Sidney's hexameters are the first in literary verse which have come down to us; but there must have been earlier efforts at least by the time of Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ (1570), which vigorously attacked "our rude beggerly ryming, brought first into Italie by Gothes and Hunnes, ... and at last receyved into England by men of excellent wit in deede, but of small learning, and less judgement in that behalfe." (Arber Reprint, p. 145.) One hexameter distich by a contemporary and friend of Ascham's, Master Watson of Cambridge, is handed down to us by Webbe, as being "common in the mouthes of all men": "All travellers doo gladlie report great praise to Ulisses For that he knewe manie mens maners, and saw many citties." (_Discourse of English Poetrie_, p. 72.) But the Queene in meane while with carks quandare deepe anguisht, Her wound fed by Venus, with firebayt smoldred is hooked. Thee wights doughtye manhood leagd with gentilytye nobil, His woords fitlye placed, with his hevnly phisnomye pleasing, March throgh her hert mustring, al in her brest deepelye she printeth. Theese carcking cratchets her sleeping natural hynder. Thee next day foloing Phœbus dyd clarifye brightlye Thee world with luster, watrye shaads Aurora remooved, When to her deere sister with woords haulf gyddye she raveth. "Sister An, I merveyle, what dreams me terrefye napping, What newcom travayler, what guest in my harborye lighted? How brave he dooth court yt? what strength and coorrage he carryes? I beleve yt certeyn (ne yet hold I yt vaynelye reported) That fro the great linnadge of gods his pettegre shooteth." (RICHARD STANYHURST: Vergil's _Æneid_, bk. iv. 1582.) Stanyhurst's _Vergil_ is one of the curiosities of Elizabethan literature, not only from its verse-form but from its spelling and diction. The translator declares himself a disciple of Ascham, in his antipathy to rimed verse; "What Tom Towly is so simple," he asks, "that wyl not attempt too bee a _rithmoure_?" In an address to the Learned Reader he explains his system of English quantitative prosody. In 1593 Stanyhurst's hexameters were severely noticed in a passage by Thomas Nash directed primarily against the classical versifying of Gabriel Harvey. "The hexamiter verse," said Nash, "I graunt to be a gentleman of an auncient house (so is many an English begger), yet this clyme of ours he cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in; hee goes twitching and hopping in our language, like a man running upon quagmiers, up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another, retaining no part of that stately smooth gate which he vaunts himselfe with among the Greeks and Latins.... Master Stannyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foule lumbring boystrous wallowing measure, in his translation of Virgil." (Works of Nash, Grosart edition, vol. ii. pp. 237, 238.)