to whom an exquisite poem in _The Passionate Pilgrim_, long
ascribed to Shakespere, is now more justly assigned, has, owing to this
assignment and to the singular character of his chief other poem, _The
Affectionate Shepherd_, been considerably overrated. It is unfortunately as
complete if not as common a mistake to suppose that any one who disdains
his country's morality must be a good poet, as to set down any one who
disdains it without further examination for a bad one. The simple fact, as
it strikes a critic, is that "As it fell upon a day" is miles above
anything else of Barnfield's, and is not like anything else of his, while
it is very like things of Shakespere's. The best thing to be said for
Barnfield is that he was an avowed and enthusiastic imitator and follower
of Spenser. His poetical work (we might have included the short series of
sonnets to _Cynthia_ in the division of sonneteers) was all written when he
was a very young man, and he died when he was not a very old one, a
bachelor country-gentleman in Warwickshire. Putting the exquisite "As it
fell upon a day" out of question (which, if he wrote it, is one of the not
very numerous examples of perfect poetry written by a very imperfect poet),
Barnfield has, in no extraordinary measure, the common attributes of this
wonderful time--poetical enthusiasm, fresh and unhackneyed expression,
metrical charm, and gorgeous colouring, which does not find itself
ill-matched with accurate drawing of nature. He is above the average
Elizabethan, and his very bad taste in _The Affectionate Shepherd_ (a
following of Virgil's Second Eclogue) may be excused as a humanist crotchet
of the time. His rarity, his eccentricity, and the curious mixing up of his
work with Shakespere's have done him something more than yeoman's service
with recent critics. But he may have a specimen:--

"And thus it happened: Death and Cupid met
Upon a time at swilling Bacchus' house,
Where dainty cates upon the board were set,
And goblets full of wine to drink carouse:
Where Love and Death did love the liquor so
That out they fall, and to the fray they go.

"And having both their quivers at their back
Filled full of arrows--the one of fatal steel,
The other all of gold; Death's shaft was black,
But Love's was yellow--Fortune turned her wheel,
And from Death's quiver fell a fatal shaft
That under Cupid by the wind was waft.