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 SHAKSPEARE 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS TIMES: 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE POET; 
 
 CRITICISMS ON HIS GENIUS AND WRITINGS; A NEW CHRONOLOGY OF HIS PLAYS; 
 
 A DISQUISITION ON THE OBJECT OF HIS SONNETS; 
 
 AND 
 
 A HISTORY OF 
 
 THE MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND AMUSEMENTS, SUPERSTITIONS, 
 
 POETRY, AND ELEGANT LITERATURE OF HIS AGE. 
 
 By NATHAN 'DRAKE, M.D. 
 
 AUTHOR or " LITERARY HOURS," AND OF " ESSAYS ON PERIODICAL LITERATURE.' 
 
 Triumph my Britain ! thou hast one to show. 
 To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. — 
 
 The applause, dehght, the wonder of our stage, 
 
 My Shakspeare, rise ! Ben Jonson. 
 
 The very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. 
 
 SuAKSrEAKjP. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRAND. 
 
 1817.
 
 ^w^ 
 
 Printedby A. Strahan, 
 Printers-Street, London.
 
 
 
 & 
 Q 
 
 en 
 
 4J 
 
 V.I 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Though two centuries have now elapsed, since the 
 death of Shakspoarc, no attempt has hitherto been made 
 to render him the medium for a comprehensive and con- 
 nected view of the Times in which he lived. 
 
 Yet, if any man be allowed to fill a station thus con- 
 spicuous and important, Shakspeare has undoubtedly the 
 best claim to the distinction ; not only from his pre-emi- 
 nence as a dramatic poet, but from the intiinate relation 
 which his works bear to the manners, customs, super- 
 stitions, and amusements of his ag-e. 
 
 Struck with the interest which a work of this kind, 
 if properly executed, might possess, the author was 
 induced, several years ago, to commence the under- 
 taking, with the express intention of blending with the 
 detail of manners, &c. such a portion of criticism, 
 biography, and literary history, as should render the 
 whole still more attractive and complete. 
 
 In attempting this, it has been his aim to place Shak- 
 speare in the fore-ground of the picture, and to throw 
 around him, in groups more or less distinct and full, 
 
 A 2 
 
 ^SZt79
 
 IV 
 
 the various objects of his design ; giving them promi- 
 nency and Ught, according to their greater or smaller 
 connection with the principal figure. 
 
 More especially has it been his wish, to infuse through- 
 out the whole plan, whether considered in respect to its 
 entire scope, or to the parts of which it is composed, 
 that degree of unitv and integrity, of relative proportion 
 and just bearing, without which neither harmony, sim- 
 plicity, nor effect, can be expected, or produced. 
 
 With a view, also, to distinctness and perspicuity of 
 elucidation, the whole has been distributed into three 
 parts or pictures, entitled, — " Shakspeare in Strat- 
 ford ;" — "Shakspeare in London;" — "Shakspeare 
 IN Retirement;" — which, though inseparably united, 
 as foiTfning but portions of the same story, and harmo- 
 nized by the same means, have yet, both in subject 
 and execution, a peculiar character to support. 
 
 The Jirst represents our Poet in the days of his youth, 
 on the banks of his native Avon, in the midst of rural 
 imagery, occupations, and amusements ; in the second, 
 we behold him in the capital of his country, in the 
 centre of rivalry and competition, in the active pursuit 
 of reputation and glory ; and in the third, we accom- 
 pany the venerated bard to the shades of retirement, to 
 the bosom of domestic peace, to the enjoyment of unsul- 
 lied fame. 
 
 It has, therefore, been the business of the author, in 
 accordancy with his plan, to connect these delineations
 
 with their relative accompaniments ; to incorporate, for 
 instance, with the first, what he had to relate of the 
 countrif, as it existed m the age of Shakspeare ; its man- 
 ners, customs, and characters ; its festivals, diversions, 
 and many of its superstitions ; opening and closing the 
 suhject with the biography of the poet, and binding 
 the intermediate parts, not only by a perpetual reference 
 to his drama, but by their own constant and direct ten- 
 dency towards the developement of the one object in 
 view. 
 
 With the second, which commences with Shakspeare's 
 introduction to the stage as an actor, is combined the 
 poetic, dramatic, and general literature of the times, 
 together with an account of metropolitan manners and 
 diversions, and a full and continued criticism on the 
 poems and plays of our bard. 
 
 After a survey, therefore, of the Literary world, under 
 the heads of Bibliography, Philology, Criticism, History, 
 Romantic, and Miscellaneous Literature, follows a View of 
 the Poetry of the same period, succeeded by a critique 
 on the juvenile productions of Shakspeare, and includ- 
 ing a biographical sketch of Lord Southampton, and a 
 new hypothesis on the origin and object of the Sonnets. 
 
 Of the immediately subsequent description of diver- 
 sions, &c. the Economy of the Stage fomis a leading 
 feature, as preparatory to a History of Dramatic Poetry, 
 previous to the year 15.90 ; and this is again introductory 
 to a discussion concerning the Period when Shakspeare
 
 VI 
 
 commenced a writer for the theatre ; to a new chronology 
 of his phiys, and to a criticism on each drama ; a depart- 
 ment which is interspersed with dissertations on the 
 fairij imjiliology , the ajjpariftom, the ivifchcrqfl, and 
 the jna^ic of Shakspeare ; portions of popvdar creduhty 
 which had been, in reference to this distribution, omitted 
 in detaihng- the superstitions of the country. 
 
 This second part is then terminated by a summary of 
 Shakspeare's dramatic character, by a brief view of dra- 
 matic poetry durmg his coiuiectlon >vlth the stage, and 
 by the biography of the poet to the close of his residence 
 in London. 
 
 The third and last of these delineations is, unfortu- 
 nately, but too short, being altogether occupied with 
 the few circumstances which distinguish the last three 
 years of the life of our bard, with a review of his dispo- 
 sition and moral character, and with some notice of the 
 first tributes paid to his memory. 
 
 It will readily be admitted, that the materials for the 
 greater part of this arduous task are abundant ; but it 
 must also be granted, that they are dispersed through a 
 vast variety of distant and unconnected departments of 
 literature ; and that to draw forth, arrange, and give a 
 luminous disposition to, these masses of scattered intel- 
 ligence, is an achievement of no slight magnitude, espe- 
 cially when it is considered, that no step in the progress 
 of such an vmdertaking can be made, independent of a 
 constant recurrence to authorities.
 
 Vll 
 
 How far the author is quahfied for the due execution 
 of his desio n, remains for the puhhc to decide ; hut it 
 may, without ostentation, be told, that his leisure, for 
 the last thirty years, has been, in a great degree, devoted 
 to a line of study immediately associated with the subject ; 
 and that his attachment to old English literature has led 
 him to a familiarity with the only sources from which, 
 on such a topic, authentic illustration is to be derived. 
 
 He will likewise venture to observe, that, in the style 
 of criticism which he has pursued, it has been his object, 
 an ambitious one it is true, to unfold, in a manner more 
 distmct than has hitherto been effected, the peculiar 
 character of the poet's drama ; and, lastly, to produce a 
 work, which, while it may satisfy the poetical anti- 
 quary, shall, from the variety, interest, and integrity of 
 its component parts, be equally gratifying to the general 
 reader. 
 
 Hadleigh, Suffolk, 
 April "ith, 1817.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 PART I. 
 SHAKSPEARE IN STRATFORD. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 Birth of Shakspeare — Account of his Family — Orthography of his Name. 
 
 Page 1 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 The House in which Shakspeare was bom — Plague at Stratford, June 1564 — 
 Shakspeare educated at the Free-school of Stratford — State of Education, 
 and of Juvenile Literature in the Country at this period — Extent of Shak- 
 speare's acquirements as a Scholar. - - - 21 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 Shakspeare, after leaving School, follows his Father's Trade — Statement of 
 Aubrey — Probably present in his Twelfth Year at Kenelworth, when 
 Elizabeth visited the Earl of Leicester — Tradition of Aubrey concerning 
 him — Whether there is reason to suppose that, after leaving his Father, he 
 was placed in an Attorney's Office, who was likewise Seneschal or Steward 
 of some Manor — Anecdotes of Shakspeare — Allusions in his Works to 
 Barton, Wilnecotte, and Barston, Villages in Warwickshire — Earthquake 
 in 1580 alluded to — ^\Tiether, after leaving School, he acquired any 
 Knowledge of the French and Italian languages. - - - 34 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 Shakspeare married to Anne Hathaway — Account of the Hathaways — Cot- 
 tage at Shottery — Birth of his eldest Child, Susanna — Hamnet and 
 Judith baptized — Anecdote of Shakspeare — Shakspeare apparently settled 
 in the Country. . . ,. ... 59 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 A View of Country-Life during the Age of Shakspeare — Its Manners mid 
 Ciistoms — Rural Characters ; the Country-Gentleman — the Country- 
 Coxcomb — the Country-Clergyman — the Country-Schoolmaster — the 
 Farmer or Yeoman, his Mode of Living — the Huswif^, her Domestic 
 Economy — the Farmer's Heir — the Poor Copyholder — the Downright 
 Clown, or Plain Country-Boor. - ... 68 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 A View of Country -Life during the Age of Shakspeare — Manners and Cus- 
 toms conthitied — Rural Holydays and Festivals; New-Yeai-'s Day — 
 Twelfth Day — Rock-Day — Plough-Monday — Shrove-tide — Easter-tide 
 
 — Hock-tide — May-Day — Whitsuntide — Ales; Leet-ale — Lamb-ale — 
 Bride-ale — Clerk-ale — Church-ale — Whitsun-ale — Sheep-shearing Feast 
 
 — Candlemas-Day — Harvest-Home — Seed-cake Feast — Martinmas — 
 Christinas. - - - - - 123 
 
 CHAP. vn. 
 
 A View of Country-Life during the Age of Shakspeare — Manners and Cus- 
 toms, continued — Wakes — Fairs — Weddipgs — Christenings — Burials. 
 
 209 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 View of Country- Life during the Age of Shakspeare, continued — Diversions — 
 The Itinerant Stage — Cotswold Games — Hawking — Hunting — Fowl- 
 ing — Fishing — Horse-racing — The Quintaine — The Wild-goose Chase 
 — Hurling — Shovel-board — Juvenile Sports — Barley-breake — Parish-Top. 
 
 246
 
 XI 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 View of Country-Life during the Age of Shakspeare, continued —An Account 
 of some of its Superstitions; Winter-Night's Conversation — Peculiar 
 Periods devoted to Superstition — St. Paul's Day — St. Swithen's Day — 
 St. Mark's Day — Childermas — St. Valentine's Day — Midsummer-Eve — 
 Michaelas —All Hallow-Eve —St. Withold — Omens— Charms — Sympa- 
 thies — Superstitious Cures — Miscellaneous Superstitions. - 314 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 Biography of Shakspeare resumed — His Irregularities — Deer-stealing in 
 Sir Thomas Lucy's Park— Account of the Lucy family —Daisy-hill, the 
 Keeper's Lodge, where Shakspeare was confined, on the Charge of steaUng 
 Deer— Shakspeare's Revenge— Ballad on Lucy — Severe Prosecution by 
 Sir Thomas — never forgotten by Shakspeare —this Cause, and probably 
 also Debt, as his Father was now in reduced Circumstances, induced him 
 to leave the Country for London about 1586 — Remarks on this Removal. 
 
 401 
 
 PART IL 
 
 SHAKSPEARE IN LONDON. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 Shakspeare's Arrival in London about the Year 1586, when twenty-two 
 Years of Age —Leaves his Family at Stratford, visiting them occasionally 
 — His Introduction to the Stage —His Merits as an Actor. - 413 
 
 CHAP. IL 
 
 Shakspeare commences a Writer of Poetry, probably about the year 1587, by 
 the composition of his Venus and Adonis — Historical Outline of Polite 
 Literature, during the Age of Shakspeare — General passion for Letters — 
 BibUography — Shakspeare's Attachment to Books — Philology— Criticism 
 —Shakspeare's Progress in both — History, general, local, and personal, 
 Shakspeare's Acquaintance with — Miscellaneous Literature. - 426
 
 xu 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 View of Romantic Literature during the Age of Shakspeare — Shakspeare's 
 Attachment to, and Use of, Romances, Tales, and Ballads. - 518 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 View of Miscellaneous Poetry during the same period. - - - 594 
 
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 SHAKSPEARE AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE IN STRATFORD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIRTH OF SHAKSPEARE HIS FAMILY THE ORTHOGRAPHY OF HIS NAME. 
 
 William SHAKSPEARE, the object almost of our idolatry as 
 a dramatic poet, was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, 
 on the iJ3d of April, 1564, and he was baptized on the 26th of the 
 same month. 
 
 Of his family, not much that is certain can be recorded; but it 
 would appear, from an instrument in the College of Heralds, con- 
 firming the grant of a coat of arms to John Shakspeare in 1599, that 
 his great grandfather had been rewarded by Henry the Seventh, 
 " for his faithefuU and approved service, with lands and tenements 
 given to him in those parts of Warwickshire, where," proceeds this 
 document, " they have continued by some descents in good reputation 
 and credit." Notwithstanding this assertion, however, no such grants 
 after a minute examination, made by Mr. Malone in the chapel of 
 the Rolls, has been discovered ; whence we have reason to infer, that 
 the heralds have been mistaken in their statement, and that the 
 bounty of the monarch was directed through a different channel. 
 From the language, indeed, of two rough draughts of a prior grant of 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 arms to John Shakspeare in 1596, it is probable that the service 
 alhided to was of a miHtary cast, for it is there expressly said, that 
 he was rewarded "for his faithful and valiant service," a term, perhaps, 
 implying the heroism of our poet's ancestor in the field of Bosworth. 
 
 That the property, thus bestowed upon the family of Shakspeare, 
 descended to John, the father of the poet, and contributed to his 
 influence and respectability, there is no reason to doubt. From the 
 register, indeed, and public writings relating to Stratford, Mr. Rowe 
 has justly inferred, that the Shakspeares were of good figure and 
 fashion there, and were considered as gentlemen. We may presume, 
 however, that the patrimony of Mr. John Shakspeare, the parent of 
 our great dramatist, was not very considerable, as he found the profits 
 of business necessary to his support. He was, in fact, a wool-stapler, 
 and, there is reason to suppose, in a large way ; for he was early 
 chosen a member of the corporation of his town, a situation usually 
 connected with respectable circumstances, and soon after,^he filled the 
 office of high bailiff, or chief magistrate of that body. The record of 
 these promotions has been thus given from the books of the cor- 
 poration. 
 
 " Jan. 10, in the 6th year of the reign of our sovereign lady Queen 
 Elizabeth, John Shakspeare passed his Chamberlain's accounts." 
 
 " At the Hall holden the eleventh day of September, in the eleventh 
 year of the reign of our sovereign lady Elizabeth, 1569, were present 
 Mr. John Shakspeare, High Bailiff."* 
 
 It was during the period of his filling this important office, that he 
 first obtained a grant of arms ; and, in a note annexed to the subse- 
 quent patent of 1596, now in the College of Armsf , it is stated that 
 he was likewise a justice of the peace, and possessed of lands and 
 tenements to the amount of 500/. The final confirmation of this 
 grant took place in 1599, in which his shield and coat are described 
 to be. In a field of gould upon abend sable, a speare of the first, the 
 
 * Communicated to Mr. Malone by the Rev. Mr. Davenport, vicar of Strattbrd-upou- 
 Avon. 
 f Vincent, vol. clvii. p. 24.
 
 3 
 
 2)oynt upr^ard, hedded argent ; and for his crest or cognisance, A 
 falcon -idth his 'd't/ngs displai/cd, standing on a xirethe of his coullers, 
 supporting a speare armed hedded, or steeled sylver.* 
 
 Mr. John Shakspeare married, though in what year is not ac- 
 curately known, the daughter and heir of Robert Arden, of 
 Wellingcote, in the county of Warwick, who is termed, in the 
 Grant of Arms of 1596, " a gentleman of worship." The Arden, or 
 Ardern family, appears to have been of considerable antiquity ; for, 
 in Fuller's Worthies, Rob. Arden de Bromwich, ar. is among the 
 names of the gentry of this county returned by the commissioners 
 in the twelfth year of King Henry the Sixth, 1433 ; and in the 
 eleventh and sixteenth years of Elizabeth, A. D. 1562 and 1568, 
 Sim. Ardern, ar. and Edw. Ardrn, ar. are enumerated, by the same 
 author, among the sheriffs of Warwickshire, f It is well known 
 that the woodland part of this county was formerly denominated 
 Ardern, though, for the sake of euphony, frequently softened 
 towards the close of the sixteenth century, into the smoother 
 appellation of Arden ; hence it is not improbable, that the sup- 
 position of Mr. Jacob, who reprinted, in 1770, the Tragedy of Arden 
 of Feversham, a play which was originally published in 1592, may 
 be correct ; namely that Shakspeare, the poet, was descended by the 
 female line from the tmfortunate individual whose tragical death is 
 the subject of this drama ; for though the name, of this gentleman 
 was originally Ardern, he seems early to have experienced the fate 
 of the county district, and to have had his surname harmonized by a 
 similar omission. In consequence of this marriage, Mr. John 
 Shakspeare and his posterity were allowed, by the College of 
 Heralds, to impale their arms with the ancient arms of the Ardrns of 
 Wellingcote. % 
 
 Of the issue of John Shakspeare by this connection, the accounts 
 are contradictory and perplexed ; nor is it absolutely ascertained, 
 
 *■ See the instrument, at full length, Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 146, edit, of 1803. 
 f The History of the Worthies of England, part iii. fol. 131, 132. 
 X See Shalispeare's coat of arms, Reed's Shaksp. vol. i. p. 14-6. 
 
 B 2
 
 whether he had only one wife, or whether he might not have had 
 two, or even three. Mr. Rowe, whose narrative has been usually 
 followed, has given him ten children, among whom he considers 
 William the poet, as the eldest son. * The Register, however, of the 
 parish of Stratford-upon-Avon, which commences in 1558, is 
 incompatible with this statement ; for, we there find eleven children 
 ascribed to John Shakspeare, ten baptized, and one, the baptism of 
 which had taken place before the commencement of the Register, 
 buried, f The dates of these baptisms, and of two or three other 
 events, recorded in this Register, it will be necessary, for the sake 
 of elucidation, to transcribe ; 
 
 " Jone, daughter of John Shakspere, was baptized Sept. 15, 1558. 
 " Margaret, daughter of John Shakspere, was buried April 30, 1563. 
 " William, son of John Shakspere, was baptized April 26, 1564. 
 " Gilbert, son of John Shakspere, was baptized Oct. 3, 1566. 
 " Jone\, daughter of John Shakspere, was baptized April 15, 1569. 
 " Anne, daughter of Mr. John Shakspere, was baptized Sept. 28, 1571. 
 " Richard, son of Mr. John Shakspere, was baptized March 11, 1573-4. 
 " Edmund, son of Mr. John Shakspere, was baptized May 3, 1580. 
 " John Shakspere and Margery Roberts were married Nov. 25, 1584. 
 " Margery, wife of John Shakspere, was buried Oct. 29, 1587. 
 " Ursula, daughter of John Shakspere, was baptized March 11, 1588. 
 " Humphrey, son of John Shakspere, was baptized May 24, 1590. 
 " Philip, son of John Shakspere, was baptized Sept. 21, 1591. 
 " Mr. John Shakspere was buried Sept. 8, 1601. 
 " Mary Shakspere, widow, was buried Sept. 9, 1608." 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 58, 59. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 133. 
 
 I '* It was common in the age of Queen Elizabeth to give the same Christian name to 
 two children successively. This was undoubtedly done in the present instance. The 
 -former Jone having probably died, (though I can find no entry of her burial in the 
 Register, nor indeed of many of the other children of John Shakspeare) the name of 
 Jone, a very favourite one in those days, was transferred to another new-born child.'-' — 
 Malone from Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 134. 
 
 11
 
 Now it is evident, that if the ten children which were baptized, 
 according to this Register, between the years 1558 and 1591, are to 
 be ascribed to the father of our poet, he must necessarily have had 
 eleven, in consequence of the record of the decease of his daughter 
 Margaret. He must also have had three wives, for we find his 
 second wife, Margery, died in 1587, and the death of a third, Mary, 
 a widow, is noticed in 1608. 
 
 It was suggested to Mr. Malone*, that very probably, Mr. John 
 Shakspeare had a son born to him, as well as a daughter, before the 
 commencement of the Register, and that this his eldest son, was, as 
 is customary, named after his father, John ; a supposition which, 
 (as no other child was baptized by f he Christian name of the old 
 gentleman,) carries some credibility with it, and was subsequently 
 acquiesced in by Mr. Malone himself. 
 
 In this case, therefore, the marriage recorded in the Register, is 
 that of John Shakspeare the younger with Margery Roberts, and the 
 three children born between 1588 and 1591, Ursula, Mumphrey, and 
 Philip, the issue of this John, not by the first, but by a second 
 marriage ; for as Mai'gery Shakspeare died in 1587, and Ursula was 
 baptized in 1588-9, these children must have been by the Mary 
 Shakspeare, whose death is mentioned as occurring in 1608, and as 
 she is there denominated a mdow^ the younger John must conse- 
 quently have died before that date. 
 
 The result of this arrangement will be, that the father of our poet 
 had only nine children, and that William was not the eldest, but 
 the second son. 
 
 On either plan, however, the account of Mr. Rowe is equally 
 inaccurate ; and as the introduction of an elder son involves a variety 
 of suppositions, and at the same time nothing improbable is attached 
 to the consideration of this part of the Register in the light in which 
 it usually appears, that is, as allusive solely to the father, it will, 
 we think, be the better and the safer mode, to rely upon it, according 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 136.
 
 6 
 
 to its more direct and literal import. This determination will be 
 greatly strengthened by reflecting, that old Mr. Shakspeare was, on 
 the authority of the last instrument granting him a coat of arms, 
 living in 1599; that on the testimony of the Register, taken in the 
 common acceptation, he was not buried until September 1601 ; and 
 that in no part of the same document is the epithet younger annexed 
 to the name of John Shakspeare, a mark of distinction which there 
 is. every reason to suppose would have been introduced, had the 
 father and a son of the same Christian name been not only living at 
 the same time in the same town, but the latter likewise a parent. 
 
 That the circumstances of Mr. John Shakspeare were, at the 
 period of his marriage, and for several years afterwards, if not 
 affluent, yet easy and respectable, there is eveiy reason to suppose, 
 from his having filled offices of the first trust and importance in his 
 native town ; but, from the same authority which has induced us to 
 draw this inference, another of a very different kind, with regard to 
 a subsequent portion of his life, may with equal confidence be taken. 
 In the books of the corporation of Stratford it is stated, that — 
 
 " At the hall holden Nov. 19th, in the 21st year of the reign 
 of our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, it is ordained, that every 
 Alderman shall be taxed to pay weekly 4c?., saving John Shakspeare 
 and Robert Bruce, who shall not be taxied to pay any thing ; and 
 every burgess to pay 2</." Again, 
 
 " At the hall holden on the 6th day of September, in the 28th 
 year of our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth: 
 
 " At this hall William Smith and Richard Courte are chosen to 
 be Aldermen in the places of John Wheler and John Shakspeare, 
 for that Mr. Wheler doth desire to be put out of tlie company, and 
 Mr. Shakspeare doth not come to the halls, when they be Avarned, 
 nor hath not done of long time."* 
 
 The conclusion to be drawn from these memoranda must un- 
 avoidably be, that, in 1579, ten years after he had served the office 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 5S.
 
 of High Bailiff, his situation, in a pecuniary light, was so much 
 reduced, that, on this account, he was excused the weekly payment 
 of 4fA; and that, in 1586, the same distress still subsisting, and 
 perhaps in an aggravated degree, he was, on the plea of non- 
 attendance, dismissed the corporation. 
 
 The causes of this unhappy change in his circumstances cannot 
 now, with the exception of the burthen of a large and increasing 
 family, be ascertained ; but it is probable, that to this period is to 
 be referred, if there be any truth in the tradition, the report of 
 Aubrey, that " William Shakspeare's father was a butcher." This 
 anecdote, he affirms, was received from the neighbours of the 
 bard, and, on this account, merits some consideration. * 
 
 We are indebted to Mr. Rowe for the first intimation concern- 
 ing the trade of John Shakspeare ; his declaration, derived also 
 from tradition, that he was a " considerable dealer in wool," appears 
 confirmed by subsequent research. From a window in a room of 
 the premises which originally formed part of the house at Stratford, 
 in which Shakspeare the poet was born, and a part of which premises 
 has for many years been occupied as a public-house, with the 
 sign of the Swan and Maidenhead, a pane of glass was taken, about 
 five and forty years ago, by Mr. Peyton, the then master of the 
 adjoining Inn called The White Lion. This pane, now in the pos- 
 session of his son, is nearly six inches in diameter, and perfect, and on 
 it are painted the arms of the merchants of the wool-staple — Nebide 
 on a chief gules, a lion passant or. It appears, from the style in 
 which it is finished, to have been executed about the time of 
 Shakspeare, the father, and is undoubtedly a strong corroborative 
 proof of the authenticity of Mr. Howe's relation, f 
 
 * MS. Aubrey, Mus. Ashmol. Oxon. Lives, p. ]. fol. 78, a. (Inter Cod. Dugdal.) 
 Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii, p. 213. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 214. and Ireland's Picturesque Views on the Upper or 
 Warwickshire Avon, p. 190, 191. Since this passage was written, however, the proof 
 which it was supposed to contain, has been completely annihilated. " If John Shaks- 
 peare's occupation in life," observes Mr. Wheeler, « want confirmation, tliis circumstance
 
 8 
 
 These traditionary anecdotes, though apparently contradictory, 
 may easily admit of reconcilement, if we consider, that between the 
 employment of a wool-dealer, and a butcher, there is no small 
 affinity ; " few occupations," observes Mr. Malone, " can be named 
 which are more naturally connected with each other." * It is 
 hio-hly probable, therefore, that during the period of John Shaks- 
 peare's distress, which we know to have existed in 1579 when 
 our poet was but fifteen years of age, he might have had recourse 
 to this more humble trade, as in many circumstances connected 
 with liis customary business, and as a great additional means of 
 supporting a very numerous family. 
 
 That the necessity for this union, however, did not exist towards 
 the latter part of his life, there is much reason to imagine, both 
 from the increasing reputation and affluence of his son William, 
 and from the fact of his applying to the College of Heralds, in 
 1596 and 1599, for a grant of arms ; events, of which the first, 
 considering the character of the poet, must almost necessarily have 
 led to, and the second directly pre-supposes, the possession of com- 
 parative competence and respectability. 
 
 The only remaining circumstance which time has spared us, relative 
 to the personal conduct of John Shakspeare, is, that there appears 
 some foundation to believe that, a short time previous to his death, 
 he made a confession of his faith, or spiritual will ; a document still 
 in existence, the discovery and history of which, together with the 
 declaration itself, will not improperly find a place at the close of 
 this commencing chapter of our work. 
 
 About the year 1770, a master-bricklayer, of the name of Mosely, 
 being employed by Mr. Thomas Hart, the fifth in descent, in a 
 
 will unfortunately not answer such a purpose ; for old Thomas Hart constantly declared 
 that his great uncle, Shakspeare Hart, a glazier of this town, who had the new glazing of 
 the chapel windows, where it is known, from Dugdale, that such a shield existed, brought 
 it from thence, and introduced it into his own window." — Wheeler's Guide to Stratford, 
 pp. IS, 14. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol, iii. p. 214.
 
 direct line, from the poet's sister, Joan Hart, to new-tile the house in 
 which he then lived, and which is supposed to be that under whose roof 
 the bard was born, found hidden between the rafters and the tiling of 
 the house, a manuscript, consisting of six leaves, stitched together, in 
 the form of a small book. This manuscript Mosely, who bore the 
 character of an honest and industrious man, gave (without asking or 
 receiving any recompense) to Mr. Peyton, an alderman of Stratford ; 
 and this gentleman very kindly sent it to Mr. Malone, through the 
 medium of the Rev. Mr. Davenport, vicar of Stratford. It had, 
 however, previous to this transmission, unfortunately been deprived 
 of the first leaf, a deficiency which was afterwards supplied by the 
 discovery, that Mosely, who had now been dead about two years, had 
 copied a great portion of it, and from his transcription the introduc- 
 tory parts were supplied. * The daughter of Mosely and Mr. Hart, 
 who were both living in the year 1790, agreed in a perfect recollec- 
 tion of the circumstances attending the discovery of this curious 
 document, which consists of the following fourteen articles. 
 
 1. 
 
 " In the name of God, the Father, Sonne and Holy Ghost, the 
 most holy and blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, the holy host 
 of archangels, angels, patriarchs, prophets, evangelists, apostles, 
 saints, martyrs, and all the celestial court and company of heaven : 
 I John Shakspear, an unworthy member of the holy Catholic reli- 
 gion, being at this my present writing in perfect health of body, and 
 sound mind, memory, and understanding, but calling to mind the 
 uncertainty of life and certainty of death, and that I may be possibly 
 cut off in the blossome of my sins, and called to render an account 
 of all my transgressions externally and internally, and that I may be 
 unprepared for the dreadful trial either by sacrament, pennance, fast- 
 ing, or prayer, or any other purgation whatever, do in the holy pre- 
 sence above specified, of my own free and voluntary accord, make 
 
 * Reed's Shakespeare, vol. iii. p. 197, 1^8. 
 
 vol. I. 
 
 c
 
 10 
 
 and ordaine this my last spiritual will, testament, confession, protest- 
 ation, and confession of faith, hopinge hereby to receive pardon for 
 all my sinnes and offences, and thereby to be made partaker of life 
 everlasting, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my saviour and 
 redeemer, who took upon himself the likeness of man, suffered death, 
 and was crucified upon the crosse, for the redemption of sinners. 
 
 2. 
 « Item, I John Shakspear doe by this present protest, acknowledge, 
 and confess, that in my past life I have been a most abominable and 
 grievous sinner, and therefore unworthy to be forgiven without a true 
 and sincere repentance for the same. But trusting in the manifold 
 mercies of mv blessed Saviour and Redeemer, I am encouraged by 
 relying on his sacred word, to hope for salvation, and be made 
 partaker of his heavenly kingdom, as a member of the celestial 
 company of angels, saints, and martyrs, there to reside for ever and 
 ever in the court of my God. 
 
 3. 
 « Item, I John Shakspear doe by this present protest and declare, 
 that as I am certain I must passe out of this transitory life into an- 
 other that will last to eternity, I do hereby most humbly implore 
 and intreat my good and guardian angell to instruct me in this my 
 solemn preparation, protestation, and confession of faith, at least 
 spiritually, in will adoring and most humbly beseeching my Saviour, 
 that he will be pleased to assist me in so dangerous a voyage, to de- 
 fend me from the snares and deceites of my infernal enemies, and to 
 conduct me to the secure haven of his eternal blisse. 
 
 4. 
 
 " Item, I John Shakspear doe protest that I will also passe out of 
 this life, armed with the last sacrament of extreme unction : the 
 which if through any let or hindrance I should not then be able to 
 have, I doe now also for that time demand and crave the same j be-
 
 1] 
 
 seeching his Divine Majesty that he will be pleased to anoynt my 
 senses both internall and externall with the sacred oyle of his infi- 
 nite mercy, and to pardon me all my sins committed by seeing, 
 speaking, feeling, smelling, hearing, touching, or by any other way 
 whatsoever. 
 
 5. 
 
 " Item, I John Shakspear doe by this present protest, that I will 
 never through any temptation whatsoever despaire of the divine 
 goodness, for the multitude and greatness of my sinnes ; for which, 
 although I confesse that I have deserved hell, yet will I steadfastly 
 hope in God's infinite mercy, knowing that he hath heretofore par- 
 doned many as great sinners as myself, whereof I have good warrant 
 sealed with his sacred mouth, in holy writ, whereby he pronounceth 
 that he is not come to call the just, but sinners. 
 
 6. 
 
 " Item, I John Shakspear do protest, that I do not know that I have 
 ever done any good worke meritorious of life everlasting : and if I 
 have done any, I do acknowledge that I have done it with a great 
 deale of negligence and imperfection ; neither shoidd I have been 
 able to have done the least without the assistance of his divine grace. 
 Wlierefore let the devill remain confounded : for I doe in no wise 
 presume to merit heaven by such good workes alone, but through the 
 merits and bloud of my Lord and Saviour Jesus, shed upon the cross 
 for me most miserable sinner. 
 
 7. 
 " Item, I John Shakspear do protest by this present writing, that 
 I will patiently endure and suffer all kind of infirmity, sickness, yea, 
 and the paine of death itself: wherein if it shoidd happen, which 
 God forbid, that through violence of paine and agony, or by subtilty 
 of the devill, I shoidd fall into any impatience or temptation of blas- 
 phemy, or murrauration against God, or the Catholic faith, or give 
 
 c 2
 
 12 
 
 any signe of bad example, I do henceforth, and for that present, 
 repent me, and am most heartily sorry for the same : and I do re- 
 nounce all the evill whatsoever, which I might have then done or 
 said ; beseeching his divine clemency that he will not forsake me in 
 that grievous and paignefull agony. 
 
 8. 
 " Item, I John Shakspear, by virtue of this present testament, I do 
 pardon all the injuries and offences that any one hath ever done unto 
 me, either in my reputation, life, goods, or any other way whatsoever ; 
 beseeching sweet Jesus to pardon them for the same ; and I do desire 
 that they will doe the like by me whome I have offended or injured 
 in any sort howsoever. 
 
 9. 
 
 " Item, I John Shakspear do here protest, that I do render infinite 
 thanks to his Divine Majesty for all the benefits that I have received, 
 as well secret as manifest, and in particular for the benefit of my 
 creation, redemption, sanctifi cation, conservation, and vocation to the 
 holy knowledge of him and his true Catholic faith : but above all for 
 his so great expectation of me to pennance, Avhen he might most justly 
 have taken me out of this life, when I least thought of it, yea, even 
 then, when I was plunged in the durty puddle of my sinnes. Blessed 
 be therefore and praised, for ever and ever, his infinite patience and 
 charitv. 
 
 10. 
 
 " Item, I John Shakspear do protest, that I am wiUing, yea, I do 
 infinitely desire and humbly crave, that of this my last will and 
 testament the glorious and ever Virgin Mary, mother of God, re- 
 fuge and advocate of sinners, (whom I honour specially above all 
 saints,) may be the chiefe executresse, togeather with these other saints, 
 my patrons, (Saint Winefride,) all whome I invoke and beseech to be 
 present at the hour of my death, that she and they comfort me with
 
 IS 
 
 tlieir desired presence, and crave of sweet Jesus that he will receive 
 my soul into peace. 
 
 11. 
 " Item, In virtue of this present writing, I John Shakspear <lo like- 
 wise most willingly and with all humility constitute and ordaine my 
 good angell for defender and protector of my soul in the dreadfuU day 
 of judgment, when the finall sentence of eternall life or deatli shall be 
 discussed and given : beseeching him that, as my soule was appointed 
 to his custody and protection when I lived, even so he will vouch- 
 safe to defend the same at that houre, and conduct it to eternall 
 bliss. 
 
 12. 
 " Item, I John Shakspear do in like manner pray and beseech all 
 my dear friends, parents, and kinsfolks, by the bowells of our Saviour 
 Jesus Christ, that since it is uncertain what lot will befall me, for fear 
 notwithstanding least by reason of my sinnes I be to pass and stay a 
 long while in purgatory, they will vouchsafe to assist and succour me 
 with their holy prayers and satisfactory workes, especially with the 
 holy sacrifice of the masse, as being the most effectual means to de- 
 liver soules from their torments and paines ; from the which, if I shall 
 by God's gracious goodnesse, and by their vertuous workes, be deli- 
 vered, I do promise that I will not be ungratehxU unto them for so 
 great a benefitt. 
 
 13. 
 
 " Itevi, I John Shakspear doe by this my last will and testament 
 bequeath my soul, as soon as it shall be delivered and loosened from 
 the prison of this my body, to be entombed in the sweet and amorous 
 coffin of the side of Jesus Christ ; and that in this life-giving sepul- 
 cher it may rest and live, perpetually enclosed in that eternall 
 habitation of repose, there to blesse for ever and ever that direfid 
 iron of the lauuce, wliich, like a charge in a censore, formes so sweet
 
 14 
 
 and pleasant a monument witliin the sacred breast of my Lord and 
 Saviour. 
 
 14. 
 
 « Itetn, Lastly I John Shakspear doe protest, that I will willingly 
 accept of death in what manner soever it may befall me, conforming 
 my will unto the will of God ; accepting of the same in satisfaction for 
 my sinnes, and giving thanks unto his Divine Majesty for the life he 
 hath bestowed upon me. And if it please him to prolong or shorten 
 the same, blessed be he also a thousand thousand times ; into whose 
 most holy hands I commend my soul and body, my life and death ; 
 and I beseech him above all things, that he never permit any change 
 to be made by me John Shakspear of this my aforesaid will and 
 testament. Amen. 
 
 " I .John Shakspeare have made this present writing of protestation, 
 confession, and charter, in presence of the blessed Virgin Mary, my 
 ano-ell suardian, and all the celestial court, as witnesses hereunto : the 
 which my meaning is, that it be of fidl value now presently and for 
 ever, with the force and vertue of testament, codicill, and donation 
 in course of death ; confirming it anew, being in perfect health of 
 soul and body, and signed with mine own hand ; carrying also the 
 same about me, and for the better declaration hereof, my will and 
 intention is that it be finally buried with me after my death. 
 
 " Pater noster, Ave maiia, Credo. 
 
 " Jesu, son of David, have mercy on me. — Amen." * 
 
 If the intention of the testator, as expressed in the close of this 
 will, were carried into eiFect, then, of course, the manuscript which 
 IMosely found, must necessarily have been a copy of that which was 
 buried m the grave of John Shakspeare. 
 
 Mr. Malone, to whom, in his edition of Shakspeare, printed in 
 1790, we are indebted for this singular paper, and for the history 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol.iii. p. 199. et seq.
 
 15 
 
 attached to it, observes, that he is unable to ascertain, whether it was 
 drawn up by John Shaksjieare the father, or by John his supposed 
 eldest son ; but he says, " I have taken some pains to ascertain the 
 authenticity of this manuscript, and, after a very careful inquiry, am 
 perfectly satisfied that it is genuine." * In the " Inquiry," however, 
 which he published in 1796, relative to the Ireland papers, he has 
 given us, though without assigning any reasons for his change of 
 opinion, a very different result : " In my conjecture," he remarks, 
 " concerning the writer of that paper, I certainly was mistaken ; for 
 I have since obtained documents that clearly prove it could not have 
 been the composition of any one of our poet's family." f 
 
 In the " Apology" of Mr. George Chalmers " for the Believers m 
 the Shakspeare-Papers," which appeared in the year subsequent to 
 Mr. Malone's " Inquiry," a new light is thrown upon the origin of 
 this confession. " From the sentiment, and the language, this con- 
 fession appears to be," says this gentleman, " the eifusion of a Roman 
 Catholic mind, and was probably dj-awn up by some Roman Catholic 
 priest, ij: If these premises be granted, it will foUow, as a fair de- 
 duction, that the family of Shakspeare were Roman Catholics ; a 
 circumstance this, which is wholly consistent with what Mr. Ma- 
 lone is now studious to inculcate, viz. " that this confession could 
 not have been the composition of any of our poet's family." The 
 thoughts, the language, the orthography, all demonstrate the truth 
 of my conjecture, though Mr. Malone did not perceive this truth, 
 when he first published this paper in 1790. But, it was the 
 performance of a clerke, the undoubted work of the family-priest. 
 The conjecture, that Shakspeare's family were Roman Catholics, 
 is strengthened by the fact, that his father declined to attend the 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 197- 
 
 f Malone's Inquiry, p. 198, 199. 
 
 :t: As a specimen, let us take the beginning of this declaration of faith, and see still 
 stronger terms in the conclusion of this protestation, cotifession, and charter.
 
 16 
 
 corporation meetings, and was at last removed from the corporate 
 body." '■■■ 
 
 This conjecture of Mr. Chahners appears to us in its leading points 
 very plausible ; for that the father of our poet might be a Roman 
 Catholic is, if we consider the very unsettled state of his times with 
 regard to religion, not only a possible but a probable supposition : 
 in which case, it would undoubtedly have been the office of the spiri- 
 tual director of the family to have drawn up such a paper as that 
 which we have been perusing. It was the fashion also of the period, 
 as Mr. Clalmers has subsequently observed, to draw up confessions of 
 religious faith, a fashion honoured in the observance by the great 
 names of Lord Bacon, Lord BurgUey, and Archbishop Parker -j". 
 That he declined, however, attending the corporation-meetings of 
 Stratford from religious motives, and that his removal from that body 
 was the result of non-attendance from such a cause, cannot readily be 
 admitted ; for we have clearly seen that his defection was owing to 
 pecuniary difficulties ; nor is it, in the least degree, probable that, 
 after having honourably filled the highest offices in the corporation 
 without scruple, he should at length, and in a reign too popularly 
 protestant, incur expulsion from an avowed motive of this kind ; 
 especially as we have reason to suppose, from the mode in which this 
 profession was concealed, that the tenets of the person whose faith 
 it declares, were cherished in secret. 
 
 From an accurate inspection of the hand-writing of this will, 
 Mr. Malone infers that it cannot be attributed to an earlier period 
 than the year 1600 J, whence it follows that, if dictated by, or drawn 
 up at the desire of, John Shakspeare, his death soon sealed the con- 
 fession of his faith ; for, according to the register, he was buried on 
 September 8th, 1601. 
 
 * " The place too, the roof of the house where this confession was found, proves, that 
 it had been therein concealed, during times of persecution, for the holy Catholick reli- 
 gion." Apology, p. I'JS, 199. 
 
 f Chalmers's Apology, p. 200. | Reed's Shakspeare, vol. p. iii. 198.
 
 17 
 
 Such are the very few circumstances which reiterated research has 
 hitherto gleaned relative to the father of our poet; circumstances 
 which, as being intimately connected v/ith the history and character of 
 his son, have acquired an interest of no common nature. Scant v as 
 they must be pronounced, they lead to the conclusion that he was a 
 moral and industrious man ; that when fortune favoured him, he was 
 not indolent, but performed the duties of a magistrate with respect- 
 ability and effect, and that in the hour of adversity he exerted every 
 nerve to support with decency a numerous family. 
 
 Before we close this chapter, it may be necessary to state, that the 
 very orthography of the name of Shakspeare has occasioned much 
 dispute. Of Shakspeare the father, no autograph exists • but the 
 poet has left us several, and from these, and from the monumental in- 
 scriptions of his family, must the question be decided ; the latter, as 
 being of the least authority, we shall briefly mention, as exhibitino-, in 
 Dugdale, three varieties, — Shakespeare; Shakespere, and Shakspeare. 
 The former present us with five specimens which, singular as it may 
 appear, all vary, either in the mode of writing, or mode of spellino-. 
 Tlie first is annexed to a mortgage executed by the poet in 1613, and 
 appears thus, W'" Shakspe" : the second is from a deed of bargain 
 and sale, relative to the same transaction, and of the same period, 
 and signed, William Shaksper : the third, fourth, and fifth are taken 
 from the Will of Shakspeare executed in March 1616, consisting of 
 three briefs or sheets, to each of which his name is subscribed. These 
 signatures, it is remarkable, differ considerably, especially in the sur- 
 names ; for in the first brief we find William Shackspere; in the second, 
 Willm Shakspe re, and in the third, William Shakspeare. It has been 
 supposed, however, that, according to the practice in Shakspeare's time, 
 the name in the first sheet was written by the scrivener who drew 
 the wiB. 
 
 In the year 1790, Mr. Malone, from an inspection of the mortgage, 
 pronounced the genuine orthography to be Shakspeare*; in 1796, 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. 149. 
 VUI.. l. D
 
 18 
 
 from consulting the deed of sale, he altered his opinion, and declared 
 that the poet's own mode of spelling his name was, beyond a possibility 
 of doubt, that of Shakspere, though for reasons which he should assign 
 in a subsequent publication, he should still continue to write the name 
 Shakspeare. * 
 
 To this decision, relative to the genuine orthography, Mr. Chalmei-s 
 cannot accede; and for this reason, that, " when the testator subscribed 
 his name, for the last time, he plainli/ wrote Shakspeare." f 
 
 It is obvious, therefore, that the controversy turns upon, whether 
 there be, or be not, an a introduced in the second syllable of the last 
 signature of the poet. Mr. Malone, on the suggestion of an anony- 
 mous correspondent, thinks that there is not, this gentleman having 
 clearly shown him, " that though there was a superfluous stroke 
 when the poet came to write the letter /■ in his last signature, pro- 
 bably from the tremor of his hand, there was no a discoverable in 
 that syllable ; and that this name, like both the other, was written 
 Shakspere." % 
 
 From the annexed plate of autographs, which is copied from Mr. 
 Chalmers's Apology, and presents us with very perfect fac-similes of 
 the signatures, it is at once evident, that the assertion of the anony- 
 mous correspondent, that the last signature, " like both the other, was 
 written Shakspere," cannot be correct ; for the surname in the first 
 brief is written Shackspere, and, in the second, Shakspe re. Now the 
 hiatus in this second signature is unaccounted for in the fac-simile 
 given by Mr. Malone § ; but in the plate of Mr. Chalmers it is found 
 to have been occasioned by the intrusion of the word the of the j)re- 
 ceding line, a circumstance which, very probably, might prevent the 
 introduction of the controverted letter. It is likewise, we think, 
 very evident that something more than a superfluous stroke exists 
 between the e and r of the last signature, and that the variation 
 
 * Malone's Inquiry, p. 1 20. f Chalmers's Apology, p. 235. 
 
 X Malone's Inquiry, p. 117, 118. § Inquiry, Plate II. No. 12.
 
 19 
 
 is, indeed, too material to have originated from any supposed tremor 
 of the hand. 
 
 Upon the whole, it may, we imagine, be safely reposed on as a fact, 
 that Shakspeare was not uniform in the orthography of his own name j 
 that he sometimes spelt it Shakspere and sometimes Shakspeare ; but 
 that no other variation is extant which can claim a similar authority. * 
 It is, therefore, nearly a matter of indifference which of these two modes 
 
 * A want of uniformity in the spelling of names, was a species of negligence very common 
 in the time of Shakspeare, and may be observed, remarks Mr. Chalmers, " with regard 
 to the principal poets of that age ; as we may see in England's Parnassus, a collection of 
 poetry which was published in 1600: thus, 
 
 Sydney 
 
 S/'dney. 
 
 
 Spenser 
 
 Spencer. 
 
 
 Jonson 
 
 Johnson 
 
 JhoHson. 
 
 Dekker 
 
 Dekkar. 
 
 
 Markeliam 
 
 Markham. 
 
 
 Sylvzster 
 
 Sylvester 
 
 Silvester. 
 
 Sadkwill 
 
 Sackuil. 
 
 
 Fitz Geffrey 
 
 Fitzjeffry 
 
 Fitz Jeffray. 
 
 France 
 
 Fraunce. 
 
 
 Mid/eton 
 
 Midrfleton. 
 
 
 Gwilpin 
 
 G/lpin. 
 
 
 Achelly 
 
 Achely 
 
 Achilly 
 
 Draj/ton 
 
 Draz'ton. 
 
 
 Danie/ 
 
 Daniels. 
 
 
 Dav/s 
 
 Davifs. 
 
 
 Marlow 
 
 MarloK'i?. 
 
 
 Marston 
 
 Mwrston. 
 
 
 Fairefax 
 
 Fairfax. 
 
 
 Kid 
 
 Kj/d. 
 
 
 Achillye. 
 
 Yet, it is remarkable, that in this collection of diversities, our dramatist's name is 
 uniformly spelt Shakespeare : in whatever manner this celebrated name may have been 
 pronounced in Warwickshire, it certainly was spoken in Lontlon, with the e soft, thus, 
 Shakt'speare : in the registers of the Stationers' Company, it is written, Shakespere, and 
 Shakespeare" Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 1 29, 1 30. 
 
 A curious proof of the uncertain orthography of the poet's surname among his con- 
 temporaries and immediate successors, may be drawn from a pamphlet, entitled, " The 
 great Assizes holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours : at which Sessions are 
 arraigned, Mercurius Britannicus, &c. &c. London : Printed by Richard Coles for 
 Edward Husbands, and are to be sold at his shop in the Middle Temple. 1645. qto. 
 25 leaves." 
 
 D 2
 
 20 
 
 of spelling we adopt ; yet, as his last signature appears to have included 
 the letter a, it may, for the sake of consistency, be proper silently to 
 acquiesce in its admission. 
 
 In this rare tract, among the list of the jurors is found the name of our bard, written 
 WUliam Shakespeere ; and in the body of the poem, it is given Shakespeare, and Shakespear. 
 Vide British Bibliographer, vol. i. p. 513.
 
 21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE HOUSE IN WHICH SHAKSPEARE WAS BORN PLAGUE AT STRATFORD, JUNE 1564 
 
 SHAKSPEARE EDUCATED AT THE FREE-SCHOOL OF STRATFORD — STATE OF EDUCATION, 
 
 AND OF JUVENILE LITERATURE IN THE COUNTRY AT THIS PERIOD EXTENT OF 
 
 SHAKSPEARE's ACQUIREMENTS AS A SCHOLAR. 
 
 J. HE experience of the last half century has fully proved, that every 
 thing relative to the history of our immortal dramatist has been 
 received, and received justly too, by the public with an avidity pro- 
 portional to his increasing fame. What, if recorded of a less 
 celebrated character, might be deemed very uninteresting, imme- 
 diately acquires, when attached to the mighty name of Shakspeare, 
 an importance nearly unparalleled. No apology, therefore, can be 
 necessary for the introduction of any fact or circumstance, however 
 minute, which is, in the slightest degree, connected with his bio- 
 graphy ; tradition, indeed, has been so sparing of her communications 
 on this subject, that every addition to her little store has been 
 hitherto welcomed with the most lively sensation of pleasure, nor 
 will the attempt to collect and embody these scattered fragments be 
 unattended with its reward. 
 
 The birth-place of our poet, the spot where he drew the first 
 breath of life, where Fancy 
 
 fed the little prattler, and with songs 
 
 Oft sooth'd his wond'ringr ears. 
 
 a 
 
 has been the object of laudable curiosity to thousands, and happily 
 the very roof that sheltered his infant innocence can still be pointed 
 out. It stands in Henley-street, and, though at present forming two 
 separate tenements, was originally but one house.* The premises 
 
 * It is with some apprehension of imposition that I quote the following passage from 
 Mr. Samuel Ireland's Picturesque Views on the River Avon. This gentleman, the father 
 of the youth who endeavoured so grossly to deceive the public by the fabrication of a large
 
 22 
 
 ai'e still in possession of the Hart family, nojs? the seventh descendants, 
 in a direct line, from Jone the sister of the poet. From the plate in 
 Reed's Shakspeare, which is a correct representation of the existing 
 state of this humble but interesting dwelling, it will appear, that one 
 portion of it is occupied by the Swan and Maidenhead public-house, 
 and the other by a butcher's shop, in which the son of old Mr. Thomas 
 Hart, mentioned in the last chapter, still carries on his father's trade.* 
 " The kitchen of this house," says Mr. Samuel Ireland, " has an 
 appearance sufficiently interesting, abstracted from its claim to notice 
 as relative to the Bard. It is a subject very similar to those that so 
 frequently employed the rare talents of Ost^de, and therefore cannot 
 be deemed unworthy the pencil of an inferior artist. In the corner 
 of the chimney stood an old oak-chair, which had for a munber of 
 years received nearly as many adorers as the celebrated shrine of the 
 Lady of Loretto. This relic was purchased, in July 1790, by the 
 Princess Czartoryska, who made a journey to this place, in order to 
 
 mass of MSS. which he attributed to Shakspeare, was undoubtedly, at the time he wrote 
 this book, the complete dupe of his son ; and though, as a man of veracity and integrity, 
 to be depended upon with regard to what originated from himself, it is possible, that the 
 settlement which he quotes may have been derived fi-om the same ample store-house of 
 forgery which produced the folio volume of miscellaneous papers, &c. This settlement, 
 in the possession of Mr. Ireland, is brought forward as a proof that the premises in 
 Henley-street were certainly in the occupation of John Shakspeare, the father of the poet ; 
 it is dated August 14th, thirty-third of Elizabeth, 1591, and Mr. Ireland professes to 
 give the substance of it in the subsequent terms : — " ' That George Badger, senior, of 
 Stratford upon Avon, conveys to John and William Courte, yeomen, and their heirs, in 
 ti-ust, &c. a messuage or tenement, with the appurtenances, in Stratford upon Avon, in 
 a certain streete called Henley-streete, between the house of Robert Johnson on the one 
 part, and the house of John Shakspeare on the other ; and also two selions (/. c. ridges, or 
 ground between furrows) of land lying between the land of Thomas Combe, Gent, on the 
 one hand, and Thomas Reynolde, Gent, on the other.' It is regularly executed, and 
 livery of seisin on the 29th of the same month and year indorsed." P. 19.5. 196". 
 
 * " In a lower room of this public-house," says Mr. Samuel Ireland, " which is part 
 of the premises wherein Shakspeare was born, is a curious antient ornament over the 
 chimney, relieved in plaister, which, from the date, 1606, that was originally marked on 
 it, was probably put up at the time, and possibly by the poet himself: although a rude 
 attempt at historic representation, I have yet thought it worth copying, as it has, I
 
 23 
 
 obtain intelligence relative to Shakspeare ; and being told he had often 
 sat in this chair, she placed herself in it, and expressed an ardent 
 wish to become a purchaser ; but being informed that it was not to be 
 sold at any price, she left a handsome gratuity to old Mrs. Hart, and 
 left the place with apparent regret. About four months after, the 
 anxiety of the Princess could no longer be withheld, and her secretary 
 was dispatched express, as the fit agent, to purchase this treasure at 
 any rate : the sum of twenty guineas was the price fixed on, and the 
 secretary and chair, with a proper certificate of its authenticity on 
 stamped paper, set off in a chaise for London." * The elder Mr. Hart, 
 who died about the year 1794, aged sixty-seven, informed Mr. Samuel 
 Ireland, that he well remembered, when a boy, having dressed him- 
 self, with some of his playfellows, as Scaramouches (such was his 
 phrase), in the wearing-apparel of Shakspeare ; an anecdote of which, 
 if we consider the lapse of time, it may be allowed us to doubt the 
 credibility, and to conclude that the recollection of Mr. Hart had 
 deceived him. 
 
 Little more than two months had passed over the head of the 
 infant Shakspeare, when he became exposed to danger of such an im- 
 minent kind, that we have reason to rejoice he was not snatched from 
 
 believe, passed unnoticed by the multitude of visitors that have been on this spot, or at 
 least has never been made public : and to me it was enough that it held a conspicuous 
 place in the dwelling-house of one who is himself the ornametit and pride of the island he 
 inhabited. In 1759, it was repaired and painted in a variety of colours by the old 
 Mr. Thomas Harte before-mentioned, who assured me the motto then round it had been 
 in the old black letter, and dated 1606". The motto runs thus : 
 
 (Soiiti) comes tmti; ettiois anS spear, 
 
 anB DabtB tmtjj a elinc : 
 aitf)auei) iSolit^ rase anS sloeare, 
 Dotim Dabin Dotjj fjim fating." Picturesque Views, p. 1 92, 1 93. 
 
 * Pictui-esque Views, p. 189, 190. It is probable that Mr. Ireland, though, it appears, 
 unconnected with the forgeries of his son, might, during his tour, be too eager in credit- 
 ing the tales which were told him. One Jordan, a native of Alverton near Stratford, was 
 for many years the usual cicerone to enquirers after Shakspeare, and was esteemed not very 
 accurate in weighing the authenticity of the anecdotes which he related.
 
 24 
 
 us even while he lav in the cradle. He was born, as we have already 
 recorded, on the 23d of April, 1564; and on the 30th of the Jinie fol- 
 lowing, the plague broke out at Stratford, the ravages of which dread- 
 ful disease were so violent, that betAveen this last date and the close 
 of December, not less than two hundred and thirty-eight persons 
 perished ; " of which number," remarks Mr. Malone, " probably 
 two hundred and sixteen died of that malignant distemper ; and one 
 only of the whole number resided, not in Stratford, but in the neigh- 
 bouring town of Welcombe. From the two hundred and thirty-seven 
 inhabitants of Stratford, whose names appear in the Register, twenty- 
 one are to be sxibducted, who, it may be presumed, would have died 
 in six months, in the ordinary course of nature ; for in the five pre- 
 ceding years, reckoning, according to the style of that time, from 
 March 25, 1559, to March 25, 1564, two hundred and twenty-one 
 persons were buried at Stratford, of whom two hundred and ten were 
 townsmen : that is, of these latter, forty-two died each year at an 
 average. Supposing one in thirty-five to have died annually, the total 
 number of the inhabitants of Stratford at that period was one thou- 
 sand four hundred and seventy ; and consequently the plague, in the 
 last six months of the year 1564, carried off more than a seventh part 
 of them. Fortunately for mankind it did not reach the house in which 
 the infant Shakspeare lay ; for not one of that name appears in the 
 dead list. May we suppose, that, like Horace, he lay secure and fear- 
 less in the midst of contagion and death, protected by the Muses, to 
 whom his future life was to be devoted, and covered over:— 
 
 sacra 
 
 Lauroque, collataquc mijrto, 
 
 Nbii sine Diis animosus inj'ans" * 
 
 It is now impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty the 
 mode M^hich was adopted in the education of this aspiring genius; all 
 that time has left us on the subject is, that he was sent, though but 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 84, 85.
 
 25 
 
 for a short period, to the free-school of Stratford, a seminary founded 
 
 in the reign of Henry the Sixth, by the Rev. Jolepe, M. A., a 
 
 native of the town ; and which, after sharing, at the general disso- 
 lution of chantries, religious houses, &c. the usual fate, was restored 
 and patronised by Edward the Sixth, a short time previous to his 
 death. Here it was, that he acquired the small Latin and less Ch'eek, 
 which Jonson has attributed to him, a mode of phraseology from which 
 it must be inferred, that he was at least acquainted with both languages ; 
 and, perhaps, we may add, that he who has obtained some knowledge 
 of Greek, however slight, may, with little hesitation, be supposed to 
 have proceeded considerably beyond the limits of mere elementary 
 instruction in Latin. 
 
 At the period when Shakspeare was sent to school, the study of the 
 classical languages had made, since the era of the revival of literature, 
 a very rapid progress. Grammars and Dictionaries, by various au- 
 thors, had been published * ; but the grammatical institute then in 
 general use, both in town and country, was the Grammar of Henry 
 
 * It is possible also that the following grammars and dictionaries, independent of those 
 mentioned in the text, may have contributed to the school-education of Shakspeare : — 
 
 1. Certain brief Rules of the Regiment or Construction of the Eight Partes of Speche, 
 in English and Latin, 1537. 
 
 2. A short Introduction of Grammar, generallie to be used : compiled and set forth, 
 for the bringyng up of all those that intend to attaine the knowledge of the Latin tongue, 
 1557. 
 
 3. The Scholemaster ; or, Plaine and perfite Way of teaching Children to understand, 
 write, and speak, the Latin Tong. By Roger Ascham, 1571. 
 
 4. Abecedarium Anglico-Latinum, pro tyrunculis, Ricardo Huloets excriptore, 1552. 
 
 5. The Short Dictionary, 1558. 
 
 6. A little Dictionary; compiled by J. Withals, 1559. Afterwards reprinted in 1568, 
 1572, 1579, and 1599; and entitled, A Shorte Dictionarie most profitable for young 
 Beginners : and subsequently, A Shorte Dictionarie in Lat. and English. 
 
 7. The brefe Dyxcyonary, 1562. 
 
 8. Huloets Dictionary ; newlye corrected, amended, and enlarged, by John Hig- 
 gins, 1572. 
 
 9. Veron's Dictionary; Latin and English, 1575. 
 
 10. An Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionarie; containing foure sundrie Tongues: 
 namelie, English, Latine, Greeke, and Frenche. Newlie enriched with varietie of wordes, 
 phrases, proverbs, and divers lightsome observations of grammar. By John Baret, 1580. 
 
 11. Rider's Dictionary, Latine, and English, 1589. 
 VOL. 1. E
 
 26 
 
 the Eighth, which, by the order of Queen Elizabeth, in her Injunctions 
 of 1559, was admitted, to the exclusion of all others : " Every school- 
 master," says the thirty-ninth Injunction, " shall teach the grammar 
 set forth by King Henrie the Eighth, of noble memorie, and continued 
 in the time of Edward the Sixth, and none other ;" and in the Booke 
 of certain Cannons, 1571, it is again directed, " that no other gram- 
 mar shall be taught, but only that which the Queen's Majestie hath 
 commanded to be read in all schooles, through the whole realm." 
 
 With the exception of Wolsey's Rudimenta Granmiatices, printed in 
 1536, and taught in his school at Ipswich, and a similar work of 
 Collet's, established in his seminary in St. Paul's churchyard, this was 
 the grammar publicly and universally adopted, and without doubt the 
 instructor of Shakspeare in the language of Rome. 
 
 Another initiatory work, which we may almost confidently affirm 
 him to have studied under the tuition of the master of the free-school 
 at Stratford, was the production of one Ockland, and entitled EIPH- 
 NAPXIA, sive Elizabetha. The object of this book, which is written 
 in Latin verse, is to panegyrise the characters and government of 
 Elizabeth and her ministers, and it was, therefore, enjoined by autho- 
 rity to be read as a classic in every grammar-school, and to be 
 indelilily impressed upon the memory of every young scholar in the 
 kingdom ; " a matchless contrivance," remarks Bishop Hurd, " to 
 imprint a sense of loyalty on the minds of the people." * 
 
 To these school-books, to which, being introduced by compulsory 
 edicts, there is no doubt Shakspeare was indebted for some learning 
 and much loyalty, may be added, as another resource to which he was 
 directed by his master, the Dictionary of Syr Thomas Elliot, declaring 
 Latin by English, as greatly improved and enriched by Thomas 
 Cooper in 1552. This lexicon, the most copious and celebrated of 
 its day, was received into almost every school, and underwent nume- 
 rous editions, namely, in 1559, and in 1565, under the title of The- 
 saurus LinmtcB Romance et Brifannicce, and again in 1573, 1578, and 
 
 ■te' 
 
 * Moral and Political Dialogues, vol. ii. p. 28. edit. 17SS.
 
 27 
 
 1584. Elizabeth not only recommended the lexicon of Cooper, and 
 professed the highest esteem for him, in consequence of the great 
 utility of his work toward the promotion of classical literature, but 
 she more substantially expressed her opinion of his worth by pro- 
 moting him to the deanery of Gloucester in 1569, and to the bishop- 
 rics of Lincoln and Winchester in 1570 and 1584, at which latter see 
 he died on the 29th of April, 1594.* 
 
 Thus far we may be allowed, on good grounds, to trace the very 
 books which were placed in the hands of Shakspeare, during his short 
 tioviciate in classical learning ; to proceed farther, would be to indulge 
 in mere conjecture, but we may add, and with every just reason for 
 the inference, that from these productions, and from the few minor 
 classics which he had time to study at this seminary, all that the most 
 precocious genius, at such a period of life, and under so transient a 
 direction of the mind to classic lore, could acquire, was obtained, f 
 
 * That school-masters and lexicographers were not usually so well rewarded, notwith- 
 standing the high value placed on classical literature at this period, may be drawn from 
 the complaint of Ascham: "It is pitie," says he, "that commonlie more care is had, 
 yea, and that amonge verie wise men, to find out rather a cunnynge man for their horse, 
 than a cunnynge man for their children. They say nay in worde, but they do so in deede. 
 For, to the one they will gladlie give a stipend of 200 crownes by ycarc, and loth to offer 
 to the other 200 shillings. God, that sitteth in heaven, laugheth their choice to skornc, 
 and rewardeth their liberalitie as it should ; for he suffereth them tojiave tame, and well 
 ordered horse, but wilde and unfortunate children ; and therefore, in the ende, they finde 
 more pleasure in their horse than comforte in their children," — Ascham's Works, Ben- 
 net's edition, p. 212. 
 
 f It is more than possible that the Eclogues of Mantuanus the Carmelite may have 
 been one of the school-books of Shakspeare. He is familiarly quoted and praised in 
 the following passage from Love's Labour's Lost : — 
 
 " Hoi. Fauste, precor gelidd quando pecus omne sub umhra JRuminat, — and so forth. 
 Ah, good old Mantua ! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice : 
 
 Vincgia, Vinegia, 
 
 Chi lion te rede, ci non te pregia. 
 
 Old Mantuan 1 old Mantuan ! who understandeth thee not, loves thee not." Act iv. 
 sc. 2. And his Eclogues, be it remembered, were translated and printed, together \\ith 
 the Latin on the opposite page, for the use of schools, before the commencement of our 
 author's education ; and from a passage quoted by Mr. Malone, from Nashe's Apologie of 
 Pierce Penniless, 1593, appear to have continued in use long after its termination. " "With 
 
 E 2
 
 28 
 
 The universality of classical education about the era of 1575, when, 
 it is probable, Shakspeare had not long entered on the acquisitions of 
 the Latin elements, was such that no person of rank or property could 
 be deemed accomplished who had not been thoroughly imbued with 
 the learning and mythology of Greece and Rome. The knowledge 
 which had been previously confined to the clergy or professed scholars, 
 became now diffused among the nobility and gentry, and even in- 
 fluenced, in a considerable degree, the minds and manners of the 
 softer sex. Elizabeth herself led the way in this career of erudition, 
 and she was soon followed by the ladies of her court, who were taught 
 as Warton observes, not only to distil strong waters, but to construe 
 Greek.* 
 
 The fashion of the court speedily became, to a certain extent, the 
 fashion of the country, and every individual possessed of a decent 
 cxjmpetency, was solicitous that his children should acquire the lite- 
 rature in vogue. Had the father of our poet continued in prosperous 
 circumstances, there is every reason to conclude that his son would 
 have had the opportunity of acquiring the customary erudition of the 
 times ; but we have already seen, that in 1579 he was so reduced 
 in fortune, as to be excused a weekly payment of 4d., a state of de- 
 pression which had no doubt existed some time before it attracted the 
 notice of the corporation of Stratford. 
 
 One result therefore of these pecuniary difficulties was the removal 
 of young Shakspeare from the free-school, an event which has occa^ 
 sioned, among his biographers and numerous commentators, much 
 controversy and conjecture as to the extent of his classical attain- 
 ments. 
 
 From the short period which tradition allows us to suppose that 
 our poet continued under the instruction of a master, we have a right 
 
 the first and second leafe, he plaies very prettilic, and, in ordinarie terms of extenuating, 
 verdits Pierce Pennilesse for a grammar-school wit; saies, his margine is as deeply 
 learned as, Faiiste, precor gelidd." Mantuanus was translated by George Turberville in 
 1567, and reprinted in 1594. — Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 95. 
 • Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 491.
 
 29 
 
 to conclude that, notwithstanding his genius and industry, he must 
 necessarily have made a very superficial acquaintance with the learned 
 languages. That he was called home to assist his father, we are told 
 by Mr. Rowe ; and consequently, as the family was numerous and 
 under the pressure of poverty, it is not likely that he found mucli 
 time to prosecute what he had commenced at school. The accounts, 
 therefore, which have descended to us, on the authority of Ben Jonson, 
 Drayton, Suckling, &c. that he had not much learning, that he de- 
 pended almost exclusively on his native genius, [that his Latin was 
 small and his Greek less,) ought to have been, without scruple, 
 admitted. Fuller, who was a diligent and accurate enquirer, has 
 given us in his Worthies, printed in 1662, the most full and express 
 opinion on the subject. " He was an eminent Instance," he remarks, 
 " of the truth of that rule, Foeta non Jit, sed nascitur ; one is not 
 made but born a poet. Indeed his learning was veri/ little, so that 
 as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed 
 and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so nature itself 
 was all the art which was used upon him." * 
 
 Notwithstanding this uniform assertion of the contemporaries and 
 immediate successors of Shakspeare, relative to his very imperfect 
 knowledge of the languages of Greece and Rome, many of his modern 
 commentators have strenuously insisted upon his intimacy with both, 
 among whom may be enumerated, as the most zealous and decided 
 on this point, the names of Gildon, Sewell, Pope, Upton, Grey, and 
 Whalley. The dispute, however, has been nearly, if not altogether 
 terminated, by the Essay of Dr. Farmer on the Learning of Shak- 
 speare, who has, by a mode of research equally ingenious and convinc- 
 ing, clearly proved that all the passages which had been triumphantly 
 brought forward as instances of the classical literature of Shakspeare, 
 were taken from translations, or from original, and once popular, pro- 
 ductions in his native tongue. Yet the conclusion drawn from this 
 essay, so far as it respects the portion of latinity which our poet had 
 
 * Worthies, p. iii. p. 126.
 
 30 
 
 acquired and preserved, as the result of his school-education, appears 
 to us greatly too restricted. " He remembered,''' says the Doctor, " jyer- 
 haps enough of Ins school-hoy learmng to put the Hig, hag, hog, into the 
 month of Sir Hugh Evans : and might pick up in the writers of the 
 time, or the course of his conversation, a familiar phrase or two of 
 French or Italian : but his studies were most demonstratively confined 
 to nature and his own lanouag-e.* 
 
 A very late writer, in combating this part of the conclusion of 
 Dr. Farmer, has advanced an opinion in several respects so similar to 
 our own, that it will be necessary, in justice to him and previous to any 
 further expansion of the idea which we have embraced, to quote his 
 words. " Notwithstanding," says he, " Dr. Farmer's essay on the 
 deficiency of Shakspeare in learning, I must acknowledge myself to 
 be one who does not conceive that his proofs of that fact sufficiently 
 warrant his conclusions from them : ' that his studies were demon- 
 strably confined to nature and his own language' is, as Dr. Farmer 
 concludes, true enough ; but when it is added, ' that he only picked 
 up in conversation a familiar phrase or two of French, or remembered 
 enough of his school-boy's learning to put hig, hag, hog, in the 
 mouths of others :' he seems to me to go beyond any evidence pro- 
 duced by him of so little knowledge of languages in Shakspeare. 
 He proves indeed sufficiently, that Shakspeare chiefly read English 
 books, by his copying sometimes minutely the very errors made in 
 them, many of which he might have corrected, if he had consulted 
 the original Latin books made use of by those writers : but this does 
 not prove that he was not able to read Latin well enough to examine 
 those originals if he chose ; it only proves his indolence and indiffer- 
 ence about accuracy in minute articles of no importance to the chief 
 object in view of supplying himself with subjects for dramatic compo- 
 sitions. Do we not every day meet with numberless instances of 
 similar and much greater oversights by persons well skilled in Greek 
 as well as Latin, and professed critics also of the writings and abilities 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 85.
 
 31 
 
 of others? If Shakspearc made an ignorant man pronounce the 
 French word bras like the Enghsh brass, and evidently on purpose, 
 as being a probable mistake by such an unlearned speaker ; has not 
 one learned modern in writing Latin made Pagmibiis of Paginis-, and 
 another mentioned a person as being born in the reign of Charles the 
 First, and yet as dying in 1600, full twenty-five years before the 
 accession of that king ? Such mistakes arise not from ignorance, but 
 a heedless inattention, while their thoughts are better occupied with 
 more important subjects ; as those of Shakspeare were with forming 
 his plots and his characters, instead of examining critically a great 
 Greek volume to see whether he ought to write on this side of Tiber 
 or on that side of Tiber ; which however very possibly he might not 
 be able to read ; but Latin was more universally learnt in that a^e, 
 and even by women, many of whom could both write and speak it ; 
 therefore it is not likely that he should be so very deficient in that 
 language, as some would persuade us, by evidence which does not 
 amount to sufficient proofs of the fact. Nay, even although he had a 
 sufficiency of Latin to understand any Latin book, if he chose to do 
 it, yet how many in modern times, imder the same circumstances, 
 are led by mere indolence to prefer translations of them, in case they 
 cannot read Latin with such perfect ease, as never to be at a loss for 
 the meaning of a word, so as to be forced to read some sentences 
 twice over before thev can understand them rightlv. That Shaks- 
 peare was not an eminent Latin scholar may be very true, but that he 
 was so totally ignorant as to know nothing more than hie, hcec, hoc, 
 must have better proofs before I can be convinced." * 
 
 The truth seems to be, that Shakspeare, like most boys who have 
 spent but two or three years at a grammar-school, acquired just as 
 much Latin as would enable him, with the assistance of a lexicon, 
 and no little share of assiduity, to construe a minor classic ; a degree 
 of acquisition which we every day see, unless forwarded by much lei- 
 sure and much private industry, immediately becomes stationary, and 
 
 * Ceusui'a LiUraria, vol.ix. p. 283.
 
 32 
 
 soon retrograde. Our poet, when taken from the free-school of Strat- 
 ford, had not only to direct his attention to business, in order to assist 
 in warding off from his father's family the menacing approach of 
 poverty ; but it is likewise probable that his leisure, as we shall notice 
 more at large in the next chapter, was engaged in other acquisitions ; 
 and when at a subsequent period, and after he had become a married 
 man, his efforts were thrown into a channel perfectly congenial to his 
 taste and talents, still to procure subsistence for the day was the im- 
 mediate stimulus to exertion. Under these circumstances, and when 
 we likewise recollect that populate favour and applause were essential 
 to his success, and that nearly to the last period of his Hfe he was 
 a prolific caterer for the public in a species of poetry which called for 
 no recondite or learned resources, it is not probable, nay, it is, indeed, 
 scarcely possible, that he should have had time to cultivate and in- 
 crease his classical attainments, originally and necessarily supei-ficial. 
 To translations, therefore, and to popular and legendary lore, he was 
 alike directed by policy, by inclination, and by want of leisure ; yet 
 must we still agree, that, had a proficiency in the learned languages 
 been necessary to his careei', the means resided within himself, and 
 that, on the basis merely of his school-education, although limited as 
 we have seen it, he might, had he early and steadily directed his at- 
 tention to the subject, have built the reputation of a scholar. 
 
 That the powers, however, of his vast and capacious mind, especially 
 if we consider the shortness of his life, were not expended on such an 
 attempt, Ave have reason to rejoice ; for though his attainments, as a 
 linguist, were truly trifling, yet his knowledge was great, and his learn- 
 ing, in the best sense of the term, that is, as distinct from the mere 
 acquisition of language, multifarious, and extensive beyond that of 
 most of his contemporaries. * 
 
 * « If it were asked from what sources," observes Mr. Capel Lofft, " S/iakspeare drew 
 these abundant streams of wisdom, carrying with their current the fairest and most unfad- 
 ing flowers of poetry, I should be tempted to say, he had what would be now considered 
 a very reasonable portion of Latin ; he was not wholly ignorant of Greek ; he had a know- 
 ledge of the French, so as to read it with ease; and I believe not less of the Italian. He
 
 S'3 
 
 It is, therefore, to his English studies that we must have recourse 
 for a due estimate of his reading and research ; a subject which will 
 be treated of in a future portion of the work. 
 
 was habitually conversant in the chronicles of his country. He lived with wise and 
 highly cultivated men; vv'ith Jonson, Essex, and Southampton, in familiar friendship. 
 He had deeply imbibed the Scriptures. And his own most acute, profound, active, and 
 original genius (for there never was a truly great poet, nor an aphoristic writer of excel- 
 lence without these accompanying qualities) must take the lead in the solution." Apho- 
 risms from Shakspeare: Introduction, pp. xii. and xiii. 
 
 Again, in speaking of his poems, he remarks — " Transcendent as his original and sin- 
 gular genius was, I think it is not easy, with due attention to these poems, to doubt of his 
 having acquired, when a boy, no ordinary facility in the classic language of Rome; though 
 his knowledge of it might be small, comparatively, to the knowledge of that great and 
 indefatigable scholar, Ben Jonson. And when Jonson says he had ' less Greek,' had it 
 been true that he had none, it would have been as easy for the verse as for the sentiment 
 to have said • no Greek.' " — Introduction, p. xxiv. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 34 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE, AFTER LEAVING SCHOOL, FOLLOWS HIS FATHER'S TRADE STATEMENT OF 
 
 AUBREY PROBABLY PRESENT IN HIS TWELFTH YEAR, AT KENELWORTH, WHEN ELIZA- 
 BETH VISITED THE EARL OF LEICESTER TRADITION OF AUBREY CONCERNING HIM 
 
 WHETHER THERE IS REASON TO SUPPOSE THAT, AFTER LEAVING HIS FATHER, HE WAS 
 PLACED IN AN ATTORNEY'S OFFICE WHO WAS LIKEWISE SENESCHAL OR STEWARD OF 
 
 SOME MANOR ANECDOTES OF SHAKSPEARE ALLUSIONS IN HIS WORKS TO BARTON, 
 
 WILNECOTTE AND BARSTON, VILLAGES IN WARWICKSHIRE EARTHQUAKE IN 1580 
 
 ALLUDED TO WHETHER, AFTER LEAVING SCHOOL, HE ACQUIRED ANY KNOWLEDGE 
 
 OF THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN LANGUAGES. 
 
 1 HAT Shakspeare, when taken from the free-school of Stratford, 
 became an assistant to his father in the wool-trade, has been the 
 general opinion of his biographers from the period of Mr. Rowe, who 
 first published the tradition in 1709, to the present day. The anec- 
 dote was probably collected by Mr. Betterton the player, who visited 
 Stratford in order to procure intelligence relative to his favourite 
 poet, and from whom Mr. Rowe professes to have derived the greater 
 part of his information.* A few incidental circumstances tend also 
 to strengthen the account that both father and son were engaged in 
 this employment, and, for a time, together : in the first place, we 
 may mention the discovery already noticed of the arms of the mer- 
 chants of the wool-staple on a window of the house in which the poet 
 was born f ; secondly, the almost certain conclusion that the poverty of 
 John Shakspeare, which we know to have been considerable in 1579, 
 
 * " Mr. Betterton," observes Mr. Malone, " was born in 1 635, and had many oppor- 
 tunities of collecting information relative to Shakspeare, but unfortunately the age in 
 which he lived was not an age of curiosity. Had either he or Dryden or Sir William 
 d'Avenant taken the trouble to visit our poet's youngest daughter, who lived till 1662, or 
 his grand-daughter, who did not die till 1670, many particulars might have been pre- 
 served which are now irrecoverably lost. Shakspeare's sister, Joan Hart, who was only five 
 years younger than him, died at Stratford in Nov. 1646, at the age of seventy-six; and 
 from her undoubtedly his two daughters, and his grand-daughter Lady Bernard, had 
 learned several circumstances of his early history antecedent to the year 1600." Reed's 
 Shakspeare, p. 119, 120. 
 
 f It has ah-eady been observed, in a note written some years after the composition of the 
 text, that this supposed corroboration is no longer to be depended upon.
 
 35 
 
 would naturally incline him to require the assistance of his son, in 
 the only way in which, at that time, he could be serviceable to him ; 
 and thirdly, we may adduce the following passages from the works of 
 our Dramatist, which seem to imply a more than theoretic intimacy 
 with his father's business. In the Winter's Tale, the Clown exclaims, 
 
 " Let me see : — Every 'levcn wether — tods ; every tod yields — pound and odd 
 shilling: fifteen hundred shorn, — What comes the wool to ?" Act IV. Scene 2. 
 
 Upon this passage Dr. Farmer remarks, " that to tod is used as a verb 
 by dealers in wool ; thus, they say, ' Twenty sheep ought to tod fifty 
 pounds of wool,' &c. The meaning, therefore, of the Clown's words 
 is, ' Every eleven wether tods ; i. e. will produce a tod, or twenty- 
 eight pounds of wool ; every tod yields a povmd and some odd shil- 
 lings ; what then will the wool of fifteen hundred yield ?' " 
 
 " The occupation of his father," subjoins Mr. Malone, " fm-nished 
 our poet with accurate knowledge on this subject j for two pounds and 
 a half of wool is, I am told, a very good produce from a sheep at the 
 time of shearing." 
 
 " Every ^leven wether — tods" adds Mr. Ritson, " has been rightly 
 expounded to mean that the wool of eleven sheep would weigh a tod, 
 or 281b. Each fleece would, therefore, be 21b. 8oz. 114dr., and the 
 whole produce o^ fifteen hundred shorn 136 tod, 1 clove, 21b. 6oz. 2dr. 
 which at pound and odd shilling per tod, would yield 143/. Ss. Od. 
 Our author was too familiar with the subject to be suspected of 
 inaccuracy. 
 
 " Indeed it appears from Stafford's Breefe Conceipte of English 
 Pollicye, 1581, p. 16, that the price of a tod of wool was at that period 
 twenty or two and twenty shillings: so that the medium price was 
 exactly 'pound and odd shilling.'''* 
 
 In Hamlet, the prince justly observes. 
 
 There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 
 Rough-he'w them how we will. Act V. Scene 2. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 322, 323. 
 F 2
 
 36 
 
 Lines, of which the words hi itahcs were considered by Dr. Farmer as 
 merely technical. " A woolman, butcher, and dealer in skewers,'"'' 
 says Mr. Stevens, " lately observed to him (Dr. F.), that his nephew, 
 an idle lad, could only assist him in making them ; ' — he could rough- 
 heiv them, but I was obliged to shape their ends.^ To shape the ends 
 of wool-skewers, i. e. to point them, requires a degree of skill ; any 
 one can rough-hew them. Whoever recollects the profession of 
 Shakspeare's father, will admit that his son might be no stranger to 
 such terms. I have frequently seen packages of wool pinned up with 
 skewer s.^^ * 
 
 We may, therefore, after duly considering all the evidence that can 
 now be obtained, pretty confidently acquiesce in the traditional 
 account that Shakspeare was, for a time, and that immediately on 
 his being taken from the free-school, the assistant of his father in 
 the wool-trade ; but it will be necessary here to mention, that Aubrey, 
 on whose authority it has been related that John Shakspeare was, at 
 one period of his life, a butcher, adds, with regard to our poet, that 
 " when he was a boy, he exercised his father's trade ;" and that 
 " when he killed a calfe, he would do it in a high style, and make a 
 speech." t That John Shakspeare, when under the pressure of adver- 
 sity, might combine the two employments, which are, in a certain 
 degree, connected with each other, we have already recorded as pro- 
 bable ; it is very possible, also, that the following similes may have 
 been suggested to the son, by what he had occasionally observed at 
 home ; 
 
 And as the butcher takes fiway the calf, 
 
 And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays, 
 
 Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house ; 
 
 Even so, remorseless, have they borne him hence, 
 
 And as the dam runs lowing up and down, 
 
 Looking the way her harmless young one went, 
 
 And can do nought but wail her darling's loss ; 
 
 Even so, &c. &c. Henry VI. Part 11. Act III. Scene \. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 346, 347. 
 
 t Aubrey MS. — Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 2V^.
 
 but that the father of our poet, the former bailiff of Stratford, should 
 employ his children, instead of servants, in the slaughter of his 
 cattle, is a position so revolting, so unnecessarily degrading on the 
 part of the father, and, at the same time, must have been so discord- 
 ant with the well-known humane and gentle cast of the poet's dispo- 
 sition, that we cannot, for a moment, allow oiu'selves to conceive 
 that any credibility can be attached to such a report. 
 
 At what age he began to assist his father in the wool-trade, cannot 
 now be positively ascertained ; but as he was early taken from school, 
 for this purpose, we shall probably not err far, if we suppose this 
 change to have taken place when he was twelve years old ; a com- 
 putation which includes a period of scholastic education sufficiently 
 long to have imbued him with just such a portion of classical lore, as 
 an impartial enquirer into his life and works would be willing to 
 admit. 
 
 A short time previous to this, when our poet was in his twelfth 
 year, and in the summer of 1575, an event occurred which must have 
 made a great impression on his mind ; the visit of Queen Elizabeth 
 to the magnificent Earl of Leicester, at Kenelworth Castle. That 
 young Shakspeare was a spectator of the festivities on this occasion, 
 was first suggested by Bishop Percy *, who, in his Essay on the Origin 
 of the English Stage, speaking of the old Coventry play of Hock 
 Tuesday, which was performed before Her Majesty during her resi- 
 dence at the castle, observes, — " Whatever this old play, or ' storial 
 show,' was at the time it was exhibited to Queen Elizabeth, it had 
 probably our young Shakspeare for a spectator, who was then in his 
 twelfth year, and doubtless attended with all the inhabitants of the 
 surrounding country at these ' Princely Pleasures of Kenelworth,' f 
 whence Stratford is only a few miles distant. And as the Queen was 
 
 * Mr. Malone is also of opinion that Shakspeare was present at this magnificent recep- 
 tion of Elizabeth. Vide "Inquiry," p. 150. note 82. 
 
 f So denominated from a tract, written by George Gascoignc Esq., entitled " The 
 Princely Pleasures of Kenelworth Castle." It is inserted in Nichols's Progresses of 
 Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. 
 
 ^82179
 
 38 
 
 much diverted with the Coventry play, * whereat Her Majestic 
 laught well,' and rewarded the performers with two bucks, and five 
 marks in money : who, ' what rejoicing upon their ample reward, 
 and what triumphing upon the good acceptance, vaunted their play 
 was never so dignified, nor ever any players before so beatified:' 
 but especially if our young Bard afterwards gained admittance into 
 the castle to see a play, which the same evening, afl;er supper, was 
 there ' presented of a very good theme, but so set forth by the actors' 
 well-handling, that pleasure and mirth made it seem very short, 
 though it lasted two good hours and more, we may imagine what an 
 impression was made on his infant mind. Indeed the dramatic cast 
 of many parts of that superb entertainment, which continued nineteen 
 days, and was the most splendid of the kind ever attempted in this 
 kingdom, must have had a very great effect on a young imagination, 
 whose dramatic powers were hereafter to astonish the world." * 
 
 Of the gorgeous splendour, and elaborate pageantry which were 
 displayed during this princely fete at Kenelworth, some idea may be 
 formed from the following summary. The Earl met the Queen on 
 Saturday the 9th of July 1575, at Long Ichington, a town seven miles 
 from Kenelworth, where His Lordship had erected a tent, for the pur- 
 pose of banqueting Her Majesty, upon such a magnificent scale, 
 " that justly for dignity," says Laneham, " may be comparable with a 
 beautiful palace ; and for greatness and quantity, with a proper town, 
 or rather a citadel ;" and to give his readers an adequate conception of 
 its vast magnitude, he adds that " it had seven cart load of pins per- 
 taining to it." f At the first entrance of the Queen into His Lordship's 
 castle a floating island was discerned upon the pool, glittering with 
 torches, on which sat the Lady of the Lake, attended by two 
 n3rmphs, who addressed Her Majesty in verse, with an historical 
 account of the antiquity and owners of the castle ; and the speech 
 
 * Reliquesof Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. p. 143. 4th edition. 
 
 t Nichols's Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. Laneham's 
 Account of the Queen's Entertainment at Killingworth Castle, 1575, p. 50. or 78. of the 
 original pamphlet.
 
 39 
 
 was closed with the sound of cornets, and other instruments ol' loud 
 music. Within the base-court was erected a stately bridge, twenty 
 feet wide, and seventy feet long, over which the Queen was to pass ; 
 and on each side stood columns, with presents upon them to Her 
 Majesty from the gods. Silvanus offered a cage of wild-fowl, and 
 Pomona various sorts of fruits ; Ceres gave corn, and Bacchus wine ; 
 Neptune presented sea-fish ; Mars the habiliments of war ; and 
 Phoebus all kinds of musical instruments. During the rest of her 
 stay, varieties of sports and shows were daily exhibited. In the chase 
 was a savage-man clad in ivy accompanied by satyrs ; there were 
 bear-baitings and fire-works, Italian tumblers, and a country brideale, 
 running at the Quintain, and JNIorrice-dancing. And, that no sort of 
 diversion might be omitted, hither came the Coventry-men and 
 acted the old play already mentioned, called Hock Tuesday, a kind of 
 tilting match, representing, in dumb show, the defeat of the Danes by 
 the English, in the reign of King Ethelred. There were besides on 
 the pool, a Triton riding on a Mermaid, eighteen feet long, and Arion 
 upon a Dolphin. To grace the entertainment, the Queen here 
 knighted Sir Thomas Cecil, eldest son to the lord treasurer ; Sir 
 Henry Cobham, brother to the Lord Cobham ; Sir Francis Stanhope, 
 and Sir Tnomas Tresham. An estimate may be formed of the 
 expense from the quantity of ordinary beer, that was drank upon 
 this occasion, which amounted to three hundied and twenty hogs- 
 heads. * 
 
 To the ardent and opening mind of our youthful Bard what exqui- 
 site delight must this grand festival have imparted, the splendour of 
 which, as Bishop Hurd remarks, " claims a remembrance even in the 
 annals of our country." f A considerable portion of the very my- 
 thology which he had just been studying at school, was here brought 
 before his eyes, of which the costume and language were under the 
 direction of the first poets of the age ; and the dramatic cast of the 
 
 * Life of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1727. 8vo. p. 92. 
 
 f Kurd's Moral and Political Dialogues, vol. i. p. 148. Edit, of 1788.
 
 40 
 
 whole pageantry, whether classical or Gothic, was such, as probably to 
 impress his glowing imagination with that bias for theatrical amuse- 
 ments, which afterwards proved the basis of his own glory, and of 
 his country's poetic fame. 
 
 Here, could he revisit the glimpses of the day, how justly might he 
 deplore, in his own inimitable language, the havoc of time, and the 
 mutability of human grandeur ; of this princely castle, once the seat 
 of feudal hospitality, of revelry and song, and of which Laneham, in 
 his quaint style and orthography, has observed, — " Who that considerz 
 imtoo the stately seat of Kenelieorth Castl, the rare beauty of bilding 
 that His Honor hath avaunced ; all of the hard quarry-stone : every 
 room so spacious, so well belighted, and so hy roofed within ; so 
 seemly too sight by du proportion without ; a day tyme, on every side 
 so glittering by glasse ; a night, by continuall brightnesse of candel, 
 fyre, and torch-light, transparent thro the lyghtsome wyndow, as it 
 wear the Egiptian Pharos relucent untoo all the Alexandrian coast : 
 or els (too talke merily with my mery freend) thus radiant, as thoogh 
 Phoebus for hiz eaz woold rest him in the Castl, and not every 
 night so to travel doown untoo the Antipodes; heertoo so fully furnisht 
 of rich apparell and utensilez apted in all points to the best;"* 
 of this vast pile the very ruins are now so reduced, that the grand 
 gateway, and the banquetting hall, eighty-six feet in length, and forty- 
 five in width, are the only important remains, f- 
 
 * Laneham's Account, p. 65. of the Original. 
 
 f The following extract from Laneham's Letter, which immediately follows the passage 
 given in the text, and in which I have dropped the author's singular orthography, will 
 afford the reader a curious and very entertaining description of the costly and magnificent 
 gardens of Kenelworth Castle, gardens in which it is probable the youthful Shakpeare had 
 more than once wandered with delight : — 
 
 " Unto this, His Honour's exquisite appointment of a beautiful garden, an acre or more 
 of quantity, thai lieth on the north there : wherein hard all along the castle-wall is reared 
 a pleasant terrace of a ten foot high, and a twelve broad : even under foot, and fresh of 
 fine grass ; as is also the side thereof toward the garden, in which, by simdry equal distances, 
 with obelisks, spheres, and white bears, all of stone, upon their curious bases, by goodly 
 shew were set : to these two fine arbours redolent by sweet trees and flowers, at each end 
 one, the garden plot under that, with fair allies green by grass, even voided from the
 
 41 
 
 If Shakspeare were taken as eaily from school as we have supposed, 
 and his slender attainments in latinity strongly warrant the supposition, 
 it is more than probable, building on the traditional hint in Rowe, of 
 
 borders a both sides, and some (for change) with sand, not light or too soft or soily by 
 dust, but smooth and firm, pleasant to walk on, as a sea-shore when the water is availd: 
 then, much gracificd by due proportion of four even quarters: in the midst of each, upon 
 a base a two foot square, and high, seemly bordered of itself, a square pilaster rising py- 
 ramidally of a fifteen foot higli : simmetrically pierced through from a foot beneath, until 
 a two foot of the top : whereupon for a capital, an orb of a ten inches thick: every of 
 these (with his base) from the ground to the top, of one whole piece ; hewn out of hard 
 porphery, and with great art and heed (thinks me) thither conveyed and there erected. 
 Where, further also, by great cast and cost, the sweetness of savour on all sides, made so re- 
 pirant from the redolent plants and fragrant herbs and flowers, in form, colour, and quantity 
 so deliciously vax^iant ; and fiuit-trees bedecked with apples, pears, and ripe cherries. 
 
 " And unto these, in the midst against the terrace, a square cage, sumptuous and 
 beautiful, joined hard to the north wall (that a that side gards the garden as the garden 
 the castle), of a rare form and excellency, was raised : in height a twenty foot, thirty long, 
 and a fourteen broad. From the ground strong and close, reared breast high, whereat a 
 soil of a fair moulding was couched all about: from that upward, four great windows a 
 front, and two at each end, every one a five foot wide, as many more even above them, 
 divided on all parts by a transome and architrave, so likewise ranging about the cage. 
 Each window arched in the top, and parted from other in even distance by flat fair bolted 
 columns, all in form and beauty like, that supported a comely cornish couched all along 
 upon the bole square; which with a wire net, finely knit, of mashes six square, an iiich 
 wide (as it were for a flat roof) and likewise the space of every window with great cun- 
 ning and comeliness, even and tight was all over-strained. Under the cornish again, every 
 part beautified with great diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires ; pointed, tabled, 
 rok and round ; garnished with their gold, by skilful head and hand, and by toil and pencil 
 so lively expressed, as it mought be great marvel and pleasure to consider how near ex- 
 cellency of art could approach unto perfection of nature. 
 
 " Holes were there also and caverns in orderly distance and fashion, voided into the 
 wall, as well for heat, for coolness, for roost a nights and refuge in weather, as also for 
 breeding when time is. More, fair even and fresh holly-trees for pearching and proinirg, 
 set within, toward each end one. 
 
 " Hereto, their diversity of meats, their fine several vessels for their water and sundry 
 grains ; and a man skilful and diligent to look to them and tend them. 
 
 " But (shall I tell you) the silver sounded lute, without the sweet touch of hand ; the 
 glorious golden cup, without the fresh fragrant wine ; or the rich ring with gem, without 
 the fair featured finger ; is nothing indeed in his proper grace and use : even so His 
 Honour accoj^nted of this mansion, till he had placed their tenants according. Had it 
 therefore replenished with lively birds, English, French, Spanish, Canarian, and (I am 
 deceived if I saw not some) African. Whereby, whether it became more delightsome in 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 42 
 
 his aid being li'anted at home *, tliat he continued to assist his father in 
 the wool-tratle for some years ; that is, in all likelihood, until his 
 sixteenth or eighteenth year. Mr. A^alone, however, not adverting 
 
 change of tuiies, and harmony to the ear; or else in difference of colours, kinds, and pro- 
 perties to the eye, I'll tell you if I can, when 1 have better bethought me. 
 
 " In the centre (as it were) of this goodly garden, was there placed a very fair fountain, 
 cast into an eight-square, reared a four foot high ; from the midst whereof a column up 
 set in shape of two Athlants joined together a back half; the one looking east, tothcr 
 west, with their hands upholding a fair formed bowl of a three foot over ; from whence 
 sundry fine pipes did lively distill continual streams into the receipt of the fountain, main- 
 tained still two foot deep by the same fresh falling water : wherein pleasantly playing to 
 and fro, and round about, carp, tench, bream, and for variety, perch, and eel, fish fair- 
 liking all, and large : In the top, the ragged staff; which with the bowl, the pillar, and 
 eight sides beneath, were all hewn out of rich and hard white marble. A one side Neji- 
 tune with his tridental fuskin triumphing in his throne, trailed into the deep by his marine 
 horses. On another, Thetis in her chariot drawn by her dolphins. Then Triton by his 
 fishes. Here Proteus herding his sea-bulls. There Doris and her daughters solacing a 
 sea and sands. The waves scourging with froth and foam, intermingled in place, with 
 whales, whirlpools, sturgeons, tunnies, conchs, and wealks, all engraven by exquisite 
 device and skill, so as I may think this not much inferior unto Phcebus gates, which (Ovid 
 says) and peradventure a pattern to this, that Vulcan himself did cut : whereof such was 
 the excellency of art, that the work in value surmounted the stuff, and yet were the gates 
 all of clean massy silver. 
 
 " Here were things, ye see, mought inflame any mind to long after looking : but whoso 
 was found so hot in desire, with the wreast of a cok was sure of a cooler : water spurting 
 upward with such vehemency, as they should by and by be moistened from top to toe; 
 the he's to some laughing, but the she's to more sport. This some time was occupied to 
 very good pastime. 
 
 " A garden then so appointed, as wherein aloft upon sweet shawdowed walk of tenrace, 
 in heat of summer, to feel the pleasant whisking wuid above, or delectable coolness of the 
 fountain spring beneath : to taste of delicious strawberries, cherries and other fruits, even 
 fi"om their stalks : to smell such fragrancy of sweet odours, breathing from the plants, 
 herbs, and flowers : to hear such natural melodious musick and tunes of birds : to have in 
 eye, for mirth, some time these under springing streams ; then, the woods, the waters (for 
 both pool and chase were hard at hand in sight,) the deer, the people (that out of the east 
 arbour in the base court also at hand in view,) the fruits trees, the plants, the herbs, the 
 flowers, the change in colours, the birds flittering, the fountain streaming, the fish swim- 
 ming, all in such delectable variety, order, dignity ; whereby, at one moment, in pne place, 
 at hand, without travel, to have so fid 1 fruition of so many God's blessings, by 'entire 
 delight unto all senses (if all can take) at once : for ctijmon of the word worthy to be called 
 Paradise : and though not so goodly as Paradise for want of the feir rivers, yet b.etter a 
 great deal by the lack of so unhappy a tree." Pages 66^-72. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 59.
 
 4t 
 
 to this tradition, has, in a note to Rowe's Life, declared his belief,' 
 " that} on leaving school, Shakspeare was placed in the office of some 
 country attorney, or the seneschal of some manor court*:" a po- 
 sition which we think improbable only in point of time ; and, in jus- 
 tice to Mr. Malone, it must be added, that in other places he has 
 given a much wider latitude to the period of this engagement. 
 
 The circumstances on which this conjecture has been founded, 
 are these: — that, in the first place, throughout the dramas of Shak- 
 speare, there is interspersed such a vast variety of legal phrases 
 and allusions, expressed with such technical accuracy, as to force upon 
 the mind a conviction, that the person who had used them must have, 
 been intimately acquainted with the profession of the law ; and, se- 
 condly, that at the close of Aubrey's manuscript anecdotes of Shak- 
 speare, which are said to have been collected, at an early period, from 
 the information of the neighbours of the poet, it is positively asserted, 
 that our bard " understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his 
 younger years a schoolmaster in the country." f 
 
 On the first of these data, it has been observed by Mr. Malone, in 
 his " Attempt to ascertain the Order in which the Plays of Shakspeare 
 were written," that the poet's " knowledge of legal terms is not merely 
 such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his all- 
 comprehending mind ; it has the appearance of technical skill ; and he 
 is so fond of displaying it on all occasions, that I suspect he was 
 early initiated in at least the forms of law, and was employed, while 
 he yet remained at Stratford, in the office of some country-attorney, 
 who was at the same time a petty conveyancer, and perhaps also the 
 seneschal of some manor-court." :j: In confirmation of this opinion, 
 various instances are given of his legal phraseology, which we have 
 copied in the note below § ; and here we must remark that the expres- 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 60. note 7. \ Reed's Shakspeare, vol.iii. p. 214. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 2/6". 
 
 § " ' For wiiat in me was purc/iased. 
 
 Falls upon thee in a much fairer sort.' K, Hen. IV. P. II. 
 
 G 2
 
 44 
 
 sion, Ti^'hile he y^t remained at Stratford, leaves the period of his first 
 apphcation to the law, irom the time at which he left school to the era 
 
 " Purchase is here used in its strict legal sense, ia contradistinction to an acquisition by 
 
 descent. 
 
 « Unless the devil have him \n fee-simple, iicithfne and recofvery.' 
 
 Merry Wives of fVindsor. 
 
 ' He is 'rested on the case.' Comedy of Errors. 
 
 I with bills on their necks, Be it known unto all men by these presents,' &c. 
 
 As you like it. 
 
 ' who writes himself armigero, in any bill, ■a.iarraiit, quittance, or obligation.' 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 
 ' Go with me to a notary, seal me there 
 Your single bond.' Merchant of Venice. 
 
 ' Say, for non-payment that the debt should double.' Venus and Adonis. 
 
 " On a conditional bond's becoming forfeited for non-payment of money borrowed, the 
 whole penalty, which is usually the double of the principal sum lent by the obligee, was 
 formerly recoverable at law. To this our poet here alludes. 
 
 ' But the defendant doth that plea deny ; 
 To 'cide his title, is impanell'd 
 A quest of thoughts.' Sonnet 46. 
 
 " In Much Ado about Nothing, DogbeiTy charges the watch to keep their fellow's counsei 
 and their cmn. This Shakspeare transferred from the oath of a grand juryman. 
 
 ' And let my officers of such a nature 
 Make an extent upon his house and lands.' As you like it. 
 
 ' He was taken with the maimer' Love's Labour's lost. 
 
 ' Enfeof'd himself to popularity.' K. Hen. IV. P. I. 
 
 « He will seal the fee-simple of his salvation, and cut the entail from all remainders, 
 and a perpetual sufccession for it perpetually.' All's Well that ends Well. 
 
 ' Why, let her accept before excepted.' Izvelfh Night. 
 
 i which is four terms or two actions ; — and he shall laugh without ijitei-vallums.' 
 
 K.Hai.IV. P.IL 
 
 ' keeps leets and law-days' K. Richard IL 
 
 ' Pray in aid for kindness.' Anthony and Cleopatra. 
 
 " No writer but one who had been conversant with the technical language of leases and 
 other conveyances, would have used determination as synonymous to end. Shakspeare 
 frequently uses the word in that sense. See voi. xii. (Reed's Shakspeare,) p. 202. n.2.; 
 
 7
 
 45 
 
 of his visiting London, unfixed ; a portion of time which we may 
 fairly estimate as inckiding the lapse often years. 
 
 With regard to the affirmation of Aubrey, that Shakspeare had been 
 in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country, the same ingenious 
 critic very justly remarks, that " many traditional anecdotes, though 
 not perfectly accurate, contain an adumbration of the truth ;" and 
 then adds, " I am strongly inclined to think that the assertion con- 
 tains, though not the truth, yet something like it : I mean that Shak- 
 speare had been employed for some time in his younger years as a 
 teacher in the country ; though Dr. Farmer has incontestably proved, 
 that he could not have been a teacher of Latin. I have already sug- 
 gested my opinion, that before his coming to London he had acquired 
 some share of legal knowledge in the office of a petty country-con- 
 veyancer, or in that of the steward of some manorial court. If he 
 began to apiply to this study at the age of eighteen, two years afterwards 
 
 vol. xiii. p. 127. n. 4. ; and (Mr. Malone's edit.) vol. x. p. 202. n. 8. ' From and after the 
 determination of such a term,' is the regular language of conveyancers. 
 
 < Humbly complaining to Your Highness.' K. Richard III. 
 
 ' Humbly complaining to Your Lordship, your orator,' &c. are the first words of every 
 bill in chancery. 
 
 * A kiss in fee farm ! In witness whereof these parties interchangeably have set tlicir 
 hands and seals.' Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 « Art thou afeodai-y for this act?' Cymbdinc. 
 
 " See the note on that passage, vol.xviii. p. 507, 508. n. 3. Reed's edit. 
 
 ' Are those precepts served ?' says Shallow to Davy, in K. Henry IV. 
 " Precept in this sense is a word only known in the office of a justice of peace. 
 
 ' Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour, 
 Can'st thou demise to any child of mine ?' K. Richard III. 
 
 ' hath demised, granted, and to farm let,' is the constant language of leases. What 
 
 poet but Shakspeare has used the word demised in this sense .'' 
 
 " Perhaps it may be said, that our author in the same manner may be proved to have 
 been equally conversant with the terms of divinity or physic. Whenever as large a 
 number of instances of his ecclesiastical or medicinal knowledge shall be produced, what 
 has now been stated will certainly not be entitled to any weight." Malone, Reed's 
 Shakspeare, vol. ii, p. 276. n. 9.
 
 46 
 
 he might have been sufficiently conversant w^ith conveyances to have 
 taught others the form of such legal assurances as are usually prepared 
 by country-attorneys ; and perhaps spent two or three years in this 
 employment before he removed from Stratford to London. Some 
 uncertain rumour of this kind might have continued to the middle 
 of the last century, and by the time it reached Mr. Aubrey, our poet's 
 original occupation was changed from a scrivener to that of a school- 
 master." * 
 
 In this quotation it will be immediately perceived that the period 
 of our author's application to the study of the law, is now supposed 
 to Ijave occurred at the age of eighteen, when he must have been long- 
 removed from school, and that he is also conceived to have been a 
 teacher of what he had ac(juired in the profession. 
 
 These conjectures of JNIr. Malone, which, in their latter and mo^ 
 dified state, appear to me singularly happy, have met with a warm 
 advocate in Mr. Whiter : " The anecdotes," he remarks, " which have 
 been delivered down to us respecting our poet, appear to me neither 
 improbable nor, when duly examined, inconsistent with each other : 
 even those which seem least allied to probability, contain in my 
 opinion the adumbrata, if not expressa signa ventatis. Mr. Malone 
 has admirably sifted the accounts of Aubrey ; and thei-e is no truth, 
 that is obtained by a train of reasoning not reducible to demonstra- 
 tion, of which I am more convinced than the conjecture of Mr. Ma- 
 lone, who supposes that Shakspeare, before he quitted Stratford, was 
 employed in such matters of business as belonged to the office of a 
 country-attorney, or the steward of a manor-court. I have stated his 
 conjecture in general terras, that the fact, as it relates to our poet's 
 legal allusions, might be separated from any accidental circumstances 
 of historical truth. I am astonished, however, that Mr. Malone lias 
 confirmed his conjecture by so few examples. I can supply him with 
 a very large accession." f 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 222, 223. 
 
 f Whiter's Specimen of a Conimentaiy, p. J)5. note. As Mr. Whiter lias not cho&tn 
 to append these additional examples, I luive thought it would be satisfactory to give ttus 
 few wliich more immediately occur to my memory.
 
 47 
 
 Mr. Chalmers, however, refuses his aid in the structure of this 
 conjectural fabric, and asserts that Shakspeare might have derived all 
 his technical knowledge of the law from a very few books. " From 
 Totell's Presidents, 15*72; from Pulton's Statutes, 1578; and from 
 the Lawier's Logike, 1588." * 
 
 That these books were read by Shakespeare, there can, we think, 
 be little doubt; but this concession by no means mihtates against the 
 idea of his having been employed for a short period in some profit- 
 able branch of the law. After weighing all the evidence which can 
 now be adduced, either for or against the hypothesis, we shall pro- 
 bably make the nearest approximation to the truth in concluding, 
 that the object of our research, having assisted his father for some 
 years in the wool-trade, for which express purpose he had been early 
 taken from school, might deem it necessary, on the prospect of ap- 
 proaching marriage, to acquire some additional means of supporting 
 a domestic establishment, and, accordingly, annexed to his former 
 occupation, or superseded it, by a knowledge of an useful branch of 
 
 " Immediately provided in that case." Midsummer Night's Dieam. 
 
 « Royally attornied." Winter's Tale. 
 
