To rediscover a minor poet would not necessarily be matter
for much congratula- tion. But suppose it were a minor Eliza- bethan ? In 1940 the British Museum acquired a little manuscript volume which engagingly declared itself to be The Vanityes of Sir Arthur Gorges Youthe. Professor Sandison of Vassar College, who has already made a study of Gorges as a literary per- sonality, is an admirable editor. She has the capable and careful technique we have come to expect of an American scholar, allied to an easy manner of writing and an unpreten- tious and genuine insight. Gorges was that typically Elizabethan figure, a " gentleman- poet." Ralegh was his friend and cousin and disputes authorship with him. Spenser, who praises him under the name of Alcyon, was his friend, his protégé, and his inspiration. His life was stormy. He married for love and won a peck of troubles. This singing- bird can have had no illusions of eternal summer. To his modern editor, he appears as " an Englishman, and a seriously romantic one, bred on Tottel," but " first and foremost Spenser's man, dyed deep in the colours of the earlier work." He has been well served by the Oxford Press and merits this handsome edition. A. L.
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