There had been good versifiers long before. Chaucer, for example, and even Gower, wearisome as he mainly is, made verses sometimes not only easy in movement, but in which the language seems strangely modern. That most dolefully dreary of books, “The Mirror for Magistrates,” and Sackville, more than any of its authors, did something towards restoring the dignity of verse, and helping it to recover its self-respect, while Spenser was still a youth. Tame as it is, the sunshine of that age here and there touches some verse that ripples in the sluggish current with a flicker of momentary illumination. But before Spenser, no English verse had ever soared and sung, or been filled with what Sidney calls “divine delightfulness.” Sidney, it may be conjectured, did more by private criticism and argument than by example. Drayton says of him:-- “The noble Sidney with this last arose, That heroë for numbers and for prose, That throughly paced our language as to show The plenteous English hand in hand might go With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce Our tongue from Lilly’s writing then in use.” But even the affectations of Lilly were not without their use as helps to refinement. If, like Chaucer’s frere,-- “Somewhat he lisped, for his wantonness,” it was through the desire “To make his English sweet upon his tongue.” It was the general clownishness against which he revolted, and we owe him our thanks for it. To show of what brutalities even recent writers could be capable, it will suffice to mention that Golding, in his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, makes a witch mutter the devil’s pater-noster, and Ulysses express his fears of going “to pot.” I should like to read you a familiar sonnet of Sidney’s for its sweetness:-- “Come, Sleep: O Sleep! the certain knot of peace, The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, The indifferent judge between the high and low; With shield of proof, shield me from out the press Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw; O make in me those civil wars to cease: I will good tribute pay if thou do so. Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light, A rosy garland, and a weary head: And if these things, as being thine of right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.”