 " That doth utter all men's ware-a." Winter's Tale. 
 
 " Thy title is affeet'd." (This is a law-term for confirmed.) 
 
 " Keep leets, and law-days, and in sessions sit." OtMlo. 
 
 " Why should calamity be full of words ?" 
 
 Windy attorneys to their client woes. Richard III. 
 
 " But when the heart's attorney, once is mute, 
 
 The clietit breaks, as desperate in his suit." Vemis and Adonis. 
 
 " So now I have confessed that he is thine, 
 
 And I myself am mortgaged to thy •will." Sonnet 134. 
 
 " He learn'd but, suretij-like, to write for me, 
 Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. 
 The statute of thy beauty, &c." . Sonnet 134. 
 
 * Chalmers's Apolpgy, p. 55 1. The " Lawiers Logike" was written by Abraham 
 Fraunce.
 
 48 
 
 the law, which, by being taught to others, might prove to himself a 
 source of revenue. Thus combining the record of Howe with the 
 tradition of Aubrey, and with the evidence derived from our author's 
 own works, an inference has been drawn which, though not amount- 
 ing to certainty, approaches the confine of it with no small 
 pretensions. 
 
 Of the events and circumstances which must have occurred to 
 Shakspeare in the interval between his leaving the free-school of 
 Stratford, and his marriage, scarcely any thing has transpired ; the 
 following anecdote, however, which is still preserved at Stratford 
 and the neighbouring village of Bidford, may be ascribed with 
 greater propriety to this than to any subsequent period of his 
 life. We shall give it in the words of the author of the " Picturesque 
 Views on the Avon," who professes to have received it on the spot, 
 as one of the traditional treasures of the place. Speaking of Bidford, 
 v/hich is still equally notorious for the excellence of its ale, and the 
 thirsty clay of its inhabitants, he adds, " there were antiently two 
 societies of village-yeomanry in this place, who frequently met under 
 the appellation of Bidford Topers. It was a custom with these 
 heroes to challenge any of their neighbours, famed for the love of 
 good ale, to a drunken combat : among others the people of Stratford 
 were called out to a trial of strength, and in the number of their 
 champions, as the traditional story runs, our Shakspeare, who for- 
 swore all thin potations, and addicted himself to ale as lustily as 
 Falstaff to his sack, is said to have entered the lists. In confirmation 
 of this tradition we find an epigram written by Sir Aston Cockayn, 
 pnd published in his poems in 1658, p. 124 : it runs thus — 
 
 TO MR. CLEMENT FISHER, OF WINCOT. 
 
 SHArsPEARB, your Wincot ale hath much rencwn'd, 
 That fox'd a beggar so (by chance was found 
 Sleeping) that there needed not many a word 
 To make him to believe he was a lord :
 
 49 
 
 But you affirm (and in it seems most eager) 
 "Twill make a lord as drunk as any beggar. 
 Bid Norton brew such ale as Shakspeare fancies 
 Did put Kit Sly into such lordly trances : 
 And let us meet there (for a fit of gladness) 
 And drink ourselves merry in sober sadness. 
 
 •• \Vlien the Stratford lads went over to Bidford, they found the 
 topers were gone to Evesham fair ; but were told, if they wished to 
 try their strength with the sippers, they were ready for the contest. 
 This being acceded to, our bard and his companions were staggered 
 at the first outset, when they thought it adviseable to sound a retreat, 
 while the means of retreat were practicable ; and then had scarce 
 marched half a mile, before they were all forced to lay down more 
 than their arms, and encamp in a very disorderly and unmilitary 
 form, under no better covering than a large crab-tree ; and there 
 they rested till morning : 
 
 " This tree is yet standing by the side of the road. If, as it has 
 been observed by the late Mr. T. Warton, the meanest hovel to which 
 Shakspeare has an allusion interests curiosity, and acquires an im- 
 portance, surely the tree that has spread its shade over him, and 
 sheltered him from the dews of the night, has a claim to our 
 attention. 
 
 " In the morning, when the company awakened our bard, the story 
 says they intreated him to return to Bidford, and renew the charge ; 
 but this he declined, and looking roiuid upon the adjoining villages, 
 exclaimed, ' No ! I have had enough ; I have drank with 
 
 Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, 
 Haunted Hilibro,' Hungry Grafton, 
 Dudging Exhall, Papist \Mcksford, 
 Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford.' 
 
 " Of the truth of this story I have very little doubt : it is certain 
 that the crab-tree is known all round the country by the name of 
 Shakspeare's crab ; and that the villages to which the allusion is 
 made, all bear the epithets here given them : the people of Peb- 
 worth are still famed for their skill on the pipe and tabor : Hillborough 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 50 
 
 is now called Haunted Hillborough ; and Gratiton is notorious for the 
 poverty of its soil." * 
 
 To the immediate neighbourhood indeed of Stratford, and to the 
 adjacent country, with which, at this early period of his life, our 
 poet seems to have been familiarised liy frequent excursions either of 
 pleasure or business, are to be found some allusions in his dramatic 
 works. In the Taming of the Shrexc, Christopher Sly, being treated 
 with great ceremony and state, on waking in the bed-chamber of the 
 nobleman, exclaims — " Wliat, would you make me mad? Am not I 
 Christopher Sly, oldSly's son of Burton-heath ; by birth a pedlar, by 
 education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by 
 present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of 
 Wincot, if she know me not : if she say I am not fourteen pence on 
 the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in 
 Christendom. What, I am not bestraught ! " f 
 
 There are two villages in Warwickshire called Burton Dorset and 
 Burton Hastings ; but that which was the residence of old Sly, is, in 
 all probability. Burton on the Heath, on the south side of the Avon, 
 opposite to Bidford, and about eighteen miles from Stratford. The 
 first scene of the play is described as Before an Alehouse on a Heath, 
 and it is remarkable that on Burton-heath there still remains a tene- 
 ment, which was formerly a public-house, under the name of Woncott 
 or Onecott: yet there is much reason to conclude, from the mode 
 in which Wincot is spoken of, both in this place, and in the follow- 
 ing passage, that Burton-heath and Wincot were considerably 
 distant : in the Second Part of King Henry IV. Davy says to Justice 
 Shallow, " I beseech you. Sir, to countenance William Visor of Wincot 
 against Clemont Perkes of the hill if," a phraseology which seems to 
 imply, not an insulated house, but a village, an inference which is 
 strongly supported by the fact that near Stratford there is actually a 
 village with the closely resembling name of Wilnecotte, which, in the 
 pronunciation and orthography of the common people, would almost 
 
 * Ireland's Picturesque Views, p. 22!) — 233. 
 
 |- Acti. sc. 2. t Act V. sc. 1.
 
 51 
 
 necessarily become Wincot. It should likewise be mentioned that 
 Mr. Warton is of opinion that this is the place to which Shakspeare 
 alludes, and he adds, " the house kept by our genial hostess still 
 remains, but is at present a mill." * 
 
 We are indebted also to the Second Part of King Henry IV. for an- 
 other local allusion of a similar kind : Silence, addressing Pistol, nick- 
 names him " goodman Puff of Barson f ," a village which, under this 
 appellation, and that of Barston, is situated between Coventry and Soly- 
 hall. It may indeed excite some surprise that we have not more allusions 
 of this nature to commemorate ; that the scenery which occurred to 
 him early in life, and especially at this period, when the imagery 
 drawn from nature must have been impressed on his mind in a manner 
 peculiarly vivid and defined, when he was free from care, unshackled 
 by a family, and at liberty to roam where fancy led him, has not been 
 delineated in some portion of his works, with such accuracy as imme- 
 diately to designate its origin. For, if we consider the excursive 
 powers of his imagination, and the desultory and unsettled habits 
 which tradition has ascribed to him during his youthful residence at 
 Stratford, we may assert, without fear of contradiction, and as an un- 
 doubted truth, that his rambles into the country, and for a poet's pur- 
 pose, were both frequent and extensive, and that not a stream, a wood, 
 or hamlet, within many miles of his native town, was unvisited by him 
 at various times and under various circumstances. 
 
 Yet, if we can seldom point out in his works any distinct reference 
 to the actual scenery of Stratford and its neighbourhood, we may 
 observe, that few of the remarkable events of his own time appear to 
 have escaped his notice ; and among these may be found one which 
 occurred at this juvenile period of his life, and to which we have an 
 allusion in Romeo and Juliet ; for though the personages of the 
 
 * Mr. Edwards and Mr. Steevens Iiave conjectured that Barton and Woodmancot, vul- 
 garly pronounced Woncot, in Gloucestershire, might be the places meant by Shakspeare ; 
 and Mr. Toilet remarks, that IVoncot, may be put for WolpJimancote, vulgarly Chjeiicote, m 
 Warwickshire. Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 30., and vol. xii. p. 240. 
 
 X Act V. sc. 3. 
 
 H 2
 
 52 
 
 drama exist and act in a foreign clime, yet in this, and in many similar 
 instances, he hesitates not to describe the events of his native country 
 as occurring wherever he has chosen to lay the scene. Thus 
 the nurse, describing to Lady Capulet the age at which Juliet was 
 weaned, says 
 
 " 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years," — 
 
 a line, which, as Mr. Tyrwhitt and Mr. Malone have observed*, 
 manifestly alludes to a phenomenon of this kind that had been felt 
 throughout England in the year 1580, and of which Holinshed, the 
 favourite historian of our bard, has given the following striking account: 
 — " On the sixt of April (1580), being Wednesdaie in Easter weeke, 
 about six of the clocke toward evening, a sudden earthquake happen- 
 , ing in London, and almost generallie throughout all England, caused 
 such an amazednesse among the people as was wonderfull for the time, 
 and caused them to make their earnest praiers to Almighty God ! 
 The great clocke bell in the palace at Westminster strake of it selfe 
 against the hammer with the shaking of the earth, as diverse other 
 clocks and bels in the steeples of the cities of London and els- 
 where did the like. The gentlemen of the Temple being then at 
 supper, ran from the tables, and out of their hall with their knives in 
 their hands. The people assembled at the plaie-houses in the fields, as 
 at the Whoreater (the Theater I would saie) were so amazed, that doubt- 
 ing the mine of the galleries, they made hast to be gone. A pcece of 
 the Temple church fell downe, some stones fell from Saint Panic's 
 church in London : and at Christ's church neere to Newgate-market, 
 in the sermon while, a stone fell fi-om the top of the sanie church, 
 which stone killed out of hand one Thomas Greie an apprentice, and 
 another stone fell on his feUow-servant named Mabell Eueret, and so 
 brused hir that she lived but four daies after. Diverse other at that time 
 in that place were sore hurt, with running out of the church one over 
 an other for feare. The tops of diverse chimnies in the citie fell 
 
 * Reed's Shakspearc, vol. xx. p. 38. n. 2.
 
 S3 
 
 downe, the houses were so shaken : a part of the castell at Bishops 
 Stratford in Essex fell downe. This earthquake indured in or about 
 London not passing one minute of an houre, and was no more felt. 
 But afterward in Kent, and on the sea coast it was felt three times ; 
 and at Sandwich at six of the clocke the land not onelic quaked, but 
 the sea also fomed, so that the ships tottered. At Dover also the same 
 houre was the like, so that a peece of the cliiFe fell into the sea, 
 with also a peece of the castell wall there : a piece of Saltwood 
 castell in Kent fell downe : and in the church of Hide the bels 
 were heard to sound. A peece of Sutton church in Kent fell downe, 
 the eailhquake being there not onlie felt, but also heard. And in all 
 these places and others in east Kent, the same earthquake was felt 
 three times to move, to wit, at six, at nine, and at eleven of the 
 clocke." * In this passage, to which we shall again have occasion to 
 revert, the violence and universality of the event described, are such 
 as would almost necessarily form an era for reference in the poet's 
 mind ; and the date, indeed, of the prima stamina of the play in 
 which the line above-mentioned is found, may be nearly ascertained 
 by this allusion. 
 
 If, as some of his commentators have supposed, Shakspeare pos- 
 sessed any grammatical knowledge of the French and Italian lan- 
 guages, it is highly probable that the acquisition must have been 
 obtained in the interval which took place between his quitting the 
 grammar-school of Stratford and his marriage, a period, if our arrange- 
 ment be admitted, of about six years ; and consequently, any consi- 
 deration of the subject will almost necessarily claim a place at the close 
 of this chapter. 
 
 That the dramas of our great poet exhibit numerous instances in 
 which both these languages are introduced, and especially the former, 
 of which we have an entire scene in Henry V., will not be denied by 
 any reader of his works ; nor will any person, acquainted with the 
 literature of his times, venture to affirm, that he might not have ac- 
 quired by his own industry, and through the medium of the introduc- 
 
 * Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. iv. p. 426. edit, of 1808.
 
 54 
 
 tory books then in circulation, a sufficient knowledge of French and 
 Italian for all the purposes which he had in view. We cannot there- 
 fore agree with Dr. Farmer, when he asserts, that Shakspeare's 
 acquaintance with these languages consisted only of a familiar phrase 
 or ^TOO- picked up in the xscriters of the time, or the course of his con- 
 versation. * 
 
 The coiTupted state of the French and Italian passages, as found in 
 the early editions of our poet's plays, can be no argument that he was 
 totally ignorant of these languages ; as it would apply with nearly equal 
 force to prove that he was similarly situated with regard to his verna- 
 cular tongue, which in almost every scene of these very editions has 
 undergone various and gross corruptions. Nor will greater conviction 
 result, when it is affirmed that this foreign phraseology might be the 
 interpolation of the players ; for it remains to be ascertained, that 
 they possessed a lai'ger portion of exotic literature than Shakspeare 
 himself. 
 
 The author of an essay on Shakspeare's learning in the Censura 
 Literaria, from which we have already quoted a passage in favour of his 
 having made some progress in latinity, is likewise of opinion that his 
 knowledge of the French was greater than Dr. Farmer is wilhng to 
 allow. 
 
 " I have been confirmed in this opinion," he observes, " by a casual 
 discovery of Shakspeare having imitated a whole French line and de- 
 scription in a long French epic poem, written by Gamier, called the 
 Henriade, like Voltaire's, and on the same subject, first published in 
 1594. 
 
 " In As You Like It, Shakspeare gives an affecting description of the 
 different manners of men in the different ages of life, which closes 
 with these lines : 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 85. Mr. Capel Lofft's opinion of the Italian literature 
 of Shakspeare is somewhat more extended than my own. " My impression," says he, 
 " is, that Shakspeare was not unacquainted with the most popular authors in Italian 
 prose : and that his ear had listened to the enchanting tones of Petrarca and some others 
 of their great poets." Preface to his Laura, p. cxcii.
 
 55 
 
 " What ends this strange eventful history 
 Is sccontl childishness and mere oblivion, 
 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing." 
 
 " Now — why have recourse for an insipid preposition to a lan- 
 guage of which he is said to have been totally ignorant ? I always 
 supposed therefore that there must have been some peculiar circum- 
 stance well known in those times, which must have induced him to 
 give this motley garb to his language : — but what that circumstance 
 was I could not discover until I accidentally in a foreign literary 
 journal, met with a review of a republication of that poem of Garnier 
 at Paris, in which were inserted, as a specimen of the poem, a de- 
 scription of the appearance of the ghost of Admiral Coligny on the 
 uioht after his murder at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and in the 
 followino; lines : 
 
 "& 
 
 " Sans jyicds, sans mains, sans ncz,sans orc/l/cs, sansija/.r, 
 Meurtri dc toutes parts ; la barhe et les chcvcux 
 Poudraix, cnsanglantez, chose presqne incredible ! 
 Tant cctlc vision eloit triste et homhle .'" 
 
 " Here it immediately appeared to what author Shakspeare had 
 gone for the archetype of his own description of the last stage of old 
 age, which, by a parody on the above lines, he meant to represent like 
 to that mutilated ghost ; and this seems to indicate that he had read 
 that poem in the original ; for we even find the meurtri de toutes parts 
 imitated by smis every thing. A friend of mine formerly mentioned this 
 to Mr. Steevens, and he has briefly noticed this parody, if I recollect 
 rightly, in his joint edition along with Johnson *, but he did not copy 
 the original lines of Garnier ; nor so far as I know any editor since ; 
 which however are too remarkable to be altogether consigned to obli- 
 vion ; and it is not very likely, that any Englishman will ever read 
 through that long dull poem ; neither should I myself have known of 
 
 * This notice does not ajipear in the Variorum edition of 1803.
 
 56 
 
 those lines, it" they had not been quoted as a specimen. Steevens's 
 note is so very brief as to be quite obscure in regard to what conse- 
 quence he thought deducible from the imitation : he seems to suggest 
 as if there might have been some English translation of the poem 
 published, though now unknown ; this is the constant refuge for 
 Shakspeare's knowledge of any thing written originally in another lan- 
 ffuaffe. But even if the fact were true, yet no translator would have 
 preserved the repetition of that word sans ; for this he must have gone 
 to the French poem itself, therefore must at least have been able to 
 read that hue in French, if not also the whole description of the ghost; 
 and if that, why not able also to read other French books ? It may 
 indeed, be supposed, that some friend may have shown him the above 
 description, and explained to him the meaning of the French lines, 
 but this is only to make a second supposition in order to support a 
 former one made without sufficient foundation : we may just as well 
 make a single supposition at once, that he was himself able to read and 
 understand it, since he has evidently derived from it his own descrip- 
 tion of the decrepitude of old age. Upon the whole, if his copy of a 
 sinole word from Holinshed, viz. ' on this side Tiber,' is a proof of his 
 
 O ... 
 
 having read that historian, why also is not his copy of the repetition of 
 sans, and his parody of Coligny's ghost, an equally good proof of his 
 having read the poem of Gamier in the original French language? To 
 reason otherwise is to say, that when he gives us bad French, this 
 proves him not to understand it ; and that when he gives us good 
 French, applied with propriety and even with ingenuity, yet this again 
 equally proves that he neither understood what he wrote, nor was so 
 much as able to read the French lines, which he has thus so wittily 
 imitated. * 
 
 Dr. Farmer has himself granted that Shakspeare began to learn 
 Latin : why then not allow, from premises still more copious and 
 convincing, that he began likewise to learn French and Italian ? 
 
 * Ceusura Liteiaria, vol. ix. p. 2S7. et seq.
 
 31 
 
 That he wanted not inclination for the attempt, the frequent use of 
 these languages in his works will sufficiently evince ; that he had 
 some leisure at the period which we have appropriated to these 
 acquisitions, namely, between the years 1576 and 1582, few will be 
 disposed to deny ; and that he had books which might enable him 
 to make some progress in these studies, the following list will 
 ascertain : — 
 
 1. A Treatyse English and French right necessarye and profitable 
 for all young Children. 1560. 
 
 2. Principal Rules of the Italian Grammar, &c. Newly corrected 
 and imprinted by Wykes : 1560, reprinted 1567. 
 
 3. The Italian Grammar and Dictionary : By W. Thomas. 1561. 
 
 4. Lentulo's Italian Grammar, put into English : By Henry Gren- 
 them. 1578. 
 
 5. Ploiche, Peter, Introduction to the French Tongue. 1578. 
 
 6. An Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionarie, containing foure sundrie 
 tongues : namelie, English, Latine, Greeke, and French : By I. Baret. 
 1580. * 
 
 In short, with regard to the literature of Shakspeare, the nearest 
 approximation to the truth will be found to arise from taking a me- 
 dium course between the conclusions of Dr. Farmer, and of those who 
 have gone into a contrary extreme. That he had made some and that 
 the usual progress in the Latin language during the short period of 
 his school-education, it is, we think, in vain to deny ; but that he ever 
 attained the power of reading a Roman classic with facility, cannot 
 with any probability be affirmed ; it will be likewise, we are disposed 
 to believe, equally rational and correct, if we conclude, from the 
 evidence which his genius and his works affiard, that his acquaintance 
 with the French and Italian languages was not merely confined to 
 the picking up a familiar phrase or tx&o from the conversation or 
 writings of others, but that he had actually commenced, and at an 
 early period too, the study of these languages, though, from his 
 
 • Vide Chalmers's Apology, p. 5't9. and Bibliotheca Recdiana, p. 9. 
 VOL. I. I
 
 58 
 
 situation, aud the circumstances of his Hfe, he had neither the means 
 nor the opportunity of cultivating them to any considerable extent. * 
 
 * Since these observations were written, a work has fallen into my hands under the 
 title of " A Tour in Quest of Genealogy, through several parts of Wales, Somersetshire, 
 and Wiltshire, in a Series of Letters to a Friend in Dublin ; interspersed with a de- 
 scription of Stourhead and Stonehenge; together with various Anecdotes and curious 
 Fragments from a Manuscript CoUectiop ascribed to Shakespeare. By a Barrister." 
 London, 1811. 
 
 These manuscripts ascribed to Shakspeare, which, from the language and sentiment of 
 almost every line, are manifestly a mere fiction, are said to have been purchased at an 
 auction at Carmarthen, consisting of verses and letters that passed between Shakspeare 
 and his mistress Anne Hatheway, together with letters to and from him and others, 
 a journal of Shakspeare, an account of many of his plays, memoirs of his life by him- 
 self, &c. I have mentioned the publication in this place, as it is worthy of remark, that 
 the fabricator of these MSS., whoever he is, appears to have entertained an idea similar to 
 my own, with regard to the period when our poet attempted the acquisition of the 
 modern languages ; for of the supposed memoirs said to be written by Shakspeare 
 himself, the following, among others, is given as a specimen : — 
 
 «' Having an ernest desier to lerne forraine tonges, it was mie good happ to have in 
 mie fathere's howse an Italian, one Girolama Albergi, tho he went bye the name of 
 Francesco Manzini, a dier of woole; but he was not what he wished to passe for ; he had 
 the breedinge of a gentilman, and was a righte sounde scholer. It was he taught me the 
 iittel Italian I know, and rubbed up my Latten ; we redd Bandello's Novells together, 
 from the which I gatherid some delliceous flowres to stick in mie dramattick poseys. He 
 was nevew to Battisto Tibaldi, who made a translacion of the Greek poete, Homar, into 
 Italian ; he showed me a coppy of it given him by hys kinsman, Ercole Tibaldi." P. 202. 
 
 I must do the author of this literary forgery, however, the justice to say, that in taste 
 and genius he is immeasurably beyond his youthful predecessor, and that some of the 
 verses ascribed to J}ina Hatheway, as he terms her, possess no inconsiderable beauties. 
 It is most extraordinary, however, that any individual should venture to bring forward 
 the following lines, which are exquisitely modern in their structure, as the production of 
 a cottage gii'l of the sixteenth century. 
 
 TO THE BELOVYD OF THE MUSES AND MEE. 
 
 SwEETE swanne of Avon, thou whoose art 
 Can mould at will the human hart, 
 Can drawe from all who reade or heare. 
 The unresisted smile and teare: 
 
 By thee a vyllege maiden found, 
 No care had I for measured sounde ; 
 To dressc the fleese that Willie wrought 
 Was all I knewe, was all I sought.
 
 59 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE MARRIED TO ANNE HATHAWAY ACCOUNT OF THE HATHAWAYS — COTTAGE 
 
 AT SHOTTERY BIRTH OF HIS ELDEST CHILD, SUSANNA — HAMNET AND JUDITH BAP' 
 
 TIZED — ANECDOTE OF SHAKSPEARE APPARENTLY SETTLED IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Shakspeare married and became the father of a family at a very 
 early period ; at a period, indeed, when most young men, even in his 
 own days, had only completed their school-education. He had pro- 
 bably been attached also to the object of his affections, who resided 
 very near to him, for a year X)v two previous to the nuptial connec- 
 tion, which took place in 1582 ; and Mr. Malone is inclined to 
 believe that the ceremony was performed either at Hampton-Lacy, 
 or at Billesley, in the August of that year*, when consequently the 
 poet had not attained the age of eighteen and a half! 
 
 The maiden name of the lady who had induced her lover to enter 
 thus early on the world, with little more than his passion to console, 
 and his genius to support them, was Afine Hathaway, the daughter of 
 
 At thie softe lure too quicke I flewo, 
 Enamored of thie songe I grew ; 
 The distaffe soone was layd aside. 
 And all niie woork thie straynes supply'd. 
 
 Thou gavest at first th' inchanting quill, 
 And evcrie kiss convay'd thie skill; 
 Unfelt, ye maides, ye cannot tell 
 The wondrous force of suche a spell. 
 
 Nor marvell if thie breath transfuse 
 A charme repleate with everie muse ; 
 They cluster rounde thie lippes, and thyne 
 Distill thcirc sweetes improv'd on myne. 
 
 Anna Hatheway. 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol.i. p. 139, note 4. 
 
 I 2
 
 60 
 
 Richard Hathaway, a substantial yeoman, residing at Shottery, a 
 village about a mile distant from Stratford It appears also from the 
 tomb-stone of his mistress * in the church of Stratford, that she must 
 have been born in 1556, and was therefore eight years older than 
 himself. 
 
 Of the family of the Hathaways little now, except the record of a 
 few deaths and baptisms, can be asceitained with precision : in the 
 register-books of the parish of Stratford, the following entry, in all 
 probability, refers to the father of the poet's wife : — 
 
 " Johanna, daughter of Richard Hathazvay, otherwise Gardiner, of 
 Shottery, was baptized May 9, 1566." f 
 
 As the register does not commence before 1558, the baptism of 
 Anne could not of course be included ; but it appears that the family 
 of this Richard was pretty numerous, for Thomas his son was bap- 
 tized at Stratford, April 12. 1569; John, another son, Feb. 3. 1574 ; 
 and William, another son, Nov. 30. 1578.:}: Thomas died at Strat- 
 ford in 1654-5, at the advanced age of eighty-five. § That the 
 Hathaways have continued resident at Shottery and the neighbour- 
 hood, down to the present age, will be evident from the note below, 
 which records their deaths to the year 1785, as inscribed on the floor, 
 in the nave and aisle of Stratford church. || 
 
 * " Heere Lyeth Interrid The Bodye of Anne, Wife of Mr. William Shakespeare, Who 
 Depted. This Life The 6th Day of Avgvst, 1623, Being of The Age of 67 Yeares." — 
 \\'iieler's Stratford, p. 76. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 133. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 134. Note by Malone. 
 
 5 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 128. 
 
 II " Richard Hathaway, of Shottery, died 15th April, 1692. Robert Hathaway died 
 4th March, 1728, aged 64. Edmund Hathaway died 14th June, 1729, aged 57. Jane 
 his wife died 12th Dec. 1729, aged 64. John Hathaway died Uth Oct. 1731, aged 39. 
 Abigail, wife of John Hathaway, jun. of Luddington, died 5th of May, 1735, aged 29. 
 Mary her daughter died 13th July, 1735, aged 10 weeks, Robert Hathaway, son of 
 Robert and Sarah Hathaway, died the 1st of March, 1723, aged 21. Ursula, wife of 
 John Hathaway, died the 23d of Janry. 1 731, aged 50. John Hathaway, sen. died the 5th of 
 Sept. 1753, aged 73. John Hathaway, of Haddington, died the 23d of June, 1775, 
 aged 67, S. H. 1756. S. H. 1 785." — Wheler's History and Antiquities of Stratford- 
 upon-Avon, p. 55.
 
 61 
 
 The cottage at Shottery, in which Anne and her parents dwelt, is 
 said to be yet standing, and is still pointed out to strangers as a subject 
 of curiosity. It is now impossible to substantiate the truth of the tra- 
 dition ; but Mr. Ireland, who has given a sketch of this cottage in his 
 Picturesque Views on the Avon, observes, " it is still occupied by the 
 descendants of her family, who are poor and numerous. To this same 
 humble cottage I was referred when pursuing the same inquiry, by the 
 late Mr. Harte, of Stratford, before-mentioned. He told me there was 
 old oak chair, that had always in his remembrance been called Shak- 
 speare's courting chair, with a purse that had been likewise his, and 
 handed down from him to his grand-daughter Lady Bernard, and from 
 her through the Hathaway family to those of the present day. From 
 the best information I was able to collect at the time, I was induced 
 to consider this account as authentic, and from a wish to obtain the 
 smallest trifle appertaining to our Shakspeare, I became a purchaser 
 of these relics. Of the chair I have here given a sketch : it is of a date 
 sufficiently ancient to justify the credibility of its history ; and as to 
 farther proof, it must rest on the traditional opinion and the character 
 of this poor family. Tlie piu'se is about four inches square, and is 
 curiously wi'ought with small black and white bugles and beads ; the 
 tassels are of the same materials. The bed and other furniture in 
 the room where the chair stood, have the appearance of so high anti- 
 quity, as to leave no doubt but that they might all have been the 
 furnitui'e of this house long before the time of Shakspeare. 
 
 " The proprietor of this furniture, an old woman upwards of 
 seventy, had slept in the bed from her childhood, and was always 
 told it had been there since the house was built. Her absolute 
 refusal to part with this bed at any price was one of the circumstances 
 which led to a persuasion that I had not listened with too easy credu- 
 lity to the tale she told me respecting the articles I had purchased. 
 By the same person I was informed, that at the time of the Jubilee, 
 the late George Garrick obtained from her a small inkstand, and a 
 pair of fringed gloves, said to have been worn by Shakspeare."* 
 
 * Ireland's Views, p. 206—209.
 
 62 
 
 Of the personal charms of the poet's mistress nothhig has been 
 transmitted to us by which we can form the smallest estimate, nor can 
 we positively ascertain whether convenience, or the attraction of a 
 beautiful form, was the chief promoter of this early connection. Mr, 
 Rowe merely observes, that, " in order to settle in the world after a 
 family-manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very * young;" 
 language which seems to imply that p7-udence was the prime motive 
 with the youthful bard. Theobald proceeds still further, and declarcvS 
 " it is probable, a view of interest might partly sway his conduct in 
 this point : for he married the daughter of a substantial yeoman in his 
 tieighbourhood, and she had the start of him in age no less than eight 
 j/ears." f Capell, on the contrary, thinks that the marriage was con- 
 tracted against the wishes of his father, whose displeasure was the 
 consequence of their union. :]: 
 
 A moment's consideration of the character of Shakspeare will in- 
 duce us to conclude that interest could not be his leading object in 
 forming the matrimonial tie. In no stage of his subsequent life 
 does a motive of this kind appear strongly to have influenced him ; 
 and it is well known, from facts which we shall have occasion shortly 
 to record, that his juvenility at Stratford was marked, rather by care- 
 lessness and dissipation, than by the cool calculations of pecuniary 
 wisdom. In short, to adopt, with slight vari?tion, a line of his own, 
 we may confidently assert that at this period, 
 
 " Love and Liberty crept in the mind and marrow of his youth." 
 
 Timon of Athens. 
 
 Neither can we agree with Mr. Capell in supposing that the father 
 of our bard was averse to the connection ; a supposition which he 
 has built on the idea of old Mr. Shakspeare being " a man of no little 
 substance," and that by this marriage of his son he was disappointed 
 in a design which he had formed of sending him to an § University ! 
 Now it has been proved that John Shakspeare was, at this period, if 
 not in distressed yet in embarrassed circumstances, and that neither 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. GO. f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 193. 
 
 % Reed's Shakspeare, vol.i. p. 355. note 1. § Ibid.
 
 63 
 
 the school-education of his son, nor his subsequent employment at 
 home, could be such as was calculated in any degree to prepare him 
 for an academical life. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, and certainly, with every probability on 
 our side, that the young poet's attachment to Anne Hathaway was, 
 not only perfectly disinterested, but had met likewise with the aj)- 
 probation of his parents. This will -appear with more verisimilitude 
 if we consider, in the first place, that though his bride were eight 
 years older than himself, still she could be but in her twenty-sixth 
 year, an age compatible with youth, and with the most alluring 
 beauty ; secondly, it does not appear that the finances of young 
 Shakspeare were in the least improved by the connection ; and thirdly, 
 we know that he remained some years at Strattbrd after his marriage, 
 which it is not likely that he would have done, had he been at variance 
 with his father. 
 
 It is to be regretted, and it is indeed somewhat extraordinary, that 
 not a fragment of the bard's poetry, addressed to his Warwickshire 
 beauty, has been rescued from oblivion ; for that the muse of Shak- 
 speare did not lie dormant on an occasion so propitious to her inspir- 
 ation we must believe, both from the costume of the times, and from 
 his own amatory disposition. He has himself told us that 
 
 " Never durst poet touch a pen to write, 
 
 Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs." — 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost, act iv. sc. 3. 
 
 and we have seen that an opportunity for qualification was very early 
 placed within his power. That he availed himself of it, there can be 
 no doubt ; and had his effusions, on this occasion, descended to 
 posterity, we should, in all probability, have been made acquainted 
 with several interesting particulars relative to his early life and cha- 
 racter, and to the person and disposition of his mistress. * 
 
 * Building on ihe high credibility of Shakspeare having employed his poetical talents, 
 at this period, on the subject nearest to his heart, two ingenious gentlemen have been so 
 obliging as not only to furnish him with words on this occasion, but to offer these to the
 
 64 
 
 Our ignorance on this subject, however, would have been compen- 
 sated, had any authentic documents been preserved relative to his 
 establishment at Stratford, in consequence of his marriage ; but of 
 his domestic arrangements, of his business or professional employment, 
 no information, or tradition to be depended upon, has reached us. 
 We can only infer, from the evidence produced in the preceding 
 chapter, and from the necessity, which must now have occurred, of 
 providing for a family-establishment, that if, as we have reason to 
 conclude, he had entered on the exercise of a branch of the manorial 
 law, previous to his marriage, and with a view towards that event, he 
 would, of course, be compelled, from prudential motives, to continue 
 that occupation, after he had become a householder, and most pro- 
 bably to combine with it the business of a woolstapler, either on his 
 own separate interest, or in concert with his father. 
 
 If any further incitement were wanting to his industry, it was soon 
 imparted ; for, to the claims upon him as a husband, were added, 
 during the following year, those which attach to the name of a parent ; 
 his eldest child, Susanna, being born in May 1583, and baptized on 
 the 26th of the same month. Thus, scarcely had our poet com- 
 pleted his nineteenth year, when the most serious duties of life were 
 imperiously forced upon his attention, under circumstances perhaps 
 of narrow fortune not altogether calculated to render their perform- 
 ance easy and pleasant ; a situation which, on a superficial view, 
 would not appear adapted to afford that leisure, that free and unin- 
 cumbered state of intellect, so necessary to mental exertion ; but 
 with Shakspeare the pressure of these and of pecuniary difficulties 
 served only to awaken that energy and elasticity of mind, which, 
 ultimately directing his talents into their proper channel, called 
 forth the brightest and most successfid emanations of a genius nearly 
 universal. 
 
 world as the genuine product of his genius. It is scarcely necessary to add, that I allude 
 to the Shakspcfire Papers of young Ireland ; and to a Tour in Quest of Genealogy, by a 
 Barrister.
 
 65 
 
 The family of the youthful bard gathered round him with rapidity; 
 for, in 1584-5, it was increased by the birth of twins, a son and 
 daughter, named Hamnet and Judith, who were baptized on February 
 the 2d, of the same year. 
 
 The boy was christened by the name of Hamnet in compliment to 
 his god-father Mr. Hamnet Sadler, and the girl was called Judith, 
 from a similar deference to his wife, Mrs. Judith Sadler, who acted as 
 her sponsor. Mr. Hamnet or Hamlet Sadler, for they were considered 
 as synonymous names, and therefore used indiscriminately *, appears 
 to have been some relation of the Shakspeare family ; he is one of the 
 witnesses to Shakspeare's will, and is remembered in it in the 
 following manner : — " Item, I give and bequeath to Hamlet Sadler 
 twenty-six shillings eight-pence, to buy him a ring." Mr. Sadler 
 died at Stratford in October 1624, and is supposed to have been 
 born about the year 1550. His wife was buried there March 23. 
 1613-14, and Mr. Malone conjectures that our poet was probably god- 
 father to their son William, who was baptized at Stratford, February 5. 
 1 597-8. -f- In the Stratford Register are to be found entries of the 
 baptism of six of Mr. Sadler's children, four sons and two daughters, 
 William being the last but one. 
 
 An anecdote of Shakspeare, unappropriated to any particular period 
 of his life, and which may with as much, if not more, probability, be 
 ascribed to this stage of his biography, as to any subsequent era, has 
 been preserved as a tradition at Stratford. A drunken blacksmith, 
 with a carbuncled face, reeling up to Shakspeare, as he was leaning 
 over a mercer's door, exclaimed, with much vociferation, 
 
 " Now, Mr. Shakspeare, tell me, if you can, 
 
 The dilFerence between a youth and a young man :" 
 
 * Tlius in the will of Shakspeare we read, " I give and bequeath to Hamlet Sadler ;" 
 when at the close, Mr. Sadler as a witness writes his christian name Hamnet. See 
 Malone's note on this subject, Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 135. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 158, note 1, 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 66 
 a question which immediately drew from our poet the following reply : 
 
 " Thou son of fire, with thy face like a maple. 
 
 The same difference as between a scalded and a coddled apple." 
 
 A part of the wit of this anecdote, which, says Mr. Maloue, 
 " was related near fifty years ago to a gentleman at Stratford, by a 
 person then above eighty years of age, whose father might have been 
 Contemporary with Shakspeare," turns upon the comparison between 
 the blacksmith's face and a species of maple, the bark of which, ac^ 
 cording to Evelyn, is uncommonly rough, and the grain undulated 
 and crisped into a variety of curls. 
 
 It would appear, indeed, from a book published in 1611, under the 
 title of Tarletons Jeasts, that this fancied resemblance was a frequent 
 sovirce of sarcastic wit ; for it is there recorded of this once celebrated 
 comedian, that, " as he was performing some part ' at the Bull in 
 Bishopsgate-street, where the Queen's players oftentimes played,' 
 while he was ' kneeling down to aske his father's blessing,' a fellow 
 in the gallery threw an apple at him, which hit him on the cheek. 
 He immediately took up the apple, and, advancing to the audience, 
 addressed them in these lines : 
 
 ' Gentlemen, this fellow, with his face ofmapple. 
 Instead of a pippin hath throwne me an apple ; 
 But as for an apple he hath cast a crab, 
 So instead of an honest woman God hath sent him a drab.' 
 
 ' The people,' says the relator, ' laughed heartily ; for the fellow had 
 a quean to his wife.' " * 
 
 Shakspeare was now, to all appearance, settled in the country ; he 
 was carrying on his own and his father's business ; he was married 
 and had a family around him ; a situation in which the comforts of 
 domestic privacy might be predicted within his reach, but which 
 augured little of that splendid destiny, that universal fame and unpa.- 
 ralleled celebrity, which awaited his future career. 
 
 * Malone's Historical Account of the English Stage, Reed's Shakspeare, vol.iii. p. 140. 
 note 4.
 
 67 
 
 In adlierence, therefore, to the plan, which we have announced, of 
 connecting the circumstances of the times with our author's Ufe, we 
 have chosen this period of it, as admirably adapted for the introduc- 
 tion of a survey of country life and manners, its customs, diversions and 
 superstitions, as they existed in the age of Shakspeare. These, 
 therefore, will be the subject of the immediately following chapters, 
 in which it shall be our particular aim, among the numerous autho- 
 rities to which we shall be obliged to have recourse, to draw from the 
 poet himself those passages which throw light upon the topics as they 
 rise to view ; an arrangement which, when it shall have been carried, 
 in all its various branches, through the work, will clearly show, that 
 from Shakspeare, more than from any other poet, is to be collected 
 the history of the times in which he lived, so far as that history re- 
 lates to popular usage and amusement. 
 
 ^ 2
 
 68 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A VIEW OF COUNTRY LIFE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE ; — ITS MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 RURAL CHARACTERS. 
 
 It may be necessary» in the commencement of this chapter, to remark, 
 that rural Hte, in the strict acceptation of the term, will be at present 
 the exclusive object of attention ; a survey of the manners and customs 
 of the metropolis, and of the superior orders of society, being deferred 
 to a subsequent portion of the work. 
 
 No higher character will, therefore, be introduced in this sketch than 
 the country squire, constituting according to Harrison, who wi-ote about 
 the year 1580, one of the second order of gentlemen ; for these, he 
 remarks, " be divided into two sorts, as the baronie or estate of lords 
 (which conteineth barons and all above that degree), and also those that 
 be no lords, as knights, esquires, and simple gentlemen." * He has 
 also furnished us, in another place, with a more precise definition of 
 the character under consideration. " Esquire (which we call com- 
 monlie squire) is a French word, and so much in Latine as Scutiger vel 
 Armiger, and such are all those which beare amies, or armoires, testi- 
 monies of their race from whence they be descended. They were at 
 the first costerels or bearers of the armes of barons, or knights, and 
 tliereby being instructed in martial! knowledge, had that name for a 
 dignitie given to distinguish them fi*om common souldiers called Gre- 
 garii Milities when they were together in the field." f 
 
 It is curious to mark the minute distinctions of gentlemen as detailed 
 at this period, in the various books of Armorie or Heraldrie. The sci- 
 ence, indeed, was cultivated, in the days of Shakspeare, with an enthu- 
 siasm which has never since been equalled, and the treatises on the 
 subject were consequently multitudinous. 
 
 * Holinshed's Chronicles, edit, of 1807, in six vol. 4to. vol. i. p. 2/6. 
 t Holinshed, vol. i. p. 273.
 
 G9 
 
 " If no gentleman, why then no arms," * 
 
 exclaims our poet ; the aspirants, therefore, to this distinction were 
 numerous, and in the Gentleman's Academie ; or, The Booke of 
 St. Albans, pubhshed by Gervase Markham in 1595, which he says in 
 the dedication was then absolutely " necessarie and behovefull to the 
 accomplishment of the gentlemen of this flourishing ile — in the 
 heroicall and excellent study of Armory," we find " nine sortes" and 
 " foure maner" of gentlemen expressly distinguished. 
 " Of nine sortes of gentlemen : 
 
 " First, there is a gentleman of ancestry and blood. 
 
 " A gentleman of blood. 
 
 " A gentleman of coat-armour, and those are three, one of the kings 
 badge, another of lordship, and the third of killing a pagan. 
 
 " A gentleman untriall : a gentleman Ipocrafet : a gentleman 
 spirituall and temporall : there is also a gentleman spirituall and tem- 
 porall. — 
 
 " Tlie divers manner of gentlemen : 
 
 " There are foure maner of gentlemen, to wit, one of auncestrie, 
 which must needes bee of blood, and three of coate-armour, and not 
 of blood : as one a gentleman of coate-armour of the kings badge, 
 which is of armes given him by an herauld : another is, to whome the 
 king giveth a lordeshippe, to a yeoman by his letters pattents, and 
 to his heires for ever, whereby hee may beare the coate-armour of the 
 same lordeshippe : the thirde is, if a yeoman kill a gentleman. Pagan 
 or Sarazen, whereby he may of right weare his coate-armour : and 
 some holde opinion, that if one christian doe kill an other, and if it be 
 lawful! battell, they may weare each others coate-armour, yet it is not 
 so good as where the christian killes the Pagan." 
 
 We have also the virtues and vices proper or contrary to the cha- 
 racter of the gentleman, the former of which are divided into five 
 amorous and four sovereign : " the five amorous are these, — lordly of 
 
 * Taming of the Shrew, act ii. sc. 1.
 
 70 
 
 countenance, sweet in speech, wise in answere, perfitte in government 
 andcherefuUto taithfulnes : the foure soveraigne are these fewe, — oathes 
 are no swearing, patient in affliction, knowledge of his owne birth, and 
 to feare to offend his soveraigne." * The vices which are hkewise 
 enumerated as nine, are all modifications of cowardice, lechery, and 
 drunkenness. 
 
 * Of the very rare tract from which these extracts are taken, the following is the entire 
 title-page: — " The Gentleman's Academic; or, the Booke of St. Albans: containing 
 three most exact and excellent Bookes : the first of Hawking, the second of all the proper 
 Termes of Hunting, and the last of Armorie : all compiled by Juliana Barnes, in the 
 Yere from the Incarnation of Christ 1486. And now reduced into a better method, by 
 G. M. London. Printed for Humphrey Lownes, and are to be sold at his shop in Panics 
 Church-yard, 1595." This curious edition of the BooJce of St. Albans, accommodated to 
 the days of Shakspeare, contains 95 leaves 4to. and I shall add the interesting dedi- 
 cation : 
 
 " To the Gentlemen of England : 
 
 and all good fellowship 
 
 of Huntsmen and 
 
 Falconers. 
 
 " Gentlemen, this booke, intrcting of Hawking, Hunting, and Armorie ; the origi- 
 nal! copie of the which was doone at St. Albans, about what time the excellent arte of 
 printing was first brought out of Germany, and practised here in England : which 
 booke, because of the antiquitie of the same, and the things therein contained, being so 
 nccessarie and behovefull to the accomplishment of the gentlemen of this flourishing ile, 
 and others which take delight in either of these noble sports, or in that heroicall and ex- 
 cellent study of Armory, I have revived and brought again to light the same which was 
 almost altogether forgotten, and either few or none of the perfect copies thereof remain- 
 ing, except in their hands, who wel knowing the excellency of the worke, and the rare- 
 nesse of the booke, smothered the same from the world, thereby to inrich themselves in 
 private with the knowledge of these delights. Therfore I humbly crave pardon of the 
 precise and judicial reader, if sometimes I use the words of the ancient authour, in such 
 plaine and homely English, as that time affoorded, not being so regardful, nor tying 
 myself so strictly to deliver any thing in the proper and peculiar wordes and termes of 
 arte, which for the love I beare to antiquitie, and to the honest simplicitie of those 
 former times, I observe as wel beseeming the subject, and no whit disgracefull to the 
 worke, our tong being not of such puritie then, as at this day the poets of our age have 
 raised it to: of whom, and in whose behalf I wil say thus much, that our nation may 
 only thinke herself beholding for the glory and exact compendiousnes of our longuage. 
 Thus submitting our academy to your kind censures and friendly acceptance of the same, 
 and requesting you to reade with indifferency, and correct with judgement ; 1 commit you 
 to God. 
 
 G. M."
 
 That the character of the gentleman was still estimated, in the reign 
 of Elizabeth, according to this definition of the Prioress of Sopewell, 
 
 From this dedication we learn that the original edition of the Booke of St. Albans was 
 as scarce towards the close of the sixteenth century as at the present day ; that " few or 
 none of the perfect copies" were to be obtained; for that those were in the liands of Biblio- 
 maiiiacs who (like too many now existing) " smother'd them from the world." We have, 
 therefore, every reason to conclude, from " the rarenesse (and consequent value) of the 
 booke" of 1486, that the copy of Juliana's work in the library of Shakspeare, was the edition 
 by Markham of 1595. I shall just add, that the copy now before me, was purchased at 
 the Roxburgh sale, for 9/. 195. Gd. ! It is, notwithstanding, probable, from the peculiari- 
 ties attending Markham's re-impression, that this sum, great as it may appear, will be ex- 
 ceeded at some future sale. 
 
 The attachment of Gei-oase Markham to the subjects which employed the pen of his 
 favourite Prioress, is very happily introduced by Mr. Dibdiu, while alluding to the 
 similar propensities of the modern Markham, Mr. Haslewood, " Up starts Florizel, 
 and blows his bugle, at the annunciation of any work, new or old, upon the diversions of 
 Hawking, Huntings or Fishing ! Carry him through Camillo's cabinet of Dutch pic- 
 tures, and you will see how instinctively, as it were, his eyes are fixed upon a sportino- 
 piece by Wouveinians. The hooded hawk, in his estimation, hath more charms than 
 Guido's Madonna : — how he envies every rider upon his white horse ! — how he burns to 
 bestride the foremost steed, and to mingle in the fair throng, who turn their blue eyes to 
 the scarcely bluer expanse of heaven ! Here he recognises Gervase Markham, spurring 
 his courser; and there he fancies himself lifting Dame Juliana from her horse! Happy 
 deception ! dear fiction ! says Florizel — while he throws his eyes in an opposite direc- 
 tion, and views every printed book upon the subject, from Barnes to Thornton." Biblio- 
 mania, p. 7^9, 730. 
 
 Tlie following very amusing description of " the difference twixt Churlcs and Gentle- 
 men," will prove an adequate specimen of Markham's edition, will be appropriate to the 
 subject in the text, and may be compared with the accurate reprint of the edition of 
 W. De Worde by Mr. Haslewood. 
 
 " There was never gentleman, nor churle ordained, but hee had father and mother : 
 Adam and Eve had neither father nor mother, and therefore in the sonnes of Adam and 
 Eve, first issued out both gentleman and churle. By the sonnes of Adam and Eve, to 
 wit, Seth, Abell, and Caine, was the royall blood divided from the rude and barbarous, a 
 brother to murder his brother contrary to the law, what could be more ungentlemanly or 
 vile? in that, therefore, became Caine and al his ofspring churles, both by the curse of 
 God, and his owne fother. Seth was made a gentleman thi-ough his father and mother's 
 blessing, from whose loynes issued Noah, a gentleman by kind and lina"-e. Noah had 
 three sonnes Iruely begotten, two by the mother, named Cham and Scm, and the third 
 by the father called Japhet, even in these three, after the world's inundation, was both 
 gentlenes and vilenes discerned, in Cham was grose barbarisme foundc towardes his owne 
 father in discovering his privities, and deriding from whence hee proceeded. Japhet the 
 yongest gentlemanlike reproved his brother, which was to him reputed a vertue, where
 
 72 
 
 we have consequently the authority of Markham to assert, who tells 
 us, that the study of his modernised edition of the Booke of St. Albans 
 was still " behovefull to the accomplishment of the gentleman" of 
 1595. 
 
 The mansion-houses of the country-gentlemen were, in the days of 
 Shakspeare, rapidly improving both in their external appearance, and 
 in their interior comforts. During the reign of Henry the Eighth, 
 and even of Mary, they were, if we except their size, little better than 
 cottages, being thatched buildings, covered on the outside with the 
 coarsest clay, and lighted only by lattices ; when Harrison wrote, in 
 the age of Elizabeth, though the greater number of manor-houses still 
 remained framed of timber, yet he observes, " such as be latelie 
 builded, are comonlie either of bricke or hard stone, or both ; their 
 roomes large and comelie, and houses of office further distant from 
 their lodgings." * The old timber mansions, too, were now covered 
 with the finest plaster, which, says the historian, " beside the delectable 
 
 Cham for his abortive vilenes became a churle both through the curse of God and his 
 father Noah. When Noah awoke, hee said to Cham his sonne knowest not thou how it 
 is become of Caine the sonne of Adam, and of his churlelike blood, that for them all the 
 worlde is drowned sa\'e eight persons, and wilt thou nowe begin barbarisme againe, 
 whereby the world in after ages shall be brought to consummation ? well upon thee it 
 shall bee and so I pray the Great one it niaye fall out, for to thee I give my curse, and 
 withall the north part of the world, to draw thine habitation unto, for there shall it be 
 where sorrow, care, colde, and as a mischievous and unrespected churle thou shalt live, 
 which part of the earth shall be termed Europe, which is the country of churles. Japhet 
 come hither my sonne, on thee will I raine my blessing, deare insteede of Seth : Adams 
 Sonne, I make thee a gentleman, and thy renowne shall stretch through the west part of 
 the world, and to the end of the Occident, where wealth and grace shall flourish, there 
 shall be thine habitation, and thy dominion shall bee called Asia, which is the cuntrie of 
 gentlemen. And Seni my sonne, I make thee a gentleman also, to multiply the blood of 
 Abell slaine so undeserved lie, to thee I give the orient, that part of the world which shal 
 be called Africa, which is the country of temperateres : and thus divided Noah the world 
 and his blessings. From the of-sj)ring of gentlemanly Japhet came Abraham, Moyses, 
 Aaron and the Prophets, and also the king of the right line of Marj', of whom that only 
 absolute gentleman Jesus was borne, perfite God and perfite man, according to his man- 
 hood king of the lande of Juda and the Jewes, and gentleman by his mother Mary prin- 
 cesse of coat armor." Fol. 44. 
 * Holinshed, vol. i. p. 316.
 
 73 
 
 whitenesse of the stuff'e itselfe, is laied on so even and smoothlie, as 
 nothing in my judgment can be done with more exactnesse * :" and at 
 the same time, the windows, interior decorations, and furniture were 
 becoming greatly more useful and elegant. " Of old time our coun- 
 trie houses," continues Harrison, " instead of glasse did use much 
 lattise, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oke in chekerwise. 
 1 read also that some of the better sort, in and before the time of the 
 Saxons, did make panels of home insteed of glasse, and fix them in 
 woodden calmes. But as home in windows is now quite laid downe in 
 everie place, so our lattises are also growne into lesse use, because 
 glasse is come to be so plentifull, and within a verie little so good 
 cheape if not better then the other. — The wals of our houses on the 
 inner sides in like sort be either hanged with tapisterie, arras worke, or 
 painted cloths, wherein either diverse histories, or hearbes, beasts, 
 knots, and such like are stained, or else they are seeled with oke of 
 our owne, or wainescot brought hither out of the east countries, 
 whereby the roomes are not a little commanded, made warme, and 
 much more close than otherwise they would be. As for stooves we 
 have not hitherto used them greatlie, yet doo they now begin to be 
 made in diverse houses of the gentrie. — Likewise in the houses of 
 knights, gentlemen, &c. it is not geson to behold generallie their great 
 provision of Turkie worke, pewter, brasse, fine linen, and thereto 
 costlie cupbords of plate, worth five or six hundred or a thousand 
 pounds, to be deemed by estimation." f 
 
 The house of every country-gentleman of property included a neat 
 chapel and a spacious hall ; and where the estate and establishment 
 were considerable, the mansion was divided into two parts or sides, 
 one for the state or banqueting-rooms, and the other for the house- 
 hold ; but in general, the latter, except in baronial residences, was the 
 only part to be met with, and when complete had the addition of par- 
 lours ; thus Bacon, in his Essay on Building, describing the houshold 
 side of a mansion, says, " I wish it divided at the first into a hall, and 
 
 • Holinshed, vol. i. p. 315. f Holinshed, vol. i. p. 315. 31/. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 74 
 
 a chappell, with a partition betweene ; both of good state and big- 
 nesse : and those not to goe all the length, but to have, at the further 
 end, a winter, and a summer parler, both faire : and under these 
 roomes a faire and large cellar, sunke under ground : and likewise, 
 some privie kitchins, with butteries and pantries, and the like." * It 
 was the custom also to have windows opening from the parlours and 
 passages into the chapel, hall, and kitchen, with the view of overlook- 
 ing or controlling what might be going on ; a trait of vigilant caution, 
 which may still be discovered in some of our ancient colleges and 
 manor-houses, and to which Shakspeare alludes in King Henry the 
 Eighth, where he describes His Majesty and Butts the physician enter- 
 ing at a window above, which overlooks the council-chamber, f We 
 may add, in illustration of this system of architectural espionage, that 
 Andrew Borde, when giving instructions for building a house in his 
 Dictarie of Health, directs " many of the chambers to have a view 
 into the chapel :" and that Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in a 
 letter, dated 1573, says, " if it please Her Majestic, she may come in 
 through my gallerie, and see the disposition of the hall in dynner- 
 time, at a window opening thereunto^ % 
 
 The hall of the country-squire was the usual scene of eating and 
 hospitality, at the upper end of which was placed the orsille or high 
 table, a little elevated above the floor, and here the master of the 
 mansion presided, with an authority, if not a state, which almost 
 equalled that of the potent baron. The table was divided into upper 
 and lower messes, by a huge saltcellar, and the rank and consequence 
 of the visitors were marked by the situation of their seats above, and 
 below, the saltcellar ; a custom which not only distinguished the rela- 
 tive dignity of the guests, but extended likewise to the nature of the 
 provision, the wine frequently circulating only above the saltcellar, 
 and the dishes below it, being of a coarser kind than those near the 
 head of the table. So prevalent was this uncourteous distinction, that 
 
 * Bacon's Essayes or Counsels, Mo. edit,, 1632, p. 260. f Act v. sc. 2. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol.xv. p. 184. note 5. by Steevens.
 
 75 
 
 Shakspeare, in his Winter's Tale, written about the year 1604, or 1610, 
 designates the inferior orders of society by the term " /ower messes.'' 
 
 " Lower messes, 
 
 Perchance, are to this business purblind." * 
 
 Dekkar, likewise, in his play called The Honest Whore, 1604, men- 
 tions in strong terms the degradation of sitting beneath the salt : 
 " Plague him, set him beneath the salt ; and let him not touch a bit, 
 till every one has had his full cut." f Hall too, in the sixth satire of 
 his second book, published in 1597, when depicting the humiliated 
 state of the squire's chaplain, says, that he must not 
 
 " ever presume to sit above the salt .-" 
 
 and Jonson, in his Cynthia's Revells, speaking of a coxcomb, says, 
 " his fashion is, not to take knowledge of him that is beneath him in 
 clothes. He never drinkes below the salt." See act i. sc. 2. 
 
 This invidious regulation appears to have extended far into the 
 seventeenth century ; for Massinger in his Citi/ Madam, acted in 
 1632, thus notices it : 
 
 " My proud lady 
 
 Admits him to her table, marry, ever 
 Beneath the salt, and there he sits the subject 
 Of her contempt and scorn : " % 
 
 and Cartriffht still later : 
 
 'to 
 
 Where you are best esteem'd, 
 
 You only pass under the favourable name 
 
 Of humble cousins that sit beneath the salt." Love's Cotivert. 
 
 The luxury of eating and of good cooking were well understood 
 in the days of Elizabeth, and the table of the country-squire fre- 
 quently groaned beneath the burden of its dishes ; at Christmas and 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 236. 
 
 t Ancient British Drama, vol. i, p. 531. 
 
 t Massinger's Plays, apud GifFord, vol. iv. p. 7« 
 
 L 2
 
 76 
 
 at Easter especiailj, the hall became the scene of" great festivity ; " in 
 gentlemen's houses, at Giristmas," says Aubrey, " the first dish that 
 was brought to table was a boar's head, with a lemon in his mouth. 
 At Queen's Coll. Oxon. they still retain this custom, the bearer of 
 it bringing it into the hall, singing to an old tune an old Latin rhyme, 
 Apri caput defero, ^c. The first dish that was brought up to table on 
 Easter-day was a red-herring riding away on horseback ; i. e. a her- 
 ring ordered by the cook something after the likeness of a man on 
 horseback, set in a corn sallad. The custom of eating a gammon of 
 bacon at Easter (which is still kept up in many parts of England) wa* 
 founded on this, viz. to shew their abhorrence of Judaism at that so- 
 lemn commemoration of our Lord's resurrection." * 
 
 Games and diversions of various kinds, such as mumming, masque- 
 ing, dancing, loaf-stealing, &c. &c. were allowed in the hall on these 
 days ; and the servants, or heralds, wore the coats of arms of their 
 masters, and cried ' Lai^gesse thrice. The hall was usually hung round 
 with the insignia of the squire's amusements, such as hunting, shoot- 
 ing, fishing, &c. ; but in case he were a justice of the peace, it assumed 
 a more terrific aspect. " The halls of the justice of peace," observes 
 honest Aubrey, " were dreadful to behold. The skreen was garnished 
 with corslets and helmets, gaping with open mouths, with coats of 
 mail, launces, pikes, halberts, brown bills, bucklers." f 
 
 The following admirable description of an old English hall, which 
 still remains as it existed in the days of Elizabeth, is taken from the 
 notes to Mr. Scott's recent poem of Rokeby, and was communicated 
 to the bard by a friend ; the story which it introduces, I have also 
 added, as it likewise occurred in the same reign, and affords a curious 
 though not a pleasing trait of the manners of the times ; as, while it 
 gives a dreadful instance of ferocity, it shows with what ease justice, 
 even in the case of the most enormous crimes, might be set aside. 
 
 * From a MS. of Aubrey's in the Ashmole Museum, as quoted by Mr. Malcolm in 
 hi* Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London, part i. p. 220. 4to. 
 
 i" Aubrey's MS. Malcohii, p. 221, 222.
 
 77 
 
 Littlecote-House stands in a low and lonely situation. On three 
 sides it is surrounded by a park that spreads over the adjoining hill ; on 
 the fourth, by meadows which are watered by the river Kennet. Close 
 on one side of the house is a thick grove of lofty trees, along the verge 
 of which runs one of the principal avenues to it through the park. 
 It is an irregular building of great antiquity, and was probably erected 
 about the time of the termination of feudal warfare, when defence 
 came no longer to be an object in a country-mansion. Many circum- 
 stances in the interior of the house, however, seem appropriate to 
 feudal times. The hall is very spacious, floored with stones, and 
 lighted by large transom windows, that are clothed with casements. 
 Its walls are hung with old military accoutrements, that have long- 
 been left a prey to rust. At one end of the hall is a range of coats 
 of mail and helmets, and there is on every side abundance of old- 
 fashioned pistols and guns, many of them with matchlocks. Imme- 
 diately below the cornice hangs a row of leathern jerkins, made in the 
 form of a shirt, supposed to have been worn as armour by the vassals. 
 A large oak-table, reaching nearly from one end of the room to the 
 other, might have feasted the whole neighbourhood, and an append- 
 age to one end of it made it answer at other times for the old game 
 of shuffle-board. The rest of the furniture is in a suitable style, 
 particularly an arm-chair of cumbrous workmanship, constructed of 
 wood, curiously turned, with a high back and triangular seat, said to 
 have been used by Judge Popham in the reign of Elizabetli. The 
 entrance into the hall is at one end by a low door, communicating 
 with a passage that leads from the outer door, in the front of the 
 house, to a quadrangle within ; at the other it opens upon a gloomy 
 staircase, by which you ascend to the first floor, and, passing the doors 
 of some bed-chambers, enter a narrow gallery, which extends along 
 the back front of the house from one end to the other of it, and looks 
 upon an old garden. This gallery is hung with portraits, chiefly in 
 the Spanish dresses of the sixteenth century. In one of the bed- 
 chambers, which you pass in going towards the gallery, is a bedstead 
 with blue furniture, which time has now made dingy and threadbare,
 
 78 
 
 and in the bottom of one of the bed-curtains you are shewn a place 
 where a small piece has been cut out and sown in again ; a circum- 
 stance which ser\^es to identify the scene of the following story : 
 
 " It was a dark rainy night in the month of November, that an 
 old midwife sate musing by her cottage fire-side, when on a sudden 
 she was startled by a loud knocking at the door. On opening it she 
 found a horseman, who told her that her assistance was required im- 
 mediately by a person of rank, and that she should be handsomely 
 rewarded, but that there were reasons for keeping the affair a strict 
 secret, and, therefore, she must submit to be blind-folded, and to be 
 conducted in that condition to the bed-chamber of the lady. After 
 proceeding in silence for many miles through rough and dirty lanes, 
 they stopped, and the midwife was led into a house, which, from the 
 length of her walk through the apartment, as well as the sounds about 
 her, she discovered to be the seat of wealth and power. When the 
 bandage was removed from her eyes, she found herself in a bed- 
 chamber, in which were the lady on whose account she had been sent 
 for, and a man of a haughty and ferocious aspect. The lady was de- 
 livered of a fine boy. Immediately the man commanded the mid- 
 wife to give him the child, and, catching it from her, he hurried across 
 the room, and threw it on the back of the fire, that was blazing in the 
 chimney. The child, however, was strong, and by its struggles rolled 
 itself off upon the hearth, when the ruffian again seized it with fury, 
 and, in spite of the intercession of the midwife, and the more piteous 
 entreaties of the mother, thrust it under the grate, and raking the live 
 coals upon it, soon put an end to its life. The midwife, after spend- 
 ing some time in affording all the relief in her power to the wretched 
 mother, was told that she must be gone. Her former conductor ap- 
 peared, who again bound her eyes, and conveyed her behind him to 
 her own home ; he then paid her handsomely, and departed. The 
 midwife was strongly agitated by the horrors of the preceding night ; 
 and she immediately made a deposition of the fact before a magis- 
 trate. Two circumstances afibrded hopes of detecting the house in 
 which the crime had been committed ; one was, that the midwife, as
 
 79 
 
 she sate by the bed-side, had, with a view to discover the place, cut 
 out a piece of the bed-curtain, and sown it in again ; the other was, 
 that as she had descended the staircase, she had counted the steps. 
 Some suspicions fell upon one Darrell, at that time the proprietor of 
 Littlecote- House and the domain around it. The house was ex- 
 amined, and identified by the midwife, and Darrell was tried at Salis- 
 bury for the murder. By corrupting his judge, he escaped the 
 sentence of the law ; but broke his neck by a fall from his horse in 
 hunting, in a few months after. The place where this happened is 
 still known by the name of Darrell's Hill : a spot to be dreaded by 
 the peasant whom the shades of evening have overtaken on his 
 way. 
 
 " Littlecote-House is two miles from Hungerford, in Berkshire, 
 through which the Bath road passes. The fact occurred in the reign 
 of Elizabeth. All the important circumstances I have given exactly 
 as they are told in the country." Rokeby, 4to. edit, notes, p. 102 
 —106. 
 
 The usual fare of country-gentlemen, relates Harrison, was " foure, 
 five, or six dishes, when they have but small resort ;" and accordingly, 
 we find that Justice Shallow, when he invites FalstafFe to dinner, 
 issues the following orders : " Some pigeons, Davy ; a couple of short- 
 legged hens ; a joint of mutton ; and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, 
 tell William Cook." * But on feast-days, and particularly on the 
 festivals above-mentioned, the profusion and cost of the table were 
 astonishing. Harrison observes that the country-gentlemen and mer- 
 chants contemned butchers meat on such occasions, and vied with the 
 nobility in the production of rare and delicate viands, of which he 
 gives a long list \ ; and Massinger says, 
 
 " Men may talk of countiy-christmasses — 
 
 Their thirty-pound butter'd eggs, their pies of carps tongues. 
 
 * Henry IV. part ii. act v. sc. 1. 
 
 t Holinshed, vol. i. p. 281. The particulars of the diet of our ancestors in the age of 
 Shakspeare will be given in a subsequent part of the work.
 
 80 
 
 Their pheasants drench'd with ambergris, the carcases 
 Of three fat wethers bruised for gravy, to 
 Make sauce for a single peacock; yet their feasts 
 Were fasts, compared with the city's." * 
 
 It was the custom in the houses of the country-gentlemen to retire 
 after dinner, which generally took place about eleven in the morning, 
 to the garden-bower or an arbour in the orchard, in order to partake 
 of the banquet or dessert ; thus Shallow, addressing Falstaffe after 
 dinner, exclaims, " Nay, you shall see mine orchard : where, in an 
 arbour, we will eat a last year's pippin of my own grafting, with a dish 
 of carraways, and so forth." f From the banquet it was usual to re- 
 tire to evening prayer, and thence to supper, between five and six 
 o'clock ; for in Shakspeare's time, there were seldom more than two 
 meals, dinner and supper ; " heretofore," remarks Harrison, " there 
 hath beene much more time spent in eating and drinking than com- 
 monlie is in these dales, for whereas of old we had breakfasts in the 
 forenoone, beverages, or nuntions after dinner, and thereto reare sup- 
 
 * City Madam, act ii. sc. 1. 
 
 Gervase Markham in his English House- Wife, the first edition of which was published 
 not long after Shakspeare's death, after mentioning in his second chapter, which treats of. 
 cookery, the manner of " ordering great feasts," closes his observations under this head, with 
 directions for "a more humble feast, or an ordinary proportion which any good man may 
 keep in his family, for the entertainment of his true and worthy friend ; " this humble feast 
 or ordinary proportion, he proceeds to say, should consist for the first course of " sixteen 
 full dishes, that is, dishes of meat that are of substance, and not empty, or for shew — as 
 thus, for example; first, a shield of brawn with mustard ; secondly, a boyl'd capon; thirdly, 
 a boyl'd piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef rested; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted; 
 sixthly, a pig rosted ; seventhly, chewets bak'd ; eighthly, a goose rosted ; ninthly, a swan 
 rosted ; tenthly, a turkey rosted ; the eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted ; the twelfth, 
 a pasty of venison; the thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, an 
 olive-pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard or dowsets. Now to 
 these full dishes may be added sallets, fricases, quelque choses, and devised paste, as many 
 dishes more which make the full service no less than two and thirty dishes, which is as 
 much as can conveniently stand on one table, and in one mess; and after this manner you 
 may proportion both your second and third course, holding fulness on one half of the 
 dishes, and shew in the other, which will be both frugal in the spcndor, contentment to the 
 guest, and much pleasure and delight to the beholders." P. 100, 101. ninth edition of 
 1683, small 4to. 
 
 -f Henry IV. part ii. act v. sc. 3.
 
 81 
 
 pers generallie when it was time to go to rest. Now these od repasts, 
 thanked be God, are verie well left, and ech one in manner (except 
 here and there some yoong hungrie stomach that cannot fast till 
 dinner time) contenteth himselfe with dinner and supper onelie. The 
 nobilitie, gentlemen, and merchantmen, especiallie at great meetings, 
 doo sit commonlie till two or three of the clocke at afternoone, so 
 that with manie is an hard matter to rise from the table to go to 
 evening praier, and returne from thence to come time enough to 
 supper. * 
 
 The supper which, on days of festivity, was often protracted to a 
 late hour, and often too as substantial as the dinner, was succeeded, 
 especially at Christmas, by gambols of various sorts, and sometimes 
 the squire and his family would mingle in the amusements, or retir- 
 ing to the tapestried parlour, would leave the hall to the more boister- 
 ous mirth of their household ; then would the Blind Harpeb, who 
 sold his FIT of mirth for a groat, be introduced, either to provoke the 
 dance, or to rouse their wonder by his minstrelsy ; his " matter being 
 for the most part stories of old time, as the tale of Sir Topas, the 
 reportes of Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwicke, Adam Bell, and 
 Clymme of the Clough, and such other old I'omances or historical 
 rimes, made purposely for recreation of the common people at Christ- 
 masse dinners and brideales." f Nor was the evening passed by the 
 parlour fire-side dissimilar in its pleasures ; the harp of history or 
 romance was frequently made vocal by one of the party. " We our- 
 selves," says Puttenham, who wrote in 1589, " have written for 
 pleasure a little brief romance, or historical ditty, in the English tong 
 of the Isle of Great Britaine, in short and long meetres, and by 
 breaches or divisions, to be more commodiously sung to the harpe in 
 places of assembly, where the company shal be desirous to heare of 
 old adventures, and valiaunces of noble knights in times past, as are 
 those of King Authur and his Knights of the Round Table, Sir Bevys 
 of Southampton, Guy of Warwicke, and others like." X 
 
 * Holinshed, vol. i. p. 287. 
 
 f Puttenham's Art of English Poesie, p. 69, reprint ol' 181 1. J Ibid. p. S:i. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 82 
 
 The posset at bed-time, closed the joyous day, a custom to which 
 Shakspeare has occasionally alluded ; thus Lady Macbeth says of the 
 " surfeited grooms," " I have drugg'd their possets * ;" Mrs. Quickly 
 tells Rugby, " Go ; and we'll have a posset for't soon at night, in 
 faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal firef;" and Page, cheering 
 FalstafFe, exclaims, " Thou shalt eat a posset to-night at my J house." 
 Thomas Heywood also, a contemporary of Shakspeare, has particu- 
 larly noticed this refection as occurring just before bed-time : " Thou 
 shalt be welcome to beef and bacon, and perhaps a bag-pvidding ; 
 and my daughter Nell shall pop a possei upon thee when thou goest 
 to bed. " § 
 
 In short, hospitality, a love of festivity, and an ardent attachment 
 to the sports of the field, were prominent traits in the character of 
 the country-gentleman in Shakspeare's days. The floor of his hall 
 was commonly occupied by his greyhounds, and on his hand was 
 usually to be found his favorite hawk. His conversation was very 
 generally on the subject of his diversions ; for as Master Stephen says, 
 " Why you know, an'a man have not skill in the hawking and hunting 
 languages now-a-dayes, I'll not give a rush for him. They are more 
 studied than the Greeke, or the Latine." \\ Classical acquirements 
 were, nevertheless, becoming daily more fashionable and familiar 
 with the character which we are describing ; but still an intimacy with 
 heraldy, romance, and the chroniclers, constituted the chief literary 
 wealth of the country-gentleman. In his dress he was plain, though 
 occasionally costly; yet Harrison complains in 1580, that the gaudy 
 trappings of the French were creeping even into the rural and mer- 
 cantile world : " Neither was it merrier," says he, " with England, 
 than when an Englishman was knowne abroad by his owne cloth, and 
 contented himselfe at home with his fine carsie hosen, and a meane 
 slop : his coat, gowne, and cloak of browne, blue, or puke, with some 
 
 * Macbeth, act ii. sc. 2. f Merry Wives of Windsor, act i. sc. 4. 
 
 :|: Merry Wives of Windsor, act v. sc. 5. § Heywood's Edward II. p. 1. 
 
 II Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, acti. sc. 1. Acted in the year 1598.
 
 83 
 
 pretie furniture of velvet or furre, and a doublet of sad tawnie, or 
 blacke velvet, or other comelie silke, without such cuts and gawrish 
 colours as are worne in these dales, and never brought in but by the 
 consent of the French, who thinke themselves the gaiest men, when 
 they have most diversities of jagges and change of colours about 
 them." * 
 
 Of the female part of the family of the country-gentleman, we must 
 be indulged in giving one description from Drayton, which not only 
 particularizes the employments and di*ess of the younger part of the 
 sex, but is written with the most exquisite simplicity and beauty j he 
 is delineating the well-educated daughter of a country-knight : 
 
 " He had, as antique stories tell, 
 A daughter cleaped Dawsabel, 
 
 A maiden fair and free : 
 And for she was her father's heir, 
 Full well she was ycond the leir 
 
 Of mickle courtesy. 
 
 The silk well couth she twist and twine, 
 And make the fine march-pine, 
 
 And with the needle work : 
 And she couth help the priest to say 
 His mattins on a holy day. 
 
 And sing a psalm in kirk. 
 
 She wore a frock of frolic green, 
 Might well become a maiden queen, 
 
 Which seemly was to see ; 
 A hood to that so neat and fine, 
 In colour like the columbine, 
 
 Ywrought full featously. 
 
 Her features all as fresh above, 
 
 As is the grass that grows by Dove, 
 
 And lythe as lass of Kent. 
 Her skin as soft as Lemster wool. 
 As white as snow on Peakish Hull, 
 
 Or swan that swims in Trent. 
 
 * Holinshed, vol. i. p. 290. 
 M 2
 
 84 
 
 This maiden in a morn hetime, 
 
 Went forth when May was in the prime, 
 
 To get sweet setj'wall, 'j-tXtv^a 
 
 The honey-suckle, the harlock, 
 The Hly, and the lady-smock, 
 
 To deck her summer-hall." * 
 
 Some heightening to the picture of the country-gentleman which 
 we have just given, may be drawn from the character of the upstart 
 squire or country-knight, as it has been pourtrayed by Bishop Earle, 
 towards the commencement of the seventeenth century ; for the ab- 
 surd imitation of the one is but an overcharged or caricature exhi- 
 bition of the costume of the other. The upstart country-gentleman, 
 remarks the Bishop, " is a holiday clown, and differs only in the 
 stuff of his clothes, not the stuff of himself, for he bare the kings 
 sword before he had arms to wield it ; yet being once laid o'er the 
 shoulder with a knighthood, he finds the herald his friend. His 
 father was a man of good stock, though but a tanner or usurer ; he 
 purchased the land, and his son the title. He has doffed off the 
 name of a country-fellow, but the look not so easy, and his face still 
 bears a relish of churne-milk. He is guarded with more gold lace 
 than all the gentlemen of the country, yet his body makes his clothes 
 still out of fashion. His house-keeping is seen much in the distinct 
 families of dogs, and serving-men attendant on their kennels, and the 
 deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. A hawk he 
 esteems the true burden of nobility, and is exceeding ambitious to 
 seem delighted in the sport, and have his fist gloved with his f jesses. 
 A justice of peace he is to domineer in his parish, and do his neigh- 
 bour wrong with more right. He will be drunk with his hunters 
 for company, and stain his gentility with droppings of ale. He is 
 fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize- 
 week as much as the prisoner. In sum, he's but a clod of his own 
 
 * Chalmers' Poets, vol. iv. p. 435, 436. Drayton, Fourth Eclogue. 
 
 f " A term in hawking, signifying the short straps of leather which are fastened to 
 the hawk's legs, by which he is held on the fist, or joined to the leash." Bliss.
 
 85 
 
 earth, or his land is the dunghill and he the cock that crows over it : 
 and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children's children, 
 though they scape hanging, return to the place from whence they 
 came. " * 
 
 Notwithstanding the hospitality which generally prevailed among 
 the country-gentlemen towards the close of the sixteenth century, 
 the injurious custom of deserting their hereditary halls for the luxury 
 and dissipation of the metropolis, began to appear ; and, accordingly, 
 Bishop Hall has described in a most finished and picturesque manner 
 the deserted mansion of his days ; 
 
 " Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound 
 With double echoes doth againe rebound ; 
 But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee, 
 Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see: 
 All dumb and silent, like the dead of night, 
 Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite ! 
 The marble pavement hid with desert weed, 
 With house-leek, thistle, dock, and hemlock-seed. — 
 Look to the towered chimnies, which should be 
 
 The wind-pipes of good hospitalitie : 
 
 Lo, there th'unthankful swallow takes her rest, 
 And fills the tunnel with her circled nest." f 
 
 That it was no very uncommon thing for country-gentlemen to 
 spend their Christmas in London at this period, is evident from a 
 letter preserved by Mr. Lodge, in his Illustrations of British History ; 
 it is written by William Fleetwood, afterwards Queen's Serjeant, to 
 the Earl of Derby ; is dated New Yere's Daye, 1589, and contains 
 the following passage : — " The gentlemen of NorfF. and Suffolk were 
 commanded to dep'te from London before Xtemmas, and to repaire 
 to their countries, and there to kepe hospitalitie amongest their 
 
 • Earle's Microcosmography ; or a Piece of the World discovered, in Essays and 
 Characters. Edition of 1811, by Philip Bliss, 
 t Hall's Satires, book v. sat. 2. printed in 1 598.
 
 86 
 
 neighbours. * " The fashion, however, of annually visiting the ca- 
 pital did not become general, nor did the character of the country- 
 squire, such as it was in the days of Shakspeare, alter materially 
 during the following century, f 
 
 * Lodge's Illustrations of British History, Biography, and Manners, in the Reigns of 
 Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, and James I., vol. ii. p. 383. 
 
 That this evil kept gradually increasing during the reign of James I., may be proved 
 from the testimony ofPeachamand Brathwait; the former, in his Compleat Gentleman, ob- 
 serves, — " Much doe I detest that effeminacy of the most, that burne out day and night 
 in their beds, and by the fire side ; in trifles, gaming, or courting their yellow mistresses 
 all the winter in a city ; appearing but as cuckoes in the spring, one time in the yeare to 
 the count rey and their tenants, leaving the care of keeping good houses at Christmas, 
 to the honest yeomen of the countrey;" (p. 214.) and the latter, in his English Gentleman, 
 addressing the rural fashionables of his day, exclaims, — " Let your countrey (I say) enjoy 
 you, who bred you, shewing there your hospitality, where God hath placed you, and 
 with sufficient meanes blessed you. I doe not approve of these, who fly from their 
 countrey, as if they were ashamed of her, or had committed something unworthy of her. 
 How blame-worthy then are these Court-comets, whose onely delight is to admire them- 
 selves? These, no sooner have their hed-r\6 fat hers betaken themselves to their last home, 
 and removed from their crazie couch, but they are ready to sell a mannor for a coach. 
 They will not take it as their fathers tooke it : their countrey houses must bee barred up, 
 lest the poore passenger should expect what is impossible to finde, releefe to his want, or 
 a supply to his necessity. No, the cage is opened, and all the birds are fled, not one 
 crum of comfort remaining to succour a distressed poore one. Hospitality, which was 
 once a relique of gentry, and a knowne cognizance to all ancient houses, hath lost her 
 title, meerely through discontinuance : and great houses, which were at first founded to 
 releeve the poore, and such needfull passengers as travelled by them, are now of no 
 use but onely as 'joaymarkes to direct them. But whither are these Great ojies gone ? To 
 the Court; there to spend in boundlesse and immoderate riot, what their provident 
 ancestors had so long preserved, and at whose doores so many needy soules have beene 
 comfortably releeved." Second edition, 1 633. p. 332. 
 
 In the margin of the page from which this extract is taken, occurs the following note : — 
 " This is excellently seconded by a Princely pen, in a pithy poem directed to all persons 
 to ranke or quality to leave the Court, and returne into their owne countrey." 
 
 f In confirmation of this remark, I shall beg leave to give, for the entertainment of my 
 readers, the two following sketches of country-squires, as they existed towards the middle 
 of the seventeenth, and commencement of the eighteenth century. " Mr. Hastings," 
 relates Gilpin from Hutchin's History of Dorsetshire, " was low of stature, but strong 
 and active, of a ruddy complexion with flaxen hair. His cloaths were always of green 
 cloth, his house was of the old fashion ; in the midst of a large park, well stocked with 
 deer, rabbits, and fish-ponds. He had a long narrow bowling green in it ; and used to 
 play with round sand bowls. Here too he had a banquetting room built, like a stand, in 
 a large tree. He kept all sorts of hounds, that ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger :
 
 87 
 
 The country-clergyman, the next character we shall attempt to 
 notice, was distinguished, in the time of Shakspeare, by the appel- 
 
 and had hawks of all kinds, botli long and short winged. is great hall \vas commonly 
 
 strewed with marrow bones ; and full of hawk-perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers. 
 The upper end of it was hung with fox-skins, of this and the last year's killing. Here 
 and there a pole-cat was intermixed ; and hunter's poles in great abundance. The 
 parlour was a large room, compleatly furnished in the same style. On a broad hearth, 
 paved with brick, lay some of the choicest terriers, hounds and spaniels. One or two of 
 the great chairs had litters of cats in them, which were not to be disturbed. Of these, 
 three or four always attended him at dinner, and a httle white wand lay by his trencher, 
 to defend it, if they were too troublesome. In the windows which were very large, lay 
 his arrows, cross-bows, and other accoutrements. The corners of the room were filled 
 with his best hunting and hawking poles. His oyster table stood at the lower end of the 
 room, which was in constant use twice a day, all the year round ; for he never failed to 
 eat oysters both at dinner and supper; with which the neighbouring town of Pool sup- 
 plied him. At the upper end of the room stood a small table with a double desk ; one 
 side of which held a Church Bible ; the other the Book of Martyks. On different 
 tables in the room lay hawk's-hoods, bells, old hats, with their crowns thrust in, full of 
 pheasant eggs ; tables, dice, cards, and store of tobacco pipes. At one end of this room 
 was a door, which opened into a closet, where stood bottles of strong beer and wine ; 
 which never came out but in single glasses, which was the rule of the house ; for he 
 never exceeded himself nor permitted others to exceed. Answering to this closet, was 
 a door into an old chapel ; which had been long disused for devotion ; but in the pulpit, 
 as the safest place, was always to be found a cold chine of beef, a venison pasty, a 
 gammon of bacon, or a great apple-pye, with thick crust well baked. His table cost 
 him not much, though it was good to eat at. His sports supplied all, but beef and mutton ; 
 except on Fridays, when he had the best of fish. He never wanted a London pudding; 
 and he always sang it in with " My part lies therein-a." He drank a glass or two of 
 wine at meals ; put syrup of gilly-flowers into his sack ; and had always a tun glass of 
 small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about with rosemary. He lived to be 
 an hundred ; and never lost his eye sight, nor used spectacles. He got on horseback 
 without help ; and rode to the death of the stag, till he was past four score." Gilpin's 
 Forest Scenery ; vol. ii. p. 23. 26. 
 
 Mr. Dibdin, in the second edition of his Bibliomania, the most pleasing and interesting 
 book which Bibliography has ever produced, has quoted the above passage, and thus 
 alludes, in his text, to the character which it describes : — " But what shall we say to Lord 
 Shaftesbury's eccentric neighbour, Henry Hastings ? who, in spite of his hawks, hounds, 
 kittens, and oysters, could not forbear to indulge his book -propensities, though in a 
 moderate degree ! Let us fancy we see him, in his eightieth year, just alighted from the 
 toils of the chase, and listening, after dinner, with his ' single glass' of ale by his side, 
 to some old woman with ' spectacle on nose,' who reads to him a choice passage out 
 of John Fox's Book of Mar(i/rs ! A rare old boy was this Hastings." Bibliomania, 
 p. 379.
 
 88 
 
 lation of Sir : a title which the poet has uniformly bestowed on the 
 inferior orders of this profession, as Sir Hugh in the Merry Wives of 
 
 Mr. Grose, the antiquary, has given us, in his sketches of some worn-out characters of 
 the last age, a most amusing portrait of the country squire of Queen Anne's days : 
 " I mean," says he, " the little independant gentleman of three hundred pounds per 
 annum, who commonly appeared in a plain drab or plush coat, large silver buttons, a 
 jockey cap, and rarely without boots. His travels never exceeded the distance of the 
 county town, and that only at assize and session time, or to attend an election. Once a 
 week he commonly dined at the next market town, with the attornies and justices. This 
 man went to church regularly, read the Weekly Journal, settled the parochial disputes 
 between the parish officers at the vestry, and afterwards adjourned to the neighbouring 
 ale-house, where he usually got drunk for the good of his country. He never played at 
 cards but at Christmas, when a family pack was produced from the mantle-piece. He 
 was commonly followed by a couple of grey-hounds and a pointer, and announced his 
 arrival at a neighbours house by smacking his whip, or giving the view-halloo. His 
 drink was generally ale, except on Christmas, the fifth of November, or some other gala 
 days, when he would make a bowl of strong brandy punch garnished with a toast and 
 nutmeg. A journey to London was, by one of these men, reckoned as great an under- 
 taking, as is at present a voyage to the East Indies, and undertaken with scarce less 
 precaution and preparation. 
 
 " The mansion of one of these 'Squires was of plaister striped with timbei", not 
 unaptly called callimanco work, or of red brick, large casemented bow widows, a porch 
 with seats in it, and over it a study ; the eaves of the house well inhabited by swallows, 
 and the court set round with holly-hocks. Near the gate a horse-block for the con- 
 veniency of mounting. 
 
 " The hall was furnished with flitches of bacon, and the mantle-piece with guns and 
 fishing rods of different dimensions, accompanied by the broad sword, partizan, and 
 dagger, borne by his ancestor in the civil wars. The vacant spaces were occupied by 
 stag's horns. Against the wall was posted King Charles's Golden Rules, Vincent Wing's 
 Almanack, and a portrait of the Duke of Marlborough ; in his window lay Baker's 
 Chronicle, Fox's Book of Martyrs, Glanvil on Apparitions, Quincey's Dispensatory, the 
 Complete Justice, and a Book of Farriery. 
 
 " In the corner, by the fire side, stood a large wooden two-armed chair with a 
 cushion ; and within the chimney corner were a couple of seats. Here, at Christmas, he 
 entertained his tenants assembled round a glowing fire made of the roots of trees, and 
 other great logs, and told and heard the traditionary tales of the village respecting 
 ghosts and witches, till fear made them afraid to move. In the mean time the jorum 
 of ale was in continual circulation. 
 
 " The best parlour, which was never opened but on particular occasions, was furnished 
 with Turk-worked chain, and hung I'ound with portraits of his ancestors ; the men in 
 the character of shepherds, with their crooks, dressed in full suits and huge full-bot- 
 tomed perukes : others in complete armour or buff coats, playing on tlie base viol or
 
 89 
 
 Windsor, Sir Topas in the Twelfth Night, Sir Oliver in As You like It, 
 and Sir Nathaniel in Love's Labour's lost. This custom, which was 
 not entirely discontinued until the close of the reign of Charles II., 
 owes its origin to the language of our universities, which confers the 
 designation of Dominus on those who have taken their first degree or 
 bachelor of arts, and not, as has been supposed, to any claim which 
 the clergy had upon the order of knighthood. The word Dominna 
 was naturally translated Sir; and as almost every clergyman had taken 
 his first degree, it became customary to apply the term to the lower 
 class of the hierarchy. " Sir seems to have been a title," remarks 
 Dr. Percy, " formerly appropriated to such of the inferior clergy as 
 were only readers of the service, and not admitted to be preachers, 
 and therefore were held in the lowest estimation, as appears from a 
 lemarkable passage in Machell's MS. Collections for the History of 
 Westmoj^eland and Cumberland, in six volumes, folio, preserved 
 in the Dean and Chapter's library at Carlisle. The Rev. Thomas 
 Machell, author of the Collections, lived temp. Car. 11. Speak- 
 ing of the little chapel of Martindale in the mountains of West- 
 moreland and Cumberland, the writer says, ' There is little remarkable 
 in or about it, but a neat chapel yard, which, by the peculiar care of 
 the old reader. Sir Richard *, is kept clean, and as neat as a bowling- 
 green.' 
 
 " Within the limits of myne own memory all readei^s in chapels 
 were called Sirs f, and of old have been writ so ; whence, I suppose, 
 such of the laity as received the noble order of knighthood being- 
 
 lute. The females likewise as shepherdesses, with the lamb and crook, all habited in 
 high heads and flowing robes. 
 
 " Alas ! these men and these houses are no more ! 
 
 Grose's Olio, 2d edit. 179G. p. -11—44. 
 
 * Richard Berket Reader, aet, 74. MS. note. 
 
 \ In the margin is a MS. note seemingly in the hand-writing of Bishop Nicholson, 
 Avho gave these volumes to tJie library: 
 
 " Since I can remember there was not a reader in any chapel but was called Sir." 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 90 
 
 called Sirs too, for distinction sake had Knight writ after them ; 
 which had been superfluous, if the title Sir had been peculiar to 
 them." * 
 
 Shakspeare has himself indeed sufficiently marked the distinction 
 between priesthood and knighthood, when he makes Viola say, " I 
 am one that had rather go with Sir Priest than Sir Knight.'' f 
 
 Were we to estimate the character of the country-clergy, during 
 the age of Elizabeth, from the sketches which Shakspeare has given 
 us of them, I am afraid we should be induced to appreciate their 
 utility and moral virtue on too low a scale. It will be a fairer plan 
 to exhibit the picture from the delineation of one of their own order, 
 a competent judge, and who was likewise a contemporary. " The 
 apparell of ovir clergiemen," records Harrison, " is comlie, and, in 
 truth, more decent than ever it was in the popish church : before the 
 universities bound their gi'aduats unto a stable attire, afterward 
 usurped also even by the blind Sir Johns. For if you peruse well my 
 chronolojie, you shall find, that they went either in diverse colors, 
 like plaiers, or in garments of light hew, as yellow, red, greene, &c. : 
 with their shoes piked, their haire crisped, their girdles armed with 
 silver ; their shoes, spurres, bridles, &c. buckled with like metall : 
 their apparell (for the most part) of silke, and richlie furred ; their 
 cappes laced and butned with gold : so that to meet a priest in those 
 dales, was to behold a peacocke that spreadeth his taile when he 
 danseth before the henne : which now (I sale) is well reformed. 
 Touching hospitalitie, there was never any greater used in England, 
 sith by reason that marriage is permitted to him that will choose that 
 kind of life, their meat and drinke is more orderly and frugallie 
 dressed ; their furniture of houshold more convenient, and better 
 looked unto; and the poore oftener fed generallie than heretofore 
 they have beene." Then, alluding to those who reproach the country- 
 clergy for not being so prodigal of good cheer as in former days, he 
 adds, " To such as doo consider of the curtailing of their livings, or 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 8. note. f Twelfth Night, actiii. so. 4'.
 
 9i 
 
 excessive prices wherevnto things are growen, and iiow their course is 
 limited by law, and estate looked into on every side, the cause of 
 their so dooing is well inough perceived. This also offendeth manie, 
 that they should after their deaths leave their substances to their 
 wives and children ; whereas they consider not, that in old time such 
 as had no lemans nor bastards (verie few were there God wot of this 
 sort) did leave their goods and possessions to their brethren and 
 kinsfolk, whereby (as I can shew by good record) manie houses of 
 gentilitie have growen and beene erected. If in anie age some one of 
 them did found a college, almes-house, or schoole, if you looke unto 
 these our times, you shall see no fewer deeds of charitie doone, nor 
 better grounded upon the right stub of pietie than before. If you sale 
 that their wives be fond, after the decease of their husbands, and 
 bestow themselves not so advisedlie as their calling requircth, which 
 God knoweth these curious surveiors make small accompt of in truth, 
 further than thereby to gather matter of reprehension: I beseech 
 you then to look into all states of the laitie, and tell me whether 
 some duchesses, countesses, barons, or knights' wives, doo not fullie so 
 often offend in the like as they : for Eve will be Eve, though Adam 
 would sale naie. Not a few also find fault with our thread-bare 
 gowns, as if not our patrons but our wives were causes of our wo : 
 but if it were knowne to all, that I know to have beene performed of 
 late in Essex, where a minister taking a benefice (of lesse than twentie 
 pounds in the Queen's bookes so farre as I remember) was inforced to 
 paie to his patrone, twentie quarters of otes, ten quarters of wheat, 
 and sixteene yeerlie of barleie, which he called hawkes-meat ; and 
 another left the like in farme to his patrone forten pounds by the 
 yeere, which is well worth fortie at the least, the cause of our thread- 
 bare gowns would easilie appeere, for such patron es doo scrape the 
 wooll from our clokes." * 
 
 This delineation is, upon the whole, a favourable one ; but the 
 author in the very next page admits that the country-clergy had not- 
 
 * Holinshed, vol. i. p. 233, 234. 
 N 2
 
 92 
 
 withstanding fallen into " general contempt" and " small consider- 
 ation ;" that the cause of this was not merely owing to the poverty of 
 the ministry, but was for the most part attributable either to the 
 iniquity of the patron or the immorality of the priest, will but too 
 clearly appear from the relation of Harrison himself, and from other 
 contemporary evidence. The historian declares that it was the cus- 
 tom of some patrons to " bestow advowsons of benefices upon their 
 bakers, butlers, cookes, good archers, falconers, and horsekeepers, 
 insted of other recompence for their long and faithfull service * ;" and 
 the following letter from the Talbot papers presents us with a frightiiil 
 view of the manners of the country-clergy at the commencement of 
 the reign of James I. 
 
 " Ad. Slack to the Lady Bowes. 
 " Right wor". 
 
 " I understand that one Raphe Cleaton ys curate of the chappell 
 at Buxton ; his wages are, out of his neighbour's benevolence, about 
 v'"' yearely : S' Charles Cavendishe had the tythes there this last yeare, 
 ether of his owne right or my Lords, as th' inhabitants saye. The 
 minister aforenamed diifereth litle from those of the worste sorte, and 
 hath dipt his finger both in manslaughter and pjurie, &c. The 
 placinge or displacing of the curate there resteth in Mr. Walker, 
 commissarie of Bakewell, of which churche Buxton is a chappell of 
 ease. 
 
 " I humbly thanke yo' Wor" for yo' 1" to the justices at the 
 cessions ; for S' Peter Fretchvell, togither w'" Mr. Bainbrigg, were 
 verie earnest against the badd vicar of Hope ; and lykewyse S' Jer- 
 mane Poole, and all the benche, savinge Justice Bentley, who use some 
 
 vaine on his behalfe, and affirmed that my La. Bowes had been 
 
 disprooved before My Lord of Shrowesburie in reports touching the 
 vicar of Hope ; but such answere was made therto as his mouthe was 
 stopped : yet the latter daie, when all the justic's but himselfFe and 
 
 * Holinshed, vol. i. p. 231.
 
 one other were rjsen, he wold have had the said vicar lycensed 
 to sell ale hi his vicaredge, althoe the whole benche had comanded 
 the contrarye ; whereof S' Jermane Poole being adv'tised, retyrned to 
 the benche (contradicting his speeche) whoe, w'" Mr. Bainbrigge, made 
 their warrant to bringe before them, him, or anie other person that 
 shall, for him, or in his vicaridge, brue, or sell ale, &c. He ys not to 
 bee punished by the Justices for the multytude of his women, untyll 
 the basterds whereof he is the reputed father bee brought in. I am 
 the more boulde to wryte so longe of this sorrie matter, in respect 
 you maye take so much better knowledge of S' Jo. Bentley, and his 
 p'tialytie in so vile a cause ; and esteem e and judge of him accoi'dinge 
 to y' wisdome and good discretion. Thus, humbly cravinge p'don, I 
 comitt y' good Wors. to the everlasting Lorde, who ever keepe you. 
 This 12thofOctob. 1609. 
 
 " Yo' La' humble poore tenant, at comandm'. 
 
 " Ad. Slack. * 
 " To the right wor" my good Ladie, the 
 La. Bowes of Walton, geive theise." 
 
 That men who could thus debase themselves should be held in little 
 esteem, and their services ill requited, cannot excite our wonder ; 
 and we consequently read without surprise, that in the days of Eliza- 
 beth, the minstrel and the cook were often better paid than the 
 priest ; — thus on the books of the Stationers' Company for the year 
 1560, may be found the following entry : 
 
 " Item, payd to the preacher 
 Item, payd to the minstrell 
 Item, payd to the coke - xv " f 
 Let us not conclude, however, that the age of Shakspeare was with- 
 out instances of a far different kind, and that religion and virtue were 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 vi 
 
 2 
 
 xjj 
 
 
 
 XV 
 
 
 
 'to^ 
 
 * Lodge's Illustrations, vol. iii. p. 391. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 221. note 7-
 
 94 
 
 altogether excluded from what ought to have been their most 
 favoured abode ; it will be sufficient to mention the name of Bernard 
 Gilpin, the most exemplary of parish-priests, whose humility, bene- 
 volence, and exalted piety were never exceeded, and whose ministe- 
 rial labours were such as to form a noble contrast to the shameful 
 neglect of the pastoral care which existed around him. Indeed we 
 are inclined to infer, notwithstanding the numerous individual in- 
 stances of profligacy and dissipation wliich may be brought forward, 
 that the country clergy then, as now, if considered in the aggregate, 
 possessed more real virtue and utility than any other equally nume- 
 rous body of men ; but that aberrations from the stricter decency of 
 their order were, as is still very properly the case in the present day, 
 marked with avidity, and censured with abhorrence. To the younger 
 clergy in the countr}-, also, was frequently committed the task of 
 education, a labour of unspeakable importance, but in the period of 
 which we are writing, attended too often with the most undeserved 
 contumely and contempt. In the Scholemaster of Ascham may be 
 found the most bitter complaints of the barbarous and disgraceful 
 treatment of the able instructor of youth ; and the following sketches 
 of the clerical tutor from Peacham and Hall, will still further heighten 
 and authenticate the picture. The former of these writers observes, 
 " Such is the most base and ridiculous parsimony of many of our 
 Gentlemen, (if I may so terme them) that if they can procure some 
 poore Batchelor of Art from the Universitie to teach their children to 
 say grace, and serve the cure of an impropriation, who wanting meanes 
 and friends, will be content upon the promise of ten pounds a yeere 
 at his first comming, to be pleased with five ; the rest to be set off" in 
 hope of the next advouson, (which perhaps was sold before the 
 young man was borne) : Or if it chance to fall in his time, his lady or 
 master tels him ; ' Indeed Sir we are beholden unto you for your 
 paines, such a living is lately falne, but I had before made a promise 
 of it to my butler or bailiffe, for his true and extraordinary service.' 
 
 " Is it not commonly seene, that the most Gentlemen will give 
 better wages, and deale more bountifully with a fellow who can but
 
 95 
 
 Xr L a (loo-o-e, or reclaimo a hawke, than upon an honest, learned, and well 
 qualified man to bring up their children ? It may be, hence it is, that 
 dogges are able to make syllogismes in the fields, when their 
 }T)ung masters can conclude nothing at home, if occasion of argument 
 or discourse be offered at the table." * 
 
 The domestic chaplain of Bishop Hall is touched with a glowing 
 pencil, and while it faithfully exhibits the servile and depressed state 
 of the poor tutor, is, at the same time, wrought up with much point 
 and humour. 
 
 " A gentle squire would gladly entertaine 
 Into bis house some trencher-chapelaine ; 
 Some willing man, that might instruct his sons, 
 And that would stand to good conditions. 
 First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed, 
 "N^'^hile his young raaister lieth o'er his head : 
 Second, that he do, upon no default, 
 Never presume to sit above the salt : 
 Third, that he never change his trencher twise ; 
 Fourth, that he use all common courtesies : 
 Sit bare at meales, and one half rise and wait : 
 Last, that he never his young maister beat ; 
 But he must aske his mother to define 
 How manie jerks she would his breech should line. 
 All these observ'd, he could contented be, 
 To give five markes, and winter liverie." f 
 
 From the description of the character of the country clerical tutor, 
 it is an easy transition to that of the rural pedagogue or schoolmaster, a 
 personage of not less consequence in the days of Elizabeth, than in the 
 present period. He frequently combined, indeed, in the sixteenth 
 century, the reputation of a conjuror with that of a schoolmaster, and 
 
 * The Compleat Gentleman. Fashioning him absolut, in the most necessary and 
 commendable Qualities concerning Minde or Body that may be required in a Noble 
 Gentleman. By Henry Peacham Master of Arts : Sometime of Trinitie Colledge in 
 Cambridge. 
 
 This book, which is written in an easy and elegant style, was published in 1622, and has 
 been several times reprinted ; it is a work of considerable interest and amusement, and 
 throws much light on the education and literature of its times. 
 
 t Hall's Satires, Book ii. sat. 6.
 
 96 
 
 accordingly in the Comedif of Errors, Pinch, in the dramatis personse, 
 is described as " a schoohiiaster, and a conjuror," and the following 
 not very amiable portrait of iiis person is given to\\'ards the conclusion 
 ot" the play : — 
 
 " Tliey brought one Pinch ; a hungry lean-faced villain, 
 A mcer anatomy, a mountebank, 
 A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller; 
 A needy, hoUow-eye'd, sharp-looking wretcli, 
 A living dead man : this pernicious slave. 
 Forsooth, took him on as conjuror." * 
 
 Ben Jonson also alludes to this union of occupations when he says, 
 " I would have ne'er a cunning schoolemastcr in England, I mean a 
 Cunningman as a schoolemaster ; that is, a Conjurour." f 
 
 A less formidable figure of a schoolmaster has been given us by 
 Shakspeare, under the character of Holofernes, in Love's Labour s 
 Lost, where he has drawn a full-length caricature of the too frequent 
 pedantry of this profession. Yet Holofernes, though he speak a 
 leash of languages at once, is not deficient either in ability or discrimi- 
 nation ; he ridicules with much good sense and humour the literary 
 fops of his day, the " rackers of orthography ;" and his conversation 
 is described by his friend, Sir Nathaniel, the Curate, as possessing 
 all the requisites to perfection. " Sir : your reasons at dinner have 
 been sharp and sententious ; pleasant without scurrility, witty without 
 affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and 
 strange without heresy." % " It is very difficult," remarks Dr. John- 
 son, " to add any thing to this character of the schoolmaster's table- 
 talk, and perhaps all the precepts of Castiglione will scarcely be found 
 to comprehend a rule for conversation so justly delineated, so widely 
 dilated, and so nicely limited." § 
 
 The country-schoolmasters in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, 
 were, however, if we trust to the accounts of Ascham and Peacham, in 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 451. 
 
 t The Staple of Newes, the third Intermeane after the third act. 
 
 X Act V, sc. I. § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 132. note 7,
 
 97 
 
 general many degrees below the pedagogue of Shakspeare in ability ; 
 tyranny and ignorance appear to liave been their chief characteristics ; 
 to such an extent, indeed, were they deficient in point of necessary 
 knowledge, that Peacham, speaking of bad masters, declares, " it is 
 a generall plague and complaint of the whole land ; for, for one dis- 
 creet and able teacher, you shall finde twenty ignorant and carelesse ; 
 who (among so many fertile and delicate wits as England affordeth) 
 whereas they make one scholler, they marre ten." * 
 
 Ascham had endeavoured, by every argument and mode of persua^ 
 sion in his power, to check the severe and indiscriminate discipline 
 which prevailed among the teachers in his time ; it would seem in 
 vain ; for Peacham, about the year 1620, found it necessary to recom- 
 mend lenity in equally strenuous terms, and has given a minute and 
 we have no doubt a faithful picture of the various cruelties to which 
 scholars were then subjected ; a summary of the result of this con- 
 duct may be drawn, indeed, from his own words, where he says, 
 " Masters for the most part so behave themselves, that their very 
 name is hatefull to the scholler, who trembleth at their comming in, 
 rejoyceth at their absence, and looketh his master (returned) in the 
 the face, as his deadly enemy." f 
 
 To the charges of undue severity and defective literature, we must 
 add, I am afraid, the infinitely more weighty accusation of frequent 
 immorality and buffoonery. Ludovicus Vives, who wrote just before 
 the age of Shakspeare, asserts, that " some schoolmasters taught 
 Ovid's books of love to their scholars, and some made expositions, 
 and expounded the vices | ;" and Peacham, at the close of the era 
 we are considering, censures in the strongest terms their too common 
 levity and misconduct : " the diseases whereunto some of them are 
 very subject, are humour and folly (that I may say nothing of the 
 grosse ignorance and insufficiency of many) whereby they become 
 ridiculous and contemptible both in the schoole and abroad. Hence 
 
 * Compleat Gentleman, p. 22. edit, of 1634. + Ibid. p. 25, 
 
 :|: Instruction of a Christian Woman, 4to. edit, of 1557. 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 98 
 
 it comes to passe, that in many places, especially in Italy, of all pro- 
 fessions that of pedanteria is held in basest repute : the school e-master 
 almost in every comedy being brought upon the stage, to paralell the 
 Zani or Pantaloun. He made us good sport in that excellent comedy 
 of Pedantius, acted in our Trinity CoUedge in Cambridge, and if I be 
 not deceived, in Priscianus Vapulans, and many of our English plays. 
 
 " I knew one, who in winter would ordinarily in a cold morning, 
 whip his boyes over for no other purpose than to get himselfe a heat : 
 another beat them for swearing, and all the while he sweares himselfe 
 with horrible oathes, he would forgive any faidt saving that. 
 
 " I had I remember myselfe (neere S.Albanes in Hertfo7'dshire, 
 where I was borne) a master, who by no entreaty would teach any 
 scholler he had, farther than his father had learned before him ; as, 
 if he had onely learned but to reade English, the sonne, though he 
 went with him seven yeeres, should goe no further : his reason was, 
 they would then proove saucy rogues, and controule their fathei-s : 
 yet these are they that oftentimes have our hopefull gentry under their 
 charge and tuition, to bring them in science and civility." * 
 
 We must, I apprehend, from these representations, be induced to 
 conclude, that ignorance, despotism, and self-sufficiency were leading 
 features in the composition of the country-schoolmaster, during this 
 period of our annals ; it would not be just, however, to infer from 
 these premises that the larger schools were equally unfortunate in 
 their conductors ; on the contrary, most of the public seminaries of 
 the capital, and many in the large provincial towns, were xmder the 
 regulation of masters highly respectable for their erudition, men, inr- 
 deed, to whom neither Erasmus nor Joseph Scaliger would have re- 
 fused the title of ripe and good scholars. 
 
 We shall now pass forward, in the series of our rural characters, to the 
 delineation of one of great importance in a national point of view, 
 that of the substantial Farmer or Yeoman, of whom Harrison has left 
 us the following interesting definition : — " This sort of people have a 
 
 * Compleat Gentleman, p. 26, 27.
 
