Sing lullaby, as women do, Wherewith they bring their babes to rest, And lullaby can I sing too, As womanly as can the best. Beneath the stiff borrowed phrases and metres there was always this native and tuneful spirit of unsophisticated song. In 1575 he was a maker of words for the Masques at Leicester's famous reception of Elizabeth at Kenilworth (see the novel of that name, where Scott calmly introduces Shakespeare as already a successful dramatist). He satirized drunkards: we have already seen that he translated a tragedy, "Jocasta," from the Italian; he wrote a love story in rhyme of a personal kind, and his brief "Instructions" is the earliest English work, in no way indebted to Aristotle, on the Art of Poetry. As he also translated, we have seen, a comedy from the Italian, and a prose tale, a kind of work later fashionable, Gascoigne may be regarded as an intrepid explorer in many fields of literature. "He first beat the path to that perfection which our best poets have aspired to since his departure," says Nash (1589). "He brake the ice for our quainter poets that now write," says Tofte (1615). But the path as trodden by this pioneer continued to be rough. Gascoigne was an example of the versatility and literary ambition which many young gentlemen displayed in the age of Elizabeth; mingling poetry and study and serious thought with their gallant adventures in love, diplomacy, war, and travel. His "Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse in English" is a very brief pamphlet. He quotes "my master, Chaucer" against alliterative "thunder in _Rym, Ram, Ruff_," but mentions no other poet. Be original, he says, if you sing of a lady do not applaud her "crystal eye" or "cherry lip," which Spenser did not disdain, for these things are trite and obvious. The great matter is "to avoid the uncomely customs of common writers," says this "common rhymer". Do not use "obscure and dark phrases in a pleasant sonnet". Do not wander out of your "Poulters measure" metre into lines of thirteen syllables. Give every word its natural emphasis: do not make _treasure_ into trea_sure._ Chaucer is to be followed as a master of prosody. You should write:-- "I understand your meaning by your eye," _not_, "Your meaning I _under_stand by your eye", "The more monosyllables that you use, the truer Englishman you shall seem". There follows advice on the caesura, and all this counsel shows that, in the early years of Elizabeth, versification was at a very low ebb. In practice, Gascoigne did not always shine. There are few passages of interest in the stiff blank verse of his "Steel Glass" (the mirror that does not flatter). The best passage, and it is very good, describes the labourer, Behold him, priests, and though he stink of sweat, Disdain him not, for shall I tell you what? Such climb to heaven before the shaven crowns, because the labourers