A year or two prior to the discovery of this pernicious influence, Christopher Ocland had printed a metrical narrative in doggerel metre of the martial achievements of the English people from the time of the Plantagenets down to that of Elizabeth, whom he places before Zenobia; and this gentleman or his friends had sufficient influence to procure, through the Lords Commissioners in Causes Ecclesiastical, letters-patent prescribing the use of his _Anglorum Prælia_ in all grammar-schools in England and Wales in lieu of the books of less moral authors. The privilege, dated May 7, 1582, was accorded in consideration not only of the freedom of Ocland's volume from profligacy, but of "the quality of the verse,"--an encomium quite seriously intended, in whatever degree it may strike us as ironical. This literary gem, which was to supersede Virgil, Ovid, Homer, and the rest of the heathens, was dedicated to Zenobia by the worthy writer in some lines which are a fair sample of the "quality of the verse." They begin:-- "Regia Nympha, soli [_sic_] moderatrix alma Britanni, Quæ pace et vera religione nites, Quæ vitæ meritis, morum & candore coruscans, Zenobiam vincis, siqua vel ante fuit." Such was the Oclandian Muse which the Lords Commissioners in Causes Ecclesiastical accounted preferable to the compositions which were the glory of their own and the delight of every succeeding age! Despite the lofty patronage and auspicious circumstances under which the _Anglorum Prælia_ was launched on its proud career, the imbecility of the whole idea appears to have been promptly appreciated; and the "lascivious poets," whom it was to have effaced, continued, and to this day continue, "to corrupt the youth." XVI. Ben Jonson and Shirley writers of Grammars--Some account of the former--Thomas Hayne's Latin Grammar--A curious anecdote about it. I. The _English Grammar_ inserted among Ben Jonson's works in 1640, and also to be found in the modern editions, is not the production originally compiled by that eminent writer, but a series of notes and rough material collected perhaps for a new undertaking after the destruction of Jonson's books and MSS. by an accidental fire. It appears that the author had taken considerable trouble to collect together the literature of this class already existing in our own and other languages, with a view to comparison and improvement, and he was probably assisted by friends, as Howell speaks so early as 1620 of having borrowed for him Davis's Welsh Grammar, "to add to those many which he already had." Sir Francis Kinaston cites "his most learned and celebrated friend, Master Ben Jonson," as the possessor of a very ancient grammar written in the Saxon tongue and character, by way of illustrating what it could scarcely illustrate--the state of our language in the time of Chaucer. This book doubtless perished with the rest.