He wrote elegies on the great, letters and courtly compliments and love-lyrics to his friends, satires with an air of general censure.

But though he was classical, his style was never latinized.

In all of them he strove to pour into an ancient form language that was as intense and vigorous and as purely English as the earliest trumpeters of the Renaissance in England could have wished.

The result is not entirely successful.

He seldom fails to reproduce classic dignity and good sense; on the other hand he seldom succeeds in achieving classic grace and ease.