THE

POETICAL DECAMERON.

THE THIRD CONVERSATION.

BOURNE. Poetry is such an excursive thing of itself, that it would be a task of extreme difficulty to adhere closely to one course, without turning aside now and then to examine objects a little out of the road.

MORTON. But we have no road; no straight course, and we ought to have none: we are bound in any direction that may appear to afford us amusement and knowledge.

BOURNE. A sort of literary steeple-hunting, where we endeavour to avoid all beaten tracks, and are in search of fresh and sometimes hitherto unseen objects to engage our attention.

ELLIOT. Under your superior guidance, who seem accustomed to this mode of travelling: I must allow that if we now and then are obliged for a while to follow you over barren ground, we are generally rewarded in the end.

MORTON. That is a great deal for you to confess.

ELLIOT. Why, almost every thing we behold has an air of novelty to recommend it: to be sure we sometimes flounder awhile in a bog or quagmire, but

BOURNE. On that head I do not think you have much to complain of: I have industriously avoided all the heavy toilsome ground.

MORTON. Your objection would, in my opinion, be more fairly directed against his endeavours sometimes to engage your attention upon objects of comparative insignificance, when there is a wide and watered prospect for the eye to wander over.

BOURNE. That must be excused, for I dare say I often attach a peculiar and artificial interest to particulars that nobody would think of but those who have been occupied in the same pursuits.

MORTON. I do not know after all that it is not better on all accounts, that we should shape our course in some particular direction, provided we de not confine ourselves to it with too much severity.

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BOURNE. For instance, I wish now to refer you a few of our old English satirists, beginning with those who are considered our earliest in the reign of Elizabeth, and coming down to a later date towards the close of the reign of her successor.

ELLIOT. I shall be happy to accompany you; but you must not murmur, if in requiring explanations on a subject on which I am comparatively so much in the dark, I occasion you to make a few digressions;

only ne soyez vous faciles (says Rabelais) à ces ocieux et inutiles voyages-if they are useless.

BOURNE. My fear is, notwithstanding your caution, that I shall be too ready to comply.

MORTON. I should apprehend digressions could hardly be avoided altogether, and they will, I dare say, afford sufficient variety to make the time not hang heavily on our hands.

ELLIOT. If it do, it will be the first time, for though, as you are aware, I am not quite as ardent an admirer of old poetry as you two, and think a great deal that I have seen quoted as good, mere trash; yet I have always been hitherto entertained, and sometimes gratified, with what you have brought forward.

BOURNE. I am glad of it; if you find us dull and not worth listening to, recollect that you are always at full liberty to .doze away half an hour in the library chair.

MORTON. I will undertake, that he will feel no disposition to sleep. Speaking of English Satirists, I recollect that you said you would prove that Dr. Donne was the oldest in our language.

ELLIOT. I always thought he was; though I have read nothing more of his satires than what has been modernised by Pope.

BOURNE. I believe that yours is the popular notion, though most literary antiquaries, perhaps all, would tell you, that Lodge, Hall, and Marston wrote

before him; yet they are in the wrong, and you and the public, by accident and ignorantly, in the right.

ELLIOT. I am much obliged to you:-explain if you please.

MORTON. Bishop Hall, I think, claims to be the first English satirist. Warton in his H. E. P. says, "Satire, specifically so called, did not commence in England till the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth...... the first professed English satirist, to speak technically, is Bishop Joseph Hall."

BOURNE. But Hall certainly has no right to the distinction: he says in the prologue to his satires; "I first adventure with fool-hardy might, To tread the steps of perilous despite. I first adventure,-follow me who list, And be the second English satirist."

Most likely he was not aware of the existence of any predecessor in the language, for when he published his "Vergidemiarum, the first three books of toothlesse satyrs," in 1597, he was a very young man, little acquainted with English writers, his knowledge being chiefly confined to the classics at college.

MORTON. The late Mr. Beloe, in his " Anecdotes of Literature and scarce Books," has very satisfactorily proved that Bishop Hall was the "second English satirist," and Dr. Thomas Lodge the first.

BOURNE. And I think I can as satisfactorily prove

that Hall was only third, Lodge the second, and Dr. Donne the first English satirist.

MORTON. You do not mean that nobody had written satires before the date when they flourished? BOURNE. Certainly not: Skelton, Roy, and several others had written satirical pieces: Roy's attacks upon Cardinal Wolsey were very severe, but though they were intended as satires they were not so called. There was, besides, Gascoyne, whose "Steele Glasse" I have already mentioned, and to which I shall again have occasion to refer that was first printed in 1576. Even Sir T. Wyat has been called a satirist.

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ELLIOT. But you are wandering: how do you show that Dr. Donne wrote his satires before 1597, the date of Bishop Hall's work?

BOURNE. By a manuscript copy of his three first satires preserved in the British Museum (among the Harl. MS. No. 5110): it is entitled "Ihon Dunne his Satires. Anno Domini 1593;" of the authenticity, as well as of the correctness of the date of this document, I imagine, there can be no doubt.

MORTON. You have heard of no printed copy of so early a date?

BOURNE. NO; but printing has in truth nothing to do with the question, who was the first English satirist: it is enough for me to show that Dr. Donne was the first, about that time, who wrote several satires in English, so called. Besides, great doubt hangs over the printing of Dr. Donne's poems.