undeserved share of the honours of authorship. The very earliest of our
poets, Chaucer, must have been a man of gentle birth, since he was
employed on embassies of importance, and was married to the daughter of
a French knight of distinction, and sister of the Duchess of Lancaster.
The long civil wars of the fifteenth century prevented his having any
immediate followers; but the sixteenth opened more propitiously. The
conqueror of Flodden was also "Surrey of the deathless lay";[1] and from
his time to the present day there is hardly a break in the long line of
authors who have shown their feeling that noble birth and high position
are no excuses for idleness, but that the highest rank gains additional
illustration when it is shown to be united with brilliant talents
worthily exercised. The earliest of our tragic poets was Sackville Earl
of Dorset. The preux chevalier of Elizabeth's Court, the accomplished
and high-minded Sidney, took up the lyre of Surrey: Lord St. Albans,
more generally known by his family name of Bacon, "took all learning for
his province"; and, though peaceful studies were again for a while
rudely interrupted by the "dark deeds of horrid war," the restoration of
peace was, as it had been before, a signal for the resumption of their
studies by many of the best-born of the land. Another Earl of Dorset
displayed his hereditary talent not less than his martial gallantry.
Lord Roscommon well deserved the praises which Dryden and Pope, after
his death, liberally bestowed. The great Lord Chancellor Clarendon
devoted his declining years to a work of a grander class, leaving us a
History which will endure as long as the language itself; while ladies
of the very highest rank, the Duchess of Newcastle and Lady Mary Wortley
Montague, vindicated the claims of their sex to share with their
brethren the honours of poetical fame.

[Footnote 1: "Lay of the Last Minstrel," vi. 14.]