A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Webbe, William

by John William Cousin

Webbe, William (b. 1550).—Critic and translator. Almost nothing is known of him except that he was at Camb. and acted as tutor in certain distinguished families, and was a friend of Spenser. He wrote a Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), in which he discusses metre, rhyme (the use of which he reprehends), and reviews English poetry up to his own day. He also translated the first two of the Eclogues of Virgil in singularly unmelodious hexameters.