George Gascoigne Quotes

Master Gascoigne is not to bee abridged of his deserved esteeme, who first beate the path to that perfection which our best Poets have aspired too since his departure.

Full many wanton babes have I,
Which must be stilld with lullabie.

Sing lullabie, as women do,
Wherewith they bring their babes to rest;
And lullabie can I sing to,
As womanly as can the best.

The Raynbowe bending in the skye,
Bedeckte with sundrye hewes,
Is lyke the seate of God on hye,
And seemes to tell these newes:
That as thereby he promised,
To drowne the worlde no more,
So by the bloud whiche Christe hath shead,
He will oure health restore.

Suffiseth this to proove my theame withall,
That every bullet hath a lighting place.

From shortly after his death until the present Gascoigne's reputation as the foremost poet of his generation and as a precursor of the great Elizabethans has remained constant.

I thinke it not amisse to forewarne you that you thrust as few wordes of many sillables into your verse as may be: and hereunto I might alledge many reasons: first the most auncient English wordes are of one sillable, so that the more monasyllables that you use, the truer Englishman you shall seeme, and the lesse you shall smell of the Inkehorne.