Our Shyp here leuyth the sees brode By helpe of God almyght and quyetly At Anker we lye within the rode But who that lysteth of them to bye In Flete strete shall them fynde truly At the George: in Richarde Pynsonnes place Prynter vnto the Kynges noble grace. Deo gratias. Contemporary allusions to the Ship of Fools there could not fail to be, but the only one we have met with occurs in Bulleyn's Dialogue quoted above, p. xxvii. It runs as follows:--_Uxor_.--What ship is that with so many owers, and straunge tacle; it is a greate vessell. _Ciuis_.--This is the ship of fooles, wherin saileth bothe spirituall and temporall, of euery callyng some: there are kynges, queenes, popes, archbishoppes, prelates, lordes, ladies, knightes, gentlemen, phisicions, lawiers, marchauntes, housbandemen, beggers, theeues, hores, knaues, &c. This ship wanteth a good pilot: the storme, the rocke, and the wrecke at hande, all will come to naught in this hulke for want of good gouernement. The Eclogues, as appears from their Prologue, had originally been the work of our author's youth, "the essays of a prentice in the art of poesie," but they were wisely laid past to be adorned by the wisdom of a wider experience, and were, strangely enough, lost for years until, at the age of thirty-eight, the author again lighted, unexpectedly, upon his lost treasures, and straightway finished them off for the public eye. The following autobiographical passage reminds one forcibly of Scott's throwing aside Waverley, stumbling across it after the lapse of years, and thereupon deciding at once to finish and publish it. After enumerating the most famous eclogue writers, he proceeds:-- "Nowe to my purpose, their workes worthy fame, Did in my yonge age my heart greatly inflame, Dull slouth eschewing my selfe to exercise, In such small matters, or I durst enterprise, To hyer matter, like as these children do, Which first vse to creepe, and afterwarde to go. . . . . . . . . So where I in youth a certayne worke began, And not concluded, as oft doth many a man: Yet thought I after to make the same perfite, But long I missed that which I first did write. But here a wonder, I fortie yere saue twayne, Proceeded in age, founde my first youth agayne. To finde youth in age is a probleme diffuse, But nowe heare the truth, and then no longer muse. As I late turned olde bookes to and fro, One litle treatise I founde among the mo Because that in youth I did compile the same, Egloges of youth I did call it by name. And seing some men haue in the same delite, At their great instance I made the same perfite, Adding and bating where I perceyued neede, All them desiring which shall this treatise rede, Not to be grieued with any playne sentence, Rudely conuayed for lacke of eloquence."