GASCOIGNE, GEORGE, 1535-77; one of the pioneers of Elizabethan poetry,, was the son and heir of Sir John Gascoigue. He studied at Cambridge, and was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1555. His youth was unsteady, and his-father disinherited him. In 1565, he had written his tragicomedy of The Glass-of the Government, not printed until 1576. In 1566, his first published verses were prefixed to a book called The French Littleton, and he brought out on the stage of Gray's Inn two'very remarkable dramas, Supposes, the earliest existing English'play in prose, and Jrccosta, the first attempt to naturalize the Greek tragedy. Of the latter only the second, third, and fourth acts were from his hands. Soon after this he married. In 1572, there ;vas published A Hundred Sundry Flowers bound up in one small Posy, a printed collection of Gascoigne's lyrics, he having started in March of that year to serve as a volunteer under the prince of Orange. He was wrecked on the coast of Rolland and nearlylost his life. but obtained a captain's commission, and acquired considerable military reputation. An intrigue, however, with a lady in the Hague, nearly cost him his life. He regained his position, and fought well at the siege of Middleburg, but was captured under the walls of Leyden, and sent back to England after an imprisonment of four months. In 1575, he issued an authoritative edition of his poems under the name of Posies. IN the summer of the same year, he devised a poetical' entertainment for queen Etizitboth, Thep visit il3g. Elenil worth ; this
series of masques was printed in 1576 as the Princely Pleasures. Later on in 1575, he greeted the queen at Woodstock with his Tale of Hemetes, and presented her on next New Year's day with the MS. of the same poem, which is now in the British museum. He completed in 1576 his two most important works, The Complaint of .Philomene, and The Steel Glass, the first of which bad occupied him since 1562; they were printed in single volume. Later on in the same year, he published A Delicate Diet for Dainty mouthed Drunkard.y. He fell into a decline and died at Stamford. We are indebted for many particulars of his life to a rare poem published in the same year by George Whet. stone, and entitled A Remembrance of the Life and Godly End of George Gascoigne, Esquire. In his poem of The Steel Glass, in blank verse, Gascoigne intro duced the Italian style of satire into our literature. He was a great innovator in point of metrical art, and he prefixed to the work in question a prose essay on poetry, which contains some very valuable suggestions. His great claim to remembrance was well Summed up in the next generation by Thomas Nash, who remarked in his preface to Green's Menaphon, that •• Master Gascoigne is not to be abridged of his deserved esteem, who first beat the path to that perfection which our best poets aspired to since his departure, whereto he did ascend by comparing the Italian with the English." [Eneyc. Brit., 9th ed.]