 99 
 
 certaine preheminence, and more estimation than labourers and the 
 common sort of artificers, and these commonhe hve wealthilie, keepe 
 good houses, and travell to get riches. They are also for the most 
 part farmers to gentlemen, or at the leastwise artificers, and with 
 grazing, frequenting of markets, and keeping of servants (not idle 
 servants, as the gentlemen doo, but such as get both their owne and 
 part of their masters living) do come to great welth, in somuch that 
 manie of them are able and doo buie the lands of unthriftie gentle- 
 men, and often setting their sonnes to the schooles, to the universi- 
 ties, and to the Ins of the court ; or otherwise leaving them sufficient 
 lands whereupon they may live without labour, doo make them by 
 those meanes to become gentlemen : these were they that in times 
 past made all France afraid. And albeit they be not called master, 
 as gentlemen are, or sir as to knights apperteineth, but onelie John 
 and Tlromas, &c.: yet have they beene found to have doone verie 
 good service: and the kings of England in foughten battels, were 
 woont to remaine among them (who were their footmen) as the 
 French kings did amongst their horssemen : the prince thereby shew- 
 ing where his chiefe strength did consist." * 
 
 After this description of the rank which the farmer held in society, 
 we shall proceed to state the mode in which he commonly lived in 
 the age of Elizabeth ; and in doing this we have chosen, as usual, to 
 adopt at considerable length the language of our old writers ; a prac- 
 tice to which we shall in future adliere, while detailing the manners, 
 customs, &c. of our ancestors, a practice which has indeed peculiar 
 advantages ; for the authenticity of the source is at once apparent, 
 the diction possesses a peculiar charm from its antique cast, and the 
 expression has a raciness and force of colouring, which owes its origin 
 to actual inspection, and which, consequently, it is in vain to expect, 
 on such subjects, from modern composition. 
 
 The houses or cottages of the farmer were built, in places abound- 
 ing in wood, in a very strong and substantial manner, with not more 
 
 * Holinshed, vol. i. p. 275. 
 O 2
 
 100 
 
 than four, six, or nine inches between stud and stud ; but in the open 
 and champaine country, they were compelled to use more flimsy 
 materials, with here and there a girding to which they fastened their 
 splints, and then covered the whole with thick clay to keep out the 
 wind. " Certes this rude kind of building," says Harrison, " made 
 the Spaniards in queene Maries dales to wonder, but cheeflie when 
 they saw what large diet was used in manie of these so homelie cot- 
 tages, in so much that one of no smaD reputation amongst them said 
 after this manner : ' These English (quoth he) have their houses made 
 of sticks and durt, but they fare commonlie so well as the king.' 
 Wliereby it appeareth that he liked better of our good fare in such 
 coarse cabins, than of their owne thin diet in their prince-like habit- 
 ations and palaces." * The cottages of the peasantry usually consisted 
 of but two rooms on the ground-floor, the outer for the servants, the 
 inner for the master and his family, and they were thatched with 
 straw or sedge ; while the dwelling of the substantial farmer was distri- 
 buted into several rooms above and beneath, was coated with white 
 lime or cement, and was very neatly roofed with reed ; hence Tusser, 
 speaking of the farm-house, gives the following directions for repair- 
 ing and preserving its thatch in the month of May : 
 
 " Where houses be reeded (as houses have need) 
 Now pare of the mosse, and go beat in the reed : 
 The juster ye drive it, the smoother and plaine, 
 More handsome ye make it, to shut ofiF the raine." f 
 
 A few years before the era of which we are treating, the venerable 
 Hugh Latimer, describing in one of his impressive sermons the eco- 
 nomy of a farmer in his time, tells us that his father, who was a 
 
 * Holinshed, vol. i. p. 315. 
 
 f Three editions of Tusser's Poem on Husbandry are now before me ; the first printed 
 in 1557, entitled A Hundreth good Pointes of Husbandrie ; the ^to. edition of 1586, 
 termed Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie ; and Tusser Redivivus, by Daniel 
 Hilman, first published in 1/10, and again in 1744; the quatrain just quoted is from the 
 copy of 1744, p. 56.
 
 101 
 
 yeoman, had no land of his own, but only " a farm of three or four 
 pounds by the year at the utmost ; and hereupon he tilled so much as 
 kept half a dozen men. He had a walk for an hundred sheep ; and my 
 mother milked thirty kine. He kept his son at school till he went to 
 the university, and maintained him there ; he married his daughters 
 with five pounds or twenty nobles a piece ; he kept hospitality with 
 his neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor ; and all this he 
 did out of the said farm."* 
 
 Land let, at this period, it should be remembered, at about a 
 
 shilling per acre; but in the reign of Elizabeth its value rapidly 
 
 increased, together with a proportional augmentation of the comfort 
 
 of the farmer, who even began to exhibit the elegancies and luxuries 
 
 of life. Of the change which took place in rural economy towards the 
 
 iClose of the sixteenth century, the following faithful and interesting 
 
 picture has been drawn by the pencil of Harrison, who, noticing the 
 
 additional splendour of gentlemen's houses, remarks, — " In times past 
 
 the costlie furniture staled there, whereas now it is descended yet lower, 
 
 even unto manie farmers, who by vertue of their old and not of their 
 
 new leases, have for the most part learned also to garnish their cup- 
 
 bords with plate, their ioined beds with tapistrie and silke hangings, 
 
 and their tables with carpets and fine naperie, whereby the wealth of 
 
 our coimtrie (God be praised therefore, and give us grace to imploie it 
 
 well) dooth infinitlie appeare. Neither doo I speake this in reproch 
 
 of anie man, God is my judge, but to shew that I do rejoise rather, to 
 
 see how God hath blessed us with his good gifts ; and whilest I behold 
 
 how that in a time wherein all things are growen to most excessive 
 
 prices, and what commoditie so ever is to be had, is daily plucked 
 
 from the commonaltie by such as looke in to everie trade, we doo 
 
 yet find the means to obtein and atchive such furniture as here to fore 
 
 hath beene unpossible. There are old men yet dwelling in the village 
 
 where I remaine, which have noted three things to be marvellouslie 
 
 altered in England within their sound remembrance j and other three 
 
 * Gilpin's Life of Latimer, p. 2.
 
 102 
 
 things too too much encreased. One is, the multitude of chimnies 
 latehe erected, wheras in their yoong daies thei-e were not above two 
 or three, if so manie in most uplandish townes of the realme, (the 
 rehgious houses, and manor places of their lords alwaies excepted, 
 and peradventure some great personages) but ech one made his fire 
 against a rere dosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat. 
 
 " The second is the great (although not generall) amendment of 
 lodging, for (said they) our fathers (yea and wee ourselves also) have 
 lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered onlie with a 
 sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain or hop harlots (I use their 
 owne termes) and a good round log under their heads instead of a 
 bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers or the good man of 
 the house, had within seven yeares after his mariage purchased a 
 matteres or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chafFe to rest his head 
 upon, he thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lord of the 
 towne, that peradventure laie seldome in a bed of downe or whole 
 fethers ; so well were they contented, and with such base kind of 
 furniture : which also is not verie much amended as yet in some parts 
 of Bedfordshire, and elsewhere further off from our southerne parts. 
 Pillowes (said they) were thought meet onelie for women in child bed. 
 As for servants, if they had anie sheet above them it was well, for 
 seldome had they anie under their bodies, to keepe them from the 
 pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet, and rased 
 their hardened hides. 
 
 " The third thing they tell of, is the exchange of vessell, as of 
 treene platters into pewter, and wodden spoones into silver or tin. 
 For so common was all sorts of treene stuff in old time, that a man 
 should hardlie find four peeces of pewter (of which one was perad- 
 venture a salt) in a good farmer's house, and yet for all this fru- 
 galitie (if it may so be justly called) they were scarce able to live 
 and paie their rents at their daies without selling of a cow, or an 
 horsse, or more, although they paid but foure pounds at tlie uttermost 
 by the yeare. Such also was their povertie, that if some one od 
 farmer or husbandman had beene at the alehouse, a thing greathe
 
 103 
 
 used in those daies, amongst six or seven of his neighbours, and there 
 in a braverie to shew what store he had, did cast downe liis purse, and 
 therein a noble or six shiDings in silver unto them (for few such men 
 then cared for gold because it was not so readie paiment, and they 
 were oft inforced to give a penie for the exchange of an angell) it 
 was verie likelie that all the rest could not laie downe so much against 
 it : whereas in my time, although peradventure foure poundes of old 
 rent be improved to fortie, fiftie, or an hundred pounds, yet will 
 the farmer as another palme or date tree thinke his gaines verie small 
 toward the end of his terme, if he have not six or seven yeares rent 
 lieing by him, therewith to purchase a new lease, beside a faire garnish 
 of pewter on his cupbord, with so much in od vessell going about the 
 house, three or foure feather beds, so manie coverlids and carpets of 
 tapistrie, a silver salt, a bowle for wine (if not an whole neast) and a 
 dozzen of spoones to furnish up the sute."* 
 
 To this curious delineation of the furniture and household accom- 
 modation of the farmer, it will be necessary, in order to complete 
 the sketch, to add a few things relative to his diet and hospitality. 
 Contrary to what has taken place in modern times, the hours for 
 meals were later with the artificer and the husbandman than with the 
 higher order of society ; the farmer and his servants usually sitting 
 down to dinner at one o'clock, and to supper at seven, while the 
 nobleman and gentleman took the first at eleven in the morning, and 
 the second at five in the afternoon. 
 
 It would appear that, from the cottage to the palace, good eating 
 was as much cultivated in the days of Elizabeth as it has been in any 
 subsequent period ; and the rites of hospitality, more especially in 
 the country, were observed with a frequency and cordiality which a 
 further progress in civilisation has rather tended to check than to 
 increase. 
 
 Of the larder of the cotter and the shepherd, and of the hospi- 
 tality of the former, a pretty accurate idea may be acquired from the 
 
 * Holinshed, vol. i. p. 317,318.
 
 104 
 
 simple yet beautiful strains of an old pastoral bard of Elizabeth's 
 days, who, describing a nobleman fatigued by the chase, the heat of 
 the weather, and long fasting, adds that he — 
 
 " Did house him in a peakish graunge, 
 Within a forrest great : 
 
 Wheare, knowne, and welcom'd, as the place 
 
 And persons might afforde, 
 Browne bread, whig, bacon, curds, and milkr.j 
 
 Were set him on the borde : 
 
 A cushion made of lists, a stoole 
 
 Half backed with a houpe. 
 Were brought him, and he sitteth down 
 
 Besides a sorry coupe. 
 
 The poor old couple wish't their bread 
 
 Were wheat, their whig were perry. 
 Their bacon beefe, their milke and curds 
 
 Weare creame, to make him mery." * 
 
 The picture of the shepherd youth is so exquisitely drawn that, 
 though only a portion of it is illustrative of our subject, we cannot 
 avoid giving so much of the text as will render the figure complete. 
 
 " Sweet growte, or whig, his bottle had 
 As much as it might hold : 
 
 A sheeve of bread as browne as nut. 
 
 And cheese as white as snowe, 
 And wildings, or the season's fruite, 
 
 He did in scrip bestow : 
 
 And whil'st his py-bald curre did sleepe. 
 
 And sheep-hooke lay him by, 
 On hollow quilles of oten strawe 
 
 He piped melody : — 
 
 * Warner's Albion's England, chap. 42. Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 602.
 
 105 
 
 ------- With the sun 
 
 He cloth his flocke unfold, 
 And all the day on hill or plaine 
 
 He merrie chat can hold : 
 
 And with the sun doth folde againe ; 
 
 Then jogging home betime, 
 He turnes a crab, or tunes a round, 
 
 Or sings some merrie ryme : 
 
 Nor lackes he gleeful tales to tell, 
 
 WhiVst round the bole doth trot; 
 And sitteth singing care away. 
 
 Till he to bed hath got. 
 
 Theare sleeps he soundly all the night. 
 
 Forgetting morrow cares. 
 Nor feares he blasting of his come 
 
 Nor uttering of his wares. 
 
 Or stormes by seas, or stirres on land, 
 
 Or cracke of credite lost. 
 Not spending franklier than his flocke 
 
 Shall still defray the cost. 
 
 Wei wot I, sooth they say that say : 
 
 More quiet nightes and dales 
 The shepheard sleepes and wakes than he 
 
 Whose cattel he doth graize." * 
 
 The lines in Italics allude to the favourite beverage of the pea- 
 santry, and the mode in which they recreated themselves over the 
 spicy bowl. To turne a crab is to roast a wilding or wild apple in 
 the fire for the purpose of being thrown hissing hot into a bowl of 
 nut-brown ale, into which had been previously put a toast with some 
 spice and sugar. To this delicious compound Shakspeare has fre- 
 quently referred ; thus in Lovers Labour's Lost one of his designations 
 of winter is, 
 
 " When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl :"f 
 
 • Warner in Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 552, 553. 
 t Act V. sc. 2. Song at the conclusion. 
 
 VOL. I. p 
 
 i
 
 106 
 
 and Puck, describing his own wanton tricks in Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, says — 
 
 " And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl, 
 In very likeness of a roasted crab, 
 And when she drinks, against her lips I bob." * 
 
 The very expression to turn a crab will be found in the following 
 passages from two old plays, in the first of which the good man 
 says he will 
 
 " Sit down in fits chaire by his wife faire Alison, 
 And turne a crabbe in the fire ;" f 
 
 and in the second, Christmas is personified 
 
 " sitting in a corn er turning crabs. 
 
 Or coughing o'er a warmed pot of ale. :j: 
 
 Nor can we omit, in closing this series of quotations, the following 
 stanza of a fine old song in the curious comedy of Gatmner Gurtons 
 Needle, first printed in 1575 : 
 
 ^ " I love no rost, but a nut brown toste, 
 and a crab layde in thefyre ; 
 A lytle bread shall do me stead, 
 much bread I not desyre. 
 
 No froste nor snow, no winde, I trow, 
 
 can hurte me if I wolde, 
 I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt 
 
 of joly good ale, and olde. 
 
 Back and syde go bare, go bare, 
 
 booth foote and hande go colde ; 
 But belly, God sende thee good ale ynoughe, 
 
 whether it be newe or olde. § 
 
 * Actii. sc. 1. t Damon and Pithias, 1682. 
 
 X Summer's Last Will and Testament, by Nash, 1 600. 
 
 § Introductory Song to the second acte. Vide Ancient Brilisli Drama, vol. i.
 
 107 
 
 To tell gleeful tales, " whilst round the bole doth trot," was an 
 amusement much more common among our ancestors, during the 
 age of Elizabeth, and the subsequent century, than it has been in 
 any later period. The Winters Tale of Shakspeare owes its title 
 to this custom, of which an example is placed bpfore us in the 
 first scene of the second act. 
 
 Her. Come Sir — 
 
 Pray you, sit by us, 
 
 And tell 's a tale. 
 
 Mam, Merry, or sad, shal't be ? 
 Her. As merry as you will. * 
 
 And Burton, the first edition of whose Anatomy of jNlelancholy 
 was published in 1617, enumerates, among the ordinary recreations 
 of Winter, " merry tales of errant knights, queens, lovers, lords, 
 ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fayries, goblins, 
 friars, &c. — which some delight to hear, some to tell ; all are well 
 pleased with ;" and he remarks shortly afterwards, " when three or 
 four good companions meet, they tell old stories by the fire-side, or 
 in the sun, as old folks usually do, remembering afresh and with 
 pleasure antient matters, and such like accidents, which happened in 
 their younger years." f Milton also, in his V Allegro, first printed 
 in 1645, gives a conspicuous station 
 
 and adds. 
 
 — " to the spicy nut-brown ale, 
 With stories told of many a feat :" 
 
 " Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 
 By whispering winds soon lull'd to sleep." % 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 355. 
 
 t Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 172, 173., eighth edition of \GTG. 
 
 X Milton's Poems by Warton, second edition, p. 56. (»I. 
 
 r 2
 
 108 
 
 The farmer's daily diet may be drawn with sufficient accuracy from 
 the curious old Georgic of Tusser, a poem which, more than any other 
 that we possess, throws light upon the agricultural manners and 
 customs of the age. In Lent, says this entertaining bard, the farmer 
 must in the first place consume his red herring, and afterwards his 
 salt fish, which should be kept in store, indeed, and considered as 
 good even when Lent is past, and with these leeks and peas should 
 be procured for pottage, with the view of saving milk, oatmeal, and 
 bread : at Easter veale and bacon are to be the chief articles ; at 
 Martilmas salted beef, " when country folk do dainties lack :" at Mid- 
 summer, when mackrel are out of season, grasse (that is sallads, &c.) 
 fresh beef and pease : at Michaelmas fresh herring and fatted * crones : 
 at AD Saints pork and souse, sprats and spurlings : at Christmas he 
 enjoins the farmer to " plaie and make good cheere," and he concludes 
 by advising him, as was the custom in Elizabeth's time, to observe 
 Fridays, Saturdays, and Wednesdays as fish-days ; to " keep embrings 
 well and fasting dayes," and of fish and fruit be scarce, to supply their 
 want with butter and cheese, f To these recommendations he adds, 
 in another place, that 
 
 " Good ploughmen look weekly of custom and right, 
 For rostmeat on sundaies, and thursday at night :" 
 
 and he subsequently gives directions for writing what he terms " hus- 
 bandlie posies," that is, economical proverbs in rhyme, to be hung up 
 in the Hall, the parlour, the Ghest's chamber, and the good man's own 
 bed chamber. J 
 
 If the farmer have a visitor, our woithy bard is not illiberal in his 
 allowance, but advises him to place three dishes on his table at 
 
 * Crones are ewes whose teeth are so worn down, that they can no longer live in their 
 sheep-walk; but will sometimes, if put into good pasture, thrive exceedingly, 
 t Tusser, 4to. edit. 1586., chap. 12. fol. 25, 26. 
 % Tusser, Ito. edit. 1586., fol. 138. 144, 145.
 
 109 
 
 dinner, well dressed, which, says he, will be sufficient to please your 
 friend, and will become your Hall. * 
 
 On days of feasting and rejoicing, however, it appears to have been 
 a common custom for the guests to bring their victuals with them, 
 forming as it were a pic-nic meal ; thus, Harrison, describing the 
 occasional mirth and hospitality of the farmer, says, — " In feasting the 
 husbandmen doo exceed after their maner: especiallie at bridales, 
 purifications of women, and such od meetings, where it is incredible 
 to tell what meat is consumed and spent, ech one bringing such a 
 dish, or so manie with him as his wife and he doo consult upon, but 
 alwaies with this consideration, that the leefer freend shall have the 
 better provision. This also is commonlie scene at these bankets, that 
 the good man of the house is not charged with any thing saving bread, 
 drink, sauce, houseroome, and fire. (He then gives us the following 
 naive and pleasing picture of their festivity and content.) The hus- 
 bandmen are sufficientlie liberall, and verie freendlie at their tables, 
 and when they meet, they are so merie v^^ithout malice, and plaine with- 
 out inward Italian or French craft and subtiltie, that it would doo a 
 man good to be in companie among them. Herein only are the 
 inferiour sort somewhat to be blamed, that being thus assembled, their 
 talke is now and then such as savoureth of scurrilitie and ribaldrie, a 
 thing naturallie incident to carters and clowns, who thinke themselves 
 not to be merie and welcome, if their foolish veines in this behalfe be 
 never so little restreined. This is moreover to be added in these 
 meetings, that if they happen to stumble upon a peece of venison, 
 and a cup of wine or verie strong beere or ale (which latter they 
 commonlie provide against their appointed daies) they thinke their 
 cheere so great, and themselves to have fared so well, as the lord 
 Maior of London, with whome when their bellies be full they will 
 not often sticke to make comparison, (saying, / have dined so xvell as 
 my lord maior') because that of a subject there is no publike officer of 
 anie citie in Europe, that may compare in port and countenance 
 with him during the time of his office." f 
 
 * Tussei-, 4to. of 1586. fol. 133, f Holinshed, vol. i. p, 282,
 
 110 
 
 The dress of the farmer during the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury was plain and durable ; consisting, for common purposes, of 
 coarse gray cloth or fustian, in the form of trunk-hose, frock, or 
 doublet. 
 
 To this account of the farmer's mode of living, it will be proper to 
 add a brief description of his coadjutor in domestic economy, the 
 English housewife, a personage of no small importance ; lor, as 
 honest Tusser has justly observed, 
 
 " House keping and husbandry, if it be good, 
 must love one another, as cousinncs in blood. 
 The wife to, must husband as well as the man, 
 or farewel thy husbandry, doe what thou can." * 
 
 Of the qualifications necessary to constitute this useful character, 
 Gervase Markham has given us a very curious detail, in his work 
 .entitled " The English Housewife j" which, though not published 
 imtil the close of the Shakspearian era, appears, from the dedication 
 to Frances, Countess Dowager of Exeter, to have been written long 
 anterior to its transmission to the press ; for it is there said, " That 
 much of it was a manuscript which many years ago belonged to an 
 honourable Countess, one of the greatest glories of our f kingdom." 
 It is a delineation which, as supposed of easy practical application, 
 does honour to the sex and to the age. After expatiating on the 
 necessity of a religious example to her household, on the part of the 
 good housewife, he thus proceeds : 
 
 " Next unto her sanctity and holiness of life, it is meet that our 
 English Housewife be a woman of great modesty and temperance, as 
 well inwardly as outwardly ; inwardly, as in her behaviour and car- 
 riage towards her husband, wherein she shall shun all violence of 
 rage, passion and humour, coveting less to direct than to be directed, 
 appearing ever unto him pleasant, amiable and delightful ; and, 
 
 * Tusser, first edit, of 1557. title-page. 
 
 f The English House- Wife, containing the inward and outward vertues which ought 
 to be in a Compleat Woman. Ninth edition, 1683. Dedication.
 
 Ill 
 
 tho' occasion of mishaps, or the mis-government of his will may in- 
 duce her to contrary thoughts, yet vertuously to suppress them, and 
 witli a mild sufferance rather to call him home from his error, than 
 with the strength of anger to abate the least spark of his evil, calling 
 into her mind, that evil and uncomely language is deformed, though 
 uttered even to servants ; but most monstrous and ugly, when it ap- 
 pears before the presence of a husband : outwardly, as in her apparel, 
 and dyet, both which she shall proportion according to the com- 
 petency of her husband's estate and calling, making her circle rather 
 strait than large : for it is a rule, if we extend to the uttermost, we 
 take away increase ; if we go a hairs bredth beyond, we enter into 
 consumption : but if we preserve any part, we build strong forts 
 against the adversaries of fortune, provided that such preservation 
 be honest and conscionable : for as lavish prodigality is brutish, so 
 miserable covetousness is hellish. Let therefore the Housewife's gar- 
 ments be comely and strong, made as well to preserve the health, 
 as to adorn the person, altogether without toyish garnishes, or the 
 gloss of light colours, and as far from the vanity of new and fantastick 
 fashions, as near to the comely imitation of modest matrons. Let 
 her dyet be wholesome and cleanly, prepared at due hours, and 
 cook'd with care and diligence, let it be rather to satisfie nature, than 
 her affections, and apter to kill hunger than revive new appetites ; 
 let it proceed more from the provision of her own yard, than the 
 furniture of the markets ; and let it be rather esteemed for the 
 familiar acquaintance she hath without it, than for the strangeness 
 and rarity it bringeth from other countries. 
 
 " To conclude, our English Housewife must be of chast thoughts, 
 stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent, witty, pleasant, 
 constant in friendship, full of good neighbour-hood, wise in discourse, 
 but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but not bitter 
 or talkative, secret in her affairs, comfortable in her counsels, and 
 generally skilful in the worthy knowledges which do belong to her 
 vocation." * 
 
 * English House- Wife, p. '2, 3, 4.
 
 112 
 
 These knowledges, he then states, should consist in an intimacy 
 with domestic physic, with cookery, with the distillation of waters, 
 with the making and preserving of wines, with the making and dying 
 of cloth, with the conduct of dairies, and with malting, brewing, and 
 baking ; for all which he gives very ample directions. Markham, 
 indeed, seems to have taken the greater part of this picture from his 
 predecessor Tusser, in whose poems on husbandry may be found, 
 among many others, the following excellent precepts for the conduct 
 of the good house-wife : — 
 
 " In Marche and in Aprill from morning to night : 
 in sowing and setting good huswives delight. 
 To have in their garden or some other plot : 
 to trim up their house and to furnish their pot. 
 
 Have millons at Mihelmas, parsneps in lent : 
 in June, butlred beanes, saveth fish to be spent. 
 With those and good pottage inough having than : 
 thou winnest the heart of thy laboring man. 
 
 From Aprill begin til saint Andrew be past : 
 so long with good huswives their dairies doe last. 
 Good milche bease and pasture, good husbandes provide : 
 good huswives know best all the rest how to guide. 
 
 But huswives, that learne not to make their owne cheese : 
 with trusting of others, have thes for their feese. 
 Their milke slapt in corners their creame al to sost : 
 their milk pannes so flotte, that their cheeses be lost. 
 
 Where some of a kowe maketh yerely a pounde : 
 these huswives crye creake for their voice will not sounde. 
 The servauntes suspecting their dame, lye in waighte : 
 with one thing or other they trudge away straight. 
 
 Then neighbour (for god's sake) if any such be ; 
 
 if you know a good servant, waine her to me. 
 
 Such maister, suche man, and such mistres such mayde : 
 
 such husbandes and huswives, suche houses araide. 
 
 For flax and for hemp, for to have of her owne : 
 the wife must in May take good hede it be sowne. 
 And trimme it and kepe it to serve at a nede : 
 the femhle to spin and the karle for her fede.
 
 113 
 
 Good Jiusbaudes abrode seketh al wel to have : 
 good huswives at home seketh al wel to save. 
 Thus having and saving in place where they meete : 
 make profit with pleasure suche couples to greete. *" 
 
 But it is in " The points of Huswifry united to the comfort of 
 Hivibandry" of the good old poet, that we recognise the most perfect 
 picture of the domestic economy of agricultural life in the days of 
 Elizabeth. This material addition to the husbandry of our author 
 appeared in 1570, and embraces a complete view of the province of 
 the Huswife, with all her daily labours and duties, which are divided 
 into — 1st, Morning Wor-ks; 2dly, Breakfast Doings; 3dly, Dinner 
 Matters ; 4thly, Afternoon Works ; 5thly, Evening Woj'ks ; 6thly, Sup- 
 per-Matters ; and 7thly, After-Supper Matters. 
 
 From the details of this arrangement we learn, that the servants in 
 summer rose at four, and in winter at five o'clock ; that in the latter 
 season they were called to breakfast on the appearance of the day- 
 star, and that the huswise herself was the carver and distributer oi" 
 the meat and pottage. We find, likewise, and it is the only objec- 
 tionable article in the admonitions of the poet, that he recommends 
 his dame not to scold, but to thrash heartily her maids when re- 
 fractory ; and he adds a circumstance rather extraordinary, but at the 
 same time strongly recommendatory of the effects of music, that 
 
 «' Such servants are oftenest painfull and good, 
 That sing in their labour, as birds in the wood." 
 
 Dinner, he enjoins, shoidd be taken at noon ; should be quickly 
 dispatched ; and shoidd exhibit plenty, but no dainties. 
 
 The bare table, he observes, will do as well, as if covered with a 
 cloth, which is liable to be cut'; and that wooden and pewter dishes 
 and tin vessels for liquor are the best, as most secure ; and then, with 
 his accustomed piety, he advises the regular use of grace — 
 
 * Tusser, first edit. p. 14, 15. 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 114 
 
 " At dinner, at supper, at morning, at night, 
 Give thanks unto God." 
 
 As soon as dinner is over, the servants are again set to work, and 
 he very humanely adds, 
 
 " To servant in seikness, see nothing ye grutch, 
 A thing of a trifle shall comfort him much." 
 
 Many precepts, strictly economical, then follow, in which the hus- 
 wife is directed to save her parings, drippings, and skimmings for the 
 sake of her poultry, and for " medicine for cattle, for cart, and for 
 shoe ;" to employ the afternoon, like a good sempstress, in making and 
 mending ; to keep her maids cleanly in their persons, to call them 
 quarterly to account, to mark and number accurately her linen, to 
 save her feathers, to use little spice, and to make her own candle. 
 
 The business of the evening commences with preparations for 
 supper, as soon as the hens go to roost ; the hogs are then to be 
 served, the cows milked, and as night comes on, the servants return, 
 but none empty-handed, some bringing in wood, some logs, &c. 
 The cattle, both without and within doors, are next to be attended 
 to, all clothes brought into the house, and no door left unbolted, and 
 the duties of the evening close with this injunction : 
 
 " Thou woman, whom pity becometh the best, 
 Grant all that hath labom-ed time to take rest." 
 
 Supper now is spread, and the scene opens with an ex- 
 cellent persuasive to cheerfulness and hospitality : 
 
 " Provide for thy husband, to make him good cheer, 
 Make merry together, while time ye be here. 
 A-bed and at board, howsoever befall. 
 Whatever God sendeth, be merry withall. 
 No taunts before servants, for hindering of fame. 
 No jarring too loud, for avoiding of shame."
 
 115 
 
 Tlie servants are then ordered to be courteous, and attentive to each 
 other, especially at their meals, and directions are given for the next 
 morning's work. 
 
 The last section, entitled " After-supper matters," is introduced 
 and terminated in a very moral and impressive manner. The first 
 couplet tells us to 
 
 " Remember those children, whose parents be poor. 
 Which liunger, yet dare not to crave at thy door ;" 
 
 the bandog is then ordered to have the bones and the scraps ; the 
 huswife looks carefully to the fire, the candle, and the keys ; the 
 whole family retire to rest, at nine in winter, and at ten in summer, 
 and the farmer's day closes with four lines which ought to be written 
 in letters of gold, and which, if duly observed, would ensure a great 
 portion of the happiness obtainable by man : 
 
 " Be lowly, not sullen, if aught go amiss, 
 
 What wresting may lose thee, that win with a kiss. 
 Both bear and forbear, now and then as ye may. 
 Then wench, God a mercy ! thy husband will say." * 
 
 * Mavor's Tusser, p. 247. ad p. 270. 
 
 Even this, and every other description of the duties of the Huswife, may be traced to 
 " The Book of Husbandry," written by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, of Norbury, in 
 Derbyshire. 
 
 This gentleman, who was a Judge of the Common Pleas, in the reign of Henry the 
 Eighth, is justly entitled to the appellation of " the father of English Husbandry." His 
 work, the first edition of which was printed by Richard Pynson, in 1523, 4to., under- 
 went not less than eleven editions during the sixteenth century, and soon excited among 
 his countrymen a most beneficial spirit of emulation. Notwithstanding these numerous 
 impressions, there are probably not ten complete copies left in the kingdom. 
 
 One of these is, however, now before me included in a thick duodecimo, of which the 
 Jirst article is " Xenophon's treatise of householde," black letter, title wanting ; the 
 colophon, " Imprinted At London in fletestrete in the house of Thomas Berthelet. 
 Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum." No date. The second article is " The booke 
 of Husbandrye verye profitable and necessary for all maner of persons, ncwlye corrected 
 and amended by the auctor fitzherbard, with dyvers addicions put thereunto. Anno do. 
 1555." black letter. Colophon, " Imprinted at London in Flete strete at the signe of 
 the Sunne over agaynst the Conduit by John Weylande." Sixty-one leaves, exclusive 
 of the table. The third article is entitled " Surveyinge," An. 1546. Colophon, 
 
 Q 2
 
 116 
 
 Frugality and domestic economy were not, however, the constant 
 attributes of the farmer's wife in the age of which we are treating ; 
 
 " Londini in eedibus Thome Berthelet typis impress. Cum privllegio ad iniprimendum 
 solum." Contains sixty leaves, black letter. 
 
 From " The booke of husbandrye," I shall extract the detail of huswifely duties, as a 
 specimen of the work, and as a proof of the assertion at the commencement of this note. 
 
 " What workes a wyfe shoulde doe in generall. 
 " First in the mornyng when thou art waked and purpose to rise, lift up thy hand, 
 and blis the and make a signe of the holy crosse. In nomine patris et filii et spiritus 
 sancti. Amen. In the name of the father y"" sonne, and the holy gost. And if tliou 
 saye a Paternoster, an Ave and a Crede, and remembre thy maker thou shalte spede 
 much the better, and when thou art up and readye, then firste swepe thy house: dresse 
 up the dysshe bord, and set al thynges in good order within thy house, milke y" kie, socle 
 thy calves, sile by thy milke, take up thy children, and aray them, and provide for thy 
 husbande's breakefaste, diner, souper, and for thy children and servauntes, and take thy 
 parte wyth them. And to ordeyne corne and malt to the myll, to bake and brue withal 
 when nede is. And mete it to the myl and fro the niyl, and se that thou have thy 
 mesure agayne besides the tole or elles the mylner dealeth not truly wyth the, or els thy 
 corne is not drye as it should be, thou must make butter and chese when thou may, serve 
 thy swine both mornynge and eveninge, and give thy polen meate in the mornynge, and 
 when tyme of yeare conieth thou must take hede how thy henne, duckes and geese do 
 ley, and to gather up their egges and when they waxe broudy to set them there as no 
 beastes, swyne, nor other vermyne hurt them, and thou must know that al hole foted 
 foule wil syt a moneth and all cloven foted foule wyll syt but three wekes except a peyhen 
 and suche other great foules as craynes, bustardes, and suche other. And when they 
 have brought forth theyr birdes to se that they be well kepte from the gleyd, crowes 
 fully martes and other vermyn, and in the begynyng of March, or a lytle befoi'e is time 
 for a wife to make her garden and to get as manye good sedes and herbes as she can, 
 and specyally such as be good for the pot and for to eate and as ofte as nede shall require 
 it must be weded, for els the wede wyll over grow the herbes, and also in Marche is 
 time to sowe flaxe and hempe for I have heard olde buswyves say, that better is 
 Marche hurdes than Apryll flaxe, the reason appereth, but howe it shoulde bee sowcn, 
 weded, pulled, repealed, watred, washen, dried, beten, braked, tawed, hccheled, spon, 
 wounden, wrapped and oven, it nedeth not for me to shewe, for they be wyse ynough, 
 and thereof may they make shetes, bordclothes, towel?, shertes, smockes, and suche 
 other necessaryes, and therefore lettc thy dystaffe be alwayc rcdy for a pastyme, that 
 thou be not ydell. And undoubted a woman can not get her livinge honestly with 
 si)inning on the dystaffe, but it stoppeth a gap and must nedes be had. The bolles of 
 flaxe when they be rypled of, must be rediled from the wcdes and made dry with the 
 sunne to get out the sedes. Now be it one maner of linsede called loken sede wyll not 
 open by the sunne, and therefore when they be dryc they must be sore brusen and broken 
 t]ie wyves know how, and then wynowcd and kept dry til perctijnc cum againe. Thy
 
 117 
 
 the luxury of dress, both in England and Scotland, had already 
 corrupted the simplicity of country-habits. Stephen Perlet, who 
 
 femell hempe must be pulled fro the chucle hempe for this beareth no sedc and thou must 
 
 doe by it as thou didest by the flaxe. ITie chucle hempe doth beare sede, and thou 
 
 must be ware that birdes eate it not as it groweth, the hempe thereof is not so good as 
 
 the femel hempe, but yet it wil do good service. It may fortune sometime that thou 
 
 shake have so many thinges to do that thou shalte not wel know where is best to begyn. 
 
 Then take hede which thing should be the greatest losse if it were not done and in what 
 
 space it woulde be done, and then thinke what is the greatest los and ther begin. But I 
 
 put case that, that thing that is of the greatest losse wyll be longe in doing, that thou 
 
 might do thre or iiij other thinges in the meane whyle then loke wel if all these thinges were 
 
 set togyther whiche of them were greatest losse, and yf these thynges be of greater losse, 
 
 and may be al done in as shorte space as the other, then do thy many thinges fyrst. It 
 
 is convenient for a husbande to have shepe of his owne for many causes, and then may 
 
 his wife have part of the vvooU to make her husbande and her selfe sum clothes. And at 
 
 the least waye she may have the lockes of the shepe therwith to make clothes or 
 
 blankets, and coverlets, or both. And if she have no wol of her owne she maye take 
 
 woU to spynne of cloth makers, and by that meanes she may have a convenient living, 
 
 and many tymes to do other workes. It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of 
 
 comes, to make malte wash and wring, to make hey, to shere corne, and in time of nede 
 
 to helpe her husbande to fyU the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough, to 
 
 lode hey corne and such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell butter, chese, 
 
 mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees, and al maner of corne. And 
 
 also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging to a houshold, and to make a true 
 
 rekening and accompt to her husband what she hath receyved and what she hathc payed. 
 
 And yf the husband go to the market to b^'e or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his 
 
 wife in lyke maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he disceyveth 
 
 himselfe, and he is not lyke to thryve, and therfore they must be true ether to other. I 
 
 could peraventure shew the husbande of divers pointes that the wives disceve their hus- 
 
 bandes in, and in like maner how husbandes deceve their wives. But yf I should do so, 
 
 I shuld shew mo subtil pointes of disceite then other of them knew of before. And 
 
 therfore me semeth best to holde my peace, leste I shuld do as the knight of the tower 
 
 did the which had many faire doghters, and of fatherlie love that he oughte to them he 
 
 made a boke unto a good intent that they mighte eschewe and flee from vices and folowe 
 
 vcrtues in the which boke he sheweth that yf they were woed, moved, or styrred by 
 
 any man after such a maner as is there shewed that they shuld withstande it, in the 
 
 which booke he shewed so manye wayes how a man shuld attaine to his purpose to 
 
 bryng a woman to vice, the which wales were so naturall and the wayes to come to theyr 
 
 purpose was so subtylly contrived and craftely shewed that hard it woldc be for any 
 
 woman to resist or deny their desyre. And by the sayd boke hath made both the inan 
 
 and the woman to know nio vyces subtylty and crafte then ever they shoulde have 
 
 knowen if the boke had not bene made, the which boke he named him selfe the knightc 
 
 of the tower. And thus I leave the wyvcs to use theyr occupations at theyr owne 
 
 discression." Fol. to, Ifi, 1/.
 
 118 
 
 visited Scotland in 1553, and Fines Moryson, who made a similar 
 tour in 1598 *, agree in describing the dress of the common people 
 of both countries as nearly if not altogether the same ; the picture, 
 therefore, which Dunbar has given us of the dress of a rich farmer's 
 wife, in Scotland, during the middle of the sixteenth century, will 
 apply, with little fear of exaggeration, to the still wealthier dames of 
 England. He has drawn her in a robe of fine scarlet with a white 
 hood ; a gay purse and gingling keys pendant at her side from a 
 silken belt of silver tissue ; on each finger she wore two rings, and 
 round her waste was bound a sash of grass-green silk, richly em- 
 broidered with silver, f To this rural extravagancy in dress, Warner 
 will bear an equal testimony ; for, describing two old gossips 
 cowering over their cottage-fire, and chatting how the world was 
 changed in their time, 
 
 " When we were maids (quoth one of them) 
 Was no such new found pride : 
 Then wore they shooes of ease, now of 
 
 An inch-broad, corked hye : 
 Black karsie stockings, worsted now, 
 Yea silke of youthful'st dye : 
 
 Garters of lystes, but now of silke, 
 
 Some edged deep with gold : 
 With costlier toyes, for courser turns, 
 
 Than us'd, perhaps of old. 
 
 Fring'd and ymbroidered petticoats 
 
 Now begge. But heard you nam'd, 
 Till now of late, busks, perrewigs, 
 
 Maskes, plumes of feathers fram'd. 
 
 Supporters, posters, fardingales 
 
 Above the loynes to waire. 
 That be she near so bombe-thin, yet 
 
 She crosse-like seems foure-squaire ? 
 
 * See Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i. p, 236 ; and Moryson's Itinerary, part iii. fol. 
 
 1617. 
 
 t The Freirs of Berwick; Pinkerton's Ancient Scotish Poems, 12mo. 2 vols. 17S6. 
 V. 2. p. "0.
 
 119 
 
 Some wives, grayheaded, shame not locks 
 Of youthful! borrowed haire : 
 
 Some, tyring arte, attyer theii* heads 
 With only tresses bare : 
 
 Some, (grosser pride than which, think I, 
 
 No passed age might shame) 
 By arte, abusing nature, heads 
 
 Of antick't hayre doe frame. 
 
 Once starching lack't the tearme, because 
 
 Was lacking once the toy. 
 And lack't we all these toyes and tearmes. 
 
 It were no griefe but joy. — 
 
 Now dwels ech drossell in her glas : 
 
 When I was yong, I wot, 
 On holly-dayes (for sildome els 
 
 Such ydell times we got) 
 A tubb or paile of water cleere 
 
 Stood us in steede of slas. * 
 
 o 
 
 Luxury and extravagance soon spread beyond the female circle, 
 and the Farmers Heir of forty pounds a year, is described by Hall, 
 in 1598, as dissipating his property on the follies and fopperies of 
 the day. 
 
 " Villus, the wealthy farmer, left his heire 
 
 Twice twenty sterling pounds to spend by yeare : — 
 
 But whiles ten pound goes to his wife's new gowne, 
 
 Nor little lesse can serve to suit his owne ; 
 
 Whiles one piece pays her idle waiting-man, 
 
 Or buys an hoode, or silver-handled fanne, 
 
 Or hires a Friezeland trotter, halfe yard deepe. 
 
 To drag his tumbrell through the staring Cheape ; 
 
 Or whiles he rideth with two liveries, 
 
 And's treble rated at the subsidies ; 
 
 One end a kennel keeps of thriftlesse hounds ; 
 
 What think ye rests of all my younker's pounds 
 
 To diet him, or deal out at his doore, 
 
 To coffer up, or stocke his wasting store ?" f 
 
 * Warner's Albion's England, book ix. chap, xlvii. 
 f Hall's Satires, book v. satire 4.
 
 120 
 
 In contrast to this character, wlio keeps a pack of hounds, and 
 sports a couple of liveries, it will be interesting to bring forward the 
 picture of the poor copyholder, as drawn by the same masterly pencil ; 
 the description of the wretched hovel is given in all the strength of 
 minute reality, and the avidity of the avaricious landlord is wrought 
 up with several strokes of humour, 
 
 " Of one bay's breadth, God wot, a silly cote, 
 Whose thatched spars are furr'd with sluttish soote 
 A whole inch thick, shining like black-moor's brows, 
 Through smoke that downe the headlesse barrel blows. 
 At his bed's feete feeden his stalled teame, 
 His swine beneath, his pullen o'er the beame. 
 A starved tenement, such as I guesse 
 Stands straggling on the wastes of Holdemesse : 
 Or such as shivers on a Peake hill side, &c. — 
 Yet must he haunt his greedy landlord's hall 
 With often presents at each festivall : 
 With crammed capons everie new-yeare's morne, 
 Or with greene cheese when his sheepe are shorne : 
 Or many raaunds-full of his mellow fruite, 
 To make some way to win his weighty suite. — 
 The smiling landlord shews a sunshine face, 
 Feigning that he will grant him further grace ; 
 And leers like Esop's foxe upon the crane. 
 Whose neck he craves for his chirurgian." * 
 
 We shall close these characters, illustrative of rural manners, as 
 they existed in the reigns of Elizabeth and James 1st, with a de- 
 lineation of the plain Country Fellow or down right Clown, from 
 the accurate pen of Bishop Earle, who has touched this homely 
 subject with singular point and spirits. 
 
 " A plain country fellow is one that manures his ground well, but 
 lets himself lye fallow and un tilled. He has reason enough to do 
 his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy. He seems 
 to have the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar, for his conversation is 
 among beasts, and his tallons none of the shortest, only he eats not 
 
 * Hall's Satires, book v. satire 1.
 
 121 
 
 «rass, because he loves not stiUets. His hand guides the plough, 
 and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very 
 mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very un- 
 derstandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English. His 
 mind is not much distracted with objects, but it" a good fat cow come 
 in his way, he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be 
 never so great, will fix here half an hour's contemplation. His ha- 
 bitation is some poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by 
 the loop-holes that let out smoak, which the rain had long since 
 washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, 
 which has hung there from his grandsire's time, and is yet to make 
 rashers for posterity. His dinner is his other work, for he sweats at 
 it as much as at his labour ; he is a terrible fastner on a piece of beef, 
 and you may hope to stave the guard off sooner. His religion is a 
 part of his copy-hold, which he takes from his land-lord, and refers 
 it wholly to his discretion : yet if he give him leave he is a good 
 Christian to his power, (that is,) comes to church in his best cloaths, 
 and sits there with his neighbours, where he is capable only of two 
 prayers, for rain, and fair weather. He apprehends God's blessings 
 only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and never praises him but on 
 good ground. Sunday, he esteems a day to make merry in, and 
 thinks a bag-pipe as essential to it as evening prayer, where he walks 
 very solemnly after service with his hands coupled behind him, and 
 censures the dancing of his parish. His compliment with his neigh- 
 bour is a good thump on the back, and his salutation commonly 
 some blunt curse. He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill 
 husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has 
 some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a 
 niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell 
 well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. He is 
 sensible of no calamity but the burning a stack of corn or the over- 
 flowing of a meadow, and thinks Noah's flood the greatest plague 
 that ever was, not because it drowned the world, but spoiled the 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 122 
 
 grass. For death he is never troubled, and if he get in but his 
 harvest before, let it come when it will, he cares not." * 
 
 The nine characters which have now passed in brief review before 
 us, namely, the Rural Squire ; the Rural Coxcomb ; the Rural Clergy- 
 man ; the Rural Pedagogue ; the Farmer or substantial Yeoman ; the 
 Farmer's Wife; the Farmers Heir; the Poor Copyholder, and the 
 mere Ploughman or Country Boor, will, to a certain extent, point out 
 the personal manners, condition, and mode of living of those who 
 inhabited the country, during the period in which Shakspeare flou- 
 rished. They have been given from the experience, and, generally, 
 in the very words of contemporary writers, and may, therefore, be 
 considered as faithful portraits. To complete the picture, a further 
 elucidation of the customs of the country, as drawn from its prin- 
 cipal occurrences and events, will be the subject of the ensuing 
 chapter, in which the references to the works of our immortal bard 
 will be more frequent than could take place while collecting mere 
 out- line draughts of rural character. 
 
 * Earle's Microcosmography, p. 64. et seq. edit- of 1811, by Philip Bliss.
 
 123 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A VIKW OF COUNTRT LIFE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE ; ITS MANNERS AND 
 CUSTOMS. — RURAL HOLYDAYS, AND FESTIVALS. 
 
 1 HE record of rural festivity and amusement, must, as far as it is 
 unaccompanied by any detail of riot or intemperance, be a subject of 
 pleasing contemplation to every good and cheerful mind. Labour, 
 the destined portion of by far the greater part of human beings, 
 requires frequent intervals of relaxation ; and the encouragement of 
 innocent diversion at stated periods, may be considered, therefore, 
 both in a moral and political point of view, as essentially useful. The 
 sports and amusements of our ancestors on their holydays and festi- 
 vals, while they had little tendency to promote either luxury or dissi- 
 pation, contributed very powerfully to preserve some of the best and 
 most striking features of our national manners and character, and 
 were frequently mingled with that cheerful piety which forms the 
 most heart-felt species of devotion, where religion, mixing with the 
 social rite, offers up the homage of a happy and contented heart. 
 
 It may be necessary here to mention, that in enumerating the 
 various ceremonial and feast days of rural life, we have purposely 
 omitted those which are peculiarly occupied by superstitious obser- 
 vances, as they will with more propriety be included under a subse- 
 quent chapter, appropriated to the consideration of popular supersti- 
 tions. 
 
 The ushering in of the New Year, or New Years tide, with rejoic- 
 ings, presents, and good wishes, was a custom observed, during the six- 
 teenth century, with great regularity and parade, and was as cordially 
 celebrated in the court of the prince as in the cottage of the peasant., 
 
 To end the old year lyierrily and begin the new one well, and in 
 friendship with their neighbours, were the objects which the common 
 
 R 2
 
 124 
 
 people had in view in the celebration of this tide or festival. New- 
 Years Eve, therefore, was spent in festivity and frolic by the men ; 
 and the young women of the village carried about, from door to door, 
 a bowl of spiced ale, which they offered to the inhabitants of every 
 house where they stopped, singing at the same time some rude con- 
 gratulatory verses, and expecting some small present in return. This 
 practice, however, which originated in pure kindness and benevolence, 
 soon degenerated into a mere pecuniary traffic, for Selden, in his 
 Table Talk, thus alludes to the subject, while drawing the following 
 curious comparison : " The pope in sending relicks to princes, does 
 as 'wenches do by their ix.-assails at New Yeay's Tide. — They jyreseiit you 
 with a cup, and you must drink of a slabby stuff; but the meaning is, 
 you must give them money ten times more than it is worth." * 
 
 It was customary also, on this eve, for the young men and women 
 to exchange their clothes, which was termed Mumming or Disguising ; 
 and when thus di-essed in each other's garments, they would go from 
 one neighbour's cottage to another, singing, dancing, and partaking of 
 their good cheer ; a species of masquerading which, as may be ima- 
 gined, was often productive of the most licentious freedoms. 
 
 On the succeeding morning, the first of the New Year, presents, 
 called new-year's gifts, were given and received3 with the mutual ex- 
 pression of good wishes, and particularly that of a happy New Year. 
 The compliment was sometimes paid at each other's doors in the form 
 of a song ; but more generally, especially in the north of England and 
 in Scotland, the house was entered very early in the morning, by 
 some young men and maidens selected for the purpose, who pre- 
 sented the spiced bowl, and hailed you with the gratulations of the 
 season. 
 
 The custom of interchanging gifts on this day, though now nearly 
 obsolete, was, in the days of Shakspeare, observed most scrupulously ; 
 and not merely in the country, but, as hath been just before hinted, 
 even in the palace of the monarch. In fact the wardrobe and jewelry 
 
 * Selden, under the article Pope, The TaUe Talk, though not printed until A. D. 
 1(589, is a work illustrative of the era under our consideration.
 
 125 
 
 of Elizabeth appear to have been supported principally by these 
 annual contributions. 
 
 As a brief summary of these presents, though given not in the 
 country, but at court, will yet, as including almost every rank in life, 
 from the peer to the dustman, place in a strong light the prevalence 
 of this custom, and point out of what these gifts usually consisted in 
 a town, and therefore, by inference, of what they must have included 
 in the country, its introduction will not, we should hope, be consi- 
 dered as altogether digressive from the nature of our subject. 
 
 To Mr. Nichols, who, in his work entitled " Queen Elizabeth's 
 Progresses," has printed, from the original rolls in vellum, some very- 
 copious lists of New Year's gifts annually presented to this popular 
 monarch, are we indebted for the following curious enumeration. 
 
 *' From all these rolls," says he, " and more of them perhaps are 
 still existing, it appears that the greatest part, if not all the peers and 
 peeresses of the realm, all the bishops, the chief officers of state, and 
 several of the Queen's houshold servants, even down to her apothe- 
 caries, master cook, serjeant of the pastry, &c. gave New Year's gifts 
 to Her Majesty ; consisting, in general, either of a sum of money, or 
 jewels, trinkets, wearing apparel, &c. The largest sum given by any 
 of the temporal lords was 201. ; but the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 gave 40/., the Archbishop of York 30/., and the other spiritual lords 
 20/. and 10/. ; many of the temporal lords and great officers, and 
 most of the peeresses, gave rich gowns, petticoats, smocks, kirtles, 
 silk stockings, cypres garters, sweet-bags, doblets, mantles, some em- 
 broidered with pearles, garnets, &c. looking-glasses, fans, bracelets, 
 caskets studded with precious stones, jewels ornamented with sparks 
 of diamonds in various devices, and other costly trinkets. Sir 
 Gilbert Dethick, Garter King of Arms, gave a book of the states 
 in King William the Conqueror's time, and a book of the arms 
 of the noblemen in Henry the Fifth's time ; Absolon, the master of 
 the Savoy, a Bible covered with cloth of gold, garnished with silver, 
 and gilt, and two plates with the royal arms ; PetnicJuo Ubaldino, a 
 book covered with vellum of Italian j Lambarde, the antiquary,
 
 126 
 
 his Pandecta of all the Rolls, &c. in the Tower of London. The 
 Queen's physician presented her with a box of foreign sweetmeats ; 
 another physician with two pots, one of green ginger, the other of 
 orange flowers ; two other physicians gave each a pot of green ginger, 
 and a pot of the rinds of lemons ; her apothecaries a box of lozenges, 
 a box of ginger candy, a box of grene ginger, a box of orange candit, 
 a pot of conserves, a pot of wardyns condite, a box of wood with 
 prunolyn, and two boxes of manus Chrisfi; Mrs. Blanch a Parry, a little 
 box of gold to put in cumphetts, and a little spoon of gold ; Mrs. Mor- 
 gan a box of cherryes, and one of aberycocks ; her master cook a 
 fayre marchepayne ; her Serjeant of the pastry a fayre pie of quinces 
 oringed ; a box of peaches of Jenneway (Genoa) ; a great pie of 
 quynses and wardyns guilte ; Putrino, an Italian, presented her with 
 two pictures ; Innocent Corry with a box of lutestrings ; Ambrose Lupo 
 mth another box of lutestrings, and a glass of sweet water ; Petro 
 Lupo, Josepho Lujjo, and Ccesar Caliardo, each with a pair of sweet 
 gloves ; a cutler with a meat knyfe with a fan haft of bone, a conceit 
 in it ; Jarorny with twenty-four drinking-glasses ; Jeromy Bassano two 
 drinking-glasses ; Smyth, dustman, two boltes of cambrick." * 
 
 The Queen, though she made returns in plate and other articles, 
 took sufficient care that the balance should be in her own favour ; 
 hence, as the custom was found to be lucrative, and had indeed been 
 practised with success by her predecessors on the throne, it was en- 
 couraged and rendered fashionable to an extent hitherto unpre- 
 cedented in this kingdom. In the country, however, with tlie 
 exception of the extensive households of the nobility, this interchange 
 was conducted on the pure basis of reciprocal kindness and good 
 will, and without any view of securing patronage or support ; it was, 
 indeed, frequently the channel through which charity delighted to 
 exert her holy influence, and though originating in the heathen 
 world, became sanctified by the Christian virtues. 
 
 * Nicliols's Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. preface, 
 p. 25—28.
 
 127 
 
 To the rejoicings on New Year's tide succeeded, after a short in- 
 terval, the observance of the Twelfth Day, so called from its being 
 the twelfth after the Nativity of our Saviour, and the day on which 
 the Eastern Magi, guided by the star, arrived at Bethlehem to worship 
 the infant Jesus. 
 
 This festive day, the most celebrated of the twelve for the peculiai- 
 conviviality of its rites, has been observed in this kingdom ever since 
 the reign of Alfred, in whose days, says Collier, " a Law was made 
 with relation to Holidays, by virtue of which the txvelve days after the 
 Nativity of our Saviour were made Festivals." * 
 
 In consequence of an idea, which seems generally to have pre- 
 vailed, that the Eastern Magi were kings, this day has been fre- 
 quently termed the Feast of the Three Kitigs ; and many of the rites 
 with which it is attended, are founded on this conception ; for it was 
 customary to elect, from the company assembled on this occasion, a 
 king or queen, who was usually elevated to this rank by the for- 
 tuitous division of a cake containing a bean or piece of coin, and he 
 or she to whom this symbol of distinction fell, in dividing the cake, 
 was immediately chosen king or queen, and then forming their 
 ministers and court from the company around, maintained their state 
 and character until midnight. 
 
 The Twelfth Cake was almost always accompanied by the Wassail 
 Bowl, a composition of spiced wine or ale, or mead, or metheglin, 
 into which was thrown roasted apples, sugar, &c. The term Wassail, 
 which in our elder poets is connected with much interesting imagery, 
 and many curious rites, appears to have been first used in this 
 island during the well-known interview between Vortigern and 
 Rowena. Geoffrey of Monmouth relates, on the authority of Walter 
 Calenius, that this lady, the daughter of Hengist, knelt down, on 
 the approach of the king, and presenting him with a cup of wine, 
 exclaimed " Lord king wees heil," that is, literally " Health be to 
 you." Vortigern being ignorant of the Saxon language, was informed 
 
 * Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 163.
 
 128 
 
 by an interpreter, that the purport of these words was to wish him 
 health, and that he should reply by the expression drinc-heil, or 
 " Drink the health ;" accordingly, on his so doing, Rowena drank, 
 and the king receiving the cup from her hand, kissed and pledged 
 her. * Since this period, observes the historian, the custom has pre- 
 vailed in Britain of using these words whilst drinking ; the person 
 who drank to another saying was-heil, and he who received the cup 
 answering drinc-heil. 
 
 It soon afterwards became a custom in villages, on Christmas-Eve, 
 New Year's Eve, and Twelfth Night, for itinerant minstrels to carry 
 to the houses of the gentry, and others, where they were generally 
 very hospitably received, a bowl of spiced wine, which being presented 
 with the Saxon words just mentioned, was therefore called a Wassail- 
 howl. A bowl or cup of this description was likewise to be found in 
 almost every nobleman's and gentleman's house, (and frequently of 
 massy silver,) until the middle of the seventeenth century, and which 
 was in perpetual requisition during the revels of Christmas. In " The 
 Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i. p. 217," relates Mr. Douce, " there is 
 an account, accompanied with an engraving, of an oaken chimney- 
 piece in a very old house at Berlen, near Shodland in Kent, on which 
 is carved a wassel-bowl resting on the branches of an apple-tree, 
 alluding, probably, to part of the materials of which the liquor was 
 composed. On one side is the word UuifSbciJ, and on the other 
 
 * Galfred. Monumeth. 1.3. c. 1. Robert oi Gloucesta- gives us a similar account of 
 the origin of this ceremony, and makes the same observation as to its general prevalency. 
 The rude lines of the ancient poet have been thus beautifully paraphrased in the Anti- 
 quarian Repertory: — 
 
 ' Health, my Lord King,' the sweet Rowena said — 
 ' Health,' cried the Chieftain to the Saxon maid; 
 Then gaily rose, and, 'mid the concourse wide, 
 Kiss'd her hale lips, and plac'd her by his side. 
 At the soft scene such gentle thoughts abound, 
 That healths and kisses 'mongst the guests went roimd : 
 From this the social custom took its rise, 
 We still retain, and still must keep the prize.
 
 129 
 
 &rinci)rilr. * This is certainly," he adds, " a very great curiosity of its 
 kind, and at least as old as the fourteenth century. Edmund Mor- 
 timer, Earl of March, in his will gave to Sir John Briddlewood a 
 silver cup called •wassail : and it appears that John Duke of Bedford, 
 the regent, by his first will bequeathed to John Barton, his maitre 
 d'hotel, a silver cup and cover, on which was inscribed Washayl." f 
 
 In consequence of the Wassail-bowl being peculiar to scenes of 
 revelry and festivity, the term wassail in time became synonymous 
 with feasting and carousing, and has been used, therefore, by many 
 of our poets either to imply di'inking and merriment, or the place 
 where such joviality was expected to occur. Thus Shakspeare makes 
 Hamlet say of the king " draining his draughts of Rhenish down," 
 that he 
 
 " Keeps wassel .•" % 
 
 and in Macbeth, the heroine of that play declares that she will con- 
 vince the two chamberlains of Duncan 
 
 " With wine and wassel." § 
 
 In Anthony and Cleopatra also, Caesar, advising Anthony to live 
 more temperately, tells him to leave his 
 
 " Lascivious wassals." || 
 
 * " The ingenious remarker on this representation observes, that it is the figure of 
 the old Wassel- Bowl, so much the delight of our hardy ancestors, who on the vigil of the 
 New- Year never failed to assemble round the glowing hearth, with their chearful neigh- 
 bours, and then in the spicy Wassel-Bowl (which testified the goodness of their hearts) 
 drowned every former animosity, an example worthy modern imitation. fVassel was the 
 word, Wassel every guest returned as he took the circling goblet from his friend, whilst 
 song and civil mirth brought in the infant year." Brand's Observations, by Ellis, 
 >vol. i. p. 3. 
 
 t Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient Manners, vol. ii. p. 209,210. 
 
 t Act i. sc. 4. Reed's edit. vol. xviii. p. 64. 
 
 § Act i. sc. 7. Reed, vol. x. p. 88. 
 
 II Act i. sc. 4. Reed, vol. xvii. p. 49. 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 130 
 
 And lastly, in Love's Labour's Lost, Biron, describing the character 
 of Boyet, says, 
 
 " He is wit's pedler : and retails his wares 
 At wakes, and laassels, meetings, markets, fairs." * 
 
 Ben Jonson has given us two curious personifications of the Wassal ; 
 the first in his Forest, No. 3. whilst giving an account of a rural feast 
 in the hall of Sir Robert Wroth ; he says, 
 
 " The rout of rural folk come thronging in. 
 Their rudenesse then is thought no sin — 
 The jolly Wassal walks the often round. 
 
 And in their cups their cares are drown'd : f 
 
 and the second in " Christmas, His Masque, as it was presented at 
 Court 1616," where Wassail, as one of the ten children of Christmas, 
 is represented in the following quaint manner. Like a neat Sempster, 
 and Songster ; her Page bearing a browne bowle, drest with Ribbands, 
 and Rosemarie before her. J 
 
 Fletcher, in his Faithful Shepherdess, has given a striking descrip- 
 tion of the festivity attendant on the Wassal bowl : 
 
 " The woods, or some near town 
 
 That is a neighbour to the bordering down, 
 Hath drawn them thither, 'bout some lusty sport. 
 Or spiced Wassel-Boul, to which resort 
 All the young men and maids of many a cote. 
 Whilst the trim minstrell strikes his merry note." § 
 
 The persons thus accompanying the Wassal bowl, especially those 
 who danced and played, were called Wassailers, an appellation which 
 it was afterwards customary to bestow on all who indulged, at any 
 season, in intemperate mirth. Hence Milton introduces his Lady in 
 Comus making use of the term in the following beautiful passage : 
 
 * Actv. sc. 2. Reed, vol. vii. p. 16"5. f Epigrammes i. booke folio 1640, p. 50. 
 X Jonson's Works, fol. vol. ii. 1640. § Act v. sc. 1.
 
 131 
 
 Methought it was the sound 
 
 Of riot and ill-manag'd merriment. 
 Such as the jocund flute, or gamesome pipe 
 Stirs up among the loose unlctter'd hinds. 
 When for their teeming flocks, and granges full. 
 In wanton dance, they praise the bounteous Pan, 
 And thank the gods amiss. I should be loath 
 To meet the rudeness, and swill'd insolence, 
 Of such late lioassailers" * 
 
 Durincr the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. the celebration of 
 Twelfth Night was, equally with Christmas-Day, a festival through 
 the land, and was observed with great ostentation and ceremony in 
 both the Universities, at Court, at the Temple, and at Lincoln's and 
 
 * Warton's Milton, 2d edit. p. 160. The Peg Tankard, a species of Wassail- Bowl 
 introduced by the Saxons, was still in use in the days of Shakspeare. I am in possession 
 of one, which was given to a member of my family about one hundred and fifty years ago; 
 it is of chased sUver, containing nearly two (juarts, and is divided by four pegs. 
 
 This form of the wassail or wish-health bowl was introduced by Dunstan, with the view 
 of checking the intemperance of his countrymen, which for a time it effected ; but subse- 
 quently the remedy was converted into an additional stimulus to excess ; " for, refining 
 upon Dunstan's plan, each was obliged to drink precisely to a pin, whether he could sus- 
 tain a quantity of liquor equal to others or not : and to that end it became a rule, that 
 whether they exceeded, or fell short of the prescribed bumper, they were alike compelled 
 to drink again, until they reached the next mark. In the year 1102, the priests, who had 
 not been backward in joining and encouraging these drunken assemblies, were ordered to 
 avoid such abominations, and wholly to discontinue the practice of " Drinking to Pegs." 
 Some of these Peg or Pin Cups, or Bowls, and Pin or Peg Tankahds, are yet to be 
 found in the cabinets of antiquaries ; and we are to trace from their use some common 
 terms yet current among us. When a person is much elated, we say he is " In a Merry 
 Pin," which no doubt originally meant, he had reached that mark which had deprived 
 him of his usual sedateness and sobriety : we talk of taking a man " A Peg lower," 
 when we imply we shall check him in any forwardness; a saying which originated from 
 a regulation that deprived all those of their turn of drinking, or of their Peg, who had 
 become troublesome in their liquor : from the like rule of society came also the expression 
 of " He is a Peg too low," i. e. has been restrained too far, when we say that a person 
 is not in equal spirits with his company; while we also remark of an individual, that he is 
 getting on " Peg by Peg," or, in other words, he is taking greater freedoms than he 
 ought to do, which formerly meant, he was either drinking out of his turn, or, contrary to 
 express regulation, did not confine himself to his proper portion, or peg, but drank into 
 the m.rt, thereby taking a double quantity." Brady's Clavis Calendaria, vol. ii. p. 322, 
 323. 1st edit. 
 
 S 2
 
 132 
 
 Gray's-Inn. Many of the Masques of Ben Jonson were written for 
 the amusement of the royal family on this night, and Dugdale in his 
 Origines Juridicales, has given us a long and particular account of 
 the revelry at the Temple on each of the twelve days of Christmas, in 
 the year 1562. It appears from this document that the hospitable 
 rites of St. Stephen's Day, St. John's Day, and Twelfth Day, were 
 ordered to be exactly alike, and as many of them are, in their nature, 
 perfectly rural, and were, there is every reason to suppose, observed, 
 to a certain extent, in the halls of the country-gentry and substantial 
 yeomanry, a short record here, of those that fall under this descrip- 
 tion, cannot be deemed inapposite. 
 
 The breakfast on Twelfth Day is directed to be of brawn, mustard, 
 and malmsey ; the dinner of two courses, to be served in the hall, 
 and after the first course " cometh in the Master of the Game, appa- 
 ralled in green velvet : and the Ranger of the Forest also, in a green 
 suit of satten ; bearing in his hand a green bow and divers arrows, 
 with either of them a hunting horn about their necks : blowing toge- 
 ther three blasts of venery, they pace round about the fire three 
 times. Then the Master of the Game maketh three curtesies," kneels 
 down, and petitions to be admitted into the service of the Lord of 
 the Feast. 
 
 " This ceremony performed, a huntsman cometh into the hall, 
 with a fox and a purse-net ; with a cat, both bound at the end of a 
 staff; and with them nine or ten couple of hounds, with the blowing 
 of hunting-horns. And the fox and cat are by the hounds set 
 upon, and killed beneath the fire. This sport finished, the Marshal 
 (an officer so called, who, with many others under different appel- 
 lations, were created for the purpose of conducting the revels) placeth 
 them in their several appointed places." 
 
 After the second course, the " antientest of the Masters of the Revels 
 singeth a song, with the assistance of others there present ;" and after 
 some repose and revels, supper, consisting of two courses, is then 
 served in the hall, and, being ended, " the Marshall presenteth him-
 
 133 
 
 self with drums afore him, mounted upon a scaffold, born by four 
 men ; and goeth three times round about the harthe, crying out, 
 aloud, ' A Lord, a Lord,' &c., then he descendeth, and goeth to 
 dance." 
 
 " This done, the Lord of Misrule (an officer whose functions will 
 be afterwards noticed) addresseth himself to the Banquet ; which 
 ended with some minstralsye, mirth and dancing, every man departeth 
 to rest."* 
 
 Herrick, who was the contemporary of Shakspeare for the first 
 twenty-five years of his life, that is, from the year 1591 to 1616, has 
 given us the following curious and pleasing account of the ceremonies 
 of Twelfth Night, as we may suppose them to have been observed in 
 almost every private family : 
 
 " TWELFTH-NIGHT, 
 On King and Queen. 
 
 Now, now the mirth comes 
 
 With the cake full of plums, 
 Where Beane's the king of the sport here ; 
 
 Beside, we must know, 
 
 The Pea also 
 Must revell, as Queene, in the court here. 
 
 Begin then to chuse, 
 
 Til is night as ye use, 
 Who shall for the present delight here, 
 
 Be a King by the lot, 
 
 And who shall not 
 Be Twelfe-day Queene for the night here. 
 
 Which knowne, let us make 
 * Joy-sops with the cake; 
 
 And let not a man then be seen here, 
 
 Who unurg'd will not drinke 
 
 To the base from the brink 
 A health to the King and the Queene here. 
 
 * Nichols's Progresses of Elizabeth, vol. i. Entertainments at the Temple, &c. p. 22. 34.
 
 134 
 
 Next crowue the bowle full 
 
 With gentle lambs-wooU ; 
 Adde sugar, nutmeg and ginger. 
 
 With store of ale too ; 
 
 And thus ye must doe 
 To make the wassaile a swinffer. 
 
 c 
 
 Give then to the King 
 
 And Queene wassailing; 
 And though with ale ye be whet here ; 
 
 Yet part ye from hence. 
 
 As fi-ee from offence, 
 As when ye innocent met here." Herrick's Hesperides, p. 376, 3/7. 
 
 Tlie Twelfth Day was the usual termination of the festivities of 
 Christmas with the higher ranks ; but with the vulgar they were fre- 
 quently prolonged until Candlemas, to which period it was thought 
 a point of much importance to retain a portion of their Christmas 
 cheer. 
 
 It should not be forgotten here, that Shakspeare has given the 
 appellation of Twelfth Night to one of his best and most finished plays. 
 No reason for this choice is discoverable in the drama itself, and from 
 its adjunctive title of What You Will, it is probable, that the name 
 was meant to be no otherwise appropriate than as designating an 
 evening on which dramatic mirth and recreation were, by custom, 
 peculiarly expected and always acceptable. * 
 
 * The only rite that still lingers among us on the Twelfth Day, is the election of a 
 King and Queen, a ceremony which is now usually performed by drawing tickets, and of 
 which Mr. Brand, in his commentary on Bourne's Antiquities of the Common People, has 
 extracted the subsequent detail from the Universal Magazine of 1774: — "I went to a 
 Friend's house in the country to partake of some of those innocent pleasures that constitute 
 a merry Christmas ; I did not return till I had been present at draining King and Queen, 
 and eaten a Slice of the Twelfth Cake, made by the fair hands of my good Friend's Consort. 
 After Tea Yesterday, a yioble Cake was produced, and two Boids, containing (hejbrtunaie 
 chances for the different sexes. Our Hostelled up the tickets -, the whole company, except 
 the King and Qsieen, were to be Ministers of State, Maids of Honour, or Ladies of the 
 Bed-cha/nbe>: 
 
 " Our kind Host and Hostess, whether by design, or accident became King and Queen. 
 According to T'aelfth-Dai/ Laiv, each pa7fj^ is to sujrport their character till ]\Iid-night. 
 After supper one called for a Kings Speech, &c." Observations on Popular Antiquities, 
 edit, of 1810, p. 228.
 
 135 
 
 It appears from a passage from Warner's Albion's England, that 
 between Twelfth Day and Plough- Monday, a period was customarily 
 fixed upon for the celebration of games in honour of the Distaff, and 
 which was termed Rock-Day. * The notice in question is to be found 
 in the lamentations of the Northerne-man over the decline of festivity, 
 where he exclaims, 
 
 " Roclc, and plow-mondaies, gams sal gang, 
 With saint-feasts and kirk sights." f 
 
 That this festival was observed not only during the immediate days 
 of Warner and Shakspeare, but for some time afterwards, we learn 
 from a little poem by Robei't Herrick, which was probably written 
 between the years 1630 and 1640. Herrick was born in 1591, and 
 pubhshed his collection of poems, entitled Hesperides, in 1648. He 
 gives us in his title the additional information that Rock, or Saint 
 Distaff's Day, was the morrow after Twelfth Day ; and he advises 
 that it should terminate the sports of Christmas. 
 
 « SAINT DISTAFFS or THE MORROW AFTER 
 TWELFTH-DAY. 
 
 Partly worke and partly play 
 Ye must on S. Distaff's day : 
 From the plough soone free your teame ; 
 Then come home and fother them. 
 If the Maides a spinning goe, 
 Burne the flax, and fire the tow : 
 Scorch their plackets, but beware 
 That ye singe no maiden-haire. 
 
 ^,__.^.._,.^ —^ ' 
 
 * Dr. Johnson's definition of the word Rock in the sense of the text, is as follows : 
 , *' (rock, Danish; ;ocm, Italian ; 7'ucca, Spanish; spmrock, Dutch) A distaff held in the 
 hand, from which the wool was spun by twirling a ball below." I shall add one of his 
 illustrations : 
 
 " A learned and a manly soul 
 I purpos'd her ; that should with even powers, 
 The rock, the spindle, and the sheers, controul 
 Of destiny, and spin her own free hours. Ben Jonson." 
 
 t Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 564. Albion's England, chap. 24.
 
 136 
 
 Bring in pailes of water then, 
 Let the Maides bewash the men. 
 Give S. Distaffe all the right, 
 Then bid Christmas sport good night. 
 And next morrow, every one 
 To his owne vocation." * 
 
 The first Monday after Twelfth Day used to be celebrated by the 
 ploughmen as a Holiday, being the season at which the labours of the 
 plough commenced, and hence the day has been denominated Plough- 
 Monday. Tusser, in his poem on husbandry, after observing that 
 the " old guise must be kept," recommends the ploughmen on this 
 day to the hospitality of the good huswife : 
 
 " Good huswives, whom God hath enriched ynough, 
 forget not the feasts, that belong to the plough : 
 The meaning is only to joy and be glad, 
 for comfort with labour, is fit to be had." 
 
 He then adds, 
 
 " Plough- Munday, next after that Twelftide is past, 
 bids out with the plough, the worst husband is last: 
 If plowman get hatchet, or whip to the skreene, 
 maids loveth their cocke, if no water be seene." 
 
 These lines allude to a custom prevalent in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, and which Mr. Hilman, in a note on the 
 passage, has thus explained: " After Christmas, (which formerly, 
 during the twelve days, was a time of very little work,) every gentleman 
 feasted the farmers, and every farmer their servants and task-men. 
 Plough-monday puts them in mind of their business. In the morning 
 the men and maid-servants strive who shall shew their diligence in 
 rising earliest ; if the ploughman can get his whip, his plough-stafF, 
 hatchet, or any thing that he wants in the field, by the fire-side, 
 before the maid hath got her kettle on, then the maid loseth her 
 Shrovetide cock, and it wholly belongs to the men. Tlius did our 
 
 f Hesperides, p. 374.
 
 137 
 
 forefathers strive to allure youth to their duty, and provided them 
 innocent mirth, as well as labour. On this Plough-Momlay they have 
 a good supper and some strong drink, that they might not go 
 immediately out of one extreme into another." ■* 
 
 In the northern and noith-western parts of England, the entire 
 day was usually consumed in parading the streets, and the night was 
 devoted to festivity. The ploughmen, apparently habited onlv in 
 their shirts, but in fact with flannel jackets underneath, to keep out 
 the cold, and these shirts decorated with rose-knots of various coloured 
 riband, went about collecting what they called " plough-money for 
 drink." They were accompanied by a plough, which they di-agged 
 along, and by music, and not unlrequently two of the party were 
 dressed to personate an old woman, whom they called Bessy, and a 
 Fool, the latter of these characters being covered with skins, with a 
 hairy cap on his head, and the tail of some animal pendent from his 
 back. On one of these antics was devolved the office of collecting 
 money from the spectators by rattling a box, into which their 
 contributions were dropped, while the rest of the ploughmen were 
 engaged in performing a sword-dance, a piece of pageantry derived 
 from our northern ancestors, and of which Olaus Magnus has left us 
 an accurate description in his history of the Gothic nations, f It 
 consisted, for the most part, in forming various figures with the 
 swords, sheathed and unsheathed, commencing in slow time, and 
 terminating in very rapid movements, which required great agility 
 and address to be conducted with safety and effect. % 
 
 It was the opinion of Dr. Johnson that Shakspeare alluded to the 
 
 • Tusser Redivivus, p. 79, 80. 
 
 f Olai Magni Gent. Septent. Breviar. p. 341. 
 
 X See Brand on Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares, p. 194; and Strutt's Sports and 
 Pastimes of the People of England, p. 307- edit, of 1810. Of this curious exhibition 
 on Plough- Monday, 1 have often, during my boyhood, at York, been a delighted spec- 
 tator, and, as far as I can now recollect, the above description appears to be an accurate 
 detail of what took place. 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 138 
 
 sword-dance, where, in Anthony and Cleopatra, he makes his hero 
 observe of Augustus, that 
 
 He, at Philippi, kept 
 
 His sword even like a dancer." * 
 
 But Mr. Malone has remarked, with more probabihty, tliat the allusiou 
 is to the EngHsh custom of dancing with a sword woim by the side ; 
 in confirmation of which idea, he quotes a passage from AWs Well 
 That Ends Well, where Bertram, lamenting that he is kept from the 
 wars, says, 
 
 *' I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, 
 Creaking ray shoes on the plain masonry, 
 Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn, 
 But one to dance with." f 
 
 It has been observed in a preceding page, that, among the com- 
 mon people, the festivities of Christmas were frequently protracted to 
 Candlemas-Day. This was done under the idea of doing honour to 
 the Virgin Mary, whose purification is commemorated by the church 
 at this period. It was generally, remarks Bourne, " a day of festivity, 
 and more than ordinary observation among women, and is therefore 
 called the Wives Feast-Day." X The term Candlemas, however, seems 
 to have arisen from a custom among the Roman Catholics, of con- 
 secrating tapers on this day, and bearing them about lighted in pro- 
 cession, to which they were enjoined by an edict of Pope Sergius, 
 A. D. 684 ; but on what foundation is not accurately ascertained. 
 At the Reformation, among the rites and ceremonies which were 
 ordered to be retained in a convocation of Henry VIIL, this is one, 
 and expressedly because it was considered as symbolical of the 
 spiritual illumination of the Gospel. § 
 
 * Act iii. sc. 9. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 17J. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 172. 
 
 t Bourne's Antiquities apud Brand, p. 244. 
 
 § Fuller's Church History, p. 222.
 
 139 
 
 From Candlemas to Hallowmas, the tapers which had been lighted 
 all the winter in Cathedral and Conventual Churches ceased to be 
 used ; and so prevalent, indeed, was the relinquishment of candles on 
 this day in domestic life, that it has laid the foundation of one of the 
 proverbs in the collection of Mr. Ray : 
 
 On Candlemas-day throw Candle and Candlestick away. 
 
 On this day likewise the Christmas greens were removed from 
 churches and private houses. Herrick, who may be considered as 
 the contemporary of Shakspeare, being five-and-twenty at the period 
 of the poet's death, has given us a pleasing description of this ob- 
 servance ; he abounds, indeed, in the history of local rites, and, 
 though surviving beyond the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 paints with great accuracy the manners and superstitions of 
 the Shakspearean era. He has paid particular attention to the 
 festival that we are describing, and enumerates the various 
 greens and flowers appropriated to different seasons in a little 
 poem entitled 
 
 " CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMASSE EVE. 
 
 Down with the Rosemary and Bayes, 
 
 Down with the Misleto ; 
 Instead of Holly, now up-raise 
 
 The greener Box (for show). 
 
 The Holly hitherto did sway ; 
 
 Let Box now domineere ; 
 Untill the dancing Easter-day, 
 
 On Easter's Eve appeare. 
 
 Then youthfull Box which now hath grace, 
 
 Your houses to renew ; 
 Grown old, surrender must his place, 
 Unto tlie crisped Yew. 
 
 T 2
 
 140 
 
 When Yew is out, then Birch comes in, 
 
 Ami many Flowers beside; 
 Both of a fresh and fragrant kinne, 
 
 To honour Whitsontide. 
 
 Green Bushes then, and sweetest Bents, 
 
 With cooler Oken bouglis ; 
 Come in for comely oi'naments, 
 
 To re-adorn the house." * 
 
 The usage which we have alkided to, of preserving the Christmas 
 cheer and hospitality to Candlemas, is immediately afterwards re- 
 corded and connected with a singular superstition, in the following 
 poems under the titles of 
 
 « CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMASSE DAY. 
 
 Kindle the Christmas Brand, and then 
 
 Till sunne-set, let it burne ; 
 Which quencht, then lay it up agen, 
 
 Till Christmas next returne. 
 
 Part must be kept wherewith to teend f 
 
 Tlie Christmas Log next yeare ; 
 And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend 
 
 Can do no mischiefe there. 
 
 End now the white-loafe, and the pye, 
 And let all sports with Christmas dye. J 
 
 To the exorcising power of the Christmas Brand is added, in the 
 subsequent effusion, a most alarming denunciation against those 
 who heedlessly leave in the Hall on Candlemas Eve, any the smallest 
 portion of the Christmas greens. 
 
 * Hesperides, p. 337. f Teend, to kindle. 
 
 X Hesperides, p. 337, 338.
 
 141 
 
 " CEREMONY UPON CANDLEMAS EVE. 
 
 Down with the Rosemary, and so 
 Down with the Baies, and Misletoe : 
 Down with the Holly, I vie, all 
 Wherewith ye drest the Christmas Hall : 
 That so the superstitious find 
 No one least Branch there left behind : 
 For look, how many leaves there be, 
 Neglected there, maids, trust to me, 
 So many goblins you shall see." * 
 
 The next important period of feasting in the country occurred at 
 Shrove-tide, which among the Roman Catholics was the time ap- 
 pointed for shriving or confession of sins, and was also observed as a 
 carnival before the commencement of Lent. The former of these 
 ceremonies was dispensed with at the Reformation ; but the rites 
 attending the latter were for a long time supported with a rival spirit 
 of hilarity. The Monday and Tuesday succeeding Shrove Sunday, 
 called Collop Monday and Pancake Tuesday, were peculiarly devoted 
 to Shrovetide Amusement; the first having been, in papal times, the 
 period at which they took leave of flesh, or slices of meat, termed 
 collops in the north, which had been preserved through the winter by 
 salting and drying, and the second was a relic of the feast preceding 
 Lent ; eggs and collops therefore on the Monday, and pancakes, as a 
 delicacy, on the Tuesday, were duly if not religiously served up. 
 
 * Hesperides, p. 361. Dramatic amusements were frequent on this day, as well in the 
 halls of the nobility in the country, as at court. With regard to their exhibition in the 
 latter, many documents exist ; for instance, in a chronological series of Queen Elizabeth's 
 payments for plays acted before her (from the Council Registers) is the following 
 entry : 
 
 " 18th March,' 1573-4. To Richard Mouncaster, (Mulcaster, the Grammarian,) for two 
 plays presented before her on Candlemas-day and Shrove-tuesday last, 20 marks." % 
 
 J Gcnilenian's Magazine, vide life of Richard Mulcaster, May, June, and July, 1800.
 
 142 
 
 Tusser, in his very curious and entertaining poem on agriculture, 
 thus notices some of the old observances at Shrovetide : — 
 
 " At Shroftide to shroving, go thresh the fat hen, 
 If bhndfold can kill her, then give it thy men : 
 Maids, fritters and pancakes, ynow see ye make. 
 Let slut have one pancake, for company sake." 
 
 For an explanation of the obsolete custom of " threshing the fat 
 hen," we are indebted to Mr. Hilman. " The hen," says he, " is 
 hung at a fellow's back, who has also some horse-bells about him ; 
 the rest of the fellows are blinded, and have boughs in their hands, 
 with which they chase this fellow and his hen about some large court 
 or smaU enclosure. The fellow with his hen and bells shifting as 
 weU as he can, they follow the sound, and sometimes hit him and his 
 hen ; at other times, if he can get behind one of them, they thresh 
 one another well favour' dly ; but the jest is, the maids are to blind 
 tlie fellows, which they do with their aprons, and the cunning 
 baggages will endear their sweet-hearts with a peeping hole, whilst 
 the others look out as sharp to hinder it. After thi» the hen is boil'd 
 with bacon, and store of pancakes and fritters are made. She that is 
 noted for lying in bed long, or any other miscarriage, hath the first 
 pancake presented to her, which most commonly falls to the dogs 
 share at last, for no one will own it their due." Mr. Hilman con- 
 cludes his comment on the text with a singular remark ; " the loss 
 of the above laudable custom, is one of the benefits we have got by 
 smoaking tobacco." * 
 
 Shakspeare has twice noticed this season of feasting and amuse- 
 ment ; first, in All's Well That Ends Well, where he makes the 
 Clown tell the Countess (among a string of other similes), that his 
 
 * Hilman's Tusser, p. 80. Mr. Hilman seems to have had as great an aversion to 
 tobacco as King James ; for, in another part of his notes, he observes, that " Suffolk and 
 Es^ex were the counties wherein our author was a farmer, and no where are better dairies 
 for butter, and neater housewives than there, if too many of them at present do not smoke 
 tobacco." p. 49.
 
 143 
 
 answer is " as fit as a pancake for Shrove-tuesday * ;" and in the 
 Second Part of King Henri/ IV. he has introduced Silence singing the 
 following song : — 
 
 " Be merry, be nierrj', my wife's as all ; f 
 For women' are shrews, both short and tall : 
 'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all, 
 
 And welcome merry skrove-tide. 
 Be merry, be merry, &c." 
 
 The third line of this song appears to have been proverbial, and 
 of considerable antiquity ; for Adam Davie, who flourished about 
 1312, has the same imagery with the same rhyme, in his Life of 
 Alexander : 
 
 " Merry swithe it is in halle. 
 When the berdes waveth aUe." % 
 
 And the subsequent passage, quoted by Mr. Reed from a writer con- 
 temporary with Shakspeare, proves, that it was a common burden or 
 under song in the halls of our gentry at that period : — " which 
 done, grace said, and the table taken up, the plate presently conveyed 
 in.to the pantrie, the hall summons this consort of companions (upon 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 272, 273. Act ii. sc. 2. Warner has also noticed 
 this culinary article as appropriated to Shrove- Tuesday in his Albion's England, chapter 
 xxiv., where, enumerating the feasts and holidays of his time, he says, they had 
 
 " At fasts-eve pan-puffes." — 
 
 Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 564. 
 
 Shrove or Pancake Ttiesday, is still called, in the North, Fastens, or Pasterns E'en, as 
 preceding Ash-Wednesday, the first day of Lent ; and the turning of these cakes in the pan 
 is yet observed as a feat of dexterity and skill. 
 
 Of the pancake-bell which used to be rung on Sh rove-Tuesday, Taylor, the Water Poet, 
 has given us the following most singular account : — " Shrove-Tuesday, at whose entrance 
 in the morning all the whole kingdom is unquiet, but by that time the clocke strikes eleven, 
 which (by the help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before nine, then there is a bell rung, 
 cal'd paneake-bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted, and forgetful 
 either of manners or humanitie." See his Works, folio, 1 630. p. 1 1 5. 
 
 f — my wife's as all ,] /. i: as all women are. Farmer. 
 
 X Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 225. note (p).
 
 144 
 
 payne to dyne with Duke Huniphfrie, or to kisse the hare's foot,) to 
 appear at the first call : where a song is to be sung, the under song 
 or holding whereof is, // is juerrie in haul xchere beards wag ally The 
 Serving-man's Comfort, 1598, sign. C. * 
 
 The evening of Shrove- Tuesdai/ was usually appropriated, as well in 
 the country as in town, to the exhibition of dramatic pieces. Not 
 only at Court, where Jonson was occasionally employed to write 
 Masques on this night f, but at both the Universities, in the provin- 
 cial schools, and in the halls of the gentry and nobility, were these 
 the amusements of Shrovetide, during the days of Elizabeth and 
 James. Warton, speaking of these ephemeral plays, adds, in a 
 note, " I have seen an anonymous comedy, Apollo Shroving, com- 
 posed by the Master of Hadleigh-school, in Suffolk J , and acted by 
 his scholars, on Shrove-tuesday, Feb. 7, 1626, printed 1627. 8vo. 
 published, as it seems, by E. W. Shrove-tuesday, as the day imme- 
 diately preceding Lent, was always a day of extraordinary sport and 
 feasting. — " Some of these festivities," he proceeds to say, " still 
 remain in our universities. In the Percy Houshold-Book, 1512, it 
 appears, that the clergy and officers of Lord Percy's chapel performed 
 a play before his lordship upon Shrowften-esday at nights Pag. 345. § 
 
 The cruel custom of Cock-throwing, which, until lately, was a diver- 
 sion peculiar to this day, seems to have originated from the barbarous, 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 235. 
 
 •j See his Masque on the Shrove-tuesday at night 1608, and Chloridia, a Masque, at 
 Shrove-tide, 1 G30. 
 
 X Tlie author of Apollo Shroving was William Hawkins, who likewise published 
 " Corolla varia contexta per Guil. Haukinum scholarcham Hadleianum in agro Suffol- 
 cienci. Cantabr. ap. Tho. Buck." 12mo. 1634. 
 
 It may be observed, that Shrove-Tiwsday was considered by the apprentices as their 
 peculiar holiday ; and it appears that in the days of Shakspeare, they claimed a right of 
 punishing, at this season, women of ill-fame. To these customs Dekker and Sir Thomas 
 Overbury allude, when the former says: " They presently (like Premises upon Shrove- 
 Tuesday) take the lawe into their owne handes and do what they list." Seven Deadly 
 Sinnes of London, 4to. p. 35. 1606". And when the latter, in his Characters, speaking 
 of a bawd, remarks: " Nothing daunts her so much as the approach of Shrove-Tuesday;" 
 and describing a " roaring boy," adds, " he is a supervisor of brothels, and in them is a 
 more unlawful reformer of vice than prentices on Shrove-Tuesday." 
 
 § History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 3S7.
 
 145 
 
 yet less savage, amusement of Cock-Jighfing. " Every yeare on 
 Shrove-Tuesdai/" says Fitzstephen, who wrote in the reign of Henry II., 
 " the schoole-boyes doe bring cockes of the game to their master, 
 and all the forenoone they delight themselves in Cock-fighting." * 
 At what period this degenerated into Cock-throwing cannot now be 
 ascertained ; Chaucer seems to allude to it in his Nonnes Priests 
 T^ale, where the Cock revenges himself on the Priest's son, because he 
 
 gave hym a knocke 
 
 Upon his legges, when he was yonge and nice ;" 
 
 and that it was common in the sixteenth century, we have the testi- 
 mony of Sir Thomas More, who, describing the state of childliood, 
 speaks of his skill in casting a cok-stele, that is, a stick or cudgel to 
 tlu'ow at a cock, f 
 
 The first effective blow directed against this infamous sport, was 
 given by the moral pencil of Hogarth, who in one of his prints called 
 The Four Stages of Cruelty, has represented, among other puerile 
 diversions, a groupe of boys throwing at a Cock, and, as Trusler re- 
 marks, " beating the harmless feathered animal to jelly." X The be- 
 nevolent satire of this great artist gradually produced the necessary 
 reform, and for some time past, the magistrates have so generally 
 interdicted the practice, that the pastime may happily be considered 
 as extinct. § 
 
 * Stow's Survey of London, edit, of 1G18, p. 142. 
 
 t Vide Stnitt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 250. 
 
 t Vide Hogarth Morah'zed, p. 134. 
 
 § " In some places," says Mr. Strutt, " it was a common practice to put the cock into 
 an earthern vessel made for the purpose, and to place him io such a position that his head 
 aiid tail might be exposed to view ; the vessel, witii the bird in it, was then suspended 
 across the street, about twelve or fourteen feet from the ground, to be thrown at by such 
 as chose to make trial of their skill; two-pence was paid for four throws, and he who 
 broke the pot, and delivered the cock from his confinement, had him for a reward. At 
 North- Walsham, in Norfolk, about forty years ago, some wags put an owl into one of these 
 vessels ; and having procured the head and tail of a dead cock, they placed them in the 
 same position as if they had appertained to a living one; the deception was successful ; and 
 at last, a labouring man belonging to the town, after several fruitless attempts, broke the 
 pot, but missed his prize; for tlie owl being set at liberty, instantly flew away, to his great 
 VOL. I. U
 
 146 
 
 Easter-tide, or the week succeeding Easter- Sunday, afforded 
 another opportunity for rejoicing, and was formerly a season of great 
 festivity. Not only, as bound by every tie of gratitude to do, did 
 man rejoice on this occasion, but it was the belief of the vulgar that 
 the sun himself partook of the exhilaration, and regularly danced on 
 Easter-Day. To see this glorious spectacle, therefore, it was cus- 
 tomary for the common people to rise before the sun on Easter- 
 morning, and though, as we may conclude, they were constantly 
 disappointed, yet might the habit occasionally lead to serious thought 
 and useful contemplation ; metaphorically considered, indeed, tlie 
 idea may be termed both just and beautiful, " for as the earth and 
 her valleys standing thick with corn, are said to laugh and sing ; so, 
 on account of the Resurrection, the heavens and the sun may be said 
 to dance for joy ; or, as the Psalmist words it, the heavens may 
 rejoice and the earth may be glad." * 
 
 The great amusement of the Easter-holidays consisted in playing 
 at hand-ball, a game at which, say the ritualists Belithus and Durandus, 
 
 astonishment, and left him nothing more than the head and tail of the dead bird, with the 
 potsherds, for his money and his trouble; this ridiculous adventure exposed him to the 
 continual laughter of the town's people, and obliged him to quit the place, to which I am 
 told he returned no more." Sports and Pastimes, p. 25 1 . 
 
 " For many years," observes Mr. Brady, " our public diaries, and monthly publications, 
 took infinite pains to impress upon the minds of the populace a just abhorrence of such 
 barbarities (cock-fighting and cock-throwing) ; and, by way of strengthening their argu- 
 ments, they failed not to detail in the most pathetic terms the following fact, which for the 
 interest it contains is here transcribed, from the Obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine 
 for April, 1789. ' Died, April 4th, at Tottenham, John Ardesoif, esquire, a young 
 man of large fortune, and in the splendour of his horses and carriages, rivalled by few 
 country-gentlemen. His table was that of hospitality, where it may be said he sacrificed 
 too much to conviviality. Mr. Ardesoty -was very fond of cock-fighting, and had a favour- 
 ite cock upon which he had won many profitable matches. The last bet he laid upon this 
 cock he lost, wliich so enraged him, that he had the bird tied to a spit, and roasted alive 
 before a large fire. The screams of the miserable animal were so affecting, that some 
 gentlemen who were present attempted to interfere, which so enraged Mr. Ardesoif, that 
 he seized a poker, and with the most furious vehemence declared, that he would kill the 
 first man who interfered : but in the midst of his passionate asseverations, he Jell down dead 
 upon the spot.' Clavis Calendaria, 1st edit. vol. i. p. 200, 201." 
 
 ♦ Bourne's Antiquities apud Brand, p. 268.
 
 147 
 
 bisliops and archbishops used, upon the continent at this period, to 
 recreate themselves with their inferior clergy* ; nor was it uncommon 
 for corporate bodies on this occasion in England to amuse themselves 
 in a similar way with their burgesses and young people ; antiently 
 this was the custom, says Mr. Brand, at Newcastle, at the feasts of 
 Easter and Whitsuntide, when the mayor, aldermen, and sheriff, 
 accompanied by great numbers of the burgesses, used to go yearly at 
 these seasons to the Forth, or little mall of the town, with the mace, 
 sword, and cap of maintenance carried before them, and not only 
 countenance, but frequently join in the diversions of hand-ball, 
 dancing, &c. f 
 
 The constant prize at hand-ball, during Easter, was a tansy-cake, 
 supposed to be allusive to the bitter herbs used by the Jews on this 
 festival. Selden, the contemporary of Shakspeare, speaking of om" 
 chief holidays, remarks, that " our Meats and Sports have much of 
 them relation to Church- Works. The coffin of our Christmas Pies, in 
 shape long, is in imitation of the Cratch \ : our clausing Kings and 
 Queens on Twelfth Night, hath reference to the three kings. So 
 likewise our eating of fritters, whipping of tops, roasting of herrings, 
 Jack of Lents, &c. they are all in imitation of Church- Works, emblems 
 of martyrdom. Our Tansies at Easter have reference to the bitter 
 Hei'bs ; though at the same time 'twas always the fashion for a man 
 to have a Ganmion of Bacon, to shew himself to be no Jeic." § 
 
 * Bourne's Antiquities apud Brand, p. 277- " Why they should play at Hand Ball at 
 this time," observes Mr. Bourne, " rather than any other game, I have not been able to 
 find out, but I suppose it will readily be granted, that this custom of so playing, was the 
 original of our present recreations and diversions on Easter Holy Days," p. 277- 
 
 f Brand on Bourne, p. 280. note. The morris dance, of which such frequent mention 
 is made in our old poets, was fre<|uently performed at Easter ; but, as we shall have occa- 
 sion to notice this amusement, at some length, under the article " May-Day," we shall here 
 barely notice that Warner has recorded it as an Easter diversion in the following line: 
 
 " At Paske begun our morrise : and ere Penticost our May." 
 
 Albion's England, Chap. xxiv. 
 X Rack or Manger. 
 $ Selden's Table- Talk, art. Christmas. 
 
 U 2
 
 148 
 
 Fuller has noticed this Easter game under his Cheshire, where, 
 explaining the origin of the proverb " AVlien the daughter is stolen 
 shut Pepper Gate," he says, " The mayor of the city had his 
 daughter, as she was playing at hall with other maidens in Pepper- 
 street, stolen away by a young man through the same gate, whereupon 
 he caused it to be shut up." * 
 
 Another custom which prevailed in this country, during the sixteenth 
 .century, at Easter, and is still kept up in some parts of the north, was 
 that of presenting children with eggs stained with various coheirs in boil- 
 ing, termed Paste or more properly Pasche Eggs, which the young 
 people considered in the light of fairings. This observance appears to 
 have arisen from a superstition, prevalent among the Roman Catholics, 
 that eggs were an emblem of the resurrection, and, indeed, in the 
 Ritual of Pope Paul the Fifth, which was composed for the use of 
 England, Ireland, and Scotland, there is a prayer for the consecration 
 of eggs, in which the faithful servants of the Lord are directed to eat 
 this his creature of eggs on account of the resurrection. On this 
 custom Mr. Brand has well observed, that " the antient Egyptians, if 
 the resurrection of the body had been a tenet of their faith, would 
 perhaps have thought an Egg no improper hieroglyphical represent- 
 ation of it. The exclusion of a living creature by incubation, after 
 the vital principle has lain a long while dormant or extinct, is a pro- 
 cess so truly marvellous, that if it could be disbelieved, would be 
 thought by some a thing as incredible, as that the Author of Life 
 should be able to re-animate the dead.'''' -)• So prevalent indeed was 
 this custom of egg-giving at Easter, that it forms the basis of an old 
 English proverb, which, in the collection of Mr. Ray, runs thus : 
 
 " I'll warrant you for an egg at Easter." J 
 
 * Fuller's Worthies, p. 188. f Bourne apud Brand, p. 346. 
 
 % The following whimsical custom, relates Mr. Brand, " is still retained at the city of 
 Durham on these holidays. On one day the men take off the women's shoes, whicli arc 
 only to be redeeni'd by a present ; on another day the women take off the men's in like 
 manner." Bourne apud Brand, p. 282.
 
 14» 
 
 A popular holiday, called Hoke-Day, or Hock-Day, whicli used to 
 be celebrated with much festivity in Shakspeare's native county, was 
 usually observed on the Tuesday following the second Sunday after 
 Easter-day. Its origin is doubtful, some antiquaries supposing it 
 was commemorative of the massacre of the Danes in the reign ot 
 Ethelred the Unready, which took place on the 13th of November 
 1002 ; and others that it was meant to perpetuate the deliverance 
 of the English from the tyrannical government of the Danes, by the 
 death of Hardicanute on Tuesday the 8th of June 1041. At Coventry 
 in Warwickshire, however, it was celebrated in memory of the former 
 event, though the commemoration was held on a day wide apart from 
 that on which the catastrophe occurred, a circumstance which originated 
 in an ordinance of Ethelred himself, who transferred the sports of 
 this day to the Monday and Tuesday in the third week after Easter. 
 John Rouse, or Ross, the Warwickshire historian, says, that this day 
 was distinguished by various sports, in which the people, divided 
 into parties, used to draw each other by ropes * ; a species of diversion 
 of which Spelman has given us a more intelligible account by teUing 
 us that it " consisted in the men and women binding each other, and 
 especially the women the men," and that the day, in consequence of 
 this pastime, was called Binding-Tuesday, f 
 
 The term hock, by which this day is designated, is thus accounted 
 for by Henry of Huntingdon. " The secret letters of Ethelred, 
 directed to all parts of his kingdom from this city (Winchester), 
 ordered that all the Danes indiscriminately should be put to death ; 
 and this was executed, as we learn from the chronicle of Wallingford, 
 with circumstances of the greatest cruelty, even upon women and 
 
 Stow also recoi-ds, that in the week before Easter there were " great shewes made, for 
 the fetching in of a twisted tree, or With,' as they teamied it, out of the Woods into 
 the King's house, and the like into every man's house of Honor or Worship," p. 150.; 
 but whether this was general throughout the kingdom, is not mentioned. 
 
 * Vide Ross, as published by Hearne, p. 105. 
 
 f Spelman's Glossary, under the title Hock-day.
 
 150 
 
 children, in many parts : but in other places, it seems that the English, 
 instead of killing their guests, satisfied themselves with what was 
 called hock-shining, or hoiighing them, by cutting their ham-strings, so 
 as to render them incapable of serving in war. Hence the sports 
 which were afterwards instituted in our city, and from thence propa- 
 gated throughout the whole kingdom, obtained the name of Hocktide 
 meri'imentsy 
 
 It appears from the following passage in Laneham's Account of 
 Queen Elizabeth's Entertainment at Kenel worth Castle, A. D. 1575, 
 that the citizens of Coventry had lately been compelled to give up 
 their annual amusements on Hock Tuesday, and took the opportunity 
 of the queen's visit to the Earl of Leicester to petition her for a 
 renewal of the same. " Hereto followed," says Laneham, " as good a 
 sport (methought), presented in an historical cue, by certain good- 
 hearted men of Coventry, my Lord's neighbours there ; who under- 
 standing among them the thing that could not be hidden from any, 
 how careful and studious his Honour was that by all pleasant recre- 
 ations her Highness might best find herself welcome, and be made 
 gladsome and merry (the groundwork indeed and foundation of his 
 Lordship's mirth and gladness of us all), made petition that they 
 mought renew now their old storial shew : Of argument how the Danes, 
 whylome here in a troublous season were for quietness borne withal and 
 suffered in peace ; that anon, by outrage and importable insolency, 
 abusing both Ethelrcd the King, then, and all Estates every where 
 beside ; at the grievous complaint and counsel of Hiina the King's 
 chieftain in wars on a Saint Brices night, A. D. 1012 (as the book says, 
 that falleth yearly on the thirteenth of November) were all dispatched, 
 and the realm rid. And for because the matter mentioneth how 
 valiantly our English women for love of their country behaved them- 
 selves, expressed in actions and rymes after their manner, they thought 
 it mought move some mirth to her Majesty the rather. The thing, 
 said they, is grounded on story, and for pastime wont to be played in 
 our city yearly ; without ill example of manners, papistry, or any 
 superstition; and else did so occupy the heads of a number, that likely
 
 151 
 
 enough would have had worse meditations ; had an ancient beginning 
 and a long continuance ; till now of late laid down, they knew no 
 cause why, unless it were by the zeal of certain their preachers, men 
 very commendable for their behaviour and learning, and sweet in their 
 sermons, but somewhat too sour in preaching away their pastime : 
 Wished therefore, that as they should continue their good doctrine in 
 pulpit, so, for matters of policy and governance of the city, they would 
 permit them to the Mayor and Magistrates ; and said, by my faith. 
 Master Martyn, they would make their humble petition unto her Highness, 
 that tliey might have their Plays up again.^^ * 
 
 As it is svxbsequently stated that their play was very graciously 
 received by the queen, who commanded it to be represented again on 
 the following Tuesday, and gave the performers two bucks, and five 
 marks in money, we must suppose, that their petition was not rejected, 
 and that they were allowed to renew yearly at Coventry, their favourite 
 diversions on Hock- Tuesday. The observance of this day, indeed, was 
 still partially retained in the time of Spelman, who died A.D. 1641 -f, 
 and even Plott, who lived until 1696, mentions it then as not totally 
 discontinued ; but the eighteenth century, we believe, never witnessed 
 its celebration. 
 
 We have now reached that period of the year which was formerly 
 dedicated to one of the most splendid and pleasing of our festal rites. 
 
 * Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. Laneham's Letter, p. 32 — 34, 
 t That Hock-tide was generally observed in the days of Shakspeai-e, is evident from the 
 following passage in Withers's " Abuses Stript and Whipt." 8vo. London. 16'18. 
 
 ♦• Who think (forsooth) because that once a yeare 
 They can affoord the poore some slender cheere, 
 Observe their country feasts, or common doles, 
 And entertaine their Christmass Wassaile Boles, 
 Or els because that, Jbr the C/iurc/ie's good. 
 They in defence of Hocktide cmtoine stood: 
 A Whitsun-ale, or some such goodly motion, 
 The better to procure young men's devotion : 
 What will they do, I say, that think to please 
 Their mighty God with such fond things as these? 
 Sure, very ill. P. 232.
 
 152 
 
 The observance of May-Day was a custom which, imtil the close.i 
 of the reign of James the First, ahke attracted the attention of the 
 royal and . the noble, as of the vulgar class. Henry the Eighthj^ 
 Elizabeth, and James, patronized and partook of its ceremonies ; 
 and, during this extended era, there was scarcely a village in the 
 kingdom but what had a May-pole, with its appropriate games and 
 dances. 
 
 The oriffin of these festivities has been attributed to three different 
 sources, Classic, Celtic, and Gothic. The first appears to us to establish 
 the best claim to the parentage of our May-day rites, as a relique of 
 the Roman Floralia, which were celebrated on the last four days of 
 April, and on the first of May, in honour of the goddess Flora, and 
 were accompanied with dancing, music, the wearing of garlands, 
 strewing of flowers, &c. The Beltein, or rural sacrifice of the 
 Highlanders on this day, as described by Mr. Pennant and Dr. Jamie- 
 son *, seems to have arisen from a different motive, and to have 
 been instituted for the purpose of propitiating the various noxious 
 animals which might injure or destroy their flocks and herds. 
 The Gothic anniversary on May-day makes a nearer approach to 
 the general purpose of the Floralia, and was intended as a thanks- 
 giving to the sun, if not for the return of flowers, fruit, and 
 ^rain, yet for the introduction of a better season for fishing and 
 hunting, f 
 
 The modes of conducting the ceremonies and rejoicings on May-day, 
 may be best drawn from the writers of the Elizabethan period, in 
 which this festival appears to have maintained a very high degree 
 of celebrity, though not accompanied with that splendour of exhibition 
 which took place at an earlier period in the reign of Henry the 
 Eighth. It may be traced, indeed, from the era of Chaucer, who, in 
 the conclusion of his Court of Love, has described the Feast of May, 
 when 
 
 * Vide Pennant's Scotland, p. 91.; and Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scot- 
 tish Language. 
 
 f Olaus Magnus de Gentibus Septcntrionalibus, lib. xv. c 8.
 
