Most of the good poems written in the two decades following the appearance of Tottel's Miscellany in 1557 are to be found among the works of Barnabe Googe, George Turbervile, and George Gascoigne.¹ Of these three poets only Gascoigne continued to write verse over a period of years. Googe and Turbervile, after publishing single collections of lyrical verse which they had probably written when fresh from the university, turned to what seemed to them more important political and literary labors.² Generally they follow the fashionable vogues that had been established by Tottel's Miscellany, although Turbervile was one of the early imitators of classical epigram, and Googe worked hard, if unsuccessfully, to resurrect the Mantuan eclogue. Each also experimented with variations of the eloquent style. But mainly they follow the models they found in Tottel among the works of Surrey, Wyatt, and Grimald.³ Gascoigne, too, shows the influence of Tottel, though to a lesser extent.

Googe appears deliberately to have set out to learn to write verse by imitating the poets in Tottel's Miscellany, especially Wyatt and Grimald, and his verse indicates how rigidly the early Elizabethan poet felt bound to those conventions which the Miscellany had established as proper for the treatment of specific subjects and themes.

Most of Googe's aphoristic poems reflect the continuation of the medieval didactic tradition. They have the effect of wise proverbs neatly expressed, but they lack the conviction of Wyatt's better epigrams, or the incisive wit of Turbervile's. “To L. Blundeston” is typical in these respects.

Some men be countyd wyse that well can talke:
And some because they can eche man begyle.
Some forbecause they know well chese from chalke,
And can be sure, weepe who so lyst to smyle.
But (Blundston) hym I call the wysest wyght,
Whom God gyues grace to rule affections ryght.(4)

The verse states the advice with about as much effect as Polonius' advice to Laertes. More effective is his handling of the theme of friendship which, judging by the number of poems in the Paradise and the Gallery treating it, must have been a favorite among the schoolmasters.⁵

“OF MONEY”

Gyue Money me, take Frendshyp who so lyst,
For Frends are gon come once Aduersytie,
When Money yet remayneth safe in Chest,
That quickely can the bryng from myserye,
Fayre face showe frendes, whan ryches do habounde,
Come tyme of proofe, farewell they must awaye,
Beleue me well, they are not to be founde.
If God but sende the once a lowrynge daye.
Golde neuer starts asyde, but in dystres,
Fyndes wayes enoughe, to ease thyne heuynes.

The poem shows signs of the discipline gained from the exercise of refutatio and may, in fact, have been written as an exercise in refutation.⁶ But it shows none of the cavalier qualities that usually accompany such schoolboy assignments. As an attack upon the fawning hypocrisy of the Court, which Wyatt had also attacked in “Myn owne Iohn Poyns,”⁷ and as a blunt condemnation of the fatuous and insincere praises of friendship of the sort collected by Richard Edwardes,⁸ the poem is distinguished by the personal conviction that comes through in its unrelieved severity of statement. It is concomitant with an uncompromising honesty in attitude and language—a quality of mind which distinguishes Wyatt and for which Googe probably admired him.

Googe, however, was also intent on mastering eloquence and experimented with a good many of the conventions of the polite and learned lyric that he found in Tottel. The opening stanzas of “To Maystresse D.” and “Of the vnfortunate choyse of his Valentyne” emulate the learned and rhetorical style of Grimald's praises of women:⁹

Not from the hye Cytherion Hyll
          nor from that Ladies throne
From whens flies forth the winged boy
          that makes some sore to grone.
THe Paynes that all the Furyes fell
          can cast from Lymbo lake,
Eche Torment of those Hellish brains
          wher crawleth mani a snake. …

“Out of Syght, out of Mind” is an exercise in gradatio and almost certainly an imitation of No. 16 in Tottel's collection. “To the Tune of Appeles” suggests a similar indebtedness; its opening stanzas echo Wyatt's “Resound my voice, ye woods that hear me plain”:

The rushyng Ryuers that do run
The valeys sweet adourned new
That leans their sides against the Sun
With Flours fresh of sundry hew,
Both Ashe and Elme, and Oke so hye,
Do all lament my wofull crye.
While winter blak, with hydious stormes
Doth spoil the ground of Sommers grene,
While springtime sweet the leaf returns
That late on tree could not be sene,
While somer burns while haruest rains
Stil styl do rage my restles paynes.

The rest of the poem is composed of familiar amatory materials, the third and fourth stanzas developing the notion of love as a passion consuming reason, and the fifth cataloguing the mistress' charms:

O Nature thou that fyrst dyd frame,
My Ladyes heare of purest Golde
Her face of Crystall to the same.
Her lippes of precious Rubyes molde,
Her necke of Alblaster whyte
Surmountyng far eche other Wight.

