anding, you will needes seem to emulate, and
hope to overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in one
of your last letters. Besides that, you know it hath
bene the usual practise of the most exquisite and odde
wittes in all nations, and especially in Italie, rather
to shewe and advaunce themselves that way than any
other; as namely, those three notorious dyscoursing
heads Bibiena, Machiavel, and Aretine did (to let Bembo
and Ariosto passe), with the great admiration and
wonderment of the whole countrey; being indeede reputed
matchable in all points, both for conceyt of witte, and
eloquent decyphering of matters, either with
Aristophanes and Menander in Greek, or with Plautus and
Terence in Latin, or with any other in any other tong.
But I will not stand greatly with you in your owne
matters. If so be the Faery Queen be fairer in your
eie than the Nine Muses, and Hobgoblin runne away with
the garland from Apollo; marke what I saye, and yet I
will not say that I thought; but there is an end for
this once, and fare you well, till God or some good
Aungell putte you in a better minde.'

Clearly the _Faerie Queene_ was but little to
Harvey's taste. It was too alien from the cherished
exemplars of his heart. Happily Spenser was true to
himself, and went on with his darling work in spite of
the strictures of pedantry. This is not the only
instance in which the dubious character of Harvey's
influence is noticeable. The letters, from one of
which the above doom is quoted, enlighten us also as to
a grand scheme entertained at this time for forcing the
English tongue to conform to the metrical rules of the
classical languages. Already in a certain circle rime
was discredited as being, to use Milton's words nearly
a century afterwards, 'no necessary adjunct or true
ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works
especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to set
off wretched matter and lame metre.' A similar attempt
was made in the course of the sixteenth century in
other parts of Europe, and with the same final issue.
Gabriel Harvey was an active leader in this deluded
movement. When Sidney too, and Dyer, another poet of
the time, proclaimed a 'general surceasing and silence
of bald rhymes, and also of the very best too, instead
whereof they have by authority of their whole senate,
prescribed certain laws and rules of quantity of
English syllables for English verse, having had already
thereof great pract