,' not 'condolent,' as Anthony
Wood quotes, Puttenham meant original. His first public appearance as a
poet was in 1576, when in grave and sounding lines he maintained
Gascoigne's merits against envious detractors, as if with a presentiment
of his own fate--

For whoso reaps renown above the rest,
With heaps of hate shall surely be oppressed.

His flow of inspiration never dried up till his head rolled in the dust.
But the years between 1583 and 1593 seem, so far as dates, always in
Ralegh's career distracting, can be fixed, to have been the period of
his most copious poetic fruitfulness.

[Sidenote: _Their Limitations._]

Throughout his life he won the belief of men of letters and refinement
in his poetic power. Their admiration has never failed him in the
centuries which have followed. He has not been as fortunate in gaining
and keeping the ear of the reading public. For that a poet has not only
to be born, but to be made. Ralegh had a poet's gifts. He had music in
his soul. He chose to think for himself. He possessed the art of the
grand style. The twenty-first book of the _Cynthia_ errs in being
overcharged with thought. It abounds in noble imagery. There is pathos
as well as dignity. Its author, had he lived in the nineteenth century,
in default of new worlds to explore, or Armadas to fight, might have
written an _In Memoriam_. In previous English poetry no such dirge is to
be found as his Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney. A couple of stanzas will
indicate its solemn music:--

There didst thou vanquish shame and tedious age,
Grief, sorrow, sickness, and base fortune's might;
Thy rising day saw never woeful night,
But passed with praise from off this worldly stage.

What hath he lost that such great grace hath won?
Young years for endless years, and hope unsure
Of fortune's gifts for wealth that still shall dure:
O happy race, with so great praises run!

He had as light a touch. He understood how to play with a conceit till
it glances and dances and dazzles, as in his, for probably it is his,
_Grace of Wit, of Tongue, of Face_, and in _Fain would I, but I dare
not_. Praed was not happier in elaborate trifling than he in his _Cards
and Dice_. Prior might have envied him _The Silent Lover_. His _Nymph's
Reply to the Passionate Shepherd_, if it be his, as Izaak Walton without
suspicion assumes, and, if it did not compel comparison with Marlowe's
more exquisite melod