[GEORGE PEELE was probably born in 1558. He was a most noted poet in the University' of Oxford, and taking up his residence in London became one of the band of University writers for the stage, with whom the 'player' Shakespeare's first efforts as a dramatist brought him into conflict. His first published play was a 'pastoral,' The Arraignment of Paris, which had been performed before Queen Elizabeth in 1584. It is supposed that he wrote more plays for the public stage than have been preserved. He also composed pageants for the great city festivals, making a precarious living by his wits. Occasional verses of Peele's appear in the poetic collections of the period. He died before 1598.]

Pecle was one of the singers before the great Elizabethan sunrise, and his notes contain no anticipatory vibration of the burst of song that was to follow him. His University friends,

even after Marlowe had made his voice heard, spoke of him as the Atlas of poetry, inferior to none, and in some respects superior to all; but this partial verdict can now be recorded only as an example of how contemporary criticism is sometimes mistaken. In reading his plays now one is more astonished that Greene and Nash should have considered him worthy to be named in the same breath with Marlowe, than that the theatrical managers of the time, so much to their indignation, should have rejected his plays in favour of the productions of non-academic workmen. Peele's blank verse, which was so much admired by his academic contemporaries, gives us a fair idea of the environment out of which Marlowe emerged, and increases our admiration of that mighty genius. It deserves the praise of 'smoothness' which it received from Campbell; it is graceful and elegant, but it has neither sinew nor majesty. I have quoted what seems to me to be the most favourable example of his use of this instrument, an address prefixed to one of his plays, The Tale of Troy, published in 1599, two years after the production of Tamburlaine. The

inspiration of the subject seems to have contributed a fire and a freedom of movement which is generally lacking in Peele's blank verse. In using this form at all, Peele essayed an instrument which was beyond his powers and unsuited to his bent of feeling. His was an adroit, subtle, versatile mind, without massiveness or passionate intensity, and he is seen at his best in the expression of graceful and humorous fancies. He was not however a follower of Marlowe in the application of blank verse to tragic purposes. In the Arraignment of Paris, the prologue spoken by Ate is in that metre, and it is also adopted by Paris in his speech before the council of the Gods, and by Diana in her description of the nymph Eliza, a 'figure' of Queen Elizabeth. This seems to show that among the University poets, from whose circle Marlowe burst to reform the common stage, blank verse was considered the appropriate instrument for tragic and stately speeches. But it was not apparently till after the production of Tamburlaine that Peele wrote whole plays in blank verse. David and Bethsabe is the best of these, and is full of happy touches in the tender scenes, but the firmness of a masterly hand is wanting. The verse seldom moves far without having recourse to the crutch of weak and superfluous epithets. In the Battle of Alcazar Peele tried, perhaps at the instigation of his hard taskmasters the theatrical managers, to make up by sound and fury for his want of natural strength in the expression of passion, and thereby furnished Shakespeare with the model for some of the best-known extravagances of Pistol. Peele has also left us in Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes an example of the jigging measure of fourteen syllables, from which Marlowe aspired to redeem the stage. It cannot be said that Peele helped forward the great literary movement of his time; he is perhaps the best illustration of the utmost that could be done by a cultured man of facile talent and poetic temperament before the advent of the great Elizabethans.

W. MINTO.

A FAREWELL TO SIR JOHN NORRIS AND SIR FRANCIS
DRAKE.

Have done with care, my hearts! aboard amain,
With stretching sails to plough the swelling waves ;
Bid England's shore and Albion's chalky cliffs
Farewell; bid stately Troynovant adieu,
Where pleasant Thames from Isis silver head
Begins her quiet glide, and runs along

To that brave bridge, the bar that thwarts her course,
Near neighbour to the ancient stony tower,

The glorious hold that Julius Caesar built.