 153 
 
 " Forth goth all the court both most and les'., 
 
 To fetch the floures fresh, and braunch and blome — • 
 And namely hauthorn brought both page and grome 
 Ami than rejoysen in theh" great delite: 
 Eke ech at other throw the floures bright, 
 The pi'imerose, the violete, and the gold. 
 With fresh garlants party blew and white." * 
 
 And, it should be observed, that this, the simplest mode of celebrating 
 May-day, was as much in vogue, in the days of Shakspeare, as the 
 more complex one, accompanied by the morris-dance, and the games 
 of Robin Hood. The following descriptions, by Bourne and Borlase, 
 manifestly allude to the costume of this age, and to the simpler mode 
 of commemorating the 1st of May : " On the Calends, or the 1st day 
 of May," says the former, " commonly called May-day, the juvenile 
 part of both sexes were wont to rise a little after midnight, and walk 
 to some neighbouring wood, accompany'd with music, and the 
 blowing of horns, where they break down branches from the trees, 
 and adorn them with nosegays and croie^ns of flowers. When this is 
 done, they return with their booty homewards, about the rising of the 
 sun, and make their doors and windows to triumph in the flowery 
 spoil. The after part of the day, is chiefly spent in dancing round a 
 tall poll, which is called a May Poll; which being placed in a con- 
 venient part of the village, stands there, as it were consecrated to 
 the Goddess of Flowers, without the least violence offered it, in the 
 whole circle of the year." f " An antient custom," says the latter, 
 " still retained by the Cornish, is that of decking their doors and 
 porches on the first of May with green sycamore and hawthorn 
 boughs, and of planting trees, or rather stumps of trees, before 
 their houses : and on May-eve, they from towns make excursions 
 into the country, and having cut down a tall elm, brought it into 
 town, fitted a straight and taper pole to the end of it, and painted 
 
 * Chalmers's English Poets, vol.i. p. 378. 
 
 f Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares apud Brand, p. 2S3. 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 154 
 
 the same, erect it in the most public places, and on holidays and 
 festivals adorn it with flower garlands, or insigns and streamers." * 
 
 Now both these passages are little more than a less extended ac- 
 count of what Philip Stubbes was a witness of, and described, in the 
 year 1595, in his puritanical work, entitled The Anatomic of Abuses. 
 " Against Maie-day," relates this vehement declaimer, " every 
 parish, towne, or village, assemble themselves, both men, women, 
 and children ; and either all together, or dividing themselves into 
 companies, they goe some to the woods and groves, some to the hills 
 and mountaines, some to one place, some to another, where they 
 spend all the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they 
 return bringing with them, birche boughes and branches of trees 
 -to deck their assemblies withal. But their chiefest jewel they bring 
 from thence is the maie-pole, which they bring home with great 
 veneration, as thus — they have twentie or fortie yoake of oxen, 
 every oxe having a sweete nosegaie of flowers tied to the tip of his 
 homes, and these oxen drawe home the maie-poale, their stinking 
 idol rather, which they covered all over with flowers and hearbes, 
 bound round with strings from the top to the bottome, and some- 
 times it was painted with variable colours, having two or three 
 hundred men, women, and children following it with great devotion. 
 And thus equipp'd it was reared with handkerchiefes and flagges 
 streaming on the top, they strawe the ground round about it, they 
 bind green boughs about it, they set up summer halles, bowers, and 
 arbours, hard by it, and then fall they to banquetting and feasting, 
 to leaping and dauncing about it, as the heathen people did at the 
 dedication of their idolls. — I have heard it crediblie reported," he 
 sarcastically adds, " by men of great gravity, credite, and reputation, 
 that of fourtie, three score, or an hundred maides going to the wood, 
 there have scarcely the third part of them returned home againe as 
 they went." f 
 
 * Vide Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, &c. 
 
 f Stubbes's Anatomic of Abuses, p, 109. edit. 1595, 4to.
 
 155 
 
 Browne also has given a similar description of the May-day rites 
 in his Britannia's Pastorals : — 
 
 " As I have scene the Lady of the May 
 
 Set in an arbour 
 
 Built by the May-pole, where the jocund swaines 
 
 Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's straines, 
 
 When envious night commands them to be gone, 
 
 Call for the merry yongsters one by one, 
 
 And for their well performance some disposes, 
 
 To this a garland interwove with roses; 
 
 To that a carved hooke, or well-wrought scrip, 
 
 Gracing another with her cherry lip : 
 
 To one her garter, to another then 
 
 A liandkerchiefe cast o're and o're agen ; 
 
 And none returneth empty, that hath spent 
 
 His paynes to fill their rurall merriment." * 
 
 The custom of rising early on a May-morning to enjoy the season, 
 and honour the day, is thus noticed by Stow: — " In the month of 
 May," he says, " namely, on May-day in the morning, every man, 
 except impediment, would walke into the sweete meddowes and 
 green woods, there to rejoice their spirits, with the beauty and savour 
 of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds, praysing God in 
 their kind f ;" and Shakspeare has repeated references to the same 
 observance ; in Midsummer- NigM s Dream, Lysander tells Hermia, 
 
 " I did meet thee once with Helena, 
 
 To do observance to a morn of May " % 
 
 and again, in the same play, Theseus says, — 
 
 * Book ii. Song 4. Chalmers's Poets, vol. vi. p. 296. — It was no uncommon thing 
 also for the milk- maids to join the procession to the May-pole on this day, leading a cow 
 decorated with ribands of various colours, intermingled with knots of flowers, and 
 wreathes of oaken leaves, and with the horns of the animal gilt. 
 
 t Stow's Survey of London, p. 150. 1618. 
 
 X Acti. sc. 1. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 327. 
 
 X 2
 
 156 
 
 " No doubt they rose up early, to ohicrve 
 The rite of Mayr * 
 
 So generally prevalent was this habit of early rising on May-day, 
 that Shakspeare makes one of his inferior characters in King Henry 
 the Eighth exclaim, — 
 
 " Pray, sir, be patient ; 'tis as }nuch impossible 
 
 (Unless we sweep them from the door with cannons) 
 To scatter them, as 'tis to make them sleep 
 On May-day morning ; "which "will never be," f 
 
 Herrick, the minute describer of the customs and superstitions of 
 his times, which were those of Shakspeare, and the immediately suc- 
 ceeding period, has a poem called Corinnas Going A Maying, which 
 includes most of the circumstances hitherto mentioned ; he thus 
 addresses his mistress; — 
 
 " Get up and see 
 
 The dew bespangling herbe and tree : * 
 
 Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east, 
 Above an houre since ; — it is sin, 
 
 Nay profanation to keep in ; 
 
 * Act iv. so. 1. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 452, 453. — " The rite of this month," 
 observes Mr. Steevens, " was once so universally observed, that even authors thought their 
 works would obtain a more favourable reception, if published on May-day. The following 
 is a title-page to a metrical performance by a once celebrated poet, Thomas Churchyard: 
 
 * Come bring in Maye with me, 
 My Maye is fresh and greene ; 
 A subjectes harte, an humble mind, 
 To serve a mayden Queene. 
 
 ' A discourse of rebellion, drawne forth for to warne the wanton wittes how to kepe their 
 heads on their shoulders. 
 
 ' Imprinted at London, in Flete-streat by William Griffith, Anno Domini 1570. The 
 .first of Maye: " 
 
 t Act V. sc. 3. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 201.
 
 157 
 
 When as a thousand virgins on this day, 
 Spring sooner than tiie lark, to fetch in May ! 
 Come, my Corinna, come; and comming marke 
 How each field turns a street, each street a parkc 
 Made green, and trimm'd with trees ; see how 
 Devotion gives each house a bough, 
 Or branch : each porch, each doore, ere this, 
 An arke, a tabernacle is 
 Made up of white-thorn neatly enterwove. — ' 
 
 There's not a budding boy, or givle, this day 
 But is got up, and gone to bring in May : 
 
 A deale of youth, ere this, is come 
 
 Back, and with white-thorn laden home. 
 
 Some have dispatcht their cakes and creame. 
 
 Before that we have left to dreame : 
 And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth, 
 And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth : 
 
 Many a green gown has been given ; 
 
 Many a kisse, both odde and even : 
 
 Many a glance too has been sent 
 
 From out the eye. Love's firmament : 
 Many a jest told of the keyes betraying 
 ^ This night, and locks pickt, ye w'are not a Maying !" * 
 
 With this, the simplest mode of celebrating the rites of May-day, 
 was frequently united, in the days of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, a 
 groupe of Morris Dancers, consisting of several characters, which 
 were often varied both in number, appellation, and dress. The 
 Morris Dance appears to have been introduced into this kingdom 
 about the reign of Edward the Fourth, and is, without doubt, derived 
 from the Morisco, a dance peculiar to the Moors, and generally 
 termed the Spanish Morisco, from its notoriety in Spain, during the 
 dynasty of that people in the peninsula. The Morris Dance in this 
 country, Avhen performed on a May-day, and not connected with the 
 Games of Robin Hood, usually consisted of the Lady of the May, 
 the Fool, or domestic buffoon of the 15th and 16tli centuries, a 
 Piper, and two, four, or more, Morris Dancers. The dress of these 
 
 * Herrick's Hesperides, p. 71, 75.
 
 158 
 
 last personages, who designated the amusement, was of a very pe- 
 culiar kind ; they had their faces blackened fo resemble the native 
 Moors, and " in the reign of Henry the Eighth," says Mr. Douce, 
 " they were dressed in gilt leather and silver paper, and sometimes 
 in coats of white spangled fustian. They had piu'ses at their girdles, 
 and garters to which bells were attached* ;" but according to Stubbes, 
 who wrote in 1595, the costume had been altered, for he tells us that 
 they were clothed in " greene, yellow, or some other light wanton 
 collour. And as though that were not gawdy ynough," he con- 
 tinues, " they bedeeke themselves with scarffes, ribbons, and laces 
 hanged all over with golde ringes, precious stones, and other jewels : 
 this done, they tie about either legge twentie or fourtie belles, with 
 rich handkerchiefe in their handes, and sometimes laide a crosse 
 over their shovxlders and neckes borrowed for the most part of their 
 pretie Mopsies and loving BessieS for bussing them in the darke." f 
 Feathers, too, were usually worn in their hats, and they had occa- 
 sionally bells fixed on their arms or wrists, as well as on their legs. 
 That these jingling ornaments were characteristic of, and derived 
 from, the genuine Moorish Dance, appears from a plate copied by 
 Mr. Douce from the habits of various nations, published by Hans 
 Weigel at Nuremberg, in 1577, and which represents the figure of 
 an African lady of the kingdom of Fez in the act of dancing, Avith 
 bells at her feet. '\. 
 
 It was the business of these motley figures to dance round the 
 May-pole, which was painted of various colours ; thus in Mr.^Tollett's 
 painted glass window, at Betley in Staffordshire, which represents an 
 English May-game and morris-dance, the May-pole is stained yellow 
 and black, in spiral lines § ; and Shakspeare, in allusion to this cus- 
 tom, makes Hermia tell Helena, whilst ridiculing the tallness of her 
 form, that she is a " painted May-pole || ;" so Stubbes, likewise, in a 
 
 * Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 4/3. f Anatomic of Abuses, p. 10/. 
 
 :(: Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 474. 
 
 § Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 440. 
 
 II Midsummer-Night's Dream, actiii. so. 2. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 42/.
 
 159 
 
 passage previously quoted, says, that the Maie-pole was " painted 
 with variable colours." 
 
 That the morris-dance was an almost constant attendant on the 
 May-day festivities, may be di'awn from our usual authority, the 
 works of Shakspeare ; for, in AlVs Well That Ends Well, the Clown 
 affirms, that his answer will serve all questions 
 
 " As fit as a morris for May-day." * 
 
 But, about the commencement of the sixteenth century, or some- 
 what sooner, probably towards the middle of the fifteenth century, a 
 very material addition was made to the celebration of the rites of 
 May-day, by the introduction of the characters of Robin Hood and 
 some of his associates. This was done with a view towards the encou- 
 ragement of archery, and the custom was continued even beyond the 
 close of the reign of James I. It is true, that the May-games in their 
 rudest form, the mere dance of lads and lasses round a May-pole, or 
 the simple morris with the Lady of the May, were occasionally seen 
 ■during the days of Elizabeth ; but the general exhibition was the more 
 complicated ceremony which we are about to describe. 
 
 The personages who now became the chief performers in the morris- 
 dance, were four of the most popular outlaws of Sherwood forest ; 
 that Robin Hood, of whom Drayton says, — 
 
 " In this our spacious isle, I think there is not one, 
 
 But he hath heard some talk of him and little John : — 
 Of Tuck the merry friar, which many a sermon made 
 In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws and their trade; — 
 " Of Robin's" mistress dear, his loved Marian, 
 
 which wheresoe'er she came, 
 
 Was sovereign of the woods, chief lady of the game : 
 Her clothes tuck'd to the knee, and dainty braided hair, 
 With bow and quiver arm'd j" f 
 
 characters which Warner, the contemporary of Drayton and Shaks- 
 peare, has exclusively recorded as celebrating the rites of May ; tor, 
 
 * Act ii. so. 2. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 273. 
 
 t Drayton's Poly-Olbion, Song 26. Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 373, 374.
 
 160 
 
 speaking of the periods of some of our festivals, and remarking that 
 " ere penticost begun our May," he adds, 
 
 " Tho' {then) Robin Hood, liell John, frier Tucke, 
 And Marian, deftly play, 
 And lord and ladie gang till kirke 
 With lads and lasses gay : 
 
 Fra masse and een sang sa gud cheere 
 And glee on ery greene." * 
 
 These four characters, therefore, Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, 
 and Maid Marian, although no constituent parts of the original English 
 morris, became at length so blended with it, especially on the festival 
 of May-day, that until the practice of archery was nearly laid aside, 
 they continued to be the most essential part of the pageantry. 
 
 In consequence of this arrangement, " the old Robin Hood of 
 England," as Shakspeare calls him f, was created the King or Lord of 
 the May, and sometimes carried in his hand, during the May-game, a 
 painted standard. % It was no uncommon circumstance, likewise, for 
 metrical interludes, of a comic species, and founded on the achieve- 
 ments of this outlaw, to be performed after the morris, on the May- 
 pole green. In Garrick's Collection of Old Plays, occurs one, entitled 
 " A mery Geste of Robyn Hoode, and of hys Lyfe, wyth a newe 
 Playe/or to be played in Maye-Games, very pleasaunte and full of pas- 
 tyme ;" it is printed at London, in the black letter, for William 
 Copland, and has figures in the title page of Robin Hood and Lytel 
 John. § Shakspeare appears to allude to these interludes when he 
 represents Fabian, in the Tu-elfth Night, exclaiming on the approach 
 of Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek with his challenge, " JMore matter for 
 May-morning." |1 
 
 * Warner's Albion's England, chapter 21. Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 56 1. 
 
 f As You Like It, acti. sc. 1. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 13. 
 
 X Lysons's Environs of London, vol. i. p. 22/. 
 
 § Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature and scarce Books, vol. i. p. 101. 
 
 II Act iii. sc. 4. Recd'o Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 364.
 
 161 
 
 Upon this introduction of Robin Hood and his companions into 
 the celebration of Maj-day, his paramour Maid Marian, assumed the 
 office of the former Queen of May. This far-famed lady has, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Ritson, no part in the original and more authentic history 
 of Robin Hood ; but seems to have been first brought forward when 
 the story of this hero became dramatised, which was at a very early 
 period in this country ; and Mr. Douce is of opinion that the name, 
 which is a stranger to English history, has been taken from " a pretty 
 French pastoral drama of the eleventh or twelfth century, entitled 
 Lejeu du berger et de la bergere^ in which the principal characters are 
 Robin and Marian, a shepherd and shepherdess." * This appears 
 the more probable, as the piece was not only very popular in France, 
 but performed at the season when the May-games took place in 
 England. 
 
 Maid Marian, in the days of Shakspeare, was usually represented 
 by a delicate, smooth-faced youth, who was dressed in all the fashion- 
 able finery of the times ; and this assumption of the female garb gave, 
 not without some reason, great offence to the puritanical dissenters, 
 one of whom, exclaiming against the amusements of May-day, notices 
 this, amongst some other abuses, in the following very curious pas- 
 sage : — " The abuses which are committed in your May-games are 
 infinite. The first whereof is this, that you doe use to attyre in 
 woman's apparrell whom you doe most commonly call may-marrions, 
 whereby you infringe that straight commandment whiche is given in 
 Deut. xxii. 5., that men must not put on women's apparrell fOr feare 
 of enormities. Nay I myself have scene in a may game a troupe, the 
 greater part whereof hath been men, and yet have they been attyred 
 so like into women, that their faces being hidde (as they were indeede) 
 a man coulde not discerne them fi'om women. The second abuse, 
 which of all other is the greatest, is this, that it hath been toulde that 
 your morice dauncers have dannced naked in nettes : what greater 
 enticement unto naughtiness could have been devised ? The third 
 
 * Donee's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 151. 
 VOL. J. Y
 
 162 
 
 abuse is, that you (because you will loose no tyme) doe use commonly 
 to runne into woodes in the night time, amongst maidens, to fet 
 bowes, in so muche as I have hearde of tenne maidens which went to 
 fet May, and nine of them came home with childe." * 
 
 That, in consequence of this custom, effeminate and coxcomical 
 men were sarcastically compared to Maid Marian, appears from a 
 passage in a pamphlet by Barnaby Rich, who, satirising the male 
 attire, as worn by the fops of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., 
 cries out, — " From whence commeth this wearing, and this embroider- 
 ing of long locks, this curiosity that is used amongst men, in frizeling 
 and curling of their haire, this gentlewoman-like starcht bands, so 
 be-edged and be-laced. Jitter for Maid Marian in a Moris dance, 
 than for him that hath either that spirit or courage that shold be in 
 a gentleman." f 
 
 It will not seem surprising that the converse of this was occasionally 
 applicable to the female sex ; and that those women who adopted 
 masculine airs and habits should be branded with a similarity to the 
 clown who, though personating the lady of the May, never failed, 
 however nice or affected he might be, to disclose by the boldness and 
 awkwardness of his gesture and manner, both his rank and sex. 
 Thus FalstafF is represented as telling the hostess, when he means to 
 upbraid her for her masculine appearance and conduct, that " for 
 •woman hood Maid Marian may be the Deputy's wife of the ward to 
 thee." X A fancy coronet of gilt metal, or interwoven with flowers, 
 and a watchet coloured tunic, a kirtle or petticoat of green, as the 
 livery of Robin Hood, were customary articles of decoration in the 
 dress of the May- Queen. 
 
 Friar Tuck, the next of the four characters which we have men- 
 tioned as introduced into the May-games, was the chaplain of Robin 
 
 * Fetherston's Dialogue agaynst light, lewde, and lascivious dancing, 1582, 12mo. sign. 
 D. 7- apud Douce. 
 
 t The honestie of this age, 1615, 4to. p. 35. 
 
 X First part of King Henry IV. act iii. sc. 3. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 362.
 
 163 
 
 Hood, and is noticed by Shakspeare, who makes one of the out- 
 laws, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, swear 
 
 " By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar." * 
 
 He is represented in the engraving of Mr. Toilet's window as a 
 Franciscan friar in the full clerical tonsure ; for, as ]\lr. T. observes 
 in giving an account of his window, " when the parish priests were 
 inhibited by the diocesan to assist in the May games, the Franciscans 
 might give attendance, as being exempted from episcopal juris- 
 diction ;" he adds that " most of Shakspeare's friars are Franciscans," 
 and that in Sir David Dairy mple's extracts from the book of the 
 Universal Kirk, in the year 1576, he is styled " chaplain to Robin 
 Huid, king of May." f 
 
 The last of this groupe was the boon companion of Robin, the 
 " brave Little John" as he is termed in one of the ballads on this 
 popular outlaw, and who " is first mentioned," remarks Mr. Douce, 
 " together with Robin Hood, by Fordun the Scotish historian, who 
 wrote in the fourteenth century, and who speaks of the celebration of 
 the story of these persons in the theatrical performances of his time, 
 and of the mmstrel's songs relating to them, which he says the com- 
 mon people preferred to all other romances." % 
 
 With these four personages therefore, who were deemed so inse- 
 parable, that a character in Peele's Edward I. says, " We will live and 
 die together, like Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tucke, and Maide 
 Marian §," the performers in the simple English Morris, the fool, Tom 
 the Piper, and the Morris Dancers, peculiarly so called from their 
 
 * Activ. sc. 1. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 266. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 438. 
 
 % Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 450. Fordiin's Scotichronicon, 17.5!), 
 folio, torn ii. p. 104. " In this time," says Stow, that is, about the year 1 190, in the reign 
 of Richard I. " were many robbers, and outlawes, among the which Robin Hood and 
 Little John, renowned theeves, continued in woods, despoyiingand robbing the goods of 
 the rich." Annals, p. 159. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 267. note by Malone. -« 
 
 \ 2
 
 164 
 
 dress and function, were, for a time, generally connected. Tom the 
 Piper is thus mentioned by Drayton : 
 
 " Myself above Tom Piper to advance, 
 Which so bestirs him in the Morrice-dance 
 For penny wage." * 
 
 And Shakspeare, alluding to the violent gesticulations and music of 
 the Morris dancers says, speaking of Cade the rebel, 
 
 " I have seen him 
 
 Caper upright hke a ivild rtiofisco. 
 Shaking the bloody darts, as he his bells." f 
 
 The music accompanying the Morris and the May-games, was 
 either the simple pipe, or the pipe and tabor, or the bag-pipe. In 
 the following passage from a curious controversial pamphlet, pub- 
 lished towards the close of the sixteenth century, the morris and the 
 pipe and tabor are thus noticed : " If Menippus, or the man in the 
 moone, be so quick sighted, that he beholds these bitter sweete 
 jests, these railing outcries ; this shouting at prelates to cast them 
 downe, and heaving at Martin to hang him up for Martilmas biefe ; 
 what would he imagine otherwise, then as that stranger, which seeing 
 a Quintessence (beside the foole and the Maid Marian) of all the 
 picked youth, strained out of an whole Endship, footing the morris 
 about a may pole, and he, not hearing the crie of the hounds, for 
 the barking of dogs, (that is to say) the minstrelsie for the fidling, 
 the tune for the sound, nor the pipe for the noise of the tabor, 
 bluntly demanded if they were not all beside themselves, that they 
 so lip'd and skip'd whithout an occasion," J To this quotation 
 Mr. Haslewood has annexed the subsequent ludicrous story from 
 a tract entitled, Hay any uorke for Cooper. It is a striking proof of 
 the singular attraction and popularity of the May-games at this 
 
 * Eclogue iii. Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv, p. 4-33. 
 
 t Second Part of King Henry the Sixth, act iii. sc. 1. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xiii. 
 p. 276. 
 
 :|: Plainc Percevall the peace-maker of England, &c. &c. Vide Censura Literaria, 
 vol. ix. p. 250.
 
 165 
 
 period: — " Tiiere is a neighbour of ours, an honest priest, who was 
 sometimes (simple as he now stands) a vice in a play, for want of a 
 better ; his name is Gliberie of Hawstead in Essex, hee goes much 
 to the pulpit. On a time, I thinke it was tlie last May, he went up 
 with a full resolution to doe his businesse with great commendations. 
 But, see the fortune of it. A boy in the church, hearing either the 
 summer lord with his May-game, or Robin Hood with his inorice daunce, 
 going by the church, out goes the boye. Good Glibery, though he 
 were in the pulpit, yet had a mind to his old companions abroad, 
 (a company of merry grigs you must thinke them to be, as merry 
 as a vice on a stage), seeing the boy going out, finished his matter 
 presently with John of London's amen, saying, ha ye faith, boy ! 
 are they there ? Then ha with thee, and so came downe and among 
 them he goes." * 
 
 That the music of the bag-jyipe was highly esteemed in the days 
 of Shakspeare, and even preferred to the tabor and pipe, we have a 
 strong instance in his Winters Tale, where a servant enters an- 
 nouncing Autolicus in the following terms : " If you did but hear 
 the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and 
 pipe ; no, the bag-pipe could not move you f ;" and that especially in 
 the country, it was a frequent accompaniment to the morris bells, 
 the numerous collections of madrigals, published in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, afford many proofs. Thus, from a collection 
 printed in 1600 : 
 
 " Harke, harke, T heare the dancing 
 And a nimble morris prancing; 
 The bagpipe and the morris bells. 
 That they are not farrc hence us tells ; 
 Come let us all goe thither, 
 And dance like friends together:" % 
 
 * Censura Literaria, vol. ix. p. 251. 
 
 t Act iv. sc. 3. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 345. 
 
 t Canto Madrigals, of 5 and 6 parts, apt for the viols and voices. Made and newly 
 published by Thomas Wcelkes of the Coledge at Winchester, Organist. At London 
 printed by Thomas Estc, the assigne of Thomas Morley. 1 600. 4to.
 
 166 
 
 and from anotlier, allusive to the May-games, edited by Thomas 
 jMorley : 
 
 " Now is the month of Maying, 
 
 When merry lads are playing ; Fa la la, 
 
 Each with his bonny lasse, 
 
 Upon the greeny grasse. Fa hi la. 
 
 The spring clad all in gladness, 
 Doth laugh at winter's sadnesse ; 
 And to the bagpipe's sound. 
 The niinphs tread out their ground. 
 
 About the May-pole new with glee and merriment, 
 While as the bagpipe tooted it, 
 Thirsis and Cloe fine together footed it ; Fa la la." * 
 
 The Morris and the May-game of Robin Hood attained their most 
 perfect form when united with the Hohhi)-Hor$e and the Dragon. 
 Of these the former was the resemblance of the head and tail of ahorse, 
 manufactured in pasteboard, and attached to a person whose business 
 it was, whilst he seemed to ride gracefully on its back, to imitate the 
 prancings and curvettings of that noble animal, whose supposed feet 
 were concealed by a foot-cloth reaching to the ground ; and the 
 latter, constructed of the same materials, was made to hiss and vibrate 
 his wings, and was frequently attacked by the man on the hobby- 
 horse, who then personated the character of St. George, f 
 
 * Censura Literaria, vol. ix. p. 34. 
 
 f It is probable indeed from the subsequent Madrigal, that the Hobby-horse was fre- 
 quently attached to, and provided for, by the town or village. 
 
 " Our counti"y swains, in the morris daunce. 
 Thus woo'd and win their brides; 
 Willfjor our towne, the liobby horse 
 A pleasure Jrolike rides." * 
 
 * Vide Cantus primo. MadrigaU lo 3, 4, i, and 6 voyces. Made and newly publisbtd by Thomas Weelkes at Lnmlim, 
 imnted by Thomas Este, 1597, 410. Censura Literaria, vol. ix. p. 9 — lo.
 
 167 
 
 In the reio-ns therefore of Elizabeth and James I. these eight 
 masqueraders? consisting of Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, 
 Little John, the Fool, Tom the Piper, the Hobhy-Hm^se, and the 
 Dragon, with from two to ten morris-dancers, or, in lieu of them, the 
 same number of Robin Hood's men, in coats, hoods, and hose of 
 green, with a painted pole in the centre, represented the most 
 complete establishment of the May-game. * 
 
 All these characters may be traced, indeed, so far back as the middle 
 of the fifteenth century ; and, accordingly, Mr. Strutt, in his interesting 
 romance, entitled " Queen-hoo Hall," has introduced a very pleasing 
 and accurate description oi' the May-games and Morris of Robin 
 Hood, which, as written in a lively and dramatic style, and not m the 
 least differing from what they continued to be in the youthful days 
 of Shakspeare, and before they were broken in upon by the fanaticism 
 of the puritans, we shall copy in this place for the entertainment of 
 
 our readers. 
 
 « In the front of the pavilion, a large square was staked out, and 
 fenced with ropes, to prevent the crowd from pressing upon the 
 performers, and interrupting the diversion ; there were also two bars 
 at the bottom of the inclosure, through which the actors might pass 
 and repass, as occasion required. 
 
 « Six young men first entered the square, clothed in jerkins of 
 leather, with axes upon their shoulders like woodmen, and their heads 
 bound with large garlands of ivy-leaves intertwined with sprigs of 
 hawthorn. Then followed, 
 
 * « The English were famed," observes Dr. Grey, « for these and such like diversions; 
 and even the old, as well as young persons, formerly followed them : a remarkaWe mstance 
 of which is given by Sir William Temple, (Miscellanea, Part 3 Essay of Hea th and 
 Long Life,) who makes mention of a Morrice Dance in Herefordslure, from a noble per- 
 son, who told him he had a pamphlet in his library written by a very mgen.ous gentleman 
 of that county, which gave an account how, in such a year of Kn.g James srogn, there 
 went about the country a sett of Morrice Dancers, composed of ten men, who danced a 
 Maid Marian, and a taber and pipe : and how these ten, one wuh another, made up 
 twelve hundred years. 'Tis not so much, says he. that so many m one county should hve 
 to that age, as that they should be in vigour and, humour to travel and dance. Grey s 
 Notes on Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 38-'.
 
 168 
 
 " Six young maidens of the village, dressed in blue kirtles, with 
 garlands ol" primroses on their heads, leading a fine sleek cow, 
 decorated with ribbons of various colours, interspersed with flowers ; 
 and the horns of the animal were tipped with gold. These were 
 succeeded by 
 
 " Six foresters, equipped in green tunics, with hoods and hosen of 
 the same colour ; each of them carried a bugle-horn attached to a 
 baldrick of silk, which he sounded as he passed the barrier. After 
 them came 
 
 " Peter Lanaret, the baron's chief falconer, who personified Robin 
 Hood; he was attired in a bright grass-green tunic, fringed with 
 gold ; his hood and his hosen were parti-coloured, blue and white ; 
 he had a large garland of rose-buds on his head, a bow bent in his 
 hand, a sheaf of arrows at his girdle, and a bugle-horn depending 
 from a baldrick of light blue tarantine, embroidered with silver ; he 
 had also a sword and a dagger, the hilts of both being richly embossed 
 with gold. 
 
 " Fabian a page, as Little John, walked at his right hand ; and 
 Cecil Ccllerman the butler, as Will Stukely, at his left. These, with 
 ten others of the jolly outlaw's attendants who followed, were habited 
 in green garments, bearing their bows bent in their hands, and their 
 arrows in their girdles. Then came 
 
 " Two maidens, in orange-coloured kirtles with white * comtpies ; 
 strewing flowers ; followed immediately by 
 
 " The maid Marian, elegantly habited in a watchet-coloured f tunic 
 reaching to the ground ; over which she wore a white linen :|: rochet 
 with loose sleeves, fringed with silver, and very neatly plaited ; her 
 girdle was of silver baudekin §, fastened with a double bow on the 
 left side ; her long flaxen hair was divided into many ringlets, and 
 flowed upon her shoulders j the top part of her head was covered 
 
 * Cow/f/)/p, in women's dress, a short vest. Striitt. 
 
 f Watc/iet-coloured, pale blue. Strutt. 
 
 X Rochet, a lawn garment resembling a surplice gathered at the wrists. Strutt. 
 
 § Baudekin, a cloth of gold tissue, with figures in silk, for female dress. Strutt.
 
 169 
 
 with a net-work cawl of gold, upon which was placed a garland of 
 silver, ornamented with blue violets. She was supported by 
 
 " Two bride-maidens, in sky-coloured rochets girt with crimsom 
 girdles, wearing garlands upon their heads of blue and white violets. 
 After them, came 
 
 " Four other fetnales in green courtpies, and garlands of violets 
 and cowslips : Then 
 
 *' Sampson the smith, as Friar Tuck, carrying a huge quarter-staff' 
 on his shoulder ; and Morris the mole-taker, who represented Much 
 the miller's son, having a long pole with an inflated bladder attached 
 to one end * : And after them 
 
 " The May-pole, drawn by eight fine oxen, decorated with scarfs, 
 ribbons, and flowers of divers colours ; and the tips of their horns 
 were embellished with gold. The rear was closed by 
 
 " The Hobby-horse and the Dragon. 
 
 « When the May-pole was drawn into the square, the foresters 
 sounded their horns, and the populace expressed their pleasure by 
 shouting incessantly untill it reached the place assigned for its elev- 
 ation : — and during the time the ground was preparing for its recep- 
 tion, the barriers of the bottom of the inclosure were opened for the 
 villagers to approach, and adorn it with ribbons, garlands, and flowers, 
 as their inclination prompted them. 
 
 « The pole being sufficiently onerated with finery, the square was 
 cleared from such as had no part to perform in the pageant ; and 
 then it was elevated amidst the reiterated acclamations of the spec- 
 tators. The woodmen and the milk-maidens danced around it ac- 
 cording to the rustic fashion ; the measure was played by Peretto 
 Cheveritte, the baron's chief minstrel, on the bagpipes accompanied 
 with the pipe and tabour, performed by one of his associates. Wlien 
 the dance was finished, (iregory the jester, who undertook to play 
 the hobby-horse, came forward with his appropriate equipment, and, 
 
 * The mole-taker, in this place, personates liic character of theyoo/or domestic buffoon. 
 VOL. I. z
 
 170 
 
 frisking up and down the square without restriction, imitated the 
 galloping, curvetting, ambling, trotting, and other paces of a horse, 
 to the infinite satisfaction of the lower classes of the * spectators. 
 He was followed by Peter Parker, the baron's ranger, who personated 
 a dragon, hissing, yelling, and shaking his wings with wonderful in- 
 genuity ; and to complete the mirth, Morris, in the character of 
 Much, having small bells attached to his knees and elbows, capered 
 here and there between the two monsters in the form of a dance ; 
 and as often as he came near to the sides of the inclosure, he cast 
 slily a handful of meal into the faces of the gaping rustics, or rapped 
 them about their heads with the bladder tied at the end of his f pole. 
 In the mean time, Sampson, representing Friar Tuck, walked with 
 much gravity around the square, and occasionally let fall his heavy 
 staff upon the toes of such of the crowd as he thought were approach- 
 ing more forward than they ought to do ; and if the sufferers cried 
 out from the sense of pain, he addressed them in a solemn tone of 
 voice, advising them to count their beads, say a paternoster or two, 
 and to beware of purgatory. These vagaries were highly palatable 
 to the populace, who announced their delight by repeated plaudits 
 and loud bursts of laughter ; for this reason they were continued for a 
 considerable length of time : but Gregory, beginning at last to faulter 
 in his paces, ordered the dragon to fall back : the well-nurtured beast, 
 being out of breath, readily obeyed, and their two companions followed 
 their example ; which conchided this part of the pastime. 
 
 * The management of the hobby-horse appears to have been the most difficult part of 
 the May-day festivities, and from the following passage in an old play, to have required 
 some preparatory discipline. A character personating this piece of pageantry, and angry 
 with the mayor of the town as being his rival, calls out, " Let the mayor play the hobby- 
 horse among his brethren, an he will, I hope our towne-lads cannot want a hobby-horse. 
 Have I practic'd my reines, my careeres, my pranckers, my ambles, my false trotts, my 
 smooth ambles and Canterbury paces, and shall master mayor put me besides tlie hobby- 
 horse? Have I borrowed the fore horse bells, his plumes and braveries, nay had his 
 mane new shorne and frizl'd, and shall the mayor put me besides the hobby -laorse ?" The 
 Vow breaker, by Sampson. 
 
 f The morris-dance in this description of the May-game seems to have been performed 
 chiefly by the fool, with the occasional assistance of the hobby-horse, which was always 
 decorated with bells, and the dragon.
 
 171 
 
 " Then the archers set up a target at the lower part of the Green, 
 and made trial of th«ir skill in a regular succession. Robin Hood 
 and Will Stukely excelled their comrades : and both of them lodged 
 an arrow in the centre circle of gold, so near to each other that the 
 difference could not readily be decided, which occasioned them to 
 shoot again ; when Robin struck the gold a second time, and 
 Stukely's arrow was affixed upon the edge of it. Robin was there- 
 fore adjudged the conqueror ; and the prize of honour, a garland of 
 laurel embellished with variegated ribbons, was put upon his head ; 
 and to Stukely was given a garland of ivy, because he was the second 
 best performer in that contest. 
 
 " The pageant was finished with the archery ; and the procession 
 began to move away, to make room for the villagers, who afterwards 
 assembled in the square, and amused themselves by dancing round 
 the May-pole in promiscuous companies, according to the ancient 
 custom." * 
 
 In consequence of the opposition, however, of the puritans, during 
 the close of Elizabeth's reign, who considered the rights of May-day 
 as relics of paganism, much havoc was made among the Dramatis 
 Personae of this festivity. Sometimes instead of Robin and Marian, 
 only a Lord or Lady of the day was adopted ; frequently the friar 
 was not suffered to appear, and still more frequently was the hobby- 
 horse interdicted. This zealous interference of the sectarists was ridi- 
 culed by the poets of the day, and among the rest by Shakspeare, who 
 quotes a line from a satirical ballad on this subject, and represents 
 Hamlet as terming it an epitaph ; " Else shall he suffer not thinking 
 on," says he, " with the hobby-horse ; whose epitaph is, For, 0,for, 
 0, the hobby horse is forgot." f He has the same aUusion in Love's 
 Labour's Lost X ; and Ben Jonson has still more explicitly noticed 
 the neglect into which this character in the May-games had fallen in 
 his days. 
 
 * Strutt's Queenhoo- Hall, a romance, vol. i. p. 13. et seq. 
 f Act iii. sc. 2. Read's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 198. 
 X Act iii, sc. 1, Heed's Shakespeare, vol. vii. p. 53, 54. 
 
 z 2
 
 172 
 
 " But see, the Hobby-horse is forgot. 
 Foole, it must be your lot; 
 To supply his want with faces, 
 And some other Buffon graces ;" * 
 
 and again, still more pointedly, — 
 
 " Clo. They should be Morris dancers by their gingle, but they have no napkins. 
 Coc. No, nor a hobby-horse. 
 
 Clo. Oh, he's often forgotten, that's no rule ; but there is no maid Marian nor Friar 
 amongst them, which is the surer mark. 
 Coc. Nor a Foole that I see." f 
 
 In Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-comedy called Women Pleased, 
 the aversion of the puritans to this festive beast is strikingly depicted ; 
 where the person who was destined to perform the hobby-horse, being 
 converted by his wife, exclaims vehemently against the task imposed 
 upon him. 
 
 " Hob. 
 I do defie thee and thy foot-cloth too, 
 And tell thee to thy face, this prophane riding 
 I feel it in my conscience, and I dare speak it. 
 This unedified ambling hath brought a scourge upon us. — 
 
 Far. 
 Will you dance no more, neighbour ? 
 
 Hob. 
 
 Surely no. 
 
 Carry the beast to his crib : I have renounc'd him 
 
 And all his works. 
 
 Soto. 
 Shall the Hobby-horse be forgot then ? 
 The hopeful Hobby-horse, shall he lye founder' d F 
 
 * Entertainment of the Queen and Prince at Althorpe. 1603. fol. edit. vol. i. p. 99. 
 t The Metamophosed Gipsies, fol. edit. vol. 2. p. 65. — This folio edition of Jonson's 
 works, in two volumes, dated 1640, is not regularly paged to the close of each volume; 
 . for instance, in vol. i. the Dramas terminate at p. <>68, and then the Epigrammes, Forest, 
 Masques, &c. eommence with p. 1.
 
 173 
 
 Hob. 
 1 cry out on't, 
 
 'Twas the forerunning sin brought in those tilt-staves, 
 They brandish 'gainst the church, tlie Devil calls Maij poles.'" * 
 
 From one of these puritans, named Stephen Gosson, we learn, 
 Ukewise, that Morrice-dancers and Hobby-horses had been introduced 
 even upon tlie stage during the early part of the reign of Elizabeth ; 
 for this writer, in a tract published about 1579, and entitled Plays 
 Confuted, says, that " the Devil beeside the beautie of the houses, 
 and the stages, sendeth in gearish apparell, maskes, ranting, tumbhng, 
 dauncing of gigges, galiardes, morisces, hobbi-horses, &c." f By the con- 
 tinued railings and invectives, however, of these fanatics, the May- 
 oames were, at length, so broken in upon, that had it not been for the 
 Book of Sports, or lawful Recreations upon Sunday after Evening-prayers, 
 and upon Holy-days, issued by King James in 1618, they would 
 have been totally extinct. This curious volume permitted May-games, 
 Morris-dances, Whitsun-ales, the setting up of May-poles, &c. % ; and 
 
 * Activ. sc. 1. Jonson mhii Bartholmevo Fayre, acted in the year 1614, has a character 
 
 of ihis kind, a Baker, who has undergone a similar conversion, and is thus introduced: — 
 " Win. W. What call you the Reverend Elder, you told me of? your Banbury-man. 
 Joh. Rabbi Busy, Sir, he is more than an Elder, he is a Prophet, Sir. 
 Quar. O, I know him ! a Baker, is he not ? 
 Joh. Hee was a Baker, Sir, but hee do's dreame now, and see visions, he has given 
 
 over his Trade. 
 
 Qiiar. I remember that too : out of a scruple hee tooke, tliat (in spic'd conscience) 
 those Cakes hee made, were serv'd to Bridales, May poles, Morrisscs, and such prophane 
 feasts and meetings ; his Christen-name is Zeale-of-the-land Busye." 
 
 Jonson's Works, fol. edit. vol. ii. p. vi. act i. sc. 3. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol.xviii. p. 198, note, Steevens. 
 
 X Wilson, censuring these indulgences, places the era of the publication of the Book 
 of Sports under 1617, and says of it, that " some of the Bishops, pretending Recreations, 
 and liberty to servants and the common people (of which they carved to themselves too 
 much already) procured the King to put out a Book to permit dancing about May-poles, 
 Church-ales, and such debauched exercises upon the Sabbath-Day after Evening-Prayer 
 (being a specious way to make the King, and them, acceptable to the Rout) : which Book 
 came out with a command, injoyning all Ministers to read it to their parishioners, and 
 to approve of it ; and those that did not, were brought into the high Commission, im- 
 prisoned and suspended." The History of Great Britain, being the Life and Reign of 
 King James the First, relating to what passed from his first access to the Crown, till his 
 death. Folio, London 1653. p. 105.
 
 174 
 
 had it not allowed church-ales, and dancing on the Sabbath, would 
 have been unexceptionable in its tendency ; for as honest Burton 
 observes, in allusion to this very Declaration of King James, " Danc- 
 ing, Singing, Masking, Mumming, Stage-playes, howsoever they be 
 heavily censured by some severe Catoes, yet if ojjjmrfuneli/ and soberhj 
 used, may justly be approved. Melius est fodere, quam saltare, saith 
 Augustin : but what is that if they delight in it ? Nemo saltat sobrius. 
 But in what kind of dance ? I know these sports have many oppugners, 
 whole volumes writ against them ; when as all they say (if duly con- 
 sidered) is but ignoratio Elenchi ; and some again, because they are 
 now cold and wayward, past themselves, cavil at all such youthful 
 sports in others, as he did in the Comedy ; they think them, illico 
 nasci senes, &c. Some out of preposterous zeal object many times 
 trivial arguments, and because of some abuse, will quite take away 
 the good use, as if they should forbid wine, because it makes men 
 drunk ; but in my judgment they are too stern : there is a time for 
 all things, a tinie to mourn, a time to dance. Eccles. 3. 4. a time to 
 einbrace, a time not to embrace, (ver. 5.) and nothing better than that a 
 mati should rejoice in his own works, ver. 22. For my part, I will sub- 
 scribe to the King's Declaration, and was ever of that mind, those 
 Mai/-ga?nes, Wakes, and Whitsun-ales, &c. if they be not at unseason- 
 able hours, may justly be permitted. I.et them freely feast, sing and 
 dance, have their poppei-jilxiyes, hobby-horses, tabers, crouds, bag- 
 jnpes, &c., play at ball, and baiiey-brakes, and what sports and recrea^ 
 tions they like best." * All these festivities, however, on May-day, 
 were again set aside, by still greater enthusiasts, during the period of 
 the Commonwealth, and were once more revived at the Restoration ; 
 at present, few vestiges remain either of those ancient rites, or of 
 those attendant on other popular periodical festivals. •(• 
 
 * Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 8th edit. fol. p. 1/1. 
 
 f " The last May-pole in London was taken down in l/l/j and conveyed to Wanstead 
 in Essex, where it was fixed in the Park for the siiiiport of an immensely large telescope. 
 Its original height was upwards of one hundred feet above the surface of the ground, and
 
 175 
 
 Several of the amusements, and some of the characters attendant 
 on the celebration of May-day, were again introduced at Whitsun- 
 tide, especially the morris-dance, which was as customary on this 
 period of festivity as on the one immediately preceding it. Thus 
 Shakspeare, in King Henry V., makes the Dauphin say, alluding to 
 the youthful follies of the English monarch, 
 
 " Let us do it with no show of fear ; 
 
 No, with no more, than if we heard that England 
 Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance." * 
 
 The rural sports and feasting at Whitsuntide were usually desig- 
 nated by the term Whitsun-ales ; ale being in the time of Shakspeare, 
 and for a century or two, indeed, before him, synonymous Wxih festival 
 or merry-making. Chaucer and the author of Pierce Plowman use 
 the word repeatedly in this sense, and the following passages from 
 our great poet, from Jonson, and from Ascham, prove that it was 
 familiar, in their time, in the sense of simple carousing, church-feast- 
 ing, and Wliitsuntide recreation, Launcelot, in the Txeo Gentle- 
 men of Verona, exclaims to Speed, " Thou hast not so much charity 
 in thee, as to go to the ale with a Christian f ;" and Ascham, speaking 
 oftheconduct of husbandmen, in his Toxophilus, observes that those 
 which have their dinner and drink in the field, " have fatter barnes in 
 the harvest, than they which will either sleape at noonetyme of the 
 day, or els make merye with theyr neighbours at the aleT % In the 
 chorus to the first act of Pericles, it is recorded of an old song, that 
 
 its station on the East side of Somerset- House, where the new church now stands. — 
 Pope thus perpetuates its remembrance : 
 
 Amidst the area wide they took their stand, 
 
 Where the tall May-pole once o'erlook'd the Strand." 
 
 Clavis Calendaria, vol. i. p. 318. 
 
 * Act ii. sc. 4. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 354. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 231. act ii. sc. 6. 
 
 ± Ascham's Works apud Bennet, p. 62, 63.
 
 17fi 
 
 " It bath been sung at festivals, 
 On ember-eves, and holij-alcs." * 
 
 And Jonson says, 
 
 " All the neighbourhood, from old records 
 
 Of antique proverbs drawn from TV/a'tson lords. 
 And their authorities at wakes and ales, 
 With country precedents, and old wives tales, 
 We bring you now." f 
 
 It will be necessary, in this place, therefore, to notice briefly, as 
 being periods of festivity, the various Ales which were observed by 
 our ancestors in the sixteenth century. They may be enumerated 
 under the heads of Leet-ale, Lamb-ale, Bride-ale, Clerk-ale, Church- 
 ale and Whitsun-ale. We shall confine our attention at present, 
 however, principally to the two latter ; for of the Lamb-ale and Bride- 
 ale, an occasion will occur to speak more at large in a subsequent part 
 of this chapter, and a very few words will suffice with regard to the 
 Leet-ale and the Clerk-ale ; the former being merely the dinner pro- 
 vided for the jury and customary tenants at the court-leet of a manor, 
 or View of frank pledge, formerly held once or twice a year, before 
 the steward of the leet \ ; to this court Shakspeare alludes, in his 
 Taming of the Shrew, where the servant tells Sly, that in his dream 
 he would " rail upon the hostess of the house," and threaten to 
 
 " present her at the leet :"§ 
 
 and the latter, which usually took place at Easter, is thus mentioned 
 by Aubrey in his manuscript History of Wiltshire. " In the Easter 
 holidays was the Clarkes-Ale, for his private benefit and the solace of 
 the neio;hbourhood." 11 
 
 'to 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xxi. p. 155. 
 f Jonson's Works, fol. edit. 
 
 :j: " A leet," observes BulJokar, in his English Expositor, IG16, " -is a court, or law- 
 day, holden commonly every half year." 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 33. act i. sc. 2. 
 
 II Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. \29, note.
 
 177 
 
 The Church-ale was a festival instituted sometimes in honour of the 
 church-saint, but more frequently for the purpose of contributing 
 towards the repair or decoration of the church. On this occasion it 
 was the business of the churchwardens to brew a considerable quantity 
 of strong ale, which was sold to the populace in the church-jard, and 
 to the better sort in the church itself, a practice which, independent 
 of the profit arising from the sale of the liquor, led to great pecuniary 
 advantages ; for the rich thought it a meritorious duty, beside paying 
 for their ale, to offer largely to the holy fund. It was no uncommon 
 thing indeed to have four, six, or eight of these ales yearly, and some- 
 times one or more parishes agreed to hold annually a certain number 
 of these meetings, and to contribute individually a certain sum. Of this 
 a very curious proof may be drawn from the following stipvilation, 
 preserved in Dodsworth's Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: — ■ 
 " The parishioners of Elveston and Okebrook, in Derbyshire, agree 
 jointly, to brew four Ales, and every Ale of one quarter of malt, betwixt 
 this (the time of contract) and the feast of saint John Baptist next 
 coming. And that every inhabitant of the said town of Okebrook 
 shall be at the several Ales. And every husband and his wife shall 
 pay two pence, and every cottager one penny, and all the inhabitants 
 of Elveston shall have and receive all the profits and advantages 
 coming of the said Ales, to the use and behoof of the said church of 
 Elveston. And the inhabitants of Elveston shall brew eight Ales 
 betwixt this and the feast of saint John Baptist, at the which Ales the 
 inhabitants of Okebrook shall come and pay as before rehersed. And 
 if he be away at one Ale, to pay at the toder Ale for both, &c." * 
 
 The date of this document is anterior to the Reformation, but that 
 church-ales were equally popular and frequent in the days of Shakspeare 
 will be evident from the subsequent passages in Carew and Philip 
 Stubbes. The historian of Cornwall, whose work was first printed in 
 1602, says that "for the church-ale, two young men of the parish are 
 yerely chosen by their last foregoers, to be wardens ; who, dividing 
 
 * MSS. Bibl. Bod., vol. cxlviii. fol. 97.' 
 VOL. I. ' A A
 
 178 
 
 the task, malce collection among the parishioners, of what soever 
 provision it pleaseth them voluntarily to bestow. This they imploy in 
 brewing, baking, and other acates, against Wliitsontide ; upon which 
 holy-dayes the neighbours meet at the church-house, and there merii> 
 feede on their owne victuals, contributing some petty portion to 
 the stock ; which, by many smalls, groweth to a meetley greatness : 
 for there is entertayned a kinde of emulation betweene these wardens, 
 who by his graciousness in gathering, and good husbandry in expend- 
 ing, can best advance the churches profit. Besides, the neighbour 
 parishes at those times lovingly visit one another, and this way 
 frankely spend their money together. The afternoones are consumed 
 in such exercises as olde and yong folke (having leysure) doe accustom- 
 ably weare out the time withall." * Stubbes in his violent phihppic 
 declares that, " in certaine townes, where drunken Bacchus bears 
 swaie against Christmas and Easter, ^^^litsundav, or some other time, 
 the churchwardens, for so they call them, of every parish, with the 
 consent of the whole parish, provide half a score or twentie quarters 
 of mault, whereof some they buy of the church stocke, and some is 
 given to them of the parishioners themselves, every one conferring 
 somewhat, according to his ability ; which mault being made into very 
 strong ale, or beer, is set to sale, either in the church or in some other 
 place assigned to that purposa Then, when this nippitatum, this 
 huffe-cappe, as they call it, this nectar of life, is set abroach, well is he 
 that can get the soonest to it, and spends the most at it, for he is 
 counted the godliest man of all the rest, and most in God's favour, 
 because it is spent upon his church forsooth." f 
 
 There is but too much reason to suppose that the satire of this bitter 
 writer was not, in this instance, ill directed, and that meetings of this de- 
 scription, though avowedly for the express benefit of the church, were 
 often productive of licentiousness, and consequently highly injurious 
 both to morals and religion. A few hnes from Ben Jonson will pro- 
 
 * Carew's Survey of CornwaU, edit, of 1769. p- 68. 
 t Amitomie of Abuses, A. D. 1595.
 
 179 
 
 bably place this beyond doubt. In his Masque of Queens, performed 
 at Wliitehall, 1609, he represents one of his witches as exclaiming 
 
 " I had a dagger : wliat did I with that ? 
 Kill'd an infant, to have his fat : 
 A Piper it got, at a Church-ale." * 
 
 Returning to the consideration of the Whitsuntide amusements, it 
 may be observed, that not only was the morris a constituent part in 
 their celebration, but that the Maid Marian of the May-games was 
 frequently introduced : thus Shirley represents one of his characters 
 exclaiming against rural diversions m the following manner : 
 
 " Observe with what solemnity 
 
 They keep their wakes, and throw for pewter candiestickes. 
 
 How they become the morris, with whose bells 
 
 They ring all into Whltson ales, and sweate 
 
 Through twentie scarfFes and napkins, till the Hobby-horse 
 
 Tire, and the maide Martian dissolv'd to a gelly. 
 
 Be kept for spoone meate." f 
 
 The festivities, indeed, on this occasion, as at those on May-day, 
 were often regulated by a Lord and Lady of the Whitsun-ales. % Very 
 frequently, however, there was elected only a Lord of Misrule, and as 
 the church or holy ales were not unfrequently combined with the 
 merriments of this season, the church-yard, especially on the sabbath- 
 day, was too generally the scene of rejoicing. Tire severity of Stubbes, 
 when censuring this profanation of consecrated ground, will scarcely 
 
 * Jonson's "Works, fol. edit. vol. i. p. 166. 
 
 f The Lady of Pleasure, act i. 
 
 X The former of which is thus noticed by Sir Philip Sidney : — 
 
 " Strephon, with leavy twigs of laurell tree, 
 A garlant made on temples for to weare, 
 
 For he then chosen was the digtiitie 
 Of village Lord that Wliitsiintide to beare." 
 
 The Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadie, 7th edit. fol. 1629. p. 84. 
 
 A A 2
 
 180 
 
 be deemed too keen : " First," says he, " all the wilde heads of the 
 parish, flocking together, chuse them a graund captaine (of mischiefe) 
 whom they inrolle with the title of tny Lord of misrule, and him they 
 crowne with great solemnitie, and adopt for their king. This king 
 annoynted, chooseth foorth twentie, fourtie, threescore, or a hundred 
 lustie guttes like to himselfe to wait upon his lordly majesty, and to 
 guarde his noble person. — (Here he describes the dress of the morris 
 dancers, as quoted in a former page, and proceeds as follows.) Thus 
 all things set in order, then have they their hobby-horses, their dragons 
 and other antiques, together with their baudie pipers, and thundering- 
 drummers, to strike up the Devils Daunce withall : then martch this 
 heathen company towards the church and church-yarde, their pypers 
 pypyng, their drummers thundering, their stumpes dauncing, their 
 belles jyngling, their handkercheefes fluttering about their heads like 
 madde men, their hobbie horses, and other monsters skirmishing 
 amongst the throng : and in this sorte they goe to the church like 
 Devils incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare 
 his owne voyce. Then the foolish people they looke, they stare, they 
 laugh, they fleere, and mount upon formes and pewes, to see these 
 goodly pageants solemnized in this sort. Then after this about the 
 church they goe againe and againe, and so foorth into the church yard, 
 whei-e they have commonly their summer haules, their bowers, arbom-s, 
 and banqetting houses set up, wherein they feast, banquet, and daunce 
 all that day, and (peradventure) all that night too. And thus 
 these terrestrial furies spend the Sabboth day. Another sort of 
 fantastical fooles bring to these helhoundes (the Lord of misrule and 
 his complices) some bread, some good ale, some new cheese, some old 
 cheese, some custardes, some cracknels, some cakes, some flaunes, 
 some tartes, some creame, some meat, some one thing, some another ; 
 but if they knewe that as often as they bringe anye to the maintenance 
 of these execrable pastimes, they offer sacrifice to the Devill and 
 Sathanas, they would repente and with drawe their handes, which 
 God graunt they may." * 
 
 * Anatomic of Abuses, 1595. p. 107.
 
 181 
 
 Dramatic exliibitions, called Whitsun plays, were common, ut this 
 season, both in town and country, and in the latter they were chiefly 
 of a pastoral character. Shakspeare has an allusion to them in his 
 Winter s Tale, where Perdita, addressing Florizel, says, 
 
 " Come, take your flowers : 
 
 ) Methinks, I play as I have seen them do 
 
 In Wkitsun' 2>astorah," * 
 
 Soon after \Vhitsuntide began the season of sheep-shearing, which 
 was generally terminated about midsummer, and either at its com- 
 mencement or close, was distinguished by the Lamb-ale or Sheep- 
 shearing Feast. At Kidlington in Oxfordshire, it seems to have 
 been ushered in by ceremonies of a peculiar kind, for, according to 
 Blount, " the Monday after the Whitsun week, a fat lamb was pro- 
 vided, and the maidens of the town, having their thumbs tied behind 
 them, were permitted to run after it, and she who with her mouth 
 took hold of the lamb was declared the Lady of the Lamb, which, 
 being killed and cleaned, but with the skin hanging upon it, was 
 carried on a long pole before the lady and her companions to the 
 green, attended with music, and a morisco dance of men, and another 
 of women. The rest of the day was spent in mirth and merry glee. 
 Next day the lamb, partly baked, partly boiled, and partly roasted, 
 was served up for the lady's feast, where she sat, majesticallv at the 
 upper end of the table, and her companions with her, the music 
 playing during the repast, which, being finished, the solemnity 
 ended." f 
 
 The most usual mode, however, of celebrating this important 
 period was by a dinner, music, with songs, ' and the election of 
 a Shepherd King, an office always conferred upon the individual 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 341. Activ. sc. 3. — Whitsun playesor mysteries, which 
 at first were exclusively drawn from the sacred page, may be traced to the fourteenth 
 century; those which were performed at Chester have been attributed to Ranulph Hig- 
 den, the chronicler, who died 136'3. 
 
 f Blount's Ancient Tenures, p. 49, and Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 3 1 6.
 
 182 
 
 whose flock had produced the earhest lamb. The dinner is thus en- 
 joined by the rustic muse of Tusser : — 
 
 " Wife make us a dinner, spare flesh neither come, 
 
 Make wafers and cakes, for our sheepe must be shorne, 
 At sheep -shearing, neighbours none other things crave, 
 But good cheare and welcome, hke neighbours to have." * 
 
 But it is from Drayton that we derive the most minute account of 
 the festival ; who in the fourteenth song of his Poly-Olbion, and 
 still more at large in his ninth Eclogue, has given a most pleasing 
 picture of this rural holy-day : — 
 
 " When the new-wash'd flock from the river's side. 
 Coming as white as January's snow, 
 The ram with nosegays bears his horns in pride, 
 And no less brave the bell-wether doth go. 
 
 After their fair flocks in a lusty rout. 
 
 Come the gay swains with bag-pipes sts-ongly blown, 
 
 And busied, though this solemn sport about. 
 
 Yet had each one an eye unto his own. 
 
 And by the ancient statutes of the field, 
 He that his flocks the earliest lamb should bring, 
 (As it fell out then, Rowland's charge to yield) 
 Always for that year was the shepherd's king. 
 
 And soon preparing for the shepherd's board, 
 Upon a green that curiously was squar'd. 
 With country cates being plentifully stor'd : 
 And 'gainst their coming handsomely prepar'd. 
 
 New whig, with water from the clearest stream, 
 C ■ Green plumbs, and wildings, cherries chief of feast, 
 
 Fresh cheese, and dowsets, curds, and clouted cream, 
 Spic'd syllibubs, and cyder of the best : 
 
 And to the same down solemnly they sit, 
 In the fresh shadow of their summer bowel's. 
 With sundry sweets them every way to fit, 
 The neighb'ring vale despoiled of her flowers. — 
 
 * Tusser apud Hilton, p. 80.
 
 183 
 
 Wlien now, at last, as lik'd the shepherd's king, 
 (At whose command they all obedient were) 
 Was pointed, who the roundelay should sing. 
 And who again the under-song should bear." * 
 
 ^hakspeare also, in his Winter s Tale, has presented us not only 
 with a list of the good things necessary for a sheep-shearing feast, 
 but he describes likewise the attentions which were due, on this oc- 
 casion, from the hostess, or Shepherd's Queen. 
 
 " Let me see," says the Clown, " what I am to buy for our sheep- 
 shearing feast ? 77^ree pound of sugar ; Jive pound of currants ; rice 
 
 Wliat will this sister of mine do with rice ? But my father hath 
 
 made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. . She hath made 
 me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers : three-man song-men 
 all f , and very good ones ; but they are most of them means % and 
 bases : but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to horn- 
 pipes. I must have saffron, to colour the warden pies ; mace, — 
 dates, — none; that's out of my note: nutmegs, seven; a race, or two, 
 of ginger : but that I may beg; — four pound of prunes, and as many 
 of raisins o the sun.^' § 
 
 The culinary articles in this detail are somewhat more expensive 
 than those enumerated by Drayton ; and Mr. Steevens, in a note on 
 this passage of the Winter's Tale, observes that " the expence at- 
 tending these festivities, appears to have afforded matter of com- 
 plaint. Thus, in Questions of profitable and pleasant Concernings, 
 &c. 1594 : ' If it be a sheep-shearing feast, maister Baily can enter- 
 taine you with his bill of reckonings to his maister of three sheap- 
 heard's wages, spent on fresh cates, besides spices and saff'ro?i 
 pottage. " II 
 
 The shepherd's reproof to his adopted daughter, Perdita, as Polix- 
 enes remarks, 
 
 the prettiest low-born lass, that ever 
 
 Ran on the green- sward," 
 
 * Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 443. f fingers of catches in three parts. 
 
 :j: By means are meant tenors. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 323, 324. Act iv. sc. 2. 
 
 II Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 323. note 5.
 
 184 
 
 implies indirectly the duties which were expected by the peasants, on 
 this day, from their rural queen, and which seems to have been 
 sufficiently numerous and laborious : — 
 
 " Fye, daughter, when my old wife liv'd, upon 
 This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook; 
 Both dame and servant : welcom'd all ; serv'd all : 
 Would sing her song, and dance her turn : npw here, 
 At upper end o'the table, now, ithe middle : 
 On his shoulder, and his : her face o'fire 
 With labour ; and the thing, she took to quench it. 
 She would to each one sip : You are retir'd, 
 As if you were a feasted one, and not 
 The hostess of tlie meeting : Pray you, bid 
 Tliese unknown friends to us welcome : for it is 
 A way to make us better friends, more known. 
 Come, quench your blushes ; and present yourself 
 That which you arc, mistress o'the feast : Come on, 
 And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing. 
 As your good flock shall prosper." * 
 
 It should be remarked that one material part of this welcome ap- 
 pears, from the context, to have consisted in the distribution of 
 various flowers, suited to the ages of the respective visitors, a cere- 
 mony which was, probably, customary at this season of rejoicing. 
 
 " Pei'dita. Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. — Reverend sirs, 
 For you there's rosemary, and rue ; these keep 
 Seeming, and savour, all the winter long : 
 Grace, and remembrance, be to you both. 
 And welcome to our shearing ! 
 
 Here's flowers for you ; 
 Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram ; 
 The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun. 
 And with him rises weeping ; these are flowers 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 334. Act iv. sc. 3. — I beUeve the custom of choosing 
 a king and queen at the sheep-shearing feast, is still continued in several of our counties ; 
 that it was commonly observed, at least, in the time of Thomson, is evident from the fol- 
 lowing lines, taken from his description of this festival : — 
 " One, chief, in gracious dignity enthron'd, 
 
 Shines o'er the rest, the Pas'tral Queen, and rays 
 
 Her smiles, sweet-beaming on her SJiepherd King." Summer.
 
 185 
 
 Of middle summer, and, I think, they are given 
 To men of middle age : You are very welcome. — 
 
 Now, my fairest friend, 
 
 I would, I had some flowei's of the spring, that might 
 Become your time of day ; and yours, and yours ; 
 That wear upon your virgin branches yet 
 Your maidenheads growing : — O, these I lack. 
 To make you garlands of" 
 
 # 
 
 A custom somewhat allied to this, that of scattering flowers on the 
 streams at shearing time, has been long observed in the south-west of 
 England, and is thus alluded to as an ancient rite by Dyer, in his 
 beautifully descriptive poem entitled The Fleece : 
 
 " With light fantastic toe, the nymphs ' 
 
 Thither assembled, thither ev'ry swain ; 
 
 And o'er the dimpled stream a thousand flowers. 
 
 Pale lilies, roses, violets and pinks, 
 
 Mixt with the greens of burnet, mint and thyme. 
 
 And trefoil, sprinkled with their sportive arms. 
 
 Such custom holds along the irriguous vales. 
 
 From Wreakin's brow to rocky Dolvoryn, 
 
 Sabrina's early haunt." f 
 
 That one of the principal seasons of rejoicing should take place on 
 securely collecting the fruits of the field, it is natural to expect ; and 
 accordingly, in almost every country, a Harvest-Home, or Feast, has 
 been observed on this occasion. 
 
 Much of the festivity and jocular freedom however, which sub- 
 sisted formerly at this period, has been worn away by the increasing 
 refinements and distinctions of society. In the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, and, indeed, during a part of the eighteenth, the 
 Harvest, or Mell, Supper, as it was sometimes called, from the 
 French word Mesler, to mingle or mix together, was a scene not only 
 remarkable for merriment and hospitality, but for a temporary sus- 
 pension of all inequality between master and man. The whole 
 family sate down at the same table, and conversed, danced, and sang 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 334, 335. 337, 338. 340. 
 f Dyer's Fleece, book i. sub Jinem. 
 
 VOL. I. B B
 
 186 
 
 together during the entire night without difference or distinction of 
 any kind ; and, in many places indeed, this freedom of manner sub- 
 sisted during the whole period of getting in the Harvest. Thus 
 Tusser, recommending the social equality of the Harvest-tide, ex- 
 claims, 
 
 " In harvest time, harvest folke, servants and al, 
 
 should make altogither, good cheere in the hal : 
 And fil out the blacke bol, of bleith to their song, 
 and let them be merrie, al harvest time long." * 
 
 Of this ancient convivial licence, a modern rural poet has drawn a 
 most pleasing picture, lamenting, at the same time, that the Harvest- 
 Feast of the present day is but the phantom of what it was : — 
 
 " The aspect only with the substance gone. 
 
 Behold the sound oak table's massy frame 
 Bestride the kitchen floor ! the careful dame 
 And gen'rous host invite their friends around, 
 While all that clear" d the crop, or till'd the ground. 
 
 Are guests by right of custom : 
 
 Here once a year Distinction low'rs its crest. 
 The master, servant, and the merry guest, 
 Are equal all ; and round the happy ring 
 The reaper's eyes exulting glances fling, 
 And, warm'd with gratitude, he quits his place. 
 With sun-burnt hands and ale-enliven'd face, 
 Refills the jug his honour'd host to tend. 
 To serve at once the master and the friend ; 
 Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale, 
 His nuts, his conversation, and his ale. 
 
 Such were the days, of days long past I sing," f 
 
 * Tusser Redivivus, p. 104. In the first edition of Tusser, 1557, this stanza is as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Then welcome thy harvest folke, serveauntes and all: 
 with mirth and good chere, let them furnish the hall. 
 The harvest lorde nightly, must give thee a song: 
 fiill him then the blacke bolJ, or els he hath wrong." 
 
 Reprint by Sir Egerton Brydges, p. 19. 
 
 t Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy, Summer, 1, 299.
 
 187 
 
 It will be necessary to enter a little more minutely into the rites 
 and ceremonies which accompanied this annual feast in the days of 
 Shakspeare, and fortunately we can appeal to a few curious docu- 
 ments on which dependence can be placed. Hentzner, a learned 
 German who travelled through Germany, England, France, and 
 Italy, towards the close of the sixteenth century, and whose Itinerary, 
 as far as it relates to this country, has been translated by the late 
 Lord Orford, says, " as we were returning to our inn (from Windsor), 
 we happened to meet some country people celebrating their harvest- 
 home ; their last load of corn they crown with flowers, havin» besides 
 an image richly dressed, by which, perhaps, they would signify 
 Ceres ; this they keep moving about, while men and women, men 
 and maid servants, riding through the streets in the cart, shout as 
 loud as they can till they arrive at the barn." * Dr. Moresin also 
 another foreigner, who published, in the reign of James I., an ela- 
 borate work on the " Origin and Increase of Depravity in Relio-ion," 
 relates that he saw " in England the country people bringino- home, 
 in a cart from the harvest field, a figure made of corn, round which 
 men and women were promiscuously singing, preceded by a piper 
 and a drum." \ 
 
 To this custom of accompanying home the last waggon-load of 
 com, at the close of harvest, with music, Shakspeare is supposed to 
 allude in the Merchant of Venice, where Lorenzo tells the musicians 
 to pierce his mistress' ear with sweetest touches, 
 
 " And draw her home with musick." % 
 
 It was usual also, not only to feast the men and women, but to 
 reward likewise the boys and girls who were in any degree instru- 
 
 • Paul Hentzner's Travels in England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, trans- 
 lated by Horace, late Earl of Orford. Edit, of I797. p. 55. 
 
 t « Anglos vidi spiceam ferre domum in Rheda Imaginem circum cantantibus promiscue 
 viris et foeminis, praecedente tibicine aut tympano." Deprav. Rel. Orig. in rerbo Vacina. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 376. Act v. so. ]. 
 
 n B 2
 
 188 
 
 mental in getting in the harvest; accordingly Tusser humanely 
 observes, 
 
 " Once ended thy harvest, let none be begilde, 
 
 please such as did please thee, man, woman and child : 
 Thus doing, with alwaie such helpe as they can, 
 thou winnest the praise, of the labouring man;" * 
 
 an injunction which Mr. Hilman has further explained by subjoining 
 to this stanza the following remark : — " Every one," says he, " that 
 did any thing towards the Inning, must now have some reward, as 
 ribbons, laces, rows of pins to boys and girls, if never so small, for 
 their encouragement, and to be sure plumb-pudding." 
 
 The most minute account, however, which we can now any where 
 meet with, of the ceremonies and rejoicings at Harvest-Home, as 
 they existed during the prior part of the seventeenth century, and 
 which we may justly consider as not deviating from those that accom- 
 panied the same festival in the reign of Elizabeth, is to be found 
 among the poems of Robert Herrick, and will be valued, not exclu- 
 sively for its striking illustration of the subject, but for its merit, 
 likewise, as a descriptive piece. 
 
 « THE HOCK-CART, OR HARVEST-HOME, f 
 
 Come, Sons of Summer, by whose toile 
 We are the Lords of wine and oile : 
 By whose tough labours, and rough hands, 
 We rip up first, then reap our lands. 
 Crown'd with the eares of come, now come, 
 And, to the pipe, sing Harvest-home. 
 Come forth, my Lord, and see the cart 
 Drest up with all the country art. 
 See, here a Maukin, there a sheet. 
 As spotlesse pure, as it is sweet : 
 
 * Tusser Redivivus, p. 104. 
 
 f Hock-£art, — by this word is meant the high or rejoicing-cart, and was applied to the 
 last load of corn, as typical of the close of harvest. Thus Hock-tide is derived from the 
 Saxon Hoah-tibf or high tide, and is expressive of the height of festivity.
 
 189 
 
 The horses, mares, and frisking fillies, 
 
 Clad, all, in linnen, white as lillies. 
 
 The Harvest swaines, and wenches bound 
 
 For joy, to see the Hock-cart crown'd. 
 
 About the cart, heare, how the rout 
 
 Of rurall younglings raise the shout ; 
 
 Pressing before, some coming after. 
 
 These with a shout, and these with laughter. 
 
 Some blesse the cart ; some kisse the sheaves ; 
 
 Some prank them up with oaken leaves : 
 
 Some crosse the fill-horse ; some with great 
 
 Devotion, stroak the home-borne wheat : 
 
 While other rusticks, lesse attent 
 
 To prayers, then to merryment. 
 
 Run after with their breeches rent. 
 
 Well, on, brave boyes, to your Lord's hearth, 
 
 Glitt'ring with fire ; where, for your mirth. 
 
 Ye shall see first the large and cheefe 
 
 Foundation of your feast, fat beefe : 
 
 With upper stories, mutton, veale 
 
 And bacon, which makes fiill the meale; 
 
 With sev'ral dishes standing by. 
 
 As here a custard, there a pie, 
 
 And here all tempting frumentie. 
 
 And for to make the merry cheere, 
 
 If smirking wine be wanting here. 
 
 There's that, which drowns all care, stout beere ; 
 
 Which freely drink to your Lord's health, 
 
 Then to the plough, the commonwealth ; 
 
 Next to your flailes, your fanes, your fats ; 
 
 Then to the maids with wheaten hats ; 
 
 To the rough sickle, and crookt sythe, 
 
 Drink froliick boyes, till all be blythe. 
 
 Feed, and grow fat ; and as ye eat, 
 
 Be mindfull, that the lab'ring neat. 
 
 As you, may have their fill of meat. 
 
 And know, besides, ye must revoke 
 
 The patient oxe unto the yoke, 
 
 And all goe back unto the plough 
 
 And harrow, though they're hang'd up now. 
 
 And, you must know, your Lord's word true, 
 
 Feed him ye must, whose food fils you. 
 
 And that this pleasure is like raine, 
 
 Not sent ye for to drowne your paine. 
 
 But for to make it spring againe. * 
 
 * Hesperides, p. 1 13 — 1 15.
 
 190 
 
 We must not forget that, during the reign of Ehzabeth, anothei- 
 feast-day fell to the lot of the husbandman, at the close of wheat- 
 sowing, in October. This was termed, from one of the chief articles 
 provided for the table. The Seed-Cake, and is no where recorded so 
 distinctly as by the agricultural muse of Tusser : — 
 
 " Wife sometime this week, if the weather hold cleer, 
 an end of wheat-sowing, we make for this yeere : 
 Remember thou therefore, though I do it not, 
 the seed-cake, the pastries, andjurmenty pot." * 
 
 Proceeding with the year, and postponing the consideration of All 
 Hallowmas to the chapter on superstitions, we reach the eleventh of 
 November, or the festival of St. Martin, usually called Martinmas, or 
 Martlemas, a day formerly devoted to feasting and conviviality, and 
 on which a stock of salted provisions was laid in for the winter. This 
 custom of killing cattle, swine, &c. and curing them against the ap- 
 proaching season, was, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
 common every where, though now only partially observed in a few 
 country-villages ; for smoke-dryed meat in those days was more 
 generally relished than at present. We find Tusser, therefore, as 
 might be expected, recommending this savoury diet ; in one place 
 saying to his farmer, — 
 
 " For Easter, at Martilmas, hang up a beefe — 
 With that and the like, yer grasse beef come in, 
 thy folke shall look checrely, when others look thin ;" f 
 
 and again, 
 
 " Martilmas beefe doth bear good lacke, 
 When countrey folke do dainties lacke ; " % 
 
 so, Ukewise, in The Pinner of Wakefield, printed in 1559, 
 
 " A piece of beef hung up since Martlemas." 
 
 Tusser Redivivus, p. 81. f Ibid. p. 14?. X Ibid. p. 77.
 
 191 
 
 Mo resin tells us, in the reign of James L, that there were great 
 rejoicings and feasting on this day throughout Europe, an assertion 
 which is verified by the ancient Calendar of the church of Rome, 
 where under the eleventh of November occur the following observ- 
 ations : — " Martinalia, Geniale Festum. Vina delibantur et defe- 
 cantur. Vinalia veterum festum hue translatum. Bacchus in Martini 
 figura. — Tlie Martinalia, a genial feast. Wines are tasted of and 
 drawn from the lees. The Vinalia, a feast of the Antients, removed 
 to this day. Bacchus in the figure of Martin." * J. Boemus 
 Aubanus likewise informs us, as Mr. Brand remarks, " that in Fran- 
 conia, there was a great deal of eating and drinking at this season ; 
 no one was so poor or niggardly that on the Feast of St. Martin had 
 not his dish of the entrails either of oxen, swine, or calves. They 
 drank, too, he says, very liberally of wine on the occasion." f 
 
 In this country, merriment and good cheer were equally con- 
 spicuous ox\ St. Martin's feast ; the young danced and sang, and the 
 old regaled themselves by the fire-side. A modern poet, who has 
 beautifully copied the antique, under the somewhat stale pretence of 
 discovering an ancient manuscript, presents us with a specimen of 
 his manufacture of considerable merit, under the title of Martilmasse 
 Daye ; this, as being referred to the age of Elizabeth, and recording, 
 with due attention to historical costume, the mirth and revelry which 
 used formerly to distinguish this period, may be admitted here as a 
 species of traditional evidence of no exceptionable kind. The poem, 
 which is supposed to have been found at Norwich, at an ancient 
 Hostelrie, whilst under repair, consists of six stanzas, two of which, 
 however, though possessing poetical and descriptive point, we have 
 omitted, as not referable to any peculiar observance of the day : — 
 
 " It is the day of Martilmasse, 
 Cuppes of ale should freelie passe; 
 
 * Brand on Bourne's Antiquities, p. 392. note edit. 1810. 
 t Ibid. p. 393, 394.
 
 192 
 
 Wliat though Wynter has begunne 
 To push downe t)ie summer sunne, 
 To our fire we can betake 
 And enjoie the cracklinge brake, 
 Never heedinge winter's face 
 On the day of Martilmasse. — 
 
 Some do the citie now frequent, 
 Where costlie shews and merriment 
 Do weare the vaporish ev'ninge out 
 With interlude and revellinse rout; 
 Such as did pleasure Englandes Queene, 
 Wlien here her royal Grace was seene,* 
 Yet will they not this day let passe, 
 The merrie day of Martilmasse. 
 
 Nel hath left her wool at home, 
 The Flanderkin hath stayed his loom,f 
 No beame doth swinge nor wheel go round 
 Upon Gurguntums walled ground ; J 
 
 * The magnificent reception of Queen Elizabeth at Norwich in 1578, has been recorded 
 with great minuteness, in two tracts, by Bernard Goldingham and Thomas Churchyard 
 the poet, which are reprinted in Mr. Nichols's Progresses ; these accounts are likewise 
 incorporated by Abraham Fleming as a supplement to Holinshed, and will be found in 
 the last edition of this chronicler, in vol. iv, p. 375. The pomp and pageantry which 
 were exhibited during this regal visit were equally gorgeous, quaint, and operose ; " order 
 was taken there," says Churchyard, « that every day, for sixe dayes together, a shew of 
 some strange device should be seene; and the maior and aldermen appointed among them- 
 selves and their breethren, that no person reteyning to the Queene, shoulde be unfeasted, 
 or unbidden to dinner and supper, during the space of those sixe dayes: which order was 
 well and wisely observed, and gained their citie more fame and credite, than they wpt of: 
 for that courtesie of theirs shall remayne in perpetuall memorie, whiles the walles of their 
 citie standeth." — Nichols's Progresses of Q. Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 56. 
 
 t The wise policy of Elizabeth in establishing the Flemings in this country gave birth 
 to our vast superiority in the woollen trade ; and the first pageant which met the eyes of 
 EUzabeth on her entrance into Norwich was the artizan-strangers pageant, illustrative of 
 the whole process of the manufactory, « a shewe which pleased her Majestic so greatly, 
 as she particularly viewed the knitting and spinning of the children, perused the loombes, 
 and noted the several workes and commodities which were made by these meanes." — 
 Nichols's Progresses, vol. ii. p. 13. 
 
 t Gerguntum, a fabulous kind of Briton, who is supposed to have built Norwich Castle; 
 in the procession which went out of Norwich to meet the Queen, on the 16th of August, 
 1578, was « one whiche represented King Gurgunt, some tyme king of Englande, whiche 
 buylded the castle of Norwich, called Blanch Flowfe, and layde the foundation of the
 
 193 
 
 Where now no anchorite doth dwell 
 To rise and pray at Lenard's bell : 
 Martyn hath kicked at Balaam's ass, 
 So merrie be old IVIartilmasse. 
 
 When the dailie spoites be done, 
 Round the market crosse they riinne, 
 Prentis laddes, and gallant blades, 
 Dancinge with their gamesome maids, 
 Till the beadel, stoute and sowre. 
 Shakes his bell, and calls the lioure ; 
 Then farewell ladde and farewell lasse, 
 To' th' merry night of Martilmasse." * 
 
 Shakspeare has an allusion to this formerly convivial day in the 
 Second Part of King Henry IV., where Poins, asking Bardolph after 
 FalstafF, says : " How doth the martlemas, yovir master ?" an epithet 
 by which, as Johnson observes, he means the latter spring, or the 
 old fellow with juvenile passions, f 
 
 We have now to record the closing and certainly the greatest fes- 
 tival of the year, the celebration of Christmas, a period which our 
 ancestors were accustomed to devote to hospitality on a very large 
 scale, to the indulgence indeed of hilarity and good cheer for, at least, 
 twelve days, and sometimes, especially among the lower ranks, for 
 six weeks. 
 
 Christmas was always ushered in by the due observance of its Eve, 
 first in a religious and then in a festive point of view. " Our fore- 
 fathers," remarks Bourne, " when the common devotions of the Eve 
 were over, and night was come on, were wont to light up candles of 
 an uncommon size, which were called Christmas-candles, and to lay a 
 
 citie. He was mounted uppon a brave courser, and was thus furnished : his body armed, 
 his bases of greene and white silke ; on his head a black velvet hat, with a plume of white 
 feathers. There attended upon him three henchmen in white and greene : one of them 
 did beare his helmet, the seconde his tergat, the^thirde his staffe." — Nichols's Progresses, 
 vol. ii. p. 5, 6. 
 
 * The Cabinet, vol. ii. p. 75, 76. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 6G. 
 
 VOL. I. C C
 
 194 
 
 log of wood upon the fire, which they termed a Yule-dog, or Christ- 
 mas-block. These were to illuminate the house, mid turn the night 
 into day; which custom, in some measure, is still kept up in the 
 northern parts." * 
 
 This mode of" rejoicing, at the winter solstice, appears to have ori- 
 ginated with the Danes and Pagan Saxons, and was intended to be 
 emblematical of the return of the sun, and its increasing light and 
 heat ; gehol or Geol, Angl. Sax. Jel, Jul, Hull, or Yule, Dan. Sax. 
 Swed., implying the idea of revoh(tio7i or of wheel, and not only 
 designating, among these northern nations, the month of December, 
 called Jul-Monih, but the great feast also of this period, f On the 
 introduction of Christianity, the illuminations of the Eve of Yule were 
 continued as representative of the true light which was then ushered 
 into the world, in the person of our Saviour, the Dai/ spring from on 
 High. 
 
 The ceremonies and festivities which were observed on Christmas- 
 Eve during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which in 
 some parts of the north have been partially continued, until within 
 these last thirty years, consisted in bringing into the house, with 
 much parade and with vocal and instrumental harmony, the Yule or 
 Christmas-block, a massy piece of fire-wood, frequently the enormous 
 root of a tree, and which was usually supplied by the carpenter 
 attached to the family. This being placed in the centre of the great 
 hall, each of the family, in turn, sate down upon it, sung a Yule- 
 Song, and drank to a merry Christmas and a happy new year. It was 
 then placed on the large open hearth in the liall chimney, and, being 
 lighted with the last year's brand, carefully preserved for this express 
 purpose, the music again struck up, when the addition of fuel already 
 inflamed, expedited the process, and occasioned a brilliant confla- 
 gration. The family and their friends were then feasted with Yule- 
 Dough or Yule-cakes, on which were impressed the figure of the child 
 
 * Bourne's Antiquities, p. 172. 
 
 f A great display of literature on the etymon of the word Yule will be found in the 
 Allegories Orientcdes of M. Count de Gebelin, Paris, 1773.
 
 195 
 
 Jesus ; and with bowls of frumenty, made from wheat cakes or creed 
 wheat, boiled in milk, with sugar, nutmeg, &c To these succeeded 
 tankards of spiced ale, while preparations were usually going on among 
 the domestics for the hospitalities of the succeeding day. 
 
 In the curious collection of Herrick is preserved a poem descriptive 
 of some of these observances, and which was probably written for 
 the express pui-pose of being sung during the kindling of the Yule- 
 clog. 
 
 " Come, bring with a noise, 
 
 My merrie, merrie boyes, 
 The Christmas Log to the firing; 
 
 While my good Dame, she 
 
 Bids ye all be free, 
 And drink to your hearts desiring. 
 
 With the last yeere's brand 
 
 Light the new block, and 
 For good success in his spending, 
 
 On your psalteries ^ay, 
 
 That sweet luck may , 
 
 Come while the Log is a teending. * 
 
 Drink now the strong beere. 
 
 Cut the white loafe here,-f- 
 The while the meat is a shredding 
 
 For the rare mince-pie, 
 
 And the plums stand by 
 To fill the paste that's a kneading." % 
 
 It was customary on this eve, likewise, to decorate the windows 
 of every house, from the nobleman's seat to the cottage, with bay, 
 laurel, ivy, and holly leaves, which were continued during the whole 
 of the Christmas-holidays, and frequently until Candlemas. Stowe, 
 in his Survey of London, particularly mentions this observance : — 
 
 * Teending, a word derived from the Saxon, means kindling. 
 
 t White-loafe, sometimes called at this period wasiel-bread or cake, from the French 
 ■wastiaux, pastry; implied white bread well or twice baked, and was considered as a 
 delicacy. 
 
 X Hesperides, p. 309, 310. 
 
 c c 2
 
 196 
 
 " Against the feast of Christmas" says he, " every man's liouse, as 
 also their parish churches, were decked with holm, ivie, bayes, and 
 whatsoever the season of the yeere aforded to be greene : The con- 
 duits and standards in the streetes were likewise garnished. Amongst 
 the which, I read, that in the yeere 1444, by tempest of thunder and 
 lightning, on the first of February at night, Paul's steeple was fired, 
 but with great labour quenched, and toward the morning of Candle- 
 mas day, at the Leaden Hall in Cornhill, a standard of tree, beeing 
 set up in the midst of the pavement fast in the ground, nayled full 
 of holme and ivy, for disport of Christmas to the people ; was torne 
 up, and cast downe by the malignant spirit (as was thought) and the 
 stones of the pavement all about were cast in the streetes, and into 
 divers houses, so that the people were sore agast at the great tem- 
 pests." * 
 
 This custom, which still prevails in many parts of the kingdom, 
 especially in our parish-churches, is probably founded on a very 
 natural idea, that whatever is green, at this bleak season of the year, 
 may be considered as emblematic of joy and victory, more particu- 
 larly the laurel, which had been adopted by the Greeks and Romans, 
 for this express purpose. That this was the opinion of our ancestors, 
 and that they believed the malignant spirit was envious of, and inte- 
 rested in destroying these symbols of their triumph, appears from the 
 passage just quoted from Stowe. 
 
 It has been, indeed, conjectured, that this mode of ornamenting 
 churches and houses is either allusive to numerous figurative ex- 
 pressions in the prophetic Scriptures typical of Christ, as the Branch 
 of Righteousness, or that it was commemorative of the style in which 
 the first Christian churches in this country were built, the materials 
 for the erection of which being usually wri/then wands or boughs f ; it 
 may have, however, an origin still more remote, and fancy may trace 
 the misletoe, which is frequently used on these occasions, to the 
 
 * Stowe's Survey of London, 4to. edit., 1618, p. 149, 150. 
 t Vide Gentleman's Magazine for 1765.
 
 197 
 
 times of the ancient Druids, an hypothesis which acquires some 
 probability from a passage in Dr. Chandler's Travels in Greece, where 
 he informs us, " It is related where Druidism prevailed, the ho^lses 
 were decked with evergreens in December, that the Sylvan spirits 
 might repair to them, and remain unnipped with frost and cold winds, 
 until a milder season had renewed the foliage of their darling 
 abodes." * 
 
 The morning of the Nativity was ushered in with the chaunting of 
 Christmas Carols, or Pious Chansons. The Christmas Carol was either 
 scriptural or convivial, the first being sung morning and evening, 
 until the twelfth day, and the second during the period of feasting or 
 carousing. 
 
 " As soon as the morning of the Nativity appears," says Bourne, 
 " it is customary among the common people to sing a Christmas 
 Carol, which is a song upon the birth of our Saviour, and generally 
 sung from the Nativity to the Twelfth-day ; this custom," he adds, 
 " seems to be an imitation of the Gloria in Excelsis, or Glory be to 
 God on High, &c. which was sung by the angels, as they hovered 
 o'er the fields of Bethlehem on the morning of the Nativity ; for 
 even that song, as the learned Bishop Taylor observes, was a Christ- 
 mas Carol. As soon, says he, as these blessed Choristers had sung their 
 Xmas Carol, and taught the Church a hymn, to put into her offices 
 for ever, on the anniversary of this festivity ; the angels," &c. f We 
 can well remember that, during the early period of our life, which 
 was spent in the north of England, it was in general use for the young 
 people to sing a carol early on the morning of this great festival, and 
 the burthen of which was, 
 
 " All the angels in heaven do sing 
 On a Clirismas day in the morning;" 
 
 customs such as this, laudable in themselves and highly impressive on 
 
 * Brand on Bourne's Antiquities, p. 193. f Ibid. p. 200, 201.
 
 198 
 
 the youthful mind, are, we are sorry to say, nearly, if not totally, 
 disappearing from the present generation. 
 
 To the carols, hymns, or pious chansons, which were sung about 
 the streets at night, during Christmas-tide, Shakspeare has two 
 allusions ; one in Hamlet, where the Prince quotes two lines fr©m a 
 popular ballad entitled " The Songe of JepthaJis Daughter,^'' and adds, 
 " The first row of the pious chanson will show you more * ;" and 
 the other in the Midsunmier-Nighf s Dream, where Titania remarks 
 that 
 
 " No night is now with hymn or carol blest." f 
 
 Upon the first of these passages Mr. Steevens has observed that 
 the " pious chansons were a kind of Christmas carols, containing some 
 scriptural history thrown into loose rhymes, and sung about the 
 streets by the common people ;" and upon the second, that " hymns 
 and carols, in the time of Shakspeare, during the season of Christmas, 
 were sung every night about the streets, as a pretext for collecting 
 money from house to house." 
 
 Carols of this kind, indeed, were, during the sixteenth century, 
 sung at Christmas, through every town and village in the kingdom ; 
 and Tusser, in his Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 
 introduces one for this season, which he orders to be sung to the 
 tune of King Salomon. % 
 
 The chief object of the common people in chaunting these nightly 
 carols, from house to house, was to obtain money or Christmas-Boxes, 
 a term derived from the usage of the Romish priests, who ordered 
 masses at this time to be made to the Saints, in order to atone for the 
 excesses of the people, during the festival of the Nativity, and as 
 these masses were always purchased of the priest, the poor were 
 allowed to gather money in this way with the view of liberating 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 143. Actii. sc. 2. 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 361. Act ii. sc. 2. 
 X Chap. XXX. fol. 57. edit. 1586.
 
 199 
 
 themselves from the consequence of the debaucheries of which they 
 were enabled to partake, through the hospitality ol" the rich. 
 
 The convivial or jolie carols were those which were sung either by 
 the company, or by itinerant minstrels, during the revelry that daily 
 took place, in the houses of the wealthy, from Christmas-Eve to 
 Twelfth Day. They were also frequently called Wassel Songs, and 
 may be traced back to the Anglo-Norman period. Mr. Douce, in his 
 very interesting " Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient Man- 
 ners," has given us a Christmas-carol of the thirteenth or fourteenth 
 century written in the Norman language, and which may be regarded, 
 says he, " as the most ancient drinking song, composed in England, 
 that is extant. This singular curiosity," he adds, " has been written 
 on a spare leaf in the middle of a valuable miscellaneous manu- 
 script of the fourteenth century, preserved in the British Museum, 
 Bibl. Regal. 16, E. 8." * To the original he has annexed a trans- 
 lation, admirable for its fidelity and harmony, and we are tempted 
 to insert three stanzas as illustrative of manners and diet which 
 still continued fashionable in the days of Shakspeare. We shall 
 prefix the first stanza of the original, as a specimen of the lan- 
 guage, with the obsei*vation, that from the word Noel, which occurs 
 in it, Blount has derived the term Ule or Yule ; the French Noucl 
 or Christmas, he observes, the Normans corrupted to Nuel, and from 
 Nuel we had Nule, or Ule. f 
 
 " Seignors ore entendez a nus, 
 De loinz sumes renuz a wous, 
 
 Pur quere Noel ; 
 Car lem nus dit que en cest hostel 
 Soleit tenir sa feste anuel 
 A hi cest jur." 
 
 * Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 214. 
 
 t Vide Blount's Ancient Tenures of Land, and Jocular Customs of some Manors. 
 Beckwith's edit. 8vo. 1784.
 
 200 
 
 " Lordings, from a distant home, 
 To seek old Christmas we are come. 
 
 Who loves our minstrelsy : 
 And here, unless report mis-say. 
 The grey-beard dwells ; and on this ilay 
 Keeps yearly wassel, ever gay, 
 With festive mirth and glee. 
 
 Lordings list, for we tell you true ; 
 Christmas loves the jolly crew 
 
 That cloudy care defy : 
 His liberal board is deftly spread 
 With manchet loaves and wastel-bread ; 
 His guests with fish and flesh are fed, 
 
 Nor lack the stately pye. 
 
 Lordings, it is om- hosts' command. 
 And Christmas joins him hand in hand, 
 
 To drain the brimming bowl : 
 And I'll be foremost to obey : 
 Then pledge me sirs, and drink away. 
 For Christmas revels here to day 
 And sways without controul. 
 Now Wassel to you all ! and merry may ye be ! 
 But foul that wight befall, who Drinks not Health to me !" * 
 
 Manchet loaves, wastel-bread, and the stately pye, that is, a peacock 
 or pheasant pye, were still common in the days of Shakspeare. 
 During the prevalence of chivalry, it was usual for the knights to 
 take their vows of enterprise, at a solemn feast, on the presentation 
 to each knight, in turn, of a roasted peacock in a golden dish. For 
 this was afterwards substituted, though only in a culinary light, and 
 as the most magnificent dish which could be brought to table, a 
 peacock in a pie, preserving as much as possible the form of the 
 bird, with the head elevated above the crust, the beak richly gilt, 
 and the beautiful tail spread out to its full extent. In allusion to 
 these superb dishes a ludicrous oath was prevalent in Shakspeare's 
 time, which he has, with much propriety, put into the mouth of 
 Justice Shallow, who, soliciting the stay of the fat knight, exclaims, 
 
 * Donee's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 2 1 5— 2 1 7- 2 1 f).
 
 201 
 
 " By cod and pye, sir, you sliall not away to niglit." * 
 
 The use of the peacock, however, as one of the articles of a second 
 course, continued to the close of the seventeenth century ; for 
 Gervase Markham, in the ninth edition of his English House-Wife, 
 London 1683, enumerating the articles and ordering of a gr^eat feast, 
 mentions this, among other birds, now seldom seen as objects of 
 cookery ; " then in the second course she shall first preferr the lesser 
 wild-fowl, as &c. then the lesser land-fowl as &c. &c. then the 
 great wild-fowl, as bitteim, hearn, shoveler, crane, bustard, and such 
 like. Then the greater land-fowl, as peacocks, phesant, puefs, 
 gulls, &c." f 
 
 Numerous collections of Carols, or festal chansons, to be sung at the 
 various feasts and ceremonies of the Christmas-holidays, were pub- 
 lished during the sixteenth century. One of the earliest of these was 
 printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1521, and entitled Christfuasse 
 carolles. It contains, among many very curious specimens of this 
 species of popular poetry, one, which not only contributed to the 
 hilarity of our ancestors in the reigns of Henry, Elizabeth, and James, 
 but is still in use, though with many alterations, in Queen's College, 
 Oxford ; it is designated as a Carol hryngyng in the bores head, which 
 was the first dish served up at the baron's high table in the great hall 
 on Christmas-day, and was usually accompanied by a procession, with 
 the sound of trumpets and other instruments. 
 
 " Caput Apri defer o, 
 
 Reddens laudes Domino. 
 The bores head in hande bringe I, 
 With garlandes gay and rosemary. 
 I pray you all synge merily, 
 
 Qui estis in convivio. 
 
 ' Act V. sc. 1. Reed's Shak.speare, vol. xii. p. 213. 
 
 t English House- Wife, p. 99. The pies which he recommends immediately subse- 
 quent to this enumeration are somewhat curious, and rather of a more substantial nature 
 than those of modern days ; for instance, red-deer pye, gammon of bacon pye, wild-bore pye, 
 and roe-pye. 
 
 VOL. I. D D
 
 202 
 
 The bores head, I understande, 
 Is the chefe servyce in this landc : 
 Lokc wherever it be faiide 
 Servile cum cantico. 
 
 Be gladdc lordes, both more and lasse, 
 For this hath ordayned our stewarde 
 To chere you all this christmasse, 
 The bores head with mustarde." * 
 
 For tlie hospitality, indeed, the merriment and good cheer, which 
 prevailed during the season of Christmas, this country was peculiarly 
 distinguished in the sixteenth century. Setting aside the splendid 
 manner in which this festival was kept at court, and in the capital, we 
 may appeal to the country, in confirmation of the assertion ; the hall 
 of the nobleman and country-gentleman, and even the humbler man- 
 sions of the yeoman and husbandman, vied with the city in the exhi- 
 bition of plenty, revelry, and sport. Of the mode in which the farmer 
 and his servants enjoyed themselves, on this occasion, a good idea 
 may be formed from the poem of Tusser, the first edition of which 
 thus admonishes the housewife : — 
 
 " Get ivye and hull, woman deck up thyne house: 
 and take this same bi-awne, for to seeth and to souse. 
 Provide us good chere, for thou know'st the old guise : 
 olde customes, that good be, let no man despise. 
 
 At Christmas be mery, and thanke god of all 
 
 and feast thy pore neighbours, the great with the small." f 
 
 And in subsequent impressions, the articles of the Christmas husbandlie 
 fare are more particularly enumerated ; for instance, good drinke, a 
 blazing fire in the hall, brawne, pudding and souse, and mustard "izith 
 all, beef, mutton, and pork, shred or minced pies of the best, pig, 
 veal, goose, capon, and turkey, cheese, apples, and nuts, with jolie 
 carols ; a pretty ample provision for the rites of hospitality, and a 
 powerful security against the inclemencies of the season ! 
 
 * Vide Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 143. 
 t A hundreth good poyntes of husbandry, 1557- p. 10.
 
 203 
 
 The Hall of the baron, knight, or squire, was the seat of the same 
 festivities, the same gambols, wassailing, mummery, and mirth, which 
 usually took place in the palaces and mansions of the metropolis, and 
 of these Jonson has given us a very curious epitome in his Masque of 
 Christmas, where he has personified the season and its attributes in 
 the following manner : 
 
 " Enter Christmas voith two oi- three of the Guard. 
 
 " He is attir'd in round hose, long stockings, a close doublet, a high crownd hat with 
 a broach, a long thin beard, a truncheon, little ruffes, white shoes, his scarffes, and 
 garters tyed crosse, and his drum beaten before him. — 
 
 " The names of his Children, with their attyres. 
 
 " Mis-rule. In a velvet cap with a sprig, a short cloake, great yellow ruffe like a 
 reveller, his torch-bearer bearing a rope, a cheese and a basket. 
 
 " Caroll. A long tawny coat, with a red cap, and a flute at his girdle, his torch- 
 bearer carrying a song booke open. 
 
 " Minc'd Pie. Like a fine cooke's wife, drest neat ; her man carrying a pie, dish, and 
 spoones. 
 
 " Gamboll. Like a tumbler, with a hoope and bells ; his torch-bearer arm'd with a cole- 
 staffe, and a bUnding cloth. 
 
 " Post And Paire. With a paire-royall of aces in his hat ; his garment all done over 
 with payres, and purrs ; his squier carrying a box, cards and counters. 
 
 " Nevi- Yeares-Gift. In a blew coat, serving-man like, with an orange, and a sprig of 
 rosemarie guilt on his head, his hat full of broaches, with a coUer of gingerbread, his 
 torch-bearer carrying a maich-paine, with a bottle of wine on either arme. 
 
 " Mumming. In a masquing pied suite, with a visor, his torch-bearer carrying the 
 boxe, and ringing it. 
 
 " Wassail. Like a neat sempster, and songster ; her page bearing a browne bowle, 
 drest with ribbands, and rosemarie before her. 
 
 " Offering. In a short gowne, with a porter's staffe in his hand ; a wyth borne before 
 him, and a bason by his torch -bearer. 
 
 " Bahie-Coche. Drest like a boy, in a fine long coat, biggin, bib, muckender, and a 
 little dagger ; his usher bearing a great cake with a beane, and a pease." * 
 
 Of these personified attributes we have already noticed, at some 
 length, the most material, such as Misrule, Caroll, New-Year s- Gift and 
 Wassail ; to the account, however, which has been given of the 
 Summer Lord of Misrule, from Stubbes's Anatomie of Abuses, it 
 
 * Christmas, His Masque; as it was presented at Court 1616". Jonson's Works, 
 folio edit. 1640. vol. ii. 
 
 DD 2
 
 204 
 
 will be here necessary to add, that the sway of this mock prince, both 
 in town and country, was still more absolute during the Christmas- 
 holidays ; " what time," says Holinshed, " of old ordinarie course 
 there is alwaies one appointed to make sport in the court, called com- 
 monlie Lord of Misrule : whose office is not unknowne to such a^ 
 have beene brought up in noblemen's houses, and among great house- 
 keepers, which use liberal feasting in that season." * Stowe, likewise, 
 has recorded, in his Survey, the universal domination of this holiday 
 monarch, " In the feast of Christmas," he remarks, " there was in the 
 king's house, wheresoever he was lodged, a Lord of Misrule, or 
 Master of merry desports, and the like had yee in the house of every 
 nobleman of honour, or good worship, were he spirituall or temporall. 
 Amongst the which, the Maior of London, and either of the SherifFes 
 had their severall Lords of Misrule, ever contending without quarrell 
 or offence, who should make the rarest pastimes to delight the 
 beholders. These Lords beginning their rule on Alhallow Eve, con- 
 tinued the same til the morrow after the feast of the Purification, 
 commonly called Candlemas-day : In all which space, there were fine 
 and subtill disguisings, maskes and mummeries, with playing at cardes 
 for counters, nayles and points in every house, more for pastime than 
 for gaine." f 
 
 In short, the directions which are to be found for a grand Christ- 
 mas in the capital, were copied with equal splendour and profusion in 
 the houses of the opulent gentlemen in the country, who made it a 
 point to be even lavish at this season of the year. We may, there- 
 fore, consider the following description as applying accurately to the 
 Christmas hospitality of the Baron's hall. 
 
 " On Christmas-day, service in the church ended, the gentlemen 
 presently repair into the hall to breakfast, with brawn, mustard, and 
 malmsey. 
 
 " At dinner the butler, appointed for the Christmas, is to see the 
 tables covered and furnished : and the ordinary butlers of the house 
 
 ♦ Holinshed's Chronicles, vol.iii. p. 1032. edit. 1808. 
 t Stowe's Survey of London, p. liO. edit. 1018.
 
 205 
 
 are decently to set bread, napkins, and trenchers, in good form, at 
 every table ; with spoones and knives. At the first course is served 
 in a fair and large bore's head, upon a silver platter, with minstralsye. 
 
 " Two ' servants' are to attend at supper, and to bear two fair 
 torches of wax, next before the musicians and trumpeters, and stand 
 above the fire with the music, till the first course be served in through 
 the hall. Wliich performed, they, with the musick, are to return 
 into the buttery. The like course is to be observed in all things, during 
 the time of Christmas. 
 
 " At night, before supper, are revels and dancing, and so also after 
 supper, during the twelve dales of Christmas. The Master of the 
 Revels is, after dinner and supper, to sing a caroll, or song ; and com- 
 mand other gentlemen then there present to sing with him and the 
 company ; and so it is very decently performed."* 
 
 Beside the revelry and dancing here mentioned, we may add, that 
 it was customary, at this season, after the Christmas sports and games 
 had been indulged in, until the performers were weary, to gather 
 round the ruddy fire, and tell tales of legendary lore, or popular super- 
 stition. Herrick, recording the diversions of this period, mentions on^ 
 of them as consisting of " winter's tales about the hearth f ;" and 
 Grose, speaking of the source whence he had derived many of the 
 superstitions narrated in the concluding section of his " Provincial 
 Glossary," says, that he gives them, as they had, from age to age, 
 been " related to a closing circle of attentive hearers, assembled in a 
 winter's evening, round the capacious chimney of an old hall or manor- 
 house ;" and he adds, that tales of this description formed, among 
 our ancestors, " a principal part of rural conversation, in all large 
 assemblies, and particularly those in Christmas holidays, during the 
 binding of the Yule-block.'''' \ 
 
 Of the conviviality which universally reigned during these holidays, 
 a good estimate may be taken by a few lines from the author of Hes- 
 
 * Nichols's Progresses and Processions of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 20, 21. Anno 
 1562. 
 
 t Hesperides, p. 145. % Provincial Glossary, Preface, p. 8. Svo. 1787-
 
 206 
 
 perides, who, addressing a friend at Christmas-tide, makes the follow- 
 ing request : 
 
 " When your faces shine 
 
 With bucksome meat and cap'ring wine, 
 Remember us in cups full crown'd, — 
 Untill the fired chesnuts leape 
 For joy, to see the fruits ye reape 
 From the plumpe challice, and the cup, 
 That tempts till it be tossed up : — 
 
 carouse 
 
 Till Liber Pater * twirles the house 
 
 About your eares ; 
 
 " Then" to the bagpipe all addrcsse, 
 Till sleep takes place of wearinesse : 
 And thus throughout, with Christmas playes, 
 Frolick the full twelve holy-dayes." f 
 
 * Liber Pater, Bacchus. 
 
 f Hesperides, p. 146. The following passages place in a strong and interesting point 
 of view, the hospitality of our ancestors during this season of the year, and will add not a 
 little to the impression derived from the text. 
 
 , " Heretofore, noblemen and gentlemen of fair estates had their heralds who wore their 
 coate of amies at Christmas, and at other solemne times, and cryed largesse thrice. 
 They lived in the country like petty kings. They always eat in Gothic Halls where the 
 Mummings and Loaf-stealing, and other Christmas sports, were performed. The hearth 
 was commonly in the middle ; whence the saying, round about our coal-fire^ Antiquarian 
 Repertory, No. xxvi. from the MS. Collections of Aubrey, dated 1678. 
 
 " An English Gentleman at the opening of the great day, i. e. on Christmas Day in 
 the morning, had all his tenants and neighbours entered his Hall by day-break. The 
 strong beer was broached, and the black jacks went plentifully about with toast, sugar, 
 nutmegg, and good Cheshire cheese. The Hackin, (the great sausage) must be boiled by 
 day-break, or else two young men must take the maiden [i. e. the cook,) by the arms and 
 run her round the market place till she is ashamed of her laziness. 
 
 " In Christmass Holidays, the tables were all spread from the first to the last; the 
 sirloins of beef, the minced pies, the j)lumb-porridge, the capons, turkeys, geese, and 
 plumb-puddings, were all brought upon the board : every one eat heartily, and was wel- 
 come, which gave rise to the proverb, ' Merry in the hall when beards wag all.' From a 
 Tract entitled " Round about our Coal Fire, or Christmas Entertainments;" of which 
 the first edition was published, I believe, about the close of the seventeenth century. 
 
 " Our ancestors considered Christmas in the double light of a holy commemoration 
 and a chearful festival ; and accordingly distinguished it by devotion, by vacation from 
 business, by merriment and hospitality. They seemed eagerly bent to make themselves 
 and every body about them happy The great hall resounded with the tumultuous joys
 
 207 
 
 We shall close this detail of the ceremonies and festivities of Christ- 
 mas with a passage from the descriptive muse of Mr. Walter Scott, in 
 which he has collected, with his usual accuracy, and with his almost 
 unequalled power of costume-painting, nearly all the striking circum- 
 stances which distinguished the celebration of this high festival, from 
 an early period, to the close of the sixteenth century. They form a 
 picture which must delight, both from the nature of its subject, and 
 from the truth and mellowness of its colouring. 
 
 " Well our Christian sires of old 
 
 Loved when the year its course had rolled, 
 
 And brought blithe Christmas back again, 
 
 "With all his hospitable train. 
 
 Domestic and religious rite 
 
 Gave honour to the holy night : 
 
 On Christmas eve the bells were rung; — 
 
 The damsel donned her kirtle sheen ; 
 
 The hall was dressed with holly green ; 
 
 Forth to the wood did merry-men go, 
 
 To gather in the misletoe. 
 
 Then opened wide the baron's hall 
 
 To vassal, tenant, serf and all ; 
 
 Power laid his rod of rule aside, 
 
 And Ceremony doffed his pride. 
 
