But in my heart this word shall sink,

Until the proof shall better be.

I would it were not as I think!

I would I thought it were not! "

Afterwards, when hope is yet fainter, he appeals, but manfully still, never brokenly:

"And wilt thou leave me thus,

That hath loved thee so long
In wealth and woe among?

And is thy heart so strong

As for to leave me thus ?
Say nay! say nay!

"And wilt thou leave me thus, That hath given thee my heart

Never for to depart,

Neither for pain nor smart?
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay say nay!"

"Forget not yet the tried intent

Of such a truth as I have meant,
My great travail so gladly spent,
Forget not yet!

"Forget not, oh forget not this,

How long ago hath been and is,
The mind that never meant amiss,
Forget not yet!

66 Forget not then thine own approved,
The which so long hath thee so loved,
Whose steadfast faith yet never moved;
Forget not this!"

He even muses on the chance that he
may love again in lines of more than
his wonted grace, - lines which Spenser
himself will hardly surpass for beauty of
rhythm:-

"A face which should content me wondrous well
Should not be fair, but lovely to behold;
With gladsome cheer all grief for to expel,
With sober looks so that I would it should
Speak without words such words as none can
tell

(The tress also should be of crispéd gold); With wit and these might chance I might be tied,

And knit again with knot that should not slide." It was really Wyatt rather than Spenser who finally fixed the scale of English verbal melody, and defined its principal modes. From this time forward the advance in euphony is marvelously rapid. But before quitting for good the preShakespearean days, we must make room

Ever my sweeting

Is in my mind;
She is so goodly,
With looks so lovely,
That no man truly
Such one can find.

"Her beauty so pure,
It doth underlure
My poor heart full sure
In governance;
Therefore now will I
Unto her apply,
And will ever cry
For remembrance.

Though she me bind,

Yet shall she not find

My poor heart unkind,
Do what she can;
For I will her pray,
While I live a day,
Me to take for aye

For her own man."

"My joy it is from her to hear,

Whom that my mind is ever to see;
And to my heart she is most near,

For I love her and she loveth me.

"Christ wolt the figure of her sweet face
Were picturéd wherever I be,
In every hall, from place to place,
For I love her, and she loveth me."

It is natural to date the singers of the
succeeding and culminating period by
the correspondence of their careers with
Shakespeare's. Of that preeminent
group, Spenser, Sidney, Raleigh, Mar-
lowe, Southwell, Daniel, Drayton, Wot-
ton, Lodge, and Donne were within fif-
teen years of Shakespeare's own age,
and therefore in the prime of their man-
hood with him; Carew, Herrick, Wither,
Waller, Suckling, Habington, Browne,
Drummond of Hawthornden, Beaumont,
and Fletcher, Bishops Corbet and King,
were past the years of infancy when the
great bard died: while Crashaw was born
one year before his death, and Abra-
ham Cowley & Richard Lovelace two
years later. Keeping these coincidences
in mind, we shall not be careful to pre-
serve a strict chronological order in the
rest of our quotations, but take them at
random from the authors enumerated,

for a few anonymous strains of unusual just as they chance to illustrate the phase

naïveté and sweetness. They belong, at latest, to the very first years of the sixteenth century:

"As I lay sleeping,

In dreams fleeting,

of character under discussion.

If we look first for the ideal of womanhood seriously cherished by the best minds of this great time we shall find it still, as formerly, a lofty and a spotless

I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride;
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to reside.

Only a learned and a manly soul

I purposed her, that should, with even powers,
The rock, the spindle, and the shears control
Of destiny, and spin her own free hours."

The reader no doubt remembers the surpassingly graceful turn by which the poet feigns suddenly to discover the personification of his fancy and the reality of his dream in Lucy, Countess of Bedford:

"These when I thought to feign, and wished to see, My muse bade Bedford write; and it was she!" But whether the likeness were exact or no, the picture is of marvelous beauty. Spenser, the courtier, was naturally more lenient to the solemn vice of greatness than Jonson, and he defends it warmly:

"Rudely thou wrongest my dear heart's desire,

In finding fault with her too portly pride.
The thing which I do most in her admire
Is of the world unworthy, most enviéd;

For in those lofty looks is close implied

Scorn of base things, disdain of foul dishonor, Threatening rash eyes that gaze on her so wide, That loosely they ne dare to look upon her: Such pride is praise, such portliness is honor." And here, too, room must surely be made for Sir Henry Wotton's eloquent address to the Queen of Bohemia, whose claim to the throne of Germany he made it in some sort his adventure to establish:

"You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the sun shall rise?

"You curious chanters of the wood,

That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your voices understood

There is a vein of quiet self-respect running through this piece of profound and yet stately homage, this distant and restrained adulation of a royal lady. It is in no way unworthy of the man who, in his last years of peaceful retirement at his beautiful manor of Bocton,1 wrote that admirable hymn, happily never yet suffered to drop out of our memories and hymnals:—

"How happy is he born or taught,

Who serveth not another's will," etc. Nevertheless, in the address to the Queen of Bohemia, and to some extent in most of the fragments of personal tribute and appeal thus far cited, there is a certain formality, a touch of the conventionally lowly attitude of the minstrel before the lady, against which, because it savored too much of what was beginning to be felt as the cant of chivalry, there was already a very general revolt among the proud-spirited and straightforward men of the day. They have begun to take on a new and more independent tone, - the tone of those who make a careful distinction between service and servitude; who, while ready for any test of voluntary devotion, will resist to the uttermost the surrender of their personal prerogatives, and scorn the thought of actual subjugation, whether to a sovereign or a sentiment, to the caprices of an individual woman or of that unaccountable Dame Fortune for whose favor they were all ready to dare so much. It is the inherent buoyancy of indomitable pluck. Pure animal spirits go up to a higher point than they have ever attained before or since in this vexatious world. But let us consider our later knights a little longer in the character of lovers. They challenge affection rather than sue for it, these lordly creatures. They do not scruple to name conditions. They even utter threats, half laughing and half earnest. They promise briefly, but abundantly; as in the matchless lines often attributed -one wishes it were on more certain authority to Graham of Montrose:ton-Malherbe adjoining unto it, both being seated within a fair park of the Wottons, on the brow of such a hill as gives the advantage of a large prospect and of equal pleasure to all beholders."

By your weak accents, what's your praise
When Philomel her voice doth raise ?

"You violets that first appear,

By your pure, purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own,
What are you when the rose is blown?

"So when my mistress shall be seen,

In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice a queen,
Tell me if she were not designed
To eclipse the glory of her kind!"

1 Izaak Walton, in his quaint memoir of Wotton, gives a fascinating picture of this ancestral home: "An ancient and goodly structure, beautifying and being beautified by the parish church of Boc

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