Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 8.djvu/440



SIR,

N obedience to your commands, I here send you the following short essay toward a History of Poetry in England and Ireland. At first it was a science we only began to Geoffrey Chaucer. A hundred years after, we attempted to translate out of the Psalms, but could not our Thomas Sternhold. In queen Elizabeth's reign, I think, there was but one Edmund Spenser of good verses; for his patron, though a great man, Philip Sidney by the length of time. Yet, a little before her death, we attempted to deal in tragedy, and began to William Shakespeare; which was pursued under king James the First by three great poets, in one of them many a line so strong, that you might make a Francis Beaumont; the second, indeed, gives us sometimes but John Fletcher (playwright), and the third is Ben Jonson-ding a little to stiffness.

In the reign of king Charles the First, there was a new succession of poets; one of them, though seldom read, I am very fond of; he has so much salt in his compositions, that you would think he had been used to John Suckling (poet): as to his friend the author