"My Ben! Or come again, Or send to us Thy wit's great overplus; But teach us yet Wisely to husband it, Lest we that talent spend; And having once brought to an end That precious stock,--the store Of such a wit the world should have no more." The Sixteenth Century. "_In fifty-two years, without counting the drama, two hundred and thirty-three poets are enumerated, of whom forty have genius or talent. . . . What is this condition which gives rise to so universal a taste for poetry? What is it breathes life into their books? How happens it, that amongst the least, in spite of pedantrie, awkwardnesses, we meet with brilliant pictures and genuine love-cries? How happens it, that when this generation was exhausted, true poetry ended in England, as true painting in Italy and Flanders? It was because an epoch of the mind came and passed away,--that, namely, of instinctive and creative conception. These men had new senses, and no theories in their heads. . . . They are happy in contemplating beautiful things, and wish only that they should be the most beautiful possible. They do not excite themselves to express moral or philosophical ideas. They wish to enjoy through the imagination, through the eyes, like those Italian nobles, who, at the same time, were so captivated by fine colors and forms, that they covered with paintings not only their rooms and their churches, but the lids of their chests and the saddles of their horses. . . . Think what poetry was likely to spring from them, how superior to common events, how free from literal imitation, how smitten with ideal beauty, how capable of creating a world beyond our sad world._"--TAINE. Poets of the Sixteenth Century. =Sir Thomas Wyatt= (1503-1542). See biographical note, page 252. =Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey= (1517-1547). See biographical note, page 252. =George Gascoigne= (1536-1577). "The Steel Glass"; "The Tragedy of Iocaste." =Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst= (1536-1608). "The Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates"; "The Tragedy of Gorboduc." =Edmund Spenser= (1552-1598). See biographical note, page 245. =Sir Philip Sidney= (1554-1586). "Astrophel and Stella"; sonnets and short poems. =Thomas Watson= (1557-1592). "The Hecatompathia or Passionate Century of Love"; "Meliboeus"; "The Tears of Fancie." =John Lyly= (1554-1606). Lyrical poems; "Alexander and Campaspe"; "Love's Metamorphosis." =Robert Greene= (1560-1592). Dramas and lyrical poems. =Christopher Marlowe= (1564-1593). Dramas and lyrical poems. =Thomas Lodge= (1556-1625). Dramas and lyrical poems. =William Warner= (1550-1609). "Albion's England"; "Pan, his Syrinx or Pipe." =William Shakespeare= (1564-1616). See note, page 221. =Samuel Daniel= (1562-1619). "History of the Civil Wars between the two Houses of York and Lancaster." =Sir Walter Raleigh= (1552-1618). Short poems.