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for searching only. SHAKSPERE'S EXERCISE OF VERSIFYING 381 upon to help with an "ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antique,
or firework" for the Court. Here is the occasion of "triumph and reioysing." But he also delivers an "extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer," in which he "something affect[s] the letter, for it argues facility." Brinsley indicates that a chief use to which school-masters put their versification was in writing elegies and epitaphs. Puttenham shows that about the time of Holofernes it was the fashion to affect the letter in these epitaphs.
Ye do by another figure notably affect th'eare when ye make euery word of the verse to begin with a like letter, as for example in this verse written in an Epithaphe of our making.
Time tried his truth his trauailes and his trust,
dad time to late tried his integritie.
It is a figure much vsed by our common rimers, and cloth well if it be not
too much vsed, for then it falleth into the vice which shalbe hereafter spoken of called Tautologia.$
Mulcaster also highly approves dalliance with the letter as a school device.
In the teaching kinde no work memorie with delite, like the old leonine verses, which run in rime, it loth admit such daliance, with the letter, as I know not anie. And in that kinde, where remembrance is the end, it is with-out blame, tho otherwise not, if it com in to often, and bewraie affectation not sound but followed.'
I have not the heart to quote Ascham's effort in "misorderlie meter" on John Whitney's death, but here are two choice lines.
Therfore my hart cease sighes andsobbes, cease sorowes seede to sow, Whereof no gaine, but greater grief, and hurtfull care may grow!
Holofernes is a typical schoolmaster both in the writing of epitaphs and in the form of the epitaphs that he writes. And William Shakspere knew only too well what was typical of such a schoolmaster.
Philoponus-Brinsley is, of course, ready to suggest the proper solution for the problem of versifying, as always.
Though I be no Poet, yet I finde this course to be found most easie and plaine to direct my schollers:
i. To looke that they be able in good manner to write true Latine, and a good phrase in prose, before they begin to meddle with making a verse. 2. That they haue read some poetry first; as at least these bookes or the
Willcoek and Walker, .rte, p. 174-Mulcaster, Ekn enrarie (1925), p. 286. Asehann, 3rhokmarter (1570), Pp. 32v-33r.
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