Born at Shrewsbury, England, about 1520: died April 1604. An English poet and miscellaneous writer, and soldier. He was the author of numerous tracts and broadsides, “The Worthines of Wales,” a poem (1587), “The Legend of Shore’s Wife” (in the 1563 edition of Baldwin’s “Mirror for Magistrates”), his best-known poem, “Churchyard’s Challenge,” a collection of prose and verse (1593), etc. As a soldier he served in Scotland, Ireland, the Low Countries, France, and elsewhere.

  Though some conceive him to be as much beneath a Poet, as above a Rhimer; in my opinion, his Verses may go abreast with any of that age, writing in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth. It seems, by this his Epitaph in Mr. Camden’s “Remains,” that he died not guilty of much wealth:

  By the men of those times he was accounted a good poet, by others a poor court-poet; but since, as much beneath a poet as a rhimer.

  An excellent soldier, and a man of honest principles.

  By his writings, he appears a man of sense, and sometimes a poet, tho’ he does not seem to possess any degree of invention. His language is generally pure, and his numbers not wholly inharmonious.

  One of those unfortunate men who have written poetry all their days, and lived a long life to complete the misfortune. His muse was so fertile, that his works pass all enumeration. He courted numerous patrons, who valued the poetry, while they left the poet to his own miserable contemplations…. Well might Churchyard write his own sad life under the title of “The Tragicall Discourse of the Haplesse Man’s Life.”

  What is to be said of the strange and oft-times incomprehensible fecundity of the first of these poets, Churchyard? The very titles of his works, (all of which I will not venture to enumerate) are perfect reflexes of the motley imagery of his mind. We have his “Chips,” his “Choice,” his “Charge,” “Chance,” “Charity,” “Challenge,” and I know not what! An historian, a controversialist, a translator, and an original poet—we are alternately bewildered by the variety of his performances, and astounded at the enormous prices which the greater part of them produce. It is in vain you depreciate, ridicule, and run down, the black letter slim quartos—in which the poetry of Churchyard is usually cased—to collectors of the olden school of poetry. Speak till you are hoarse, and declaim till language fails you—with Licius—he will be only “subridens” all the time; and, pointing to his yew-ornamented Churchyards, will exclaim, “I am eclipsed only by Atticus.” Let us therefore leave Atticus and Licius at rest; smiling, in their slumbers, at all the “Chips” by which they are surrounded.

  Churchyard is not a poet who possessed any imagination, nor are his thoughts novel or striking: his language is often below his subject, but his versification is usually flowing, and his reflections frequently just and natural.

  Much tamer in every way than Gascoigne was this other soldier and poet, yet he is an interesting man, if for no other reason than that he saw the wonderful growth of the Elizabethan literature from its beginnings to its maturity…. Though his poetry is of small account, his life was eventful and interesting…. In these works he appears as a garrulous, gossiping old fellow, fond of reciting his own exploits, and overflowing with good advice and general goodwill—on easy confidential terms with the public. So far as his works afford indications, he was tolerably happy in his old age…. He kept on writing with great activity till the very last, publishing no less than thirty-five works during the last twenty-five years of his long life. Such was the Nestor of the Elizabethan heroes.

  Thomas Churchyard was an inferior sort of Gascoigne, who led a much longer if less eventful life. He was about the Court for the greater part of the century, and had a habit of calling his little books, which were numerous, and written both in verse and prose, by alliterative titles playing on his own name, such as “Churchyard’s Chips,” “Churchyard’s Choice,” and so forth. He was a person of no great literary power, and chiefly noteworthy because of his long life after contributing to Tottel’s Miscellany, which makes him a link between the old literature and the new.

  Churchyard was a minor poet who dealt with realities, bringing—as many a man then did—his sense of poetry into the work of life, and finding in the work of life the motive to his song. This union of thought with action into a true music of life was one source of the greatness of England under Elizabeth. In the second half of her reign, through which Churchyard lived, the intellectual life rose so high, that few men cared for the old poet who had ploughed his furlong at the foot of the great upward slope.

  His poetical resources were, indeed, but slender. He never advanced beyond the point he reached in “Jane Shore,” which, considering the date at which it was composed, is remarkable for the smoothness of its versification.