The two concluding stanzas develop in familiar antitheses the customary plea for pity. These poems show little concern for invention and satisfy the requirements of eloquence either by concentrating upon decorative language or by emulating courtly love fashions.

On the other hand, there are other love poems in Googe's collection that suggest an indebtedness to the Tudor song. Occasionally in a way that recalls Wyatt they treat love in a moral context. “A Refusal” suggests Wyatt's treatments of the lover who has been badly treated by fortune:

Syth Fortune fauoures not
          and al thynges backward go,
And syth your mynd, hath so decreed,
          to make an end of woe.
Syth now is no redresse,
          but hence I must a way,
Farwele I wast no vayner wordes,
          I Hope for better day.

“At Bonyall in Fraunce,” “The Harte absent,” and “Vnhappy tonge why dydste thou not consent” are also close to the Wyatt of the native song tradition, except that Googe uses the pentameter line in place of the short-line forms. The best of these is “The Harte absent”:

SWete muse tell me, wher is my hart becom,
For well I feele, it is from hence a way,
My Sences all, doth sorrow so benumme:
That absent thus, I can not lyue a Day.
I know for troth, there is a specyall Place,
Wher as it most, desyreth for to bee:
For Oft it leaues, me thus in Dolfull case,
And hether commes, at length a gayne to me?
Woldest thou so fayne, be tolde where is thy Harte
Sir Foole in place, wher as it shuld not be:
Tyed vp so fast, that it can neuer starte?
Tyll Wysdom get, agayne thy Lybertye:
In place wher thou, as safe maist dwel swet daw?
As may the harte, ly by the Lyons paw:
And wher for thee, as much be sure they passe:
As dyd the master ons for Esops Asse.

The treatment is formulary, but the language is unpretentious, even idiomatic, the attitude unrhetorical. What makes the poem particularly interesting is the variation of cesural length and placement. The resulting cadences are unsophisticated when compared with the cadences in the song after Sidney, but they mark the beginning of the process of refinement of the pentameter line which culminates in the sonnets of Sidney and Shakespeare.

Most of Googe's epitaphs and poems in praise of friends, on the other hand, are experiments in the high style and make use of the conventions of the “hawty verse” which Googe praises as Virgilian in “An Epytaphe of Maister Phayre.” “An Epytaphe of M. Shelley” labors to sustain the “doleful” tone that is established by an astrological beginning.¹⁰ “An Epytaphe of Lorde Sheffeldes death” attempts to realize the heroic convention by balanced syntax, heavy alliteration, and other devices of classical heroical narrative.

Both poems reflect the ways in which the old biographical methods of praise were undergoing modification under the influence of Latin heroic narrative. Each attempts to present “iust cause” for lamentation and to exhort pity by the traditional methods outlined in Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique.¹¹ The “places” of praise are still present, but the “place” of “dedes doen,” under the influence of epical narration has been made the main concern. Shelley was of noble heart and a loss to the kingdom; Sheffelde's death was untimely and is mourned by all who knew him:

Farewel good Lord, thy deth bewayle
          all suche as well the knewe,
And euerye man laments thy case:
          and Googe thy death doth rewe.

(ll. 21-2)¹²

But, except for passing references to the other “places,” Googe concentrates either on “actes doen, which doe Procede out of the giftes, and excellencies of the minde” or on physical giftes and “the might and strength of the same.”¹³ “Actes doen” provides the content of heroical narrations honoring Shelley the soldier and Sheffelde the sheriff. In the latter instance Googe exhorts pity by relating the incident of Sheffelde's murder, that is, by setting “the waight of the matter” (that is, “the tyrrannous wrong”) “plain before [men's] eyes.”¹⁴ In both instances Googe's interest is mainly in narration in the heroic style. But the style that was suitable for describing the deeds of Aeneas, the founder of a new race, is simply not suitable for describing the deeds of a Shelley or the murder of a Sheffelde, no matter how worthy of praise each may have been. It is the incongruity between the heroic style and the subject that makes these poems ring hollow. The narratives provide only the barest details, at best only a sketch of their respective actions, with the consequence that the heroic convention is unsupported.

The weaknesses in Googe's elegies, and this is true of his amorous verse as well, result from a concern with conventions as ends in themselves. There are occasional exceptions, however. In “Of Maistres D S,” he has combined the familiar pledge-of-service formula with the biographical formula, to produce an original and very charming poem:

Thy fyled wordes, that from thy mouth did flow
Thy modest looke with gesture of Diane.
Thy curteous mynde, and althynges framed so.
As answered well, vnto thy vertuous fame,
The gentlenes that at thy handes I founde
In straungers hou[s]e, all vnaquaynted I,
Good S. hath my Hart to the so bounde,
That from the can it not be forced to flye,
In pledge wherof, my seruyce here I gyue
Yf thou so wylte to serue the whylst I lyue.

