continued allegory; Drayton, who, though less known, possesses perhaps
equal powers of poetry; Beaumont the elder, whose poem on Bosworth Field
carries us back to the days of the Plantagenets; Fairfax, the translator
of Tasso, the melody of whose numbers became the model of Waller;
besides many others, who ornamented this era of British literature.

Notwithstanding the splendour of these great names, it must be
confessed, that one common fault, in a greater or less degree, pervaded
the most admired poetry of Queen Elizabeth's age. This was the fatal
propensity to _false wit_; to substitute, namely, strange and
unexpected connections of sound, or of idea, for real humour, and even
for the effusions of the stronger passions It seems likely that this
fashion arose at court, a sphere in which its denizens never think they
move with due lustre, until they have adopted a form of expression, as
well as a system of manners, different from that which is proper to
mankind at large. In Elizabeth's reign, the court language was formed on
the plan of one Lillie, a pedantic courtier, who wrote a book, entitled
"Euphues and his England, or the Anatomy of Wit;"[3] which quality he
makes to consist in the indulgence of every monstrous and overstrained
conceit, that can be engendered by a strong memory and a heated brain,
applied to the absurd purpose of hatching unnatural conceits.[4] It
appears, that this fantastical person had a considerable share in
determining the false taste of his age, which soon became so general,
that the tares which sprung from it are to be found even among the
choicest of the wheat. Shakespeare himself affords us too many instances
of this fashionable heresy in wit; and he, who could create new worlds
out of his own imagination descended to low, and often ill-timed puns
and quibbles. This was not an evil to be cured by the accession of our
Scottish James, whose qualifications as a punster were at least equal to
his boasted _king-craft._[5] The false taste, which had been