_Portia_. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian; and you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English. He is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can converse with a dumb show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and his behaviour every where. When Wyatt and Surrey brought the sonnet to England, they brought also the habit of imitating the Italian poets; and this habit influenced Spenser and other Elizabethans even more than Chaucer had been influenced by Dante and Petrarch. It was the fashion at that time for Italian gentlemen to write poetry; they practiced the art as they practiced riding or fencing; and presently scores of Englishmen followed Sidney's example in taking up this phase of foreign education. It was also an Italian custom to publish the works of amateur poets in the form of anthologies, and soon there appeared in England _The Paradise of Dainty Devices, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions_ and other such collections, the best of which was _England's Helicon_ (1600). Still another foreign fashion was that of writing a series of sonnets to some real or imaginary mistress; and that the fashion was followed in England is evident from Spenser's _Amoretti_, Sidney's _Astrophel and Stella_, Shakespeare's _Sonnets_, and other less-famous effusions. * * * * * SPENSER AND THE LYRIC POETS [Illustration: MICHAEL DRAYTON] LYRICS OF LOVE. Love was the subject of a very large part of the minor poems of the period, the monotony being relieved by an occasional ballad, such as Drayton's "Battle of Agincourt" and his "Ode to the Virginian Voyage," the latter being one of the first poems inspired by the New World. Since love was still subject to literary rules, as in the metrical romances, it is not strange that most Elizabethan lyrics seem to the modern reader artificial. They deal largely with goddesses and airy shepherd folk; they contain many references to classic characters and scenes, to Venus, Olympus and the rest; they are nearly all characterized by extravagance of language. A single selection, "Apelles' Song" by Lyly, may serve as typical of the more fantastic love lyrics: Cupid and my Campaspe played At cards for kisses; Cupid paid. He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows, His mother's doves and team of sparrows: Loses them too; then down he throws The coral of his lip, the rose Growing on's cheek (but none knows how); With these the crystal of his brow, And then the dimple of his chin. All these did my Campaspe win. At last he set her both his eyes; She won, and Cupid blind did rise. O Love, has she done this to thee? What shall, alas! become of me?