Literary Record 8
[From Henry Chettle, Englandes Mourning,
1603.]
This pastoral in prose and verse, lamenting the death of Elizabeth, contains a set
of verses
reproaching the poets of the day for their silence on the occasion, spoken by the
shepherd
Collin. The eleven poets are referred to by pseudonyms and periphrases, Chapman as
Coryn,
Jonson as Horace, and Shakespeare as Melicert, in the extract below. There is an
'Antihorace' in the list (sig. D3r), perhaps Dekker, as Jenkins (1934), 52, suggests. . It is
interesting to see
Jonson at this early date pictured as the sharp drawer of character and true satirist,
and
placed next to Shakespeare of the honeyed
Rape of Lucrece.
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Neither doth Coryn full of worth and wit,
That finisht dead Musæus gracious song,
With grace as great, and words, and verse as fit;
Chide meager death for dooing vertue wrong:
He doth not seeke with songs to deck her herse,
Nor make her name live in his lively verse.
Nor does our English Horace, whose steele pen
Can drawe Characters which will never die,
Tell her bright glories unto listning men,
Of her he seemes to have no memorie.
His Muse an other path desires to tread,
True Satyres scourge the living leave the dead.
Nor doth the silver tonged Melicert,
Drop from his honied muse one sable teare
To mourne her death that graced his desert,
And to his laies opend her Royall eare.
Shepheard remember our Elizabeth,
And sing her Rape, done by that Tarquin, Death.
(sigs. D2v-3)