| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
BIBLIOGRAPHY. |
285 |
||
|
fested his good sense, in some other points he fell in with the whimsical fancies of his time; such as making poems in the shape of altars, pyramids, and the like.
He who shall peruse Puttenham may collect from him some information concerning the state of poetry in his day ; and may understand what kind of verse was censured or praised, and what degree of estimation former English poets were then held in, but he must not expect much instruction upon the art itself. Warton* says of this book, that it remained long as a rule of criticism.
Another work was published in 1602, with this title, " Observations in the Art of English Poesie, by Thomas Campion. Wherein it is demonstratively proved, and by example confirmed, that the English tongue will receive eight several kinds of numbers proper to itself; which are all in this book set forth, and were never before this time, by any man, attempted." Campion was a poet and physician during part of the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James : he was also a composer of music, and his acquaintance with the latter art appears by some remarkable passages in his book. The eight several kinds of numbers which he mentions are to be understood, not of feet, nor yet altogether of verses taken singly, but, some of them, of combinations of verses and stanzas. He has, indeed, a chapter on " English numbers in general," by which he means the feet admissible into English |
|||
|
• Walton's " History of English Poetry," vol. ii. 10. |
|||