GEORGE PEELE.

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of his age. His scholarly and profuse intellect poured out its poems, plays, translations, in ceaseless fertility. He addressed the queen in stately lines at Theobald's; he wept over Sidney; he hailed the return of the Earl of Essex, and, perhaps, shared the benefactions of Southampton. In a fine

sonnet he celebrates Watson. His inventive fancy gave ideas to Shakspeare and to Milton; his Old Wives' Tale may have suggested Comus; and from his historical tragedies Shakspeare boldly borrowed language, manners, characters, and, with his matchless alchemy, transmuted the inferior metal into refined gold. It was with intense and jealous rage, no doubt, that Greene, Marlowe, and Peele felt the unscrupulous audacity of the Bard of Avon, saw him snatch from them their crude conceptions and mould them into immortal forms. Almost with his dying hand, Greene exclaims against the "upstart crow beautified with our feathers," his "tyger's heart," his bombast and blank verse (1592), and reviles "the only Shake-scene in a country;" and Shakspeare could not have heard the sad remonstrance without a pang.

Yet the intellect from which Shakspeare and Milton borrowed, which Sidney and

Southampton admired, could not have been an inferior one. Peele's want of native refinement kept him from rising high; but many of his verses are tuneful, and some of his thoughts pure and chaste. His opening speech in Edward I. has given the key-note to many a Shakspearian scene:

Illustrious England, ancient seat of kings,
Whose chivalry hath royalized thy fame,
That, sounding bravely through terrestrial vale,
Proclaiming conquests, spoils, and victories,
Rings glorious echoes through the farthest world!
What warlike nation, train'd in feats of arms,
What barbarous people, stubborn or untam'd,
What climate under the meridian signs,
Or frozen zone under his brumal stage,
Erst have not quak'd and trembled at the name
Of Britain and her mighty conquerors?

Ages have passed since Peele sounded on the stage the martial glories of his country. The fashion has never died; and annually, when a Prime Minister relates in Guildhall the story of the year, he is expected to stir all hearts by an allusion to his country's martial vigor. A fortress in the midst of many foes, England still seems unable to sink into the arms of peace.

Here is the original of Comus. The two brothers find their sister Delia enchanted, and she refuses to recognize them.

AN EARLIER COMUS.

Enter two Brothers.

First Bro. O brother, see where Delia is!

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Second Bro. O Delia, happy are we to see thee here! Delia. What tell you me of Delia, prating swains? I know no Delia, nor know I what you mean; Ply you your work, or else you are like to smart. Second Bro. Peace, brother, peace, this wild enchanter

Hath ravish'd Delia of her senses clean,

And she forgets that she is Delia.

At last, her lover, Eumenides, sets her free, and claims her hand:

Thou fairest flower of these western parts,
Whose beauty so reflecteth in my sight

As doth a crystal mirror in the sun,

For thy sweet sake I have crost the frozen Rhine:
Leaving fair Po, I sail'd up Danuby

As far as Saba, whose entrauncing streams
Cut twixt the Tartars and the Russians;

These have I crost for thee, fair Delia,

Then grant me that which I have sued so long.

She consents. A wild incident follows; and then they sing:

We will to Thessaly with thankful hearts.

In Polyhymnia Peele laments:

Sidney, at which name I sigh,

Because I lack the Sidney that I love,
And yet I love the Sidneys that survive.

SONGS OF THE POETS.

Robert Greene.-Wild, frantic, graceful, beautiful, the genius of these dissipated contemporaries of Shakspeare often breaks out into the sweetest and most touching of songs. Candor was at least their distinguishing trait. They strove to express all they felt in the softest and purest verse. Now they reach the highest strain of wickedness, and next breathe forth the deep remorse, the dream of purity, the noblest impulses that can enter the mind of man. Robert Greene, who had just abandoned the wife whom he loved, to perish of dissipation in London, writes thus:

Sweete are the thoughts that savour of content;
The quiet minde is richer than a crowne;
Sweete are the nights in careless slumber spent.
The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frowne.
Such sweete content, such minde, such sleepe, such
blis,

Beggers injoy, when princes oft do mis.

The homely house that harbours quiet rest,

The cottage that affoords no pride nor care, The meane that grees with country musicke best, The sweet consort of mirth and musick's fare, Obscured life sets downe a type of blis,

A minde content both crowne and kingdom is.

A most touching song is his Mother to her Infant:

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;

When thou art old there's griefe enough for thee, etc.

Marlowe,* the rival, almost the superior, of Shakspeare, was another wild profligate, like Greene. He died 1592, the victim of his follies, stabbed in a fray. He was scarcely thirty-two years old, was the associate of Peele, Greene, Nash, Shakspeare, and knew Walsingham. Marlowe declaimed in regular and powerful verse in his plays all the mad impulses of his nature. His language is plain, his fancy boundless. His Doctor Faustus (1594) is a savage dream of a lost soul that lives only in the maddest sensuality; yet Marlowe wrote the following tender lines so often ascribed to Shakspeare:

Come, live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals, etc.

* Dyce's Marlowe (1850).