t taken the
best; and the inexplicable devotion of most of the versifiers of the time
to the doggerel metres already referred to seems to have prevented them
from cultivating anything better. Yet the pains which were spent upon
translation during this time were considerable, and undoubtedly had much to
do with strengthening and improving the language. The formal part of poetry
became for the first time a subject of study resulting in the
_Instructions_ of Gascoigne, and in the noteworthy critical works which
will be mentioned in the next chapter; while the popularity of poetical
miscellanies showed the audience that existed for verse. The translators
and the miscellanists will each call for some brief notice; but first it is
necessary to mention some individual, and in their way, original writers
who, though not possessing merit at all equal to that of Wyatt, Surrey, and
Sackville, yet deserve to be singled from the crowd. These are Gascoigne,
Churchyard, Turberville, Googe, and Tusser.

The poetaster and literary hack, Whetstone, who wrote a poetical memoir of
George Gascoigne after his death, entitles it a remembrance of "the well
employed life and godly end" of his hero. It is not necessary to dispute
that Gascoigne's end was godly; but except for the fact that he was for
some years a diligent and not unmeritorious writer, it is not so certain
that his life was well employed. At any rate he does not seem to have
thought so himself. The date of his birth has been put as early as 1525 and
as late as 1536: he certainly died in 1577. His father, a knight of good
family and estate in Essex, disinherited him; but he was educated at
Cambridge, if not at both universities, was twice elected to Parliament,
travelled and fought abroad, and took part in the famous festival at
Kenilworth. His work is, as has been said, considerable, and is remarkable
for the number of first attempts in English which it contains. It has at
least been claimed for him (though careful students of literary history
know that these attributions are always rather hazardous) that he wrote the
first English prose comedy (_The Supposes_, a version of Ariosto), the
first regular verse satire (_The Steel Glass_), the first prose tale (a
version from Bandello), the first translation from Greek tragedy
(_Jocasta_), and the first critical essay (the above-mentioned _Notes of
Instruction_). Most of these things, it will be seen, were merely
adaptations of foreign