e, 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."

The most important revelation in the whole of this interesting passage,
that relating to the author's age, seems to have been studiously overlooked
by all his biographers. If we can fix with probability the date at which
these Eclogues were published, then this, one of the most regretted of the
lacunae in his biography, will be supplied. We shall feel henceforth
treading on firmer ground in dealing with the scanty materials of his life.

From the length and favour with which the pr