B, you always start off with what the person is doing, then you name who they are, it also grabs attention better
To make the sentence correct, you would add a comma after "Thursday" (option B).
This past Thursday, the mechanic told me my car needed new brakes.
To understand this phrase you have to analyze it in pieces.
Courtier is a word to describe a person that goes to the court to present, in this case, poetry. The court was the place where the powerful people (kings, princes, queens, royal governors...) of society would go to have a different kind of reunions and presentations.
Middling is a word that was used as a synonym for standard, regular. Here it means that the poet is not particularly bright, not all that talented.
