Note 221 — Chapter V · ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

It is curious that, in this very début of English criticism, the incivility with which critics are constantly and too justly charged makes its appearance. Ascham would seem to have been a good-natured soul enough. Yet he abuses rhyme and its partisans in the true “Père Duchêne” style which some critics still affect. “To follow the Goths in rhyming instead of the Greeks in versifying” is “to eat acorns with swine, when we may eat wheat bread among men.” Rhymers are “a rude multitude,” “rash, ignorant heads,” “wandering blindly in their foul wrong way,” &c.