nd lofty spirit of patriotism. Never was there a better
Englishman, and as his love of his country spirited him up to the brilliant
effort of the _Ballad of Agincourt_, so it sustained him through the
"strange herculean task" of the _Polyolbion_, and often put light and life
into the otherwise lifeless mass of the historic poems. Yet I have myself
no doubt that these historic poems were a mistake, and that their
composition, though prompted by a most creditable motive, the burning
attachment to England which won the fight with Spain, and laid the
foundation of the English empire, was not altogether, perhaps was not by
any means, according to knowledge.

The almost invariable, and I fear it must be said, almost invariably idle
controversy about priority in literary styles has been stimulated, in the
case of English satire, by a boast of Joseph Hall's made in his own
_Virgidemiarum_--

"Follow me who list,
And be the _second_ English satirist."

It has been pleaded in Hall's favour that although the date of publication
of his _Satires_ is known, the date of their composition is not known. It
is not even necessary to resort to this kind of special pleading; for
nothing can be more evident than that the bravado is not very serious. On
the literal supposition, however, and if we are to suppose that publication
immediately followed composition, Hall was anticipated by more than one or
two predecessors, in the production of work not only specifically satirical
but actually called satire, and by two at least in the adoption of the
heroic couplet form which has ever since been consecrated to the subject.
Satirical poetry, of a kind, is of course nearly if not quite as old as the
language, and in the hands of Skelton it had assumed various forms. But the
satire proper--the following of the great Roman examples of Horace,
Juvenal, and Persius in general lashing of vice and folly--can hardly trace
itself further back in England than George Gascoigne's _Steel Glass_, which
preceded Hall's _Virgidemiarum_ by twenty years, and is interesting not
only for itself but as being ushered in by the earliest known verses of
Walter Raleigh. It is written in blank verse, and is a rather rambling
commentary on the text _vanitas vanitatum_, but it expressly calls itself a
satire and answers sufficiently well to the description. More immediate
and nearer examples were to be found in the Satires of Donne and Lodge. The
fir