Note 5 — Le hore di recreatione:

The curious addition Il Insonio Insonadado or 'Waking-Dream Undreamt' (whether the title is invented or borrowed, some one with greater knowledge of Spanish than I possess must decide) may supply some greater interest than Whiting's escapade in the Heroic Romance. It is not continuously paged with the rest of the volume, but merely 'signatured' H, H2, &c. as far as a (misprinted) 5. On the whole, however, it is much less carelessly put to press than Albino and Bellama, and it is also (in parts at least) much more soberly written. The opening does not promise much, except an example of the loose, would-be satirical academic commonplaces of the time; but it afterwards takes on some critical substance, and if I had read it (as I had not yet) twenty years ago I should have given it a small corner in an otherwise very scantily occupied chapter of my History of Criticism. Whether the personages introduced before the Heavenly Court aim at individuals it would be very hard to say: but the certification of the poetess5 might have some interest. 'Tenth Muses', as was said in relation to Anne King (v. sup., p. 210), were not unknown, and Katharine Philips was alive, though as yet but a child. But women had, before her, made little figure in English literature. The evidences of popular taste are not quite worthless, and while the absence of Ben Jonson is noteworthy, the presence of Drummond is almost equally so, as well as the mention of that 'testiness' which certainly does appear in the poet of Hawthornden. But the chief critical utterance is the quatrain, solid and judicial if not very poetical, on Donne.