their mother it would have been difficult to destroy the tragic force of such a situation.

The tale of Ferdinando Jeronimi and Leonora de Valasco is a voluptuous story of warm but fickle love, won easily and lost through exacting causeless jealousy. It was probably one item in the education of that generation of poets in the arts and ways of love: its main lesson, apart from its exquisite little windings and turnings, being that where a woman yields her whole heart she is implacably offended when she discovers that she is not trusted. In style the tale is the parent of the tales of Lyly and Greene. Its "euphuism" is not so methodical as Euphuism strictly so called the developed mannerism of Lyly: but one might quote from Gascoigne passages that contain all the elements of that mannerism. Gascoigne, however, was too robust a nature to develop this sort of figurative language into a system. After a euphuistic passage, he begins a new paragraph by saying-" to speak English."

His love-verses are not the verses of a sentimental inamorato, or impassioned lover. He woos more like Diomede than like Troilus, praising his lady's beauty with humorous ardour, and bidding her "farewell with a mischief" when she proves inconstant. Grave and reverend divines had some reason to complain of a poet who published three sonnets written upon the occasion of presenting his mistress with a copy of the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius. His more serious lyrics have an impetuous movement and rough fire in them that make us think of poor George as an imperfect Byron,-resembling Byron as he did not a little in his life, and complaining of the same identification of himself with his heroes.

There is abundance of comic vigour and mad rollicking humour in "Dan Bartholomew of Bath." It may be made another point of comparison with Byron; but its general strain bears more resemblance to Lockhart's "Mad Banker of Amsterdam." The hero's courtship and deceptive triumph, his discomfiture and dolorous laments, his Last Will and Testament, his Subscription and Seal, his Fare

well, and "The Reporter's" conclusion in the style of the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' are executed with great spirit. The account of his falling in love will give an idea of the style :

"For though he had in all his learned lore
Both read good rules to bridle fantasy,
And all good authors taught him evermore
To love the mean and leave extremity;
Yet Kind hath left him such a quality,
That at the last he quite forgot his books,
And fastened fancy with the fairest looks.

For proof: when green youth leapt out of his eye,
And left him now a man of middle age,

His hap was yet with wandering looks to spy
A fair young imp of proper personage,
Eke born (as he) of honest parentage:
And truth to tell, my skill it cannot serve

To praise her beauty as it did deserve.

First for her head: the hairs were not of gold,
But of some other metal far more fine,

Whereof each crinet seemed, to behold,

Like glistering wires against the sun that shine;
And therewithal the blazing of her eyne
Was like the beams of Titan, truth to tell,
Which glads us all that in this world do dwell.

Upon her cheeks the lily and the rose
Did intermeet with equal change of hue,
And in her gifts no lack I can suppose
But that at last (alas) she was untrue :
Which flinging fault, because it is not new
Nor seldom seen in kits of Cressid's kind,
I marvel not, nor bear it much in mind.

That mouth of hers which seemed to flow with mell
In speech, in voice, in tender touch, in taste:
That dimpled chin wherein delight did dwell,
That ruddy lip wherein was pleasure placed;

Those well-shaped hands, fine arms, and slender waist,
With all the gifts which gave her any grace,

Were smiling baits which caught fond fools apace."

"The Glass of Government" belongs to the broken-down and disheartened period of his life. It was published in 1575. He calls it a tragical comedy to illustrate the rewards and punishments of virtues and vices, consecrates the title-page with a quotation from Scripture, and fills a preliminary fly-leaf with pious, loyal, patriotic, and moral saws. The prologue forbids all expectations of merry jest and vain delight, referring wanton play-goers to interludes and Italian toys, and announcing that the comedy is not a comedy in Terence's sense, but a mirror to lords and citizens, and a beacon to rash youth. The argument is the history of four young men, two of quick capacity, who become dissipated, and end their careers in shame-two of dull understanding, but steady industry, who are preferred to honourable positions. The play is saturated with good advice, the education of the young men affording opportunities for commonplace counsel and the exposition of learned precepts by exemplary parents and teachers, possessing the profoundest sense of their responsibilities. Copious citations are made from Scripture, and from Greek and Roman moralists and poets. It is virtually a moralplay, with individual names given to the abstractions, and the parasite of Latin comedy in place of the Vice of the Moralities.

"The Steel Glass" shows poor Gascoigne sunk deep in the slough of despondency and bitterness. And in one of his smaller poems it is sad to find him thus looking back to the strength of his youth, and reflecting that strength is after all a dangerous thing, which may in the end prove to be a less bountiful gift of nature than weakness:

:

"I have been strong (I thank my God therefore)
And did therein rejoice as most men did:

I leapt, I ran, I toiled and travailed sore,
My might and main did covet to be kid.1
But lo behold: my merry days amid,
One heady deed my haughty heart did break,
And since (full oft) I wished I had been weak.

1 Known.

The weakling he sits buzzing at his book,
Or keeps full close, and loves to live in quiet:
For lack of force he warily doth look
In every dish which may disturb his diet.
He neither fights nor runneth after riot.
But stays his steps by mean and measure too,
And longer lives than many strong men do."

IX. THOMAS CHURCHYARD (1520-1604).

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. He lived for some two years in the service of the Earl of Surrey, contributed to Tottel's Miscellany and to the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' and survived to issue several books contemporaneously with the plays of Shakespeare. He began life as a gay gallant or "royster" at the Court of Henry VIII., and he saw the accession of James I. Though his poetry is of small account, his life was eventful and interesting. In the war with Scotland under Edward VI. he was taken prisoner; being ransomed, he returned to Court, found himself forgotten and neglected, and turned his face, swearing, "as long as he his five wits had, to come in Court no more." He courted a widow, who shamelessly told him he had too little money for her: whereupon, in the rage of his disappointment, he broke his lute, burnt his books and MSS., and went abroad to the Emperor as a soldier of fortune.

He served in Mary's wars with France in the last year of her reign; was taken prisoner; became very popular among the cultivated French, and rewarded their courtesy by cleverly escaping to England. He lived through the whole of the reign of Elizabeth, engaging in various warlike adventures, for which he seems to have received very poor recompense, and making some effort to live by his pen. His

chief writings,1 besides the stories of Lord Mowbray and Shore's Wife in the Mirror for Magistrates,' were extracts from his own experience;- Churchyard's Chips, 1565; Churchyard's Choice, 1579; Churchyard's Charge, "a light bundle of lively discourses," 1580; Churchyard's Challenge, 1593; and Churchyard's Charity, "a musical consort of heavenly harmony," 1595. 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. There would seem to have been a change in his circumstances between 1565 and 1580. In 1565 he narrated his own life in most lugubrious Mirror for Magistrates strain, under the title of "A tragical discourse of the unhappy man's life." In 1578 he translated Ovid De Tristibus. But in 1580 he gave another version of his life in dancing ballad couplets as "a story translated out of French," dwelling with particular gusto on his powers of amusing and gaining the friendship of his enemies during his periods of captivity in Scotland and France. 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.

X.-TRANSLATORS OF SENECA AND OVID.

Our translators were drawn to Seneca by the same feelings that led to the production of the Mirror for Magistrates.' They found in him a similar vein of declamation on the downfall of greatness, the evanescent character of prosperity, the slipperiness of the heights of pride. Thomas Newton, who collected the translations of the several trage

1 For reprints see 'Bibliographical Miscellanies,' Oxford, 1813; Frondes Caduca, Auchinleck Press, 1816-17; and (specially) 'Chips concerning Scotland,' edited, with Life, by George Chalmers, 1817.