding. Gabriel Harvey praised him, in his “_Foure Letters_,” &c., although Thomas Nashe, in 1592, declares that “Master Stanyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foule, lumbring, boystrous, wallowing measure in his translation of Virgil. He had never been praised by Gabriel [Harvey] for his labour, if therein he had not been so famously absurd.” (_Strange Newes._) This _Æneid_ had a limited reprint in 1839. Warton in _Hist. Eng. Poetry_ gives examples (misnaming him Robert) but Camden says “_Eruditissimus ille nobilis Richardus Stanihurstus_.” In his preface to Greene’s _Arcadia_, Nash quotes Stanyhurst’s description of a Tempest:— _Then did he make heauens vault to rebound_ _With rounce robble bobble,_ [N.B.] _Of ruffe raffe roaring,_ _With thicke thwacke thurly bouncing_: and indicates his opinion of the poet, “as of some thrasonical huffe-snuffe,” indulging in “that quarrelling kind of verse.” One more specimen, to justify our text, regarding “he that writ so big:” in the address to the winds, _Æn._, Bk. i., Neptune thus rails:— _Dare ye, lo, curst baretours, in this my Seignorie regal,_ _Too raise such racks iacks on seas and danger unorder’d?_ The recent death of Stanyhurst, 1618, strengthens our belief that _the Time-Poets_ was not later than 1620-32. To WILLIAM BASSE we owe the beautiful epitaph on Shakespeare, printed in 1633, “_Renowned ~Spencer~, lye a thought more nigh To learned ~Chaucer~_,” _etc._, and at least two songs (beside “Great Brittaine’s Sunnes-set,” 1613), viz., the Hunter in his Career, beginning “Long ere the Morn,” and one of the best Tom o’ Bedlam’s; probably, “Forth from my sad and darksome cell.” The name of JOHN SHANKE, here suggestively famous “for a jigg,” occurs in divers lists of players (see J. P. C.’s _Annals of the Stage_, _passim_), he having been one of Prince Henry’s Company in 1603. That he was also a singer, we have this verse in proof, written in the reign of James I. (_Bibliog. Acc._ i. 163):— _That’s the fat foole of the ~Curtin~,_ _And the lean fool of the ~Bull~:_ _Since ~Shanke~ did leave to sing his rimes_ _He is counted but a gull._ _The Players on the ~Banckeside~,_ _The round ~Globe~ and the ~Swan~,_ _Will teach you idle tricks of love,_ _But the ~Bull~ will play the man._ (W. Turner’s _Common Cries of London Town_, 1662.)