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INTRODUCTION |
xv |
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It was to be wished, he suggested, that some better poet than himself should write ' their glorious journeys' and give them the immortality they deserved, for they would make ' immortal pen-work.'
Drake had already been the subject of two poems. In 1587 one Thomas Greepe published The true and perfect news of the worthy and valiant Exploits of Sir Francis Drake, which contained, in very halting verse, an account of the taking of Cartagena. In 1596 Charles Fitzgeffrey, poet and divine, published Sir 'Francis Drake his honourable Life's Commendation and his tragical Death's Lamentation. In this elaborate and rhetorical poem ' that high towering falcon,' as an Elizabethan critic calls Fitzgeffrey, celebrated not only Drake, but Drake's predecessors from Cabot to Hawkins. In like manner Gervase Markham devoted a poem of 1,400 lines to The Most Honourable Tragedy of Sir Richard Grinvile, Knight, which appeared in in 1595 (reprinted by Dr. E. Arber in 1877 under the title of The Last Fight of the Revenge). There is also extant a poem In Praise of Seafaring Men, in Hope of Good Fortune, which bears the alternative title of Sir Richard Grenfilldes Farewell, referring apparently to Greynvile's voyage of discovery in 1585. It is reprinted by Halliwell in his Early Naval Ballads (p. 14) and by Stone, Sea Songs (p. 5).
A number of minor poems also deserve mention. There is, for instance, John Kirkham's Commendation of Martin Frobisher (printed in Halliwell p. 45), another by Thomas Ellis {Ballads from Manuscript, ii. 282), and there are others by Thomas Churchyard (Collier, Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers' Company, ii. 47, 51). Better known is George Peele's Farewell to the most famous Generals |
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