 The heir with roses in his shoes, 
 
 That night might village partner chuse; 
 
 The lord, underogating, share 
 
 The vulgar game of " post and pair." 
 
 All hailed, with uncontrolled delight. 
 
 And general voice, the happy night. 
 
 That to the cottage, as the crown. 
 
 Brought tidings of salvation down. 
 The fire with well dried logs supplied. 
 
 Went roaring up the chimney wide; 
 
 The huge hall-table's oaken face, 
 
 Scrubbed till it shone, the day to grace, 
 
 Bore then upon its massive board 
 
 No mark to part the squire and lord. 
 
 of servants and tenants, and the gambols they played served as amusement to the lord of 
 the mansion and his family, who, by encouraging every art conducive to mirth and enter- 
 tainment, endeavoured to soften the rigour of the season, and mitigate the influence of 
 winter." — r//e World, No. 104.
 
 208 
 
 Then was brought in the lusty brawn, 
 
 By old blue-coated serving-man ; 
 
 Then the grim boar's-head frowned on high. 
 
 Crested with bays and rosemary. 
 
 Well can the green-garbed ranger tell, 
 
 How, when, and where, the monster fell ; 
 
 What dogs before his death he tore, 
 
 And all the baiting of the boar. 
 
 The wassol round, in good brown bowls. 
 
 Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls. 
 
 There the huge sirloin reeked : hard by 
 
 Plumb-porridge stood, and Christmas pye ; 
 
 Nor failed old Scotland to produce. 
 
 At such high tide, her savoury goose. 
 
 Then came the merry masquers in. 
 
 And carols roared with blithesome din ; 
 
 If unmelodious was the song. 
 
 It was a hearty note, and strong. 
 
 Who lists may in their mumming see 
 
 Traces of ancient mystery ; 
 
 White shirts supplied the masquerade. 
 
 And smutted cheeks the visors made; 
 
 But, O ! what masquers, richly dight. 
 
 Can boast of bosoms half so light ! 
 
 England was merry England, when 
 
 Old Christmas brought his sports again. 
 
 'Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale; 
 
 'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale ; 
 
 A Christmas gambol oft could cheer 
 
 The poor man's heart through half the year." "* 
 
 * Scott's Marmion. Introduction to Canto Sixth. 8vo. edit. p. 300—303. 
 
 " At present, Christmas meetings," remarks Mr. Brady, " are chiefly confined to 
 family parties, happy, it must be confessed, though less jovial in their nature; perhaps, too, 
 less beneficial to society, because they can be enjoyed on other days not, as originally was 
 the case, set apart for more general conviviality and sociability ; not such as our old 
 ballads proclaim, and history confirms, in which the most frigid tempers gave way to re- 
 laxation, and all in eager joy were ready to exclaim, in honour of the festivity, — 
 
 " For, since such delights are thine, 
 Christmas, with thy bands I join." 
 
 Clavis Calendaria, vol. ii. p. 319.
 
 209 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY CONTINUED WAKES FAIRS —WEDDINGS 
 
 BURIALS. 
 
 Having described, in as brief a manner as was consistent with the 
 nature of our work, the various circumstances accompanying the 
 celebration of the most remarkable holidays and festivals, in the 
 country, during the age of Shakspeare, from whose inimitable com- 
 positions we have drawn many pertinent illustrations on nearly all the 
 subjects as they passed before us ; we shall proceed, in the present 
 chapter, to notice those remaining topics which are calculated to com- 
 plete, on the scale adopted, a tolerably correct view of rural manners 
 and customs, as they existed in the latter half of the sixteenth, and 
 prior portion of the seventeenth, century. 
 
 A natural transition will carry us, from the description of the rural 
 festival, to the gaieties of the Wake or Fair. Of these terms, indeed, 
 the former originally implied the vigil which preceded the festival in 
 honour of the Saint to whom the parish-church was dedicated ; for 
 " on the Eve of this day," remarks Mr. Borlase, in his Cornwall, 
 " prayers were said, and hymns were sung all night in the church ; 
 and from these watchings the festivals were stiled Wakes; which 
 name still continues in many parts of England, though the vigils 
 have been long abolished." * The religious institution, however, of 
 the Wake, whether held on the vigil or Saint's day, was soon forgot- 
 ten ; mirth and feasting early became the chief objects of this 
 meeting t» and it, at length, degenerated into something approach- 
 
 * Brand on Bourne's Antiquities, p. 333. 
 
 t Mr. Strutt, in a quotation from an old MS. legend of St. John the Baptist, preserved 
 in Dugdale's Warwickshire, tells us, — " In the beginning of holi churche, it was so that the 
 pepul cam to the chirche with candellys brinnyng, and wold roake and comuie with Light 
 toward the chirche in their devocions, and after they fell to lecherie and songs, da\^ices, 
 harping, piping, and also to glotony and sinne, &c."— Sports and Pastimes, p. 322. 
 
 VOL. I. E E
 
 210 
 
 ing towards a secular Fair. These Wakes or Fairs, which were 
 rendered more popular in proportion as they deviated from their 
 devotional origin, were, until the reign of Henry the Sixth, always 
 held on a Sunday and its eve, a custom that continued to be par- 
 tially observed as late as the middle of the seventeenth century ; 
 hence ale-houses, and places of public resort, in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of church-yards, the former scene of Wakes, were 
 still common at the close of Shakspeare's life ; thus Sir Thomas 
 Overbury, describing a Sexton, in his Characters, published in 1616, 
 says : " At every church-style commonly there's an ale-house ; where 
 let him (the Sexton) bee found never so idle-pated, hee is still a 
 grave drunkard." 
 
 The increasing licentiousness and conviviality, however, which at- 
 tended these church-yard assemblies, frequented as they were by 
 pedlars and hawkers of every description, finally occasioned their 
 suppression in all places, at least, where much traffic was expected. 
 In their room regular Fairs were established, to which in central or 
 peculiar stations, the resort, at fixed periods, was immense. 
 
 Yet the Wake, the meeting for mere festivity and frolic, still con- 
 tinued in every village and small town, and though not preceded by 
 any vigil in the church, was popularly termed the Wake-Day. 
 Tusser, in his catalogue of the " Old Guise," has not forgotten this 
 season of merriment; on the contrary, he seems to welcome its return 
 with much cordiality : — 
 
 " Fil oven ful of flawnes, Ginnie passe not for sleepe, 
 to morrow thy father his wake-daie wil keepe : 
 Then every wanton may danse at hir wil, 
 
 both Tomkin and Tomlin, and Jankin with Gil." * 
 
 " It appears," says Mr. Brand, " that in antient times the parishioners brought rushes 
 at the Feast of Dedication, wherewith to strew the Church, and from that circumstance 
 the Festivity itself has obtained the name of Busk-bearing, which occurs for a Country- 
 Wake in a Glossary to the Lancashire dialect." — Brand ap. Ellis, vol. i. p. 436. 
 
 * rlilman's Tusser, p. 81.
 
 211 
 
 Mr, Hilman, in his edition of Tusser, has made the following 
 observations on this passage. — " Waking in the church," says he, 
 " was left off because of some abuses, and we see here it was con- 
 verted to wakeing at the oven. The other continued down to our 
 author's days, and in a great many places continues still to be ob- 
 served with all sorts of rural merriments ; such as dancing, wrestling, 
 cudgel-playing, &c." Bourne observes, that the feasting and sport- 
 ing, on this occasion, usually lasted for two or three days * ; and 
 Bishop Hall gives an impressive idea of the revelry and glee which 
 distinguished these rural assemblages, when he exclaims, " ^Vhat 
 should I speak of our merry Wakes, and May games — in all which put 
 together, you may well say, no Greek can be memer than they." f 
 Indeed from one end of the kingdom to the other, from north to 
 south, it would appear, that, among the country-villages, during the 
 reigns of Elizabeth and her two immediate successors. Wakes formed 
 one of the principal amusements of the peasantry, and were anti- 
 cipated with much eagerness and expectation. In confirmation of 
 this we need only remark that Drayton, speaking of Lancashire, 
 declares, that 
 
 " every village smokes at "wakes with lusty cheer ;" % 
 
 and that Herrick, in Devonshire, has written a very curious little 
 poem, entitled The Wake, which, as strikingly descriptive of the 
 various business of this festivity, claims here an introduction : — 
 
 " Come Anthea, let us two 
 Go to feast, as others do. 
 Tarts and custards, creams and cakes, 
 Are thejunketts still at Wakes: 
 Unto which the tribes resort, 
 Where the businesse is the sport : 
 Morris-dancers thou shall see, 
 Marian too in pagentrie : 
 
 * Bourne's Antiquit. Vulg. p. 330. f Triumph of Pleasuic, p. i23. 
 
 t Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 378. Poly-Olbion, Song xxvii. 
 
 E E 2
 
 212 
 
 And a Mimick to devise 
 Many grinning properties. 
 Players there will be, and those 
 Base in action as in clothes : 
 Yet with strutting they will please 
 The incurious villages. 
 Neer the dying of the day, 
 There will be a cudgell-play. 
 Where a coxcomb will be broke, 
 Ere a good tmrd can be spoke : 
 But the anger ends all here, 
 Drencht in ale, or drown'd in beere, 
 Happy Rusticks, best content 
 Willi the cheapest merriment : 
 And possesse no other feare. 
 Than to want the Wake next yeai"e." * 
 
 Of the pedlars or hawkers who, in general, formed a constituent 
 part of these village-wakes an accurate idea may be drawn from the 
 character of the pedlar Autolycus, in the Whiter s Tale of Shaks- 
 peare, who is delineated with the poet's customary strength of pencil, 
 rich humour, and fidelity to nature. The wares in which he dealt are 
 curiously enumerated in the following passages : — 
 
 " Serv. He hath songs, for men, or women, of all sizes; no milliner can so fit his 
 customers with gloves f : he has the prettiest love-songs for maids ; he hath ribands of 
 all the colours i' the rainbow; points more than all the lawyers in Bohemia can 
 learnedly handle, though they come to him by the gross; inkles, caddissesj, cambricks, 
 lawns : whj', he sings them over, as they were gods or goddesses : you would think, a 
 smock were a she-angel; he so chants to the sleeve-hand, and the work about the 
 square on't." § 
 
 " Enter Autolycus, singing. 
 
 " Lawn, as white as driven snow; 
 Cyprus, black as e'er was crow ; 
 
 * Hesperides, p. 300, 301. 
 
 t In Shakspeare's time the business of the milliner was transacted by men. 
 
 t Caddisses, — a kind of narrow worsted galloon. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. S^tS. 34/, 348.
 
 213 
 
 Gloves as sweet as damask roses? 
 
 Masks for faces, and for noses ; 
 
 Bugle bracelet, necklace-amber, 
 
 Perfume for a lady's chamber : 
 
 Golden tjuoifs, and stomachers, 
 
 For my lads to give their dears ; 
 
 Pins and poking-sticks of steel. 
 
 What maids lack from head to heel : 
 
 Come, buy of me, come ; come buy, come buy ; 
 
 Biiv, lads, or else your lasses cry : 
 
 Come buy, &c." * 
 
 At the close of the feast Autolycus is represented as re-entering, 
 and declaring " Ha, ha ! what a fool honesty is ! and trust, his sworn 
 brother, a very simple gentleman ! I have sold all my trumpery ; 
 not a counterfeit stone, not a riband, glass, pomander f, brooch, 
 table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tye, bracelet, horn-rmg, 
 to keep mv pack from fasting : they throng who should buy first ; 
 as if my trinkets had been haUowed, and brought a benediction to 
 
 the buyer." X 
 
 In the North, the Village- Wake is still kept up, under the title 
 of The Hopping, a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon, and thus 
 applied, because dancing was the favourite amusement of these 
 meetings. The reign of Elizabeth, indeed, was marked by a 
 peculiar propensity to this exercise, and neither wake nor feast 
 could be properly celebrated without the country lads and lasses 
 footing it on the green or yard, or in bad weather, in the 
 
 Manor-hall. „ 
 
 In an old play, entitled " A Woman Killed With Kindness, the 
 production of Thomas Heywood, and acted in 1604, is to be found a 
 very humorous description of one of these Hoppings, and particularly 
 curious, as it enumerates the names of the dances then m vogue 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 349. 
 
 t Powa«rf«-,- a little ball of perfumes worn either in the pocket or about the neck. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 375, 376.
 
 214 
 
 among these rustic performers. The poet, after remarking that 
 now 
 
 " the mad lads 
 
 And country lasses, every mother's child, 
 With nosegays and bride laces in their hats, 
 Dance all their country measures, rounds and jigs," 
 
 thus introduces his couples : 
 
 " Jenlcin. Come, Nick, take you Joan Miniver to trace withal ; Jack Slime, traverse 
 j'ou with Sisly Milk-pail ; I will take Jane Trubkin, and Roger Brickbat shall have 
 Isabel Motley ; and now strike up ; we'll have a crash here in the yard. — 
 
 Jack Slime. Foot it quickly ; if the music overcome not my melancholy, I shall quarrel ; 
 and if they do not suddenly strike up, I shall presently strike them down. 
 
 Jen. No quarrelling, for God's sake : truly, if you do, I shall set a knave be- 
 tween ye. 
 
 Jack Slime. I come to dance, not to quarrel ; come, what shall it be? Rogero? 
 
 Jen. Rogero! no; we will dance ' The Beginning of the World.' 
 
 Sisli/. I love no dance so well, as ' John, come kiss me now.' 
 
 Nicholas. I have ere now deserved a cushion ; call for the Cushion-dance. 
 
 R. Brick. For my part, I like nothing so well as ' Tom Tyler.' 
 
 Jeti. No ; we'll have ' The hunting of the Fox.' 
 
 Jack Slime. ' The Hay ! the Hay ! ' there's nothing like ' The Hay.' 
 
 Nick. I have said, do say, and will say again. 
 
 Jen. Every man agree to have it as Nick says. 
 
 All. Content. 
 
 Nich. It hath been, it now is, and it shall be. 
 
 Sisli/. What? Mr. Nicholas? What? 
 
 Nick. ' Put on your smock a Monday,' 
 
 Jen. So, the dance will come cleanly off: come, for God's sake, agree of something ; 
 if you like not that, put it to the musicians ; or let me speak for all, and we'll have 
 ' Sellenger's Round.' 
 
 All. That, that, that! 
 
 Nick. No, I am resolved, thus it shall be. First take hands, then take ye to your 
 heels. 
 
 Je}i. Why, would you have us run away ? 
 
 Nick. No ; but I would have you shake your heels. Music, strike up. 
 
 They dance." * 
 
 The Fai7' or greater wake was usually held, as hath been observed, 
 in a central situation, and its period and duration were, as at present, 
 
 * Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 435, 4.36. The third edition of A Woman Killed 
 With Kindness, was printed in 4to. 1617.
 
 ^15 
 
 proclaimed by law. It was a scene of extensive business as well as 
 of pleasure ; for before provincial cities had attained either wealth or 
 consequence, all communication between them was difficult, and 
 neither the necessaries nor the elegances of life could be procured but 
 at stated times, and at fixed depots. It was usual, therefore, to go 
 fifty or a hundred miles to one of these fairs, in order both to purchase 
 goods and accommodations for the ensuing year, and to dispose of the 
 superfluous products of art or cultivation. In the reign of Henry VI. 
 the monks of the priories of Maxtoke in Warwickshire, and of Bi- 
 cester in Oxfordshire, laid in their annual stores of common neces- 
 saries at Sturbridge Fair in Cambridgeshire, at least one hundred miles 
 distant, and notwithstanding the two cities of Oxford and Coventry were 
 in their immediate neighbourhood.* In the reign of Henry VIII., 
 it appears, from the Household-Book of Henry Percy, fifth Earl of 
 Northumberland, that His Lordship's family were supplied with 
 necessaries for the whole year from fairs. " He that stands charged 
 with my Lordes House for the houll Yeir, if he maye possible, shall 
 be at all Faires, where the greice Emptions shall be boughte for the 
 House for the houll Yeir, as Wine, Wax, BeifFes, Muttons, Wheite 
 and Malt f ;" and, in the reign of Elizabeth, Tusser recommends to 
 his farmer the same plan, both for purchase and sale : 
 
 " At Bartilmewtide, or at Sturbridge faire, 
 
 buie that as is needful, thy house to repaire : 
 Then sel to thy profit, both butter and cheese, 
 who buieth it sooner, the more he shall leese." % 
 
 That this custom prevailed until the commencement of the 
 eighteenth century, and to nearly the same extent, is evident from a 
 note on the just quoted lines of Tusser by Mr. Hilman. " Sturbridge 
 Fair," says he, " stocks the country (namely, Norfolk, Suffolk, and 
 
 * Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 279. note. 
 
 t Establishment and Expences of the Houshold of Henry Percy, the fifth Earl of 
 Northumberland, A. D. 151 2. p. 40/. 
 t Hilman's Tusser, p. 1 1 0.
 
 216 
 
 Essex,) with clothes, and all other houshokl necessaries ; and they 
 (the farmers) again, sell their butter and cheese, and whatever else 
 remains on their hands ; nay, there the shopkeepers supply themselves 
 with divers sorts of commodities." 
 
 In the third year, indeed, of James L, Sturbridge Fair began to 
 acquire such celebrity, that hackney coaches attended it from London ; 
 and it subsequently became so extensive that for several years not 
 less than sixty coaches have been known to ply at this fair, then 
 esteemed the largest in England. 
 
 Sturbridge Fair is still annually proclaimed, but now in such a 
 state of decline, that its extinction, at least in a commercial light, 
 cannot be far distant. 
 
 To these brief notices of wakes and fairs, it may be necessary to 
 subjoin a slight detail of the state of Country-Inns and Ale-houses 
 during the age of Shakspeare. 
 
 To " take mine ease in mine inn" is a proverbial phrase, which the 
 poet has placed in the mouth of FalstafF*, and which implies a degree 
 of comfort which has always been the peculiar attribute of an English 
 house of public entertainment. That it was not less felt and enjoyed 
 in Shakspeare's time than in our own, is very apparent from the 
 accounts which have been left us by Harrison and Fynes Moryson ; 
 the former writing towards the close of the sixteenth, and the latter at 
 the commencement of the seventeenth century. These descriptions, 
 which are curiously faithful and highly interesting, paint the provincial 
 hostelries of England as in a most flourishing state, and, according to 
 Harrison, indeed, greatly superior to those which existed in the 
 metropolis. « 
 
 " Those townes," says the historian, " that we call thorowfaires, 
 have great and sumptuous innes builded in them, for the receiving of 
 such travellers and strangers as passe to and fro. The manner of 
 harbouring wherein, is not like to that of some other countries, in 
 which the host or goodman of the house dooth chalenge a lordlie 
 
 • Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 358.
 
 217 
 
 authoritie over his ghests, but clean otherwise, sith every man may 
 use his inne as his owne house in England, and have for his monie 
 how o-reat or little varietie of vittels, and what other service himselfe 
 shall thinke expedient to call fox-. Our innes are also verie well 
 furnished with naperie, bedding, and tapisserie, especiallie with 
 naperie : for beside the linnen used at the tables, which is commonlie 
 washed dailie, is such and so much as belongeth unto the estate and 
 calling of the a;hest. Ech commer is sure to lie in cleane sheets, 
 wherein no man hath btene lodged since they came from the lan- 
 dresse, or out of the water wherein they were last washed. If the 
 traveller have an horsse, his bed dooth cost him nothing, but if he go 
 on foote he is sure to paie a penie for the same : but whether he be 
 horsseman or footman if his chamber be once appointed he may carie 
 the kaie with him, as of his owne house so long as he lodgeth there. 
 If he loose oughts whilest he abideth in the inne, the host is bound 
 by a generall custome to restore the damage, so that there is no 
 greater securitie anie where for travellers than in the gretest ins of 
 England." He then, after enmiierating the depredations to which 
 travellers are subject on the road, completes the picture by the 
 following additional touches. " In all innes we have plentie of ale, 
 biere, and sundrie kinds of wine, and such is the capacitie of some of 
 them, that they are able to lodge two hundred or three hundred 
 persons, and their horsses at ease, and thereto with a verie short 
 warning make such provision for their diet, as to him that is unac- 
 quainted withall may seeme to be incredible. And it is a world to 
 see how ech owner of them contendeth with other for goodnesse of 
 interteinment of their ghests, as about finesse and change of linnen, 
 furniture of bedding, beautie of rooms, service at the table, costlinesse 
 of plate, strength of drinke, varietie of wines, or well using of horsses. 
 Finallie there is not so much omitted among them as the gorgeous- 
 nes of their verie signes at their doores, wherein some doo consume 
 thirtie or fortie pounds, a meere vanitie in mine opinion, but so vaine 
 will they needs be, and that not onelie to give some outward token 
 
 VOL. I. F F
 
 218 
 
 of the inne keeper's welth, but also to procure good ghests to the 
 frequenting of their houses, in hope there to be well used." * 
 
 " As soone as a passenger comes to an inne," remarks Moryson, 
 " the servants run to him, and one takes his horse and walkes him till 
 he be cold, then rubs him down, and gives him meat. Another 
 servant gives the passenger his private chamber, and kindles his fire ; 
 the third pulls off his bootes and makes them cleane ; then the host 
 or hostess visits him ; and if he will eate with the hoste, or at a 
 common table with others, his meale will cost him sixpence, or in 
 some places but four-pence ; but if he will eate in his chamber he 
 commands what meate he will according to his appetite ; yea the 
 kitchin is open to him to order the meate to be dressed as he likes 
 beste. After having eaten what he pleases, he may, with credit, set 
 by a part for the next day's breakfast. His bill will then be written 
 for him, and, should he object to any charge, the host is ready to 
 alter it." t 
 
 Taverns and ale-houses were frequently distinguished in Shakspeare's 
 time by a hush or tuft of ivy at their doors ; a custom which more par- 
 ticularly prevailed in Warwickshire, and is still practised, remarks 
 Mr. Ritson, in this county " at statute-hirings, wakes, &c. by people 
 who sell ale at no other time." % The poet alludes to this observance 
 in his Epilogue to As You Like It : — " If it be true," he says, " that 
 Good wine needs no bush, 'tis true, that a good play needs no epilogue : 
 Yet to good wine they do use good bushes." § Several old plays mention 
 the same custom, and Bishop Earle, in his Microcosmography, tells us 
 that " A Tavern is a degree, or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an 
 ale-house, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If 
 the vintner's rose be at door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of 
 this is supplied by the ivy-bush." \\ 
 
 * Holinshed's Clironicles, vol. i. p. 414, 415. Edit, of 1807. 
 
 + Moryson's Itinerary, pari iii. p. 151. folio. London, ,1()I7- 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 189. note. 
 
 § Reed's Sliakspeare, vol. viii. p. 189, 190. 
 
 II Bliss's edition, 1811. p. 3;, 38.
 
 219 
 
 That liouses of this description, the whole furniture of which, accord- 
 ing to Earle, consisted but of a stool, a table, and a * pot de chambre» 
 were as numerous two hiuidred years ago as at present, and the scene 
 of the same disgusting and intemperate orgies, is but too apparent from 
 the invective of Robert Burton: — " See the mischief." he exclaims; 
 " many men knowing that merry company is the only medicine 
 against melancholy, v/ill therefore neglect their business, and in another 
 extream, spend all their dayes among good fellows, in a Tavern or an 
 Ale-house, and know not otherwise how to bestow their time but in 
 drinking ; malt-worms, men fishes, or water-snakes. Qui bibunt solum 
 ranarum ynore, nihil comedentes, like so many frogs in a puddle. 'Tis 
 their sole exercise to eat, and drink ; to sacrifice to Volupia, Rumina, 
 Edulica, Potina, Mellona, is all their religion. They wish for Phi- 
 loxeniis neck, Jupiter s tvinoctium, and that the sun would stand still 
 as in Joshua s time, to satisfie their lust, that they might dies noctesque 
 pergrcBcari et bibere. Flourishing wits, and men of good parts, good 
 fashion, and good worth, basely prostitute themselves to every rogues 
 company, to take tobacco and di'ink, to roar and sing scurrile songs 
 in base places. 
 
 " Invenies aliqiccm cum perctissoe jaceiUem, 
 
 Pcymistum nautif, aut furibus, aid J'ligitivis." Juvenal. 
 
 " Wliat Thomas Erastus objects to Paracelsus, that he would lye 
 drinking all day long with carr-men and tapsters in a Brothel-house, 
 is too frequent amongst us, with men of better note : like Timocreon 
 of Rhodes, multa bibcns, et multa vorans, &c. They di'own their wits 
 and seeth their brains in ale." f 
 
 Few ceremonies are better calculated to throw light on the manners 
 and customs of a country, than those attendant on weddings and 
 BiTRiALS, and with these, as they occurred in rural life, during the reigns 
 of Elizabeth and James, we shall close this chapter. 
 
 • Earle's Mici'ocosmograpliy, p- 38. 
 
 f Burton's Anatomy of Melanclioly, 8th edit. p. 191. 
 
 F F 2
 
 220 
 
 The style of courtship which prevailed in Shakspeare's time, may 
 be drawn, with considerable accm-acy, from the numerous love-dia- 
 logues interspersed throughout his plays. From these specimens not 
 much disparity, either in language or manner, appears to have existed 
 between the addresses of the courtier and the country-gentleman ; the 
 female character was indeed, at this period, greatly less important 
 than at present ; the blandishments of gallantry, and the elegancies 
 of compliment were little known, and consequently the expression of 
 the tender passion admitted of neither much variety nor much polish. 
 The amatory dialogues of Hamlet, Hotspur, and Henry the Fifth, are 
 not more refined than those which occur between Master Fenton and 
 Anne Page, in the Merry Wives of Windsor; between Lorenzo and 
 Jessica in the Merchant of Venice, and between Orlando and Rosalind, 
 in As You Like It. These last, which may be considered as instances 
 taken from the middle class of life, together with a few drawn from the 
 lower rank of rural manners, such as the courtship of Touchstone and 
 Audrey, and of Silvius and Phoebe, in As Yoti Like It, will sufficiently 
 apply to the illustration of our present subject ; but it must be 
 remarked that, in point of fancy, sentiment, and simplicity, the most 
 pleasing love-scenes in Shakspeare are those that take place between 
 Romeo and Juliet, and between Florizel and Perdita ; the latter 
 especially present a most lovely and engaging picture, on the female 
 side, of pastoral naivete and sweetness ; and will, in part, serve to show, 
 how far, in the opinion of Shakspeare, refinement was, at that time, 
 compatible, as a just representation of nature, with cottage-life. 
 
 Betrothing or j^^ighting of troth, as an affiance or jyromise of future 
 niarnage, was still, there is reason to suppose, often observed in Shaks- 
 peare's time, especially in the country, and as a jmvate rite. The 
 interchange of rings was the ceremony used on this occasion, to which 
 the poet refers in his Two Gentlemen of Verona : 
 
 " Julia. Keep this remembrance for tliy Julia's sake. {Giving a ring.) 
 
 Pro. Why then we'll make exchange; here take you this. 
 Jul. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss." * 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. :213. Act ii. sc. 2.
 
 221 
 
 The public celebration of this contract, or what was termed espou- 
 mls *, was formerly in this country, as well as upon the continent, a 
 constant preliminary to marriage. It usually took place in the church, 
 and though nearly, if not altogether, disused, towards the close of the 
 fifteenth century, is minutely described by Shakspeare in his Tuelfth 
 Night. Olivia, addressing Sebastian, says, — 
 
 " Now go with me, and with this holy man, 
 * Into the chantry by : there before him 
 
 And underneath that consecrated roof 
 Plight mc the foil assurance of yourfoaith ,- 
 That my most jealous and too doubtful soul 
 May live at peace. He shall concecl it 
 Whiles you are willing it shall come to note ; 
 What time we will our celebration keep 
 According to my birth." f 
 
 A description of what passed at this ceremony of espousals or be- 
 trothing, is given by the priest himself in the first scene of the sub- 
 sequent act, who calls it 
 
 " A contract of eternal bond of love 
 
 Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands. 
 Attested by the holy close of lips. 
 Strengthened by interchangement of your 7-ings ; 
 And all the ceremony of this compact 
 Seal'd in my function, by my testimony." % 
 
 ■ These four observances, therefore ; 1st, the joining of hands; 2dly, 
 the nmtuaUy given kiss; 3dly, the interchangement of rings; and 4thly, 
 the testimony of witnesses : appear to have been essential parts of the 
 public ceremony of betrothing or espousals, which usually preceded 
 
 * " Vincent de Beauvais, a writer of the 13th century, in his Speculum historiale 
 lib. IX. c. 70., has defined espcmsals to be a contract of future marriage, made either by a 
 simple promise, by earnest or security given, by a ring, or by an oath." Douce's Illustra- 
 tions, vol. i. p. 109. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 395. Act iv. sc. 3. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 403. Act v. sc. 1.
 
 222 
 
 the marriage rite by the term of forty days. The oath indeed, ad- 
 ministered on this occasion, was to the following effect: — " You swear 
 by God and his holy saints herein and by all the saints of Paradise, 
 that you will take this woman whose name is N. to wife within forty 
 days, if holy church will permit." The priest then joining their hands, 
 said — "And thus you affiance yourselves;" to which the parties 
 answered, — " Yes, sir." * So frequently has Shakspeare I'eferred to 
 this custom of troth-plighting, that, either privately or publickly, we 
 must conclude it to have been of common usage in his days : thus, 
 in Measure for Measure, Mariana says to Angelo, 
 
 " This is the hand, which with a voxv'd contract. 
 Was fast belock'd in thine :" f 
 
 and then addressing the duke, she exclaims, 
 
 " As there is sense in truth, and truth in virtue, 
 I am qffiajic'd this man's wife." % 
 
 So in King John, King Philip, and the Arch-duke of Austria, en- 
 couraging the connection of the Dauphin and Blanch : 
 
 " K. Phil. It Hkes us well ; — Young princes, close ymir hands. 
 Aust. And your lijJS too ; for, I am well assur'd. 
 That I did so, when I was first assur'd." f 
 
 One immoral consequence arising from this custom of public be- 
 trothing was, that the parties, depending upon the priest as a witness, 
 frequently cohabited as man and wife. It would appear, indeed, 
 from a passage in Shakspeare, that the ceremony of troth-plight, at 
 
 * Deuce's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 1 13. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 395. 
 
 \ Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 396. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 405. Here assur'd is taken in the sense of affianced or 
 contracted. If necessary, many more instances of betrothing, and troth-plighting, might 
 be brought forward from our author's dramas.
 
 223 
 
 least among the lower orders, was considered as a sufficient warrant 
 for intercourse of this kind ; for he makes the jealous Leontes, in his 
 Whiter s Tale, exclaim, 
 
 " My wife's a hobby horse ; deserves a name 
 As rank as any flax-wench, that puts to 
 Before her troth-plight." * 
 
 We must not forget, however, to remark, while on the subject of 
 betrothing, that a singular proof of delicacy and attention to the fair 
 sex, on this occasion, during the sixteenth century, has been quoted 
 by Mr. Strutt, from a manuscript in the Harleian library, and which 
 runs thus : " By the civil law, whatever is given ex sponmlitia largi- 
 tate, betwixt them that are promised in marriage, hath a condition, for 
 the most part silent, that it may be had again if marriage ensue not ; 
 but if the man should have had a kiss for his money, he should lose 
 one half of what he gave. Yet with the woman it is otherwise ; for 
 kissing or not kissing, whatever she gave, she may have it again." -j- 
 
 Concerning the customs attendant on the celebration of the marriage 
 rite, among the middle and inferior ranks, in the country, during the 
 period which we are endeavouring to illustrate, much information, of 
 the description we want, may be found in Shakspeare and his contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 The procession accompanying a rural bride, of some consequence, 
 or of the middle rank, to church, has been thus given us: — " The 
 bride being attired in a gown of sheep's russet, and a kirtle of fine 
 worsted, her hair attired with a 'billement of gold, and her hair as 
 yellow as gold hanging down behind her, which was curiously combed 
 and plaited, she was led to church between two sweet boys, with bride 
 laces and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves. There was a fair 
 bride-cup of silver, gilt, carried before her, wherein was a goodly 
 branch of rosemary, gilded very fair, hung about with silken ribbands 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 240. 
 
 t Strutt's Manners and Customs, vol. iii. p. 155.
 
 224 
 
 of all colours. Musicians came next, then a groupe of maidens, some 
 bearing great bride-cakes, others garlands of wheat finely gilded ; and 
 thus they passed on to the church." * 
 
 Rosemary being supposed to strengthen the memory, was consi- 
 dered as an emblem of fidelity, and, at this period, was almost as 
 constantly used at weddings as at funerals : " There's rosemary," says 
 Ophelia, " that's for remembrance." 'j- Many passages, illustrative 
 of this usage at weddings, might be taken from our old plays, during 
 the reign of James I., but two or three will suffice. 
 
 " will I be veed this nioniiiig, 
 
 Tliou shall not be there, nor once be graced with 
 A piece of rosemary" \ 
 
 " Were the rosemary branches dipp'd, and all 
 The hippocras and cakes eat and drunk off; 
 Were these two arms encompass'd with the hands 
 Of bachelors to lead me to the church." § 
 
 " Phis. Your master is to be married to-day? 
 Trim. Else all this rosemary is lost." || 
 
 Of the peculiarities attending the marriage-ceremony within the 
 church, a pretty good idea may be formed from the ludicrous wedding 
 
 * History of Jack of Newbury, 4to. chap. ii. 
 
 •}■ Reed's Shakspeare, vol.xviii. p. 294. 
 
 t Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks, by Barry, 1611. Vide Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. 
 
 § Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady, 1616. 
 
 11 A Faire Quarrel, by Middleton and Rowley, 1617- Besides rosemary, flowers of 
 various kinds were frequently strewn before the bride as she passed to church ; a custom 
 alluded to in a well-known line of Shakspeare, 
 
 " Our Bridal F/ov.'crs serve for a buried corse:" 
 
 and more explicitly depicted in the following passage from one of his contemporaries: — 
 
 " Adriana. Come straw apace, Lord shall I never live 
 
 To walke to Church on flowers ? O 'lis fine, 
 To see a Bride tiip it to Church so lightly, 
 As if her new Choppiiies would scorne to bruise 
 A silly flower ! " 
 
 Barry's Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks, act v. sc. 1. Ho. iCAl.
 
 225 
 
 of Catharine and Petruchio in the Ta?mng of the Shrew. It appears 
 from this description, that it was usual to drink wine at the altar 
 immediately after the service was closed, a custom which was followed 
 by the Bridegroom's saluting the bride. 
 
 " He calls for wine : — A health, quoth he ; as if 
 He had been aboard, carousing to his mates 
 After a storm : — Quaff'd off the muscadel, 
 And threw the sops all in the sexton's face; — 
 This done, he took the bride about the neck ; 
 And kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack. 
 That, at the parting, all the church did echo." * 
 
 In the account of the procession just quoted, we find that a bride- 
 cup was carried before the bride ; out of this all the persons present, 
 together with the new-married couple, were expected to drink in the 
 church. This custom was prevalent, in Shakspeare's time, among 
 every description of people, from the regal head to the thorovigh- 
 paced rustic ; accordingly we are informed, on the testimony of 
 an assisting witness, that the same ceremony took place at the 
 marriage of the Elector Palatine to King James's daughter, on the 
 14th day of February, 1612-13 : there was " in conclusion," he 
 relates, " a joy pronounced by the king and queen, and seconded 
 with congratulation of the lords there present, which crowned with 
 draughts of Ippocras out of a great golden bowle, as an health to the 
 prosperity of the marriage, (began by the prince Palatine and 
 answered by the princess.) After which were served up by six or 
 seven barons so many bowles filled with wafers, so much of that 
 work was consummate." -]■ 
 
 This bride-cup or boxd was, therefore, frequently termed the knitting 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 114, 115, 116. Act iii. sc. 2. 
 
 t Finet's Philoxenis, 16'56', p. 11. quoted by Mr. Reed in his Shakspeare, vol. ix. 
 p. 115. note. 
 
 VOL. 1. G G
 
 226 
 
 or contracting cup : thus in Ben Jonson's Magnetick Lady, Cotnpass 
 says to Practise, after enquiring for a licence, 
 
 « Mind 
 
 The Parson's pint t'engage him — 
 A hiitting-cup there must be ;" * 
 
 and Middleton, in one of his Comedies, gives us the following line : — 
 " Even when my Hp touch'd the contracting cup." f 
 
 The salutation of the Bride at the altar was a very ancient custom, 
 and is referred to by sevei-al of the contemporaries of Shakspeare ; 
 Marston, for instance, represents one of his female characters 
 saying, 
 
 ". The kisse thou gav'st me in the church, here take." % 
 
 It was still customary at this period, to bless the bridal bed at 
 night, in order to dissipate the supposed illusions of the Devil ; a 
 superstitious rite of which Mr. Douce has favoured us with the form, 
 taken from the Manual for the use of Salisbury in the 13th § century. 
 It is noticed by Chaucer also in his Marchantes Tale, and is mentioned 
 as one of the marriage-ceremonies in the " Articles ordained by 
 King Henry VII. for the regulation of his Household." || Shakspeare 
 alludes to this ridiculous fashion in the person of Oberon, who tells 
 his fairies, 
 
 " To the best bride-bed will we, 
 Which by us shall blessed be." f 
 
 * Folio edit. p. 44. Act iv. sc. 2. 
 
 f No Wit, no Help like a Womans, 8vo. 1657. Middleton was contemporary with 
 Shakspeare, and commenced a dramatic writer in 1602. 
 X Insatiate Countess, 4to. 1603. 
 § Douce's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 199. 
 II Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 459. note, by Steevens. 
 f Midsummer-Night's Dream, act v. sc. 2. Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 459.
 
 227 
 
 To this brief description of marriage-ceremonies, it will be neces- 
 sary to subjoin some account of those which accompanied the tnere 
 rustic wedding, or Bnde-ale ; and fortunately we have a most curious 
 picture of the kind preserved by Laneham, in his Letter on the 
 Queens Entertainment at Kenelworth Castle, in 1575, one part of 
 which was the representation of a country Bride-ale set in order in 
 the Tylt-yard, and exhibited in the great court of the castle. This 
 grotesque piece of pageantry, a faithful draught of rural costume, as 
 it then existed, must have afforded Her Majesty no small degree of 
 amusement. 
 
 " Thus were they marshalled. First, all the lustie lads and bold 
 bachelors of the parish, suitably every wight with his blue buckram 
 bridelace upon a branch of green broom (cause rosemary is scant 
 there) tied on his left arm (for a that side lies the heart), and his 
 alder poll for a spear in his right hand, in martial order ranged on 
 afore, two and two in a rank : Some with a hat, some in a cap, some 
 a coat, some a jerkin, some for lightness in his doublet and his 
 hose, clean trust with a point afore : Some boots and no spurs, he 
 spurs and no boots, and he neither one nor t'other ; One a saddle, 
 another a pad or a pannel fastened with a cord, for girts wear geazon : 
 And these to the number of a sixteen wight riding men and well 
 beseem : But the bridegroom foremost, in his father's tawny worsted 
 jacket (for his friends were fain that he should be a bridegroom 
 before the Queen), a fair straw hat with a capital crown, steeple-wise 
 on his head : a pair of harvest gloves on his hands, as a sign of good 
 husbandry : A pen and inkhorn at his back ; for he would be known 
 to be bookish : lame of a leg, that in his youth was broken at foot- 
 ball : Well beloved yet of his mother, that lent him a new mufflar 
 for a napkin that was tied to his girdle for losing. It was no small 
 sport to mark this minion in his full appointment, that through 
 good schoolation became as formal in his action, as had he been a 
 bridegroom indeed ; with this special grace by the way, that ever as 
 he would have framed him the better countenance, with the worse 
 face he looked. 
 
 GG 2
 
 228 
 
 " Well, Sir, after these horsemen, a lively morrice-dance, accord- 
 ing to the ancient manner ; six dancers, maid-marian, and the fool. 
 Then three pretty puzels, (maids or damsels from pucelle) as bright 
 as a breast of bacon, of a thirty year old a piece, that carried three 
 special spice-cakes of a bushel of wheat (they had it by measure 
 out of my Lords backhouse), before the bride : Cicely with set 
 countinance, and lips so demurely simpering, as it had been a mare 
 cropping of a thistle. After these, a lovely lubber woorts*, freckle- 
 faced, red-headed, clean trussed in his doublet and his hose taken 
 up now indeed by commission, for that he was so loth to come for- 
 ward, for reverence belike of his new cut canvass doublet ; and 
 would by his good will have been but a gazer, but found to be a 
 meet actor for his office : That was to bear the bride-cup, formed of 
 a sweet sucket barrel, a faire-turned foot set to it, all seemly besil- 
 vered and parcel gilt, adorned with a beautiful branch of broom, gayly 
 begilded for rosemary ; from which, two broad bride laces of red and 
 yellow buckeram begilded, and gallantly streaming by such wind as 
 there was, for he carried it aloft : This gentle cup-bearer, yet had his 
 freckled physiognomy somewhat unhappily infested as he went, by 
 the busy flies, that flocked about the bride-cup for the sweetness of 
 the sucket that it savoured on ; but he, like a tall fellow, withstood 
 their malice stoutly (see what manhood may do), beat them away, 
 killed them by scores, stood to his charge, and marched on in good 
 order. 
 
 " Then followed the worshipful bride, led (after the country 
 manner) between two ancient parishioners, honest townsmen. But 
 a stale stallion, and a well spred, (hot as the weather was) God wot, 
 and ill smelling was she ; a thirty-five year old, of colour brown-bay 
 not very beautiful indeed, but ugly, foul ill favoured ; yet marvellous 
 vain of the office, because she heard say she should dance before the 
 Queen, in which feat she thought she would foot it as finely as the 
 
 * Woorts ; of this word I know not the precise meaning; but suppose it is meant to 
 imply plodded or stumbled on.
 
 229 
 
 best : Well, after this bride, came there by two and two, a dozen 
 damsels for bride-maids ; that for favor, attyre, for fashion and clean- 
 liness, were as meet for such a bride as a treen ladle for a porridge- 
 pot ; more (but for fear of carrying all clean) had been appointed, 
 but these few were enow." * 
 
 From a passage in Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub, we learn that the 
 dress of the downright rustic, on his wedding day, was as follows : 
 
 " He had on a lether doublet, with long points, 
 
 And a paire of pin'd-up breech's, like pudding bags : 
 With yellow stockings, and his hat turn'd up 
 With a silver claspe, on his leere side." f 
 
 * Nichols's Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, vol. i. — Laneham's Letter, p. IS, 19, 20. 
 
 t Jonson's Works, fol. edit, of 1640, vol. ii. A Tale of a Tub, p. 72.— Much of the 
 spirit and costume of the j-ural "wedding of the sixteenth century continued to survive until 
 within these eighty years. " 1 have received," says Mr. Brand, who wrote in 1776, 
 " from those who have been present at them, the following account of the customs used 
 at vtdgar Nor than Weddings, about half a centwy ago: — 
 
 " The young women in the neighbourhood, with bride-'avours (knots of ribbands) at 
 their breasts, and nosegays in their hands, attended the Bride on her wedding-day in the 
 morning. — Fore-Riders announced with shouts the arrival of the Bridegroom ; after a 
 kind of breakfast, at which the bride-cakes were set on and the barrels broached, they walked 
 out towards the church. — The Bride was led by two young men .■ the Bridegroom by f-wo 
 young -women: Pipers preceded them, while the crowd tossed up their hats, shouted and 
 clapped their hands. An indecent custom prevailed after the ceremony, and that too 
 before the altar: — Young men strove who could first unloose, or rather pluck off the 
 Bride's garters : Ribbands supplied their place on this occasion ; whosoever was so fortu- 
 nate as to tear them thus off from her leggs, bore them about the church in triumph. 
 
 " It is still usual for the young men present to salute the Bride immediately after the 
 performing of the marriage service. 
 
 *' Four, with their horses, were waiting without ; they saluted the Bride at the church 
 gate, and immediately mounting, contended who should first carry home the good news, 
 and WIN what they call the kail;" i. e. a smoking pize of spice-broth, which stood 
 ready prepared to reward the victor in this singular kind of race. 
 
 " Dinner succeeded; to that dancing and supper; after which a posset was made, of 
 ■which the Bride and Bridegroom were always to taste first. — The men departed the room 
 till the Bride was undressed by her maids, and put to bed ; the Bridegroom in his turn 
 was undressed by his men, and the ceremony concluded with the well-known rite of 
 throwing the stocking." — ^Bourne's Antiquitates Vulg. apud Brand, p. 3/1, 372, 373, 
 edit. 1810.
 
 230 
 
 Of the ceremonies attendant on Christenings, it will be necessary 
 to mention two that prevailed at this period, and which have since 
 fallen into disuse. Shakspeare, who generally transfers the customs 
 of his own times to those periods of which he is treating, represents 
 Henry VIII. saying to Cranmer, whom he had appointed Godfather 
 to Elizabeth, 
 
 " Come, come, my lord, you'd spare your spoons " * 
 
 and again in the dialogue between the porter and his man: 
 
 " Port. On my christian conscience, this one christening will beget a thousand ; here 
 will be father, godfather, and all together. 
 
 " Man. The spoons will be the bigger, sir." f 
 
 In the days of Elizabeth and her predecessor, Mary, it was usual 
 for the sponsors at christenings to present the child with silver spoons 
 gilt, on the handles of which were engraved the figures of the apostles, 
 whence they were commonly called apostle-spoons : thus Ben Jonson 
 in Bartholomew Fair ; " and all this for the hope of two apostle-spoons, 
 to suffer." X The opulent frequently gave a complete set of spoons, 
 nainely, the twelve apostles ; those less rich, selected the four evan- 
 gelists, and the poorer class were content to offer a single spoon, or, 
 at most, two, on which were carved their favourite saint or saints. 
 
 Among the higher ranks, in the reign of Henry VHI. the practice 
 at christenings was to give cups or bowls of gold or silver. Accordingly 
 Holinshed, describing the christening of Elizabeth, relates that " the 
 archbishop of Canturburie gave to the princesse a standing cup of 
 gold : the dutches of Norfolke gave to her a standing cup of gold, 
 fretted with pearle : the marchionesse of Dorset gave three gilt bolles, 
 pounced with a cover : and the marchionesse of Excester gave three 
 standing bolles graven, all gilt with a cover." § 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 197. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 203. 
 
 X Ben Jonson's Works, fol. edit. 1640. vol. ii. p. 6. 
 
 ^ Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. iii. p. "87 edit. 1808.
 
 231 
 
 In the Harleian MS. Vol. 6395, occurs a scarce pamphlet, entitled 
 Merry Passages and Jeasfs, from which Dr. Birch transcribed the 
 following curious anecdote, as illustrative both of the custom of offering- 
 spoons, and of the intimacy which subsisted between Shakspeare and 
 Jonson. " Shakspeare," says the author of this collection, who names 
 Donne as his authority for the story, " was godfather to one of Ben 
 Jonson's childi-en, and after the christening, being in deepe study, 
 Jonson came to cheer him up, and ask'd him why he was so melan- 
 choly : No 'faith Ben, says he, not I ; but I have been considering a 
 great while what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my 
 godchild, and I have resolved at last. I pr'ythee what ? says he. — 
 I'faith, Ben, I'll give him a douzen good latten (Latin) spoons, and 
 thou shalt translate them." * It was not until the close of the seven- 
 teenth century, that this practice of spoon-giving at christenings ceased 
 as a general custom. 
 
 Another baptismal ceremony, now laid aside, was the use of the 
 chrisome, or white cloth, which was put on the child after the perform- 
 ance of the sacred rite. To this usage Dame Quickly alludes in 
 describing the death of Falstaff, though, in accordance with her cha- 
 racter, she corrupts the term : " 'A made a finer end, and went 
 away, an it had been any christom child." f 
 
 Previous to the Reformation, oil was used, as well as water, in 
 baptism, or rather a kind of mixture of oil and balsam, which in the 
 Greek was called XgitrfA,oi • hence the white cloth worn on this occa- 
 sion, as an emblem of purity, was denominated the chrismale or 
 chrism-cloth. During the era of using this holy unction, with which 
 the priest made the sign of the cross, on the breast, shoulders, and 
 head of the child, the chrismale was worn only for seven days, as 
 symbolical, it is said, of the seven ages of life ; but after the Reform- 
 ation, the oil being omitted, it was kept on the child until the purifi- 
 
 * Capell's Notes and Various Readings on Shaksjieare, vol. i. ; and Reed's Shakspeare, 
 vol. XV. p. 198. — L'Estrange, a nephew to Sir Roger L'Estrange, appears to have been 
 the compiler of these anecdotes. Of the truth of the story, however, as far as it relates 
 to Shakspeare and Jonson, there is reason to entertain much doubt. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 34ii. Act ii. sc. ;■!.
 
 232 
 
 cation of the mother, when, after the ceremony of chiircliing, it was 
 returned to the minister, by whom it had been originally supplied. 
 If the child died during the month of wearing the chrisome-cloth, it 
 was buried in it, and children thus situated were called in the bills of 
 mortality chrisoms. This practice, which was common in the davs of 
 Shakspeare, continued in use for nearly a century afterwards ; for 
 Blount in his Glossography, 1678, explains the word chrisoms as 
 meaning such children as die within the month of birth, because 
 during that time they use to wear the chrisom-cloth. * 
 
 We shall now proceed to consider some of the peculiarities accom- 
 panying the Funeral Rites of this period ; and, in the first place, we 
 shall notice the passing-bell. This was rung at an early era of the 
 church, to solicit the prayers of all good christians for the welfare of 
 the soul passing into another world : thus Durandus, who wrote 
 towards the close of the twelfth century, says : " Verum aliquo moriente, 
 campanae debent pulsari, ut populus hoc avdiens, oret pro illo ." " when 
 any one is dying, the bells must be tolled, that the people may put up 
 their prayers for him."-\ This custom of ringing a bell for a soul just 
 departing, which is now relinquished, the bell only tolling after death, 
 we have reason to believe was still observed in Shakspeare' s time ; 
 for he makes Northumberland in King Henry IV. remark on the 
 " bringer of unwelcome news," that 
 
 " his tongue 
 
 Sounds ever after as a sullen bell, 
 Remember'd knoUing a departing friend." $ 
 
 Another benefit formerly supposed to be derived from the sounding 
 of the passing-bell, and which, from the scene of Cardinal Beaufort's 
 death, was probably a part of Shakspeare's creed, consisted in the 
 discomfiture of the evil spirits, who were supposed to surround the 
 bed of the dying person ; and who, terrified by the tolling of the 
 
 * 
 
 Vide Douce's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 488.; and Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 345. 
 t Vide Rationale Divinorum Officiorum: the first edition was printed in 1459. 
 :|; Reed's Shakspeare, voL xii. p. Iff.
 
 233 
 
 holy bell, were compelled to keep aloof; accordingly Durandus mentions 
 it as one of the effects of bell-ringing, ut damones timentes^' fugiant; 
 and in the Golden Legende, printed by Wynkyn de Worde 1498, it is 
 observed that " the evill spirytes that ben in the regyon of the ayre, 
 doubte moche when they here the bells rongen : and this is the cause 
 why the belles ben rongen — to the ende that the feindes and wycked 
 spirytes shold be abashed and flee." f- 
 
 That these opinions, indeed, relative to the passing-bell, continued 
 to prevail, as things of general belief, during the greater part of the 
 seventeenth century, is evident from the works of the pious Bishop 
 Taylor, in which are to be found several forms of prayer for the souls 
 of the departing, to be offered up dunng the tolling of the passing-bell. 
 In these the violence of Hell is deprecated, and it is petitioned, that 
 the spirits of darkness may be driven far from the couch of the dying 
 sinner. % 
 
 So common, indeed, was this practice, that almost every individual 
 had an exclamation or form of prayer ready to be recited on hearing 
 the passing-bell, whence the following proverbial rhyme : 
 
 « When the Bell begins to toll 
 Cry, Lord have mercy on the sotd," 
 
 In the Viitoria Corombona of Webster, this custom is alluded to in 
 a manner singularly wild and striking. Cornelia says : 
 
 " Cor. I'll give you a saying which my grand-mother 
 
 Was wont, when she Jieaj-d the bell, to sing o'er unto her lute. 
 Ham. Do an you will, do. 
 
 Cor. Call for the robin-red-breast, and the wren. 
 Since o'er shady groves they hover, 
 And with leaves and flowers do cover 
 The friendless bodies of unburied men. 
 
 * Durandi Rational, lib. i. c. 4. 
 
 t For an account of three editions of De Worde's Golden Legende, see Dibdin's 
 Typographical Antiquit. vol. ii. p. 73. 
 
 X These forms of prayer are transcribed by Bourne in his Antiquitates Vulgarcs. — 
 Vide Brand's edit. p. 10. Bishop Taylor died in 1667. 
 
 VOL. I. H H
 
 234 
 
 Call unto his funeral dole 
 
 The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, 
 
 To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm, 
 
 And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm, 
 
 But keep the wolf far thence: that's foe to men. 
 
 For with his nails he'll dig them up again." 
 
 Ancient British Drama, vol. iii. p, 41. 
 
 Even so late as the commencement of the eighteenth century, it 
 appears that this custom of praying during the passing-bell still lin- 
 gered in some parts of the country ; for Mr. Bourne, the first edition 
 of whose book was published in 1725, after vindicating the practice, 
 adds, — " I know several religious families in this place (Newcastle), and 
 I hope it is so in other places too, who always observe it, whenever 
 the melancholy season offers ; and therefore it will at least sometimes 
 happen, when we put up our prayers constantly at the tolling of the 
 bell, that we shall pray for a soul departing. And though it be granted, 
 that it will oftener happen otherwise, as the regular custom is so little 
 followed ; yet that can be no harmful praying for the dead." * 
 
 Immediately after death a ceremony commenced, the most offensive 
 part of which has not been laid aside for more than half a century. 
 This was called the Licke or Lake-xcake, a term derived from the 
 Anglo-Saxon Lie a corpse, and Wcecce a wake or matching. It ori- 
 ginally consisted of a meeting of the friends and relations of the 
 deceased, for the purpose of watching by the body from the moment 
 it ceased to breathe, to its exportation to the grave ; a duty which 
 was at first performed with solemnity and piety, accompanied by the 
 singing of psalms and the recitation of the virtues of the dead. It 
 speedily, however, degenerated into a scene of levity, of feasting, 
 and intoxication ; to such a degree, indeed, that it was thought 
 necessary at a provincial synod held in London during the reign of 
 Edward III. to issue a canon for the restriction of the watchers to 
 the near relations and most intimate friends of the deceased, and 
 only to such of these as offered to repeat a fixed number of psalms 
 
 * Bourne apud Brand, p. 9.
 
 235 
 
 for the benefit of his soul. * To this regulation little attention, we 
 apprehend, was paid ; for the Lake-wake appears to have been ob- 
 served as a meeting of revelry during the whole of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries ; and Mr. Bourne, so late as the year 1725, 
 declares, that it was then " a scene of sport and drinking aad 
 lewdness." j- 
 
 In Scotland during the period of which we are treating, and even 
 down to the rebellion of 1745, the Lake-wake was observed with 
 still greater form and effect than in England, though not often with 
 a better moral result. Mr. Pennant describing it, when speaking 
 of the Highland customs, under the mistaken etymology of Late- 
 wake, says, that the evening after the dea<.h of any person, the 
 relations or friends of the deceased met at the house, attended 
 by a bag-pipe or fiddle ; the nearest of kin, be it wife, son, or 
 daughter, opened a melancholy ball, dancing and greeting, i. e. crying 
 violently at the same time ; and this continued till day-light, but 
 with such gambols and frolics among the younger part of the com- 
 pany, that the loss which occasioned them was often more than sup- 
 phed by the consequences of that night, ij; Mrs. Grant, however, in 
 her lately published work on the Superstitions of the Highlanders, 
 has given us a more favourable account of this ancient custom, 
 which she has connected with a wild traditionary tale of much 
 moral interest. 
 
 A peasant of Glen Banchar, a dreary and secluded recess in the 
 central Highlands, " was fortunate in all respects but one. He had 
 three very fine children, who all, in succession, died after having been 
 weaned, though, before, they gave every promise of health and firm- 
 ness. Both parents were much afflicted ; but the father's grief was 
 clamorous and unmanly. They resolved that the next should be 
 stickled for two years, hoping, by this, to avoid the repetition of such 
 a misfortune. They did so ; and the child, by living longer, only took 
 
 * Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 546. 
 
 f Antiquitates Vulgares apud Brand, p. 23. t Tour in Scotland. 
 
 H H 2
 
 236 
 
 a firmer hold of their affections, and furnished more materials for sor- 
 rowful recollection. At the close of Uie second year, he followed his 
 brothers ; and there were no bounds to the affliction of the parents. 
 
 " There are, however, in the economy of Highland life, certain 
 duties and courtesies which are indispensable ; and for the omission 
 of which nothing can apologise. One of those is, to call in all their 
 friends, and feast them at the time of the greatest family distress. 
 The death of the child happened late in spring, when sheep were abroad 
 in the more inhabited straths ; but, from the blasts in that high and 
 stormy region, were still confined to the cot. In a dismal snowy 
 evening, the man, unable to stifle his anguish, went out, lamenting 
 aloud, for a lamb to treat his friends with at the Late-xvake. At the 
 door of the cot, however, he found a stranger standing before the 
 entrance. He was astonished, in such a night, to meet a person so 
 far from any frequented place. The stranger was plainly attired ; but 
 had a countenance expressive of singular mildness and benevolence, 
 and, addressing him in a sweet, impressive voice, asked him what he 
 did there amidst the tempest. He was filled with awe, which he 
 could not account for, and said, that he came for a lamb. ' What 
 kind of lamb do you mean to take ?' said the stranger. ' The very 
 best I can find,' he replied, ' as it is to entertain my friends ; and I 
 hope you will share of it.' — ' Do your sheep make any resistance when 
 you take away the lamb, or any disturbance afterwards?' — ' Never,' 
 was the answer. ' How differently am I treated !' said the traveller. 
 ' A^^ien I com© to visit my sheepfold, I take, as I am well entitled to 
 do, the best lamb to myself; and my ears are filled with the clamour 
 of discontent by these ungrateful sheep, whom I have fed, watched, 
 and protected.' 
 
 " He looked up in amaze ; but the vision was fled. He went how- 
 ever for the lamb, and brought it home with alacrity. He did more : 
 It was the custom of these times — a custom, indeed, which was not 
 extinct till after 1 745 — for people to dance at Late-wakes. It was a 
 mournful kind of movement, but still it was dancing. The nearest 
 relation of the deceased oft;en began the ceremony weeping ; but did,
 
 237 
 
 however, begin it, to give the example of fortitude and resignation. 
 This man, on other occasions, had been quite unequal to the perform- 
 ance of this duty ; but at this time he, immediately on coming in, 
 ordered music to begin, and danced the solitary measure appropriate 
 to such occasions. The reader must have very little sagacity or 
 knowledge of the purport and consequences of visions, who requires 
 to be told, that many sons were born, lived, and prospered afterwards 
 in this reformed family." * 
 
 Some vestiges of the Lalce-wake still remain at this day in remote 
 parts of the north of England, especially at the period of laying out, 
 or streeking the corpse, as it is termed ; and here it may be remarked, 
 that in the time of Shakspeare, the practice of xeinding the corse, or 
 putting on the •winding-sheet, was a cei*emony of a very impressive kind, 
 and accompanied by the solemn melody of dirges. Some lines strik- 
 ingly illustrative of this pious duty, are to be found in the White 
 Devil; or Vittoria Coro??«6oMa of Webster, published in 1612. Fran- 
 cisco, Duke of Florence, tells Flaminio, 
 
 ♦' I found them winding of Marcello's corse; 
 And there is such a solemn melody, 
 'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies; 
 Such as old grandames, watching by the dead, 
 Were wont to outwear the nights with ; that, believe me, 
 I had no eyes to guide me forth the room, 
 They were so o'ercharged with water. 
 
 ■Cornelia, the Moor, and three other ladies, discovered winding Marcellds corse. A SONG. 
 
 Cor. Tliis rosemary is wither'd, pray get fresh ; 
 I would have these herbs grow up in his grave, 
 When I am dead and rotten. Reach the bays, 
 I'll tie a garland here about his head : 
 'Twill keep my boy from lightning. This sheet 
 I have kept this twenty years, and every day 
 Hallow'd it with my prayers; I did not think 
 He should have worn it." f 
 
 * Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland, vol. i. p. 184 — 188. 
 f Ancient British Drama, vol. iii. p. 40.
 
 238 
 
 Another exquisite passage of this fine old poet alludes to the same 
 practice — a villain of ducal rank, expiring from the effect of poison, 
 exclaims, 
 
 " O thoTi soft natural death ! that art joint-twin 
 To sweetest siumbcr ! — no rough-bearded comet 
 Stares on thy mild departure ; the dull owl 
 Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf ■ 
 Scents not thy carion. Pity winds thy corse, 
 Whilst horror waits on princes." * 
 
 After the funeral was over, it was customary, among all ranks, to give 
 a cold, and sometimes a very ostentatious, entertainment to the 
 mourners. To this usage Shakspeare refers, in the character of 
 Hamlet : 
 
 " Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the Jttncral bak'd meats 
 Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables," 
 
 a passage which Mr. Collins has illustrated by the following quotation 
 from a contemporary writer : " His corpes was with funerall pompe 
 conveyed to the church, and there sollemnly enterred, nothing 
 omitted which necessitie or custom could claime ; a sermon, a ban- 
 quet, and like observations." f 
 
 The funeral feast is not yet extinct ; it may occasionally be met 
 with in places remote from the metropolis, and more particularly in 
 the northern counties among some of the wealthy yeomanry. 
 Mr. Douce considers the practice as " certainly borrowed from the 
 ccenaferalis of the Romans," and adds, " in the North this feast is 
 called an arval or arvil supper ; and the loaves that are sometimes 
 distributed among the poor, arval-bread. Not many years since one 
 of these arvals was celebrated in a village in Yorkshire at a public- 
 house, the sign of which was the family arms of a nobleman whose 
 motto is Virtus post funera vivit. The undertaker, who, though a 
 clerk, was no scholar, requested a gentleman present to explain to 
 
 * Ancient British Drama, vol. iii. p. 36. 
 
 t The Tragique Historic of the Faire Valeria of London, 1598. ^^de Reed's Shaks- 
 peare, vol. xviii. p. 43. note.
 
 2.'39 
 
 him the meaning of these Latin words, which he readily and faceti- 
 ously did in the following manner ; Virtus, a parish clerk, vivit, lives 
 well, post funera, at an arval. The latter word is apparently derived 
 from some lost Teutonic term that indicated a funeral pile on which 
 the body was burned in times of Paganism." * 
 
 A few observations must still be added on the pleasing, though now 
 nearly obsolete, practice of carrying ever-greens and garlands at fune- 
 rals, and of decorating the grave with flowers. There is something 
 so strikingly emblematic, so delightfully soothing in these old rites, 
 that though the prototype be probably heathen, their disuse is to be 
 regretted. " The carrying of ivy, or laurel, or rosemary, or some of 
 those ever-greens," says Bourne, " is an emblem of the soul's immorta- 
 lity. It is as much as to say, that though the body be dead, yet the 
 soul is ever-green and always in life : it is not like the body, and those 
 other greens which die and revive again at their proper seasons, no 
 autumn nor winter can make a change in it, but it is unalterably the 
 same, perpetually in life, and never dying. 
 
 " The Romans, and other heathens upon this occasion, made use 
 of cypress, which being once cut, will never flourish nor grow any 
 more, as an emblem of their dying for ever, and being no more in 
 life. But instead of that, the antient Christians used the things 
 before mentioned ; they laid them under the corps in the grave, to 
 signify, that they who die in Christ, do not cease to live. For 
 though, as to the body they die to the world, yet as to their souls, 
 they live to God. 
 
 " And as the carrying of these ever-greens is an emblem of the 
 soul's immortality, so it is also of the resurrection of the body : for 
 as these herbs are not entirely plucked up, but only cut down, and 
 will, at the returning season, revive and spring up again ; so the 
 body, like them, is but cut down for a while, and will rise and shoot 
 up again at the resurrection." f 
 
 The bay and rosemary were the plants usually chosen, the former 
 
 * Douce's Illustrations, vol, ii. p. 202, 203. 
 t Bourne's Antiquitates Vulg. p. 33, 34.
 
 240 
 
 as being said to revive from the root, when apparently dead, and the 
 latter from its supposed virtue in strengthening the memory : 
 
 "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance."* 
 
 Shakspeare has frequently noticed these ever-greens, garlands, and 
 flowers, as forming a part of the tributary rites of the departed, as 
 elegant memorials of the dead : at the funeral of Juliet he adopts the 
 rosemary : — 
 
 " Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary 
 On this fair corse , and as the custom is, 
 In all her best array bear her to church." j- 
 
 Garlands of flowers were formerly either hung up in country- 
 churches, as a mark of honour and esteem, over the seats of those 
 who had died virgins, or were remarkable for chastity and fidelity, or 
 were placed in the form of crowns on the coffins of the deceased, and 
 buried with them, for the same purpose. Of these crowns and gar- 
 lands, which were in frequent use until the commencement of the 
 last century, a very curious account has been given by a writer in the 
 Gentleman's Magazine. 
 
 " In this nation (as well as others)," he observes, " by the abundant 
 zeal of our ancestors, virginity was held in great estimation ; inso- 
 much that those which died in that state were rewarded, at their 
 deaths, with a garland or crown on their heads, denoting their tri- 
 un;iphant victory over the lusts of the flesh. Nay, this honour was 
 extended even to a widow that had enjoyed but one husband (saith 
 Weever in his Fun. Mon. p. 12.) And, in the year 1733, the pre- 
 sent clerk of the parish church of Bromley in Kent, by his digging 
 a grave in that church-yard, close to the east end of the chancel 
 wall, dug up one of these crowns, or garlands, which is most artifi-^ 
 cially wrought in fillagree work with gold and silver wire, in resem- 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 294. 
 t Ibid. vol. XX. p. 2 17, 218.
 
 241 
 
 blance of myrtle (with which plant the funebriaJ garlands of the 
 ancients were composed) whose leaves are fastened to hoops of large 
 wire of iron, now something corroded with rust, but both the gold 
 and silver remains to this time very little different from its original 
 splendor. It was also lined with cloth of silver, a piece of which, 
 together with part of this curious garland, I keep as a choice relic 
 of antiquity. 
 
 " Besides these crowns, the ancients had also their depository 
 garlands, the use of which were continued even till of late years, 
 (and perhaps are still retained in many parts of this nation, for my 
 own knowledge of these matters extends not above twenty or thirty 
 miles round London,) which garlands at the funerals of the deceased, 
 were carried solemnly before the corpse by two maids, and after- 
 ward hung up in some conspicuous place within the church, in me- 
 morial of the departed person, and were (at least all that I have seen) 
 made after the following manner, viz. the lower rim or circlet, was a 
 broad hoop of wood, whereunto was fixed, at the sides thereof, part 
 of two other hoops crossing each other at the top, at right angles, 
 which formed the upper part, being about one third longer than the 
 width ; these hoops were wholly covered with artificial flowers of 
 paper, dyed horn, or silk, and more or less beauteous, according to 
 the skill and ingenuity of the performer. In the vacancy of the 
 inside, from the top, hung white paper, cut in form of gloves, whereon 
 was wrote the deceased's name, age, &c. together with long slips of 
 various coloured paper, or ribbons. These were many times intei*- 
 mixed with gilded or painted empty shells of blown eggs, as farther 
 ornaments ; or, it may be, as emblems of the bubbles or bitterness of 
 this life ; whilst other garlands had only a solitary hour-glass hanging 
 therein, as a more significant symbol of mortality. 
 
 " About forty years ago, these garlands grew much out of repute, and 
 were thought, by many, as very unbecoming decorations for so sacred 
 a place as the church ; and at the reparation, or new beautifying 
 several churches, where 1 have been concerned, I was obliged, by 
 order of the minister and churchwardens, to take the garlands down, 
 
 VOJU I. II
 
 242 
 
 and the inhabitants were strictly forbidden to hang up any more for 
 the future. Yet, notwithstanding, several people, unwilling to forsake 
 their ancient and delightful custom, continued still the making of 
 them, and they were carried at the funerals, as before, to the grave, 
 and put therein, upon the coffin, over the face of the dead ; this I 
 have seen done in many places." Bromley in Kent. Gentleman s 
 Magazine for June 1747. 
 
 Shakspeare has alluded to these maiden rites in Hamlet, where 
 the priest, at the interment of Ophelia, says, 
 
 " Here she is allovv'd lier virgin crants. 
 
 Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home 
 Of bell and burial." * 
 
 The term crants, observes Johnson, on the authority of a corre- 
 spondent, is the German word for garlands, and was probably re- 
 tained by us from the Saxons, -f- 
 
 The strewments mentioned in this passage refer to a pleasing 
 custom, which is still, we believe, preserved in Wales, of scattering 
 flowers over the graves of the deceased. :t It is manifestly copied 
 from the funeral rites of the Greeks and Romans, and was early in- 
 troduced into the Christian church ; for St. Jerom, in an epistle to his 
 friend Pammachius on the death of his wife, remarks, " whilst other 
 husbands strawed violets and roses, and lilies, and purple flowers, 
 upon the graves of their wives, and comforted themselves with such 
 like offices, Pammachius bedewed her ashes and venerable bones 
 with the balsam of alms § ;" and Mr. Strutt, in his Manners and Cus- 
 stoms of England, teUs us, " that of old it was usual to adorn the 
 graves of the deceased with roses and other flowers (but more 
 especially those of lovers, round whose tombs they have often planted 
 rose trees) : Some traces," he observes, " of this ancient custom are 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 335, 336". f Ibid. p. 336. note. 
 
 X See Pratt's Gleanings in Wales, and Mason's Elegy in a Chuich-yard in Wales. 
 § Bourne's Antiq. apud Brand, p. 45.
 
 243 
 
 yet remaining in the church-yard of Oakley, in Surry, whicli is full 
 of rose trees planted round the graves." * 
 
 Many of the dramas of our immortal bard bear testimony to his 
 partiality for this elegantly affectionate tribute ; a practice which there 
 is reason to suppose was in the country at least not uncommon in his 
 days : thus Capulet, in Romeo and Juliet, observes, 
 
 " Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse ;" f 
 
 and the Queen in Hamlet is represented as performing the ceremony 
 at the grave of Ophelia: 
 
 " Queen. Sweets to the sweet: Farewell! {Scattering Flffwers.) 
 
 I hop'd, thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife ; 
 1 thouirht, thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, 
 And not have streTJo'd thy grave." t 
 
 It was considered, likewise, as a duty incumbent on the survivors, 
 annually to plant shrubs and flowers upon, and to tend and keep neat, 
 the turf which covered the remains of their beloved friends ; in 
 accordance with this usage, Mariana is drawn in Pericles decorating 
 the tomb of her nurse : 
 
 " I will rob Tellus of her weed, 
 
 To strew thy green with flowers : the yellows, blues, 
 The purple violets, and marigolds, 
 Shall, as a chaplet, hang upon thy grave. 
 While summer days do last ;" § 
 
 and Arviragus, in Cymbeline, pathetically exclaims, 
 
 " With fairest flowers, 
 
 Whilst summer lasts, and I live hejre, Fidele, 
 I'll sweeten thy sad grave : Thou shall not lack 
 The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose ; nor 
 
 * Anglo Saxon lEra., vol. i. p. 69. f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 219. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 337. § Ibid. vol. xxi. p. 297, 298. 
 
 II 2
 
 244 
 
 The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
 The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, 
 Out-sweeten'd not thy breath." * 
 
 The only relic which yet exists in this country of a custom so in- 
 teresting, is to be found in the practice of protecting the hallowed 
 mound by twigs of osier, an attention to the mansions of the dead, 
 which is still observable in most of the country-church-yards in the 
 south of England. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 576. — In Mr. Malkin's notes on Mason's Eleg}', 
 we have the following elegant and pleasing description of this pathetic custom, as it still 
 exists in Wales : — " It is a very antient and general practice in Glamorgan," he remarks, 
 " to plant flowers on the graves ; so that many Church-yards have something like the 
 splendour of a rich and various parterre. Besides this it is usual to strew the graves with 
 flowers and ever-greens, within the Church as well as out of it, thrice at least every year, 
 on the same principle of delicate respect as the stones are whitened. 
 
 " No flowers or ever-greens are permitted to be planted on graves but such as are 
 sweet-scented : the pink and polyanthus, sweet williams, gilliflowers, and carnations, 
 mignionette, thyme, hyssop, camomile, rosemary, make up the pious decoration of this 
 
 consecrated garden . 
 
 " The white rose is always planted on a virgin's tomb. The red rose is appropriated 
 to the grave of any person distinguished for goodness, and especially benevolence of 
 character. 
 
 " In the Easter week most generally the graves are newly dressed, and manured with 
 fresh earth, when such flowers or ever-greens as may be wanted or wished for arc planted. 
 In the Whitsuntide Holidays, or rather the preceding week, the graves are again looked 
 after, weeded, and other wise dressed, or, if necessary, planted again. — This work the nearest 
 relations of the deceased always do with their own hands, and never by servants or hired 
 persons. — 
 
 " When a young couple are to be married, their ways to the Church are strewed with 
 sweet-scented flowers and ever-greens. When a young unmarried person dies, his or her 
 ways to the grave are also strewed with sweet flowers and ever-greens ; and on such occa- 
 sions it is the usual phrase, that those persons are going to their nuptial beds, not to their 
 graves. — None ever molest the flowers that grow on graves ; for it is deemed a kind of 
 sacrilege to do so. A relation or friend will occasionally take a pink, if it can be spared, 
 or a sprig of thyme, from the grave of a beloved or respected person, to wear it in re- 
 membrance ; but they never take much, lest they should deface the growth on the grave. — 
 " These elegant and highly pathetic customs of South Wales make the best impression 
 on the mind. What can be more affecting than to see all the youth of both sexes in a 
 village, and in every village through which the corpse passes, dressed in their best apparel, 
 and strewing with sweet-scented flowers the ways along which one of their beloved neigh- 
 bours goes to his or her marriage-bed." 
 
 Malkin's Scenery, Antiquities, and Biography of 
 South Wales, 4to. 1804. p. 606.
 
 245 
 
 We have thus advanced in pursuit of our object, namely, A Swvey 
 of Country Life during the Age of Shakspeare, as far as a sketch of 
 its manners and customs, resulting from a brief description of rural 
 characters, holidays, and festivals, wakes, fairs, weddings, and burials, 
 will carry us ; and we shall now proceed with the picture, by adding 
 some account of those diversions of our ancestors which coidd not with 
 propriety find a place under any of the topics that have been hitherto 
 noticed ; endeavouring in our progress to render the great dramatic 
 bard the chief illustrator of his own times.
 
 246 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 VIEW or COUNTRY LIFE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE CONTINUED DIVERSIONS. 
 
 The attempt to describe all the numerous rural diversions which were 
 prevalent during the age of Shakspeare, would be, in the highest 
 degree, superfluous ; for the greatest part of them, it is evident, must 
 remain, with such slight or gradual modification as to require but 
 little notice. It will be, therefore, our endeavour, in the course of this 
 chapter, after giving a catalogue of the principal country-diversions of 
 the era in question, to dwell only upon those which are now either 
 entirely obsolete, or which have subsequently undergone such 
 alterations as to render their former state an object of novelty and 
 curiosity. 
 
 This catalogue may be taken, with tolerable accuracy, from Randal 
 Holme of Chester, and from Robert Burton ; the former enumerating 
 the games and diversions of the sixteenth century, and the latter 
 those of the prior part of the seventeenth. If to these, we add the 
 notices to be drawn from Shakspeare, the sketch will, there is reason 
 to suppose, prove sufficiently extensive. 
 
 In the hst of Randal Holme will be found the names of some 
 juvenile sports, which are now perhaps no longer explicable ; this 
 poetical antiquary, however, shall speak for himself 
 
 «' They dare challenge foi* to tlirow the sledge; 
 
 To junipe or lepc over ditch or hedge ; 
 
 To wraslle, play at stool-balle, or to runne ; 
 
 To pitch the barre or to shote offe the gunne ; 
 
 To play at loggets, nineholes, or ten pinnes; 
 
 To trye it out at fote balle by the shinnes ; 
 
 At ticke tacke, seize noddy, maw, or ruffe ; 
 
 Hot-cockles, leape frogge, or blindman's buffe ; 
 
 To drinke the halfer pottes, or deale att the whole canne; 
 
 To playe at chesse, or pue, and inke-horenne ;
 
 247 
 
 To (launcc flic morris, playe at barley breake; 
 
 At alle exploytes a mao can tliynke or speake ; 
 
 Att shove-grote, 'venter poyntc, att crosse and pyle; 
 
 Att " Beshrewe him that's last att any style;" 
 
 Att lepynge over a Christmas bon fyer, 
 
 Or att the " drawynge dame owte o' the myre;" 
 
 At " Shoote cock, Gregory," stoole-bali, and what not : 
 
 Picke-poynt, top, and scourge to make him liot." * 
 
 Burton, after mentioning Hazcking, Hunting, Fowlhig, and Fishing, 
 says, " many other sports and recreations there be, much in use, as 
 ringing, boicling, shooting, (with the bow,) keelpins, tronks, coits, pitching 
 bars, hurling, wrestling, leainng, runiiing, fencing, mustring, szohnming, 
 •wasters, foiles, foot-hall, balo-wn, qui?itan, &c., and many such which are 
 the common recreations of the Country folks." f He subsequently adds 
 bull and bear baiting as common to both countrymen and ij: citizens, 
 and then subjoins to the list of rural amusements, dancing, singing, 
 masking, mumming, and stage-plai/ers. § For the ordinary recreations 
 of Winter as well in the country as in town, he recommends " cards, 
 tables and dice, shovelboord, chess-p)lay, the philosojjh e7'\s game, small 
 trunks, shuttle-cock, balUards, niusick, masks, singing, dancing, ule 
 games, frolicks. Jests, riddles, catches, putposes, cj^uestions and commands, 
 and merry tales.'''' || 
 
 From this statement it will immediately appear, that many of the 
 rural diversions of this period are those likewise of the present day, 
 and that no large portion of the catalogue can with propriety call for a 
 more extended notice. 
 
 At the head of those which demand some brief elucidation, we shall 
 place the Itinerant Stage, a country amusement, however, which, in 
 the days of Elizabeth, was fast degenerating into contempt. The 
 performance of secular plays by strolling companies of minstrels, had 
 
 * MS. Harl. Libr., No. 2057, apud Strutl's Cusioms, &c. 
 
 i Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 8th edit. fol. 1«76. p. Hi!), I/O. 
 
 X Ibid. p. 1/2. § Ibid. p. 171. 1| Ibid. p. l/i'.
 
 248 
 
 been much encouraged for two or three centuries, not only by the 
 \ailgar, but by the nobihty, Into whose castles and halls they were 
 gladly admitted, and handsomely rewarded. At the commencement 
 of the sixteenth century, the custom was still common, and Mr. 
 Steevens, as a proof of it, has furnished us with the following entry 
 from the fifth Earl of Northumberland's Household Book, which was 
 begun in the year 1512 : — 
 
 " Rewards to Players. 
 
 " Item, to be payd to the said Richard Gowge and Thomas Percy 
 for rewards to players for playes playd in Chrystinmas by stranegers 
 in my house after xxd. every play by estimacion somme xxxiijs. iiijd. 
 Which ys appoynted to be paid to the said Richard Gowge and 
 Thomas Percy at the said Christynmas in fidl contentacion of the 
 said reward ys xxxiijs. iiijd." * 
 
 That these itinerants were stiU occasionally admitted into the 
 country-mansions of the great, during the reign of Elizabeth, we 
 have satisfactory evidence ; but it may be sufficient here to remark, 
 that Elizabeth herself was entertained with an historical play at 
 Kenelworth Castle, by performers who came for that purpose from 
 Coventry; and that Shakspeare has favoured us with another instance, 
 by the mtroduction of the following scene in his Taming of the Shrew, 
 supposed to have been written in 1594: — 
 
 " Lord. Sirrah, go see what trumpet 'lis that souiuls : — 
 
 Exit Serf ant. 
 Belike, some noble gentleman ; that means, 
 Travelling sonic journey, to repose him here. — 
 
 Re-enter a Soranf. 
 
 How now ? who is it ? 
 
 Sc7V. An it jilease your lionoin-. 
 
 Players that offer service to your lordship. 
 
 Lord. Bid them come near: — 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 22. note 6".
 
 249 
 
 Enter Players. 
 
 Now, fellows, you are welcome. 
 
 1 Play. We thank your honour. 
 
 Lord. Do you intend to stay with me to night ? 
 
 2 Play. So please your lordship to accept our duty. 
 Lord. With all my heart. — 
 
 Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery. 
 
 And give them friendly welcome every one : 
 
 Let them want nothing that my house affords." * 
 
 From this passage it may be deduced, that the itinerant players of 
 this period were held in no higher estimation than menial servants ; 
 an inference which is corroborated by referring to the anonymous 
 play of ^ Taming of a Shrew, written about 1590, where the entry of 
 the players is thus marked, " Enter two of the plaiers, Tiith packs at 
 their backs.'''' The abject condition of these strollers, Mr. Pope has 
 attributed, perhaps too hastily, to the stationary performers of this 
 reign ; " the top of the profession," he observes, " were then mere 
 players, not gentlemen of the stage ; they were led into the huttery 
 by the steward, not placed at the lord's table, or the lady's \ toilette;" 
 a passage on which Mr. Malone has remarked, that Pope " seems not 
 to have observed, that the players here introduced are strollers; and 
 there is no reason to suppose that our author, Heminge, Burbage, 
 Condell, &c. who were licensed by King James, were treated in this 
 manner." % 
 
 On the other hand Mr. Steevens supports the opinion of Pope by 
 asserting, that " at the period when this comedy { Taming of a Shrew) 
 was written, and for many years after, the profession of a player was 
 scarcely allowed to be reputable. The imagined dignity," he con- 
 tinues, " of those who did not belong to itinerant companies, is, 
 therefore, imworthy consideration. I can as easily believe that the 
 blundering editors of the first folio were suffered to lean their hands 
 on Queen Elizabeth's chair of state, as that they were admitted to the 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 21, 22. 25,26. 
 
 t Pope's Preface to his edition of Shakspeare, vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 183. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 25, note 3. 
 
 VOL. I. K K
 
 250 
 
 table of the Earl of Leicester, or the toilette of Lady Hunsden. 
 Like Stephen, in Every Man in his Humour, the greatest indulgence 
 our histrionic leaders could have expected, would have been a trencher 
 and a napkin in the buttery^ * 
 
 The inference, however, which Mr. Malone has drawn, appears to 
 have the authority of Shakspeare himself; for M'hen Hamlet is 
 informed of the arrival of the players, he exclaims, " How chances it, 
 they travel ; their residetice, both in reputation and profit, was better 
 both waysf ;" a question, the drift of which even Mr. Steevens explains 
 in the following words. " How chances it they travel? — i. e. How 
 happens it that they are become strollers ? — Their residence, both in 
 reputation and profit, was better both ways — i. e. To have remained 
 in a settled theatre was the more honourable as well as the more lucrative 
 situation.^'' X We have every reason, therefore, to suppose, that the 
 difference between the stroller and the licensed performer was in 
 Shakspeare's time considerable ; and that the latter, although not the 
 companion of lords and countesses, was held in a very respectable 
 light, if his personal conduct were good, and became the occasional 
 associate of the first literary characters of the age ; while the former 
 was frequently degraded beneath the rank of a servant, and, in the 
 statute, indeed, 39 Eliz. ch. 4. he is classed with rogues, vagabonds, 
 and sturdy beggars. 
 
 This depreciation of the character of the itinerant player, towards 
 the close of Elizabeth's reign, soon narrowed his field of action ; the 
 opulent became unwilling to admit into their houses persons thus 
 legally branded ; and the stroller was reduced to the necessity of ex- 
 hibiting his talents at wakes and fairs, on temporary scaffolds and bar- 
 rel heads ; " ifhepenfor thee once," says Ben Jonson, addressing 
 a strolling player, " thou shalt not need to travell, with thy pumps 
 full of gravell, any more, after a blinde jade and a hamper, and stalk 
 tipon boards and barrel-heads to an old crackt trumpet." § 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 26, note. f Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 130, 131. 
 
 X Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 131. note 7- 
 
 § Poetaster, 1601, vide Ben Jonson's Works, fol. edit, of 1640, vol. i. p. 267.
 
 251 
 
 Many country-towns, indeed, at this period, were privileged to hold 
 fairs by exhibiting a certain number of stage-plays at their annual 
 fairs. Of these, Manningtree in Essex was one of the most cele- 
 brated; Heywood mentions it as notorious for yearly plays at its fair *; 
 and that its festivity on these occasions was equally known, is evident 
 from Shakspeare's comparison of FalstafFto a " roasted Manningtree 
 ox with a pudding in his belly." f The histrionic fame of Manning- 
 tree Mr. Malone proves by two quotations from Nashe and Decker ; 
 the former exclaiming in a poem, called The choosing of Valentines, 
 
 " Or see a play of strange moralitie, 
 
 Shewen by bachelrie of Manning-iiee, 
 
 Whereto the countrie franklins flock-meale swarme;" 
 
 and the latter observing, in a tract entitled Seven deadly Sinnes of 
 London, 1607, that " Cruelty has got another part to play ; it is 
 acted like the old morals at Manningtree.'''' J 
 
 This custom of stage-playing at annual fairs continued to support a 
 few itinerant companies ; but in general, after the halls of the nobility 
 and gentry were shut against them §, they divided into small parties 
 of three or four, and at length became mere jugglers, jesters, and 
 puppet-show exhibitors. This last-mentioned amusement, indeed, 
 and its professors, seem to have been known, in this country, under 
 the name of motions, and motion-men, as early as the commencement 
 
 * Apology for Actors, 1612, 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 307. 
 
 J Vide Malone's note in Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 307. 
 
 § By the statute of the 39 Eliz. any baron of the realm might license a company of 
 players ; but by the statute of first James I. " it is declared and enacted, that fi-om thence- 
 forth no authority given, or to be given or made, by any baron of this realm, or any other 
 honourable personage of greater degree, unto any interlude players, minstrels, jugglers, 
 bearward, or any other idle jierson or persons whatsoever, using any unlawful games or 
 plays, to play or act, should be available to iree or discharge the said persons, or any of 
 them, from the pains and i)unishments of rogues, of vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, in the 
 said statutes (those of Eliz.) mentioned." 
 
 K K 2
 
 252 
 
 of the sixteenth century * ; and the term, indeed, continued to be 
 thus applied in the time of Jonson, who repeatedly uses it, in his 
 Bartholomeii) Fair.]- The degradation of the strolling companies, 
 by the statutes of Elizabeth and James, rendered the exhibition of 
 automaton figures, at this period, common throughout the kingdom. 
 They are alluded to by Shakspeare under the appellation of drol/eries ; 
 thus in the Tempest, Alonzo, alarmed at the strange shapes bihiging 
 in the banquet, exclaims 
 
 " Give us kind keepers, heavens ! What were these?" 
 
 a question to which Sebastian replies, 
 
 " A LiriXG drolleiy," % 
 
 meaning by this epithet to distinguish them from the wooden pup- 
 pets, the performers in the shows called drolleries. 
 
 A very popular annual diversion was celebrated, during the age of 
 Shakspeare, and for more than twenty-five years after, on the Cots- 
 wold Hills in Gloucestershire. It has been said that the rural games 
 which constituted this anniversary, were founded by one Robert Dover 
 on the accession of James I. ; § but it appears to be ascertained that 
 Dover was only the reviver, with additional splendour, of sports 
 which had been yearly exhibited, at an early period, on the same 
 spot, and perhaps only discontinued for a short time before their 
 revival in 1603. " We may learn from Rudder's History of Gloces- 
 tershire," says Mr. Chalmers, " that, in more early times, there was 
 at Cottswold a customary meeting, every year, at Whitsontide, called 
 
 * A character in Gammar Giirtons Needle, says Mr. Strutt, a comedy supposed to have 
 been written A. D. 1517? declares he will go " and travel with young Goose, the motion- 
 man, for a puppet-player." * This reference, however, is inaccurate, for after a diligent 
 perusal of the comedy in question, no such passage is to be found. 
 
 f Ben Jonson's Works, fol. edit. 1640, vol. ii.. p. 11. act v. sc. 4. 
 
 + Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 112. 
 
 5 Vide Malone on the Chi-onological Order of Shakspeare's Plays. Reed's Shakspeare, 
 vol. 2. p. 304. 
 
 • Strutt's Sporis and Pasiimes, p. 150, note b.
 
 253 
 
 an ale, oi- Whitson-ale, which was attended by all the lads, and the 
 lasses, of the villegery, who, annually, chose a Lord and Lady of the 
 Yule, who were the authorized rulers of the rustic revellers. There 
 is in the Church of Cirencester, says Rudder, an ancient monument, 
 in basso relievo, that evinces the antiquity of those games, which were 
 known to Shakspeare, before the accession of King James. They 
 were known, also, to Drayton early in that reign : for upon the map 
 of Glocestershire, which precedes the fourteenth song, there is a re- 
 presentation of a Whitsun-ale, with a may pole, which last is inscribed 
 ' Heigh for Cotszvold.'' 
 
 " Ascending, next, faire Cotswold's plaines, 
 Slie revels with the Shepherd's svvaines." * 
 
 Mr. Strutt also is of opinion that the Cotswold games had a much 
 higher origin than the time of Dover, and observes that they are evi- 
 dently alluded to in the following lines by John Heywood the 
 epigrammatist : 
 
 " He fometh like a bore, tlie beaste should seeme bolde, 
 For he is as fierce as a lyon of Cotsivold." f 
 
 In confirmation of these statements it may be added, that Mr. Stee- 
 vens and Mr. Chalmers have remarked, that in Randolph's poems, 
 1638, is to be found " An eclogue on the noble assemblies revived on 
 Cotswold hills by Mr. Robert Dover ;" and in D' Avenant's poems 
 published the same year, a copy of verses " In celebration of the 
 yeareiy preserver of the games at Cotswold," X 
 
 The Reviver of these far-famed games was an enterprising attorney, 
 a native of Barton on the Heath in Warwickshire, and consequently a 
 near neighbour to Shakspeare's country-residence. He obtained per- 
 mission from King James to be the director of these annual sports, 
 which he superintended in person for forty years. They were 
 
 * Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 323, note s. 
 
 t Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 20. 
 
 % Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 304, and Chalmers's Apology, p. 324, note.
 
 254 
 
 resorted to by prodigious multitudes of people, and by all the nobility 
 and gentry for sixty miles round, until " the rascally rebellion," to 
 adopt the phraseology of Anthony Wood, " was begun by the Pres- 
 byterians, which gave a stop to their proceedings, and spoiled all that 
 was generous and ingenious elsewhere."* 
 
 They consisted originally, and previous to the direction of Dover, 
 merely of athletic exercises, such as wrestling, leaping, cudgel-play- 
 ing, sword and buckler fighting) pitching the bar, throwing the 
 sledge, tossing the pike, &c. &c. To these Dover added coursing for 
 the gentlemen and dancing for the ladies ; a temporary castle of 
 boards being erected for the accommodation of the fair sex, and a 
 silver collar adjudged as a prize for the fleetest greyhound. 
 
 To these two eras of the Cotswold Games Shakspeare alludes in 
 the second part of King Henry IV., and in the Merry Wives of 
 Windsor. Justice Shallow refers to the original state of this diver- 
 sion, when in the first of these dramas he enumerates among the 
 swinge-bucklers, " Will Squeele, a Cotsole man f ;" and to Dover's 
 improvement of them, when, in the second, he represents Slender 
 asking Page, " How does your fallo'w greyhound, Sir ? I heard say, 
 he was out-run on Cotsale." J 
 
 Dover, tradition says, was highly delighted with the superintend- 
 ance of these Games, and assumed, during his direction of them, a 
 great deal of state and consequence. " Captain Dover," relates 
 Granger, a title which courtesy had probably bestowed on this public- 
 spirited attorney, " had not only the permission of James I. to cele- 
 brate the Cotswold Games, but appeared in the very cloaths which 
 that monarch had formerly worn §, and with much more dignity in 
 his air and aspect." || 
 
 In 1636, there was published at London a small quarto, entitled, 
 " Annalia Dubrensia, upon, the yearly Celebration of Mr. Robert 
 
 * Athene Oxon. vol. ii. p. 812. f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 124. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 16. 
 
 § They were given him by Endymion Porter, the King's servant. 
 
 II Biographical History of England, vol. ii. p. 399, 8vo. edit, of 1775.
 
 255 
 
 Dover s Olympic Games, upon Cotszcold Hills, a book consisting 
 entirely of recommendatory verses, written by Jonson, Drayton, 
 Randolph, and many others, and with a print prefixed of Dover on 
 horseback. 
 
 It is probable that, at this period, and for many subsequent years, 
 there were several places in the kingdom which had Games somewhat 
 similar to those of Cotswold, though not quite so celebrated; for 
 Heath says, that a carnival of this kind was kept every year, about 
 the middle of July, upon Halgaver-moor, near Bodwin in Cornwall ; 
 " resorted to by thousands of people. The sports and pastimes here 
 held were so well liked," he relates, " by Charles the Second, when 
 he touched here in his way to Sicily, that he became a brother of the 
 jovial society. The custom," he adds, " of keeping this Cai'uival is 
 said to be as old as the Saxons."* 
 
 Of the four great rural diversions. Hawking, Hunting, Fording 
 and Fishing, the first will require the greatest share of our attention, 
 as it is now nearly, if not altogether extinct, and was, during the 
 reigns of Elizabeth and James, the most prevalent and fashionable of 
 all amusements. 
 
 To the very commencement, indeed, of the seventeenth century, 
 we may point, as to the zenith of its popularity and reputation ; for 
 although it had been introduced into this country as early as the 
 middle of the eighth century f, it was, until the commencement of 
 the sixteenth, nearly, if not entirely, confined to the highest rank of 
 society. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, however, it 
 descended from the nobility to the gentry and wealthy yeomanry, 
 and no man could then have the smallest pretension to the character 
 
 * Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 20, and Heath's Description of Cornwall, 1750. 
 
 f " About the year 750, Winifrid, or Boniface, a native of England, and archbishop of 
 Mons, acquaints Ethelbald, a king of Kent, that he has sent him, one hawk, two falcons 
 and two shields. And Hedilbert, a king of the Mercians, requests the same archbishop 
 "Winifrid to send him two falcons which have been trained to kill cranes. See Epistol. 
 Winifrid. (Bonifiic.) Mogunt. 16'05. 1629. And in Bibl. Patr. torn, vi,, and torn. xiii. 
 p. 70." — Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 221.
 
 256 
 
 of a gentleman who kept not a cast of hawks. Of this a kidicrous 
 instance is given us by Ben Jonson, in his Every Man in his Humour .- 
 
 " Master Stephen. How does my coussin Edward, uncle ? 
 
 Kn&tsoell. O, well cousse, goe in and see : I doubt he be scarce stirring yet. 
 
 Step/i. Uncle, afore I goe in, can you tell me, an' he Iiave ere a booke of the sciences 
 of hawking, and hunting ? I would faine borrow it. 
 
 Know. Why, I hope you will not a hawking now, will you ? 
 
 Stepfi. No, cousse ; but I'll practise against next yere uncle. I have bought me a 
 hawke, and a hood, and bells, and all ; I lacke nothing but a booke to keepe it by. 
 
 Know. O, most ridiculous. 
 
 Steph. Nay, looke j'ou now, you are angrie, uncle : why you know, an' a man have 
 not skill in the hawking, and hunting-languages now-a-days, I'll not give a rush for him. 
 They are more studied than the Greeke, or the Latine. He is for no gallant's com- 
 pany without 'hem. — A fine jest ifaith ! Slid a gentleman mun show himselfe like a 
 eentJeman !" * 
 
 a 
 
 That the character of Master Stephen is not, in this respect, over- 
 charged, but represents faithfully the fashionable folly of the age, is 
 evident from many contemporary writers, and especially from that 
 sensible old author Richard Brathwait, who, speaking of dogs and 
 hawks, says, " they are to be used only as pleasures and recreations, 
 of which to speake sparingly were much better, than onely to dis- 
 course of them, as if our •whole reading were in them. Neither doe I 
 speake this without just cause ; for I have noted this fault in many of 
 our younger brood of Gentry, who either for want of education in 
 learning, or their owne neglect of learning, have no sooner attained 
 to the strength of making their fist a pearch for a hawfce, but by 
 the helpe of some bookes of faulconry, whereby they are instructed in 
 the words of art, they will run division upon discourse of this plea- 
 sure : whereas, if at any time they be interrupted by occasion of 
 some other conference, these High-flyers are presently to bee tnewed 
 up, for they are taken from their element." f 
 
 Many of the best books on the Art, of Falconry were written, 
 indeed, as might be expected, during this universal rage for (he 
 
 * Jonson's Works, fol. vol. i. p. 6. act i. sc. 1. 
 
 t Brathwait's English Gentleman, 2d edit. 1633. p. 220.
 
 257 
 
 amusement, and the ha-jiking coxcombs of the day, adopting their 
 language on all occasions, became necessarily obtrusive and pedantic 
 in a disgusting degree. Of these manuals the most popular were 
 written by George Turberville, Gervase JVIarkham, and Edmund 
 Best. * 
 
 But the most detrimental consequence arising from the universality 
 of this elegant diversion, was the immense expense that attended it, 
 and which frequently involved those who were not opulent in utter 
 ruin : a result not to be wondered at, when we find, that at the 
 commencement of the seventeenth century, a goss-hawk and a tassel- 
 hawk were not to be purchased for less than a hundred marks ; and 
 that in the reign of James I., Sir Thomas Monson gave one thousand 
 pounds for a cast of hawks. Brathwait, in his usual strain of pro- 
 priety, advises those who are not possessed of good estates, to give 
 up all idea of this diversion, and exposes its indiscriminate pursuit in 
 the following pleasant manner : — 
 
 " This pleasure," observes he, " as it is a princely delight, so it 
 moveth many to be so dearely enamoured of it, as they will under- 
 goe any charge, rather than forgoe it : which makes mee recall to 
 mind a merry tale which I have read, to this effect. Divers men 
 having entered into discourse, touching the superfluous care (I will 
 
 * " The Booke of Faulconrie, or Hawking, for the onely delight and pleasure of all 
 Noblemen and Gentlemen : collected out of the best aucthors, as wel Italians as French- 
 men, and some English practises withall concernyng Faulconrie, the contentes whereof 
 are to be seene in the next page folowyng. By Geo. Turbervile, Gentleman. Nocet 
 empta dolore voluptas. Imprinted at London for Chr. Barker, at the signe of the Gras- 
 hoper in Panics Church-yarde, 1575." To this was added, the " Noble Arte of Venerie 
 or Hunting;" and are-impression of both, "newly revived, corrected, and augmented 
 with many additions proper to these present times," was published by Thomas Purfoot, 
 in 1611. 
 
 Gervase Markham published in 1595 the edition of Dame Julyana Barne's Treatise on 
 Hawking and Hunting, which we have formerly noticed, and which was first printed by 
 Caxton, and afterwards by Winkin De Worde; and in 1615, the first edition of his 
 Country Contentments, which contains a treatise on Hawking: a work so populai-, that it 
 reached thirteen or fourteen editions. 
 
 Edmund Best, who trained and sold hawks, printed a treatise on Hawks and Hawkins 
 in 1619. ^ 
 
 VOL. I. L L
 
 258 
 
 not say folly) of such as kept dogs and kazi'kes for hawking ; ohe 
 Paulus a Florentine stood up and spake : Not without cause (quoth 
 hee) did that foole of Millan laugh at these ; and being entreated to 
 tell the tale, hee thus proceeded ; upon a time (quoth he) there 
 was a citizen of Millan, a physitian for such as were distracted or 
 lunaticke ; who tooke upon him within a certaine time to cure such as 
 were brought unto him. And hee cured them after this sort : Hee 
 had a plat of ground neere his house, and in it a pit of corrupt and 
 stinking water, wherein he bound naked such as were mad to a stake, 
 some of them knee-deepe, others to the groin, and some others 
 deeper according to the degree of their madnesse, where hee so 
 long pined them with water and hunger, till they seemed sound. 
 Now amongst others, there was one brought, whom he had put 
 thigh-deepe in water ; who after fifteene dayes began to recover, 
 beseeching the physitian that hee might be taken out of the water. 
 Tlie physitian taking compassion of him, tooke him out, but with 
 this condition, that he should not goe out of the roome. Having 
 obeyed him certaine dayes, he gave him liberty to walke up and 
 downe the house, but not to passe the out-gate ; while the rest of 
 his companions, which were many, remaining in the water, diligently 
 observed their physitian's command. Now it chanced, as on a time 
 he stood at the gate, (for out hee durst not goe, for feare he should 
 returne to the pit) he beckoned to a yong gentleman to come unto 
 him, who had a haiake and two spaniels, being moved with the 
 novelty thereof; for to his remembrance before hee fell mad, he had 
 never seene the like. The yong gentleman being come unto him ; 
 Sir, (quoth he) I pray you hear mee a word or two, and answer mee 
 at your pleasure : What is this you ride on (quoth he) and how do 
 you imploy him ? This is a horse (replied he) and I keepe him for 
 hawking. But what call you that, you carry on your fist, and how do 
 you use it ? This is a hawke (said he) and I use to flie with it at 
 pluver and partridge. But what (quoth he) are these which follow 
 you, what doe they, or wherein doe they profit you? These are 
 dogges (said he) and necessary for hawking, to finde and retrieve my
 
 259 
 
 oame. And what were these birds worth, for which you provide so 
 many things, if you should reckon all you take for a whole yeere ? 
 Who answering, hee knew not well, but they were worth a very 
 little, not above sixe crownes. The man replied ; what then may be 
 the charge you are at with your horse, dogges and hawke? Some 
 fiftie crowns, said he. Whereat, as one wondering at the folly of 
 the yong gentleman : Away, away Sir, I pray you quickly, and fly 
 hence before our physitian returne home : for if he finde you here, as 
 one that is maddest man alive, he will throw you into his pit, there 
 to be cured with others, that have lost their wits ; and more than 
 all others, for he will set you chin-deepe in the water. Inferring 
 hence, that the use or exercise of haiekhig, is the greatest folly, 
 unlesse sometimes used by such as are of good estate, and for 
 recreation sake. 
 
 " Neither is this pleasure or recreation herein taxed, but the ex- 
 cessive and immoderate expence which many are at in maintaining 
 this pleasure. Wlxo as they should be wary in the expence of their 
 coins, so much more circumspect in their expence of tme. So as in 
 a word, I could wish yong gentlemen never to bee so taken with this 
 pleasure, as to lay aside the dispatch of more serious occasions, for 
 a flight of feathers in the ayre." * 
 
 The same prudent advice occurs in an author who wrote imme- 
 diately subsequent to Brathwait, and who, though a lover of the 
 diversion, stigmatises the folly of its general adoption. " As for 
 hawking," says he, " I commend it in some, condemne it in others ; 
 in men of qualitie whose estates will well support it, I commend it 
 as a generous and noble qualitie ; but in men of meane ranke and 
 religious men f, I condemne it with Blesensis, as an idle and foolish 
 vanitie ; for I have ever thought it a kinde of madnesse for such 
 men, to bestow ten pounds in feathers, which at one blast might be 
 
 * Brathwait's English Gentleman, 2d edit. 1633. p. 201 — 203. 
 
 t Henry Peacham, who remarks of Hawking, that it is a recreation " very commend- 
 able and befitting a Noble or Gentleman to exercise," adds, that " by tlie Canon Law, 
 Hawking was forbidden unto Clergie." The Compleat Gentleman, 2d edit. p. 212, 213. 
 
 L L 2
 
 260 
 
 blowne away, and to buy a momentary monethly pleasure with the 
 labours and expence of a whole yeare." * 
 
 It is to be regretted, however, that the use of the gun has super- 
 seded, among the opulent, the pursuit of this far more elegant and 
 picturesque recreation. As intimately connected, for many centuries, 
 with the romantic manners and costume of our ancient nobility and 
 gentry, it now possesses peculiar charms for the poet and the 
 antiquary, and we look back upon the detail of this pastime, and all its 
 magnificent establishments, with a portion of that interest which time 
 has conferred upon the splendid pageantries of chivalry. Of the 
 estimation in which it was held, and of the pleasure which it pro- 
 duced, in Shakspeare's time, there are not wanting numerous proofs : 
 he has himself frequently alluded to it, and the poets Turberville, 
 Gascoign, and Sydney, have delighted to expatiate on its praises, and 
 to adopt its technical phraseology. But the most interesting eulogia, 
 the most striking pictures of this diversion, appear to us to be derived 
 from a few strokes in Brathwait, Nash, and Massinger ; writers who, 
 publishing shortly after Shakspeare's death, and describing the amuse- 
 ment of their youthful days, of course delineate the features as they 
 existed in Shakspeare's age, with as much, if not greater accuracy 
 than the still earlier contemporaries of the bard. 
 
 " Hawking," remarks Brathwait, " is a pleasure for high and 
 mounting spirits : such as will not stoope to inferiour lures, having 
 their mindes so farre above, as they scorne to partake with them. It is 
 rare to consider, how a wilde bird should bee so brought to hand, and 
 so well managed as to make us such pleasure in the ayre : but most 
 of all to forgoe her native liberty and feeding, and returne to her 
 former servitude and diet. But in this, as in the rest, we are taught 
 to admire the great goochiesse and bounty of God, who hath not only 
 given us the birds of the aire, with their flesh to feede us, with their 
 voice to cheere us, but with their flight to delight us." f 
 
 • Vide Quaternio, or a Fourefold Way to a Happie Life, set forth in a Dialogue 
 betweene a Countryman and a Citizen, a Divine and a Lawyer. Per Tho. Nash, Philo- 
 politean, 1633. 
 
 f English Gentleman, p. 200.
 
 261 
 
 « I have in my youtlifiill dayes," relates Nash, " beene as glad as 
 ever I was to come from Schoole, to see a little martin in the dead 
 time of the yeare, when the winter had put on her whitest coat, and 
 the frosts had sealed up the brookes and rivers, to make her way 
 throuffh the midst of a multitude of fowle-mouth'd ravenous crows 
 and kites, which pursued her with more hydeous cryes and clamours, 
 than did Coll the dog, and Malkin the maide, the Fox in the 
 Apologue. 
 
 " When the geese for feare flew over the trees, 
 And out of their hives came the swarme of bees :" 
 
 Chancer in his Nunes Priests Tale. 
 
 and maugre all their oppositior;s pulled down her prey, bigger than 
 herselfe, being mounted aloft, steeple-high downe to the ground. 
 And to heare an accipitrary relate againe, how he went forth in a 
 cleere, calme, and sun-shine evening, about an houre before the sunne 
 did usually maske himselfe, unto the river, where finding of a mal- 
 lard, he whistled off his faulcon, and how shee flew from him as if 
 shee would never have turned head againe, yet presently upon a 
 shoote came in, how then by degrees, by little and little, by flying 
 about and about, she mounted so high, vmtill shee had lessened 
 herselfe to the view of the beholder, to the shape of a pigeon or 
 partridge, and had made the height of the moone the place of her 
 flight, how presently upon the landing of the fowle, shee came downe 
 like a stone and enewed it, and suddenly got up againe, and suddenly 
 upon a second landing came downe againe, and missing of it, in the 
 downe come recovered it, beyond expectation, to the admiration of 
 the beholder, at a long ; and to heare him tell a third time, how 
 he went forth early in a winter's morning, to the woody fields and 
 pastures to fly the cocke, where having by the little white feather in 
 his tayle discovered him in a brake, he cast of a tasel gentle, and how 
 he never ceased in his circular motion, untill he had recovered his 
 place, how suddenly upon the flushing of the cocke he came downe, 
 and missing of it in the downcome, what working there was on both
 
 262 
 
 sides, how the cocke mounted, as if he would have pierced the skies ; 
 how the hawke flew a contrary way, untill he had made the winde his 
 friend, how then by degrees he got up, yet never offered to come in, 
 untill he had got the advantage of the higher ground, how then he 
 made in, what speed the cocke made to save himselfe, and what 
 hasty pursuit the hawke made, and how after two long miles flight 
 killed it, yet in killing of it killed himselfe. These discourses I love 
 to heare, and can well be content to be an eye-witnesse of the sport, 
 when my occasions will permit." * 
 
 To this lively and minute detail, which brings the scene imme- 
 diately before our eyes, we must be allowed to add the poetical picture 
 of Massinger, which, as Mr. GifFord has justly observed, " is from the 
 hand of a great master." 
 
