olute heroicall
poem." To the great joy of their author he would certainly have seen an
epic in Chateaubriand's "Martyrs." "It is not riming and versing that
maketh a poet, no more then a long gowne maketh an advocate: who though
he pleaded in armor should be an advocate and no soldiour." Even
historians have sometimes to do the work of poets, that is imagining,
inventing, "although theyr lippes sounde of things doone and veritie be
written in theyr foreheads."

In spite of his fondness for the ancients, whose unities and messenger
he greatly approves, and of his contempt for the modern drama, such as
it was understood in those pre-Shakespearean times, he remains, at
bottom, entirely English; he adores the old memorials of his native
land, and does not know his Virgil better than his Chaucer, or even the
popular songs hummed by the wayfarer along the high roads. Irish
ballads, English ballads of Robin Hood, Scottish ballads of Douglas, are
familiar to him, and some of them make him start as at the sound of a
trumpet: "Certainly, I must confesse my own barbarousnes, I never heard
the olde song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart mooved
more then with a trumpet: and yet it is sung by some blind crouder, with
no rougher voyce then rude stile; which being so evill apparelled in the
dust and cobwebbes of that uncivill age, what would it worke, trymmed in
the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" He would have loved, like Moliere,
the song of the "roi Henri," and like La Fontaine, the story of Peau
d'Ane. But his closest sympathies were reserved for poetical tales, for
the adventures of Roland and King Arthur, which are a soldier's reading,
and even for the exploits of Amadis of Gaul. "I dare undertake 'Orlando
furioso' or honest King Arthur will never displease a souldier....
Truely, I have knowen men, that even with reading 'Amadis de Gaule,'
which God knoweth wanteth much of a perfect poesie, have found their
hearts mooved to the exercise of courtesie, liberalitie and especially
courage." He imagines nothing more enchanting or more powerful than the
charm of poetical prose stories, "any of which holdeth children from
play, and old men from the chimney corner." Their attraction has
something superior, divine; for, he adds with a depth of emotion that
appears quite modern, "so is it in men, most of which are childish in
the best things, till they bee cradlid in their graves."[187]

He closes with a witty and delightful