In verse there are Ed. Spencer's Hymns. I cannot advise the allowance of other his Poems, as for practick English, no more than I can do Jeff. Chaucer, Lydgate, Peirce Ploughman, or Laureat Skelton. It was laid as a fault to the charge of Salust, that he used some old outworn Words, stoln out of Cato his Books de Originibus. And for an Historian in our Tongue to affect the like out of those our Poets would be accounted a foul Oversight. That therefore must not be, unless perhaps we cite the Words of some old Monument, as Livy cites Carmen Martium, or as other Latins might alledge Pacuvius, Andronicus, or Laws of the Twelve Tables, or what else soever of the ancients, My judgment is nothing at all in Poems, or Poesie, and therefore I dare not go far, but will simply deliver my Mind concerning those Authours among us, whose English hath in my Conceit most propriety, and is nearest to the Phrase of Court, and to the Speech used among the noble, and among the better sort in London; the two sovereign Seats, and as it were Parliament tribunals to try the question in.

[Bolton recommends some or all the poems of Chapman, Daniel, Drayton, Queen Elizabeth, Southwell, and Constable; The Mirror of Magistrates and Gorboduc ; and poems by Surrey, Wyatt, Raleigh, Donne, Hugh Holland and Fulke Greville. He concludes:]

But if I should declare mine own Rudeness rudely, I should then confess, that I never tasted English more to my liking, nor more smart, and put to the height of Use in Poetry, then in that vital judicious, and most practicable Language of Benjamin Jonson's Poems.