Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/44

 coigne confined himself to literary work, but he still suffered much from poverty. In 1575 appeared his ‘tragicall comedie,’ called ‘A Glasse of Government,’ chiefly in prose, but with four choruses and an epilogue in verse, and two didactic poems introduced into the third act. A poem by him of fifty-eight lines, ‘in the commendation of the Noble Art of Venerie,’ was prefixed to George Turberville's ‘Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting’ (1575). Gascoigne accompanied Queen Elizabeth on her visit to the Earl of Leicester's castle of Kenilworth, 9–27 July 1575, and was commissioned by Leicester to write verses and masques for the entertainment of his sovereign. Many of these were issued in 1576, in a separate volume entitled ‘The Princelye Pleasures at the Courte of Kenelwoorth,’ to which George Ferrers, Henry Goldingham, and William Hunnis were also contributors. A reprint of this work is dated 1821, and it reappears in the appendix to Adlard's ‘Amye Robsart,’ 1870. Gascoigne's prose ‘tale of Hemetes the heremyte, pronownced before the Q. Majesty att Woodstocke, [11 Sept.] 1575,’ in the course of the progress from Kenilworth, was not included in ‘The Princelie Pleasures,’ nor was it printed in its author's lifetime. Gascoigne wrote it in four languages—English, French, Latin, and Italian. In 1579 Abraham Fleming [q. v.] had the boldness to annex this ‘pleasant tale …, newly recognised both in Latin and English,’ to his volume called ‘The Paradoxe,’ and allowed it to be supposed that he was the author. Gascoigne's original manuscript, with a dedication to the queen, and a drawing representing him in the act of offering it to her, is in the British Museum (Reg. MS. 18 A. 49, p. 27). It has been printed by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his collected edition of Gascoigne's works. It was also in 1576 that Gascoigne's well-known satire in blank verse appeared, dedicated to Lord Grey, and entitled ‘The Steele Glas.’ He completed this satire 12 April 1576, ‘amongst my books in my house here at Walthamstow.’ At the end of the volume was placed ‘The Complainte of Phylomene,’ Gascoigne's first poetic effort, begun thirteen years before. To the ‘Steele Glas’ a youthful friend, ‘Walter Raleigh of the Middle Temple,’ prefixed commendatory stanzas, the earliest by him to appear in print. In April 1576 a visit to Sir Humphry Gilbert at Limehouse suggested to Gascoigne the publication of Gilbert's account of the voyage to Cathay in 1566, which he duly prepared for the press. There followed two serious efforts in prose—‘the fruites of repentaunce’ Gascoigne called them—entitled respectively ‘The Droomme of Doomesday,’ a translation from the Latin of Lothario Conti (May 1576; 1586), dedicated to Francis, second earl of Bedford, and ‘A delicate Diet for daintie-mouthde Droonkardes’ (22 Aug. 1576), dedicated to Lewis Dyve. The first is described at length in Brydges's ‘Restituta,’ iv. 299–307; the second was reprinted by F. G. Waldron in 1789. Finally, in January 1576–7, Gascoigne dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, but did not print, a collection of moral elegies entitled ‘The Griefe of Joye.’ His manuscript is in the British Museum (Royal MS. 18 A. 61), and has been printed by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt. In May 1576 Gascoigne's health had begun to fail (The Droomme of Doomesday, ded.) The ‘Delicate Diet’ is dedicated (Aug. 1576) ‘from my lodging in London.’ But there seems good foundation for the categorical assertion of Richard Simpson that Gascoigne was present at the sack of Antwerp by the Spaniards in November 1576. On 10 Nov. 1576 Thomas Heton, governor of the English House at Antwerp, wrote to the privy council that he had sent accounts of the fall of Antwerp by ‘this bearer, Mr. George Gascoigne [not Gaston, as printed in the Calendar], whose humanity in this time of trouble we for our parts have experimented.’ There is little doubt that Gascoigne was the author of a prose tract, ‘The Spoyle of Antwerpe. Faithfully reported by a true Englishman, who was present at the same. … London, by Richard Iones.’ On this tract was founded ‘A Larum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerp,’ 1602, and Mr. Simpson prints both together in his ‘School of Shakspere,’ pt. i. (1872). All the best evidence shows, however, that Gascoigne in his last years was an invalid who moved about very little and spent most of his time in pious exercises. In the autumn of 1577 he went on a visit to his friend and biographer, George Whetstone, at Stamford, Lincolnshire, and he died at Whetstone's house on 7 Oct. 1577, being buried probably in the family vault of the Whetstones at Bernack, near Stamford. He seems to have left a son William.

Contemporaries praised Gascoigne. W. Webbe, in his ‘Discourse of English Poetrie,’ speaks of him as ‘a witty gentleman and the very chief of our late rhymers,’ who, though ‘deficient in learning,’ was sufficient in ‘his gifts of wit and natural promptness.’ Arthur Hall, in the preface to his translation of the ‘Iliad’ (1581), praises his ‘pretie pythie conceits.’ Puttenham, in his ‘Arte of English Poesie,’ writes of his ‘good metre’ and ‘plentiful vein.’ Francis Meres, in his ‘Comparative Discourse of our English Poets’ in his ‘Palladis Tamia’ (1598), numbers him among ‘the best poets for’ comedies and elegies. Gabriel Harvey had