A study of the poems of George Turbervile

Abstract

George Turbervile, (born 1541 or 1542) belonged to a group of writers, the members of which speedily became old-fashioned. In 1529 Puttenham mentions him immediately after "Gascon" and "Britton", and in the same year Nashe, in his preface to Greene's Menaphon, associated him with Gascoigne and "aged Arthur Golding". Gascoigne soon fell into disrepute with the contemporaries of the brilliant younger school. In 1579 in his notes to the "Shepheardes Kalendar" (November), E.K. wrote: "Ma. George Gaskin a wittie gentleman, and the very chief of our late rymers, who and if some parties of learning wanted not (albee it is well known he altogether wanted not learning) no doubt would have attayned to the excellencye of those famous Poets. For gifts of wit and naturall promptnesse appeare in hymn. abundantly", and this rather patronising estimate was reproduced word for word---without acknowledgment by Webbe in 1586 in his Discourse of English Poetrie.*(1) George Turbervile was the twelfth and last boy admitted to Winchester College under the election of 1554. The entry in the Scholars' Register runs thus: "Georgius Turbervyll de White Churche xiii Annorum i die Aprilis preterit diocesis Bristall". For these particulars, I am indebted to the kindness of Herbert Chitty, Esq., Bursar of Winchester College, who adds "But as the exact date of his admission is not recorded, and the admissionsunder the election of 1554 would have been made as there were vacancies between that election and the next of 1555, I cannot say for certain whether "1st April last" means 1st April 1554 or 1st April 155-5. As a guess I should say it means 1st April 1554." This entry disposes of the idea, held by Alexander Chalmers and others, that Turbervile was born "about 1530."(2) The Arte of English Poesie. (ed. Arber) p.75. Gabriel Harvey, in 1593, in Pierces Supererogation, contemptuously refers to Gascoigne and Turbervile together, as representatives of an old school; speaking of Nashe he says: " Had he begun to Aretinize when Elderton began to ballat, Gascoine to sonnet, Turbervile to madrigal, Drant to versify, or Tarleton to extemporise, some parte of his phantasticall bibble-babbles, and capricious panges, might have been tolerated in a greene and wild youth but the winde is chaunged and there is a busier pageant upon the stage," thus classing Gascoigne and Turbervile with writers of small merit, and dismissing their work as tolerable perhaps at the time of its production, but as neglible In his own day. Nashe, in the mention of Turbervile already referred to, takes up a position somewhat similar, when he says with a not unkindly condescension "Neither was Master Turbervile the worst of his time, although in translating he attributed too much to the necessitie of rime." Robert Tofte in 1615, classed Turbervile with Gascoigne, and spoke of them both as belonging to a fashion which had passed, while apportioning to them a modicum of praise for what seemed to him to be their actual achieve-ments:- "But this nice Age, wherein we now live, hath brought more neate and teirse Wits into the world; yet must not old George Gascoigne, and Turbervill, with such others, be altogether rejected, since they first brake the Ice for our quainter Poets, that now write, that they might the more safer swimme in the maine ocean of sweet Poesie; and therefore all old things must not he east away, because they may now and then, stand us in some stead. Nor could Sir John Harrington, though speaking as a friend in very commendatory terms of Turbervile, afford him any higher praise as a poet than to say that he struggled against the "barbarity" of his day. When times were yet but rude, thy pen endeavour'd To polish barbarism with purer style: when times were grown most old, thy heart persever'd Sincere and just, unstained with gifts or guile. Now lives thy soul, tho' from thy corpse dissever'd: There high in bliss, here clear in fame the while: To which I pay this debt of due thanksgiving: my pen doth praise thee dead: thine grac'd me living. Edward Philips, in 1675, dismissed him curtly. After speaking of William Warner, he proceeds:- he may be reckoned with several other writers of the same time, i.e. queen Elizabeth's Reign; who though inferiour to Sidney, Spenser, Drayton and Daniel, yet have been thought by some not unworthy to be remember'd and quoted, namely George Gascoigne, Th. Hudson, John Markham, Thomas Achely, John Weever, Ch. Middleton, George Turbervile, Henry Constable, Sir Edw. Dyer, Thomas Churchyard, Charles Fits-Geoffry. This is, apparently, the last mention of George Turbervile, until the labours of the eighteenth-century antiquaries made the main facts of his life and work comparatively accessible.