 " In the afternoon, 
 
 For we will have variety of delights, 
 We'll to the field again, no game shall rise 
 But we'll be ready for't ; 
 
 for the pye or jay, a sparrow hawk 
 
 Flies from the fist ; the crow so near pursued, 
 
 Shall be compell'd to seek protection under 
 
 Our horses bellies ; a hearn put from her siege, 
 
 And a pistol shot off in her breech, shall mount 
 
 So high, that, to your view, she'll seem to soar 
 
 Above the middle region of the air : 
 
 A cast of haggard falcons, by me mann'd, 
 
 Eying the prey at first, appear as if 
 
 They did turn tail ; but with their labouring wings 
 
 Getting above her, with a thought their pinions 
 
 Clearing the purer element, make in, 
 
 And by turns bind vidth her f ; the frighted fowl. 
 
 Lying at her defence upon her back, 
 
 With her dreadfiil beak, awhile defers her death. 
 
 But by degrees forced down, we part the fray. 
 
 And feast upon her. 
 
 * Quaternio, 1633. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add, that the writer of this 
 work must not be confounded with Thos. Nash the author of Pierce Penniless, who died 
 before 1606. 
 
 t To bi7id -with is to tire or seize. — Gentleman's Recreation.
 
 263 
 
 —Then, for an evening flight. 
 
 A tiercel gentle, which I call, my masters, 
 As he were sent a messenger to the moon, 
 In such a place flies, as he seems to say, 
 See me, or see me not ! the partridge sprung, 
 He makes his stoop ; but wanting breath, is forced 
 To cancelier * ; then, with such speed as if 
 He carried lightning in his wings^ he strikes 
 The trembling bird, who even in death appears 
 Proud to be made his quarry." f 
 
 After these praises and general description of hawking, it will be 
 proper to mention the various kinds of hawks used for this diversion, 
 the different modes of exercising it, and a few of the most interesting 
 particulars relative to the training of the birds. 
 
 It will be found, on consvdting the Treatise on HawMng, by Dame 
 Juliana Barnes, printed by Winkin De Worde in 1496, the Gen- 
 tleman s Academic, by Markham, 1595, and the Jewel for Gentrie, 
 published in 1614, that during this space of time, the species of 
 hawks employed, and the several ranks of society to which they were 
 appropriated, had scarcely, if at aU varied. The following catalogue 
 is, therefore, taken from the ancient Treatyse : 
 
 " An eagle, a bawter (a vulture), a melown ; these belong unto an 
 Emperor. 
 
 A Gerfalcon : a Tercell of a Gerfalcon are due to a King. 
 
 There is a Falcon gentle, and a Tercel gentle ; and these be for a 
 
 Prince. 
 
 There is a Falcon of the rock ; and that is for a Duke. 
 There is a Falcon peregrine ; and that is for an earl. 
 Also there is a Bastard ; and that hawk is for a baron. 
 There is a Sacre and a Sacret ; and these ben for a knight. 
 There is a Lanare and a Lanrell ; and these belong to a squire. 
 
 * To cancelier. " Cancelier is when a high-flown hawk in her stooping, turneth two 
 or three times upon the wing, to recover herself before she seizeth her prey."— Gentle- 
 man's Recreation. 
 
 + Gifibrd's Massinger, vol. iv. p. 136, 13?. -The Guardian, from which this passage.i>= 
 
 taken, was licensed in October 1633.
 
 264 
 
 There is a Merlyon ; and that hawk is for a lady. 
 
 There is an Hoby ; and that hawk is for a young man. 
 
 And these hen hawks of the tour and ben both illuryd to be 
 called and reclaimed. 
 
 And yet there ben more kinds of hawks. 
 
 There is a Goshawk ; and that hawk is for a yeoman. 
 
 There is a Tercel ; and that is for a poor man. 
 
 There is a Sparehawk ; she is an hawk for a priest. 
 
 There is a Musky te ; and he is for an holy-water clerk." * 
 To this list the Jewel for Gentre adds 
 
 A Kesterel, for a knave or servant. 
 
 Many of these birds were held in such high estimation by our 
 crowned heads and nobility, that several severe edicts were issued for 
 the preservation of their eggs. These were mitigated in the reign of 
 Ehzabeth ; but still if any person was convicted of taking or destroy- 
 ing the eggs of the falcon, gos-hawk or laner, he was liable to suffer 
 imprisonment for three months, and was obliged to find security for 
 his good behaviour for seven years, or remain confined until he did. 
 
 Hawking was divided into two branches, land and water hawking, 
 and the latter was usually considered as producing the most sport. 
 The diversion of hawking was pursued either on horseback or on 
 foot : on the former in the fields and open country ; on the latter, in 
 woods, coverts, and on the banks of rivers. When on foot, the sports- 
 man had the assistance of a stout pole, for the purpose of leaping 
 over ditches, rivulets, &c. ; a circumstance which we learn from the 
 chronicle of Hall, where the historian tells us that Henry the Eighth, 
 pursuing his hawk on foot, in attempting to leap over a ditch of 
 muddy water with his pole, it broke, and precipitated the monarch 
 head-foremost into the mud, where, had it not been for the timely 
 assistance of one of his footmen, named John Moody, he would 
 soon have been suffocated; " and so," concludes the venerable 
 chronicler, " God of hys goodnesse preserved him." f 
 
 • Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 57, 58. 
 f Hall's Life of Henry VIII. sub an.xvj.
 
 m5 
 
 The game pursued in hawking inckided a vast variety of birds, 
 many of which, once fashionable articles of the table, have now ceased 
 to be objects of the culinary art. Of those which are now obsolete 
 among epicures may be enumerated, herons, bitterns, swans, cranes, 
 curlews, sheldrakes, cootes, peacocks ; of those still in use, teel, 
 mallard, geese, ducks, pheasants, quails, partridges, plovers, doves, 
 turtles, snipes, woodcocks, rooks, larks, starlings, and sparrows. 
 
 Hawking, notwithstanding the occasional fatigue and hazard which 
 it produced, was a favourite diversion among the ladies, who in the 
 pursuit of it, according to a writer of the seventeenth century, did 
 not hesitate to assume the male attire and posture. " The * Bury 
 ladies," observes he, " that used hawking and hunting, were once in a 
 great vaine of wearing breeches." f The same author has preserved 
 a hawking anecdote of some humour, and which occurred, likewise, at 
 the same place : " Sir Thomas Jermin," he relates, " going out with 
 his servants, and brooke hawkes one evening, at Bury, they were no 
 sooner abroad, but fowle were found, and he called out to one of his 
 falconers, Off with your jerkin ; the fellow being into the wind did not 
 heare him ; at which he stormed, and still cried out, Off with your 
 jerkin, you knave, off with your jerkin ; now it fell out that there 
 was, at that instant, a plaine townsman of Bury, in a freeze jerkin, 
 stood betwixt him and his falconer, who seeing Sir Thomas in such a 
 rage, and thinking he had spoken to him, unbuttoned himself amaine, 
 threw off his jerkin, and besought his worshippe not to be offended, 
 for he would off with his doublet too, to give him content." X 
 
 That the training of hawks was a work of labour, difficulty, and skill, 
 and that the person upon whom the task devolved, was highly 
 prized, and supported at a great expense, may be readily imagined. 
 The Falconer was, indeed, an officer of high importance in the house- 
 hold of the opulent, and his whole time was absorbed in the duties of 
 
 * Biiry St. Edmunds in SuflPolk. 
 
 t Anonymous MS., eutitled " Merry Passages and Jeabts." Bibl. Harl. Go'.i5. Art. 
 cccliv. 
 
 j; Merry Passages and Jeasts, art. ccxxiii. 
 
 VOI-. I. . M M
 
 266 
 
 his station. That these were various and incessant may be deduced 
 from the following curious character of a, falconer, drawn by a satirist 
 of 1615. * 
 
 " A falkoner is the egge of a tame pullett, hatcht up among hawkes 
 and spaniels. Hee hath in his minority conversed with kestrils and 
 yong hobbies : but growing up he begins to handle the lure, and look 
 a fawlcon in the face. All his learning makes him but a new lin- 
 guist ; for to have studied and practised the termes of Hawke's Dic- 
 tionary, is enough to excuse his wit, manners, and humanity. He 
 hath too many trades to thrive ; and yet if hee had fewer, hee would 
 thrive lesse. Hee need not be envied therefore, for a monopolie, 
 though he be barber-surgeon, physitian, and apothecary, before he 
 commences haxik-leech ; for though he exercise all these, and the art 
 of bow-strings together, his patients be compelled to pay him no fur- 
 ther, then they be able. Hawkes be his object, that is, his know- 
 ledge, admiration, labour, and all ; they be indeed his idoU, or 
 mistresse, be they male or female : to them he consecrates his 
 amorous ditties, which be no sooner framed then hallowed ; nor 
 should he doubt to overcome the fairest, seeing he reclaimes such 
 haggards, and courts every one with a peculiar dialect. Tliat he is 
 truly affected to his sweetheart in her fether-bed, appeares by the 
 sequele, himselfe being sensible of the same misei-y, for they be both 
 mewed up together : but he still chuses the worst pennance, by claus- 
 ing rather an ale-house, or a cellar, for his moulting place than the 
 hawke's mew." f 
 
 The training of Hawks consisted principally in the manning, hir- 
 ing^ flying, and hooding them. Of these, the first and second imply 
 a perfect familiarity with the man, and a perfect obedience to his 
 voice and commands, especially that of returning to the fist at the 
 
 * The Falconer was sometimes denominated the Ostrivger or Sperviter : " they be called 
 Ostringers," says Markham, " which are the keepers of Goshawkes or Tercelles, and those 
 which keepe Sparrow-hawkes or Muskets are called Sperviters, and those which keepe any 
 other kinde of hawke being long-winged are termed Falconers." Gentleman's Academic 
 or Booke of S. Alban's, fol. 8. 
 
 t Satyrical Essayes, Characters, &c., by John Stephens, 1615, 16mo. 1st edit.
 
 267 
 
 appointed signal.* The flying includes the appropriation of peculiar 
 hawks to peculiar game ; thus the Faulcon gentle, which, according to 
 Gervase Markham, is the principal of hawks, and adapted either for 
 the field or river, will fly at the partridge or the mallard ; the Ger- 
 faulcon will fly at the heron ; the Saker at the crane or bittern ; the 
 Lanner at the partridge, pheasant, or chooffe ; the Barbary Faulcon 
 at the partridge only ; the Merlin and the Hobby at the lark, or any 
 small bird ; the Goshawk or Tercel at the partridge, pheasant, or hare ; 
 the SparTOw-hawk at the partridge or blackbird, and the Musket at 
 the bush only, f 
 
 Tlie hooding of hawks, as it embraces many technical terms, which 
 have been adopted by our poets, and among the rest, by Shakspeare, 
 will require a more extended explanation, and this we shall give in the 
 words of Mr. Strutt. " When the hawk," he observes, " was not 
 flying at her game, she was usually hood-winked, with a cap or hood 
 provided for that purpose, and fitted to her head ; and this hood was 
 worn abroad, as well as at home. All hawks taken upon ' the Jist,' 
 the term used for carrying them upon the hand, had straps of leather 
 called Jesses I, put about their legs; the jesses were made sufficiently 
 
 * " All hawks," says Markham, " generally are manned after one manner, that is to 
 say, by watching and keeping them from sleep, by a continuall carrying them upon your 
 fist, and by a most familiar stroaking and playing with them, with the wing of a dend fowl, 
 or such like, and by often gazing and looking them in the face, with a loving and gentle 
 countenance, and so making them acquainted with the man. 
 
 " After your hawks are manned, you shall bring them to the T.urc* by easie degrees, as 
 first, making them jump unto the fist, after fixU upon the lure, then come to the voice, and 
 lastly, to know the voice and lure so perfectly, that either upon the sound of the one, sight 
 of the other, she will jjresently come in, and be most obedient; which may easily be per- 
 formed, by giving her reward when she doth your pleasure, and making her tast wiien she 
 disobeyeth : short wing'd hawks shall be called to the fist only, and not to the lure : nei- 
 ther shall you use unto them the loudnesse and variety of voice, which you do to the long- 
 winged liawks, but only bring them to the fist by chiriping your lips togetlitr, or else by 
 the whistle." Countrey Contentments, 11th edit. p. 30. 
 
 f Country Contentments, p. 29. 
 
 i Though it sometimes appears that the jesses were made of silk. 
 
 * An uljjeci stuffed like thai kiml of biiii ivliifU tlie hawk was Jesigneii to pursue. The use uf the lure was to tcmiH 
 him hack aft'.r h'j hati flotvn. — Sitiv:!iis. 
 
 M M 2
 
 268 
 
 long, for the knots to appear between the middle and the little 
 fingers of the hand that held them, so that the limes, or small thongs 
 of leather, might be fastened to them with two tyrrits, or rings ; and 
 the lunes were loosely wound round the little finger; lastly, their 
 legs were adorned with hells, fastened with rings of leather, each leg 
 having one ; and the leathers, to which the bells were attached, were 
 denominated bewits ; and to the bewits was added the creance, or 
 long thread, b}^ which the bird in tutoring, was drawn back, after 
 she had been permitted to fly ; and this was called the reclaiming of 
 the hawk. The bewits, we are informed, were useful to keep the 
 hawks from winding xvhen she bated, that is, when she fluttered her 
 wings to fly after her game. Respecting the bells, it is particularly 
 recommended that they should not be too heavy, to impede the 
 flight of the bird ; and that they should be of equal weight, sonorous, 
 shrill, and musical ; not both of one sound, but the one a semitone 
 below the other *; they ought not to be broken, especially in the 
 sounding part, because, in that case, the sound emitted would be 
 dull and unpleasing. There is, says the Book of St. Alban's, great 
 choice of sparrow-hawk bells, and they are cheap enough ; but for 
 gos-hawk bells, those made at Milan are called the best ; and, indeed, 
 they are excellent ; for they are commonly sounded with -f- silver, 
 and charged for accordingly.":}; 
 
 * "These observations are taken from ' The Boke of Saint Albans ; ' a subsequent 
 edition says, ' at least a note under.' " * 
 
 f " I am told, that silver being mixed wiii> the metal, when the bells are cast, adds 
 much to the sweetness of the sound ; and hence probably the allusion of Shakspearc, when 
 he says, 
 
 • How silver sweet sound lovers tongues by night.' " 
 
 % Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 28. 
 
 * Tliis subsequent edition, to which Mr. Strutt alludes, is probably that by Gervase Markham, who tells u« under the head 
 of " Hawkes belles :" " The bells which your hawke shal weare, looke in any wise that they be not too heavy, whereby they 
 overloade hir, neither tliat one be lieavier than an olher, but both of like weight : looke also, that they be well sounding and 
 shrill, yet not both of one sound, but one at least a note under the olher." He adds " of spar-hawkes belles there is choice 
 enough, and the chari^e little, by reason that the store thereof is great. But for goshawks sometimes belles of MilUine were 
 supposed to bee the best, and undoubtedly ihey be excellent, for that they are sounded with silver, and the price of them is 
 thereafter, but there be now," he observes, " used belles out of the lowe Countries which are approoved to be passing good, 
 for they are principally sorted, they are well sounded, and sweet o( ringing, wlih a pleasant shrilnesse, and excellently well 
 lasting." Gentleman's Academic, fol.l3.
 
 269 
 
 Tliomas Heywood, In his play, entitled A IVoman Id/led roith 
 Kindness, and acted before 1604, has a passage on falconry, four 
 lines of which have been quoted by Mr. Strutt, as allusive to the 
 toning of the Milan bells ; but as the whole is highly descriptive of 
 the diversion, and is of no great length, we shall venture to transcribe 
 it, with the exception of a few lines, entire : 
 
 " Sir Charles. So; well cast off : aloft, aloft; well flown. 
 O, now she takes her at the soxvsc, and strikes her down 
 To th' earth, like a swift thunder clap. — 
 Now she hath seized the fowl, and 'gins to plume her, 
 Rebeck her not ; rather stand still and c/iec/c her. 
 So : seize her gets, hor jesses, and her bells ; 
 Away. 
 
 Sir Francis. My hawk kill'd too ! 
 
 Sir Charles. Aye, but 'twas at the querrc. 
 Not at the mount, like mine. 
 
 Sir Fran. Judgment, my masters. 
 
 C?-anwell. Your's miss'd her at thej'er7e. * 
 
 Wendoll. Aye, but our Merlin first had plumed the fowl. 
 And twice rene'w'd her from the river too ; 
 Her bells, Sir Francis, had not both one weight, 
 Nor was one semi-tune above the other : 
 Methinks these Milain bells do sound too full. 
 And s}ioil the mounting of your hawk. — 
 
 Sir Fran. Mine Ukewise seized a fowl 
 
 Within her talons ; and you saw her paws 
 Full of the feathers : both her petty singles. 
 And her long singles griped her more than other ; 
 The terrials of her legs were stained with blood : 
 
 * These techical terms may admit of some explanation, from the following passage in 
 Markham's edition of the Booke of St. Alban's, 1595, where speaking of the fowl being 
 found in a river or pit, he adds, " if shee (the hawk) nyme or take the further side of 
 the river or pit from you, then she slaieth the foule at ferejuttie : but if she kill it on that 
 side that you are on yourselfe, as many times it chanceth, then you shall say shee killed 
 the foule at the jut ft/ Jerri/: if your hawke nime the foule aloft, you shal say she tooke it 
 at the mount. If you see store of mallards separate from the river and feeding in the fielde, 
 if your hawke flee covertly under hedges, or close by the ground, by which means she 
 nymeth one of them before they can rise, you shall say, that foule was killed at the guerre," 
 Gentleman's Academic, fol. 12.
 
 270 
 
 Not of the fowl only, she did discomfit 
 Some of her feathers ; but she brake away." 
 
 To hawking and the language of falconry, Shakspeare, as we have 
 previously observed, has frequently had recourse, and he has 
 selected the terms with his wonted propriety and effect ; of this five 
 or six instances will be adequate proof Othello, in allusion to Des- 
 demona, exclaims : 
 
 " If I do prove her haggard. 
 
 Though that hev jesses were my dear heart-strings, 
 I'd whistle her off, and let her dxmn the "wind. 
 To prey at fortune." f 
 
 A haggard is a species of hawk wild and difficult to be reclaimed, 
 and which, if not well trained, flies indiscriminately at every bird ; a 
 fault to which Shakspeare again refers in his Twelfth Night, where 
 Viola tells the Clown that 
 
 " He must observe their mood on whom he jests — 
 And, like the haggard, check at every feather 
 Tliat comes before his eye." % 
 
 The phrase to zchistle of will be best explained by a simile in 
 Burton, which opens his chapter on Air. " As a long-winged hawk 
 when he is first whistled qfthejist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure 
 fetcheth many a circuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher, till 
 he be come to his full pitch, and in the end when the game is sprung, 
 comes down amain, and stoops upon a sudden." § To let a hauk donn 
 the xvind, was to dismiss it as worthless. 
 
 Petruchio, soliloquising on the means which he had adopted, in 
 order to tame his termagant bride, says emphatically, 
 
 * Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. Aid. 
 
 \ Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 387- Act iii. sc. 3. 
 
 X Ibid., vol. V. p. 3:39. Act iii. sc. 1. 
 
 § Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, fol. Sth edit. p. 15i.
 
 271 
 
 " My falcon now is sharp, and passing empty ; 
 And, till she stoop, she must not be liiU-gorgcd, 
 For then she never looks upon her lure. 
 Another way I have to man my haggard,' 
 To make her come, and know her keeper's call. 
 That is, — to watch her, as we watch these kites, 
 That haie^ and beat, and will not be obedient." * 
 
 To hate in this passage means io flutter or beat the wings, as striving 
 to fly away, and is metaphorically vised in the following address of 
 Juliet to the night ; 
 
 " Come, civil night, 
 
 Hood my unmann'd blood batiiig in my cheeksj' 
 With thy black mantle." f 
 
 The same tragedy furnishes us with another obligation to falconry, 
 where the love-sick maiden recalls Romeo in these terms : 
 
 " Hist ! Romeo, hist ! O, for a falconer's voice 
 
 To lure this tassel-gentle back again." \ 
 
 FalstafF's page in the Meiry Wives of Windsor is appositely 
 compared to the eyas-musket, an unfledged hawk of the smallest 
 species : 
 
 " Mrs. Ford. How nov/, my eyas-musket ? What news with you ?" § 
 
 Eyas-musket, remarks Mr. Steevens, is the same as infant Lillipu-^ 
 tian, and he subjoins an illustrative passage from Spenser : 
 
 youthful gay, 
 
 Like cyas-haxvke, up mounts into the skies, 
 His newly budded pinions to essay." || 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 135. Act iv. sc. 1. 
 f Ibid. vol. XX. p. 147. Actiii. sc. 2. 
 
 X Ibid. p. 93. Act ii. sc. 2. § Ibid. vol. v. p. 126. Act ili. sc. 3. 
 
 |] Fairy Queen, book i. cant. 1 1 . stan. 34. " Eyes, or nias," says Mr. Douce, " is a 
 
 term borrowed from the French 7iiais, which means any young bird in the nest, avis in
 
 272 
 
 If the commencement of the seventeenth century, saw Hazching 
 the most splendid and prevalent amusement of the nobility and 
 gentry, the close had to witness its decline and abolition ; it gave 
 way to a more sure and expeditious, though, perhaps, less interesting 
 mode of killing game, and the adoption of the gun had, before the 
 year 1700, almost entirely banished the art of the Falconer. 
 
 The costume of the next great amusement of the country, that of 
 Hunting, differs at present in few essential points from what it was 
 in the sixteenth century. The chief variations may be included in 
 the disuse of killing game in inclosures, and in the adoption of more 
 speed, and less fatigue and stratagem in the open chace ; or in other 
 words, it is the strength and speed of the fleet blood-horse, and not of 
 the athletic and active huntsman, or old steady-paced hunter, that now 
 decide the sport. " In the modern chace," observes Mr Haslewood, 
 " the lithsomness of youth is no longer excited to pursue the animals. 
 Attendant footmen are discontinued and forgotten ; while the active 
 and eager rustic with a hunting pole, wont to be foremost, has long 
 forsaken the field, nor is there a trace of the character known, except 
 in a country of deep clay, as parts of Sussex. Few years will pass ere 
 the old steady paced English hunter and the gabbling beagle will be 
 equally obsolete. All the spoi't now consists of speed. A hare is 
 hurried to death by dwarf fox-hounds, and a leash murdered in a 
 shorter period than a single one could generally struggle for existence. 
 The hunter boasts a cross of blood, or, in plainer phrase, a racer, 
 sufficiently professed to render a country sweepstakes doubtful. This 
 variation is by no means an improvement, and can only advantage 
 the plethoric citizen, who seeks to combat the somnolency arising from 
 civic festivals by a short and sudden excess of exercise." * 
 
 Tlie mode of hunting, indeed, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, 
 still continued an emblem of, and a fit preparation for, the fatigues of 
 
 vldo. It is the first of five several names by which a falcon is called during its first year." 
 Illustrations, vol. i, p. 71. 
 
 * Ccnsura Literaria, vol. x. p. 231.
 
 ^73 
 
 war; nor was it unusual to consider the toils of tlie cliace as initiatory 
 to those of the camp. " The old Lord Gray, our English Achilles," 
 says Peacham, " when hee was Deputie of Ireland, to inure his sonnes 
 for the warre, would usually in the depth of winter, in frost, snow, 
 raine, and what weather so ever fell, cause them at midnight to be raised 
 out of their beds, and carried abroad on hunting till the next morning ; 
 then perhaps come wet and cold home, having for a breakefast, a 
 browne loafe and a mouldie cheese, or (which is ten times worse) a 
 dish of Irish butter * ;" and Dekkar, in his praise of hunting, remarks, 
 that " it is a very true picture of warre, nay, it is a warre in itselfe, 
 for engines are brought into the field, stratagems are contrived, 
 ambushes are laide, onsets are given, alarams strucke up, brave 
 encounters are made, fierce assailings are resisted by strength, by 
 courage, or by policie : the enemie is pursued, and the pursuers never 
 give over till they have him in execution, then is a retreate sounded, 
 then are spoiles divided, then come they home wearied, but ^et 
 crowned with honour and victorie. And as in battailes, there bee 
 several manners of fight ; so in the pastime of hunting, there are 
 several degrees of game. Some hunt the lyon, &c. — others pursue 
 the long-lived hart, the couragious stag, or the nimble footed deere ; 
 these are the noblest hunters, and they exercise the noblest game : 
 these by following the chace, get strength of bodie, a free, and undis- 
 quieted minde, magnanimitie of spirit, alacritie of heart, and un- 
 wearisomnesse to breake thi'ough the hardest labours : their pleasures 
 are not insatiable, but are contented to be kept within limits, for these 
 hunt within parkes inclosed, or within bounded forests. The hunting 
 of the hare teaches feare to be bold, and puts simplicitie to her shifts, 
 that she growes cunning and provident ; &c." f 
 
 Hunting in inclosures, that is, in parks, chases, and forests, where 
 the game was inclosed with a fence-work of netting stretched on posts 
 driven into the ground, appears to have been the custom of this 
 
 * Complete Gentleman, Ciicl edit., p. 212, J 13. 
 
 f Dekkar's Villanies discovered by lanthorne and candle-light, Sec. 1(>16. 
 
 VOL. I. N N
 
 274 
 
 country from the time of Edward the Second to the middle of the 
 seventeenth century. The manuscript treatise of Wilham Twici, grand 
 huntsman to Edward the Second, entitled Le Aii De Ve?ierie, le quel 
 maistre Guillame Twici venour le roy cV Angleterre fat en son temps per 
 aprandre Aidres* ; the nearly contemporary manuscript translation 
 of John GyfFord, with the title of A book of Venerie, dialogue f icise ; 
 the tract called The Maistre of the Game %, in manuscript also, and 
 written by the chief huntsman of Henry the Fourth, for the instruc- 
 tion of his son, afterwards Henry the Fifth ; the Book of St. 
 Albans, the first printed treatise on the subject, and written by the 
 sister of Lord Berners, when prioress at the nunnery of Sopewell, 
 about 1481 ; the tract on the Noble Art of Venerie, annexed to Tur- 
 berville on Falconrie 1575, and supposed to have been written by 
 George Gascoigne, and the re-impression of the same in 1611, all 
 describe the ceremonies and preparations necessary for the pursuit of 
 this, now obsolete, mode of hunting, which, from its luxury and 
 effeminacy, forms a perfect contrast to the manly fatigues of the 
 open chace. 
 
 This style of hunting, indeed, exhibited great splendour and pomp, 
 and was certainly a very imposing spectacle ; but the slaughter must 
 have been easy and great, and the sport therefore proportionally less 
 interesting. When the king, the great barons, or dignified clergy, 
 selected this mode of the diversion, in which either bows or grey- 
 hounds were used, the masters of the game and the park-keepers pre- 
 pared all things essential for the purpose ; and, if it were a royal hunt, 
 the sheriff of the county furnished stabling for the king's horses, and 
 carts for the dead game. A number of temporary buildings, covered 
 with green boughs, to shade the company from the heat of the sun or 
 bad weather, were erected by the foresters in a proper situation, and 
 on the morning of the day chosen for the sport, the master of the 
 game and his officers saw the greyhounds duly placed, and . a person 
 
 * Vide Wartoii's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 221. note. 
 
 t MS. Cotton Library, Vespasianus, B. 12. 
 
 t MS. Digb. 182. Bibl. Bodl. Warton, vol. ii. p. 221. note ni.
 
 275 
 
 appointed to announce, by the different intonations of his horn, the 
 species of game turned out, so that the company might be prepared 
 for its reception when it broke cover. 
 
 The enclosure being guarded by officers or retainers, placed at equal 
 distances, to prevent the multitude prematurely rousing the game, the 
 grand huntsman, as soon as the king, nobility, or gentry had taken 
 their respective stations, sounded three long mootes or blasts with the 
 horn, as a signal for the uncoupling of the hart-hounds, when the 
 game, driven by the manoeuvres of the huntsman, passed the lodges 
 where the company were waiting, and were either shot from their bows, 
 or individuals, starting from the groupe, pursued the deer with grey- 
 hounds. * 
 
 We find, from the poems of Gascoigne and Turberville, as they 
 appear in their Book of Hunting of 1575, that every accommodation 
 which beautiful scenery and epicurean fare could produce, was thought 
 essential to this branch of the sport. Turberville, describing the scene 
 chosen for the company to take their stations, says — 
 
 " The place should first be pight, on pleasant gladsome greene, 
 Yet under shade of stately trees, where little sunne is seene : 
 
 And neare some fountaine spring, whose chrystall running streames 
 May heipe to coole the parching heate, ycaught by Phoebus beames. 
 
 The place appoynted thus, it neyther shall be clad 
 With arras nor with tapystry, such paltrie were too bad : 
 
 Ne yet those hote perfumes, whereof proude courtes do smell, 
 May once presume in such a place, or paradise to dwell. 
 
 Away with fayned fresh, as broken boughes or leaves, 
 Away, away, with forced flowers, ygathered from their greaves : 
 
 This place must of itselfe, afForde such sweet delight. 
 And eke such shewe, as better may content the greedie sight; 
 
 Where sundry sortes of hewes, which growe upon the ground. 
 May seeme, indeede, such tapystry, as we by arte, have found. 
 
 Where fresh and fragrant flowers, may skorne the courtier's cost, 
 Which daubes himselfe with syvet, muske, and many an ointment lost. 
 
 * The substance of this account is taken from The Maistre of the Game, written for the 
 ffse of Prince Henry. 
 
 N N 2
 
 276 
 
 Where sweetest singing byrdes, may make such mclodyc, 
 As Pan, nor yet Apollo's arte, can sounde such harmonye. 
 
 Where breath of westerne windes, may calmely yeld content. 
 Where casements neede not opened be, where air is never pent. 
 
 Where shade may serve for shryne, and yet the sunne at hande, 
 Where beautie need not quake for colde, ne yet with sunne be tande. 
 
 In fine and to conclude, where pleasure dwels at large. 
 Which princes seeke in pallaces, with payne and costly charge. 
 
 Then such a place once founde, the Butler first appeares, — 
 
 Then comes the captaine Cooke — 
 
 These gentlemen of the household, it seems, came well provided ; 
 the farmer, with wines and ales " in bottles and in barrels," and the 
 latter with colde loynes of veale, colde capon, beefe and goose, pigeon 
 pyes, mutton colde, neates tongs poudred well, gambones of the hogge, 
 saulsages and savery knackes. * 
 
 Of the stag-chace in the open country, and of the ceremonies and 
 costume attending it, at the castellated mansions of the Baron and 
 opulent Squire, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a 
 tolerably accurate idea may be fonned from the following statement, 
 drawn up from the ancient wa-iters on the subject, and from the works 
 of the ingenious antiquary Strutt. 
 
 The inhabitants of the castle, and the hunters, were usually 
 awakened very early in the morning by the lively sounding of the 
 bugles, after which it was not imusual for two or more minstrels to 
 sing an appropriate roundelay, beneath the windows of the master of 
 the mansion, accompanied by the deep and mellow chorus of the 
 attending rangers and falconers. Shakspeare alludes to a song of 
 this kind in his Romeo and Juliet f, which has been preserved 
 entire by Thomas Ravenscroft :}:, and commences thus : — 
 
 * Vide Censura Literaria, vol. x. p. 237, 238. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 173. Act iii. sc. 5. 
 
 $ In a work entitled " A Briefe Discourse of the true (but neglected) use of Charact'ring 
 the degrees by their perfection, imperfection, and diminution, in measurable musicke, 
 against the common practice and custome of these times. Examples whereof are exprest 
 in the harmony of 4 voyces, concerning the pleasure of 5 usuall Recreations. 1. Hunting. 
 2. Hawking. 3. Dauncing. 4. Drinking. 5. Enamouring. By Thomas Ravenscroft,
 
 277 
 
 " The hunt is up, the hunt is iiji, 
 Sing merrily wee, the hunt is up; 
 The birds they sing, 
 The deere they flhig ; 
 
 Hey noiiy nony-no ; &c." 
 
 The Yeoman Keepers, with their attendants, called Ragged Robins, 
 to the number of ten or twelve, next made their appearance, leading 
 the slow-hounds or brachets, by which the deer were roused. These 
 men were usually dressed in Kendal green, with biigles and short 
 hangers by their sides, and quarter-staffs in their hands, and were 
 followed by the foresters with a number of greyhounds led in leashes 
 for the purpose of plucking down the game. 
 
 This assemblage in the Court of the castle was soon augmented 
 by a number of Retainer's, or Yeomen who received a small annual 
 pension for attendance on these occasions ; they wore a livery, with 
 the cognisance of the house to which they belonged, borne, as a 
 badge of adlierence, on their arms, and each man had a buckler on 
 his shoulder, and a burnished broad sword hanging from his belt. 
 Shortly afterwards appeared the pages and squires in hunting garbs 
 on horse-back and on foot, and armed with spears and long and 
 cross bows ; and lastly the Baron, his friends, and the ladies. 
 
 Bachelar of Musicke. London, printed by Edw. Allde for Tho. Adams, 1614, Cum 
 privilegio Regali, 4to." 
 
 Puttenliam refers to one Gray as the author of this ballad, who was in good estimation, 
 he says, with King Henry, " and afterwards with the Duke of Sommerset Protectour, for 
 making certaine merry ballades, whereof one chiefly was. The hunte it (is) up, the hunte 
 is up," P, 12. 
 
 Ritson refers to another ballad, as the prototype of Shakspeare's hne, which, he says, is 
 very old, and commences thus : — 
 
 " The hunt is up, the hunt is up, 
 And now it is almost day ; 
 And he that's a bed with another man's wife. 
 It's time to get him away." 
 
 Remarks critical and illustrative, &c,, 1783, p, 183,
 
 278 
 
 The company thus completed, were conducted by the huntsmen 
 to a thicket, in which, they knew, by previous observation, that a 
 stag had been harboured all night. Into this cover the keeper entered, 
 leading his ban-dog (a blood-liound tied in a leam or band), and as 
 soon as the stag abandoned it, the greyhounds were slipped upon 
 him ; these, however, after running two or three miles, he usually 
 threw out, by again entering cover, when the slow-hounds and 
 prickers were sent in, to drive him from his strength. The poor 
 animal now traverses the country for several miles, and after using 
 every effort and manoeuvre in vain, exhausted and breathless, his 
 mouth embossed with foam, and the tears dropping from his eyes, 
 he turns in despair upon his pursuers, and in this situation the 
 boldest hunter of the train generally rides in, and, at some risque, 
 dispatches him with a short hunting-sword. The treble-mort is then 
 sounded, accompanied by the shouts of the men and the yelping of" 
 the dogs, and the huntsman ceremoniously presents his knife to the 
 master of the chase, in order that he may take, as it is termed, the 
 my of the deer. * 
 
 * Of the language Ibnnerly used by the huntsman to his dogs, a very curious descrip- 
 tion is given by Markham, in his modernised editi'on of the Booke of St. Albans, 1595. 
 
 " M'^hen the Huntsman," says he, " commeth to the kennell in the morning to couple 
 up his hounds, and shall jubct once or twice to awake the dogs : opening the kennell doore, 
 the Huntsman useth some gentle rating, lest in their hasty comming forth they should 
 liurt one another : to which the Frenchman useth this worde, Arerc, Arcrc, and we, sost, 
 ho ho ho ho, once or twice redoubling the same, coupling them as they come out of the 
 kennell. And being come into the field, and having uncoupled, the Frenchman useth, 
 kurs dc couple avaiit avant, onse or twise with soho three times together : wee use to Jiibet 
 once or twice to the dogges, crying, u traile a traile, tha'e dogges there, and the rather to 
 make the dogs in trailing to hold close together striking uppon some Brake crie soho. 
 And if the hounds have had rest, and being over lustie, doe beginne to fling away, the 
 Frenchmen use to crie, swe/ames swef, redoubling the same, with Arere ames ho: nowe 
 we to the same purpose use to say, sost ho, heere againe ho, doubling the same, sometimes 
 calling them backe againe with a juhct or hallow : poynting with your hunting stafFe upon 
 the ground, saying soho. 
 
 " And if some one of the hounds light upon a pure scent, so that by the manner of his 
 eager spending you perceive it is very good, yet shall the same hounds crying, there, now 
 there: and to put the rest of the crie in to him, vou shall crie, ho avant avant, list a Talbot, 
 list list there. To which the French man useth, Ch/es a Talbot le vailant oj/cs oi/es, trove
 
 279 
 
 The danger which the ancient hunter incurred, on dealing the 
 death stroke to the stag when he turned to bay, is strikingly exem- 
 plified by an incident in the life of Wilson the historian, during the 
 time he formed a part of the household of the Earl of Essex, in the 
 reign of Elizabeth. 
 
 " Sir Peter Lee, of Lime, in Cheshire, invited my lord one 
 summer, to hunt the stagg. And having a great stagg in chace, and 
 many gentlemen in the pursuit, the stagg took soyle. And divers, 
 whereof I was one, alighted, and stood with swords drawne, to have 
 a cut at him, at his coming out of the water. The staggs there, 
 being wonderfully fierce and dangerous, made us youths more eager 
 to be at him. But he escaped us aU. And it was my misfortune to 
 be hindered of my coming nere him, the way being sliperie, by a 
 i'all ; which gave occasion to some, who did not know mee, to speak 
 as if I had falne for feare. Which being told me, I left the stagg, 
 and followed the gentleman who first spake it. But I found him of 
 that cold temper, that it seems his words made an escape from him j 
 as by his denial and repentance it appeared. But this made mee 
 
 le coicard, in the same manner with little difference. And if you find by your hounds 
 where a Hare hath bcene at relefc, if it be in the time of greene corne, and if your hounds 
 spend uppon the troile merily, and make a goodly crie, then shall the Huntsman blow 
 three motes with his home, which hee may sundry times use with discretion, when he seeth 
 the houndes have m.ide away: A double, and make on towards the seate : now if it be 
 within some field or pasture where the Hare hath beene at relefe, let the Huntsman cast 
 a ring with his houndes to finde where she hath gone out, which if the houndes light uppon, 
 he shall crie. There hojjes there, that tat tat, hoc hickc, hiclcc, hicke avant, list to him list, 
 and if they chance by their brain sicknesse to overshoote it, he shall call to his hounds, 
 ho agaitie ho, doubling the same twice. And if undertaking it againe, and making it good, 
 hee shall chcare his hounds : there, to him there, thats he, that tat tat, blowing a mote. 
 And note, that this word soho is generally used at the view of any beast of Chase or Ve- 
 nerie: but indeedc the word is properly saho, and not soho, but for the better pronuntiation 
 and fulnes of the same we say, soho not saho. Now the hounds running in full chase, the 
 Frenchman useth to say, ho ho, or swef alien dome alieu, and wee imitating them say. 
 There boies, there avant there, to him there, which termes are in deede derived from their 
 language." — Gentleman's Academic, fol. 32, 33. These appear to be the terms in use at 
 the close of the sixteenth century ; for he afterwards mentions that the " olde and antient 
 Huntsmen had divers termes" which were not in his time "very ncedefull."
 
 280 
 
 more violent in pursuit of the stagg, to recover my reputation. And 
 I happened to be the only horseman in, when the dogs sett him up 
 at bay ; and approaching nere him on horsebacke, hee broke throuoh 
 the dogs, and run at mee, and tore my horse's side with his homes, 
 close by my thigh. Then I quitted my horse, and grew more cun- 
 ning (for the dogs had sette him up againe), stealing behind him 
 with my sword, and cut his hamstrings ; and then got upon his 
 back, and cut his throate." * 
 
 A still more difficult and gallant feat, however, of this kind, was 
 performed by John Selwyn, the under-keeper of Queen Elizabeth, 
 who, one day, animated by the presence of his royal mistress, at a 
 chase, in her' park of Oatlands, pursued the stag with such activitv, 
 that, overtaking it, he sprung from his horse on the animal ; when, 
 after most skilfully maintaining his seat for some time, he drew his 
 hunting-sword, and, just as he reached the green, plunged it in the 
 throat of the stag, which immediately dropped down dead at the feet 
 of Elizabeth j an achievement which is sculptured on his monument 
 in Walton church, Surrey, where he is represented in the very act of 
 killing the infuriated beast, f 
 
 The taking the say of, and the breaking up, the deer, were for- 
 merly attended with many ceremonies and superstitions. % " Touch- 
 ing the death of a deare, or other wylde beast," says a writer of the 
 sixteenth century, " yee knowe your selves what ceremonies they 
 use about the same. Ev ery poore man may cut out an oxe, or a 
 sheepe, whereas such venison may not be dismembered but of a 
 gentylman ; who bareheadded, and set on knees, with a knife pre- 
 pared properly to that use, (for every kynde of knife is not allow- 
 able) also with certain jestures, cuttes a sunder certaine partes of 
 the wild beast, in a certain order very circumstantly. Which holy 
 misterie, having seen the lyke yet more than a hundred tymes before. 
 
 * Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. ii. p. 464. 
 f Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i. p. 27. 
 
 X To take the assay or say, was to draw the knife along the belly ol the deer, in ordev 
 to ascertain how fat he was, and the operation was begun at the brisket.
 
 281 
 
 Then (sir) whose happe it bee to eate parte of the fleshe, marye hee 
 thinkes verily to bee made thereby halfe a gentilman." * 
 
 After the process of dismemberment, and the selection of choice 
 pieces, the forester, the keeper, and the hounds had their allotted 
 share, and superstition granted even a portion to the ominous raven. 
 " There is a little gristle," relates Turberville, " which is upon the 
 spoone of the brisket, which we call the raven's bone ; and I have 
 seen in some places a raven so wont and accustomed to it, that 
 she would never fail to croak and cry for it all the time you were 
 in breaking up of the deer, and would not depart till she had it," 
 
 Of this superstitious observance Jonson has given us a pleasing 
 sketch, in the most poetical of his works, the Sad Shepherd : — 
 
 " Marian. He that undoes him, 
 
 Doth cleave the brisket bone upon the spoon, 
 Of which a Httle gristle grows you call it — 
 
 Robin Hood. The raven's bone. 
 
 Marian. Now o'er head sat a raven 
 
 On a sere bough, a grown, great bird and hoarse, 
 Who, all the time the deer was breaking up. 
 So croaked and cried for it, as all the huntsmen, 
 Especially old Scathlocke, thought it ominous !" f 
 
 In an age, when to hawke and to hunt formed the Gentleman s 
 Academy |, the Falconer and the Huntsman were most important 
 characters ; of the former we have already given an outline from con- 
 temporary authority, and of the latter the following extract delineates 
 a very curious picture, in which the manners, the dress, and the 
 accoutrements are marked with singular strength and raciness of 
 touch. 
 
 " A huntsman is the lieutenant of dogs, and foe to harvest : he is 
 frolick in a faire morning fit for his pleasure ; and alike rejoyceth 
 
 * Chaloner's Prayze of Follie, 1577- The whole process of" undoing the Hart," may 
 be seen in Markham's " Gentlemans Academic," fol. 35. 
 
 f Jonson apud Whalley, act i. sc. 6. 
 
 J Alluding to the Book of St. Albans, republished, under this title, in 1595, byGervasc 
 Markham. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 282 
 
 with the Virginians, to see the rising sun : he doth worship it as 
 they, but worships his game more than they ; and is in some things 
 ahiiost as barbarous. A sluggard he contemnes, and thinks the 
 resting time might be shortened ; which makes him rise with day, 
 observe the same pace, and prove full as happy, if the day be happy. 
 The names of foxe, hare, and bucke, be all attracting sillables ; suffi- 
 cient to furnish fifteene meales with long discourse in the adventures 
 of each. Foxe, drawes in his exploits done against cubbes, bitch- 
 foxes, otters and badgers : hare, brings out his encounters, plat- 
 formes, engines, fortifications, and night worke done against leveret, 
 cony, wilde-cat, rabbet, weasell, and pole-cat : then bucke, the cap- 
 taine of all, provokes him (not without strong passion) to remember 
 hart, hind, stagge, doe, pricket, fawne, and fallow deere. He uses 
 a dogged forme of governement, which might bee (without shame) 
 kept in humanity ; and yet he is vmwilling to be governed with the 
 same reason : either by being satisfied with pleasure, or content with 
 ill fortune. Hee hath the discipline to marshall dogs, and sutably ; 
 when a wise herald would rather mervaile, how he could distinguish 
 their coates, birth, and gentry. Hee carries about him in his mouth 
 the very soule of Ovid's bodies, metamorphosed into trees, rockes 
 and waters ; for, when he pleases, they shall eccho and distinctly 
 answere ; and when he pleases, be extremely silent. There is little 
 danger in him towards the common wealth ; for his worst intelligence 
 comes from shepherds or woodmen ; and that onely threatens the 
 destruction of hares ; a well knowne dry meate. The spring and he 
 are still at variance ; in mockage therefore, and revenge together of 
 that season, he weaves her livery in winter. Little consultations 
 please him best ; but the best directions he doth love and follow, 
 they are his dogs. If hee cannot prevaile therefore, his lucke must 
 be blamed, for he takes a speedy course. He cannot be less than a 
 conquerour from the beginning, though he wants the booty ; for he 
 pursues the flight. His manhood is a crooked sword with a saw- 
 backe ; but the badge of his generous valour is a home to give notice. 
 Battery and blowing up, he loves not j to undermine is his strata-
 
 283 
 
 geme. His physick teaches him not to drinke sweating ; in amends 
 wliereof, he Hquors himselfe to a heate, upon coole bloud, if he 
 dehghts (at least) to emulate his dog in a hot nose. If a kennel of 
 hounds passant take away his attention and company from church ; 
 do not blame his devotion ; for in them consists the nature of it, and 
 his knowledge. His frailties are, that he is apt to mistake any dog- 
 worth the stealing, and never take notice of the collar. He dreames 
 of a hare sitting, a foxe earthed, or the bucke couchant : and if his 
 fancy would be moderate, his actions might be full of pleasure."* 
 
 Making a natural transition from the huntsman to his hounds, we 
 have to remark, that one great object, at this period, in the construc- 
 tion of the kennel, was the modulation and harmony of the vocal 
 powers of the dog. This was carried to a nicety and perfection little 
 practised in the present day. Gervase Markham seems to write 
 con amove on this subject, and has penned directions which partake 
 both of the picturesque, and of the melody on which he is descanting : 
 thus, speaking of the production of loudness of cry, he says, " if you 
 would have your kennel for loudness of mouth, you shall not then 
 choose the hollow deep mouth, but the loud clanging mouth, which 
 spendeth freely and sharply, and as it were redoubleth in utterance : 
 and if you mix with them the mouth that roreth, and the mouth that 
 whineth, the cry will be both the louder and the smarter ; — and the 
 more equally you compound these mouths, haveing as many rorers as 
 spenders, and as many whiners, as of either of the other, the louder 
 and pleasanter your cry will be, especially, if it be in sounding tall 
 woods, or under the echo of rocks ;" and treating of the composition of 
 notes in the kennel, he adds, " you shall as nigh as you can, sort 
 their mouths into three equal parts of musick, that is to say base, 
 counter-tenor and mean ; the base are those mouths which are most 
 deep and solemn, and are spent out plain and freely, without 
 redoubling : the counter-tenor are those which are most loud and 
 ringing, whose sharp sounds pass so swift, that they seem to dole and 
 
 • Satyrical Essayes, &c. by John Stephens, 1615. 
 o o 2
 
 284 
 
 make division ; and the mean are those which are soft sweet mouths, 
 that thouo^h plain, and a little hollow, yet are spent smooth and 
 freely ; yet so distinctly, that a man may count the notes as they 
 open. Of these thi-ee sorts of mouths, if your kennel be (as near as 
 you can) equally compounded, you shall find it most perfect and 
 delectable : for though they have not the thunder and loudness of the 
 great dogs, which may be compared to the high wind-instruments, 
 yet they will have the tunable sweetness of the best compounded con- 
 sorts ; and sure a man may find as much art and delight in a lute as 
 in an organ." * 
 
 Shakspeare, who frequently avails himself of the language, imagery, 
 and circumstances attendant on this diversion, has particularly 
 noticed, in a passage of much animation and beauty, the care taken 
 to arrange the notes of the kennel, and the pleasure derivable from 
 the varied intonations of the hounds. Theseus addressing Hippolyta, 
 exclaims — 
 
 " My love shall hear the musick of my hounds. — 
 Uncouple in the western valley ; go : — 
 Despatch, I say, and find the forester. — 
 We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top, 
 And mark the musical confusion 
 Of hounds and echo in conjunction. 
 
 Hip. Never did I hear 
 
 Such gallant chiding ; for, besides the groves, 
 The skies, the fountains, every region near 
 Seem'd all one mutual cry : I never heard 
 So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. 
 
 The. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind. 
 So flew'd f, so sanded % ; and their heads are hung 
 With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
 Crook-knee'd, and dew-lap'd like Thessalian bulls ; 
 Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
 Each under each. A cry more tuneable 
 Was never hoUa'd to, nor cheer'd with horn." § 
 
 ♦ Countrey Contentments, 1615. — lllh edit. 1683, p. 7— 9- 
 
 f Flews, the large chaps of a hound. 
 
 $ Sanded, that is, of a sandy colour, the true denotement of a blood-hound. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 449— 452, Midsummer-Night's Dream, act iv. $c. 1.
 
 285 
 
 It appears from a scene in Timon of Athens, and from a passage in 
 Laneham's Account of the Queen's Entertainment at Killingworth 
 Castle, 1575, that it was a common thing, at this period, to hunt after 
 dinner, or in the evening. Timon, having been employed, during 
 the morning, in hunting, says to Alcibiades — 
 
 " So soon as dinner's done, we'll forth again ;" * 
 
 and Elizabeth, twice, during her residence with the Earl of Leicester, 
 is described as pursuing this exercise in the cool of the evening. 
 Honest Laneham's narrative of one of these royal chases will amuse 
 the reader. 
 
 " Munday waz hot, and thearfore her Highness kept in till a five 
 a clok in the eevening : what time it pleazz'd her to ride foorth into 
 the chace too himt the Hart of fors ; which foound anon, and after 
 sore chased, and chafed by the hot pursuit of the hooundes, waz fain 
 of fine fors at last to take soil. Thear to beholl'd the swift fleeting of 
 the deer afore, with the stately cariage of hiz head in his swimmyng, 
 spred (for the quantitee) lyke the sail of a ship ; the hoounds harroing 
 after, az had they bin a number of skiphs too the spoyle of a karvell ; 
 the ton no lesse eager in purchaz of his pray, than waz the other 
 earnest in savegard of hiz life ; so az the earning of the hoounds in 
 continuauns of their crie, the swiftness of the deer, the running of 
 footmen, the galloping of horsez, the blasting of hornz, the halloing 
 and hewing of the huntsmen, with the excellent echoz between 
 whilez from the woods and waters in valliez resounding ; moved 
 pastime delectabl in so hy a degree, az, for ony parson to take plea- 
 zure by moost sensez at onez, in mine opinion, thear can be none 
 ony wey comparable to this ; and special in this place, that of nature 
 iz foormed so feet for the purpoze ; in feith. Master Martin, if ye 
 coold with a wish, I woold ye had bin at it : Wei, the hart waz kild, 
 a goodly deer." f 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 60. Act ii. sc. 2. 
 
 t Nichols's Progresses of Elizabeth, vol. i. Laneham's Letter, p. 12, original edition, 
 p. 17, 18.
 
 286 
 
 So partial was Her Majesty to this diversion that even in her 
 seventy-seventh year she still pursued it with avidity ; for Rowland 
 Whyte, one of her courtiers, writing to Sir Robert Sidney on Sep- 
 tember 12th, 1600, says, " Her majesty is well and excellently disposed 
 to hunting, for every second day she is on horseback, and continues 
 the sport long ;" and when not disposed to incur the fatigue of 
 joining in the chase, she was recreated with a sight of the pastime ; 
 thus at the seat of Lord Montecute, in 1591, she saw, after dinner, 
 from a turret, " sixteen bucks all having fayre lawe, pulled downe 
 with greyhounds in a laund or lawn." * 
 
 Nor was James the First less passionately addicted to the sport ; 
 his journey from Scotland to England, on his accession to the throne 
 of the latter kingdom, was frequently protracted by his inability to 
 resist the temptation of joining in the chase ; on his road to With- 
 rington, the seat of Sir Robert Caiy, after a hard ride of thirty-seven 
 miles in less than four hours, " and by the way for a note," says a 
 contemporary writer, " the miles according to the northern phrase, 
 are a wey bit longer, then they be here in the south, — His Majesty 
 having a little while reposed himselfe after his great journey, found 
 new occasion to travell further : for, as he was delighting himselfe 
 with the pleasure of the parke, hee suddenly beheld a number of 
 deere neare the place : the game being so faire before him hee could 
 not forbeare, but according to his xconted manner, forth he went and 
 slew two of them ;" again, " After his Majesties short repast to Wer- 
 slop his Majestie rides forward, but by the way in the parke he was 
 somewhat stayed ; for there appeared a number of huntes-men all in 
 greene ; the chiefe of which with a woodman's speech did welcome 
 him, offering his Majestie to shew him some game, which he gladly 
 condiscended to see ; and with a traine set he hunted a good space, 
 very much delighted." f This diversion from his direct roixte is 
 
 * Nichols's Progresses, vol. ii. 
 
 t " The true narration of the Entertainment of his Royall Majestic, from the time of 
 his departure from Edenbrough, till his receiving at London ; with all or the most special 
 occurrences. Together with the names of those gentlemen whom his Majestie honoured 
 with Knighthood. At London printed by Thomas Crcedc, for Thomas Millington, 
 1603. -Ito.
 
 287 
 
 repeatedly noticed by the same author, and proves the strong attacli- 
 ment of the monarch to tliis amusement, which he preferred to either 
 hawking or shooting ; he divided his time, says Wellwood. " betwixt 
 his standish, his bottle, and his hunting ; the last had his fair weather, 
 the two former his dull and cloudy *; " an assertion which with 
 regard to hunting is corroborated by Wilson, who, recording his visit 
 to his native dominions in 1617, informs us, that on his return he 
 exhibited the same keen relish for the sport which he had shown in 
 1603 : " The King, in his return from Scotland," he remarks, " made 
 his Progress through the hunting-countries, (his hounds and hunters 
 meeting him,) SJier'xvood-Fo7'est, Need-xeood, and all the parks and 
 forests in his way, were ransacked for his recreation ; and every 7iight 
 begat a new da// of delight." f In short, James was so engrossed by 
 his passion for hunting, that he neglected the most important business 
 to indulge it ; and even affected the garb of a hunter when he ought 
 to have been in that of a king. Osborne calls him a Sylvan Prince, 
 and adds, " I shall leave him dressed to posterity in the colours I 
 saw him in the next Progress after his Inauguration, which was as 
 greeyi as the grass he trod on, with a feather in his cap, and a horn 
 instead of a sword by his side." % 
 
 To these brief notices of hawking and hunting, it may be necessary 
 to add a very few remarks on the kindred amusements of foialing 
 and Jishing, as far as they deviate, either in manner or estimation, 
 from the practice or opinions of the present day. In the pursuit of 
 fowling, indeed, there is little or no discrepancy between the two 
 periods, if we make an exception for two instances ; and these now 
 obsolete modes of exercising the art, were termed horse-stalking and 
 bird-hatting. Tlie former consisted originally of a horse trained for 
 the purpose, and so mantled over with trappings as to hide the fowler 
 completely from the game ; a contrivance much improved upon for 
 facility of usage by substituting a stuffed canvas figure, painted to 
 
 * Memoirs, p. 35. 
 
 \ Wilson's History of Great Britain, p. 106. fol. London, 1653. 
 
 t Osborn's Works, 8vo. ninth edit. 1689, p. 444.
 
 S88 
 
 resemble a horse grazing ; this was so Hght that the sportsman might 
 move it easily with one hand, and behind it he could securely take 
 his aim ; to this curious species of deception Shakspeare alludes in 
 As You Like It, where the Duke, speaking of Touchstone, says, 
 " He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation 
 of that, he shoots his wit * ;" and again, in Much Ado about Nothing, 
 Claudio exclaims, " Stalk on, stalk on ; the fowl sits." f It appears 
 from Drayton, that the fowler shot from underneath his horse, where 
 he was concealed by the mantle-cloth depending to the groimd : thus 
 in the Polyolbion. 
 
 " One underneath his horse to get a shoot doth stalk ,-" t 
 
 and in the Muses' Elysium — 
 
 " Then underneath my horse, I stalk my game to strike." § 
 
 Sometimes, instead of a stuffed canvas figure, the fomi of a horse 
 painted on a cloth was carried before the sportsman : " Methinks," 
 says a writer of this period quoted by Mr. Reed, " I behold the 
 cunning fowler, such as I have knowne in the fenne countries and 
 els-where, that doe shoot at woodcockes, snipes, and wilde fowle, by 
 sneaking behind a painted cloth which they carry before them, having 
 pictured in it the shape of a horse ; which while the silly fowle gazeth 
 on, it is knockt down with hale shot, and so put in the fowler's 
 budget." II 
 
 We have reason to suppose that Henry the Eighth often amused 
 himself in this manner ; for in the inventories of his wardrobes, 
 preserved in the Harleian MS., are to be found frequent allowances 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 183. Act v. sc. 4. f Ibid. vol. vi. p. 68. 
 
 X Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 368. Poly Olbion, song xxv. 
 § Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 458. Nymphal vi. 
 
 II New Shreds of the Old Snare, by John Gee, 4to. p. 23. Vide Reed's Shakspeare, 
 vol. vi. p. 68. note 9.
 
 289 
 
 of materials for making " stalking coats, and stalking hose for the 
 use of his majesty." * 
 
 Of the peculiar mode of netting called bird-hatting, the following- 
 account has been given by a once popular authority on these subjects : 
 — " This sport we call in England most commonly bird-batting, and 
 some call it low-belling ; and the use of it is to go with a great light 
 of cressets, or rags of linen dipped in tallow, which will make a good 
 light ; and you must have a pan or plate made like a lanthorn, to 
 carry your light in, which must have a great socket to hold the light, 
 and carry it before you, on your breast, with a bell in your other 
 hand, and of a great bigness, made in the manner of a cow-bell, but 
 still larger ; and you must ring it always after one order. If you 
 carry the bell, you must have two companions with nets, one on each 
 side of you ; and what with the bell, and what with the light, the birds 
 will be so amazed, that when you come near them, they will turn up 
 their white bellies : your companions shall then lay their nets quietly 
 upon them, and take them. But you must continue to ring the bell ; 
 for, if the sound shall cease, the other birds, if there be any more 
 near at hand, will rise up and fly away."i- This method was used to 
 ensnare wood-cocks, partridges, larks, &c. and it is probable that to 
 a stratagem of this kind Shakspeare may allude, when he paints 
 Buckingham exclaiming — 
 
 " The net has fall'n upon me ; I shall perish 
 Under device and practice." J 
 
 Fishing, as an art, has deviated little, in this country, from the 
 state to which it had attained three centuries ago ; but it is a subject 
 of interest and amusement, to mark the enthusiasm with which, 
 during the period that we are considering, and anteriorly, this 
 delightful recreation has been discussed, and the minutiae to which 
 its literary patrons have descended. 
 
 ,* Harleian MS. 2i;S 1. f Jewel for Gentrie, Loiid. IfiK. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. -'1. Henry \ III. act i. sc. 1. 
 
 VOL. I. P P
 
 290 
 
 Of books written on the Ati of Angling previous to, and during 
 the age of Shakspeare, five, independent of subsequent editions, 
 may be enumerated ; and from three of these, the most curious of 
 their kind, we shall quote a few passages indicative of the warm 
 attachment alluded to in the preceding paragraph. The earliest 
 printed production on this subject is T7ie Treatise of Fysshynge wyth 
 an Angle, included, for the first time, in, what may be termed, the 
 second edition of the Book of St. Albans, namely. The Treaiyses 
 •perteynynge to Hawlcynge, Huntynge and Fisshynge with an angle, 
 printed at Westminster, by Wynkyn De Worde, 1496. This little 
 tract, which has been attributed, though perhaps not * correctly, 
 to Dame Juliana Berners, commences with giving a decided pre- 
 ference to fishing when compared with hunting, hawking, and fowling, 
 in the course of which the author observes, that the Angler, if his 
 sport should fail him, " atte the leest, hath his holsom walke, and 
 mery at his ease, a swete ayre of the swete savoure of the meede 
 floures, that makyth him himgry ; he hereth the melodyous armony 
 of fowles ; he seeth the yonge swannes, heerons, duckes, cotes, and 
 many other fowles, wyth Xheyx brodes ; wyche me semyth better 
 than aUe the noyse of houndys, the blastes of hornys, and the scrye 
 of fowlis, that hunters, fawkeners, and foulers can make. And if 
 the Angler take fysshe ; surely, thenne, is there noo man merier 
 than he is in his spryte f ;" and the book concludes in a singularly 
 pleasing strain of piety and simplicity. "Ye shall not use this 
 forsayd crafty dysporte," says this lover of fishing, " for no 
 
 * Mr. Haslewood, after much research, attributes to the pen of this ingenious lady only 
 the following portions of De Worde's edit, of 1 496 : 
 
 1 . A small portion of the treatise on Hawking. 
 
 2. The treatise upon Hunting. 
 
 3. A short list of the beasts of chace. 
 
 4. And another short one of beasts and fowls. 
 
 The public are much indebted to this elegant antiquary for an admirable fac-simile reprint 
 of De Worde's rare and interesting volume. 
 
 f Burton has introduced, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, though without acknowledg- 
 ment, the very words of this quotation. — Vide p. 169. 8th edit.
 
 291 
 
 covetysenes, to the encreasynge and sparynge of your money 
 oonly ; but pryncypally for your solace, and to cause the helthe of 
 your body, and specyally of your soule : for whanne ye purpoos to 
 goo on your dysportes in fysshynge, ye woll not desyre gretly many 
 persons wyth you, whyche myghte lette you of your game. And 
 thenne ye may serve God, devoutly, in sayenge afFectuously youre 
 custumable prayer ; and, thus doynge, ye shall eschewe and voyde 
 many vices." 
 
 Of this impression of the Book of St, Albana by De Worde, 
 numerous editions were published during the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, and frequently with new titles, as the " Gentleman's 
 Academie" 1595; the "Jewell for Gentrie" 1614, and the " Gen- 
 tleman's Recreation" 1674. Two small tracts, however, on angling, 
 possessing some originality, were published by Leonard Mascall, 
 and John Taverner, the former in 1590, and the latter in* 1600; 
 but the most important work on the subject, after the Treat yse on 
 Fysshynge, is a poem written by one John Dennys, or Davors, with 
 the following title : The Secrets of Angling ; teaching the choicest 
 Tooles, Baytes, and Seasons for the taking of any Fish, in Pond or 
 River : practised and faniiliarly opened in three Bookes. By J. D. 
 Esquire. 8o. Lond. 1613. This is a production of considerable 
 poetic merit, as will be evident from the author's eulogium on his 
 art : after reprobating the pastimes of gaming, wantonness, and drink- 
 ing, he exclaims — 
 
 * 
 
 The titles of these works are — " A Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line, and of 
 all other Instruments thereunto belonginge, made by L. M. 4o. Lond. 1590:" the 4th 
 edit, of Mascall's Book, was reprinted in 1606 — "Certain Experiments concerning 
 Fish and Fruit, practised by John Taverner, Gentleman, and by him published for the 
 benefit of others." 4to. London (printed for Wm. Ponsonby) 1600. — It would appear, 
 from a note in Walton's Complete Angler, that there was an impression of Taverner's 
 book of the same date with a different title, namely, " Approved experiments touching Fish 
 and Fruit, to be regarded by the lovers of Angling." — Vide Bagster's edit. 1808. Life 
 of Walton, p. 1 4. note. 
 
 A third was designated " The Pleasures of Princes, or Good Men's Recreations : con- 
 taining a Discourse of the general Art of Fishing with the Angle, or otherwise : and of 
 all the hidden Secrets belonging thereunto. 4o. Lond. 1614." 
 
 rp 2
 
 292 
 
 " O let me rather on the pleasant brinke 
 Of Tyne and Trent possesse some dwelling place, 
 Wliere I may see my quill and corke downe sinke 
 With eager bite of Barbell, Bleike, or Dace : 
 And on the world and his Creatour thinke, 
 While they proud Thais painted sheet embrace, 
 And with the fume of strong tobacco's smoke, 
 All quaffing round are ready for to choke. 
 
 Let them that list these pastimes then pursue, 
 And on their pleasing fancies feed their fill ; 
 So I the fields and meadows green may view. 
 And by the rivers fresh may walke at will. 
 Among the dazies and the violets blew : 
 Red hyacinth, and yellow daflFodill, 
 
 Purple narcissus like the morning rayes> 
 Pale ganderglas, and azor culverkayes. 
 
 I count it better pleasure to behold 
 The goodly compasse of the lofty skie. 
 And in the midst thereof like burning gold. 
 The flaming chariot of the world's great eye ; 
 The watry clouds that in the ayre uprold, 
 With sundry kinds of painted colours flie; 
 And faire Aurora lifting up her head. 
 All blushing rise from old Tithonus bed. 
 
 ' & 
 
 The hils and mountains raised from the plains. 
 The plains extended levell with the ground, 
 The ground divided into sundry vains. 
 The vains enelos'd with running rivers round, 
 The rivers making way through nature's chains, 
 With headlong course into the sea profound : 
 The surging sea beneath the vallies low. 
 The vallies sweet, and lakes that lovely flow. 
 
 The lofty woods, the forests wide and long 
 Adorn'd with leaves and branches fresh and green, 
 In whose cool brows the birds with chanting song 
 Do welcome with their quire the Summer's Queen, 
 The meadows fair where Flora's guifts among. 
 Are intermixt the verdant grasse between, 
 The silver skaled fish that softly swim 
 Within the brooks and crystall watry brim.
 
 293 
 
 All these and many more of his creation, 
 
 That made tlie heavens, the Angler oft doth see, 
 
 And takes therein no little delectation 
 
 To thinke liow strange and wonderful! they bee, 
 
 Framing thereof an inward contemplation, 
 
 To set his thoughts on other fancies free : 
 
 And whiles he looks on these with joyfull eye. 
 
 His minde is wrapt above the starry skie." * 
 
 The poet has entered so minutely into his task, as to give direc- 
 tions for the colour of the angler's cloaths, which he wishes should be 
 russet or gray t ; and he opens his third book with a descriptive cata/- 
 logue of the moral virtues and qualities of mind necessary to a lover 
 of the pastime ; these, he informs us, are twelve, namely, faith, 
 hope, charity, patience, humility, courage, liberality, knowledge, pla- 
 cability, piety, tefnperance, and memory ; an enumeration sufficiently 
 extensive, it might be supposed, to damp the enthusiasm of the most 
 eager disciple ; yet has Gervase Markham, notwithstanding, wonder- 
 fully augmented the list. This indefatigable author, in an early 
 edition of his Countrey Contentments'^, converted the poetry of Davors 
 into prose, with the following title : " The whole Art of Angling ; 
 as it was written in a small Treatise in Rime, and now for the 
 
 * Thl? beautiful encomium has been quoted in Walton's Complete Angler, with many 
 alteratioias, and some of them much for the worse; for instance, the very opening of the 
 quotation is thus given : — 
 
 " Let me live harmlessly ; and near the brink 
 Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place — 
 
 and the conclusion of the fourth stanza : — 
 
 " The raging sea, beneath the vallies low, 
 Where lakes, and rills, and rivulets do flow." 
 
 Bagster's edit. p. 123. 
 
 f Gervase Markham, in his Art of Angling, not only recommends the 'same colours, 
 but adds a caution which marks the rural dress of the day : " Let your apparel," says he, 
 " be close to your body, without any 7iew fashioned Jlashes, or hanging sleeves, .waving 
 loose, like sails about you." P. 59. 
 
 X The first edition of the Countrey Contentments, 1615, does not possess the Art of 
 Angling ; it probably appeared in the second, a year or two after ; for the work was so 
 popular that it rapidly ran through several impressions: the fifth is dated 1633.
 
 294 
 
 better understanding of the Reader put into prose, and adorned and 
 inlarged." The additions are numerous and entertaining, a specimen 
 of" which, under the marginal notation of Angler s vertues, will convey 
 a distinct and curious idea of the estimation in which this art was 
 held in the reign of James the First, and of the moral and mental 
 qualifications deemed essential, at this period, towards its successful 
 attainment. 
 
 " Now for the inward qualities of mind, albeit some writers reduce 
 them to twelve heads, which, indeed, whosoever enjoyeth, cannot 
 chuse but be very compleat in much perfection, yet I must draw them 
 into many other blanches. The first and most especial whereof is, 
 that a skilftxl Angler ought to be a general scholler, and seen in all 
 the liberal sciences, as a grammarian, to know how either to write or 
 discourse of his art in true and fitting terms, either without affectation 
 or rudeness. He should have sweetness of speech, to persuade and 
 intice otliers to delight in an exercise so much laudable. He should 
 have strength of arguments to defend and maintain his profession, 
 against envy or slander. He should have knowledge in the sun, 
 moon, and stars, that by their aspects he may guess the seasonableness 
 or unseasonableness of the weather, the breeding of storms, and from 
 what coasts the winds are ever delivered. He should be a good 
 knower of countries, and well used to highwayes, that by taking the 
 readiest paths to every lake, brook, or river, his journies may be 
 more certain, and less wearisome. He should have knowledge in 
 proportions of all sorts, whether circular, square, or diametrical, that 
 when he shall be questioned of his diurnal progresses, he may give a 
 geographical description of the angles and channels of rivers, how 
 they fall from their heads, and what compasses- they fetch in their 
 several windings. He must also have the perfect art of numbring, 
 that in the sounding of lakes or rivers, he may know how many foot or 
 inches each severally containeth ; and by adding, substracting, or mul- 
 tiplying the same, he may yield the reason of every river's swift or 
 slow current. He should not be unskilful in musick, that whensoever 
 either melancholy, heaviness of his thoughts, or the perturbations of
 
 295 
 
 his own fancies, stineth up sadness in him, he may remove the same 
 with some godly hymn or anthem, of which David gives him ample 
 examples. 
 
 " He must be of a well settled and constant belief, to enjoy the 
 benefit of his expectation ; for then to despair, it were better never 
 to be put in practice : and he must ever think where the waters are 
 pleasant, and any thing likely, that there the Creator of all good 
 things hath stored up much of plenty, and though your satisfaction be 
 not as ready as your wishes, yet you must hope still, that with perse- 
 verance you shall reap the fulness of your harvest with contentment : 
 Then he must be full of love both to his pleasure and to his neigh- 
 bour : to his pleasure, which otherwise will be irksome and tedious, 
 and to his neighbour, that he neither give offence in any particular, 
 nor be guilty of any general destruction : then he must be exceeding 
 patient, and neither vex nor excrviciate himself with losses or mis- 
 chances, as in losing the prey when it is almost in the hand, or by 
 breaking his tools by ignorance or negligence, but with pleased suffer- 
 ance amend errors, and think mischances instructions to better 
 carefulness. 
 
 " He must then be full of humble thoughts, not disdaining when 
 occasion commands to kneel, lye down, or wet his feet or fingers, as 
 oft as there is any advantage given thereby, unto the gaining the end 
 of his labour. Then must he be strong and valiant, neither to be 
 amazed with storms, nor affrighted with thunder, but hold them 
 according to their natural causes, and the pleasure of the highest : 
 neither must he, like the fox which preyeth upon lambs, employ all 
 his labour against the smaller frey ; but like the lyon that seizeth 
 elephants, think the greatest fish which swimmeth, a reward little 
 enough for the pains which he endureth. Then must he be hberal, 
 and not working only for his own belly, as if it could never be satis- 
 fied ; but he must with much cheerfulness bestow the fruits of his 
 skill amongst his honest neighbours, who being partners of his gain, 
 will doubly renown his triumph, and that is ever a pleasing reward 
 to vertue.
 
 296 
 
 " Then must lie be prudent, that apprehending the reasons why 
 the fish will not bite, and all other casual impediments which hinder 
 his sport, and knowing the remedies for the same, he may direct his 
 labours to be without troublesomeness. 
 
 " Then he must have a moderate contention of the mind to be 
 satisfied with indifferent things, and not out of any avaritious greedi- 
 ness think every thing too little, be it never so abundant. 
 
 " Then must he be of a thankful nature, praising the author of all 
 goodness, and shewing a large gratefulness for the least satisfaction. 
 
 " Then must he be of a perfect memory, quick and prompt to call 
 into his mind all the needfull things which are any way in this exer- 
 cise to be imployed, lest by omission or by forgetfulness of any, he 
 frustrate his hopes, and make his labour effectless. Lastly, he must 
 be of a strong constitution of body, able to endure much fasting, and 
 not of a gnawing stomach, observing hours, in which if it be unsatis- 
 fied, it troubleth both the mind and body, and loseth that delight 
 which maketh the pastime only pleasing." * 
 
 It is impossible to read this elaborate catalogue of q\ialifications 
 without a smile ; for who would suppose that grammar, rhetoric and 
 logic, astronomy, geography, arithynetic and music, were necessary to 
 form an . angler : yet we must allow, indeetl, even in the present 
 times, that hope, patience, and contentment are still articles of indis- 
 pensable use to him who would catch fish ; for though, as Shakspeare 
 justly observes, 
 
 " The pleasant'si angling is to see the fish 
 Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, 
 And greedily devour the treacherous bait," f 
 
 yet are we so frequently disappointed of this latter spectacle, that the 
 art may be truly considered as a school for the temper, and as merit- 
 ing the rational encomium of Sir Henry Wotton, a dear lover of the 
 
 * Coujitrey Contentments, 11th edit. p. 59 — 62. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 78. Much Ado about Nothing, act iii. sc 1.
 
 297 
 
 angle in the days of Sliakspeare, and who has declared that, after 
 tedious study, angling was " a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his 
 spirits, a diverter of sadness*, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a 
 moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness ;" and " that it 
 begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and prac- 
 tised it." " Indeed, my friend," adds the amiable Walton, " you 
 will find angling to be like the virtue of humility ; which has a calm- 
 ness of spirit, and a world of other blessings, attending upon it."f 
 
 A rural diversion of a kind very opposite to that of angling, namely, 
 Horse-racing, may be considered, during the reigns of Elizabeth 
 and James, if we compare it with the state to which the rage for 
 gambling has since carried it, as still in its infancy. It was classed, 
 indeed, with hawking and hunting, as a liberal pastime, and almost 
 generally pursued for the mere purposes of exercise or pleasure ; 
 hence the moral satirists of the age, the Pinitans of the sixteenth 
 century, have recommended it as a substitute for cards and dice. 
 That it was, however, even at this period, occasionally practised in 
 the spirit of the modern turf, will be evident from the authority of 
 Shakspeare, who says, 
 
 " I have heard of riding ivagcrs, 
 
 Where horses have been nimbler than the sands 
 That run i'the clock's behalf;" J 
 
 * To this effect, likewise, Col. Venables gives a decided testimony ; for in the preface 
 to his " Experienc'd Angler," first published in 1662, he declares, " if example (which 
 is the best proof) may sway any thing, I know no sort of men less subject to melancholy 
 than anglers, many have cast off' other recreations and embraced it, but I never knew any 
 angler wholly cast off" (though occasions might interrupt) their affections to their beloved 
 recreation;" and he adds, " if this art may prove a noble brave rest to my mind, 'tis all 
 the satisfaction I covet." 
 
 f Walton's Complete Angler apud Bagster, p. 122. — "Let me take this oppor- 
 tunity," says Mr. Bowles, " of recommending the amiable and venerable Isaac Walton's 
 Complete Angler; a work the most singular of its kind, breathing the very spirit of con- 
 tentment, of quiet, and unaffected philanthropy, and interspersed with some beautiful relics 
 of poetry, old songs, and ballads." Bowles's Pope, vol. i. p. 135. ' ^ 
 
 % Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 5 1 2. Cymbelinc, act iii. sc. 2, 
 
 VOL. I. Q Q
 
 298 
 
 and Burton, who wrote at the close of the Shakspearean era, mentions 
 the ruinous consequences of this innovation : " Horse-races," he 
 observes, " are desports of great men, and good in themselves, 
 though many gentlemen by such means gallop quite out of their 
 fortunes." * 
 
 To encourage, however, a spirit of emulation, prizes were esta- 
 blished for the swiftest horses, and these were usually either silver 
 beUs or silver cups ; from the prevalence of the former, the common 
 term for horse-races in the time of James I. was hell-courses, an 
 amusement which became very frequent in the reign of this prince, 
 and, though the value of the prize did not amount to more than 
 eight or ten pounds, and the riders were for the most part the owners 
 of the horses, attracted a numerous concourse of spectators. 
 
 The estimation in which the breed oi race-horses was held, even in 
 the age of Elizabeth, may be drawn from a passage in one of the 
 satires of Bishop Hall, first published in 15.97: — 
 
 " Dost thou prize 
 
 Tliy brute beasts worth by their dam's qualities ? 
 
 Say'st tliou this colt shall prove a swift pac'd steed, 
 
 Onely because a Jennet did him breed ? 
 
 Or say'st thou this same horse shall win the prize, 
 
 Because his dam was swiftest Trunchifice 
 
 Or Runceval his syre ; himself a galloway ? 
 
 While like a tireling jade, he lags half way." \ 
 
 AVhile on this subject, we may remark, that the Art of Riding was, 
 during the era we are contemplating, carried to a state of great 
 perfection ; 
 
 " To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, 
 
 Anil witch the world with noble horsemanship," | 
 
 * Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 170. part ii. sat. 2. Mem. iv. 
 
 f Chalmers's English Poels, vol. v. p. 275. book iv. satire 3. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 381. Henry IV. parti, activ. sc. 1.
 
 299 
 
 was the pursuit of every eager and aspiring spirit, and various treatises 
 were Avritten to facilitate the attainment of an accomplishment at once 
 so useful and so fashionable. Among these, the pieces of Gervase 
 Markham may be deemed the best ; indeed, his earliest work on the 
 subject, which is dated 1593, claims to be the first ever written in 
 this country on the art of training Running-horses*; and is supposed 
 also to be the first production of Markliam : it went through many 
 impressions under various titles, and from one of these termed 
 Cavelarice, printed in 1607, I shall select a minutely curious picture 
 of the " horseman's apparel." 
 
 " First, when you begin to learne to ride, you must come to the 
 stable, in such decent and fit apparel, as is meet for such an exercise, 
 that is to say, a hat which must sit close and firme upon your heade, 
 with an indifferent narrow verge or brim, so that in the saults or 
 bounds of the horse, it may neither through widenesse or unweldi- 
 nesse fall from your head, nor with the bredth of the brim fall into 
 your eies, and impeach your sight, both which are verie grosse errors : 
 About your neck you shall weare a falling band, and no ruffe, whose 
 depth or thicknesse, may, either with the winde, or motions of your 
 horse, ruffell about your face ; or, according to the fashion of the 
 Spaniards, daunce hobby-horse-like about your shoulders, which 
 though in them is taken for a grace, yet in true judgment it is found 
 an errour. Your doublet shal be made close and hansome to your 
 bodie, large wasted, so that you may ever be sure to ride with your 
 points trussed (for to ride otherwise is most vilde) and in all parts so 
 easye, that it may not take from you the use of anie part of your 
 
 * The title is as follows : " A Discource of Horsemanshippe : wherein the breeding 
 and ryding of Horses for service, in a breefe manner is more methodically sette downe 
 then hath been heretofore, &c. Also the manner to chose, trayne, ryde and dyet, both 
 Hunting-horses and Running-horses : with all the secretes thereto belonging discovered. 
 An arte never hearetofare written by any authonr. Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chiegio." 
 At London. Printed by John Charlewood for Richard Smith, 1593, 4to. Dedicated 
 " To the Right Worshipfull, and his singular good father, Ma. Rob. Markham, of 
 Cotham, in the County of Nottingham, Esq. by Jervis Markham. Licensed 29 Januarj', 
 1592-3." Vide Herbert, v. 2. 1 102. 
 
 Q Q 2
 
 300 
 
 bodie. About your waste you must have ever your girdle and thereon 
 a smal dagger or punniard, which must be so last in the sheath that 
 no motion of the horse may cast it forth, and yet so readie, that 
 upon any occasion you may draw it. Your hose would be large, 
 rounde, and full, so that they may fill your saddle, which should it 
 otherwise be emptie and your bodie looke like a small substance in a 
 great compasse, it were wondrous uncomely. Your bootes must be 
 cleane, blacke, long, and close to your legge, comming almost up to 
 your middle thigh, sSO that they may lie as a defence betwixt your 
 knee and the tree of your saddle. Your boote-hose must come some 
 two inches higher then your bootes, being hansomely tied up with 
 pointes. Your spurres must be strong and flat inward, bending with 
 a compasse under your ancle : the neck of your spurre must be long 
 and straight, and rowels thereof longe and sharp, the prickes thereof 
 not standing thicke together, nor being above five in number. Upon 
 your handes you must weare a hansome paire of gloves, and in your 
 right hande you must have a long rodde finely rush-growne, so that 
 the small ende thereof be hardly so great as a round packe-threed, 
 insomuch that when you move or shake it, the noyse thereof may be 
 lowde and sharpe." * 
 
 Having thus noticed the great rural diversions of this period, as far 
 as they deviate from modern practice, the remainder of the chapter 
 will be occupied by such minor amusements of the country as may 
 now justly be considered obsolete; for it must be recollected, that 
 to enumerate only what is peculiar to the era under consideration, 
 forms the object of our research. It should, likewise, here be 
 added, that those amusements which are equally common to both 
 country and town, will find their place under the latter head, such 
 as cards, dice, the practice of archery, baiting, &c. &c. 
 
 Among the amusements generally prevalent in the country, Burton 
 has included the Quintaine. This was originally a mere martial 
 
 * Cavelarice, or the arte and knowledge belonging to the Horse-ryder, I6O7. Book ii- 
 chap. 24.
 
 301 
 
 sport ; and, as Vegetius informs vis, familiar to the Romans, from an 
 individual of which nation, named Qiiinfiis, it is supposed to have 
 derived its etymology. During the early feudal ages of modern 
 Europe it continued to support its military character, was practised 
 by the higher orders of society, and preceded, and probably gave 
 origin to, tilting, justs, and tournaments. These, however, as more 
 elegant and splendid in their costume, gradually superseded it during 
 the prevalence of chivalry ; it then became an exercise for the middle 
 ranks, for burgesses and citizens, and at length towards the close of 
 the sixteenth century, degenerated into a mere rustic sport. 
 
 It would appear, from comparing Stowe with Shakspeare, that 
 about the year 1600, the Quintain was made use of under two forms ; 
 the most simple consisting of a post fixed perpendicularly in the 
 ground, on the top of which was a cross-bar turning upon a pivot or 
 spindle, with a broad board nailed at one end and a bag of sand sus- 
 pended at the other ; at the board they ran on horseback with 
 spears or staves, and " hee," says Stowe, " that hit not the broad 
 end of the quinten was of all men laughed to scorne ; and hee that 
 hit it full, if he rid not the faster, had a sound blow in his necke 
 with a bagge full of sand hanged on the other end."* A more 
 costly and elaborate machine, resembling the human form, is alluded 
 to by Shakspeare in As You Like It, where Orlando says, 
 
 My better parts 
 
 Are all thrown down ; and thai lo/iic/i here stands up. 
 Is bid a quintain, a mere lifeless block." f 
 
 In Italy, Germany, and Flanders, a quintain, carved in wood in 
 imitation of the human form, was, during the sixteenth century, in 
 common use. If. The figure very generally represented a Saracen, 
 armed with a shield in one hand, and a sword in the other, and, being 
 
 * Survey of London, 4to. 1618, p. 145. f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 29. 
 
 t Vide Pluvinel sur I'exercise de monter a cheval, part iii. p. 177. et Traite des Tour- 
 nois, Joustes, &c. par Claude Fran. Menestrier, p. 264.
 
 302 
 
 placed on a pivot, the skill of those who attacked it, depended on 
 shivering the lance to pieces between the eyes of the figure ; for if the 
 weapon deviated to the right or left, and especially if it struck the 
 shield, the quintain turned round with such velocity as to give the 
 horseman a violent blow on the back with his sword, a circumstance 
 which covered the performer with ridicide, and excited the mirth of 
 the spectators. That such a machine, termed the shield quintain, was 
 used in Ireland during the reign of Richard the Second, we have the 
 authority of Froissart ; it is therefore highly probable, that this species 
 of the diversion was as common in England, and still lingered here in 
 the reign of Elizabeth ; and that to a quintain of this kind, represent- 
 ing an armed man, and erected for the purpose of a military exercise, 
 Shakspeare alludes in the passage just quoted. 
 
 It must, however, be allowed, that at the commencement of the 
 seventeenth century, and for several years anterior, the quintain had 
 almost universally become the plaything of the peasantry, and was 
 seldom met with but at rural weddings, wakes, or fairs ; or under any 
 other form than that which Stowe has described. No greater proof of 
 this can be given than the fact, that when Elizabeth was entertained at 
 Kenelworth Castle, in 1575, with an exact representation of a Country 
 Bridale, a quintain of this construction formed a part of it. " Mar- 
 vellous," says Laneham, " were the martial acts that were done there 
 that day ; the bride-groom for pre-eminence had the first course at the 
 Quintaine, brake his spear treshardiment ; but his mare in his manage 
 did a little so titubate, that much ado had his manhood to sit in his 
 saddle, and to scape the foil of a fall : With the help of his hand, yet 
 he recovered himself, and lost not his stirrups (for he had none to his 
 saddle) ; had no hurt as it hapt, but only that his girth burst, and lost 
 his pen and inkhorn that he was ready to weep for ; but his handker- 
 chief, as ^ood hap was, found he safe at his girdle ; that cheered him 
 somewhat, and had good regard it should not be filed. For though 
 heat and coolness upon sundry occasions made him sometime to 
 sweat, and sometime rheumatic ; yet durst he be bolder to blow his 
 nose and wipe his face with the flappet of his father's jacket, than with
 
 30S 
 
 his mother's muffler : 'tis a goodly matter, when youth is mannerly 
 brought up, in fatherly love and motherly awe. 
 
 " Now, Sir, after the bride-groom had made his course, ran the 
 rest of the band a while, in some order ; but soon after, tag and rag, 
 cut and long tail ; where the specialty of the sport was to see how 
 some for his slackness had a good bob with the bag ; and some for 
 his haste to topple down right, and come tumbling to the post : Some 
 striving so much at the first setting out, that it seemed a question 
 between the man and the beast, whether the course should be made a 
 horseback or a foot : and put forth with the spurs, then would run 
 his race by us among the thickest of the throng, that down came they 
 together hand over head : Another, while he directed his course to 
 the quintain, his jument would carry him to a mare among the 
 people ; so his horse as amorous as himself adventurous : An other, 
 too, run and miss the quintain with his staff, and hit the board with 
 his head ! 
 
 " Many such gay games were there among these riders : who by 
 and by after, upon a greater courage, left their quintaining, and 
 ran one at another. There to see the stern countenances, the grim 
 looks, the couragious attempts, the desperate adventures, the dan- 
 gerous courses, the fierce encounters, whereby the buff at the man, 
 and the counterbuff at the horse, that both sometime came toppling 
 to the ground. By my troth, Master Martin, 'twas a lively pastime ; 
 I believe it would have moved some man to a right merry mood, 
 though it had been told him his wife lay a dying." * 
 
 This passage presents us with a lively picture of what the rurdl 
 quintain was in the days of Elizabeth, an exercise which continued 
 to amuse our rustic forefathers for more than a century after -the 
 princely festival of Kenelworth. Minshieu, who published his Dic- 
 tionary in 1617, the year subsequent to Shakspeare's death, informs 
 us that " A qidntaine or quintelle," was " a game in request at 
 marriages, when Jac and Tom, Die, Hob and Will, strive for the 
 
 * Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. and of Lanehani's Letter, p. 30 — 32.
 
 304 
 
 gav garland." Randolph in 1642, alluding in one of his poems to 
 the diversions of the Spaniards, says 
 
 " Foot-ball with us may be with them balloone ; 
 As they at tilts, so we at qiiintaine runne; 
 And those old pastimes relish best with me, 
 That have least art, and most simplicitie ;" 
 
 Plott in his History of Oxfordshire, first printed in 1677, mentions 
 the Quintain as the common bridal diversion of the peasantry at 
 Deddington in that county ; " it is now," he remarks, " only in re- 
 quest at marriages, and set up in the way for young men to ride at 
 as they carry home the bride, he that breaks the board being counted 
 the best man*;" and in a satire published about the year 1690, 
 ander the title of The Essex Chamjiion ; or the famous History of Sir 
 Billy of Billerecay, and his Squire Ricardo, intended as a ridicule, 
 after the manner of Cervantes, on the romances then in circulation, 
 the hero, Sir Billy, is represented as running at a quintain, such as 
 Stowe has drawn in his Survey, but with the most unfortunate issue, 
 for " taking his launce in his hand, he rid with all his might at the 
 Quinten, and hitting the board a full blow, brought the sand-bag 
 about with such force, as made him measure his length on the 
 ground." f 
 
 Most of the numerous athletic diversions of the country remaining 
 what they were two centuries ago, cannot, in accordance with our 
 plan, require any comment or detail ; two, however, now, we believe, 
 entirely obsolete, and which serve to mark the manners of the age, 
 it will be necessary to introduce. Mercutio, in a contest of plea- 
 santry and banter with Romeo, exclaims, " Nay, if thy wits rim the 
 wild-goose chace, I have done." X 
 
 This barbarous species of horse-race, which has been named from 
 its resemblance to the flight of wild-geese, was a common diversion 
 
 * Natural Hist, of Oxfordshire, p. 200. 
 
 f Censura Literaria, vol. viii. p. 233, 234. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. Ill, Act ii. sc. U
 
 305 
 
 tiniong the country-gentlemen of this period ; Burton, indeed, calls it 
 one of " the disports of great men*;" a confession which does no 
 honour to the age, for this elegant amusement consisted in two 
 horses starting together, and he who proved the hindmost rider 
 was obliged to follow the foremost over whatever ground he chose 
 to carry him, that horse which could distance the other winning 
 the race. 
 
 Another sport still more extraordinary and rude, and much in 
 vogue in the south-western counties, was, one of the numerous 
 games with the ball, and termed Hurling. Of this there were two 
 kinds, hurling to the Goales and hurling to the Country, and both have 
 been described with great accuracy by Carew, in his Survey of Corn- 
 wall. The first is little more than a species of hand-ball, but the 
 second, when represented as the amusement of gentle7nen, furnishes 
 a curious picture of the civilisation of the times. 
 
 " In hurling to the country" says Carew, " two or three, or more 
 parishes agree to hurl against two or three other parishes. The 
 matches are usually made by gentlemen, and their goales are either 
 those gentlemen's houses, or some towns or villages three or four 
 miles asunder, of which either side maketh choice after the nearnesse 
 of their dwellings ; when they meet, tliere is neyther comparing of 
 numbers nor matching of men, but a silver ball is cast up, and that 
 company which can catch and carry it by force or slight to the place 
 assigned, gaineth the ball and the victory. — Such as see where 
 the ball is played give notice, crying ' ware east,' ' ware west,' as the 
 same is carried. The hurlers take their next way over hilles, dales, 
 hedges, ditches ; yea, and thorow bushes, briars, mires, plashes, and 
 rivers whatsoever, so as you shall sometimes see twenty or thirty lie 
 tugging together in the water scrambling and scratching for the ball.'" ■]- 
 
 The domestic amusements in the country being nearly, if not alto- 
 gether, the same with those which prevailed in the city, we shall, with 
 
 * Anatomy of Melancholy, 8th edit. p. 1 70. 
 
 f Carew's Survey of Cornwall, 1602, book i. p. 74. 
 
 VOL. I. R B
 
 306 
 
 one exception, refer the consideration of them to another part of this 
 work. The pastime for v/hich this distinction is claimed, was known 
 by the name of Shovel-board, or SJaiffle-board^ and was so universally 
 prevalent throughout the kingdom, during the era of which we are 
 treating, that there could scarcely be found a nobleman's or gentle- 
 man's house in the country in which this piece of furniture was not a 
 conspicuous object. The great hall was the place usually assigned 
 for its station, though in some places, as, for instance, at Ludlow 
 Castle, a room was appropriated to this purpose, called The Shovell- 
 Board Room. * 
 
 The table necessary for this game, now superseded by the use of 
 Billiards, was frequently upon a very large and expensive scale. " It 
 is remarkable," observes Dr. Plott, " that in the hall at Chartley the 
 shuffle-board table, though ten yards one foot and an inch long, is 
 made up of about two hundred and sixty pieces, which are generally 
 about eighteen inches long, some few only excepted, that ax-e scarce 
 a foot ; which, being laid on longer boards for support underneath, 
 are so accurately joined and glewed together, that no shuffle-board 
 whatever is freer from rubbs or casting. — There is a joynt also in the 
 shuffle-board at Madeley Manor exquisitely well done." f 
 
 The mode of playing at Shovel-board is thus described, by 
 Mr. Strutt:— -" At one end of the shovel-board there is a line drawn 
 across, parallel with the edge, and about three or four inches from it ; 
 at four feet distance from this line another is made, over which it is 
 necessary for the weight to pass when it is thrown by the player, 
 otherwise the go is not reckoned. The players stand at the end of 
 the table, opposite to the two marks above mentioned, each of them 
 having four flat weights of metal, which they shove from them, one 
 at a time, alternately : and the judgment of the play is, to give suffi- 
 cient impetus to the weight to carry it beyond the mark nearest to 
 the edge of the board, which requires great nicety, for if it be too 
 
 * Vide Todd's Milton, 2d. edit. vol. vi. p. 1 92. 
 t Natural History of Staffordshire, p. 383.
 
 307 
 
 strongly impelled, so as to fall from the table, and there is nothing to 
 prevent it, into a trough placed underneath for its reception, the 
 throw is not counted ; if it hangs over the edge, without falling, three 
 are reckoned towards the player's game ; if it lie between the line 
 and the edge, without hanging over, it tells for two ; if on the line, 
 and not up to it, but over the fii'st line, it counts for one. The game, 
 when two play, is generally eleven ; but the number is extended 
 when four, or more, are jointly concerned." * 
 
 It appears from a passage in the Merry Wives of Windsor, that, in 
 Shakspeare's time, the broad shillings of Edward VI. were made use 
 of at shovel-board instead of the more modern weights. FalstafF is 
 enquiring of Pistol if he picked master Slender's purse, a query to 
 which Slender thus replies : " Ay, by these gloves, did he, (or I would 
 I might never come in mine own great chamber again else,) of seven 
 groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edzmrd shovel-boards, that cost 
 me two shillings and two pence a-piece of Yead Miller, by these 
 gloves." t " That Slender means the broad shilling of one of our 
 kings," remarks Mr. Malone, " appears from comparing these words 
 with the corresponding passage in the old quarto : ' Ay by this 
 handkerchief did he ; — two faire shovel-board shillings, besides seven 
 groats in mill-sixpences.' " :j: 
 
 Mr. Douce is of opinion that the game of shovel-board is not much 
 older than the reign of Edward VI., and that it is only a variation, on 
 a larger scale, of what was term'd Shove-groat, a game invented in 
 the reign of Henry VIII., and described in the statutes, of his 33d 
 year, as a nexv game. § Shove-groat was also played, as the name 
 implies, with the coin of the age, namely silver groats, then as large 
 as our modern shillings, and to this pastime and to the instrument 
 used in performing it, Shakspeare likewise, and Jonson, allude ; the 
 first in the Second Part of King Henry IV., where Falstaff, threatening 
 
 • Sportfi and Pastimes, p. 264. 
 
 t Reed's Shakespeare, vol. v. p. 22. | Ibid. vol. v. p. 23. note 2. 
 
 § Deuce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 454, 455. 
 
 R R 2
 
 308 
 
 Pistol, exclaims, " Quoit him down, Bardolph, like o Shove-groat 
 shilling :" * the second in Every Man in his Humour, where Knowell, 
 speaking of Brain-worm, says that he has " translated begging out 
 of the old hackney pace, to a fine easy amble, and made it run as 
 smooth off the tongue as a shove-groat shilling,'^ f That the game 
 of Shovel-board is subsequent, in point of time, to the diversion of 
 Shove-g}'oat, is probable from the circumstance noticed by Mr. Douce, 
 that no coin termed shovel-groat is any where to be found, and con- 
 sequently the era of the broad shilling may be deemed that also of 
 shovel-board. Mr. Strutt supposes the modern game of Justice Jervis 
 to resemble, in all essential points, the ancient Shove-gr'oat. J 
 
 Between the juvenile sports which were common in the reigns of 
 Elizabeth and James, and those of the present day, little variation or 
 discrepancy, worth noticing, can be perceived ; they were, under 
 slight occasional alterations of form and name, equally numerous, 
 trifling, or mischievous, and Shakspeare has now and then referred to 
 them, for the purposes of illustration or similitude ; he has, in this 
 manner, alluded to the well-known games of leap-frog § ; handy- 
 dandy II ; wildmare, or balancing H ; Jlap-dragons ' ; loggats, or kittle- 
 pins ^ ; country-base, or prisoner s bars ' ; fast and loose * ; nine men^s 
 morris, or five-penny morris ^ ; cat in a bottle '' ; figure of eight ', 
 &c. &c. ; games which, together with those derived from balls, 
 marbles, hoops, &c. require no description, and which, deviating little 
 in their progress from age to age, can throw no material light on the 
 costume of early life. Very few diversions, indeed, peculiar to our 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 96. 
 
 f Whalley's Works of Ben Jonson, vol. i. 
 
 X Vide Sports and Pastimes, p. 26?. edit, of 1810. 
 
 § Henry V., act v. sc. 2. H Lear, act iv. sc. 6. 
 
 % Second Part of Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4. 
 
 ' Love's Labour Lost, act v. sc. 1. and Second Part of Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4. 
 
 ■ Hamlet, act v. sc. 1. ' Cymbeline, act v. sc. 3. 
 
 * Anthony and Cleopatra, act iv. sc. 10. 
 
 ' Midsummer- Night's Dream, act ii. sc. 2. 
 " Much Ado about Nothing, act i. sc. 1. 
 ' Midsummer-Night's Dream, act ii. sc. 2.
 
 309 
 
 youthful days have become totally obsolete ; among these, however, 
 may be mentioned one, which, from the obscurity resting on it, its 
 peculiarity, and former popularity, is entitled to some distinction. We 
 allude to the diversion of barley-breake, of the mode of play in »■ 
 which, Mr. Strutt confesses himself ignorant, and merely quotes the 
 following lines from Sidney, as given by Johnson in his Dictionary : 
 
 " By neighbours prais'd, she went abroad thereby, 
 At barley-brake her sweet swift feet to try." ♦ 
 
 Barley-breake was, however, among yovmg people, one of the most 
 popular amusements of the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, 
 and continued so until the austere zeal of the Puritans occasioned its 
 suppression : thus Thomas Randall, in " An Eclogue " on the 
 diversions of Cotswold Hills, complains that 
 
 " Some melancholy swaines, about have gone, 
 To teach all zeale, their owne complection — 
 These teach that dauncing is a Jezabell, 
 And Barley-breake, the ready way to hell." f 
 
 Before this puritanical revolution took place, barley-breake was a 
 common theme with the amatory bards of the day, and allusions to it 
 were frequent in their songs, madrigals, and ballets. With one of 
 these, written about 1600, we shall present the reader, as a pleasing 
 specimen of the light poetry of the age : — 
 
 « Now is the month of maying, 
 When merry lads are playing ; 
 Each with his bonny lasse, 
 Upon the greeny grasse. 
 
 The spring clad all in gladnesse 
 Doth laugh at winter's sadnesse ; 
 And to the bagpipe's sound, 
 The nymphs tread out their ground. 
 
 * Sports and Pastimes, p. 338. 
 t Annalia Dubrensia, 1636, c, iii.
 
 310 
 
 Fye then, why sit wee musing, 
 Youth's sweet delight refusing ; 
 Say daintie Nimphs and speake, 
 Shall wee play barly-brcake." * 
 
 There were two modes of playing at barley-breake, and of these 
 one was rather more complex than the other. Mr. Gifford, in a note 
 on the Virgin- Martyr of Massinger, where this game, in its more 
 elaborate form, is referred to, remarks, that " with respect to the 
 amusement of barley-break, allusions to it occur repeatedly in our 
 old writers ; and their commentators have piled one parallel passage 
 upon another, without advancing a single step towards explaining 
 what this celebrated pastime really was. It was played by six people 
 (three of each sex), who were coupled by lot. A piece of ground 
 was then chosen, and divided into three compartments, of which the 
 middle one was called hell. It was the object of the couple condemned 
 to this division, to catch the others, who advanced from the two 
 extremities ; in which case a change of situation took place, and hell 
 was filled by the couple who were excluded by pre-occupation, from 
 the other places. In this " catching," however, there was some dif- 
 ficulty, as, by the regulations of the game, the middle couple were 
 not to separate before they had succeeded, while the others might 
 break hands whenever they found themselves hard pressed. When 
 all had been taken in turn, the last couple was said to be in hell, and 
 the game ended." -f- 
 
 That this description, explanatory of the passage in Massinger, 
 
 " He is at harley-breaJc, and the last couple 
 Are now in hell," 
 
 is accurate and full, will derive corroboration from a scarce pamphlet 
 entitled " Barley-breake, or a Warning for Wantons," published in 
 1607, and which contains a curious representation of this amusement. 
 
 * Cantus of Thomas Morley, the first booke of ballets to fire voyces. 
 f Massinger's Works, by Giffbrd, vol. i. p. 104.
 
 311 
 
 . " On a time the lads and lasses came, 
 
 Entreating Elpin that she * might goe play ; 
 He said she should (Euphema was her name) 
 And then dcnyes : yet needs she must away. 
 
 To Barley-breake they roundly then 'gan fall, 
 Raimon, Euphema had unto his mate ; 
 For by a lot he won her from them ail : 
 Wherefore young Streton doth his fortune hate. 
 
 But yet ere long he ran and caught her out, 
 And on the back a gentle fall he gave her ; 
 It is a fault which jealous eyes spie out, 
 A maide to kisse before her jealous father. 
 
 Old Elpin smiles, but yet he frets within, 
 Euphema saith, she was unjustly cast. 
 She strives, he holds, his hand goes out and in ; 
 She cries, away ! and yet she holds him fast. 
 
 Till sentence given by an other maid. 
 That she was caught according to the law ; 
 The voice whereof this civill quarrell staid, 
 And to his mate each lusty lad 'gan draw. 
 
 Euphema now with Streton is in hell, 
 (For so the middle roome is alwaies cald) 
 He would for ever, if he might, there dwell ; 
 He holds it blisse with her to be inthrald. 
 
 The other run, and in their running change ; 
 Streton 'gan catch, and then let goe his hold ; 
 Euphema like a doe, doth swiftly range, 
 Yet taketh none, although full well she could. 
 
 And winkes on Streton, he on her 'gan smil^ 
 And fainc would whisper something in her eare ; 
 She knew his mind, and bid him use a wile. 
 As she ran by him, so that none did heare." f 
 
 * His daughter. 
 
 t " Barley-breake, or a Warning for Wantons. Written by W. N., Gent. Printed 
 at London by Simon Stafford, dwelling in the Cloth-fayre, neere the Red Lyon, 1 607. 
 4to. 16 leaves." Vide British Bibliographer, vol.i. p. 65. — This poem has been attri- 
 buted, notwithstanding the initials, to Nicholas Breton.
 
 312 
 
 The simpler mode of conducting this pastime, as it was practised 
 in Scotland, has been detailed by Dr. Jamieson, who tells us, that it 
 was " a game generally played by young people in a corn-yard. 
 One stack is fixed on as the dule, or goal ; and one person is appointed 
 to catch the rest of the company, who run out from the dule. He 
 does not leave it till they are all out of his sight. Then he sets off 
 to catch them. Any one who is taken cannot run out again with his 
 former associates, being accounted a prisoner ; but is obliged to assist 
 his captor in pursuing the rest. AVhen all are taken, the game is 
 finished ; and he who was first taken is bound to act as catcher in 
 the next game." * It is evident, from our old poetry, that this style 
 of playing at barley-breake was also common in England, and especially 
 among the lower orders in the country. 
 
 It may be proper to add, at the close of this chapter, that a species 
 of public diversion was, during the Elizabethan period, supported by 
 each parish, for the purpose of innocently employing the peasantry 
 upon a failure of work from weather or other causes. To this singular 
 though laudable custom Shakspeare alludes in the Twelfth Night, 
 where Sir Toby says, " He's a coward, and a coystril, that will not 
 drink to my niece, 'till his brains turn o' the toe like a f parish-top." 
 " This," says Mr. Steevens, " is one of the customs now laid aside ;" 
 and he adds, in explanation, that " a large top was kept in every 
 village, to be whipped in frosty weather, that the peasants might be 
 kept warm by exercise, and out of mischief, while they could not 
 work ;" a diversion to which Fletcher likewise refers in his Night- 
 Walker, and which has given rise to the proverbial expression of 
 sleeping like a town-top. 
 
 From this rapid sketch of the diversions of the country, as they 
 existed in Shakspeare's time, it will be immediately perceived that 
 not many have become obsolete, and of those which have undergone 
 some change, the variations have not been such as materially to 
 
 • Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1 808. 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 248.
 
 313 
 
 obscure their origin or previous constitution. The object of this 
 chapter being, therefore, only to mark what was peculiar in rural 
 pastime to the age under consideration, and not to notice what had 
 suffered little or no modification, its articles, especially if we consider 
 the nature of the immediately preceding section, (and that nearly all 
 amusements common to both town and country were referred to a 
 future part,) could not be either very numerous, or require any very 
 extended elucidation. 
 
 What might be necessary in the minute and isolated task of the 
 commentator, would be tedious and superfluous in a design which 
 professes, while it gives a distinct and broad outline of the complexion 
 of the times, to preserve among its parts an unrelaxed attention to 
 unity and compression. 
 
 VOL. I. s s
 
 314 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 VIEW OF COUNTRY LIFE DUHINO THE AGE OF 9HAKSPEARE, CONTINUED — AN ACCOUNT OF 
 
 SOME OF ITS SUFSRSTITIONS. 
 
 The popular creed, during the age of Shakspeare, was perhaps more 
 extended and systematised than in any preceding or subsequent 
 period of our history. For this effect we are indebted, in a great 
 measure, to the credulity and superstition of James the First, the 
 publication of whose Demonology rendered a profession in the belief 
 of sorcery and witchcraft a matter of fashion and even of interest ; 
 for a ready way to the favour of this monarch was an implicit assump- 
 tion of his opinions, theological and metaphysical, as well as political. 
 