The cataloguing of the lady's spiritual and physical gifts, the confession of love, and the avowal to serve faithfully are saved from the triteness and self-pity that usually inhere in the pledge by the plain and dignified language. The poet's reference to the kindly way he has been received into a strange household by D. S. and his desire to serve only if it pleases her, set the poem beyond the customary exercise. The poem's charm lies in the way in which the convention is restrained and made to express a genuine respect for the lady.¹⁵

There are several other poems by Googe which show in various ways the successful fusion of the plain style and eloquent conventions. They include “An Epytaphe of the Death of Nicolas Grimaold,” “To Doctor Bale” and “To the Translation of Pallingen.” The epitaph for Grimald shows a fine control of syntax and tone:

Beholde this fletyng world how al things fade
Howe euery thyng doth passe and weare awaye,
Eche state of lyfe, by comon course and trade,
Abydes no tyme, but hath a passyng daye.
For looke as lyfe, that pleasuant Dame hath brought,
The pleasaunt yeares, and dayes of lustynes,
So death our Foe, consumeth all to nought,
Enuyeng these, with Darte doth vs oppresse,
And that which is, the greatest gryfe of all,
The gredye Grype, doth no estate respect,
But wher he comes, he makes them down to fall,
Ne stayes he at, the hie sharpe wytted sect.
For if that wytt, or worthy Eloquens,
Or learnyng deape, coulde moue hym to forbeare,
O Grimaold then, thou hadste not yet gon hence
But heare hadest sene, full many an aged yeare.
Ne had the Muses loste so fyne a Floure,
Nor had Minerua wept to leaue the so,
If wysdome myght haue fled the fatall howre,
Thou hadste not yet ben suffred for to go,
A thousande doltysh Geese we myght haue sparde,
A thousande wytles heads, death might haue found
And taken them, for whom no man had carde,
And layde them lowe, in deepe obliuious grounde,
But Fortune fauours Fooles as old men saye
And lets them lyue, and take the wyse awaye.

The poem begins quietly with a contemplation of the commonplace that all worldly things are transient. The commonplace is then applied successively to mankind in general, to those who have devoted their lives to learning, and finally to Grimald himself. His death is a just cause for lament, for his gifts of mind were such that were death able to spare wisdom, certainly Grimald would have been spared. But the worthiest are often taken away before their time.¹⁶ These topics are among the most familiar in medieval and sixteenth-century poetry. And yet the poem is distinguished from the elegiac exercise by a genuine, personal grief. This is achieved by a thorough mastery of a style that is wholly dedicated to its subject. It is a style that enables Googe to control feeling in every line of the poem. The opening commonplace and its development, first with respect to the world and then to mankind, establish the general tone for the whole poem—a feeling of loss and quiet resignation; but as the poem proceeds to restrict the application of the truism, until finally it is focused on Grimald, the initially established feeling is gradually particularized. Whereas initially the sadness expressed is for human mortality, by the time Grimald is introduced it is sadness occasioned by the profound loss of a civilized and venerable scholar. The feeling has been so well managed that the reader is apt to miss the shift from the detached meditative statement of the opening lines to the conversational directness of the final passage. One should notice how feeling begins to develop from the rhetorical series which introduces the direct address to Grimald until it emerges as private indignation in lines 19 through 24, and is resolved finally with the reluctant acceptance of the closing commonplace.

The same successful fusion of the plain style and eloquent structure is apparent, though less distinctly, in “To Doctor Bale” and “To the Translation of Pallingen.” The former is a fine and original compliment to an aging scholar:

Good aged Bale: that with thy hoary heares
Doste yet persyste, to turne the paynefull Booke,
O happye man, that hast obtaynde suche yeares,
And leavst not yet, on Papers pale to looke,
Gyue ouer now to beate thy weryed brayne,
And rest thy Pen that long hath laboured soore
For aged men vnfyt sure is suche paine,
And the beseems to laboure now no more,
But thou I thynke Don Platoes part will playe
With Booke in hand, to haue thy dyeng daye.

A thorough training in rhetoric lies behind the poem. Googe's familiarity with the methods of praise suggested to him a suitable way for expressing his admiration for Bale. He selects what Rainolde suggests in his adaptation of Aphthonius as suitable for the third and fifth topics when praising persons living or deceased—“excellencies of mind, as the fortitude of the mynde” and “Comparison, wherein that which you praise, maie be aduanced to the vttermoste.”¹⁷ “To the Translation of Pallingen,” on the other hand, is more indebted to the conventional divisions within the sonnet than it is to rhetorical precept:

The labour swete, that I sustaynde in the,
(O Pallingen) when I tooke Pen in hande,
Doth greue me now, as ofte as I the se,
But halfe hewd out before myne eyes to stande,
For I must needes (no helpe) a whyle go toyle,
In Studyes, that no kynde of muse delyght.
And put my Plow, in grosse vntylled soyle,
And labour thus, with ouer weryed Spryght,
But yf that God, do graunt me greater yeares
And take me not from hence, before my tyme,
The Muses nyne, the pleasaunt synging feares
Shall so enflame my mynde with lust to ryme,
That Palingen I wyll not leaue the so,
But fynysh the accordyng to my mynd.
And yf it be my chaunce away to go,
Let some the ende, that heare remayne behynde.

