Between 1580 and the appearance of Meres's work in 1598 there was much
activity in critical literature. Five years before the date of Sidney's
letter George Gascogne had published his _Certayne Notes of Instruction
concerning the makyng of Verse in Rhyme_. This was succeeded in 1584 by
James I.'s _Ane Short Treatise conteining some rewles and cautelis to be
observit_. Then came William Webbe's _Discourse of English Poesie_, 1586,
which had been preceded by Sidney's charming _Defence of Poetry_, composed
in or about 1579, but not published till 1593. This and Puttenham's
elaborate treatise, _The Art of English Poesie contrived into three
books_ (1589), had indeed marked an epoch in the history of criticism.
Memorable, too, in this branch of literature is Harington's _Apologie for
Poetry_ (1591), prefixed to his translation of the _Orlando Furioso_. But
it was not criticism only which had been advancing. The publication of
the first part of Lyly's _Euphues_ and of Spenser's _Shepherd's Calendar_
in 1579 may be said to have initiated the golden age of our literature.
The next twenty years saw Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Kyd, Shakespeare,
Chapman, Decker, and Ben Jonson at the head of our drama; Spenser,
Warner, Daniel, and Drayton leading narrative poetry; the contributors to
_England's Helicon_, published a year later, at the head of our sonneteers
and lyric poets; and Sidney, Lyly, Greene, and Hooker in the van of our
prose literature. The history of Meres's work, a dissertation from which
is here extracted, is curious. In or about 1596, Nicholas Ling and John
Bodenham conceived the idea of publishing a series of volumes containing
proverbs, maxims, and sententious reflections on religion, morals, and
life generally. Accordingly in 1597 appeared a small volume containing
various apothegms, extracted principally from the Classics and the
Fathers, compiled by Nicholas Ling and dedicated to Bodenham. It was
entitled _Politeuphuia_: _Wits Commonwealth_. In the following year
appeared '_Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury_: _Being the Second Part of Wits
Commonwealth_. By Francis Meres, Maister of Arts in both Universities.' On