Change love for arms; girt to your blades, my boys!
Your rests and muskets take, take helm and targe,
And let God Mars his consort make you mirth-
The roaring cannon, and the brazen trump,
The angry-sounding drum, the whistling fife,
The shrieks of men, the princely courser's neigh.
Now vail your bonnets to your friends at home;
Bid all the lovely British dames adieu,
That under many a standard well-advanced
Have hid the sweet alarms and braves of love;
Bid theatres and proud tragedians,

Bid Mahomet, Scipio, and mighty Tamburlaine,
King Charlemagne, Tom Stukely, and the rest,
Adieu. To arms, to arms, to glorious arms!
With noble Norris, and victorious Drake,
Under the sanguine cross, brave England's badge,
To propagate religious piety

And hew a passage with your conquering swords
By land and sea, wherever Phoebus' eye,
Th' eternal lamp of Heaven, lends us light;
By golden Tagus, or the western Ind,
Or through the spacious bay of Portugal,
The wealthy ocean-main, the Tyrrhene sea,
From great Alcides' pillars branching forth,
Even to the gulf that leads to lofty Rome;
There to deface the pride of Antichrist,
And pull his paper walls and popery down-
A famous enterprise for England's strength,

To steel your swords on Avarice' triple crown,
And cleanse Augeas' stalls in Italy.

To arms, my fellow-soldiers! Sea and land
Lie open to the voyage you intend ;

And sea or land, bold Britons, far or near,
Whatever course your matchless virtue shapes,
Whether to Europe's bounds or Asian plains,
To Afric's shore, or rich America,

Down to the shades of deep Avernus' crags,
Sail on, pursue your honours to your graves.
Heaven is a sacred covering for your heads,
And every climate virtue's tabernacle.
To arms, to arms, to honourable arms!

Hoist sails, weigh anchors up, plough up the seas
With flying keels, plough up the land with swords.
In God's name venture on; and let me say
To you, my mates, as Caesar said to his,

Striving with Neptune's hills; 'You bear,' quoth he,
Caesar and Caesar's fortune in your ships.'

You follow them, whose swords successful are;
You follow Drake, by sea the scourge of Spain,
The dreadful dragon, terror to your foes,
Victorious in his return from Ind,

In all his high attempts unvanquished.
You follow noble Norris, whose renown,
Won in the fertile fields of Belgia,

Spreads by the gates of Europe to the courts
Of Christian kings and heathen potentates.

You fight for Christ, and England's peerless Queen,
Elizabeth, the wonder of the world,

Over whose throne the enemies of God

Have thundered erst their vain successless braves.

O ten times treble happy men, that fight

Under the cross of Christ and England's Queen,
And follow such as Drake and Norris are!
All honours do this cause accompany,
All glory on these endless honours waits.
These honours and this glory shall He send
Whose honour and whose glory you defend.
D d

VOL. I.

ROBERT GREENE.

[ROBERT GREENE was born at Norwich, probably in 1560. He was a graduate of St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1578, but took his degree of M.A. five years later at Clare Hall. After this he travelled in Italy and Spain, and, returning to London, gained his living as a playwright and pamphleteer. He died in Dowgate, Sept. 3, 1592. His first work was the novel of Mamillia, 1580, which was followed by a rapid succession of tales, poems, plays, and pamphlets. His most remarkable lyrics appeared in Menaphon, 1587; Never Too Late, 1500; and The Mourning Garment, 1590.]

It has been well said that the lyrical brightness of Greene's smaller poems compared with the tame versification of his plays, is as surprising as 'when an indifferent walker proves a light and graceful runner.' Yet the reason is perhaps not very far to find; personally a lover of riotous companions and outrageous surfeiting, this hopeless reprobate was imaginatively one of the purest of idyllic dreamers. There was an absolute chasm between the foulness of his life and the serenity of his intellect, and, at least until he became a repentant character, no literary theme interested him very much, unless it was interpenetrated with sentimental beauty. This element inspired what little was glowing and eloquent in his plays; it tinctured the whole of his pastoral romances with a rosy Euphuism, and it turned the best of his lyrics to the pure fire and air of poetry. From his long sojourn in Italy and Spain he brought back a strong sense of the physical beauty of men and women, of fruits, flowers, and trees, of the coloured atmosphere and radiant compass of a southern heaven. All these things passed into his prose and into his verse, so that in many of the softer graces and innocent voluptuous indiscretions of the Elizabethan age he is as much a forerunner as Marlowe is in audacity of thought and the thunders of a massive line. For the outward part of his prose style he