These few ballads and poems comprise all the verse literature in existence touching the naval history of the period which preceded the accession of Elizabeth. With her reign the literature of the subject at once assumes considerable proportions. Mr. Julian Corbett goes too far when he says ‘It is one of the remarkable features of the Elizabethan age that its higher literature displays hardly a trace of having been influenced by the exploits of the seamen.’ (_Drake and the Tudor Navy_, ii. 44.) On the contrary Professor Raleigh shows conclusively, in his introduction to the recent reprint of Hakluyt, the extent to which the voyages and discoveries of that time influenced the imagination of contemporary poets. Writers by profession, whether they wrote for a learned audience or the people, began to discover that the character of the great seamen of the time furnished a popular topic for panegyric, and to celebrate their deeds in verse. William Warner inserted in his _Albion’s England_ a spirited description of the fight with the Armada, and a passage in praise of ‘world-admired Drake,’ ‘his brave breeder Hawkins’ and others of less note. It was to be wished, he suggested, that some better poet than himself should write ‘their glorious journeys’ and give them the immortality they deserved, for they would make ‘immortal pen-work.’ Drake had already been the subject of two poems. In 1587 one Thomas Greepe published _The true and perfect news of the worthy and valiant Exploits of Sir Francis Drake_, which contained, in very halting verse, an account of the taking of Cartagena. In 1596 Charles Fitzgeffrey, poet and divine, published _Sir Francis Drake his honourable Life’s Commendation and his tragical Death’s Lamentation_. In this elaborate and rhetorical poem ‘that high towering falcon,’ as an Elizabethan critic calls Fitzgeffrey, celebrated not only Drake, but Drake’s predecessors from Cabot to Hawkins. In like manner Gervase Markham devoted a poem of 1,400 lines to _The Most Honourable Tragedy of Sir Richard Grinvile, Knight_, which appeared in 1595 (reprinted by Dr. E. Arber in 1877 under the title of _The Last Fight of the Revenge_). There is also extant a poem _In Praise of Seafaring Men, in Hope of Good Fortune_, which bears the alternative title of _Sir Richard Grenfilldes Farewell_, referring apparently to Greynvile’s voyage of discovery in 1585. It is reprinted by Halliwell in his _Early Naval Ballads_ (p. 14) and by Stone, _Sea Songs_ (p. 5).