The argument of the poem is probably developed to fit the quatrain and sestet divisions that Googe found in the Petrarchan sonnets in Tottel: a general statement of reluctance at having to give up an unfinished task (ll. 1-4); the reason for having to give it up (ll. 5-8); the hope that it may be recommenced (ll. 9-14); and the concluding hope that if it may not be completed personally, it may be completed by someone else. Both “To Doctor Bale” and “To the Translation of Pallingen” are written in the old plain style but in conjunction with new principles of order that Googe discovered in the course of his rhetorical training and study of Tottel's Miscellany. Those principles operate both as principles of order and methods of analysis, since by establishing an order of progression they also provide a means of discovering what to say about a given subject. These two poems again illustrate the way in which the plain style was continually being improved by the adaptation of rhetorical practices.

Notes

1. Barnabe Googe, Eglogs, Epytaphes & Sonettes, 1563; George Turbervile, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songes and Sonets, 1567; George Gascoigne, A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde vp in one small Poesie, 1572, and The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire. Corrected, perfected, and augmented by the Authour, 1575. Available modern editions are: Googe, Arber Reprints (London: Constable and Company, 1910); Turbervile, Chalmers' The Works of the English Poets, ii (London, 1810); Gascoigne, Complete Works, ed., John W. Cunliffe (Cambridge: University Press, 1910), i.

2. Googe's major effort was to translate Palingenius' Zodiacus Vitae. Turbervile became ambassador to Russia, translated Ovid's Heroides, wrote courtesy books on falconry and venery, and contributed his Tragical Tales and other poems to the body of didactic “complaint verse.”

3. Turbervile's indebtedness to Tottel's poets is demonstrated by John Erskine Hawkins in The Life and Works of George Turbervile (University of Kansas Publications, Humanistic Studies, No. 25, 1940), pp. 70-84.

4. See also “Of a Ronnynge Heade”; “To Alexander Neuell”; “Accuse not God, yf fancie fond”; and “Of the blessed State of him that feeles not the force of Cupids flames.”

5. See Hoyt Hudson's discussion of the “setting of themes” in the Renaissance schools: The English Epigram in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), pp. 145-53.

6. Cf. Nos. 131 and 132 in Tottel's Miscellany, discussed in Chapter II.

7. Googe knew and admired Wyatt's poem enough to imitate it in “To M. Henry Cobham, of the most blessed state of Lyfe.” Lines 9-16, in fact, probably contain an allusion to Wyatt:

   I take not I as some do take,
   To gape and fawne, for Honours hye,
   But Court and Cayser to forsake,
   And lyue at home, full quyetlye,
   Remembrest thou? what he once sayde
   Who bad, Courte not in any case,
   For Vertue is, in Courtes decayed
   And Vyce with States, hath chyefest place.

   [Italics mine]

8. The Paradise of Dainty Devices, was advertised as Edwardes' commonplace book.

9. Cf. Nos. 139-147 in Tottel's Miscellany.

10. For earlier examples of the astrological beginning see the discussion of Surrey and Grimald in Chapter II. See also Ecclogues one and eight in Cupido Conquered for other examples in Googe.

11. Wilson's See [Wilson, Thomas. Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique, 1560, ed., G. H. Mair. Oxford, 1909.] Chapter II, pp. 62-66.

12. The elegies on Grimald and Phayre also offer commonplace reasons for lamentation. Phayre died before finishing his important work:

    The enuyous fates (O pytie great)
                        had great disdayne to se,
    That vs amongst there shuld remayn
                        so fyne a wyt as he,
    And in the mydst of all his toyle,
                        dyd force hym hence to wende,
    And leaue a Worke vnperfyt so,
                        that neuer man shall end.

    (ll. 15-18)

    Grimald died before his time:

    But Fortune favours Fooles as old men say
    And lets them lyue, and take the wyse away.

    (ll. 21-22)

13. Cf. Rainolde, [Richard.] The Foundacion of Rhetorike, [ed., Francis R. Johnson. New York, 1945. (Scholars’ Facsimilies & Reprints.] Fol. xl^r.

14. Wilson, Arte of Rhetorique, p. 131.

15. See also “To Maystresse A.”

16. Wilson, Arte of Rhetorique, p. 69.

17. The Foundacion of Rhetorike, Fol. xl^r.