gentle and chivalrous character. The reader will not fail to notice the beauty of the lyrical snatches from The Old Wives' Tale. It is a pity that we possess only fragments of Peele's pastoral play, The Hunting of Cupid, which was licensed for the press in 1591.

Thomas Nashe, "ingenious, ingenuous, fluent, facetious T. Nashe," was very serious at times. Witness his Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, that woeful cry wrung from the depths of a passionate soul. The songs in Summer's last Will and Testament are of a sombre turn. We have, it is true, the delicious verses in praise of spring; and what a pleasure it is to croon them over!

"The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit."

But when the play was produced it was sickly autumn, and the plague was stalking through the land:

"Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace :
Ah, who shall hide us from the winter's face?
Cold doth increase, the sickness will not cease,
And here we lie, God knows, with little ease."

Very vividly does Nashe depict the feeling of forlorn hopelessness caused by the dolorous advent of the dreaded pestilence. His address to the fading

summer, "Go not yet hence, bright soul of the sad year," is no empty rhetorical appeal, but a solemn supplication; and those pathetic stanzas, "Adieu; farewell, earth's bliss," must have had strange significance at a time when on every side the deathbells were tolling. Shakespeare's songs are of course written "divinely well." Yet I must frankly confess that I cannot determine to my own satisfaction whether Shakespeare or Fletcher wrote the opening song, 'Roses, their sharp spines being gone," in The Two Noble Kinsmen. Such a line as :

"Oxlips in their cradles growing"

The

would seem to be Shakespeare's very own. text of the song has been somewhat corrupted. "Primrose ... with her bells dim" cannot be what the poet wrote, for primroses have no bells; and I am inclined to accept the emendation of that venerable poet, Mr. W. J. Linton, "with harebell slim."

With all my admiration for Ben Jonson, I venture to think that his lyrics-excellent as they frequently are-want the natural magic that we find in the songs of some of his less famous contemporaries. "Still to be neat, still to be drest," and others, are polished ad unguem, so that the severest critic cannot discover a flaw. And who can fail to appreciate

the fertility of invention that Jonson displays in his masques? Few, indeed, are the poets who have so happily combined learning, smoothness, and sprightliness. He has mingled

"all the sweets and salts

That none may say the triumph halts."

His lyrical work has frequently a pronounced epigrammatic flavour. We admire the compactness of thought and the aptness of expression; we exclaim "Euge, euge!" and are ready to affirm that Martial at his smartest cannot compare with rare Ben Jonson. Yet somehow the wayward inspiration of poets who have no claim to be Jonson's peers is more powerfully attractive.

Ben's antagonist, Dekker, had a genuine lyrical gift. His life was one constant strenuous struggle with poverty, and all his work was done in haste and hurry. He was not unfrequently lodged in the Counter (a prison in the Poultry for debtors), where it was difficult to write with any comfort or satisfaction. But in the dusk and gloom his cheeriness never forsook him; his songs-too few, alas !—are blithe as the lark's tirra-lirra and wholesome as the breath of June.

Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher were lyrists of the first rank. In his Inner Temple Masque Beaumont gave ample proof of his ability for song

writing.

What a rapture is in this call to the

masquers to begin the dance!

CA IF

To play to, for the moon to lead,
And all the stars to follow!"

Of rare beauty are the glowing and tender bridal
songs in this masque; and I would certainly as-
cribe to Beaumont the bridal songs in The Maid's
Tragedy. That admirable burlesque, The Knight
of the Burning Pestle, is now regarded as mainly the
work of Beaumont, and we may be fairly confident
that it was he who wrote the whimsical song of
Ralph the May-lord, “London, to thee I do pre-
sent" (pp. 92-4). But the largest contributor to
our anthology is Beaumont's coadjutor, John
Fletcher. I have drawn copiously from The Faith-
ful Shepherdess, the best of English pastoral plays.
It is deeply to be regretted that Fletcher by the
introduction of offensive matter smirched the fair
features of a poem that would otherwise be at all
points delightful. The rhymed trochaics glide as
lightly as the satyr who bore the sleeping Alexis
to Clorin's bower. At its original representation
The Faithful Shepherdess failed to please; but it
came from the press crowned with the praises of
Beaumont, Ben Jonson, Nat Field, and Chapman.

The finest compliment was paid by Chapman, who

declared that the poem

"Renews the golden world, and holds through all

The holy laws of homely pastoral,

Where flowers and founts, and nymphs and semi-gods,
And all the Graces find their old abodes."

Milton's Comus owes not a little to Fletcher's pastoral; and Il Penseroso is under obligations to that fine song in Nice Valour, "Hence, all you vain delights!" Some of the best of Fletcher's songs are in Valentinian, where we have the rousing address to "God Lyæus, ever young " (worthy to stand beside Shakespeare's "Come, thou monarch of the vine,") and that softest of invocations to "Care-charming Sleep."

Massinger, an admirable dramatist, had little lyrical power-in fact, none at all-for his few attempts at a song are flat and insipid. Ford's songs are of small account, and Marston was no songbird. Webster has three lyrical passages of deep impressiveness-the dirge in The White Devil ("Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren "), the passing-song in The Duchess of Malfi (“Hark, now everything is still "), and the memento mori in The Devil's Law-Case ("All the flowers of the spring").

Thomas Heywood' wrote some very pleasant

1 Some of the songs in Heywood's plays are by other hands. For instance, in The Rape of Lucrece he introduces two stanzas of Sir Walter Raleigh's little poem, "Now what