PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
233
Besides James himself, several of the poets who frequented the Scotish court at that period, as Th. Hudson, R. Cockburn, and A. Colville, prefixed to this work, sonnets in praise of the translator, in which he is not only preferred to the ancients, but to the French Ronsard and Du Bartas, and the English Surry. I imagine, The Triumphs of Petrarch are alluded to with disapprobation, by Hume of Logie in his Sonnet on Amatory Poetry, p. 199.; for all the names of heroes and heroines, whose passion he ridicules, occur following verses of the Triumph of Love:
He that is next is Hercules,
That martial man so bauld;
By Dianire, and Iöle,
And Omphale made thrall'd.—
That martial man so bauld;
By Dianire, and Iöle,
And Omphale made thrall'd.—
Here standeth likewise Demophon,
With him does Phillis move,
Who for his stay, and long abode,
Did hang herself for love.
With him does Phillis move,
Who for his stay, and long abode,
Did hang herself for love.
This Jason is, with him his dame
Medea, Ætes' child,
That followed him and Love also
Through towns and defarts wild.———
Medea, Ætes' child,
That followed him and Love also
Through towns and defarts wild.———
See Pyramus and Thisbe both
To stand the shadow by;
With Hero at the window, and
In seas Leander lie.
To stand the shadow by;
With Hero at the window, and
In seas Leander lie.
The style of Fowler is often quaint, affected, and full of antithesis; while it exhibits much of the tinsel of Italian amatory poetry. In his Tarantula of Love, which
