JUDICIO.
Quem, referent musae, vivet, dum robora tellus,
Dum coelum stellas, dum vehit amnis aquas. 
Who blurs fair paper with foul bastard rhymes,
Shall live full many an age in latter times: 
Who makes a ballad for an alehouse door,
Shall live in future times for evermore: 
Then ( )[41] thy muse shall live so long,
As drafty ballads to thy praise are sung. 
But what’s his device?  Parnassus with the sun and the laurel?[42] I
wonder this owl dares look on the sun; and I marvel this goose flies
not the laurel:  his device might have been better, a fool going into
the market-place to be seen, with this motto:  Scribimus indocti; or,
a poor beggar gleaning of ears in the end of harvest, with this word: 
Sua cuique gloria.

JUDICIO.  Turn over the leaf, Ingenioso, and thou shalt see the pains of this worthy gentleman:  Sentences, gathered out of all kind of poets, referred to certain methodical heads, profitable for the use of these times, to rhyme upon any occasion at a little warning.  Read the names.

INGENIOSO. 
So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.

Edmund Spenser.  Thomas Watson. 
Henry Constable.  Michael Drayton. 
Thomas Lodge.  John Davis. 
Samuel Daniel.  John Marston. 

                          Kit Marlowe.

Good men and true; stand together; hear your censure.  What’s thy judgment of Spenser?

JUDICIO. 
A sweeter[43] swan than ever sung in Po,
A shriller nightingale than ever bless’d
The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome. 
Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud,
While he did chant his rural minstrelsy: 
Attentive was full many a dainty ear,
Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,
While sweetly of his Fairy Queen he sung;
While to the waters’ fall he tun’d for fame,
And in each bark engrav’d Eliza’s name: 
And yet for all this unregarding soil
Unlac’d the line of his desired life,
Denying maintenance for his dear relief;
Careless care to prevent his exequy,
Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.

INGENIOSO. 
Pity it is that gentler wits should breed,
Where thickskin chuffs laugh at a scholar’s need. 
But softly may our honour’s ashes rest,
That lie by merry Chaucer’s noble chest. 
But, I pray thee, proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud
of myself; as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with
thine.—­Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel,[44] Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson.

JUDICIO. 
Sweet Constable[45] doth take the wond’ring ear,
And lays it up in willing prisonment: 
Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage
War with the proudest big Italian,
That melts his heart in sugar’d sonneting;
Only let him more sparingly make use
Of others’ wit, and use his own the more,
That well may scorn base imitation. 
For Lodge[46] and Watson,[47] men of some desert,
Yet subject to a critic’s marginal;
Lodge for his oar in ev’ry paper boat,
He, that turns over Galen ev’ry day,
To sit and simper Euphues’ Legacy.[48]