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Lastly we have the Bucolics and Georgics of Vergil, translated in 1589 by Abraham Fleming into rimeless fourteeners. Besides these there are a few odd translations from Vergil among the experiments of the classical versifiers.
Their influence may be taken as non-existent, and their only interest lies in the indication they afford of the trend of literary fashion. The earliest was George Turberville, who in 1567 translated the first nine of Mantuan's eclogues into English fourteeners.
When she tired it was his turn to lead, and he soon slipped into his old grooves and entertained her with stories of the marvelous prices fetched by Mazarin Bibles, and with accounts of people who had discovered "fourteeners" in out-of-the-way places, and such like lore of the old book-shop.
The collection of his poems, 'imprinted at London' in 1563, includes eight eclogues written in fourteeners, the majority of which may fairly be said to represent Mantuan adjusted to the conditions of contemporary life in reformation England. Others show the influence of the author's visit to Spain in 1561-3.
A pretty dialogue ensues in broken fourteeners, in which the subtle god elicits a description of the shepherd from the unsuspecting nymph it too contains some delicate reminiscences of the lover's duet. In the next scene we find Paris and Venus together.
As before, the verse, mostly fourteeners, is far from bad, but the selection is not very much to our purpose. Three of the pieces, a singing match, a love complaint, and one of the Galatea poems, are more or less pastoral; but the rest among which is the dainty conceit of Venus and the boar well rendered in a three-footed measure do not belong to bucolic verse at all.
The greater part is written either in fourteeners or in decasyllabic couplets with occasional alexandrines, in both of which the author displays an ease and mastery which, to say the least, were uncommon in the dramatic work of the early eighties; while the passages of blank verse introduced at important dramatic points, notably in Paris' defence and in Diana's speech, are the best of their kind between Surrey and Marlowe.
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