 It must not be inferred, however, that at the commencement of 
 the seventeenth century, the human mind was unwilling or unpre- 
 pared to shake off the load which had oppressed it for ages. Among 
 the enlightened classes of society, now rapidly extending throughout 
 the kingdom, the reception of these doctrines was rather the effect of 
 court example than of settled conviction ; but as the vernacular bards, 
 and especially the dramatic, who ever hold unbounded influence over 
 the multitude, thought proper, and certainly, in a poetical light, with 
 great effect, to adopt the dogmata and machinery of James, the reign 
 of superstition was, for a time, not only upheld, but extended among 
 the inferior orders of the people. 
 
 " Every goblin of ignorance," observes Warton, speaking of this 
 period, " did not vanish at the first glimmerings of the morning of 
 science. Reason suffered a few demons still to linger, which she 
 chose to retain in her service under the guidance of poetry. Men 
 believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hovering 
 around, who brought with them airs frotn heaven, or blasts from hell, 
 that the ghost was duely released from his prison of torment at the
 
 315 
 
 sound of the curfew, and that fairies imprinted mysterious circles on 
 the turf by moon-light. Much of this credulity was even consecrated 
 by the name of science and profound speculation. Prospero had 
 not yet broken and buried his staff, nor drowned his book deeper than 
 did ever plummet sound. It was now that the alchymist, and the judicial 
 astrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse 
 of some preternatural being, who came obsequious to his call, and was 
 bound to accomplish his severest services, under certain conditions, 
 and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pre- 
 tended feats of these fantastic philosophers, to evoke the queen of the 
 Fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden 
 rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent lustre. The 
 Shakspeare of a more instructed and polished age would not have 
 given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the 
 witches, and the cauldron of incantation." * 
 
 The history of the popular mythology, therefore, of this era, at a 
 time when it was cherished by the throne, and adopted, in its fullest 
 extent, by the greatest poetical genius which ever existed, must 
 necessarily occupy a large share of our attention. So extensive, 
 indeed, is the subject, and so full of interest and curiosity, that to 
 exhaust it in this division of the work, would be to encroach upon 
 that symmetry of plan, that relative proportion which we wish to pre- 
 serve. The four great subjects, therefore, of Fairies, Witchcraft, 
 Magic, and Apparitions, will be deferred to the Second Part, and an- 
 nexed as Dissertations to our remarks on the Midsummer- Night' s 
 Dream, Macbeth, the Tempest, and Hamlet. 
 
 As a consequent of this decision, the present chapter, after noticing, 
 in a general way, the various credulities of the comitry, will dwell, at 
 some length, on those periods of the year which have been peculiarly 
 devoted to superstitious rites and observances, and include the residue 
 of the subject under the heads of omens, charms, sympathies, cures, and 
 miscellaneous superstitiofis. 
 
 * Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. *96'. 
 
 s s 2
 
 316 
 
 It is from the Winter-Night's Conversation of the lower orders of 
 the people that we may derive, in any age, the most authentic catalogue 
 of its superstitions. This fearful pleasure of children and uneducated 
 persons, and the eager curiosity which attends it, have been faithfully 
 painted by Shakspeare : — 
 
 " Hermione. Pray you sit by us, 
 
 And tell's a talc. 
 
 Mamillius. Merry, or sad, shall't be ? 
 
 Her. As merry as you will. 
 
 Mam. A sad tale's best for winter ; 
 
 I have one of sprites and goblins. 
 
 Het: Let's have that, sir. 
 
 Come on, sit dovm : — Come on, and do your best 
 To fright me with your sprites : you're powerful at it. 
 
 Mam. There was a man, 
 
 Her. Nay, come, sit down ; theii on. 
 
 Mam. Dwelt by a church-yard ; — I will tell it softly ; 
 Yon crickets shall not hear it. 
 
 Her, Come on then, 
 
 And give't in mine ear." • 
 
 For the particulars forming the subject-matter of these tales, and 
 for their effect on the hearers, we must have recourse to writers con- 
 temporary with the bard, whose object it was to censure or detail 
 these legendary wonders. Thus Lavaterus, who wrote a book De 
 Speciris, in 1570, which was translated into English in 1572, remarks 
 that " if when men sit at the table, mention be made of spirits and 
 elves, many times wemen and children are so afrayde that they dare 
 scarce go out of dores alone, least they should meete wyth some evyl 
 thing : and if they chaunce to heare any kinde of noise, by and by 
 they thinke there are some spirits behynde them :" and again in a 
 subsequent page, " simple foolish men — imagine that there be cer- 
 tayne elves or fairies of the earth, and tell many straunge and 
 marvellous tales of them, which they have heard of their grand- 
 mothers and mothers, howe they have appeared imto those of the 
 
 • Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 25.5, 256. Winter's Tale, act ii. sc. 1.
 
 31' 
 
 house, have done service, have rocked the cradell, and (which is a 
 signe of good kick) do continually tary in the house." * He has the 
 good sense, however, to reprobate the then general custom, a practice 
 which has more or less prevailed even to our own times, of frighten- 
 ing children by stories and assumed appearances of this kind. " It 
 is a common custome," he observes, " in many places, that at a 
 certaine of time the yeare, one with a nette or visarde on his face 
 maketh Children afrayde, to the ende that ever after they should 
 laboure and be obediente to their Parentes : afterward they tel them 
 that those which they saw, were Bugs, Witches, and Hagges, which 
 thing they verily believe, and are commonly miserablie afrayde. 
 How be it, it is not expedient so to terrific Children. For sometimes 
 through great feare they fall into dangerous diseases, and in the nyght 
 crye out, when they are fast asleep. Salomon teacheth us to chasten 
 children with the rod, and so to make them stand in awe : he doth 
 not say, we must beare them in hande they shall be devoured of 
 Bugges, Hags of the night, and such lyke monsters." f But it is to 
 Reginald Scot that we are indebted for the most curious and extensive 
 euumeration of these fables which haunted our progenitors from the 
 cradle to the grave. " In our childhood," says he, « our mother^s 
 maids have so terrified us with an oiiglie divell having homes on his 
 head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breech, eies like a bason, 
 fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skin like a Niger, and a voice 
 roaring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we heare 
 one crie Bough : and they have so fraid us with hull-heggers, spirits, 
 witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, kit 
 with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, con- 
 jurors, nymphes, changlings. Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne, 
 
 • « Of Ghostes and spirites walking by nyght, and of strange noyses, crackes, and 
 sundry forewarnynges, whiche commonly happen before the death of menne, great slaugh- 
 ters, and alterations of kyngdomes. One Booke, Written by Lewes Lavaterus of 
 Tigurine. And translated into Englyshe by R. H." Printed at London by Henry 
 Benneyman, for Richard Watkyns, 1572. Vide p. I*, and 49. 
 
 f Lavaterus, p. 2 1 .
 
 318 
 
 the mare, the man in the oke, the hell-iimiie, the Jierdrake, the pitckle 
 Tom thombe, hob gobblin, Tom. tumbler, boneless, and such other bugs, that 
 we are afraid of our own shadowes : in so much as some never feare 
 the divell, but in a darke night ; and then a polled sheepe is a perillous 
 beast, and manie times is taken for our father's soule, speciallie in a 
 churchyard, where a right hardie man heretofore scant durst passe 
 by night, but his haire would stand upright." * 
 
 That this mode of passing away the time, " the long solitary 
 winter nights," was as much in vogue in 1617 as in 1570 and 1580, 
 is apparent from Burton, who reckons among the ordinary recreations 
 o^ winter, tales of giants, dwarfs, witches, fayries, goblins, and friet's. f 
 
 The predilection which existed, during this period of our annals 
 for the marvellous, the terrible, and romantic, especially among the 
 peasantry, has been noticed by several of our best writers. Addison, 
 in reference to the genius of Shakspeare for the wild and wonderful 
 in poetry, remarks, that " our forefathers loved to astonish them- 
 selves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and 
 inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a 
 ghost in it ; the churchyards were all haunted ; every large common 
 had a circle of fairies belonging to it ; and there was scarce a shep- 
 herd to be met with who had not seen a spirit % ;" and Mr. Grose, 
 after enumerating several popular superstitions, extends the subject 
 in a very entertaining manner. " In former times," says he, " these 
 notions were so prevalent, that it was deemed little less than atheism 
 to doubt them ; and in many instances the terrors caused by them 
 embittered the lives of a great number of persons of all ages ; by 
 degrees almost shutting them out of their own houses, and deterring 
 them from going from one village to another after sun-set. The room 
 - in which the head of a family had died, was for a long time unte- 
 nanted ; particularly if they died without a will, or were supposed to 
 
 * Scot's Discoveiie of Witchcraft, 1580, p. 152, 153. 
 
 t Vide Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 172. 
 
 i Spectator, No. 419., vol. vi. p. 118. of Sharpc's edition. See also Nos. 12. 110. 
 
 and 117.
 
 319 
 
 have entertained any j)articular religious opinions. But if any dis- 
 consolate old maiden, or love-crossed bachelor, happened to dispatch 
 themselves in their garters, the room where the deed was perpetrated 
 was rendered for ever after uninhabitable, and not unfrequently was 
 nailed up. If a drunken farmer, returning from market, fell from 
 Old Dobbin and broke his neck, — or a carter, under the same pre- 
 dicament, tumbled from his cart or waggon, and was killed by it, — 
 that spot was ever after haunted and impassable : in short, there was 
 scarcely a bye-lane or cross-way but had its ghost, who appeared in 
 the shape of a headless cow or horse ; or clothed all in white, glared 
 with its saucer eyes over a gate or stile. Ghosts of superior rank, 
 when they appeared abroad, rode in coaches drawn by six headless 
 horses, and driven by a headless coachman and postilions. Almost 
 every ancient manor-house was haunted by some one at least of its 
 ibrmer masters or mistresses, where, besides divers other noises, that 
 of telling money was distinctly heard : and as for the churchyards, 
 the number of ghosts that walked there, according to the village 
 computation, almost equalled the living parishioners : to pass them 
 at night, was an achievement not to be attempted by any one in the 
 parish, the sextons excepted ; who perhaps being particularly pri- 
 vileged, to make use of the common expression, never saw any 
 thing worse than themselves." * 
 
 Of these superstitions, as forming the subject of a country con- 
 versation in a winter s evening, a very interesting detail has been 
 given by Mr. Bourne ; the picture was drawn about a hundred years 
 ago ; but, though even then partially applicable, may be considered 
 as a faithful general representation of the two preceding centuries. 
 
 " Nothmg is commoner in Country Places,'' says this historian of 
 credulity, " than for a whole family in a Winter s Evening, to sit 
 round the fire, and tell stories of apparitions and ghosts. Some of 
 them have seen spirits in the shapes of cows, and dogs and horses ; 
 and some have seen even the devil himself, with a cloven foot. 
 
 * Gi-ose's Provincial Glossary, p. 242, 243.
 
 320 
 
 " Another part of this conversation generally turns upon Fairies. 
 These, they tell you, have frequently been heard and seen ; nay that 
 there are some still living who were stolen away by them, and con- 
 fined seven years. According to the description they give of them, 
 who pretend to have seen them, they are in the shape of men, exceed- 
 ing little : They are always clad in green, and frequent the woods 
 and fields ; when they make cakes (which is a work they have been 
 often heard at) they are very noisy ; and when they have done, they 
 are full of mirth and pastime. But generally they dance in Moon- 
 light when mortals are asleep, and not capable of seeing them, as 
 may be observed on the following morn ; their dancing places being 
 very distinguishable. For as they dance hand in hand, and so make 
 a circle in their dance, so next day there will be seen lings and circles 
 on the grass. 
 
 " Another tradition they hold, and which is often talked of, is, 
 that there are particular places allotted to spirits to walk in. Thence 
 it was that formerly, such frequent reports were abroad of this and 
 that particular place being haunted by a spirit, and that the common 
 people say now and then, such a place is dangerous to be passed 
 through at night, because a spirit walks there. Nay, they'll further 
 tell you, that some spirits have lamented the hardness of their con- 
 dition, in being obliged to walk in cold and uncomfortable places, 
 and have therefore desired the person who was so hardy as to 
 speak to them, to gift them with a warmer walk, by some well grown 
 hedge, or in some shady vale, where they might be shelter'd from the 
 rain and wind. 
 
 " The last topick of this conversation I shall take notice of, shall 
 be the tales of hamited houses. And indeed it is not to be wondered 
 at, that this is never omitted. For formerly almost every place had 
 a house of this kind. If a house was seated on some melancholy 
 place, or built in some old romantic manner ; or if any particular 
 accident had happened in it, such as murder, sudden death, or the 
 like, to be sure that house had a mark set on it, and was afterwards 
 esteemed the habitation of a ghost In talking upon this point,
 
 321 
 
 tliey generally show the occasion of the house's being haunted, the 
 merry pranks of the spirit, and how it was laid. Stories of this kind 
 are infinite, and there are few viDages which have not either had such 
 an house in it, or near it." * 
 
 The quotations which we have now given from writers contem- 
 porary with, and subsequent to, Shakspeare, will point out, in a 
 general way, the prevalent superstitions of the country at this period, 
 and the topics which were usually discussed round the fire-side of 
 the cottage or manorial hall, when the blast blew keen on a Decem- 
 ber's night, and the faggot's blaze was seen, by fits, illumining the 
 rafter' d roof 
 
 The progress of science, of literature, and rational theology, has, 
 in a very great degree, dissipated these illusions; but there still 
 lingers, in hamlets remote from general intercourse, a somewhat 
 similar spirit of credulity, where the legend of unearthly agencv is 
 yet listened to with eager curiosity and fond belief These vestiges 
 of superstitions which were once universally prevalent, have been 
 seized upon with avidity by many modern poets, and form some of 
 the most striking passages in their works. More particularly the 
 ghostly and traditionary lore of the cotter's winter-night, has been 
 a favourite subject with them. Thus Thomson tells us, that 
 
 " the village rouzes up the fire, 
 
 While well attested, and as well believed, 
 Heard solemn, goes the goblin-story round ; 
 Till superstitious horror creeps o'er all :" j- 
 
 and Akenside, still more poetically, that 
 
 " by night 
 
 The village-matron round the blazing hearth 
 Suspends the infant-audience with her tales, 
 
 * Bourne's Antiquities of the Common People apud Brand, p. 113. 118, 1 J 9, 120, 
 122, 123. 
 f Seasons, Winter, line 61". 
 
 VOL. 1. T T
 
 322 
 
 Breathing astonishment ! of witching rhj-mes. 
 
 And evil spirits ; of the death-bed call 
 
 Of him who robb'd the widow, and devour'd 
 
 The orphan's portion ; of unquiet souls 
 
 Risen from the grave to ease the heavy guilt 
 
 Of deeds in life conceal'd ; of shapes that walk 
 
 At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave 
 
 The torch of hell around the murderer's bed. 
 
 At every solemn pause the crowd recoil, 
 
 Gazing each other speechless, and congeal'd 
 
 With shivering sighs : till eager for th' event, 
 
 Ai'ound the beldame all ei"ect they hang, 
 
 Each trembling heart with grateful terrors quell'd." * 
 
 The lamented Kirke Wliite has also happily introduced a similar 
 picture ; having described the daj-revels of a Whitsuntide wake, he 
 adds, 
 
 " then at eve 
 
 Commence the harmless rites and auguries ; 
 And many a tale of ancient days goes round. 
 They tell of wizard seer, whose potent spells 
 Could hold in dreadful thrall the labouring moon, 
 Or draw the fix'd stars from their eminence, 
 And still the midnight tempest. — Then anon, 
 Tell of uncharncl'd spectres, seen to glide 
 Along the lone wood's unfrequented path. 
 Startling the nighted traveller ; while the sound 
 Of undistinguished murmurs, heard to come 
 From the dark centre of the deep'ning glen, 
 Struck on his frozen ear :" f 
 
 and lastly Mr. Scott, in his highly interesting poem entitled Rokeby, 
 speaking of the tales of superstition, adds, 
 
 " When Christmas logs blaze high and wide, 
 Such wonders speed the festal tide, 
 While Curiosity and Fear, 
 Pleasure and pain, sit crouching near. 
 
 Pleasures of Imagination, book i. 
 
 The Remains of Henry Kirke White, vol. i. p. 31 1.
 
 323 
 
 Till childhood's cheek no longer glows, 
 
 And village-maidens lose the rose. 
 
 The thrilling interest rises higher. 
 
 The circle closes nigh and nigher, 
 
 And shuddering glance is cast behind, 
 
 As louder moans the wintery wind." Cant. ii. st. 1 0. 
 
 After this brief outline of the common superstitions of the country, 
 as they existed in the days of Shakspeare, and as they still linger 
 among us, we shall proceed, in conformity with our plan, to notice 
 those Days which have been peculiarly devoted to superstitious rites 
 and observances. 
 
 In entering upon this subject, however, it will be necessary to 
 remark, that as several of these days are still kept by the vulgar in 
 the same manner, and with the same spirit of credulity which sub- 
 sisted in the reign of Elizabeth, it would be superfluous to enter at 
 large into a detail of their ceremonies, and that to mark the coinci- 
 dence of usage, occurring at these periods, will be nearly all that can 
 be deemed requisite. Thus on St. Paul's Day, on Candlemas Day, and 
 on St. Swithitis Day, the prognosticators of weather still find as much 
 employment, and as much credit as ever. * St. Mark's Day is still be- 
 held with dread, as fixing the destinies of life and death, and Childer- 
 mas still keeps in countenance the doctrine of lucky and unlucky days. 
 
 * Gay, in his Trivia, notices, at some length, the prognostications attendant on these 
 days, and which equally apply to ancient and to modern times : — 
 
 " All superstition from thy breast repel ; 
 Let cred'lous boys and prattling nurses tell 
 How if the Festival of Paul be clear, 
 Plenty from lib'ral horn shall strow the year : 
 When the dark skies dissolve in snow and rain, 
 The lab'ring hind shall yoke the steer in vain ,- 
 But if the threat'ning ivi7ids in tempest roar. 
 Then voar shall bathe her wasteful sword in gore. 
 How if, on Swithen's feast the welkin lours. 
 And ev'ry penthouse streams with hasty show'rs. 
 Twice t-jcejity days shall clouds their fleeces drain, 
 And wash the pavements with incessant raiti : 
 Let no such vulgar tales debase thy mind, 
 Nor Paul, nor Swithin, rule the clouds and Xiind." 
 
 T T 2
 
 324 
 
 A similarity nearly equal may be observed with regard to the rites 
 of lovers on St. Valentine's Day. The tradition, that birds choosing 
 their mates on this day, occasioned the custom of drawing valentines, 
 has been the opinion of our poets from Chaucer to the present hour. 
 Shakspeare alludes to it in the following passage : 
 
 " Good-moiTOW friends. Saint Valentine is past ; 
 Begin these wood-birds hut to couple noisi ?" * 
 
 The ceremony of this day, however, has been attributed to various 
 sources beside the rural tradition just mentioned. The legend itself 
 of St. Valentine, a presbyter of the church, who was beheaded under 
 the Emperor Claudius, we are assured by Mr. Brand, contains nothing 
 which could give rise to the custom ; but it has been supposed by 
 some to have originated from an observance peculiar to carnival time, 
 which occurred about this very period. It was usual, on this occa- 
 sion, for vast numbers of knights to visit the different courts of 
 Europe, where they entertained the ladies with pageantry and tour- 
 naments. Each lady, at these magnificent feasts, selected a knight, 
 who engaged to serve her for a whole year, and to perform whatever 
 she chose to command. One of the never-failing consequences of 
 this engagement, was an injunction to employ his muse in the cele- 
 bration of his mistress. 
 
 Menage, in his Etymological Dictionary, has accounted for the 
 term Valentine, by stating that Madame Royale, daughter of Henry 
 the Fourth of France, having built a palace near Turin, which, in 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 453. Midsummer-Night's Dream, act iv. sc. 1. Bu- 
 chanan also beautifully records the same traditionary imagery : 
 
 " Festa Valentino rediit lux 
 
 Quisque sibi sociam jam legit ales avem. 
 
 Inde sibi dominam per sortes quffirere in annum 
 
 Mansit ab antiquis mos repetitus avis ; 
 
 Quisque legit dominam, quam casto observet amore, 
 
 Quam nitidis sertis obsequioquc colat : 
 
 Mittcre cui possit blandi nuuiuscula Veris."
 
 325 
 
 lionour of the Saint, then in high esteem, she called the Valentine, at 
 the first entertainment which she gave in it, was pleased to order 
 that the ladies should receive their lovers _/b/' the year by lots, reserv- 
 ing to herself the privilege of being independent of chance, and of 
 choosing her own partner. At the various balls which this gallant 
 princess gave, during the year, it was directed that each lady should 
 receive a nosegay from her lover, and that, at every tournament, the 
 knight's trappings for his horse should be furnished by his allotted 
 mistress, with this proviso, that the prize obtained should be hers. 
 This custom, says Menage, occasioned the parties to be called Valen- 
 tines. 
 
 Mr. Brand, in his observations on Bourne's Antiquities, thinks, 
 that the usages of this day are the remains of an antient superstition 
 in the Church of Rome, of choosing patrons for the year ensuing, at 
 this season ; " and that, because ghosts were thought to walk on the 
 night of this day, or about this time * ;" but Mr. Douce, with more 
 probability, considers them as a relic of paganism. " It was the 
 practice in ancient Rome," he observes, " during a great part of the 
 month of February, to celebrate the Lupercalia, which were feasts 
 in honour of Pan and Juno, whence the latter deity was named 
 februata, februalis, awA. februlla. On this occasion, amidst a variety of 
 ceremonies, the names of young women were put into a box, from 
 which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The pastors 
 of the early Christian chvu'ch, who by every possible means endea- 
 voured to eradicate the vestiges of Pagan superstitions, and chiefly 
 by some commutation of their forms, substituted, in the present 
 instance, the names of particular saints instead of those of the women : 
 and as the festival of the Lupercalia had commenced about the mid- 
 dle of February, they appear to have chosen Saint Valentine's day for 
 celebrating the new feast, because it occurred nearly at the same 
 time. This is, in part, the opinion of a learned and rational com- 
 piler of the lives of the saints, the Reverend Alban Butler. It should 
 
 * Bourne's Antiquities apud Brand, p. 253.
 
 326 
 
 seem, however, that it was utterly impossible to extirpate altogether 
 any ceremony to which the common people had been much accus- 
 tomed ; a fact which it were easy to prove in tracing the origin of 
 various other popular superstitions : and accordingly the outline of 
 the ancient ceremonies was preserved, but modified by some adap- 
 tation to the Christian system. It is reasonable to suppose that the 
 above practice of choosing mates would gradually become reciprocal 
 in the sexes ; and that all pei-sons so chosen would be called Valen- 
 tines, from the day on which the ceremony took place." * 
 
 The modes of ascertaining the Valentine for the ensuing year, were 
 nearly the same in Shakspeare's age as at the present period ; they 
 consisted either in drawing lots on Valentine-eve, or in considering 
 the first person whom you met early on the following morning, as 
 the destined object. In the former case the names of a certain 
 number of one sex, were, by an equal number of the other, put into 
 a vase ; and then every one drew a name ; which for the time was 
 termed their Valentine, and was considered as predictive of their 
 future fortime in the nuptial state ; in the second there was usually 
 some little contrivance adopted, in order that the favoured object, 
 when such existed, might be the first seen. To this custom Shak- 
 speare refers, when he represents Opheha, in her distraction, singing, 
 
 " Good morrow, 'tis Saint Valentine's day, 
 All in the morning betime, 
 And I a maid at 3'our window, 
 To be your Valentine." f 
 
 The practice of addressing verses, and sending presents, to the 
 person chosen, has been continued from the days of James I., in 
 
 * Donee's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 252, 253. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 281. Mr. Gay has more distinctly recorded this 
 ceremony in the following lines : — 
 
 •' Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind 
 Their paramours with mutual chirpings find; 
 I early rose, just at the break of day, 
 Before the sun had chas'd the stars away ;
 
 327 
 
 which the gifts of Valentines have been noticed by Moresin '^% to 
 modern times ; and we may add a trait, not now observed, perhaps, 
 on the authority of an old Englisli ballad, in which the lasses are 
 directed to pray cross-legged to Saint Valentine, for good luck, f 
 
 It was a usage of the sixteenth century, in its object laudable and 
 useful, for the inhabitants of towns and villages, during the summer- 
 season, to meet after sunset, in the streets, and for the wealthier sort 
 to recreate themselves and their poorer friends with banquets and 
 bonefires. Of this custom Stowe has left us a pleasing account: — " In 
 the moneths of June, and July," he relates, " on the Vigiles of festi- 
 vall dayes, and on the same festivall dayes in the evenings, after the 
 sun-setting, there were usually made bonefires in the streets, every 
 man bestowing wood or labour towards them. The wealthier sort 
 also before their dores, neere to the said bonefires, would set out 
 tables on the vigiles, furnished with sweet bread, and good drink, 
 and on the festivall dayes with meates and drinks plentifully, where- 
 unto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit, 
 and be merry with them in great familiarity, praysing God for his 
 benefits bestowed on them. These were called bonefires, as well of 
 amity amongst neighbours, that beeing before at controversie, were 
 there by the labour of others reconciled, and made of bitter enemies, 
 loving friends ; as also for the virtue that a great fire hath, to pvirge 
 
 Afield I went, amid the morning dew. 
 
 To milk my kine (for so should housewives do), 
 
 Thee^first I spied, and thejirst swain we see 
 
 In spite of fortune s/iall our true Love be." 
 
 * " Et vere ad Valentini festum a viris habent foeminas munera, et alio temporis viris 
 dantur." Moresini Deprav. Relig. 160. 
 
 f Deuce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 258. — " I have found unquestionable 
 authority," remarks Mr. Brand, " to evince that the custom of chusing Valentines was a 
 sport practised in the houses of the gentry in England as early as the year 1476." Brand 
 apud Ellis, vol. i. p. 48. 
 
 The authority alluded to by Mr, Brand, is a letter, in Fenn's Paston Letters, vol. ii. 
 p. 211., dated February 1476.
 
 328 
 
 the infection of the ayi'e." * These rites were, however, more par- 
 ticularly practisetl on Midsummer-Eve, the Vigil of Saint John the 
 Baptist, a period of the year to which our ancestors paid singular 
 attention, and combined with it several superstitious observances. 
 " On the Vigill of Saint John Baptist," continues Stowe, " every 
 man's dore beeing shadowed with greene Birch, long Fennell, Saint 
 John's Wort, Orpin, white Lillies, and such like, garnished upon 
 with Garlands of beautifull flowers, had also Lamps of glasse, with 
 Oyle burning in them all the night, some hung out branches of yron 
 curiously wrought, containing hundreds of Lamps lighted at once, 
 which made a goodly shew." f 
 
 Of some of the superstitions connected with this Eve, Barnabe 
 Googe has left us an account in his translation of Neogeorgius, which 
 was published, and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, in 1570 : — 
 
 " Then doth the joyful! feast of John the Baptist take his turnc, 
 When bonfires great, with lofty flame, in every towne doe burne, 
 And young men round about with maydes doe daunce in every stieet, 
 With gai-lands wrought of mother-wort, or else of vervaine sweet. 
 And many other flowers faire, with violets in their hands ; 
 Where as they all doe fondly thinke that whosoever stands, 
 And thorow the flowers behold the flame, hi^ eyes shall feele no paine. 
 When thus till night they daunced have, they throgh the fire amaine 
 With striving mindes doe run, and all their herbs they cast therein ; 
 And then, with words devout and prayers, they solemnly begin, 
 Desiring God that all their ilies may there confounded be ; 
 Whereby they thinke, through all that yeare, from agues to be free." % 
 
 This Midsummer-Eve Fire and the rites attending it, appear to be 
 reliques of pagan worship, for Gebelin in his Allegories Orienfales 
 observes, that at the moment of the Summer Solstice the ancients, 
 from the most remote antiquity, were accustomed to light fires, in 
 honour of the New Year, which they believed to have originally 
 commenced in fire. These fires or Feux de joie were accompanied 
 with vows and sacrifices for plenty and prosperity, and with dances 
 
 * Survey of London, 1618, p. 159. f Ibid. 
 
 I Vide Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 3 ) 7.
 
 329 
 
 and leaping over the flames, "• each on his departure snatching a fire- 
 brand of greater or less magnitude, whilst the rest was scattered to 
 the wind, in order that it might disperse every evil as it dispersed 
 the ashes." * 
 
 Many other superstitions, however, than those mentioned by 
 Googe, were practised on this mysterious eve. To one of the most 
 important Shakspeare alludes in the First Part of King Henry the 
 Fourth, where Gadshill says of himself and company, " We have the 
 receipt o? fern-seed, we walk invisible.''^ f Jonson and Fletcher have 
 abo ascribed the same wonderful property to this plant, the first in 
 his Nexv Inn . 
 
 « I had 
 
 No medicine, Sir, to go invisible, 
 NoJer7i-sced in my pocket ;" | 
 
 the second in the Fair Maid oj the Inn, — 
 
 -r " had you Gyges' ring. 
 
 Or the herb that gives invisibility ?" § 
 
 It was the belief of our credulous ancestors, that the fern-seed 
 became visible only on St. John's Eve, and at the precise moment 
 of the birth of the Saint ; that it was under the peculiar protection 
 of the Queen of Faery, antl that on this awful night, the most 
 
 * " L'origine de ce feu que tant de nations conservent encore, et qui se perd dans 
 I'antiquite, est tres simple. C'etoit un feu de joie allume au moment ou I'annee commen- 
 <;oit ; car la premiere de toutes les Annes, la plus ancienne done on ait quelque connois- 
 sance, s'ouvroit au mois de Juin. — 
 
 " Ces feux-de-joie etoient accompagnes en meme terns de Vceux et de saci'ifices pour la 
 prospcrite de peuples et des biens de la terre : on dansoit aussi autour de ce feu ; car 
 ya-t-il quelque fete sans danse ? et les plus agiles santoient par dessus. En se retirant, 
 chacun empartoit un tison plus ou moins grand, et le reste etoit jelte au vent, afin qu'il 
 emportat tout malheur comme il emportoit ces cendres." Hist. d'Hercule, p. 203. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 249. act ii. sc. 3. 
 
 X Jonson's Works, act i. sc. b. 
 
 § Beaumont and Fletcher's Works apud Colman. 
 
 VOL. I. U U
 
 330 
 
 tremendous conflicts took place, for its possession, between sorcerers 
 and spirits ; for 
 
 " The wond'rous one-night seeding feme," 
 
 as Browne calls it *, was conceived not only to confer invisibUUy at 
 pleasure, on those who succeeded in procuring it, but it was also 
 esteemed of sovereign potency in the fabrication of charms and in- 
 cantations. Those, therefore, who were addicted to the arts of 
 magic, and possessed sufficient courage for the enterprise, were 
 believed to watch in solitude during this solemn period, in order 
 that they might seize the seed on the instant of its appearance. 
 
 The achievement, however, was accompanied with great danger ; 
 for if the adventurer were not protected by spells of mighty power, 
 he was exposed to the assaults of demons and spirits, who envied 
 him the possession of the plant, and who generally took care that 
 he should lose either his life or his labour in the attempt. " A 
 person who went to gather it, reported that the spirits whisked by 
 his ears, and sometimes struck his hat, and other parts of his body ; 
 and at length, when he thought he had got a good quantity of it, 
 and secured it in papers and a box, when he came home, he found 
 both empty." -f- 
 
 Another superstition, of a nature highly impressive and terrible, 
 consists in the idea that any person fasting on Midsummer-Eve, and 
 sitting in the church-porch, will at midnight see the spirits of those 
 who are to die in the parish during that year, approach and knock 
 at the church door, precisely in the order of time in which they are 
 doomed to depart. It is related, by the author of Pandemonium, 
 that one of the company of watchers, on this night, having fallen 
 into a profound sleep, his ghost or spirit, whilst he lay in this state, 
 was seen by the rest of his companions, knocking at the church- 
 door. X 
 
 * Chahners's English Poets, vol. vi. p. 281. Britannia's Pastorals, book ii. song 2. 
 t Grose's Provhicial Glossary, p. 299. % Ibid. p. 285.
 
 331 
 
 Of these wild traditions of the " olden time" Collins has made a 
 most strikins use in his Ode to Fear : — 
 
 & 
 
 " Ne'er be I found, by thee o'eraw'd, 
 In that thrice-hallow'd eve, abroad, 
 When ghosts, as cottage-maids believe, 
 Their pebbled beds permitted leave ; 
 And gobhns haunt, from fire, or fen. 
 Or mine, or flood, the walks of men !" 
 
 The observance of Midsum7ner-Eve by rejoicings, spells, and 
 charms, has continued until within these fifty years, especially in 
 Cornwall, in the North of England, and in Scotland. Bourne, in 
 1725, tells us, that " on the Eve of St. John Baptist, commonly 
 called Midsumme7'-Eve, it is usual in the most of country places, and 
 also here and there in towns and cities, for both old and young to 
 meet together, and be merry over a large fire, which is made in the 
 open street. Over this they frequently leap and play at various 
 games, such as running, wrestling, dancing, &c But this is generally 
 the exercise of the younger sort ; for the old ones, for the most part, 
 sit by as spectators, and enjoy themselves and their bottle. And 
 thus they spend their time till mid-night, and sometimes till cock- 
 crow * ;" and Borlase, in his History of Cornwall, about thirty years 
 later, states, that " the Cornish make bonefires in every village on 
 the Eve of St. John Baptist's and St. Peter's Days." -j- 
 
 It was a common superstition in the days of Shakspeare, and for 
 two centuries preceding him, that the future husband or wife might 
 be discovered on this Eve or on St. Agnes' night, by due fasting and 
 
 * Bourne's Antiquities, p. 301. 
 
 -| Stowe also mentions, that bonefires and rejoicings weie observed on the Eve of 
 St. Peter and Paul the Apostles ; he gives likewise a curious account of the Marching 
 Watches vviiich had been regularly kept on Midsummer-Eve, time out of mind, by the 
 citizens of London and other large towns ; but these had ceased before the age of Shak- 
 speare, the last having been appointed by Sir John Grcsham, in 1548, though an attempt 
 was made to procure their revival, by John Montgomery in 1 585, who published a book 
 on the subject, dedicated to Sir Thos. PuUison, then Lord Mayor; this offer however did 
 not succeed. 
 
 U U 2
 
 332 
 
 by certain ceremonies ; thus, if a maiden, fasting on Midsummer-Eve^ 
 laid a clean cloth at midnight, with bread, cheese, and ale, and sate 
 down, with the street door open, the person whom she is fated to 
 marry will enter the room, fill the glass, drink to her, bow and 
 retire. * A similar effect, as to the visionary appearance of the 
 destined bridegroom, was supposed to folloAv the sowing of hemp- 
 seed on this night, either in the field or church-yard. Mr. Strutt, 
 depicting the manners of the fifteenth century, has given this latter 
 superstition, from the mouth of an imaginary witch, in the following 
 rhymes : — ■ 
 
 " Around the church see that you go. 
 With kirtle white and girdle blue, 
 At midnight thrice, and hempseed sowj 
 Caihng upon your lover true, 
 
 Thus shalt thou say ; 
 These seeds I sow : swift let them grow. 
 Till he, who must my husband be, 
 Shall follow me and mow :" f 
 
 a charm which appears to have been in vogue even in the time of 
 Gay, who, in his Shepherd's Week, makes Hobnelia say, — 
 
 " At eve last midsummer no sleep I sought, 
 But to the field a bag of hempseed brought ; 
 I scatter'd round the seed on every side. 
 And three times in a trembling accent cried, 
 " This hempseed with my virgin hand I sow, 
 Who shall my true-love be, the crop shall mow." 
 I straight look'd back, and if my eyes speak truth. 
 With his keen scythe behind me came the youth." 
 
 The Spell, line 27- 
 
 Another mode, which prevailed in the 16th and 17th centuries, of 
 procuring similar information on this festival, through the medium 
 of dreams, consisted in digging for what was called the plantain 
 
 * Grose's Provincial Glossary, p. 285. 
 t Queenhoo-Hall, vol. i. p. 136.
 
 333 
 
 coal ; the search was to commence exactly at noon, and the material, 
 when found, to be placed on the pillow at night. Of a wild-goose 
 expedition of this kind Aubrey reports himself to have been a 
 spectator. " The last summer," says he, " on the day of St. John 
 Baptist, 1694, I accidentally was walking in the pasture behind 
 Montague-house : it was twelve o'clock. I saw there about two or 
 three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their 
 knees, very busy,' as if they had been weeding. I could not pre- 
 sently learn what the matter was ; at last, a young man told me that 
 they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put 
 under their heads that night, and they should dream who would be 
 their husbands : it was to be found that day and hour." He adds, 
 " the women have several magical secrets handed down to them by 
 tradition for this purpose, as, on St. Agnes' night, 21st January, take a 
 row of pins, and pull out every one one after another, saying a 
 paternoster, or ' our father,' sticking a pin in your sleeve, and you will 
 dream of him or her you shall marry *;" spells to which Ben Jonson 
 alludes, when he says, — 
 
 " On sweet St. Agnes' night 
 
 Please you with the promis'd sight ; 
 Some of husbands, some of lovers, 
 Which an empty dream discovers." f 
 
 That it was the custom, in Ehzabeth's and James's days, to tell 
 tales or perform plays and masques on Christmas-Eve, on Twelfth 
 Nioht, and on Midsummer-Eve, may be drawn from the dramas of 
 Shakspeare, and the masques of Jonson. The Midsummer-NigJifs 
 Dream of the former, appears to have been so called, because its 
 exhibition was to take place on that night, for the fime of action of 
 the piece itself, is the vigil of May-Day, as is that of the Winters 
 Tale the period of sheep-shearing. It is probable also, as Mr. Steevens 
 has observed, that Shakspeare might have been influenced in his 
 choice of the fanciful machinery of this play, by the recollection of 
 
 '^ Aubrey's Miscellanies, p. 103. f Jonson's Works, fol. edit. vol. i.
 
 334 
 
 the proverb attached to the season, and which he has himself intro- 
 duced in the Twelfth-Night, where Olivia remarks of Malvolio's 
 apparent distraction, that it " is a very Midsummer madness *;" an 
 adao-e founded on the common opinion, that the brain, being heated 
 by the intensity of the sun's rays, was more susceptible of those 
 flio-hts of imagination which border on insanity, than at any other 
 period of the year. 
 
 The next season distinguished by any very remarkable tincture of 
 the popular creed, is Michaelmas, or the Feast of St. Michael and 
 All Angels. When ever this day comes, says Bourne, " it brings 
 into the minds of the people, that old opinion of Tutelar Angels, 
 that every man has his Guardian Angel ; that is one particular angel 
 who attends him from his coming in, till his going out of life, who 
 <^uides him through the troubles of the world, and strives as much 
 as he can, to bring him to heaven." f- 
 
 That the doctrine of the ministry of angels, and their occasional 
 interference with the affairs of man, is an old ojnnion, cannot be 
 denied. It pervades the whole of the Old and New Testaments, and 
 appears to have been an article of the patriarchal creed ; for from 
 the Book of Job, perhaps the oldest which exists, may be drawn not 
 only the doctrine of the ministration of angels, but that of their 
 division into certain distinct orders, such as angels, intercessors, 
 destroyers, &c. | With this general information we ought to have 
 been content: but superstition has been busy in promulgating 
 hierarchies, the oifspring of its own heated imagination ; in mi- 
 nutely ascertaining the numbers and offices of angels in heaven and 
 on earth ; and in naming and appropriating certain of them as the 
 guardians and protectors of kingdoms, cities, families, and individuals. 
 The mythologies of Persia, Arabia, and Greece, abound with these 
 arbitrary arrangements ; Hesiod declares that the angels appointed to 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 359. act iii. sc. 4. 
 ■f Bourne's Antiquities, p. 320, 321. 
 ; Vide Job, chap, xxxiii. v. 22, 23.
 
 335 
 
 watch over the earth, amount exactly to thirty-thousand*; and 
 Plato divides the world of spirits good and bad into nine classes, in 
 which he has been followed by some of the philosophising Christians. 
 The angelic hierarchy of Dionysius, however, is the one usually 
 adopted ; he professes to interfere only with good spirits, and divides 
 his angels, perhaps in imitation of Plato, into nine orders ; the first 
 he terms seraphim, the second c/ierubm, the third thrones, the fourth 
 dominations, the fifth virtues, the sixth j^oxaers, the seventh prin- 
 cipalities, the eighth archangels, and the ninth angels, "f Not content 
 with this he goes still farther, and has assigned to every country, and 
 almost to every person of eminence, a peculiar angel, thus to Adam 
 he gives Razael ; to Abraham, Zakiel ; to Isaiah, Raphael ; to Jacob, 
 Peliel ; to Moses, Metraton, &c., speaking, as Calvin observes, not as 
 if by report, but as though he had slipped down from heaven, and 
 told of the things which he had seen there. X 
 
 Of this systematic hierarchy the greater portion formed, during 
 the age of Shakspeare, and for nearly a century afterwards, an 
 important part of the popular creed, as may be ascertained from an 
 inspection of Scot on Witchcraft in 1584, Hey wood's Hierarchic of 
 the Blessed Angells, their Names, Orders, and Offices, in 1635, and 
 from Burton's Anatomie of Melancholy, which, though first published 
 in 1617, continued to re-appear in frequent editions until the close of 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
 * Opera ct Dies, vol. i. 246. 
 
 t Dionys. in Caelest. Hierarch. cap. ix. x. 
 
 X Calv. Lib. Iiistit. I. c, xiv. It is worthy of remark, that Reginald Scot, from whose 
 Discoverie of Wiichcraft, p. 500., this account of the hierarchy of Dionysius is taken, has 
 brought forward a passage from his kinsman Edward Deering, which broaches the same 
 doctrine as that held by Bishop Horsley in the last sermon which he ever v.-rote. " If you 
 read Deering," says Scot, " upon the first chapter to the Hebrues, you shall see this 
 matter (the angelic theory of Dionysius) notablie handled ; where he saith, that •whensoever 
 archangel! is mentioned in the Scriptures it signifieth our saviour Christ, and no creature" 
 p. 501. — Now in the sermon alluded to by Horsley, the text of which is Dan. iv. 17., he 
 affirms, that the term " Michael," or " Michael the Archangel," wherever it occurs, is 
 nothing more than a name for our Saviour. Vide Sermons, vol. ii. p. 37(!.
 
 336 
 
 The doctrine of Guardian Angels, as appropriated to individuals, 
 more especially appears to have been entertained by Shakspearo and 
 his contemporaries ; an idea pleasing to the human mind, though, 
 in the opinion of the most acute theologians, not warranted by Scrip- 
 ture ; where only the general ministry of angels is recorded ; and, 
 accordingly, the collect of the day, in our admirable Liturgy, merely 
 refers to, and prays for, such general interference in our behalf 
 
 The assignment of a good angel, or of a good and bad angel to 
 every individual, as soon as created, is supported by the English 
 Lavaterus in 1572, and recorded as the general object of belief, by 
 the rational Scot, in his interesting discourse on spirits. 
 
 " Saint Herome in his Commentaries," says Lavaterus, " and 
 other fathers do conclude, that God doth assigne unto every soule 
 assoone as he createth him his peculiar Angell, which taketh care 
 of him. But whether that every one of the elect have hys proper 
 angell, or many angells be appoynted unto him, it is not expresly 
 sette foorth, yet this is most sure and certayne, that God hathr 
 given his angells in charge to have regard and care over us. Daniel 
 witnesseth in his tenth chapter, that angells have also charge of 
 kingdomes, by whom God keepeth and protecteth them, and hin- 
 dreth the wicked counsels of the devill. It may be proved by many 
 places of the Scripture, that all Christian men have not only one 
 angell, but also many, whome God imployeth to their service. In 
 the 34 psalm it is sayde, the angell of the Lorde pitcheth 
 his tentes rounde about them whiche feare the Lorde, and helpeth 
 them : which ought not to be doubted but that it is also at this daye, 
 albeit we see them not. We reade that they appearing in sundrye 
 shapes, have admonished menne, have comforted them, defended 
 them, delivered them from daunger, and also punished the wicked. 
 Touching this matter, there are plentiful examples, whiche are not 
 needefull to be repeated in this place. Somtimes they have eythei; 
 appeared in sleep, or in manner of visions, and sometimes they have 
 perfourmed their office, by some internall operations : as when a 
 man's mynde foresheweth him, that a thing shall so happen, and
 
 337 
 
 after it happeneth so in deede, which thyng I suppose is doone by 
 God, through the minesterie of angells. Angells for the most part 
 take upon them the shapes of men, wherein they appeare." * 
 
 " Monsieur Bodin, M. Mai. and manie other papists," observes 
 Scot, who gives us his opinion on the nature of angels, " gather 
 upon the seventh of Daniel, that there are just ten millians of angels 
 in heaven. Manie saie that angels are not by nature, but by office. 
 Finallie, it were infinite to shew the absurd and curious collections 
 hereabout. I for my part thinke with Calvine, that angels are crea- 
 tures of God ; though Moses spake nothing of their creation, who 
 onelie applied himselfe to the capacitie of the common people, reciting 
 nothing but things seene. And I saie further with him, that they 
 are heavenlie spirits, whose ministration and service God useth : and 
 in that respect are called angels. I saie yet againe with him, that it 
 is verie certaine, that they have no shape at all ; for they are spirits, 
 who never have anie : and finallie, I saie with him, that the Scrip- 
 tures, for the capacitie of our wit, dooth not in vaine paint out 
 angels unto us with wings ; bicause we should conceive, that they 
 are readie swiftlie to succour us. And certeinlie all the sounder 
 divines doo conceive and give out, that both the names and also 
 the number of angels are set downe in the Scripture by the Holie- 
 ghost, in termes to make us understand the greatnesse and the 
 manner of their messages ; which (I saie) are either expounded by 
 the number of angels, or signified by their names. 
 
 " Furthermore, the schoole doctors affirme, that foure of the 
 superior orders of angels never take anie forme or shape of bodies, 
 neither are sent of anie arrand at anie time. As for archangels, they 
 are sent onlie about great and secret matters ; and angels are com- 
 mon hacknies about everie trifle ; and that these can take what shape 
 or bodie they list: marie they never take the forme of women or 
 children. Item, they saie that angels take most terrible shapes : for 
 Gabriel appeared to Marie, when he saluted hir, facie rutilante, veste 
 
 * Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by nyght, p. 160, 161. 
 VOL. I. XX
 
 338 
 
 coruscante, ingresm mirabili, aspectu tcrribili, &c. : that is, with a 
 brio-ht countenance, shining attire, wonderful! gesture, and a dredfull 
 visao-e, &c. It hath beene long, and continueth yet a constant opinion, 
 not onlie among the papists ; but a?nong others also, that everie man hath 
 assigned him, at the time of his nativitie, a good angell and a bad. For 
 the which there is no reason in nature, nor authoritie in Scripture. 
 For not one angell, but all the angels are said to rejoise more of one 
 convert, than of ninetie and nine just. Neither did one onlie angel 
 conveie Lazarus into Abraham's bosome. And therefore I conclude 
 with Calvine, that he which referreth to one angel, the care that 
 God hath to everie one of us, dooth himselfe great wrong." * 
 
 That Shakspeare embraced the doctrine common in his age, which 
 assigns to every individual, at his birth, a good and bad angel, an 
 idea highly poetical in itself, and therefore acceptable to a fervid 
 imagination, is evident from the following remarkable passages : 
 
 " There is a good angel about hiin — but the devil out-bids him too." f 
 
 " Yon follow the young prince up and down like his ill angsl." % 
 
 " Thy daemon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is 
 Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, 
 Where Caesar's is not ; but near him, thy angel 
 
 Becomes a Fear, as being o'erpowered 
 
 I say again, thy spirit 
 
 Is all afraid to govern thee near him ; 
 But, he away, 'tis noble ;" § 
 
 and in Macbeth the same imagery is repeated — 
 
 " near him, 
 
 My genius is rebuk'd ; as, it is said, 
 Mark Antony's was by Caesar's." || 
 
 • Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 505, 506. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 109. Henry IV. Part ii. act ii. sc 4. 
 
 % Ibid. vol. xii. p. 36. Henry IV. Part ii. act i. sc. 2. 
 
 § Ibid. vol. xvii. p. 94, 95. Antony and Cleopatra, act ii. sc. 3. 
 
 Ibid. vol. X. p. 149.
 
 339 
 
 These lines from Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth, which are 
 founded on a passage in North's Phitarch, where the soothsayer says 
 to Antony, " thy Demon, (that is to say, the good angell and spirit 
 that keepeth thee) is afFraied of his," sufficiently prove that the 
 Roman Catholic doctrine of a good and evil angel is immediately 
 drawn from the belief of Pagan antiquity in the agency of good and 
 evil genii, a dogma to which we know their greatest philosophers 
 were addicted, as is apparent from the Demon of Socrates. 
 
 Of the general, and as it may be termed, the patriarchal, doctrine 
 of the ministry of angels, no poet has made so admirable an use as 
 Milton, who tells us, in his Paradise Lost, that 
 
 " Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
 Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep, 
 All these, with ceaseless praise, his works behold, 
 Both day and night. How often, from the steep 
 Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard 
 Celestial voices, through the midnight air, 
 Sole or responsive to each o.'her's note, 
 Singing their great Creator ! oft, in bands, 
 While they keep watch ; or, nightly walking round, 
 With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds, 
 In full harmonic number join'd ; their songs 
 Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heaven." * 
 
 We must be permitted to observe, in this place, that Dr. Horsley 
 has, with great propriety, drawn a marked distinction between the 
 full-formed hierarchy of fanciful theologians, and the Scripture-account 
 of angelic agency ; while he reprobates the one, he supports the 
 other ; " those," says he, " who broached this doctrine (of an hierarchy 
 of angels governing this world) could tell us exactly how many orders 
 there are, and how many angels in each order ; that the different 
 orders have their different departments in government assigned to 
 them ; some, constantly attending in the presence of God, form his 
 cabinet council ; others are his provincial governors ; every kuigdom 
 
 * Book iv. line 677. 
 X X 2
 
 340 
 
 in the world having its appointed guardian angel, to whose manage- 
 ment it is intrusted: others again are supposed to have the charge 
 and custody of individuals. This system is, in truth, nothing better 
 than Pagan polytheism." He then subsequently and most judiciously 
 gives us the following summary of Biblical information on the 
 subject : " that the holy angels," he remarks, " are often employed 
 by God in his government of this sublunary world, is indeed 
 clearly to be proved by holy writ : that they have powers over the 
 matter of the universe analogous to the powers over it which men 
 possess, greater in extent, but still limited, is a thing which might 
 reasonably be supposed, if it were not declared : but it seems to be 
 confirmed by many passages of holy writ, from which it seems also 
 evident that they are occasionally, for certain specific purposes, com- 
 missioned to exercise those powers to a prescribed extent. That the 
 evil angels possessed, before the fall, the like powers, which they are 
 still occasionally permitted to exercise for the punishment of wicked 
 nations, seems also evident. That they have a power over the human 
 sensory (which is part of the material miiverse), which they are occa- 
 sionally permitted to exercise, by means of which they may inflict 
 diseases, suggest evil thoughts, and be the instruments of temptations, 
 must also be admitted."* 
 
 We shall conclude these observations on St. Michael's Day by 
 adding, that in both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was the 
 custom of landlords to invite their tenants on this day, and to dine 
 them in their great halls on Geese ; birds which were then only kept 
 by the gentry, and therefore esteemed a great delicacy. We must 
 consequently set aside the tradition which attributes the introduction 
 of this bird on the festival of St. Michael to Queen Elizabeth ; the 
 tale avers, that, being on her road to Tilbury Fort, she dined on 
 Michaelmas Day 1588, at Sir Neville Umfreville's seat, near that 
 place, and that the knight, recollecting her partiality for highv 
 seasoned food, had taken care to procure for her a savoury goose, 
 
 * Sermone, vol.il. p. 412. 415,416.
 
 341 
 
 after eating heartily of which she called for a half-pint bumper of 
 Burgundy, and had scarcely drank it off to the destruction of the 
 Spanish Armada, when she received the news of that joyful event ; 
 delighted with the speedy accomplishment of her toast, she is said to 
 have annually commemorated this day with a goose, and that, of 
 course, the example was followed by the Court and through the 
 kingdom at large. The custom, however, must be referred to a pre- 
 ceding age, in which it will be found that the nobility and gentry had 
 usually this delicious bird at their tables, both on St. Michael's and 
 St. Martin's Day. * 
 
 We now approach another remarkably superstitious period of the 
 year, the observance of which took place on the 31st of October, 
 being the Vigil of All Saints Day, and has been therefore commonly 
 termed All Hallow Eve. In the North of England, and in Scotland, 
 this was formerly a night of rejoicing and of the most mysterious 
 rites and ceremonies. As beyond the Tweed the harvest was seldom 
 completely got in before the close of October, Hallozceeji became a 
 kind of Harvest-home-feast ; thus, Mr. Shaw informs us, in his 
 History of the Province of Moray, that " a solemnity was kept, on 
 the Eve of the first of November, as a thanksgiving for the safe 
 Ingathering of the produce of the fields. This I am told, but have 
 not seen it, is observed in Buchan, and other countries, by having 
 Hallow-Eve Fires kindled on some rising ground." f In England 
 HaUow-eve has been generally called Nut-crack Night, from one of 
 the numerous spells usually had recourse to at this season ; and in 
 Shakspeare it is alluded to under the customary appellation of 
 Hallowmas, where Speed tells Valentine in the Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona, that he knows him to be in love, because he has learnt " to 
 speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas |;" a simile which refers to 
 a relique of the Roman Catholic Festival of All Soids' Day on the 
 2d of November, when prayers were offered up for the repose of the 
 
 * Vide Brady's Clavis Calendaria, vol. ii. p. 180. 
 f Brand's Appendix to Bourne's Antiquities, p. 382. 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 205. act ii. sc. 1.
 
 342 
 
 souls of the departed ; it being the custom, in Shakspeare's time, and 
 is still, we believe, observed in some parts of the North, for the poor 
 on All-Saints-Day to go a souling, as they term it, and in a plaintive 
 or puling voice to petition for soul-cakes. " In various parts of 
 England," remarks Brady, " the remembrance of monastic customs 
 is still preserved by giving oaten cakes to the poor neighbours, 
 conformably to what was once the general usage, particularly in Lan- 
 cashire, Yorkshire, Herefordshire, &c. when, by way of expressing 
 gratitude, the receivers of this liberality offered the following homely 
 benediction : 
 
 " God have your saul. 
 Bones and all;" 
 
 bearing more the appearance, in these enlightened days, of rustic scoff, 
 than of thankfulness." * 
 
 What has rendered All- Hallo w*Eve, however, a period of mysterious 
 di-ead, is the tradition, that on this night the host of evil spirits, 
 witches, wizards, &c. are executing their baneful errands, and that 
 the fairy court holds a grand annual procession, during which, those 
 who have been carried off by the fairies may be recovered, provided 
 the attempt be made within a year and a day from the abstraction of 
 the person stolen. That this achievement, which was attended with 
 great peril, could only be performed on Hallow- Eve, and that this 
 night was esteemed the anniversary of the elfin tribe, may be 
 established on the evidence of our northern poets. Montgomery, in 
 his Fitting against Polwarf, published about 1584, thus mentions the 
 procession : 
 
 " In the hinder end of harvest, on All-hallow een, 
 
 When our gude neighbours dois ride, if I read right, 
 Some buckled on a bunewand, and some on a been, 
 Ay trottand in troups from the twilight ; 
 
 Clavis Calendaria, vol. ii. p. 229.
 
 343 
 
 Some saidled a she-ape, all grathed into green, 
 
 Some hobland on a hemp stalk, hovard to the hight, 
 
 The king of Pharie and his court, with the elf queen. 
 With many elfish incubus was ridand that night ;" * 
 
 and in tlie ballad called Young Tamlane, whose antiquity is ascer- 
 tained from being noticed in the Complaynt of Scotland, the chief 
 incident of the story is the recovery of Tamlane from the power of 
 the fairies on this holy eve ; — 
 
 " This night is Hallowe'en, Janet ; 
 The morn is Hallowday ; 
 And, gin ye dare your true love win. 
 Ye have nae time to stay. 
 
 The night it is good Hallowein, 
 
 When fairy folk will ride ; 
 And they, that wad their true love win, 
 
 At Miles Cross they maun bide." \ 
 
 It is still recorded by tradition, relates Mr. Scott, that " the wife 
 of a farmer in Lothian having been carried off by the fairies, she, 
 during the year of probation, repeatedly appeared on Sunday, in the 
 midst of her children, combine their hair. On one of these occasions 
 she was accosted by her husband ; when she related to him the unfor- 
 tunate event which had separated them, instructed him by what 
 means he might win her, and exhorted him to exert all his courage, 
 since her temporal and eternal happiness depended on the success of 
 his attempt. The farmer, who ardently loved his wife, set out on 
 Hallowe'en, and, in the midst of a plot of furze, waited impatiently 
 for the procession of the fairies. At the ringing of the fairy bridles, 
 and the wild unearthly sound which accompanied the cavalcade, 
 his heart failed him, and he suffered the ghostly train to pass by 
 without interruption. When the last had rode past, the whol'^ troop 
 vanished, with loud shouts of laughter and exultation ; among which 
 
 * Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. ii. p. 221. 
 t Ibid. vol. ii. p. 238.
 
 344 
 
 he plainly discovered the voice of his wife, lamenting that he had lost 
 her for ever." * 
 
 Numerous have been the ceremonies, spells, and charms, which 
 formerly distinguished All-Hallow-Eve. In England, except in a 
 few remote places in the North, they have ceased to be observed for 
 the ^ last half century ; but in the West of Scotland they are stiU 
 retained with a kind of religious veneration, as is sufficiently proved 
 by the inimitable poem of Burns, entitled Halloween, which, in a vein 
 of exquisite poetry and genuine humour, minutely details the various 
 superstitions, which have been practised on this night from time 
 immemorial. Of these, as including all which prevailed in England, 
 and which were, in a great degree, common to both countries, in the 
 time of Shakspeare, we shall give a few sketches, nearly in the words 
 of Burns, as annexed in the notes to his poem, merely observing that 
 one of the spells, that of sowing hemp-seed, is omitted, as having 
 been already described among the rites of Midsummer-Eve. 
 
 The first ceremony of HaUow-Eve consisted in the lads and lasses 
 pulling each a stock, or plant of kail. They were to go out, hand in 
 hand, with eyes shut, and to pull the first they met with. Its being 
 big or little, straight or crooked, was prophetic of the size and shape 
 of the grand object of all their spells — the husband or wife. If any 
 yird, or earth, stuck to the root, that was considered as the tocher, 
 or fortune ; and the taste of the custoc, that is, the heart of the stem, 
 was deemed indicative of the natural temper and disposition. Lastly, 
 the stems, or, to give them their ordinary appellation, the runts, were 
 placed somewhere above the head of the door ; and the Christian 
 names of the people whom chance brought into the house, were, 
 according to the priority of placing the 7'unts, the names in question. 
 
 In the second, the lasses were to go to the barn-yard, and pull each, 
 at three several times, a stalk of oats. If the third stalk wanted the 
 fop-pickle, that is, the grain at the top of the stalk, the party in question 
 would come to the marriage-bed any thing but a maid. 
 
 * Scott's Minstrelsy, vol.ii. p. 9.21,222.
 
 345 
 
 Tlie third depended on the burning of nuts, and was a favourite 
 charm both in England and Scotland. A lad and lass were named 
 to each particular nut, as they laid them in the fire, and accordingly 
 as they burnt quietly together, or started from beside each other, the 
 course and issue of the courtship were to be determined. 
 
 In the fourth, success could only be obtained by strictly adhering 
 to the following directions. Steal out, all alone, to the kiln, and, 
 darkling, throw into the j^ot, a clue of blue yarn ; wind it in a new clue 
 off the old one : and, towards the latter end, something will hold the 
 thread ; demand, who holds it ? and an answer will be returned from 
 the kiln-pot, by naming the christian and sirname of your future 
 spouse. 
 
 To perform the Jifth, you were to take a candle, and go alone to a 
 looking-glass ; you were then to eat an apple before it, combing your 
 hair all the time ; when the face of your conjugal companion, to be, 
 will be seen in the glass, as if peeping over your shoulder. 
 
 The sixth was likewise a solitary charm, in which it was necessary to 
 go alotie and unperceived to the barn, and open both doors, taking them 
 off the hinges, if possible, least the being, about to appear, should shut 
 the doors, and do you some mischief. Then you were to take the 
 machine used in winnowing the corn, and go through all the attitudes 
 of letting down the grain against the wind ; and on the third repe- 
 tition of this ceremony, an apparition would be seen passing through 
 the barn, in at the windy door, and out at the other, having both the 
 figure of your future companion for life, and also the appearance or 
 retinue, marking the employment or station in life. 
 
 To secure an effective result from the seventh, you were ordered to 
 take an opportunity of going, unnoticed, to a Bear-stack, and fathom 
 it three times round ; when during the last fathom of the last time, 
 you would be sure to catch in your arms the appearance of your 
 destined yoke-fellow. 
 
 In order to carry the eighth into execution, one or more were in- 
 joined to seek a south running spring or rivulet, where " three lairds 
 lands meet," and to dip into it the left shirt-sleeve. You were then 
 
 VOL. I. Y y
 
 346 
 
 to go to bed in sight of a fire, and to hang the wet sleeve before it to 
 dry ; it was necessary, however, to lie awake, when at midnight, an 
 apparition, having the exact figure of the future husband or wife, 
 would come, and turn the sleeve, as if to dry the other side of it. * 
 
 For the due performance of the ninth, you were directed to take 
 three dishes ; to put clean water in one, foul water in another, and to 
 leave the third empty: you were then to blindfold a person, and lead 
 him to the hearth where the dishes were ranged, ordering him to dip 
 the left hand ; when, if this happened to be in the clean water, it was 
 a sign that the future conjugal mate would come to the bar of matri- 
 
 * The powers of description which Burns has evinced in one of the stanzas, while re- 
 lating the effects of this spell, are truly great : — 
 
 " A wanton widow Leezie was 
 As canty as a kittlen ; 
 But och ! that night, among the shaws. 
 
 She got a fearfii' settlin ! 
 She thro' the whins, an' by the cairn, 
 
 An' owre the hill gaed scrievin, 
 Where three lairds lands met at a burn, 
 To dip her left sai-k-sleeve in. 
 
 Was bent that night. 
 
 Whyles otxft-e a linn the burnie plays 
 
 As thro' the glen it wimprt ; 
 IVhi/les roimd a rocky scar it strays ; 
 
 IVkyles in a wiel it dimpl't ; 
 Whyles glifter'd to the nightly rays, 
 
 Wi' bic/rering, dancing dazzle ; 
 Whyles cookit underneath the braes, 
 
 Belo-JD the spreading hazle. 
 
 Unseen that night. 
 
 Anaong the brachens, on the brae, 
 
 Between her an' the moon, 
 The deil, or else an outler quey. 
 
 Gat up an' gae a croon : 
 Poor Leezie's heart maist lap the hool ; 
 
 Near lav'rock-height she jumpit, 
 But mist a fit, an' in the pool, 
 
 Out-owre the lugs she plumpit, 
 
 Wi' a plunge that night."
 
 347 
 
 mony a maid ; if in the foul, a widow ; if in the empty dish, it fore- 
 told, with equal certainty, no marriage at all. This ceremony was to 
 be repeated three times, and every time the arrangement of the dishes 
 was to be altered. * 
 
 Such are the various superstitions which were formerly observed at 
 peculiar periods of the year, and which still maintain a certain portion 
 of credit among the peasantry of Scotland and the North of England. 
 To the catalogue of Saints thus loaded with the rites of popular credu- 
 lity, may be added one whose celebrity seems to be entirely founded 
 on the casual notice of Shakspeare. In his Tragedy of King Lear, 
 Edgar introduces St. Withold as an opponent, and a protector against 
 the assaults, of that formidable Incubus, the Night-mare : — 
 
 " Saint Withold footed thrice the wold ; 
 He met the Night-mare, and her nine-fold ; 
 
 Bid her alight, 
 
 And her troth plight. 
 And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee !" f 
 
 Warburton informs us, that this agency of the Saint is taken from 
 a story of him in his legend, and that he was thence invoked as the 
 patron saint against the distemper, called the night-mare ; but 
 Mr. Tyrwhitt declares, that he could not find this adventure in the 
 common legends of St. Vitalis, whom he supposes to be synonymous 
 with St. Withold. It is probable that Shakspeare took the hint, for 
 the ascription of this achievement to Withold, from Scot's Discoverie 
 of Witchcraft, where a similar power is attributed to St. George. 
 That writer, after mentioning that there are magical cures for the 
 night-mare, gives the following as an example : — 
 
 " St. George, S. George, our ladies knight, 
 He walkt by dale, so did he by night : 
 Untill such time as he hir found, 
 He hir beat and he hir bound. 
 
 * Burns's Works, Currie's edit. vol. iii. p. 1 26. et seq. 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 472 — 4/4. 
 
 Y y 2
 
 348 
 
 Untill hir troth she to him plight, 
 
 She would not come to hir (him) that night:" * 
 
 a form which is quoted nearly verbatim, and professedly as a night- 
 spell, in the Monsieur Thomas of Fletcher, f It should be observed, 
 that the influence over incubi ascribed by our poet to St. Withold, has 
 
 * Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 87. 
 
 f See Beaumont and Fletcher apud Colman. 
 
 It would appear from the passage just quoted from Shakspeare, that he considered St. 
 Withold as commanding this Jimale incubus to alight from those she was riding and 
 tormenting ; but Fuseli and Darwin, in their delineations, appear to have mounted a male 
 fiend, or incubus, on her back, who descending from his steed, sate on the breasts of those 
 whom he had selected for his victims. The personifications of the painter and the modern 
 poet are forcibly drawn and highlj' terrific: — 
 
 " So on his Nightmare through the evening fog 
 
 Flits the squab Fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog; 
 ^ Seeks some love-wilder'd Maid with sleep oppress'd, 
 Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast. 
 
 Such as of late amid the murky sky 
 
 Was mark'd by Fuseli's poetic eye; 
 
 Whose daring tints, with Shakspeare's happiest grace. 
 
 Gave to the airy phantom form and place — 
 
 Back o'er her pillow sinks her blushing head. 
 
 Her snow-white limbs hang helpless from the bed ; 
 
 While with quick sighs, and suflfbcativc breath. 
 
 Her interrupted heart-pulse swims in death. 
 
 Then shrieks of captur'd towns, and widow's tears, 
 
 Pale lovers stretch'd upon their blood-stain'd biers, 
 The headlong precipice that thwarts her flight, 
 The trackless desert, the cold starless night. 
 And stern-eye'd Murderer with his knife behind. 
 In dread succession agonize her mind. 
 O'er her fair Hmbs convulsive tremors fleet. 
 Start in her hands, and struggle in her feet; 
 In vain to scream with quivering lips she tries, 
 And strains in palsy'd lids her tremulous eyes; 
 In vain she iioil/s to run, fly, swim, walk, creep ; 
 The Will presides not in the bower of Sleep. 
 
 On her fair bosom sits the Demon- Ape 
 
 Erect, and balances his bloated shape ; 
 Rolls in their marble orbs his Gorgon-eyes, 
 And drinks with leathern ears her tender cries." 
 
 Botanic Garden, 4to. edit. p. 101 — 103.
 
 349 
 
 been subsequently given to other Calendarian saints, and especially 
 to that dreaded personage St. Swithin, who is indebted to Mr. Col- 
 man, in his alteration of Lear, for the transference of this singular 
 power. 
 
 The mass of popular credulity, indeed, is so enormous, that, limited, 
 as we are in this chapter, to the consideration of only a portion of the 
 subject, it is still difficult, from the number and variety of the 
 materials, to present a sketch which shall be sufficiently distinct and 
 perspicuous. It is highly interesting, however, to observe to what 
 striking poetical purposes Shakspeare has converted these imbecilli- 
 ties of mind, these workings of fear and ignorance ; how by his 
 management almost every article which he has selected from the 
 mass of vulgar delusion, assumes a capability of impressing the 
 strongest and most cultivated mind with grateful terror or sublime 
 emotion. No branch, for instance, of the popular creed has been 
 more extended, or more burdened with folly, than the belief in 
 Omens, and yet what noble imagery has not the poet di-awn forth 
 from this accumulation of fear-struck fancy and childish appre- 
 hension. 
 
 With the view of placing the detail of this vast groupe in a clearer 
 light, it will be necessary to ascertain, what were the principal omens 
 most accredited in the days of Shakspeare, and after giving a cata- 
 logue of those most worthy of notice, to exhibit a few pictures by the 
 poet as founded on some of the most remarkable articles in the 
 enumeration, and afterwards to fill up the outline with additional 
 circumstances from other resources. 
 
 How prone the subjects of Elizabeth were to pry into futurity, 
 through the medium of omens, auguries, and prognostications, may 
 be learnt from the following passage in Scot, taken from his chapter 
 on the " common peoples fond and superstitious collections and 
 observations." " Amongst us," says he, " there be manie wemen 
 and efFeminat men (manie papists alwaies, as by their superstition 
 may appeere) that make great divinations upon the shedding of salt, 
 wine, &c. and for the observation of dales, and houres use as great
 
 350 
 
 witchcraft as in anie thing. For if one chance to take a fall from a 
 horse, either in a slipperie or stumbling waie, he will note the dale 
 and hom'e, and count that time unlucky for a journie. Otherwise, 
 he that receiveth a mischance, wil consider whether he met not a cat, 
 or a hare, when he went first out of his doores in the morning ; or 
 stumbled not at the threshold at his going out ; or put not on his 
 shirt the wrong side outwards ; or his left shoo on his right foote. 
 
 " Many will go to bed againe, if the neeze before their shooes be 
 on their feet ; some will hold fast their left tliombe in their right 
 hand when they hickot ; or else will hold their chinne with their 
 right hand whiles a gospell is soong. It is thought verie ill lucke of 
 some, that a child, or anie other living creature, should passe be- 
 tweene two friends as they walke together ; for they say it portendeth 
 a division of fi-eendship. — The like follie is to be impvited unto them, 
 that observe (as true or probable) old verses, wherein can be no rea- 
 sonable cause of such effects : which are brought to passe onlie by 
 God's power, and at his pleasure. Of this sort be these that follow : 
 
 " Remember on S. Vincent's daie, 
 
 If that the sunne his beames displaie. — 
 
 If Paule th' apostles daie be cleare, 
 It dooth foreshew a luckie yeare. — 
 
 If Maries purifieng daie, 
 Be cleare and bright with sunnie raie, 
 Then frost and cold shall be much more. 
 After the feast than was before, &c." * 
 
 In the almanacks of Elizabeth's and James's reigns, it was custom- 
 ary, not only to mark the days supposed to have an influence over 
 the weather, but to distinguish, likewise, those considered as lucky 
 or unlucky for making bargains, or transacting business on; and, 
 accordingly, Webster represents a character in one of his plays 
 declaring — 
 
 * Scot's Discovcrie of Witchcraft, p. 203—205.
 
 351 
 
 " By the almanack, I think 
 
 To choose good days and shun the critical ;" * 
 
 and Shakspeare, referring to the same custom and the same doctrine, 
 makes Constance in King John exclaim, — 
 
 " What hath this day deserv'd ? What hath it done ; 
 That it in golden letters should be set, 
 Among the high tides, in the kalendar ? 
 
 Nay rather ' 
 
 if it must stand still, let wives with child 
 
 Pray, that their burdens may not fall this day. 
 Lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross'd : 
 But (except) on this day, let seamen fear no wreck ; 
 No bargains break, that are not this day made : 
 This day, all things begun come to an ill end ; 
 Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change I" f 
 
 But of omens predictive of good and bad fortune, or of tlie common 
 events in life, the catalogue may be said to have no termination, and 
 we must refer the reader, for this degrading display of human weak- 
 ness and folly, to the Vulgar Errors of Browne, and to the Commen- 
 taries of Brand on Bourne's Antiquities, confining the subject to that 
 class of the ominous which has been deemed portentive of the great, 
 the dreadful, and the strange, and which, being surrounded by a 
 certain degree of dignity and awe, is consequently best adapted to 
 the genius of poetry. 
 
 That danger, death, or preternatural occurrences should be pre- 
 ceded by warnings or intimations, would appear comformable to the 
 idea of a superintending providence, and therefore faith in such 
 omens has been indulged in, by almost every nation, especially in 
 the infancy of its civilisation. The most usual monitions of this 
 kind are, Lamentings heard in the air ; shakings and tremblings of the 
 earth; sudden gloom at noon-day ; the appearance of meteors; the 
 shooting of stars ; eclipses of the sun and moon ; the moon of a bloody 
 
 * The Dutchesse of Malfy, act iii. sc. 3. Vide Ancient British Drama, vol. iii. p. 526. 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 418, 419.
 
 352 
 
 hue ; the shrieking of owls ; the croaking of ravens ; the shrilling of 
 crickets ; the nighi-howUng of dogs ; the clicking of the death-'ocalch ; 
 the chattering of pies ; the wild neighing of horses, their running wild 
 and eating each other ; the cries of fairies ; the gibbering of ghosts ; the 
 withering of bay-trees ; showers of blood ; blood dropping thrice from 
 the nose ; homd dreams ; demoniacal voices ; ghastly apparitions ; 
 winding sheets ; corpse-candles ; night-fires, and strange and fearful 
 noises. Of the greater part of this tremendous hst Shakspeare has 
 availed himself ; introducing them as the precursors of murder, sud- 
 den death, disasters, and superhuman events. Thus, previous to the 
 assassination of Julius Caesar, he tells us, that — 
 
 " In the most high and palmy stare of Rome, 
 A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, 
 The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 
 Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets — 
 — Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood ' appear'd/ 
 Disasters in the sun ; and the moist star, 
 Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, 
 Was sick almost to dooms-day with eclipse :" * 
 
 and again, as predictive of the same event, he adds, in another 
 place — 
 
 " There is one within, 
 
 Besides the things that we have heard and seen, 
 
 Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch. 
 
 A lioness hath whelped in the streets ; 
 
 And graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead : 
 
 Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds, 
 
 In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war. 
 
 Which drizzled blood upon the capitol : 
 
 The noise of battle hurtled in the air, 
 
 Horses do neigh, and dying men did groan ; 
 
 And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets." f 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 16. Hamlet, act i. sc. 1. 
 f Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 315. Julius Caesar, act ii. sc. 2.
 
 353 
 
 The circumstances which are related as preceding and accom- 
 panying the murder of Duncan are, perhaps, still more awful and 
 impressive. " Tlie night," says Lennox, 
 
 " has been unruly : where we lay, 
 
 Our chimneys were blown down : and, as they say, 
 
 Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death; 
 
 And prophecying, with accents terrible. 
 
 Of dire combustion, and confus'd events. 
 
 New hatch'd to the woeful time. The obscure bird 
 
 Clamour'd the livelong night : some say, the earth 
 
 Was feverous, and did shake. 
 
 Macb. 'Twas a rough night." 
 
 " Old M. Threescore and ten I can remember well : 
 Within the volume of which time, I have seen 
 Hours dreadful, and things strange; but this sore night 
 Hath trifled former knowings. 
 
 JRosse. Ah, good father. 
 
 Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act. 
 Threaten his bloody stage : by the clock, 'tis day. 
 And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp : 
 Is it night's predominance, or the day's shame. 
 That darkness does the face of earth intomb. 
 When living light should kiss it ? 
 
 Old M. 'Tis unnatural, 
 
 Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last, 
 A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place. 
 Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at, and kill'd. 
 
 Rosse. And Duncan's horses, (a thing most strange and certain,) 
 Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, 
 Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out. 
 Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make 
 War with mankind. 
 
 Old M. 'Tis said, they eat each other. 
 
 Rosse. Thy did so ; to the amazement of mine eyes. 
 That look'd upon't." * 
 
 In the play of King Richard II. also, the poet has with great taste 
 and skill selected the following prodigies, as forerunners of the death 
 or faU of kings : — 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. I27. Macbeth, act ii. so. 3. 
 VOL. I. Z Z
 
 354 
 
 " 'Tis thought, the king is dead ; we will not stay. 
 The bay-trees in our countiy are all wither'd, 
 And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven ; 
 The pale-fac'd moon looks bloody on the earth, 
 And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearfld change ; 
 Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap, — 
 The one, in fear to lose what they enjoy. 
 The other, to enjoy by rage and war : 
 These signs forerun the death or fall of kings." * 
 
 Omens of the same portentous kind are said to have attended the 
 births of Owen Glendower and Richard III., and Shakspeare has 
 accordingly availed himself of the tradition in a manner equally 
 poetical and striking ; the former says of himself, — 
 
 '• At my nativity, 
 
 The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, 
 Of burning cressets ; and, at my birth, 
 The frame and huge foundation of the earth 
 
 Shak'd like a coward : 
 
 The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds 
 Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields : " f 
 
 and Henry VI., in his interview with Richard in the Tower, reproach- 
 ing the tyrant for his cruelties, tells him, as indicative of his future 
 deeds, that 
 
 " The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign ; 
 The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time ; 
 Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempests shook down trees ; 
 The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top, 
 And chattering pies in dismal discords sung." | 
 
 Dreams^ considered as prognostics of good or evil, are frequently 
 introduced by Shakspeare. 
 
 *' My dreams will sure prove ominous to day," 
 
 • Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 82, 83. Act ii. sc. 4. 
 
 f Ibid. vol. xi. p. 317- First Part of King Henry IV. act iii. sc. I. 
 
 % Ibid. vol. xiv. p. 202, 203. Third Part of King VI. act v. sc. 6,
 
 355 
 
 exclaims Andromache * ; while Romeo declares, 
 
 " My dreams presage some joyful news at hand." f 
 
 But it is chiefly as precursors of misfortune that the poet has availed 
 himself of their supposed influence as omens of future fate. There 
 are few passages in his dramas more terrific than the dreams of 
 Richard the Third and Clarence ; the latter, especially, is replete 
 with the most fearful imagery, and makes the blood run chill with 
 horror. 
 
 D(emo7iiacal voices and shrieks, or monitory inti7nations and appear- 
 ances from the tutelary genius of a family, were likewise imagined to 
 precede the deaths of important individuals ; a superstition to which 
 Shakspeare alludes in the following lines from his Troiltis and 
 Cressida : 
 
 " Troil. Hark ! you are call'd : Some say, the Genius so 
 Cries, Come .' to him that instantly must die." J 
 
 This superstition was formerly very prevalent in England, and still 
 prevails in several districts of Ireland, and in the more remote parts 
 of the Highlands of Scotland. Howell tells us, that he saw at a 
 lapidary's in 1632, a monumental stone, prepared for four persons of 
 the name of Oxenham, before the death of each of whom, the inscrip- 
 tion stated a white bird to have appeared and fluttered around the 
 bed, while the patient was in the last agony § ; and Glanville, 
 remarks Mr. Scott, mentions one family, the members of which 
 received this solemn sign by music, the sound of which floated from 
 the family-residence, and seemed to die in a neighbouring || wood. 
 It is related, that several of the great Highland families are accus- 
 tomed to receive intimations of approaching fate by domestic spirits 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 448. Troil us and Cressida, act v. sc. 3. 
 t Ibid. vol. XX. p. 225. Act v. sc. 1. 
 J Ibid. vol. XV. p. 395. Act iv. sc. 4. 
 § Familiar Letters, edit. 1726. p. 24?. 
 II Ladv of the Lake, p. 348. 
 
 z z 2
 
 356 
 
 or tutelary genii, who sometimes assume the form of a bird or of a 
 bloody spectre of a tall woman dressed in white, shrieking wildly 
 round the house. Thus, observes Mr. Pennant, the family of Roth- 
 murcas had the Bodach-an-dun, or the Ghost of the Hill ; the Kin- 
 chardines, the Spectre of the Bloods/ Hand; Gartinley house was 
 haunted hy Bodach-Gartin ; and TuUock Gorms hy Maug-Monlacfi^ 
 or the Girl with the Hairy Left Hand. In certain places, he says, 
 the death of the people is supposed to be foretold by the cries of 
 Benshi, or the Fairy s Wife, uttered along the very path where the 
 funeral is to pass ; and it has been added by others, that when the 
 Benshi becomes visible, she appears in the shape of an old woman, 
 with a blue mantle and streaming hair. 
 
 Of this omen, and of another of a similar kind, Mr. Scott has made 
 his usual poetical use in the Lady of the Lake, where he relates of 
 Brian, the lone Seer of the Desert, that 
 
 " Late had iie heard in prophet's dream, 
 The fatal Ben-Shie's boding scream , 
 Sounds, too, had come in midnight blast, 
 Of charging steeds, careering fast 
 Along Benharrow's shingly side, 
 Where mortal horseman ne'er might ride." 
 
 This last passage, he informs us, " is still believed to announce 
 death to the ancient Highland family of M'Lean of Lochbuy. The 
 spirit of an ancestor slain in battle, is heard to gallop along a stony 
 bank, and then to ride thrice around the family-residence, ringing 
 his fairy bridle, and thus intimating the approaching calamity." * 
 
 That the apparition of the Benshie, and the whole train of spectral 
 and daemoniacal warnings, were in full force in Ireland, during the 
 seventeenth century, we have numerous proofs ; the former was 
 commonly called the Shrieking Woman, and of the latter a most 
 remarkable instance is given by Mr. Scott, from the MS. Memoirs of 
 the accomplished Lady Fanshaw. " Her husband. Sir Richard, and 
 
 * Lady of the Lake, p. I OK. S*;.
 
 357 
 
 she, chanced, during their abode in Ireland, to visit a friend, the 
 head of a sept, who resided in his ancient baronial castle, surrounded 
 with a moat. At mitbiight, she was awakened by a ghastly and 
 supernatural scream, and looking out of bed, beheld, by the moon- 
 light, a female face and part of the form, hovering at the window. 
 The distance from the ground, as well as the circumstance of the 
 moat, excluded the possibility that what she beheld was of this world. 
 The face was that of a young and rather handsome woman, but pale, 
 and the hair, which was reddish, loose and dishevelled. The dress, 
 which Lady Fanshaw's terror did not prevent her remarking accu- 
 rately, was that of the ancient Irish. This apparition continued to 
 exhibit itself for some time, and then vanished with two shrieks 
 similar to that which had first excited Lady Fanshaw's attention. In 
 the morning, with infinite terror, she communicated to her host what 
 she had witnessed, and found him prepared not only to credit, but to 
 account for the apparition. ' A near relation of my family,' said he, 
 « expired last night in this castle. We disguised our certain expecta- 
 tion of the event from you, lest it should throw a cloud over the 
 cheerful reception which was your due. Now, before such an event 
 happens in this family and castle, the female spectre whom you have 
 seen always is visible. She is believed to be the spirit of a woman of 
 inferior rank, whom one of my ancestors degraded himself by marry- 
 ing, and whom afterwards, to expiate the dishonour done to his 
 family, he caused to be drowned in the castle moat.' " * 
 
 Another set of omens predictive of disaster, supernatural agency, 
 and death, was drawn from the appearances of lights, tapers, and 
 fires. When a flame was seen by night resting on the tops of soldiers' 
 lances, or playing and leaping by fits among the masts and sails of a 
 ship, it was deemed the presage of misfortune ; of defeat in battle in 
 the one instance, and of destruction by tempest in the other. As the 
 forenmner of a storm, Shakspeare has introduced it in his Tempest^ 
 where Ariel says, — 
 
 * Lady of tJie Lake, p. 348.
 
 358 
 
 " Sometimes I'd divide 
 
 And burn in many places; on the top-mast, 
 The yards and bowsprit, Avould 1 flame distinciiy, 
 Then meet and join." * 
 
 It was also conceived, that the presence of unearthly beings, 
 ghosts, spirits, and demons, was instantly announced by an alteration 
 in the tint of the lights whicji happened to be burning ; a very 
 popular notion, which the poet adopts in his Richard the Third, the 
 t>Tant exclaiming, as he awakens, 
 
 " The lights burn blue — it is now dead midnight ; 
 
 Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 
 
 Methought, the souls of all that I had murder'd, 
 Came to my tent." f 
 
 But the chief superstition annexed to this branch of omens, was 
 founded on the idea, that lights and fires, commonly called corpse- 
 candles and tomb-Jires, preceded deaths and funerals ; an article of 
 belief which was equally prevalent among the Celtic and Teutonic 
 nations ; and was cherished therefore with the same credulity in 
 Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, as in Scandinavia, Germany, and 
 England. In this island, during the sixteenth century, it was gene- 
 rally credited by the common people, that when a person was about 
 to die, a pale flame would frequently appear at the window of the 
 room in which he was laid, and, after pausing there for a moment, 
 would glide towards the church-yard, minutely tracing the path 
 where the future funeral was to pass, and glowing brightly, for a 
 time, on the spot where the body was to be interred. Sometimes, 
 however, instead of lights, a procession was seen by the dim light of 
 the moon : " there have bin seene some in the night," says the 
 English Lavaterus, " when the moone shin'd, going solemnlie with 
 the corps, according to the custome of the people, or standing before 
 the dores, as if some bodie were to be caried to the church to bury- 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 28. Act i. sc. 2. 
 t Ibid. vol. xiv. p. 506. Act v. sc. 3.
 
 359 
 
 ing."* In Northumberland the fancied appearance of the corpse- 
 hght was termed seeing the Waff (the blast or spirit) of the person 
 whose death was to take place. 
 
 In Wales this superstition was formerly so general, especially in 
 the counties of Cardigan, Caermarthen, and Pembroke, that scarcely 
 any individual was supposed to die without the previous signal of a 
 corpse-candle. Mr. Davis, a Welshman, in a letter to Mr. Baxter, 
 observes, that " they are called candles, from their resemblance, not 
 of the body of the candle, but the fire ; because that fire doth a?; much 
 resemble material candle-lights, as eggs do eggs : saving that in their 
 journey, these candles are sometimes visible, and sometimes disappear; 
 especially if any one comes near to them, or in the way to meet 
 them. On these occasions they vanish, but presently appear again 
 behind the observer, and hold on their course. If a little candle is 
 seen, of a pale or bluish colour, then follows the coi-pse, either of an 
 abortive, or some infant ; if a large one, then the corpse of some one 
 come to age. If there be seen two, three, or more, of different sizes, 
 — some big, some small, — then shall so many corpses pass together, 
 and of such ages or degrees. If two candles come from different 
 places, and be seen to meet, the corpses will do the same ; and if any 
 of these candles be seen to turn aside, through some bye-path leadino- 
 to the church, the following corpse will be found to take exactly the 
 same way." -j- 
 
 Among the Highlanders of Scotland, likewise, the same species of 
 omen was so implicitly credited, that it has continued in force even 
 to the present day. Of this Mrs. Grant has given us, in one of her 
 ingenious essays, a most remarkable instance, and on the authority, 
 too, of a very pious and sensible clergyman, who was accustomed, 
 she says, " to go forth and meditate at even ; and this solitary walk 
 he always directed to his churchyard, which was situated in a shaded 
 spot, on the banks of a river. There, in a dusky October evening. 
 
 * Of Ghostes and Spirites, 1572. p. 79. 
 
 f Vide Grose's Provincial Glossary, article Popular Superstitions, p. 282, 283,
 
 360 
 
 he took his wonted path, and lingered, leaning on the churchyard- 
 wall, till it became twilight, when he saw two small lights rise from a 
 spot within, where there was no stone, nor memorial of any kind. 
 He observed the course these lights took, and saw them cross the 
 river, and stop at an opposite hamlet. Presently they returned, 
 accompanied by a larger light, which moved on between them, till 
 they arrived at the place from which the first two set out, when all 
 the three seemed to sink into the earth together. 
 
 " The good man went into the churchyard, and threw a few stones 
 on the spot where the lights disappeared. Next morning he walked 
 out early, called for the sexton, and shewed him the place, asking if 
 he remembered who was buried there. The man said, that many 
 years ago, he remembered burying in that spot, two young children, 
 belonging to a blacksmith on the opposite side of the river, who was 
 now a very old man. The pastor returned, and was scarce sat down 
 to breakfast, when a message came to hurry him to come over to 
 pray with the smith, who had been suddenly taken ill, and who died 
 next day." * 
 
 Fiery and meteorous exhalations, shooting through the lower regions 
 of the air, and sinking into the ground, were also deemed predictive of 
 death. The individual was pointed out by these fires either falling on 
 his lands or garden, or by gleaming with a lurid light over the family 
 burying-place. Appearances of this kind were called tomb-jires by the 
 Scandinavians, and tan-z&e by the Welsh, who believed that no free- 
 holder died without a meteor having been seen to sparkle and vanish 
 on his estate. In fact, as Shakspeare has expressed it, there could 
 happen 
 
 " No natural exhalations in the sky :" 
 but were considered as 
 
 * Grant's Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland, vol. i. 
 p. 259— 261.
 
 361 
 
 prodigies, and signs, 
 
 Abortives, presages, and tongues of iieavcn." * 
 
 The idea that sudden and fearful noises are fiequently heard before 
 death takes place, and are indications of such an event, was very 
 common at the period of which we are writing, both on the continent 
 and in this country. " It happeneth many times," says the English 
 Lavaterus, " that when men lye sicke of some deadly disease, there is 
 something heard going in the chamber, like as the sicke men were 
 wonte, when they were in good health : yea and the sicke parties 
 themselves, do many times heare the same, and by and by gesse what 
 wil come to passe. And divers times it commeth to passe, that 
 when some of our acquaintaunce or friends lye a dying, albeit they are 
 many miles off, yet there are some great stirrings or noises heard. 
 Sometimes we think that the house will fall on our heads, or that 
 some massie and waightie thing falleth downe throughout all the 
 house, rendring and making a disordered noise : and shortlie within 
 few monthes after, we understande that those things happened, the 
 very same houre that our friends departed in. There be some men of 
 whose stocke none doth dye, but that they observe and marke some 
 signes and tokens gdng before: as that they heare the dores and 
 windowes open and shut, that some thing runneth up the staires, or 
 walketh up and downe the house, or doth some one or other such like 
 thing. 
 
 " There was a certain parishe priest, a very honest and godly 
 man, whom I knewe well, who in the plague time, could tell before 
 hand, when any of his parishe should dye. For in the night time he 
 heard a noise over his bed, like as if one had throwne downe a sacke 
 full of corne from his shoulders : which when he heard he would say : 
 Nowe an other biddeth me farewell. After it was day, he used to 
 inquire who died that night, or who was taken with the plague, to the 
 end he might comfort and strengthen them, according to the duty of 
 a good pastour. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspcare, vol.x. p. 45!). 
 VOL. I. 3 A
 
 362 
 
 " In Abbeys, the Monks, servaunts or any other taUing sicke, 
 many have heard in the night, preparation of chests for them, in such 
 sorte as the coffin makers did afterwards prepare in deede. 
 
 " In some country villages, when one is at death's dore, many 
 times there are some heard in the evening, or in the night, digging 
 a grave in the Churcheyarde, and the same the next day is so found 
 diffged, as these men did heare before." * 
 
 The next class of superstitions which we shall notice in this chapter, 
 is that depending on charms and spells, a fertile source of knavery 
 and credulity, and which has been chiefly exercised, in our poet's 
 time and since, by old women. Of this occupation, and its attendant 
 folly and imposition, the bard has given us a sketch, in his Metry 
 Wives of Windsor, in the person of the Old Wo?nan of Brentford, who 
 is declared by Ford to be " a witch, a quean, an old cozening quean ! 
 — We are simple men ; we do not know what's brought to pass 
 under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by 
 spells, by the figure, and such daubery as this is ; beyond our element : 
 we know nothing." -f 
 
 That women of this description, or as Scot has delineated them, 
 in one instance, indeed, deviating from the portly form of Shaks- 
 peare's cunning Dame, " leane, hollow-eied, old, beetle browed 
 women X," were, as dealers in charms, spells and amulets, a very 
 numerous tribe, in the days of Elizabeth and James, we have every 
 reason to believe, from contemporary evidence ; but it appears that 
 the trade o^ fortune-telling was then, as now, chiefly exercised by the 
 wandering horde o£ gipsies, to whose name and characteristic knavery, 
 our great poet alludes, in Antony and Cleopatra, where the Roman 
 complains that Cleopatra, 
 
 " Like a right gipsj/, hath, atjast and loose, 
 Beguil'd him to the very heart of loss." § 
 
 Of this wily people, of the juggle referred to in these lines, and of 
 
 * Of Ghostes and Spirites, p. 77 — 7J>- 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 169. Act iv. sc.2. 
 
 J Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 279. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p, 230. Act iv. sc. 10.
 
 363 
 
 tlieir profession of fortune-telling, Scot thus speaks in his thirteenth 
 book : — " The Aegyptians juggling witchcraft or sortilegie standeth 
 much in fast or loose, whereof though I have written somewhat 
 generallie already (p. 197), yet having such opportunitie I will here 
 shew some of their particular feats ; not treating of their common 
 tricks which is so tedious, nor of their fortune-telling which is so 
 impious ; and yet both of them meere cousenages." * He then 
 describes two games o^ fast and loose; one with a handkerchief, and 
 the other with whip cords and beads ; but as these much resemble 
 the modern trick of pricking at the belt or girdle, explained by Sir 
 J. Hawkins, in a note on the passage just quoted from our poet, it 
 will not be necessary to notice them fuilher in this place. 
 
 To palmistry, indeed, or the art of Divination by the lines of the 
 hand, Shakspeare has allotted a great part of the second scene, in the 
 first act, of Antony and Cleopatra, no doubt induced to this by the 
 topographical situation of the opening characters, the play com- 
 mencing at Alexandria in Egypt, 
 
 He has also occasionally adverted in other dramas to the multitude 
 of charms, spells, and periapts which were in use in his time ; and he 
 makes La Pucelle, in accordance with the necromantic powers attri- 
 buted to her, solemnly invoke their assistance —r- 
 
 •' Now help, ye charming spells, and periapts ;" f 
 
 but as, to adopt the expression of Scot, he who " should go about to 
 recite all charmes, would take an infinite worke in hand J," we shall 
 confine ourselves to an enumeration, from this scarce and curious writer, 
 of the evils and the powers, against, and for, which, these charms, 
 were sought ; and shall then add a few specimens of their nature, 
 force, and composition. It appears that they were eagerly enquired 
 after in the first place against burning, drowning, pestilence, sword. 
 
 * Dicoverie of Witchcraft, p. 336. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xiii. p. 152. First Part of King Henry VI. act v, sc. 3. 
 
 X Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 279. 
 
 3 A 2
 
 364 
 
 and famine, against thieves, spii-its, witches, and diseases, and of the 
 last class, especially against the venom of serpents, scorpions and 
 other reptiles, the epilepsy, the king's evil, and the bite of a mad 
 dog ; and in the second, to enable the wearer to release a woman in 
 ti'avail, to conjure a thorn out of any member, or a bone out of the 
 throat, to open all locks and doors, to know what is said and done 
 behind our backs, to endure the severest tortures without shrinking, 
 &c. &c. 
 
 One of the most efficacious of these charms, was a periapt or 
 tablet, called an Agnus Dei. This, which was ordered to be constantly 
 worn round the neck, consisted of a little cake, having the impression 
 of a lamb carrying a flag on one side, and Christ's head on the other ; 
 and in the centre a concavity sufficiently large to contain the first 
 chapter of St. John's Gospel, written on fine paper, in a very small 
 character. It was a spell potent to protect the wearer against thunder 
 and lightning, fire and water, sin, pestilence, and the perils of child- 
 birth. * 
 
 A charm against shot, or a waistcoat of proof, was thus to be ob- 
 tained: — " On Christmas dale at night, a thread must be sponne of 
 flax, by a little virgine girle, in the name of the divell : and it must 
 be by hir woven, and also wrought with the needle. In the brest or 
 forepart thereof must be made with needle worke two heads ; on the 
 head at the right side must be a hat, and a long beard ; the left head 
 must have on a crowne, and it must be so horrible, that it maie 
 resemble Belzebub, and on each side of the wastcote must be made a 
 crosse." f 
 
 That some of these spells, however, were not carried into execution 
 with quite so much ease, as the two we have just transcribed, will be 
 evident from the directions annexed to the following, entitled a charm 
 for one possessed : " The possessed bodie must go upon his or hir 
 knees to the church, how farre soever it be off from their lodging ; 
 and so must creepe without going out of the waie, being the common 
 
 * Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 230. 270. 
 t Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 231.
 
 365 
 
 liioh waie, in that sort, how fowle and clurtie soever the same be ; or 
 whatsoever he in the waie, not shunning anie thing whatsoever, untill 
 he come to the church, where he must heare masse devouthe, and 
 then followeth recoverie." * 
 
 It appears, notwithstanding, that, even among the old women of 
 the sixteenth century, there could be found some who, while they 
 profited by, could, at the same time, despise, the credulity of their 
 neighbours. " An old woman," says Scot, " that healed all diseases 
 of cattell (for the which she never tooke any reward but a penie and 
 a loafe) being seriouslie examined by what words she brought these 
 things to passe, confessed that after she had touched the sicke creature, 
 she alwaies departed immediatlie ; saieng : 
 
 " My loafe in my lap, 
 
 my penie in my pursse ; 
 Thou art never the better, 
 and I am never the wursse." f 
 
 The same author, after relating the terrible curse or charm of St. 
 Adelbert against thieves, facetiously adds, — " But I will answer this 
 cruell cursse with another cursse farre more mild and civill, performed 
 by as honest a man (I dare saie) as he that .made the othei\ — 
 
 " So it was, that a certeine sir John, with some of his companie, 
 once went abroad a jetting, and in a moone light evening robbed a 
 millers weire, and stole all his eeles. The poore miller made his mone 
 to sir John himselfe, who willed him to be quiet ; for he would so 
 cursse the theefe, and all his confederates, with bell, booke and candell, 
 that they should have small joy of their fish. And therefore the next 
 sundaie, sir John got him to the pulpit, with his surplisse on his backe, 
 and his stole about his necke, and pronounced these words following 
 in the audience of the people. 
 
 All you that have stolne the miller's eeles, 
 Latidale Domimim dc coelis. 
 
 Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 247. f Ibid. p. 245.
 
 366 
 
 And all they that have consented thereto, 
 
 Benedicamus Domino. 
 
 So (saitli he) there is sauce for your eeles my maisters." * 
 
 A third portion of the popular creed may be considered as includ- 
 ing the various kinds of superstitious Cures, Preventatives, and Sym- 
 pathies ; a species of credulity which has suffered little diminution even 
 in the present day ; for, though the materials selected for the purpose 
 be different, the folly and the fraud are the same. Instead of animal 
 magnetism and metallic tractors, the public faith, in the days of Shak- 
 speare, rested, with implicit confidence, on the virtues supposed to be 
 inherent in bones, precious stones, sympathetic signs, powders, &c. ; 
 and the poet, accordingly, has occasionally introduced imagery founded 
 on these imaginary qualities. Thus, in the Merchant of Venice, the 
 high value which Shylock places on his turquoise ring, was derived 
 from this source, the turquoise or Turkey-stone, being considered as 
 inestimable for its properties of indicating the health of the wearer by 
 the increase or decrease of its colour, and for its protective power in 
 shielding him from enmity and peril. That this was the cause of 
 Shylock's deep regret for the loss of his ring, will appear probable 
 from the more direct intimations of his contemporaries, Jonson and 
 Drayton ; the former, in his Sejanus, remarking of two parasites, that 
 they would, 
 
 " true, as turkoise in tlie dear lord's ring, 
 
 Look well or ill with him." f 
 
 and the latter declaring, that 
 
 " The turkesse, who haps to wear, 
 
 Is often kept from peril." \ 
 
 * Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 265, 266. 
 f See Whalley's Works of Ben Jonson, 
 \ Chalmers's Poets, vol. iv. p. 4G5.
 
 367 
 
 A more distinct allusion to the sanative virtue of precious stones, is 
 to be found in the celebrated simile in As You Like It : 
 
 " Sweet are the uses of adversity ; 
 
 Which, hke the toad, ugly and venomous. 
 Wears yet a precious jewel in his head." * 
 
 This stone or jewel was supposed to secure the possessor from the 
 effects of poison, and to be, likewise, a sovereign remedy for the stone. 
 
 These important effects are ascribed to it by numerous writers of 
 Shakspeare's time, — by Gesner f ; by Batman :j: ; by Maplett § ; by 
 Fenton || ; by Lupton IF ; by Topsell, and, subsequently, by Fuller. ' 
 It even formed, very early indeed, a part of medical treatment ; for 
 Lloyd, in his Treasure of helth, recommends its exhibition for the 
 stone, and orders it, after having been stampt, to be " geven to the 
 pacyent to drinke in warme wine. " 
 
 To the Bezoar stone also was attributed great potency in expelling 
 the plague and other pestilential diseases ; and Gesner has given it an 
 origin even more marvellous than the cures for which it has been 
 celebrated ; " when the hart is sick," says he, " and hath eaten many 
 serpents for his recoverie, he is brought unto so great a heate, that he 
 hasteth to the water, and there covereth his body unto the very eares 
 and eyes, at which time distilleth many teares from which the (Bezoar) 
 stone is gendered." ' 
 
 The Belemnites or hag-stones, perforated flints hung up at the bed's 
 head, to prevent the night-mare, or in stables to secure the horses 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 'H. Act ii. sc. 1. 
 f De Quadrup. Ovip., p. 65. 
 
 X Batman uppon Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum, 1582, fol. article 
 Botrax. 
 
 § A Green Forest, or a Natural History, 1567. 
 
 II Secrete Wonders of Nature, 4to. 1569, 
 
 H First Book of Notable Things, 4to. 
 
 ' Topsell's History of Serpents, 1608. foL, p. 188. and Fuller's Church History, p. 151. 
 
 ' Printed by Copland, but without date, I2mo. 
 
 ^ Quoted by Batman on Bartholome, L, xviii. c. 30.
 
 368 
 
 from being hag-ridden, and their manes elf-knotted, were, at this 
 period, in common use. To one of the superstitious evils against 
 which it was held as a protective, Shakspeare alludes, in his Romeo 
 and Juliet, where Mercutio exclaims — 
 
 « This is that very Mab 
 
 That 2'lafs the manes of horses in the night." * 
 
 " It was believed," remarks Mr. Douce, commenting on this passage, 
 " that certain malignant spirits whose delight was to wander in groves 
 and pleasant places, assumed occasionally the likenesses of women 
 clothed in white ; that in this character they sometimes haunted 
 stables in the night-time, carrying in- their hands tapers of wax, which 
 they dropped on the horses' manes, thereby plaiting them in inextri- 
 cable knots, to the great annoyance of the poor animals and vexation 
 of their masters. These hags are mentioned in the works of William 
 of Auvergne, bishop of Paris in the thirteenth century. There is a 
 very uncommon old print by Hans Burgmair relating to this subject. 
 A witch enters the stable with a lighted torch ; and, previously to the 
 operation of entangling the horse's mane, practises her enchantments 
 on the groom, who is lying asleep on his back, and apparently in- 
 fluenced by the night-mare." f 
 
 The most copious account of the preservative and curative virtues 
 which credulity has ascribed to precious stones, is to be drawn from the 
 pages of Reginald Scot, who appears faithfully and minutely to have re- 
 corded the superstitions of his day. " An Agat (they sale) hath vertue 
 against the biting of scorpions or serpents. It is written (but I will 
 not stand to it) that it maketh a man eloquent, and procureth the 
 favour of princes ; yea, that the fume thereof dooth turn awaie tem- 
 pests. Alectorius is a stone about the bignesse of a beane, as cleere 
 as the christall, taken out of a cocks bellie which hath been gelt or 
 made a capon foure yeares. If it be held in ones mouth, it assuageth 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 59. Act i. so. 4. 
 f Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 180, 18X.
 
 569 
 
 thirst, it maketh the husband to love the wife, and the bearer invin- 
 cible : Chelidonius is a stone taken out of a swallowe, which 
 
 cureth melancholie : howbeit, some authors sale, it is the hearbe 
 whereby the swallowes recover the sight of their yoong, even if their 
 eies be picked out with an instrument. Geranites is taken out of a 
 crane, and Draconites out of a dragon. But it is to be noted, that 
 such stones must be taken out of the bellies of the serpents, beasts, or 
 birds, (wherein they are) whiles they live : otherwise, they vanish 
 awaie with the life, and so they reteine the vertues of those starres 
 under which they are. Amethysus maketh a droonken man sober, 
 and refresheth the wit. Tlie corall preserveth such as beare it from 
 fascination or bewitching, and in this respect they are hanged about 
 children's necks. But from whence that superstition is derived, and 
 who invented the lie, I knowe not : but I see how redie the people 
 are to give credit thereunto, by the multitude of coralls that waie em- 
 ploied. Heliotropius stancheth bloud, driveth awaie poisons, pre- 
 serveth health : yea, and some write that it provoketh raine, and 
 darkeneth the sunne, suffering not him that beareth it to be abused. 
 Hyacinthus dooth all that the other dooth, and also preserveth from 
 lightening. Dinothera hanged about the necke, collar, or yoke of 
 any creature, tameth it presentlie. A Topase healeth the lunatike 
 person of his passion of lunacie. Aitites, if it be shaken, soundeth as 
 if there were a little stone in the bellie thereof: it is good for the 
 falling sicknesse, and to prevent untimelie birth. Chalcedonius 
 maketh the bearer luckie in lawe, quickeneth the power of the bodie, 
 and is of force also against the illusions of the divell, and phantasticall 
 cogitations arising of melancholie. Corneolus mitigateth the heate of 
 the mind, and qualifieth malice, it stancheth bloudie fluxes. Iris 
 helpeth a woman to speedie deliverance, and maketh rainebowes to 
 appeere. A Saphire preserveth the members, and maketh them livelie, 
 and helpeth agues and gowts, and suiFereth not the bearer to be afraid : 
 it hath vertue against venome, and staieth bleeding at the nose, being 
 often put thereto. A Smarag is good for the eiesight, and maketh 
 one rich and eloquent. Mephis (as Aaron and Hermes report out of 
 
 VOL. I. 3 B
 
 370 
 
 Albertus Magnus) being broken into powder, and droonke with water, 
 maketh insensibilitie of torture. Heereby you may understand, that 
 as God hath bestowed upon these stones, and such other Uke bodies, 
 most excellent and woonderfuU vertues ; so according to the abim- 
 dance of humane superstitions and follies ; manie ascribe unto them 
 eitlier more virtues, or others than they have." * 
 
 This passage has been closely imitated by Drayton, in the ninth 
 Nymphal of his Muse's Elysium f ; he has made, however, some 
 additions to the catalogue, one of which we have already noticed, and 
 another will be shortly quoted. 
 
 Virtues of a kind equally miraculous were attributed to bones and 
 horns ; thus Scot tells us, that a bone taken out of a carp's head 
 staunches blood ; that the bone in a hare's foot mitigates the cramp, 
 and that the unicorn's horn is inestimable X ; ^^^ were we to enume- 
 rate the wonders performed by herbs, we might fill a volume. Many 
 of them, indeed, were considered of such potency as to render the 
 persons who rightly used them, either invisible or invulnerable, and, 
 therefore, to those who were engaged to fight a l^al duel, an oath 
 was administered, purporting " that they had ne charme, ne herbe 
 of vertue" about them. 
 
