al _Treatise of Offices_.
Barnes was a friend of Gabriel Harvey's, and as such met with some rough
usage from Nash, Marston, and others. His poetical worth, though there are
fine passages in _The Devil's Charter_ and in the _Divine Centurie_, must
rest on _Parthenophil_. This collection consists not merely of sonnets but
of madrigals, sestines, canzons, and other attempts after Italian masters.
The style, both verbal and poetical, needs chastising in places, and
Barnes's expression in particular is sometimes obscure. He is sometimes
comic when he wishes to be passionate, and frequently verbose when he
wishes to be expressive. But the fire, the full-bloodedness, the poetical
virility, of the poems is extraordinary. A kind of intoxication of the
eternal-feminine seems to have seized the poet to an extent not otherwise
to be paralleled in the group, except in Sidney; while Sidney's courtly
sense of measure and taste did not permit him Barnes's forcible
extravagances. Here is a specimen:--

"Phoebus, rich father of eternal light,
And in his hand a wreath of Heliochrise
He brought, to beautify those tresses,
Whose train, whose softness, and whose gloss more bright,
Apollo's locks did overprize.
Thus, with this garland, whiles her brows he blesses,
The golden shadow with his tincture
Coloured her locks, aye gilded with the cincture."

Giles Fletcher's _Licia_ is a much more pale and colourless performance,
though not wanting in merit. The author, who was afterwards a most
respectable clergyman, is of the class of _amoureux transis_, and dies for
Licia throughout his poems, without apparently suspecting that it was much
better to live for her. His volume contained some miscellaneous poems, with
a dullish essay in the historical style (see _post_), called _The Rising of
Richard to the Crown_. Very far superior is Lodge's _Phillis_, the chief
poetical work of that interesting person, except some of the madrigals and
odd pieces of verse scattered about his prose tracts (for which see Chapter
VI.) _Phillis_ is especially remarkable for the grace and refinement with
which the author elaborates the Sidneian model. Lodge, indeed, as it seems
to me, was one of the not uncommon persons who can always do best with a
model before them. He euphuised with better taste than Lyly, but in
imitation of him; his tales in prose are more graceful than those of
Greene, whom he copied; it at lea