The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.
§ 19. A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions
The next miscellany to be published was the least meritorious of all. In A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578), the faults that developed in the school after the death of Surrey became more pronounced. Alliteration is almost incessant, and the metre which we have found constantly gaining in favour and deteriorating in quality here runs wild. The book was edited, or, rather, “joyned together and builded up,” by one T. P. (Thomas Proctor), who contributes Pretie Pamphlets or Proctor’s Precepts and other poems. Another contributor is Owen Roydon, who complains of the “sicophantes,” by which, like Turbervile, he intends the critics. Short gnomic verses on the virtues are common; Troilus and Cressida are constantly to the front; loving letters (from beyond the seas and elsewhere) are frequent; subject, indeed, and method show a complete lack of freshness and conviction, and we are treated to the dregs of a school. One poem, however, Though Fortune cannot favor, is, at least, manly and downright; The glyttering showes of Floras dames has lyrical quality; and certain Prety parables and proverbes of love are interesting by their use of anapaests. The Gorgious Gallery, too, contains the popular and famous song, Sing all of green willow.