Page:Elizabethan & Jacobean Pamphlets.djvu/21

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

I.—THOMAS LODGE

(Stephen Gosson's Schoole of Abuse has acquired something like fame in virtue of one of the answers to it—Sidney's Defence of Poetry. That interesting little book has been frequently reprinted of late, and some knowledge of it, and of Gosson's attack which caused it, may be taken as common. Lodge's attempt, made as a very young man, to do what Sidney did is far less familiar even to students. It was reprinted in 1853, and again in the rare and costly private issue by the Hunterian Club of Lodge's whole works; but the author of the introductory essay to that issue, my friend Mr. Gosse, has been somewhat unkind (I cannot say unjust) to it. It is, indeed, no great thing; but as a very early example of literary criticism by pamphlet, which has lacked the modern reprinting accorded to Webbe, Puttenham, Daniel, and other critics of the same time, I thought it might find appropriate place here.)