 Several diseases were held to be incurable, by ordinary means ; 
 such as wens, warts, the king's evil, agues, rickets, and ruptures ; and 
 the remedies which were adopted present a most deplorable instance 
 of human folly. Tumours Avere to be dispelled by stroking them nine 
 times with a dead man's hand, and the evil by the royal touch, a 
 miracidous power supposed to have been first exercised by Edward 
 the Confessor, and to have been since hereditary in the royal line, at 
 least to the period of the decease of Queen Anne. Of the discharge 
 of this important fimction by the Confessor, and of its regal descent, 
 our poet has left us a pretty accurate description : — 
 
 * Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 293 — 295. 
 t Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 465. 
 (; Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 305.
 
 371 
 
 " Malcolm. Comes the king forth, I pruy you? 
 
 Doctor. Ay, Sir : there are a crew of wretched souls, 
 That stay his cure : their malady convinces 
 The great assay of art ; but, at his touch, 
 Such sanctity hath heaven given liis hand. 
 They presently amend. 
 
 Macduff: What's the disease he means? 
 
 Mai. 'Tis call'd the evil : 
 
 A most miraculous work in this good king ; 
 "Wliich often, since my here-remain in England, 
 1 have seen him do. How he solicits heaven. 
 Himself best knows .- but strangely-visited people, 
 All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye. 
 The mere despair of surgery, he cures ; 
 Hanging a golden stamp * about their necks. 
 Put on with holy prayers : and 'tis spoken, 
 To the succeeding royalty he leaves 
 The healing benediction." f 
 
 That Shakspeare had frequently witnessed Queen Elizabeth's exer- 
 cise of this extraordinary gift, is very probable ; for it appears from 
 Laneham, that even on her visits to her nobility, she was in the habit 
 of exerting this sanative power. In his Account of the Entertainment 
 at Kenelwarth Castle, he records " by her highness accustomed mercy 
 and charitee, nyne cured of the peynful and dangerous diseaz called 
 the King's Evil, for that kings and queens of this realm without oother 
 medsin (than by touching and prayer) only doo it." j. 
 
 Most of the superstitious cures for warts and agues remain as arti- 
 cles of popular credulity ; but the mode of removing ruptures and the 
 rickets which prevailed at this period, and for some centuries before, 
 is now nearly, if not altogether extinct. A young tree was split 
 
 * This golden stamp was the coin called an angel, from the figure which it bore, and 
 was worth ten shillings. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 2-42, 243. Macbeth, act iv. sc. 3. 
 
 X Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. : and Scot, speaking of the preten- 
 sions of the French monarchs to cure the evil, observes of Ehzabeth's practice, that 
 " if the French king use it no woorsse than our Princesse doth, God will not be offended 
 thereat : for hir majestic onelie useth godlie and divine praier, with some almes, and re- 
 ferreth the cure to God and to the physician," p. 304., a report which reflects great credit 
 on her majesty's judgment and good sense. 
 
 3b 2
 
 372 
 
 longitudinally, and the diseased child, being stripped naked, was 
 passed, with the head foremost, thrice through the fissure. The 
 w^ouuded tree was then drawn together with a cord so as to unite it 
 perfectly, and as the tree healed, the child was to acquire health and 
 strength. The same result followed if the child crept through a stone 
 perforated by some operation of Nature ; of stones of this kind there 
 are some instances in Cornwall, and Mr. Borlase tells us, in his His- 
 tory of that County, that there was one of this description in the 
 parish of Marden, which had a perforation through it fourteen inches 
 in diameter, and was celebrated for its cures on those who ventured, 
 under these complaints, to travel through its healing aperture. 
 
 The doctrine of sympathetic indications and cures was very prevalent 
 during the era of Elizabeth and James, and is repeatedly insisted upon 
 by the writers of that age. One of the most generally credited of 
 these was, that a murdered body bled upon the touch or approach of 
 the murderer ; an idea which has not only been adopted by our elder 
 bards as poetically striking, but has been adduced, as a truth, by some 
 of our very grave writers in prose. Among the Dramatists it will be 
 sufficient to produce Shakspeare, who represents the corpse of Henry 
 the Sixth as bleeding on the approach of the Tyrant Richard : — 
 
 " O, gentlemen, see, see ! dead Henry's wounds 
 Open their congeal'd mouths, and bleed afresh ! 
 Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity ; 
 For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood 
 From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells ; 
 Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural. 
 Provokes this deluge most unnatural :" * 
 
 and Drayton seems to have been a firm believer in the same preter- 
 natural effect ; for he informs us in his forty sixth Idea, that, 
 
 " In making trial of a murther wrought, 
 If the vile actors of the heinous deed, 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xiv. p. 285. Richard the Third, act i. so. 2.
 
 373 
 
 Near the dead bod}' happily be brought, 
 
 Oft 't hath been prov'd the breathless corps will bleed." * 
 
 Of the prose authorities, besides Luptoii, and Sir Kenelra Digby 
 mentioned in the notes of the Variorum Edition of our author, Lava- 
 terus, Reginald Scot, and King James may be quoted, as reposing an 
 implicit faith in the miracle. The Jii'st of these writers tells us, in his 
 English dress, of 1572, that " some men beeing slayne by theeves, when 
 the theeves come to the dead body, by and by there gusheth out freshe 
 blood, or else there is declaration by other tokens, that the theefe is 
 there present ;" and he then adds, " touching these and other such 
 marvellous things there might be many histories and testimonies 
 alleaged. But whosoever readeth this booke, may call to their re- 
 membraunce, that they have seene these and suche like things them- 
 selves, or that they have heard them of their freends and acquaintaunce 
 and of such as deserve sufficient credit." -j- The second, in 1584, 
 justifying what he terms common experience, says, " I have heard by 
 credible report, and I have read many grave authors constantlie 
 affirme, that the wound of a man murthered reneweth bleeding ; at 
 the presence of a deere freend, or of a mortal! enimie X >" and the 
 third, in 1603, asserts, that " in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse 
 bee at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out 
 of bloud, as if the bloud were crying to the heaven for revenge of the 
 murtherer, God having appointed that secret supernaturall signe, for 
 triall of that secret unnaturall crime." § 
 
 The influence of sympathy or affection as it was termed, at the 
 period of which we are writing, over the passions and feelings of the 
 human mind, is curiously, though correctly exemplified by the poet, 
 in the character of Shylock, who tells the Duke — 
 
 * Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 405. 
 t Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by nyght, p. 80. 
 t Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 303. 
 
 J The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince James, fol. edit. 1616. p. 136. 
 The Daemonolgie was first printed at Etlinburgh in 1 5S7> and next in London, 1 603, 4to.
 
 374 
 
 " Some men there are, love not a gaping pig; 
 Some, that are mad, if they behold a cat ; 
 And others, when the bag-pipe sings i' the nose, 
 Cannot contain their urine ; for affection. 
 Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood 
 Of what it likes and loaths." * 
 
 Another sympathy mentioned by Shakspeare, but of a nature wholly 
 superstitious, relates to the Mandrake, a vegetable, the root of which 
 was supposed to be endued with animal life, and to shriek so horribly 
 when drawn out of the ground, as to occasion madness, and even 
 death, in those who made the attempt : — 
 
 " What with loathsome smells, 
 
 And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth. 
 That living mortals, hearing them, run mad ; 
 O ! if I wake, shall I not be distraught ?" f 
 
 exclaims Juliet ; and Suffolk, in King Henry the Sixth, declares that 
 every joint of his body should curse and ban his enemies, 
 
 " Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan." % 
 
 To avoid these dreadful effects, it was the custom of those who 
 collected this root, to compel some animal to be the instrument of 
 extraction, and consequently the object of punishment. " They doe 
 affyrme," says BuUeine, " that this herbe (the Mandragora) commeth 
 of the seede of some convicted dead men : and also without the death 
 of some lyvinge thinge it cannot be drawnen out of the earth to 
 man's use. Therefore they did tye some dogge or other lyving beast 
 unto the roote thereof wyth a corde, and digged the earth in compasse 
 round about, and in the meane tyme stopp'd their own eares for feare 
 of the terrible shriek and cry of this Mandrack. In whych cry it doth 
 not only dye itselfe, but the feare thereof kylleth the dogge or beast 
 which puUeth it out of the earth." § 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 344. Merchant of Venice, act iv. sc. 1 . 
 
 \ Ibid. vol. XX. p. 20S. Romeo and Juliet, act iv. sc. 3. 
 
 X Ibid. vol. xiii. p. 297. Act iii. sc. 2. 
 
 § Bulwarke of Defence against Sickness, fol. 1579, p. 41.
 
 375 
 
 One of the most fantastic sympathies which yet lingers in the 
 popular creed, is founded on the idea that when a person is seized 
 with a sudden shivermg, some one is walking over his future grave. 
 " Probably," remarks Mr. Grose, " all persons are not subject to this 
 sensation ; otherwise the inhabitants of those parishes, whose burial 
 grounds lie in the common foot-path, would live in one continual fit 
 of shaking." * 
 
 Of all the modes of sympathetic credulity, however, none was 
 more prevalent in the reign of James the First, than that which pre- 
 tended to the cure of wounds and diseases ; no stronger proof, 
 indeed, can be given of the credulity of that age, than that Bacon was 
 a believer in the sympathetic cure of warts f, and, with James and 
 his court, in the efficacy of Sir Kenelm Digby's sympathetic powder. 
 To this far-famed medicine, the secret of which King James obtained 
 from Sir Kenelm, it is said, by the Knight himself, in his Discourse 
 on Sympathy, that Mr. James Howel, the well-known author of the 
 Letters, was indebted for a cure, when his hand was severely wounded 
 in endeavouring to part two of his friends engaged in a duel. The 
 King, out of regard to Howel, sent him his own surgeon ; but a gan- 
 grene being apprehended, from the violence of the inflammation, the 
 sufferer was induced to apply to Sir Kenelm, of whose mode of 
 treatment he had heard the most wonderflil accounts. 
 
 " I asked him," relates Digby, " for any thing that had the blood 
 upon it ; so he presently sent for his garter, wherewith his hand was 
 first bound ; and as I called for a bason of water, as if I would wash 
 my hands, I took a handfull of powder of vitriol, which I had in my 
 study, and presently dissolved it. As soon as the bloody garter was 
 brought me, I put it within the bason, observing in the interim, what 
 Mr. Howel did, who stood talking with a gentleman in a corner of my 
 chamber, not regarding at all what I was doing ; but he started sud- 
 denly as if he had found some strange alteration in himself. I asked 
 
 * Grose's Provincial Glossary, p. 29 1 . 
 
 t Vide Bacon's Natural History, Century s. No. 997, 998.
 
 B16 
 
 him what he ailed ? ' I know not what ailes me ; but I finde that 
 I feel no more pain. Methinks that a pleasing kinde of freshnesse, 
 as it were a wet cold napkin, did spread over my hand, which hath 
 taken away the inflammation that tormented me before.' I reply'd, 
 ' Since then that you feel already so good effect of my medicament, I 
 advise you to cast away all your playsters ; only keep the wound 
 clean, and in a moderate temper betwixt heat and cold.' This was 
 presently reported to the Duke of Buckingham, and a little after to 
 the king, who were both very curious to know the circumstance of 
 the businesse, which was, that after dinner I took the garter out of 
 the water, and put it to dry before a great fire. It was scarce dry, 
 but Mr. Howel's servant came running that his master felt as 
 much burning as ever he had done, if not more : for the heat was 
 such as if his hand were twixt coles of fire. I answered, although 
 that had happened at present, yet he should find ease in a short time; 
 for I knew the reason of this new accident, and would provide accord- 
 ingly ; for his master should be free from that inflammation, it may 
 be before he could possibly return to him : but in case he found no 
 ease, I wished him to come presently back again ; if not, he might 
 forbear coming. Thereupon he went ; and at the instant I did put 
 again the garter into the water, thereupon he found his master 
 without any pain at all. To be brief, there was no sense of pain 
 afterward ; but within five or six dayes the wounds were cicatrized, 
 and entirely healed." * 
 
 To this marvellous cure, which may in truth be attributed to the 
 dismission of the plasters, we may add that a similar sanative and 
 sympathetic power was conceived to subsist between the wounds and 
 the instrument which inflicted them. Thus anointing the weapon 
 with a salve, or stroking it in a peculiar manner, had an immediate 
 effect on the wounded person. " Tliey can remedie," says Scot, 
 " anie stranger, and him that is absent, with that verie sword 
 wherewith they are wounded. Yea, and that which is beyond all 
 
 Digby's Discourse upon the Sympathetic Powder, p. 6.
 
 377 
 
 admiration, if they sti'oke the sworde upwards with their fingers, 
 the partie shall feele no paine : whereas if they diawe their finger 
 downewards thereupon, the partie wounded shall feele intollerable 
 pauie. * 
 
 Independent of the superstitions which we have thus classed 
 under distinct heads, there remain several to be noticed, not clearly 
 referrible to any part of the above arrangement ; but which cannot 
 ^^^th propriety be omitted. These may, therefore, be collected 
 under the term miscellaneous, which will be found to include many 
 curious particulars, in no slight degree illustrative of the subject under 
 consideration. 
 
 In the Tempest, towards the close of the fourth act, the poet 
 represents Prospero and Ariel setting on spirits, in the shape of 
 hounds, to hunt Stephano and Trinculo, while, at the same time, a 
 noise of hunters is heard, -j- This species of diabolical or spectral 
 chase was a popular article of belief, and is mentioned or alluded to 
 in many of the numerous books which were written, during this 
 period, on devils and spectres. Lavaterus, treating of the various 
 modes in which spirits act, says, " heereunto belongeth those things 
 which are reported touching the chasing or hunting of Divels, and 
 also of the daunces of dead men, which are of sundrie sortes. I 
 have heard of some which have avouched, that they have seene 
 them |. ;" and in a translation from the French of Peter de Loier's 
 Treatise of Spectres, published in 1605, a chase of this kind is men- 
 tioned under the appellation of Arthur s Chace, " which many," 
 observes this writer, " believe to be in France, and think that it is a 
 kennel of black dogs, followed by unknown huntsmen, with an 
 exceeding great sound of horns, as if it was a very hunting of some 
 wild beast." § 
 
 * Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 280. 
 f Reed's Shakspearo, vol. iv. p. 146. 
 :j: Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by nyght, p. 96. 
 § Reed's Sliakspearc, vol. iv. p. 146. note 3. 
 VOL. I. 3 c
 
 378 
 
 Of a chase of this supernatural description, Boccacio, in the foiy^- 
 teenth century, made an admirable use in his terrific tale of Theo- 
 dore and Honoria ; a narrative which has received new charms and 
 additional horrors from the masterly imitation of Dryden ; and in 
 our own days the same impressive superstition has been productive 
 of a like effect in the spirited ballad of Burger. 
 
 The hell-hounds of Shakspeare appear to be sufficiently formidable; 
 for, not merely commissioned to hunt their victims, they are ordered, 
 likewise, as goblins, to 
 
 gi-ind their joints 
 
 With dry convulsions ; shorten up their sinews 
 
 With aged cramps ; and more pinch-spotted make them, 
 
 Than pard, or cat o'mountain. 
 
 Hark, {exclaims Ariel) they roar. 
 Prospero. Let them be hunted soundly." * 
 
 The punishments which our poet has assigned to sinners in the 
 infernal regions, are most probably founded on the fictions of the 
 monks, who, not content with the infliction of mere fire as a source of 
 torment, condemn the damned to suffer the alternations of heat and 
 cold ; to experience the cravings of extreme hunger and thirst, and 
 to be driven by whirlwinds through the immensity of space. In 
 correspondence with these legendary horrors, are the descriptions 
 attributed to Claudio in Measure for Measitre, and to the Ghost in 
 Hamlet : — 
 
 « Claudio. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
 To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot : 
 This sensible warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
 To bathe injieryjloods, or to reside, 
 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice s 
 To be imprison'd in the viewless winds. 
 And blown with restless violence round about 
 The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 14?.
 
 379 
 
 Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts 
 Imagine howling ! — 'tis too horrible !" * 
 
 " I am thy father's spirit; 
 
 Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night ; 
 And, for the day, corifined to fast iiijires. 
 Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, 
 Are burnt and purg'd away." f 
 
 Imagery somewhat similar to this may be found in the vulgar 
 Latin version of Job xxiv. 19. J, and in the Inferno and Purgatorio of 
 Dante § ; but Shakspeare had sufficient authorities in his own lan- 
 guage. An old homily, quoted by Dr. Farmer, speaking of the 
 pains of hell, says " the fyrste is fyre that ever brenneth, and never 
 gyveth lighte ; the seconde is passying cold, that yf a greate hylle of 
 fyre were cast therein, it shold torne to yce || ;" and Chaucer, in his 
 Assemblie of Foules, describing the situation of souls in hell, declares 
 that 
 
 " breakers of the lawe, sothe to saine. 
 
 And lickerous folke, after that they been dede 
 Shall w/iirle about the world, alway in paine 
 Till many a world be passed." f 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 303 — 305. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 78. 
 
 t " Ad nimium calorem transeat ab aquis nivium." In the paraphrase on Genesis, by 
 Cednion the Saxon poet, the same imagery may be found. 
 
 Of this venerable poet and monk, who flourished in the seventh century, Mr. Turner 
 has given us a very interesting account, together with a version of some parts of his para- 
 phrase. One of these is a picture of the infernal regions, in which he says, — 
 
 § Infer, c. iii. 86. Purgat. c. iii. 31. 
 
 II Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 305, note 9. 
 
 H Chalmers's English Poets, vol. i. p. 330. 
 
 3c 2 
 
 " There comes at last 
 the eastern wind, 
 the cold frost 
 mingling with the fires." 
 
 Hist, of the Anglo-Saxons, 2d edit. 
 4to. 1 807, vol. ii. p. 309. et seq.
 
 380 
 
 The same doctrine is taught in that once popular and curious old 
 work The Shepherd's Calendar^ which so frequently issued from the 
 presses of Wynkyn De Worde, Pynson, and Julian Notary. Among 
 the torments of the damned, the first enumerated 
 
 " is fire so hole to rekeiine 
 
 That no manere of thynge may slekenne, 
 The secunde is colde as seith some 
 That no hete of fii-e may over come ;" 
 
 and Lazarus, describing the punishment of the Envious, says, — "I 
 have seen in hell a flood frozen as ice, wherein the envious men and 
 women were plunged unto the navel ; and then suddenly came over 
 them a right cold and a great wind, that grieved and pained them 
 right sore, and when they would evite and eschew the wonderful 
 blasts of the wind, they plunged into water with great shouts and 
 cries, lamentable to hear * ;" and again in the eighteenth chapter 
 of the same work, it is related, as the reward of them that keep the 
 ten commandments of the Devil, that 
 
 " a great froste in a water rounes 
 
 And after a Jnjtter xm/nde comes 
 
 Whiche gothe through the soules with yre." 
 
 In the Songes and Sonnets, also, by Lord Surrey, and others, 
 which were first published in 1557, the pains of hell are depicted as 
 partaking of the like vicissitude: — 
 
 " The soules that lacked grace 
 Wliich lye in bitter paine, 
 Are not in suche a place, 
 As fooUsh folke do faine ; 
 
 Tormented all vfith Ji/re, 
 And boyle in leade againe — 
 
 Then cast mjrozen piles, 
 
 To Ji-eze there certein howres." t 
 
 * Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, vol. ii. p- 534. 598* 
 t Chalmers's English Poets, vol. ii. p. 424.
 
 381 
 
 Hunger and thirst, as forming part of the sufferings of the damned, 
 are alkided to by Chaucer in his Parson's Tale *, and by Nash in 
 one of his numerous pamphlets : " Wliether," says he, speaking of 
 hell, " it be a place of horror, stench, and darkness, where men see 
 meat, but can get none, and are ever thirsty." -j- 
 
 Heywood in his Hierarchie of Angels J, and Milton in his Para- 
 dise Lost, have adopted Claudio's description of the infernal abode 
 with regard to the interchange of heat and cold ; the picture which 
 the latter has di-awn completely fills up the outline of Shakspeare : — 
 
 " Beyond a frozen continent 
 
 Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 
 
 Of whirlwind and dire hail 
 
 Thither by harpy-footed furies hal'd, 
 
 At certain revolutions, all the damu'd 
 
 Are brought ; and feel by turns the bitter change 
 
 Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, 
 
 From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice 
 
 Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine 
 
 Immovable, infix'd, and frozen i-ound. 
 
 Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire." § 
 
 The Platonic doctrine or superstition relative to the harmony of 
 the spheres, and of the human soul, was a favourite embellishment, 
 both in prose and poetry, during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies. Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker, Milton, have all adopted it as 
 a mode of illustration, and it forms, in the works of our great 
 Dramatist, one of his most splendid and beautiful passages: 
 
 " How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank ! 
 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of musick 
 Creep in our eai's ; soft stiUness, and the night, 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony. 
 
 * Chalmers's English Poets, vol. i. p. 149. — "The mesere of helle shalbe in defaute of 
 mete and drink. For God sayth thus by Moyses : They shal be wasted with honger, &c." 
 t Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil, 1 595. 
 t Folio, 1635. p. 345. 
 § Paradise Lost, book ii. 1. 587, et seq.
 
 382 
 
 Sit, Jessica : Look, how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patinas of bright gold; 
 Therms not the smallest orb, ■which thou behold'st. 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiri?ig to the young-ey'd chenibins ; 
 Such hai-mony is in immortal souls ; 
 But, •whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." * 
 
 The opinion of Plato, as expressed in the tenth book of his Re- 
 public t and in liis Timceus, represents the music of the spheres as so 
 rapid, sweet, and variously inflected, as to exceed all power in the 
 human ear to measure its proportions, and consequently it is not to 
 be heard of man, while resident in this fleshly mould. The same 
 species of harmony is averred by Hooker | and Shakspeare to reside 
 in the human soul ; but, says the latter, " whilst this muddy vesture 
 of decay doth grossly close this musick in, we cannot hear it:" 
 that is, whilst the soul is immured in the body, it is neither con- 
 scious of its own harmony, nor of that existing in the spheres ; 
 but no sooner shall it be freed from this incumbrance, and become 
 a pure sphit, than it shall be sensible both to its oziu concord of sweet 
 sounds, and to that diapason or concentus which is addressed by the 
 nine muses or syrens to the Supreme Being, 
 
 " That undisturbed song oi pure concent. 
 
 Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne, 
 To Him that sits thereon." § 
 
 Of the various superstitions relative to the Moon, which pi-evailed 
 in the days of Shakspeare, a few are still retained. The most com- 
 mon is that founded on the idea of a human creature being im- 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 374. 
 
 t Ex vsairiiv 8e, &c. De llepubl. lib. x. p. 520, Lugd. 1590. Vide Todd's Milton, 
 vol. vii. p. 53. 
 
 :|: " Such, notwithstanding, is the force there of (musical harmony), and so pleasing 
 effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been thereby 
 induced to think, that the soul itself by nature is or hath in it harmony." — Fifth Book of 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, published singly in 1597. 
 
 § Todd's Milton, vol. vii. p. 53.
 
 383 
 
 prisoned in this beautitiil planet. The culprit was generally supposed 
 to be the sinner recorded in Numbers, chap. xv. v. 32., who was 
 found gathering sticks upon the sabbath day ; a crime to which 
 Chaucer has added the iniquity of theft ; for he describes this sin- 
 
 gular inhabitant as 
 
 <* Bearing a bush of thornes on his backe, 
 
 Which for his ikeft might clime no ner the heven." * 
 
 The Italians, however, appropriate this luminary for the residence of 
 Cain, and one of their early poets even speaks of the planet under 
 the term of Caino c le spine, f Shakspeare, with his usual attention to 
 propriety of character, attributes a belief in this superstition to the 
 monster Caliban : 
 
 " Calib. Hast thou not dropped from heaven ? 
 
 Steph. Out o'the moon, I do assure thee : I was the man ill the moon, when time was. 
 
 Cal, I have seen thee in her, and I do adore tliee; 
 My mistress shewed me thee, thy dog and bush." f 
 
 Tlie influence of the moon over diseases bodily and intellectual ; 
 its virtue in all magical rites ; its appearances as predictive of evil 
 and good, and its power over the weather and over many of the 
 minor concerns of life, such as the gathering of herbs, the killing of 
 animals for the table, &c. &c. were much more firmly and imiver- 
 sally accredited in the sixteenth century than at present ; although we 
 must admit, that traces of all these credulities may still be found ; and 
 that in medical science, the doctrine of lunar influence still, and to a 
 certain extent, perhaps with probability, exists. 
 
 Shakspeare addresses the moon as the " sovereign mistress of true 
 melancholy § ;" tells us, that when " she comes more near to the earth 
 than she was wont," she " makes men mad 11 ;" and that, when she is 
 
 * Chalmers's English Poets, vol. i. p. 296. col. 1. 
 
 f Dante's Inferno, cant. xx. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 89, 90. 
 
 § Ibid. vol. xvii. p. 222. Antony and Cleopatra, act iv. sc. 9. 
 
 y Ibid, vol.xix. p. 4UJ). Othello, act v. sc.2.
 
 384 
 
 " pale in liei* anger — rheumatic diseases do abound." * He tells us, 
 also, through the medium of Hecate, that 
 
 " Upon the corner of the moon 
 
 There hangs a vaporous drop profound" 
 
 of power to compel the obedience of infernal spirits f ; and that its 
 eclipses :{:, its sanguine colour §, and its apparent multiplication ||, 
 are certain prognostics of disaster. 
 
 To kill hogs, to collect herbs, and to sow seed, when the moon was 
 increasing, was deemed a most essential observance ; the bacon was 
 better, the plants more effective, and the crops more abundant in con- 
 sequence of this attention. Implicit confidence was also placed in 
 the new moon as a prognosticator of the weather, according to its 
 position, or the curvature of its horns ; and it was hailed by blessings 
 and supplications ; the women especially, both in England and Scot- 
 land, were accustomed to curtesy to the new moon, and on the first 
 night of its appearance the unmarried part of the sex would fre- 
 quently, sitting astride on a gate or stile, invoke its influence in the 
 following curious terms : — 
 
 «' All hail to the Moon, all hail to thee, 
 I prithee good Moon declare to me, 
 This night who my husband shall be." 
 
 The credulity of the country was particularly directed at this 
 period, including the close of the sixteenth century, and the begin- 
 ing of the seventeenth century, towards the^ numerous relations of the 
 existence of monsters of various kinds ; and Shakspeare, who more 
 than any other poet, availed himself of the superstitious follies of his 
 time, hath repeatedly both introduced, and satirized, these objects, as 
 articles of, and exciters of the popular belief His Caliban, a monster 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 361. Midsummer-Night's Dream, actii. sc. 2. 
 
 t Ibid. vol. X. p. 194. Macbeth, act iii. sc. 5. 
 
 t Ibid, vol.xvii. p. 195.342. Lear, act i. sc. 2. ; vol. xix. p. 499. Othello, act v. sc. '2, 
 
 § Ibid. vol. xi. p. 83. Richard the Second, act ii. sc. 4. 
 
 II Ibid. vol. x. p. 480, K. John, act iv. sc. 2.
 
 385 
 
 of his own creation, and, poetically considered, one of the most 
 strikino- products of his imagination, will be noticed at length in 
 another place, and we shall here confine ourselves to his description of 
 the monsters which, as objects of historical record, had lately become 
 the theme of credulous wonder, and general speculation. 
 
 Othello, in his speech before the senators, familiarly alludes to 
 
 " the Cannibals that each other eat, 
 
 The Arithropophagi, and men whose heads 
 Do grow beneath their shoulders :" * 
 
 and Gonzaga, in the Tempest, exclaims : 
 
 " Who woukl beHeve that there were mountaineers, 
 Dewlapp'd like hulls, whose throats had hanging at them 
 Wallets ofjlesh ? or that there were such vien. 
 Whose heads stood in their breasts." f 
 
 These monsters, and many others, which had been described in the 
 editions of Maundeville's Travels, published by Wynkyn De Worde 
 and Pynson in 1499 — 1503, &c. were revived, with fresh claims to 
 belief, by the voyagers and natural historians of the poet's age. In 
 1581, Professor Batman printed his " Doome, warning all men to 
 the judgemente," in which not only the Anthropophagi, who eat 
 mans flesh, are mentioned, but various other races, such as the 
 (Ethiopes with four eyes, the Hippopodes, with their nether parts like 
 horses, the Arimaspi with one eye in the forehead, &c. &c., and to 
 these he adds " men called MonojJoli, who have no head, but a face in 
 their breaste." % In 1596 these marvels were corroborated by Sir 
 Walter Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana §, an empire, which, he affirms, 
 was productive of a similar generation ; and Hackluyt, in 1598, tells 
 us that, " on that branch which is called Caora, are a nation of a 
 
 * Reed's Shaicspeare, vol. xix. p. 271. f Ibid. vol. iv. p. 114. 
 
 X Doome, p. 389. 
 
 § The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation 
 of the Great and Golden Citie of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado. Per- 
 formed in 1595, by Sir W. Ralegh. Imprinte<l at London by Rob. Robinson, 1596. 
 
 VOL. I. 3d
 
 386 
 
 people tcJiose heades appeare not above their shoulders : they are re- 
 ported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouthes in the 
 middle of their breasts." 
 
 With the mere English scholar, classical authority was given to 
 these tales by Philemon Holland's Translation of Pliny's Natural 
 History in 1601, where are the following descriptions both of the 
 Anthropophagi and of the men whose heads do grozi^ beneath their 
 shoulders : — " The Anthropophagi or eaters of man's flesh whom we 
 have placed about the North pole, tenne daies journey by land above 
 the river Borysthenes, use to drinke out of the sculs of men's heads, 
 and to weare the scalpes, haire and all, in steed of mandellions or 
 stomachers before their breasts." * " The Blemmyi, by report, have 
 no heads, but mouth and eies both in their breast f ;" and again, 
 " beyond these westward, some there bee without heads standing 
 upon their neckes, who carrie eies in their shoulders." % 
 
 It is, also, very probable that the attention of Shakspeare was still 
 further drawn to these headless monsters by the labours of the 
 engraver ; for in Este's edition of Maundeville's Travels, an attempt 
 is made to delineate one of these deformities, who is represented 
 with the eyes, nose, and mouth situated on the breast and stomach ; 
 and in a translation of Ralegh's Guiana into Latin, by Hulse, in 
 1599, a similar plate is given. § 
 
 That our author viewed this partiality in the public mind for 
 wonders and strange spectacles, with a smile of contempt, and was 
 willing to seize an opportunity for ridiculing the mania, appears 
 evident from a passage in his Tetnpest, where Trinculo, discovering 
 Caliban extended on the ground, supposes him to be a species of 
 fish, and observes, " Were I in England now (as once I was) and had 
 
 * The Historie of the World. Commonly called, The Natural Historic of C. Plinius 
 Secundus. Translated into English by Philemon Holland, Doctor in Physicke. London, 
 printed by Adam Islip. 1601. vol. i. p. 154. book vii. chap. 2. 
 
 t Holland's Pliny, vol. i. p. 96. book v. chap. 8. t Ibid. p. 156. 
 
 § The title of this work is, Brevis et admirctnda Desa-iptio Regnt Gvian^e, auri abtm- 
 dantissimi, in America. It is accompanied by a map, engraved by Hondius, on which are 
 drawn men hunting, with their heads beneath their shoulders.
 
 387 
 
 but this Jish painted, not a holiday Ibol there but would give a piece 
 of silver : there would this monster make a man ; any strange beast 
 there makes a man : when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame 
 beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian." * 
 
 Wild Indians^ curious Jishes, and crocodiles, seem to have been sin- 
 gularly numerous in London at this epoch, having been brought 
 thither by several of our enterprising navigators ; and by those who 
 crowded from every part of the country to view them, many supersti- 
 tious marvels were connected with their natural history. Of three or 
 four savages which Frobisher took in his first voyage, one, we are 
 told, " for very choler and disdain bit his tong in twaine within his 
 mouth : notwithstanding he died not thereof, but lived untill he came 
 in Englande, and then he died of colde, which he had taken at sea f ;" 
 the survivors, there is every reason to suppose, were exliibited ; for 
 in the year 1577, there was entered on the books of the Stationers' 
 Company, " A description of the portrayture and shape of those 
 strange kinde of people which the worthie Mr. Martin Fourbosier 
 brought into England in Ao 1576 % ;" and Mr. Chalmers relates, 
 that " Lord Southampton, and Sir Francis Gorges, engaging in voy- 
 ages of discovery, sent out, in 1611, two vessels under the command 
 of Harlie, and Nicolas, who sailed along the New England coast, 
 where they were sometimes well, and often ill, received, by the 
 natives ; and returned to England, in the same year, withj'?i;£' savages, 
 on board. In 1614, Captain Smith carried out to New England one 
 of those savages, named Tantum ; Captains Harlie and Hopson trans- 
 ported, in the same year, two others of those savages, called Epenoxc, 
 and Manazcet ; one of those savages adventured to the European 
 continent ; and the Jifth Indian, of whom no account is given, 
 we may easily suppose died in London, and was exhibited for a 
 show." § 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 83. Act i. sc. 2. 
 
 f Frohisher^s First Voi/agejor- t/ie Discuveric of CaUi^ti, Jto. 1578. 
 
 % Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 83, note y. 
 
 § Chalmers's Apology, p. 586. 
 
 3 U 2
 
 388 
 
 We leani from a publication of Churchyard's in 1578, that Fro- 
 bisher's crew found a " straunge fish dead, that had been caste from 
 the sea on the shore, who had a boane in his head hke an Unicorne, 
 which they brought awaye, and presented to our Prince, when thei 
 came home*;" and from the Stationers' Books, that, in 1604, an 
 account was printed " of a monstrous ^sA, that appeared in the form 
 of a woman from her waist upward, seene in the sea."-i- That the 
 credulity of the pviblic in Elizabeth's days was remarkably great in 
 swallowing the most marvellous details in natural history, is proved 
 by a curious scene in the " City Match" of Jasper Mayne, which, 
 though first acted in 1639, refers to the age of Elizabeth, as to a 
 period fertile in these wondrous exhibitions. A set of knaves are 
 described as hanging out the picture of a strange fish, which they 
 affirm is the fifth they have shown ; and the following dialogue takes 
 place relative to the inscription on the place which included the 
 monster : — 
 
 " Holland. Pray, can you read that ? Sir, I warrant 
 That tells where it was caught, and what fish 'tis. 
 
 Plofwell. Within this place is to be seen, 
 A wonderousjlsh. God save the Queen. 
 
 Hoi. Amen ! She is my customer, and I 
 Have sold her bone-lace often. 
 
 Bright. Why the Queen ? 'Tis writ the King. 
 
 Plot. That was to make the rhime. 
 
 Bright. 'Slid, thou did'st read it as twere some picture of 
 An Elizabeth-^sh." % 
 
 * Prayse and Reporte of Maister Martyne Forboisher's Voyage to Meta Incognita, &c. 
 bl. 1. 12mo. 1578. Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 83. note ?• 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 83. note 7. — The existence of met-maids has, within 
 these few years, been asserted by numerous testimonies ; some of which are so clear, 
 minute, and respectable, as to stagger the most sceptical. It is not only possible, but 
 from the evidence alluded to it appears indeed somewhat probable, that a creature partially 
 resembling the human form exists in the ocean, and occasionally, though rarely, approaches 
 so near the shore as to become an object of wonder and superstitious horror. The sea 
 round the Isle of Man was formerly reputed to abound in these monsters, which were con- 
 ceived to be of two kinds, the one malignant, the other benevolent and kind. 
 % Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 377, 378.
 
 389 
 
 A boy is then introduced, who sings a song upon the fish, com- 
 mencinof with these Hnes : 
 
 'o 
 
 " We show no monstrous crocodile. 
 Nor any prodigy of Nile ;" * 
 
 which again alludes to the monster-loving propensities of good Queen 
 Bess's subjects ; for Batman in his work upon Bartholome, published 
 in 1582, says, — " Of late years there hath been brought into England, 
 the cases or skinnes of such crocodiles, to be seene, and much money 
 given for the sight thereof; the policy of strangers," he adds, in the 
 spirit of Shakspeare, " laugh at our folly, either that we are too 
 wealthy, or else that we know not how to bestow our money -[•;" and 
 Bullokar, in his English Expositor of 1616, confirms the charge by 
 telling us, that a dead crocodile, " but in perfect forme," and nine 
 feet long, had lately been exhibited in London, a fact to which he 
 annexes the following tradition: — "It is written," he remarks, " that 
 he will weep over a mdn's head when he hath devoured the body, 
 and then he will eat up the head too. Wherefore — crocodiles tears 
 signifie such tears as are fained, and spent only with intent to deceive 
 or doe harme." J Of this superstition Shakspeare has made a poetical 
 use in two of his dramas : Margaret in Henry VI. Part 2. complains 
 that Gloucester beguiles the king, 
 
 " as the mournful crocodile 
 
 With sorrow snares relenting passengers :" § 
 
 and Othello, execrating the supposed duplicity of Desdemona, 
 exclaims, 
 
 " If that the earth could teem with woman's tears, 
 Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile." 1| 
 
 * Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 379. 
 
 f Batman upon Bartholome, p. 359. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 449. note 5. 
 
 ^ Ibid. vol. xiii. p. 268. Act iii. so. 1. || Ibid. vol. xix. p. 449.
 
 390 
 
 Many superstitions relative to the Dying, existed at this time, 
 among all ranks of people, and a few of these have been preserved by 
 our poet. One of the most general was built on the belief, that 
 Satan, or some of his infernal host, watched the death-bed of every 
 individual, and, if impenitence or irreligion appeared, immediately 
 took possession of the soul. The death-scene of Cardinal Beaufort is 
 an admirable exemplification of this appalling idea ; Henry is appeal- 
 ing to the Almighty in behalf of the agonised sinner, and utters the 
 following pious petition : — 
 
 " O thou eternal Mover of the heavens, 
 Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch ! 
 O, beat away the busy meddling fiend 
 That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul, 
 And from his bosom purge this black despair !" * 
 
 The powerful delineation of this scene from the pencil of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, in which the " meddling fiend " is personified in 
 all his terrors, must be considered in strict accordance with the cre- 
 dulity of the age ; for " in an ancient manuscript book of devotions," 
 relates Mr. Douce, " written in the reign of Henry VI., there is a 
 prayer addressed to Saint George, with the following very singular 
 passage : ' Judge for me whan the moste hedyous and damnable dra- 
 gons of helle shall be redy to take my poore soule and engloute 
 it in to theyr infernall belyes-j-;" and the books on demonology and 
 spirits, written in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, clearly prove 
 that this relic of popish superstition was still a portion of the popular 
 creed. 
 
 Another singular conception was, that it was necessary in the 
 agonies of death, to 
 
 " Pluck — men's pillows from below their heads," J 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xiii. p. 306. Act iii. so. 3. 
 t Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 20. 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 135. Timon of Athens, act iv. sc. 3.
 
 391 
 
 in order that they might die the easier ; a practice founded on the 
 ridiculous supposition that, if pigeons' feathers formed a part of the 
 materials of the pillow, it was impossible the sufferer should expire 
 but in great misery, and that he would probably continue to struggle 
 for a prodigious length of time in exquisite torture. 
 
 It was common at this period, and the practice, indeed, continued 
 until the middle of the last century, to consider Wells and Fountains 
 as peculiarly sacred and holy, and to visit them as a species of pil- 
 grimage, or for the healing virtues which superstition had fondly 
 attributed to them. Many of these wells, which had been much 
 frequented in London, during the days of Fitzstephen, were closed, 
 or neglected, when Stowe wrote* ; but in the country the habit of 
 resorting to such springs, and for purposes similar to those which 
 existed in papal times, was generally preserved. Bourne, who pub- 
 lished in 1725, speaks in language peculiarly descriptive of this 
 superstitious regard for wells and fountains, not only as it was 
 observed in ancient times, but at the period in which he lived. " In 
 the dark ages of popery," he says, " it was a custom, if any xcell had 
 an awful situation, and was seated in some lonely melancholy vale ; 
 if its water was clear and limpid, and beautifully margin'd with the 
 tender grass ; or if it was look'd upon, as having a medicinal quality ; 
 to gift it to some Saint, and honour it with his name. Hence it. is 
 that we have at this day wells and fountains called, some St. Johns, 
 St. Mary Magdalen s, St. Mary's Well, ^-c. 
 
 " To these kind of wells, the common people are accustomed to 
 go, on a summer's evening, to refresh themselves with a walk after 
 the toil of the day, to drink the water of the fountain, and enjoy the 
 pleasing prospect of shade and stream. 
 
 " Now this custom (though, at this time of day, very commendable, 
 and harmless, and innocent) seems to be the remains of that super- 
 stitious practice of the Papists, of paying adoration to wells and fcnm- 
 
 Stowe's Survey of London, p. 18. edit, of 1618,
 
 392 
 
 tains ; for they imagined there was some holiness and sanctity in 
 them, and so worshipped them." * 
 
 It was in the north especially, where Mr. Bourne resided, that 
 wells of thia description were most frequently to be found, possessing 
 the advantages of a romantic situation, and preserved with care 
 through the influence of the traditionary legends of the neighbouring 
 village ; for these retreats were supposed to be the haunts of fairies 
 and good spirits who were accustomed to meet 
 
 . " in dale, forest, or mead. 
 
 By paved fountain, or by rushy brook." f 
 
 At these wells offerings were frequently made, either owing to the 
 conceived sanctity of the place, or from gratitude for imagined benefit 
 received through the waters of the spring ; and as those who had re- 
 
 * Bourne's Antiquities apud Brand, p. 90. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 356. — A fountain of this hallowed and mysterious na- 
 ture, has been described by Mr. Southey in language most graphically and beautifully 
 descriptive : — 
 
 " Tliere is a fountain in the forest call'd 
 The fountain of the Fairies : when a child, 
 With most delightful wonder I have heard 
 Tales of the Elfin tribe that on its banks 
 Hold midnight revelry. An ancient oak, 
 The goodliest of the forest, grows beside, 
 Alone it stands, upon a green grass plat, 
 By the woods bounded like some little isle. 
 It ever hath been deem'd their favourite tree. 
 They love to lie and rock upon its leaves, 
 And bask them in the moon-shine. Many a time 
 Hath the woodman shown his boy where the dark round 
 On the green-sward beneath its boughs, bewrays 
 Their nightly dance, and bade him spare the tree. 
 Fancy had cast a spell upon the place 
 And made it holy ; and the villagers 
 Would say that never evil thing approached 
 Unpunished there. The strange and fearful pleasure 
 That fill'd me by that solitary spring, 
 Ceas'd not in riper years ; and now it woke 
 Deeper delight, and more mysterious awe." 
 
 Joan of Arc, vol. i. b. i. p. 126.
 
 393 
 
 course to these fountains were usually of the lower class, small pieces 
 of money were given, or even rags suspended on the trees or bushes 
 which overhung the stream ; whence these fountains in many places 
 obtained the name of Rag-wells. One thus termed is mentioned, by 
 Mr. Brand, as still exhibiting these tributary shreds at the village of 
 Benton near Newcastle ; Mr. Pennant records two at Spey and Drach- 
 aldy in Scotland; and Mr. Shaw tells us, that in the province of 
 Moray pilgrimages to wells are not yet obsolete. * In many places 
 in the North, indeed, there are wells still remaining which were 
 manifestly intended for the refreshment of the way-worn traveller, 
 and are yet held in veneration. We have seen some of these with 
 ladles of brass affixed to the stone-work by a chain, a convenience 
 probably as ancient as the Anglo-Saxon era. 
 
 Several traditions of a peculiarly superstitious hue, have been che- 
 rished in this country with regard to the bird-tribe, and most of them 
 have been introduced by our great poet as accessory either to the 
 terrible, or the pathetic. The ominous croaking of the raven and 
 the crow have been already mentioned, and we shall therefore, under 
 the present head, merely advert to a few additional notices relative to 
 the owl and the ruddock, the former the supposed herald of horror and 
 disaster, the latter the romantic minister of charity and pity. 
 
 To the fearful bodings of the clamorous owl, which we have already 
 introduced when treating of omens, may now be added a superstition 
 which formerly rendered this vmlucky bird the peculiar dread of 
 mothers and nurses. It was firmly believed, that the screech-owl 
 was in the habit of destroying infants by sucking out their blood and 
 breath as they laid in the cradle. " Lamias," observes Lavaterus, 
 " are things that make children afrayde. Lamige are also called 
 Striges. Striges (as they saye) are unluckie-birds, whiche sucke out 
 the blood of infants lying in their cradles. And hereof some men 
 will have Matches take their name, who also are called f Volatioce.'^ 
 
 * Bourne's Antiquities apud Brand, p. 91, 95. 
 ■j- Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by nyght, p. 6. 
 
 VOL. I. 3 E
 
 394 
 
 This credulity relative to the Strix or screech-owl may be traced 
 to Ovid *, and is alluded to by Shakspeare in the following lines : — 
 
 " We talk of goblins, owls, and elvish sprites ; 
 If we obey them not, this will ensue, 
 They'll suck mir breath, and pinch us black and blue." f 
 
 Another strange legend in the history of the owl is put into the 
 mouth of the hapless Ophelia: — 
 
 " Well, God 'ield you ! They say the owl was a baker's daughter ;" | 
 
 a metamorphosis of which Mr. Douce has given us the origin ; 
 he tells us that it is yet a common story among the vulgar in 
 Gloucestershire, and is thus related : — " Our Saviour went into a 
 baker's shop where they were baking, and asked for some bread to 
 eat. The mistress of the shop immediately put a piece of dough into 
 the oven to bake for him ; but was reprimanded by her daughter, 
 who insisting that the piece of dough was too large, reduced it to a 
 very small size. The dough, however, immediately afterwards began 
 to swell, and presently became of a most enormous size. Where- 
 upon the baker's daughter cried out ' Heugh, heugh, heugh,' which 
 owl-like noise, probably induced our Saviour for her wickedness to 
 transform her into that bird." He adds that this story was often 
 related to children, in order to deter them from such illiberal beha- 
 viour to poor people. § 
 
 The partiality shown to the ruddock or red-breast seems to have 
 been founded on the popular ballad of The Children in the Wood, and 
 the play of Cymbeline. The charitable office, however, which these 
 productions have ascribed to Robi7i, has an earlier origin than their 
 date; for in Thomas Johnson's Cormtcopia, 4to. 1596, it is related that 
 " the robin redbrest if he find a man or woman dead, will cover all 
 
 * Fast. lib. vi. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx p. 383, 384. Comedy of Errors, act ii. sc. 2. 
 
 :i; Hamlet, act 4. sc. 5. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 280. note 3.
 
 395 
 
 his face with mosse, and some thinke that if the body should remaine 
 imburied that he would cover the whole body also." * It is highly 
 probable that this anecdote might give birth to the burial of the 
 babes, whom no one heeded, 
 
 " Till Robin-red-breast painfully 
 Did caver them with leaves " 
 
 for, according to Dr. Percy f, this pathetic narrative was built upon 
 a play published by Rob. Yarrington in 1601. It is likewise possible 
 that the same passage occasioned the beautiful lines in the play of 
 Cymbeline, performed about 1606, where Arviragus, mourning over 
 Imogen, exclaims — 
 
 " With fairest flowers, 
 
 Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
 I'll sweeten thy sad grave : Thou shalt not lack 
 The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose ; nor 
 The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
 The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, 
 Out-sweeten'd not thy breath : the ruddock would, 
 With charitable bill — bring thee all this ,- 
 Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, 
 To winter-ground thy corse." % 
 
 These interesting pictures of the red-breast would alone be suffi- 
 cient to create an affectionate feeling for him ; the attachment how- 
 ever has been ever since kept alive by delineations of a similar kind. 
 In our author's time Drayton, Webster, and Dekker, have all alluded 
 to this pleasing tradition : the first in his Owl 1604 — 
 
 " Cov'ring with moss the deads unclosed eye, 
 The little red-breast teacheth charitie ;" § 
 
 the second in his Tragedy, called The White Devil, or Vittoria Corom- 
 hona, 1612 — 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol, xviii. p. 577' note 5. 
 
 f Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 171. 4to. edit. 
 
 \ Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 576. 
 
 § Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 408. 
 
 3e 2
 
 396 
 
 " Call for tlie robin red-breast and the wi-en, 
 Since o'er shady groves they hover, 
 And with leaves and flowers do cover 
 The fi-iendless bodies of unburied men ;" * 
 
 and the third in one of his pamphlets printed in 1616^ — " They that 
 cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are Robin red-breasts that 
 bring strawes in their bils to cover a dead man in extremitie." "f 
 
 Some wonderful properties relative to an imaginary gem, called 
 a carbuncle, formed likewise a part of the popular creed. It was 
 supposed to be the most transparent of all the precious stones, and to 
 possess a native intrinsic lustre so powerful as to illuminate the 
 atmosphere to a considerable distance around it. It was, therefore, 
 very appositely adopted by the writers of romance, as an ornament 
 and source of light for their subterranean palaces, and almost all our 
 elder poets have gifted it with a similar brilliancy ; thus Chaucer, in 
 his Romaunt of the Rose % ; Gower, in his Confesssio Amantis § ; 
 Lydgate, in his Description of King Priam s Palace [| ; and Stephen 
 Hawes, in his Pastime of Pleasure ^, have all celebrated it as a kind 
 of second sun, and the most valuable of earthly products. Chaucer, 
 more particularly, mentions it as so clear and bright, — 
 
 " That al so sone as it was night, 
 Men mightin sene to go for nede 
 A mile, or two in length and brede. 
 Such light ysprange out of that stone." 
 
 That this fiction was credited in the days of Elizabeth and James, 
 may be conceded, not only from the familiar allusions of the poets, 
 but from the philosophic writers on the superstitions of the age. 
 
 * Ancient British Drama, vol. iii, p. il. 
 
 f Villanies discovered by lanthorn and candle light, chap. xv. — For some modern tri- 
 butes to the supposed charity of this domestic Uttle bird, I refer my readers to the first 
 volume of Literary Hours, 3d. edit. p. 65. et seq. 
 
 X Chalmers's English Poets, vol. i. p. 179. J Ibid. vol. ii. p. 177' 
 
 II Description of King Priam's Palace, lib. ii. 
 
 II Vide Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 229.
 
 397 
 
 To the unborrowed light of the carbuncle, Shakspeare has referred in 
 King Henry the Eighth, where the Princess Elizabeth is prophetically 
 termed, 
 
 " a gem 
 
 To lighten all this isle;"* 
 
 and in Titus Andronicus, (if that play can be deemed his,) upon the 
 discovery of Bassianus slaughtered in a pit ; 
 
 " Martins. Upon his bloody finger he doth wear 
 
 A precious ring, that lightens all the hole, 
 like a taper in some monument ; f 
 
 He also mentions this " rich jewel " by way of comparison in 
 Coriolanus % ; appropriates it as an ornament to the wheels of 
 Phoebus's chariot in Cymbeline§; and in the Player's speech in 
 Hamlet, the eyes of Pyrrhus are said to be " like carbuncles." || 
 
 Drayton describes this fabled stone with nearly as much precision 
 as Chaucer ; he calls it 
 
 " that admired, mighty stone, 
 
 The carhuJKle that's named ; 
 Which from it such a flaming light 
 And radiancy ejecteth, 
 That in the very darkest night 
 The eye to it directeth." f 
 
 A modern poet, remarkable for his powers of imagination, has 
 beautifully, and very happily availed himself of these marvellous 
 attributes, in describing the magnificent palace of Shedad, a passage 
 which we shall transcribe, as it leads to an illustrative extract from a 
 writer of Shakspeare' s age : 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. S*. Act ii. so. 3. f Ibid. vol. xxL p. 5<5. 
 
 X Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 39. Act i. sc. 4. § Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 632. Act v. sc. 5. 
 
 H Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 151. Act ii. sc. 2. 
 H Chalmers's English. Poets, vol. iv. p. 465.
 
 398 
 
 " Here self-suspended hangs in aii-, 
 As its pure substance loathed material touch. 
 The living carbuncle ; 
 Sun of the lofty dome, 
 Darkness has no dominion o'er its beams ; 
 Intense it glows, an ever-flowing tide 
 Of glory, like the day-flood in its source." 
 
 " I have no where seen," says Mr. Southey in a note on these 
 lines, " so circumstantial an account of its (the carbuncle's) wonderful 
 properties as in a passage of Thuanus, quoted by Stephanius in his 
 notes to Saxo-Grammaticus. 
 
 " Wliilst the King was at Bologna, a stone, wonderful in its 
 species and nature, was brought to him from the East Indies, by a 
 man unknown, who appeared by his manners to be a Barbarian. It 
 sparkled as though all burning, with an incredible splendour; flashing 
 radiance, and shooting on every side its beams, it filled the surround- 
 ing air to a great distance with a light scarcely by any eyes endurable. 
 In this also it was wonderful, that being most impatient of the earth, 
 if it was confined, it would force its way, and immediately fly aloft ; 
 neither could it be contained by any art of man in a narrow place, 
 but appeared only to love those of ample extent. It was of the 
 utmost purity, stained by no soil nor spot. Certain shape it had 
 none, for its figure was inconstant, and momentarily changing, and 
 though at a distance it was beautiful to the eye, it would not suffer itself 
 to be handled with impunity, but hurt those who obstinately struggled 
 witli it, as many persons before many spectators experienced. If by 
 chance any part of it was broken off", for it was not very hard, it became 
 nothing less." * 
 
 An account equally minute, and in terms nearly similar, occurs in 
 Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, and both were probably taken 
 from the same source, the writings of Fernel or Fernelius. This 
 physician died in 1558; and his description, as copied by Scot, con- 
 tributed, no doubt, to prolong the public credulity in this kingdom ; 
 
 * Thalaba the Destroyer, vol. i. p. 39— 41. edit. 1801.
 
 399 
 
 though the Englisli philosopher attempts to explain the phenomenon 
 by supposing that actual flame was concentrated and burning in the 
 centre of the gem. 
 
 " Johannes Fernelius writeth of a strange stone latelie brought 
 out of India, which hath in it such a marvellous brightnes, puritie 
 and shining, that therewith the aire round about is so lightned and 
 cleared, that one may see to read thereby in the darknes of night. 
 It will not be conteined in a close roome, but requireth an open and 
 free place. It would not willingly rest or stale here belowe on the 
 earth, but alwaies laboureth to ascend up into the aire. If one 
 presse it downe with his hand, it resisteth, and striveth verie sharplie. 
 It is beautifull to behold, without either spot or blemish, and yet 
 verie unpleasant to taste or feele. If any part thereof be taken awaie, 
 it is never a whit diminished, the forme thereof being inconstant, and 
 at everie moment mutable." * 
 
 The carbuncle was believed to be an animal substance generated in 
 the body of a serpent, to possess a sexual distinction, the males 
 having a star-formed burning nucleus, while the females dispersed 
 their brilliancy on all sides in a formless blaze ; and, like other 
 transparent gems, to have the power of expelling evil spirits. 
 
 While on the subject of superstitious notions relative to luminous 
 bodies, we may remark, that in the age of Shakspeare, the wandering 
 lights, termed Will-o-wisp and Jack-o-Lanfern, were supposed by the 
 common people to be occasioned by demons and malignant fairies, 
 with the view of leading the benighted traveller to his destruction. 
 " Many tymes," says Lavaterus, " candles and small fiers appeare in 
 the night, and seeme to run up and downe ; — those fiers some time 
 seeme to come togither, and by and by to be severed and run 
 abroade, and at the last to vanish clean away. Somtime these fiers 
 go alone in the night season, and put such as see them, as they travel 
 by night, in great fear. But these things, and many suche lyke, have 
 
 * Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 306.
 
 400 
 
 their natural causes : and yet I will not denye, hut that many tymes 
 Dyvels delude men in this ?nan7ier" * 
 
 Stephano, in the Tempest, attributes this phenomenon to the 
 agency of a mischievous fairy : " Monster, your fairy, which, you say, 
 is a harmless fairy, has done little better than played the Jack with 
 us." t 
 
 Various causes have been assigned for the appearance of the ignis 
 fatuus; modern chemistry asserts it to be occasioned by hydrogen 
 gas, evolving from decaying vegetables, and the decomposition of 
 pyritic coal ; and when seen hovering on the surface of burial grounds, 
 to originate from the same gas in a higher state of volatility, through 
 the agency of phosphoric impregnation. 
 
 The partial view which we have now taken of the superstitions of 
 the country, as they existed in the age of Shakspeare, will, in part, 
 demonstrate how great was the credulity subsisting at this period ; 
 how well calculated were many of these popular delusions for the 
 purposes of the dramatic writei*, and how copiously and skilfully 
 have these been moulded and employed by the great poet of our 
 stage. A considerable portion also of the manners, customs, and 
 diversions of the country, which had been necessarily omitted in the 
 preceding chapters, will be found included in this sketch of a part of 
 the popular creed, and will contribute to heighten the effect of a 
 picture, which can only receive its completion through the mutual 
 aid of various subsequent departments of the present work. 
 
 * Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by nyght, p. 51. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 142, 143. Act iv. sc. 1,
 
 401 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 BJOGRAPHY OF SHAKSPEARE RESUMED — HIS IRREGULARITIES DEER-STEALING IN Sill 
 
 THOMAS Lucy's park — account of the lucy family — daisy-hill, the keeper's 
 
 LODGE, WHERE SHAKSPEARE WAS CONFINED ON THE CHARGE OF STEALING DEER 
 
 SHAKSPEARE's REVENGE BALLAD ON LUCY SEVERE PROSECUTION OF SIR THOMAS 
 
 NEVER FORGOTTEN BY SHAKSPEARE THIS CAUSE, AND PROBABLY ALSO DEBT, AS HIS 
 
 FATHER WAS NOW IN REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES, INDUCED HIM TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY 
 FOR LONDON ABOUT 158G REMARKS ON THIS REMOVAL. 
 
 After the slight sketch of rural life which we have just given ; of its 
 manners, customs, diversions, and superstitions, as they existed during 
 the latter part of the sixteenth century, we shall now proceed with the 
 biographical narrative of our author, resuming it from the close of the 
 fourth chapter. 
 
 To regulate the workings of an ardent imagination, and to control 
 the effervescence of the passions in early life, experience has uniformly 
 taught us to consider as a task of great difficulty; and seldom, indeed, 
 capable of being achieved without the advice and direction of those, 
 who, under the guidance of similar admonition, have succesfully borne 
 up against the numerous temptations to which human frailty is sub- 
 jected. That Shakspeare possessed powers of fancy greatly beyond 
 the common lot of humanity, and that with these is almost constantly 
 connected a correspondent fervency of temperament and passion, will 
 not probably be denied ; and if it be recollected that the poet became 
 the arbitrator of his own conduct at the early age of eighteen, not 
 much wonder will be excited, although he was a married man, and a 
 father, if we have to record some juvenile irregularities. Tradition 
 affirms, and the report has been repeated by Mr. Rowe, that he had 
 the misfortune, shortly after his settlement in Stratford, to form an 
 intimacy with some young men of thoughtless and dissipated character, 
 who, among other illegalities, had been in the habit of deer-stealing, 
 
 VOL. I. 3 F
 
 402 
 
 and by whom, more than once, he was induced, under the Idea of a 
 frohc, to join in their reprehensible practice. 
 
 The scene of depredation when Shakspeare and his companions 
 were detected, was Fulbroke Park, at that time belonging to Sir 
 Thomas Lucy, Knight. This gentleman, who has obtained celebrity 
 principally, if not solely, as the prosecutor of Shakspeare, was de- 
 scended from a family, whose pedigree has been deduced, by Dugdale, 
 from the reign of Richard the First ; the name of Lucy, however, was 
 not assumed by his ancestors until the thirty-fourth of Henry the 
 Third. Sir Thomas, in the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 built a noble mansion at Charlcott, near Stratford, but on the opposite 
 side of the Avon ; this edifice, which still exists, is constructed of 
 brick with stone coins, and though somewhat modernized, still pre- 
 serves, as a whole, its ancient Gothic character, especially the grand 
 front, which exhibits pretty accurately its pristine state. Fuller has 
 recorded Sir Thomas as sheriff for the county of Warwickshire in the 
 tenth year of Elizabeth, and informs us, that his armorial bearings 
 were Gul. Crusulee Or, 3 Picks (or Lucies) Hauriant Ar. * 
 
 That the rich woods, sequestered lawns, and romantic recesses of 
 Fulbroke Park, would very frequently attract the footsteps of our 
 youthful bard, independent of any lure which the capture of its game 
 might afford, we may justly surmise ; and still more confidently may 
 we affirm, that his meditations or diversions in this forest laid the 
 foundation of a part of the beautiful scenery which occurs in As You 
 Like It. The woodland pictures in this delightful play are faithful 
 transcripts of what he had felt and seen in those secluded haunts, par- 
 ticularly the description of the wounded deer, the pathos and accuracy 
 of which are no doubt referrible to the actual contemplation of such an 
 incident, in the shades of Fulbroke ; they strikingly prove, indeed, that 
 the habits of the chase, though fostered in the morn of youth, had not, 
 
 * Fuller's Worthies, part iii. p. 132. The Luce or Pike is very abundant in this 
 part of the Avon, and there may still be seen in the kitchen of Charlecot-house, the repre- 
 sentation of a pike, weighing forty pounds, a native of this stream, and caught in the year 
 16-10.
 
 403 
 
 even in respect to the objects of their sport, in the smallest degree 
 impaired the native tenderness and humanity of the poet. The ex- 
 pressions of pity, in fact, for the sufferings of a persecuted animal 
 were never uttered in words more impressive than what the ensuing 
 dialogue exhibits : 
 
 " Duke. Come, shall we go and kill us venison ? 
 And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools, — 
 Being native burghers of this desert city, — 
 Should, in their own confines, with forked heads 
 Have their round haunches gor'd. 
 
 Lord. Indeed, my lord. 
 
 The melancholy Jaques grieves at that ; 
 And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp 
 Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you. 
 To-day, my lord of Amiens, and myself, 
 Did steal behind him, as he lay along 
 Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out 
 Upon the brook that brawls along this wood : 
 To the which place a poor sequester'd stag. 
 That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt. 
 Did come to languish ; and, indeed, my lord, 
 The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans, 
 That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat 
 Almost to bursting ; and the big round tears 
 Cours'd one another down his innocent nose 
 In piteous chase : and thus the hairy fool. 
 Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, 
 Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook. 
 Augmenting it with tears." * 
 
 The detection of Shakspeare in his adventurous amusement, was 
 followed, it is said, by confinement for a short time in the keeper's 
 lodge, until the charge had been substantiated against him. A farm- 
 house in the park, situated on a spot called Daisy Hill, is still pointed 
 out as the very building which sheltered the delinquent on this imfor- 
 tunate occasion, -f- 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 42, 43. Act ii. sc. 1. 
 t Ireland's Views on the Avon, p. 154. 
 
 3 F 2
 
 404 
 
 That Sir Tliomas had reason to complain of this violation of his 
 property, and was warranted in taking proper steps to prevent its re- 
 currence, who will deny ? and yet it appears from tradition, that a 
 reprimand and public exposure of his conduct constituted all the 
 punishment that was B,tjirst inflicted on the offender. Here the matter 
 would have rested, had not the irritable feelings of our young bard, 
 inflamed by the disgrace which he had suffered, induced him to attempt 
 a retaliation on the magistrate. He had recourse to his talents for 
 satire, and the ballad which he produced for this purpose was probably 
 his earliest effort as a writer. 
 
 Of this pasquinade, which the poet took care should be affixed 
 to Sir Thomas's park-gates, and extensively circulated through his 
 neighbourhood, three stanzas have been brought forward as genuine 
 fragments. The preservation of the whole would certainly have been 
 a most entertaining curiosity ; but even the authenticity of what is said 
 to have been preserved, becomes a subject of interest, when we 
 recollect, that the fate and fortunes of our author hinged upon the 
 consequences of this juvenile production. 
 
 The first of these fragments, which is the opening stanza, rests 
 upon testimony of considerable weight and respectability ; upon the 
 authority of a Mr. Thomas Jones, who was born about 1613 and 
 resided at Tarbick, a viDage in Worcestershire, eighteen miles from 
 Stratford, where he died, aged upwards of ninety, in 1703. He is 
 considered by Mr. INIalone, as the grandson of a Mr. Thomas Jones, 
 who dwelt in Stratford during the period that Shakspeare was an 
 inhabitant of it, and who had four sons between the years 1581 and 
 1590, one of whom, settling at Tarbick, became the father of the 
 preserver of the fragment. * This venerable old man could re- 
 member having heard from several very aged people at Stratford 
 the whole history of the poet's transgression, and could repeat the 
 first stanza of the ballad which he had written in ridicule of Sir 
 Thomas. A friend of his to whom he was one day repeating this 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol.i. p. 128. note 1.
 
 405 
 
 stanza, which was tlie whole that he could recollect, had the pre- 
 caution to take a copy of it from his recitation, and the grandson of 
 the person thus favoured, a Mr. Wilkes, presented a transcript of it 
 to Mr. Oldys and Mr. Capell. Among the collections for a Life of 
 Shalcspeare left by the former of these gentlemen, this stanza was 
 found, " faithfully transcribed," says its possessor, " from the copy 
 which his (Mr. Jones's) relation very courteously communicated to 
 me*;" and of Mr. Oldys's veracity it is important to add, that 
 Mr. Steevens considered it as unimpeachable, remarking, at the same 
 time, that " it is not very probable that a ballad should be forged, 
 from which an undiscovered wag could derive no triumph over 
 antiquarian credulity," f It must be confessed that neither the wit 
 nor the poetry of these lines, which we are about to communicate, 
 deserve much praise, and that the greater part of the point, if it can 
 be termed such, depends upon provincial pronunciation ; for in a 
 note on the copy vi^hich Mr. Capell possessed, it is said, that " the 
 people of those parts pronounce loxvsie like Lucy ij: :" but let us 
 listen to the commencement of this once important libel : — 
 
 " A parliamente member, a justice of peace, 
 
 At homo a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse, 
 If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it, 
 Then Lucy is lowsie whatever befall it : 
 He thinks himself greate, 
 Yet an asse in his state 
 We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate. 
 If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, 
 Sing lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it." 
 
 Upon the next fragment of this composition, including two 
 stanzas, an equal degree of confidence cannot be reposed ; for it 
 occurs in a manuscript History of the Stage, written between the 
 years 1727 and 1730, in which many falsehoods have been detected; 
 but still the internal evidence is sudi as to render its genuuieness 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. G2. note. f Ibid. p. G: 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63.
 
 406 
 
 far from improbable. The narrative of its acquisition informs us, 
 that " the learned Mr. Joshua Barnes, late Greek Professor of the 
 University of Cambridge, baiting about forty years ago at an inn in 
 Stratford, and hearing an old woman singing part of the above said 
 song, such was his respect for Mr. Shakspeare's genius, that he gave 
 her a new gown for the two following stanzas in it ; and could she have 
 said it all, he would (as he often said in company, when any discourse 
 has casually arose about him) have given her ten guineas : 
 
 " Sir Thomas was too covetous 
 To covet so much deer. 
 When horns enough upon his head, 
 Most plainly did appear. 
 
 Had not his Worship one deer left? 
 
 What then ? He had a wife 
 Took pains enough to find him horns 
 
 Should last him during life." * 
 
 The quibble upon the word deer in these lines strongly tends to 
 authenticate them as a genuine production of our bard ; for he has 
 in more places than one of his dramas amused himself with a 
 similar jingle : thus in the First Part of Henry the Sixth, allowing 
 this play to have issued from his pen, Talbot, encouraging his forces, 
 exclaims 
 
 " Sell every man his life as dear as mine, 
 
 And they shall find dear deer of us my friends ;" f 
 
 and again in the First Part of King Henry the Fourth, the Prince, 
 lamenting over Falstaff, says 
 
 " Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day, 
 Though many dearer, in this bloody fi"ay." if 
 
 Mr. Whiter, who first applied these corroborating passages to 
 the subject before us, adds, " With respect to the verses in question, 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63. f Ibid. vol. xiii. p. 12?. Act iv. sc. 2. 
 
 X Ibid. vol. xL p. 426. Act v. sc. 4.
 
 407 
 
 I cannot but observe that, however suspicious their external evidence 
 may appear, they contain within themselves some very striking 
 features of authenticity ; and may, I think, be readily conceived to 
 have proceeded from the pen of our young Bard, before he was 
 removed from the little circle of his native place, when his powers, 
 unformed and unpractised, were roused only by resentment to a 
 Country Justice, and destined merely to delight the rustic com- 
 panions of his deer-stealing adventure. — As an additional evidence 
 to the quibble on the word deer, which appears to be intended in 
 these verses, we may observe that there is no topic, to which our 
 author so delights to allude, as the Horns of the Cuckold. — Let me 
 be permitted to remark in general, that the anecdotes, which have 
 been delivered down to us respecting our poet, appear to me neither 
 improbable, nor, when duly examined, inconsistent with each other : 
 even those, which seem least allied to probability, contain in my 
 opinion the adumbrata, if not expressa signa vetntatis." * 
 
 Whatever might be the merits of this ballad as a poetical com- 
 position, its effect as a satire was severely felt ; nor can we greatly 
 blame the conduct of Sir Thomas Lucy, if we consider, on the one 
 hand, the lenity which was at first shown to the young offender, 
 and, on the other, the publicity which was industriously given to this 
 provoking libel ; for it is recorded by Mr. Jones of Tarbick, that it 
 was the placarding of this piece of sarcasm " which exasperated the 
 knight to apply to a lawyer at Warwick to proceed against f him." 
 More magnanimity, it must be confessed, would have been displayed 
 by altogether neglecting this splenetic retaliation ; but still the pro- 
 vocation was sufficiently bitter to excite the resentment of a man 
 who might not be entitled to the appellations so liberally bestowed 
 on Sir Thomas by one of the poet's commentators of " vain, weak, 
 and vindictive X" The protection of property and character, pro- 
 vided the means resorted to for security be proportioned to the 
 
 * Whiter's Specimen of a Commentarj on Shakspeare, p. 94, 95. 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 62. ^ Ibid.
 
 408 
 
 offence, can neither be deemed foolish nor oppressive, and that the 
 bounds of moderation were exceeded in this instance, we have no 
 fiufRcient grounds for asserting. Of the character of the magistrate 
 nothing certain has transpired ; but if we may be allowed to form an 
 opinion of his temper and abilities, from the only trait which can 
 be considered as indicatory, we must pronounce them to have been 
 neither despicable nor unamiable. In the church at Charlcott 
 there are still remaining several monuments of the Lucy family, 
 among which is one to the memory of Sir Thomas and his lady ; the 
 effigies of the knight aifords a very pleasing idea of his countenance, 
 but is unaccompanied by date or inscription ; over his wife, however, 
 who reposes by his side, at the age of sixty-three, is a very striking 
 encomium written by himself, the conclusion of which is attested in 
 the following emphatic terms ; after much apparently sincere eulogy, 
 he adds, that she was, " when all is spoken that can be said, a woman 
 so furnished and garnished with vertue as not to be bettered, and 
 hardly to be equalled by any. As she lived most vertuously, so she 
 dyed most godly. Set down by him that best did know what hath 
 been written to be true. Thomas Lucy." 
 
 This may very justly be considered, we think, as a proof, not only 
 of the conjugal happiness of our knight, but of his possession of an 
 intellect far from contempible ; yet is it very possible that resentment, 
 even in a mind of still superior order, should for a time excite undue 
 warmth and animosity, especially under the lash of satire ; and we are 
 the more willing to believe this to have been the case in the present 
 instance, both from the known benevolence of the poet's character, and 
 from the pertinacity with which he continued to remember the injury; 
 for it is generally agreed that the opening scene of the Merry Wives 
 of Windsor is intended to ridicule Sir Thomas, under the character of 
 Justice Shallow, Now the representation of this comedy in its new- 
 modelled and enlarged state, certainly did not take place until after the 
 accession of King James, and as the prosecutor of our bard died on the 
 18th of August, 1600, it is not probable that the resentment of the
 
 409 
 
 poet would have survived the death of Sir Thomas, had not the 
 severity of the magistrate been originally pushed too far. 
 
 This dialogue also between Shallow, Slender, and Sir Hugh Evans, 
 serves strongly to confirm the authenticity of the commencing stanza 
 of the ballad ; for the Welsh parson plays upon the word luce in the 
 same manner as that fragment has done upon the sir-name Lucy. 
 Justice Shallow, it should likewise be remembered, is complaining of 
 FalstafF for beating his men, kilUng his deer, and breaking open his 
 lodge, and he threatens that " if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, 
 he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire," to which Slender adds, — 
 " In the county of Gloster, justice of peace, aud coram. 
 
 " Shal. Ay, cousin Slender, and Cust-alorum. 
 
 Slcn. Ay, and rctloloriim too, and a gentleman born, master parson ; who writes \imi- 
 scM mmigero ; in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, annigcro. 
 
 Shal. Ay, that we do ; and have done any time these three hundred years. 
 
 Slen. Ail his successors, gone before him, have done't ; and all his ancestors, that come 
 after him, may : they may give the dozen white luces in their coat. 
 
 Shal. It is an old coat. 
 
 Evans. The dozen white lovses do become an old coat well ; it agrees well, passant : it 
 is a familiar beast to man, and signifies — love. 
 
 Shal. The luce is the fresh fish ; the salt fish is an old coat. 
 
 Slen. I may quarter, coz ? 
 
 Shal. You may, by marrying. 
 
 Evans. It is marring, indeed, if he quarter it, 
 
 Shal. Not a whit. 
 
 Evans. Yes, py'r-lady ; if he has a quarter of your coat, there is but three skirts for 
 yourself, in my simple conjectures ; but this all one : if Sir John FalstafF have committed 
 disparagements unto you, I am of the church, and will be glad to do my benevolence, to 
 make atonements and compromises between you. 
 
 Shal. The Council shall hear it ; it is a riot." * 
 
 Though the portrait thus given of Sir Thomas Lucy (in the person 
 of Shallow) represent him as weak and vain, yet we must recollect 
 that it is still drawn in the spirit of retaliation and satire, and was 
 most undoubtedly meant for. a caricature. 
 
 It appears then more than probable, indeed from the testimony of 
 Mr. Jones it appears to be the fact, that the prosecution, which. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspcare, vol. v. p. 7. ct seq. 
 VOL. I. 3 G
 
 410 
 
 there is little doubt, had been threatened on the detection of the 
 trespass, was only carried into execution in consequence of the 
 poetical assault on the part of our author, who, possibly, thought no- 
 thing serious could occur from such a mode of revenge. 
 
 The circumstances, therefore, of the prosecution being threatened 
 in the first instance, and taking place in the second, might occasion 
 the report which Mr. Rowe has inserted in his Life of Shakspeare, 
 where, speaking of the ballad as his first essay in poetry, he adds, " it 
 is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution 
 against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business 
 and family in Warwickshire, for some time, and shelter himself in 
 London." * 
 
 That Shakspeare left Stratford for London, about the year 1586 or 
 1587, and that the prosecution commenced by Sir Thomas Lucy con- 
 tributed to this change of situation, are events which we may with 
 safety admit ; but that the libel was the sole cause of the removal 
 appears not very probable ; and we are inclined to believe with 
 Mr. Chalmers, that debt added wings to his flight. " Wliile other 
 boys," remarks this ingenious controversialist, " are only snivelling 
 at school, and thinking nothing of life, Shakspeare entered the world, 
 with little but his love to make him happy, and little but his genius to 
 prevent the intrusion of misery. An increasing family, and pressing 
 wants, obliged him to look beyond the limits of Stratford, for subsist- 
 ence, and for fame. He felt, doubtless, emotions of genius, and he 
 saw, certainly, persons, who had not better pretensions, than his own, 
 rising to eminence in a higher scene. By these motives was he 
 probably induced to remove to London, in the period, between the 
 years 1585, and 1588 ; chased from his home, by the terriers of the 
 law, for debt, rather than for deer-stealing, or for libelling." f 
 
 The probability of this having been the case, will be much 
 heightened, when we recollect, that between the years 1579 and 1586 
 the father of Shakspeare had fallen into distressed circumstances ; 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63. 
 
 t Chalmers's Apglogy, p. 4'J, 48.
 
 411 
 
 that (luring the first of these periods, he had been excused paying a 
 weekly contribution of 4d., and that during tlie latter he was under 
 the necessity of resigning his office as alderman, not being able to de- 
 fray the expense of attendance at the common halls ; facts, which 
 while they ascertain his impoverished state, at the same time proye 
 his utter inability to assist his son, now burdened with a liunily, and 
 anxiously looking round for the means of its support. 
 
 For the adoption of the year 1586 or 1587, as the era of our 
 author's emigration to town, several powerful, and almost convincing, 
 arguments may be given, and these it will be necessary here to 
 state. 
 
 It is well ascertained that Shakspeare married in the year 1582, 
 and Mr. Rowe has affirmed that " in this kind of settlement he con- 
 tinued Jo7' some time, till an extravagance (the deer-stealing frolic) 
 tliat he was guilty of, forced him both out of his country, and that 
 way of living which he had taken up." * Now that this settlement 
 for soffie time was the period which elapsed between the years 1582 
 and 1586, will almost certainly appear, when we recollect the domes- 
 tic events which occurred during its progress ; that, according to tra- 
 dition, he had embraced his father's business, on entering into the 
 marriage-state ; and that the family of the poet in short was increased 
 in this intei-val, by the birth of three children, baptized at Stratford ; 
 Susanna, May 26th, 1583, and Hamnet and Judith, Feb. 2d, 1584-5. 
 
 Tliat the removal was not likely to have taken place later than 
 1587, will be generally admitted, when we advert to the commence- 
 ment of his literary labours. The issue of research has rendered it 
 highly probable that our bard was a corrector and improver of old 
 plays for the stage in 1589 ; it has discovered from evidence amount- 
 ing almost to certainty, that he was a writer for the theatre on a plan 
 of greater originality in 1591, and that, even so early as 1592, he was 
 noticed as a dramatic poet of some celebrity. Now, if we compare 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. fil. 
 
 3g 2
 
 412 
 
 these facts, which will be noticed more fully hereafter, with the poet's 
 own assertion, that the Venus mid Adonis was " the first heir of his 
 invention*,''^ it will go far to prove, that this poem, which is not a short 
 one, and is elaborated with great care, must have been composed 
 between his departure from Stratford, and his commencement as a 
 writer for the stage, (that is between the years 1586 and 1589 ;) for 
 while there is no ground to surmise that it was written on the banks 
 of the Avon, there is sufficient evidence to assert that it was finished, 
 though not published before he was known to fame. 
 
 It is impossible to contemplate the flight of Shakspeare from his 
 family and native town, without pausing to reflect upon the conse- 
 quences which followed that event ; consequences most singularly 
 propitious, not only to the intellectual character of his country in 
 particular, but to the excitation and progress of genius throughout 
 the world. Had not poverty and prosecution united in driving 
 Shakspeare from his humble occupation in Warwickshire, how many 
 matchless lessons of wisdom and morality, how many unparalleled 
 displays of wit and imagination, of pathos and sublimity, had been 
 buried in oblivion ; pictures of emotion, of character, of passion, 
 more profound than mere philosophy had ever conceived, more im- 
 pressive than poetry had ever yet embodied ; strains which shall 
 now sound through distant posterity with increasing energy and in- 
 terest, and which shall powerfully and beneficially continue to in- 
 fluence and to mould both national and individual feeling. 
 
 * Vide Dedication of the Poem to the Earl of Southampton.
 
 SHAKSPEARE AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 PART 11. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE IN LONDON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE's arrival in LONDON ABOUT THE lEAR 1586", WHEN TWENTY-TWO YEARS 
 
 OF AGE LEAVES HIS FAMILY AT STRATFORD, VISITING THEM OCCASIONALLY — HIS 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO THE STAGE HIS MERITS AS AN ACTOR. 
 
 No era in the annals of Literary History ever perhaps occurred of 
 greater importance, than that which witnessed the entrance of Shaks- 
 peare into the metropohs of his native country ; a position which will 
 readily be granted, if we consider the total revolution which this 
 event produced in the Literature of the Stage, and the vast influence 
 which, through the medium of the most popular branch of our poetry, 
 it has subsequently exerted on the minds, manners, and taste of our 
 countrymen. Friendless, persecuted, poor, about the early age of 
 twenty-two, was the greatest poet which the world has ever seen, 
 compelled to desert his home, his wife, his children, to seek employ- 
 ment from the hands of strangers. Rich, however, in talent, beyond 
 all the sons of men, blessed with a cheerful disposition, an active 
 mind, and a heart conscious of integrity, soon did the clouds which 
 overspread his youth break away, and unveil a character which has 
 ever since been the dehght, the pride, the boast of England.
 
 414 
 
 We have assigned some strong reasons, at the close of the last 
 chapter, for placing the epoch of Shakspeare's arrival in London, 
 about 1586 or 1587 ; and we shall now bring forward some presump- 
 tive proofs that he not only left his wife and family at Stratford on 
 his first visit to the capital, but that his native town continued to be 
 their settled residence during his life. 
 
 Mr. Rowe has affirmed upon a tradition which we have no claim to 
 dispute, that he " was obliged to leave his family for some time ;" a 
 fact in the highest degree probable from the causes which led to his 
 removal j for it is not to be supposed, situated as he then was, that 
 he would be willing to render his wife and childi'en the companions 
 and partakers of the disasters and disappointments which it was pro- 
 bable he had to encounter. Tradition further says, as preserved in 
 the manuscripts of Aubrey, that " he was wont to go to his native 
 country once a yeare * ;" and Mr. Oldys, in his collections for a life 
 of our author, repeats this report with an additional circumstance, 
 remarking, " if tradition may be trusted, Shakspeare often baited at 
 the Crown Inn or Tavern in Oxford, in his journey to and from 
 London." f It is true that these traditions, if insulated from other 
 circumstances, might merely prove that he visited the place of his 
 birth annually, without necessarily inferring that his family was also 
 resident there ; but if we consult the parish-register of Stratford, 
 their testimony will indeed be strong, and powerfully confirm the 
 deduction ; for it appears on that record that, merely including his 
 children, there is a succession of baptisms, marriages, and deaths in 
 his family at Stratford, from the year 1583 to 1616.$ This evidence, 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 214. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 124. — Antony Wood, it appears, was the original au- 
 thor of this anecdote, for he tells us in his Athenae, that John Davenant, who kept the 
 Crown, was " an admirer and lover of plays and play-makers, especially Shakspeare, 
 'iSilio Jreqxiented his house in his journics between JVanvickskire and London," Ath. Oxon. 
 vol. ii. p. 292. 
 
 %' The Register informs us, — 
 
 1st. That his daughter Susanna was baptized there on the 26th May 1583. 
 
 2d. That Hamnet and Judith, his twin-son and daughter, were baptized there the 2d 
 of February 1584.
 
 415 
 
 so satisfactory in itself, will be strengthened when we recollect that 
 the poet in his mortgage, dated the 10th of March, 1612-13, is 
 described as William Shakspeare of Sir atford-ripon- Avon, gentleman ; 
 and that by his contemporaries he was frequently stiled the Sii>eet 
 Swan of Avon, designations which, when combined with the testi- 
 mony already adduced, must be considered as implying the family- 
 residence of the poet. * 
 
 It was this concatenation of circumstances which induced Mr. 
 Chalmers, than whom a more indefatigable encpiirer with regard 
 to our author has not existed, to conclude that Shakspeare had no 
 " fixed residence in the metropolis," nor " ever considered London, 
 as his home f ;" but had " resolved that his wife and family should 
 remain through life" at Stratford, " though he himself made frequent 
 excursions to London, the scene of his profit, and the theatre of his 
 fame X ;" adding, in a note, that the evidence from the parish-register 
 of Stratford had compelled even scepticism to admit his position to be 
 very probable, § 
 
 While discussing this subject in his first Apology, he has intro- 
 duced a novel and most curious fact, for the purpose of guarding the 
 reader against an apparently opposing, but too hasty inference. " If 
 documents," he observes, " be produced to prove, that one Shaks- 
 peare, a player, resided in St. Saviour's parish, Southwark, at the 
 end of the sixteenth, or the beginning of the seventeenth, century. 
 
 3d. That his son Hamnet was buried there, on the 11th of August 1596. 
 
 4th. That his daughter Susanna was there married to John Hall, on the 5th of June 
 1607. 
 
 5th. That his daughter Judith was there married to Thomas Queeny, on the 10th of 
 February 16^J. — Vide Chalmers's Apology, p. 247. 
 
 * Ben Jonson, in his Poem to the Memory of Shakspeare, calls him " Sweet Swan of 
 Avon ;" and Joseph Taylor, who represented the part of Hamlet in 1 596, in the Dedi- 
 cation which he and his fellow-players wrote for Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, in 1647, 
 speaks of " the flowing compositions of the then expired sweet smin of Avon, Shak- 
 speare." 
 
 f Chalmers's Apology, p. 247. 
 
 X Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 22T, $ Ibid. p. 227. note rf.
 
 416 
 
 this evidence will not be conclusive proof of the settled residence of 
 Shakspeare : For, it is a fact, as new, as it is curious, that his brother 
 Edmond, who was baptized on the 3d of May, 1580, became a 
 'player at the Globe; lived in St. Saviour's ; and was buried in the 
 church of that parish : the entry in the register being without a blur ; 
 ' 1607 December 31 ,(was buried) Edmond Shakespeare, a player, in 
 the church ;' there can be no dispute about the date, or the name, or 
 the profemon. It is remarkable, that the parish-clerk, who scarcely 
 ever mentions any other distinction of the deceased, than a man, or a 
 woman, should, by I know not what inspiration, have recorded 
 Edmond Shakespeare, as a player. There were, consequently, two 
 Shakspeares on the stage, during the same period ; as there were 
 two Burbadges, who were also brothers, and who acted on the same 
 theatre." * 
 
 Upon the whole, we may with considerable confidence and safety 
 conclude, that \he family-residence of Shakspeare was akcays at Strat- 
 ford ; that he himself originally went alone to London, and that he 
 spent the greater part of every year there alone, annually, however, 
 and probably for some months, returning to the bosom of his family, 
 and that this alternation continued until he finally left the capital. 
 
 Having chsposed of this question, another, even still more doubt- 
 ful, immediately follows, with regard to the employment and mode 
 of life which the poet was compelled to adopt on reaching the metro- 
 polis. Mr. Rowe, recording the consequences of the prosecution in 
 Warwickshire, observes,—" It is at this time, and upon this accident, 
 that he is said to have made- his Jirst acquaintance in the play-house. 
 He was received into the company then in being, at first in a very 
 mean rankr^ 
 
 From this passage we may in the first place infer, that Shakspeare, 
 immediately on his arrival in town, applied to the theatre for support ; 
 an expedient to which there is reason to suppose he was induced, by 
 a previous connection or acquaintance with one or more of the per- 
 
 • Chalmers's Apology, p. 423. note a. f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 6S.
 
 417 
 
 formers. It appears, indeed, from the researches of Mr. Malone, 
 tliat the probability of his being known, even while at Stratford, to 
 Heminge, Burbadge, and Thomas Greene, all of them celebrated 
 comedians of their day, is very considerable. " I suspect," remarks 
 this acute commentator, " that both he (namely, John Heminge,) and 
 Burbadge were Shakspeare's countrymen, and that Heminge was 
 born at Shottery, a village in Warwickshire, at a very small distance 
 from Stratford-upon-Avon ; where Shakspeare found his wife. I find 
 two families of this name settled in that town early in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth, the daughter of John Heming of Shot- 
 tery, was baptized at Stratford-upon-Avon, March 12. 1567. This 
 .Tohn misht have been the father of the actor, though I have found 
 no entry relative to his baptism : for he was probably born before the 
 year 1558, when the Register commenced. In the village of Shot- 
 tery also lived Richard Hemyng, who had a son christened by the 
 name of John, March 7. 1570. Of the Burbadge family the only 
 notice I have found, is, an entry in the Register of the parish of 
 Stratford, October 12. 1565, on which day Philip Green was mar- 
 ried in that town to Ursula Burbadge, who might have been sister to 
 James Burbadge, the father of the actor, whose marriage I suppose 
 to have taken place about that time. If this conjecture be well 
 founded, our poet, we see, had an easy introduction to the theatre."* 
 The same remark which concludes this paragraph is repeated by 
 the commentator when speaking of Thomas Greene, whom he terms, 
 a celebrated comedian, the toumsman of Shakspeare, and perhaps his 
 relation. "|" The celebrity of Greene as an actor is fully ascertained by 
 an addi-ess to the reader, prefixed by Thomas Heywood to his edition 
 of John Cook's Greens Tu Quoque ; or, The City Gallant ; " as for 
 Maister Greene," says Heywood, " all that I will speak of him (and 
 that without flattery) is this (if I were worthy to censure) there was 
 not an actor of his nature, in his time, of better ability in perform- 
 ance of what he undertook, more applauded by the audience, of 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 233. f Ibid. vol. ii. p. 230. 
 
 VOL. I. 3 11
 
 418 
 
 greater grace at the court, or of more general love in the city * ;" but 
 the townsmanship and affinity rest only on the inference to be 
 drawn from an entry in the parish-register of Stratford, and from 
 some lines quoted by Chetwood from the comedy of the Two Maids 
 of Moreclack, which represent Greene speaking in the character of a 
 clown, and declaring 
 
 " I pratled poesie in my nurse's arms, 
 And, born, where late our swan of Avon sung, 
 In Avon's streams we both of us have lav'd, 
 And both came out together." f 
 
 As these lines are not, however, in the play from which they are 
 pretended to have been taken ; as they appear to be a parody on a 
 passage in Milton's Lycidas, and as Chetwood has been detected in 
 falsifying and forging many of his dates, little credit can be attached 
 to their evidence, and we must solely depend upon the import of the 
 register, which records that Thomas Greene, alias Shakspere, was 
 buried there, March 6th, 1589. J If this Thomas were the father of 
 the actor, and the probability of this being the case cannot be denied, 
 and may even have led to the attempted imposition of Chetwood, the 
 affinity, as well as the townsmanship, will be established. § 
 
 It seems, therefore, neither rash nor inconsequent to believe, in 
 failure of more direct evidence, that the channel through which 
 Shakspeare, immediately on his arrival in town, procured an intro- 
 duction to the stage, was first opened by his relationship to Greene, 
 who possessing, as we have seen, great merit and influence as an 
 actor, could easily insure him a connection at the theatre, and would 
 naturally recommend him to his countryman Heminge, who was 
 then about thirty years of age, and had already acquired considerable 
 reputation as a performer. j| 
 
 * Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 539. f British Theatre, p. 9. 
 
 1[ Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 230. note 1 . § Vide Malone's Inquiry, p. 94. 
 
 II Mr. Chalmers, speaking of Heminges, says — " There is reason to believe, that he was, 
 originally, a Warwickshire lad,- a shire, which has produced so many players and poets; 
 the Burbadges ; the Shakspeares ; the Greens; and the Harts." Apology, p. 435, 4.36".
 
 419 
 
 Mr. Rowe's secoud assertion that he was received into the company, 
 then in being, at first in a veri/ mean rank, has given rise to some 
 reports relative to the nature of his early employment at the theatre, 
 which are equally inconsistent and degrading. It has been related 
 that his first office was that of Call-boy, or attendant on the prompter, 
 and that his business was to give notice to the performers when their 
 different entries on the stage were required. * Another tradition, 
 which places him in a still meaner occupation, is said to have been 
 transmitted thtough the medium of Sir William Davenant to Mr. Bet- 
 terton, who communicated it to Mr, Rowe, and this gentleman to 
 Mr. Pope, by whom, according to Dr. Johnson, it was related in the 
 following terms : — " In the time of Elizabeth, coaches being yet 
 uncommon, and hired coaches not at all in use, those who were too 
 proud, too tender, or too idle to walk, went on horseback to any 
 di-stant business or diversion. Many came on horseback to the play, 
 and when Shakspeare fled to London from the terror of a criminal 
 prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the play- 
 house, and hold the horses of those that had no servants, that they 
 might be ready again after the performance. In this office he became 
 so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time every 
 man as he alighted called for Will. Shakspeare, and scarcely any 
 other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will. Shakspeare could be 
 had. This was the first dawn of better fortune. Shakspeare, 
 finding more horses put into his hand than he could hold, hired boys 
 to wait under his inspection, who, when Will. Shakspeare was sum- 
 moned, were immediately to present themselves, / am Shakspeare' s 
 hoy. Sir. In time, Shakspeare found higher employment : but as 
 long as the practice of riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters 
 that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakspeare^ s boys"-]- 
 
 Of this curious anecdote it should not be forgotten, that it made" 
 its Jirst appearance in Gibber's Lives of the Poets % ; and that if it 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 63. note '2. f Ibid. p. 120. 
 
 X Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 130. 
 
 3h 2
 
 420 
 
 were known to INIr. Rowe, it is evident he thought it so Httle entitled 
 to credit that he chose not to risque its insertion in his hfe of the 
 poet. In short, if we reflect for a moment that Shakspeare, though 
 he fled from Stratford to aivoid the severity of a prosecution, could 
 not be destitute either of money or friends, as the necessity for that 
 flight was occasioned by an imprudent ebullition of wit, and not by 
 any serious delinquency ; that the father of his wife was a yeoman 
 both of respectability and property ; that his own parent, though 
 impoverished, was still in business ; and that he had, in all likelihood, 
 a ready admission to the stage through the influence of persons of 
 leading weight in its concerns ; we cannot, without doing the utmost 
 violence to probability, conceive that, under these circumstances, and 
 in the twenty-third year of his age, he would submit to the degrading 
 employment of either a horse-holder at the door of a theatre, or of 
 a call-boy within its walls. 
 
 Setting aside, therefore, these idle tales, we may reasonably con- 
 clude that by the phrase a very mean i^anlc, Mr. Rowe meant to imply, 
 that his first engagement as an actoi^ was in the performance of clia- 
 racters of the lowest class. That his fellow-comedians were ushered 
 into the dramatic world in a similar way, and rose to higher occupancy 
 by gradation, the history of the stage will sufficiently prove : Richard 
 Riu'badge, for instance, who began his career nearly at the same time 
 with our author, and who subsequently became the greatest tragedian 
 of his age, had, in the year 1589, appeared in no character more 
 important than that of a Messenger. * If this were the case with a 
 performer of such acknowledged merit, we may readily acquiesce in 
 the supposition that the parts first given to Shakspeare were equally 
 as insignificant ; and as readily allow that an actor thus circumstanced 
 might very properly be said to have been admitted into the company 
 at Jirst in a very mean rank. 
 
 As Shakspeare' s immediate employment, therefore, on his arri\al 
 in town, appears to have been that of an actor, it cannot be deemed 
 
 * Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 158. note n.
 
 421 
 
 irrelevant if we should here enquire into his merits and success in 
 ihis department. 
 
 Two traditions, of a contradictory complexion, have reached us 
 relative to Shakspeare's powers as an actor ; one on the authority of 
 Mr. Aubrey, and the other on that of Mr. Rowe. In the manuscript 
 papers of the first of these gentlemen, we are told that our author, 
 " being inclined natui'ally to poetry and acting, came to London, — 
 and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedinghf 
 te^e//*;" but, in the life of the poet by the second, it is added, after 
 mentioning his admission to the theatre in an inferior rank, that 
 " his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon 
 distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an 
 excellent writer. His name is printed, as the custom was in those 
 times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but 
 without any particular account of what sort of parts he used to play ; 
 and though I have enquired, I could never meet with any further 
 account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the 
 Ghost in his own Hamlet." j" 
 
 Of descriptions thus opposed, a preference only can be given as 
 founded on other evidence ; and it happens that subsequent enquiry 
 has enabled us to consider Mr. Aubrey's account as approximating 
 nearest to the truth. 
 
 Contemporary authority, it is evident, would decide the question, 
 and happily the researches of Mr. Malone have furnished us with a 
 testimony of this kind. In the year 1592, Henry Chettle, a dramatic 
 writer, published a posthumous work of Robert Greene's, under the 
 title of " Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of 
 Repentance," in which the author speaks harshly of Marlowe, and still 
 more so of Shakspeare, who was then rising into fame. Both these 
 poets were justly offended, and Chettle, who was of coui-se implicated 
 in their displeasure, printed, in the December of the same year, a 
 pamphlet, entitled Kind Harts Dreamc, to which is prefixed an 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 213. f Ibid. vol. i. p. 6-J.
 
 422 
 
 addi-ess to the Gentlemen Readers, apologizing, in the following temis, 
 for the offence which he had given : 
 
 " About three months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many 
 papers in sundry booksellers' hands, among others his Groatsworth of 
 Wit, in which a letter written to divei-s play-makers is offensively 
 by one or two of them taken ; and because on the dead they cannot 
 be re-avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceites a living author : 
 and after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must light on me. 
 How I have, all the time of my conversing in printing, hindered the 
 bitter inveighing against schoUers, it hath been very well known ; and 
 how in that I dealt, I can sufficiently prove. With neither of them 
 that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them ('Marlowe') 
 I care not if I never be. The other (' Shakspeare'), whom at that 
 time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I 
 have moderated the hate of living writers, and might have used my 
 own discretion, (especially in such a case, the author being dead,) 
 that I did not, I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my 
 fault ; because myself e have seene his demeanour no less civil than he 
 EXCELLENT IN THE QUALiTiE HE PROFESSES. Besidcs, divers of tcorsMp 
 have reported his uprightness of dealing, xchich argues his honestie, and 
 his facetious grace in xeiiting, that ajyproves his art. For the first, 
 whose learning I reverence, and at the perusing of Greene's booke, 
 strooke out what then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure 
 writ ; or had it been true, yet to publish it was intoUerable ; him I 
 would wish to use me 4io worse than I deserve." * 
 
 This curious passage clearly evinces that our author was deemed 
 EXCELLENT as an actor, (for the phrase the qualitie he professes pecu- 
 liarly denoted at that time the profession of a player,) in the year 1592, 
 only five or six years, at most, after he had entered on the stage ; 
 and consequently that the information which Aubrey had received 
 was correct, while that obtained by Rowe must be considered as 
 unfounded. 
 
 • Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 237, 238.
 
 423 
 
 So well instructed, indeed, was Shakspeare in the duties and quali- 
 ties of an actor, that it appears from Downes' book, entitled Roscius 
 Anglicanus, that he undertook to teach and perfect John Lowin in 
 the character of King Henry the Eighth, and Joseph Taylor in that 
 of Hamlet. 
 
 Of his competency for this task, several parts of his dramatic 
 works might be brought forward as sufficient proof. Independent of 
 his celebrated instructions to the player in Hamlet, which would 
 alone ascertain his intimate knowledge of the histrionic art, his con- 
 ception of the powers necessary to form the accomplished tragedian, 
 may be drawn from part of a dialogue which occurs between Richard 
 the Third and Buckingham: — 
 
 " Glo. Come, cousin, can'st thou quake and change thy colour ? 
 Mitrther thy breath in middle of a 'word ? 
 And then again begin, and stop again. 
 As ifthmi wert distraught, and mad 'with terror ? 
 
 Buck. Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian; 
 Speak, and look big, and pry on every side. 
 Tremble and start at "shagging of a straw, 
 Litending deep suspicion : ghastly looks 
 Are at my service, like enforced smiles." * 
 
 It would be highly interesting to be able to point out what were 
 the characters which Shakspeare performed, either in his own plays, 
 or in those of other writers ; but the information which we have on 
 this subject is, unfortunately, very scanty. Mr. Rowe has mentioned, 
 as the sole result of his enquiries, that the Ghost in Hamlet was his 
 chef d^ oeuvre. That this part, however, in the opinion of the poet, 
 I'equired some skill and management in the execution, is evident from 
 the expressions attributed to Hamlet, who exclaims, on the appear- 
 ance of the Royal spectre, during the interview between himself and 
 his mother, — 
 
 " Look you how pale he glares ! 
 
 His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xiv. p. 403, 404. Act iii. so. 5.
 
 424 
 
 Would make them capable. Do not look upon me, 
 Lest with Ms piteous action, you convert 
 My stern effects ;" * 
 
 a description, which, there is reason to suppose, the author would not 
 have ventured to introduce, unless he had been conscious of the pos- 
 session of powers capable of doing justice to his own delineation. 
 
 Another tradition, preserved by Mr. Oldys, and communicated to 
 him, as Mr. Malone thinks f, by Mr. Thomas Jones of Tarbick, in 
 Worcestershire, whom we have formerly mentioned, imports, as cor- 
 rected by the commentator just mentioned, that a relation of the poet's, 
 then in advanced age, but who in his youth had been in the habit of 
 visiting London for the purpose of seeing him act in some of his own 
 plays, told Mr. Jones j, that he had a faint recollection " of having 
 once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being 
 to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared 
 so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be 
 supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was 
 seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung 
 a song." § Tliat this part was the character of Adam, in As You Like 
 It, there can be no doubt, and if we add, that, from the arrangement 
 of the names of the actors and of the persons of the drama, prefixed 
 to Ben Jonson's play o^ Every Man in his Humour, first acted in 1598, 
 there is reason to imagine that he performed the part of Old Knowell 
 in that comedy, we may be warranted probably in drawing the conclu- 
 sion, that the representation of aged characters was peculiarly his 
 forte. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 249, 250. Act iii. sc. 4. 
 
 t Ibid. vol. i. p. 128. note 1. 
 
 \ " Mr. Jones's informer," observes Mr. Malone, " might have been Mr. Richard 
 Quincy, who hvcd in London, and died at Stratford in 1G56, at the age of 69; or Mr. 
 Thomas Quiney, our poet's son-in-law, who lived, I believe, till 1663, and was twenty- 
 seven years old when his father-in-law died ; or some one of the family of Hathaway. Mr. 
 Thomas Hathaway, I believe Shakspeare's brother-in-law, died at Stratford in 1 654-5, at 
 the age of 85." — Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 128. note 1. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 129, 130,
 
 425 
 
 It appears also, from the first four lines of a small poem, written 
 by John Davies, about the year 1611, and inscribed, To our English 
 Terence, Mr. William Shakespeare, that our bard had been accustomed 
 to perform kingly jjarfs ; 
 
 " Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing, 
 
 Hadst thou not play'd some kingly parts in sport, 
 Thou hadst been a companion for a king, 
 And been a king among the meaner sort;" * 
 
 a passage which leads us to infer, that several of the regal characters 
 in his own plays, perhaps the parts of King Henry the Eighth, King 
 Henry the Sixth, and King Henry the Fourth, may have been appro- 
 priated to him, as adapted to the general estimate of his powers in 
 acting. 
 
 From the notices thus collected, it will be perceived, that Shak- 
 speare attempted not the performance of characters of the first rank ; 
 but that in the representation of those of a second-rate order, to which 
 he modestly confined his exertions, he was deemed excellent. We 
 have just grounds also for concluding that of the theory of acting in 
 its very highest departments, he was a complete master ; and though 
 not competent to carry his own precepts into perfect execution, he 
 was a consummate judge of the attainments and deficiencies of his 
 fellow-comedians, and was accordingly employed to instruct them in 
 his own conception of the parts which they were destined to perform. 
 
 It may be considered, indeed, as a most fortunate circumstance for 
 the lovers of dramatic poetry, that our author, in point of execution, 
 did not attain to the loftiest summit of his profession. He would, 
 in that case, it is very probable, have either sate down content with 
 the high reputation accruing to him from this source, or would have 
 found little time for the labours of composition, and consequently we 
 should have been in a great degree, if not altogether, deprived of what 
 now constitute the noblest efforts of human genius. 
 
 * The Scourge of Folly, by John Davies of Hereford, no date. 
 VOL. I. 3 I
 
 426 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE COMMENCES A WRITER OF POETRY, PROBABLY ABOUT THE YEAR 1587, BY 
 
 THE COMPOSITION OF HIS VENUS AND ADONIS HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF POLITE 
 
 LITERATURE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 As the first object of Shakspeare must necessarily have been, from 
 the confined nature of his circumstances, to procure employment, it 
 is hio-hly reasonable to conclude that he at first contented himself 
 with the diligent discharge of those duties which fell to his share as 
 an actor of inferior rank. That these, however, were calculated to 
 absorb, for any length of time, a mind so active, ample, and creative, 
 cannot for a moment be credited ; and, indeed, we are warranted, by 
 every fair inference, to assert, that, no sooner did he consider his 
 situation at the theatre of Blackfi-iars as tolerably secured, than he 
 immediately directed his powers to the cultivation of his favourite 
 art — that of poetry. 
 
 Of his inclination to this elegant branch of literature, we have an 
 early proof, in the mode of retaliation which he adopted, in con- 
 sequence of his prosecution by Sir Thomas Lucy ; and that the 
 Venus and Adonis, " the first heir of his invention," as he terms it, 
 was commenced, not long subsequent to this period, and shortly after 
 his arrival in town, a little enquiry will induce us to consider as an 
 almost established fact. 
 
 It has, indeed, been surmised, by a very intelligent critic, that this 
 poem may have been written while its author " felt the powerfid 
 incentive of love," and consequently " before he had sallied from 
 Stratford ;" " certainly," he adds, " before he was known to * fame." 
 The first suggestion we may dismiss as a mere supposition ; the 
 second must be acknowledged as founded on truth. 
 
 Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 269.
 
 427 
 
 All the commentators agree in fixing on the year 1591, as the 
 LATEST period for our author's commencement as a draymitic poet : 
 for this obvious reason, that both Greene and Chettle have mentioned 
 him as a writer of plays in 1592, and in such a manner, likewise, as 
 proves that he was et>en then possessed of some degi'ee of notoriety, 
 the latter mentioning his ^^ facetious gi'ace in xtriting," and the former, 
 after calling him, " an iipstart crow beautified •with our feathers^ and 
 parodying a line from the Third Part of King Henry VI., concludes 
 by telling us, that he " is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in 
 the country ;" circumstances which have naturally induced the most 
 sagacious critics on our bard to infer, that, thus early to have excited 
 so much envy as this railing accusation evinces, he must without 
 doubt have been a corrector and improver of plays anterior to 1590, 
 and very probably in 1589. 
 
 Now, though the first edition of the Venus and Adonis was not 
 published until 1593, yet the author's positive declaration, that it was 
 " the first heir of his invention,^' necessarily implies that its composition 
 had taken place prior to any poetical attempts for the stage ; and as 
 we have seen, that his arrival in town could not have occurred before 
 1586 ; that he was then immediately employed as an actor in a very- 
 inferior rank ; and that his earliest efforts as a dramatic poet may be 
 attributed to the year 1589 or 1590, it will follow, as a legitimate 
 deduction, if we allow the space of a twelvemonth for his settle- 
 ment at the theatre, that the composition of this poem, " the first 
 heir of his invention," must be given to the interval elapsing between 
 the years 1587 and 1590, a period not too extended, the nature of 
 his other engagements being considered, for the completion of a 
 poem very nearly amounting to twelve hundred lines. 
 
 Having thus conducted Shakspeare to his entrance on the career of 
 authorship and fame, it will now be necessary, in conformity with 
 our plan, to take a general and cursory survey of Literature, as it 
 existed in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. The remainder of this 
 chapter will therefore be devoted to a broad outline on this subject, 
 reserving, however, the topics of Romance and Miscellaneous Poetry, 
 
 3 I 2
 
 428 
 
 for distinct and immediately subsequent consideration, as these will 
 form an apposite prelude to an estimate of the patronage which our 
 author enjoyed, to a critique on his poems, and to critical notices of 
 contemporary miscellaneous poets, enquiries which, while they em- 
 brace, in one view, the merits of Shakspeare as a tniscellaneous poet, 
 are, at the same time, in their preliminai'y and collateral branches, in 
 some degree preparatory to his introduction as a dramatic writer ; 
 preparatory also to a sketch of the manners, customs, and diversions 
 of the metropolis, during his age, and to a discussion of his tran- 
 scendent powers as the bard of fancy and of nature. 
 
 The literary period of which we are proceeding to give a slight 
 sketch, may be justly considered as the most splendid in our annals ; 
 for in what equal portion of our history can we bring forward three 
 such mighty names as Spenser, Bacon, and Shakspeare, each, in their 
 repective departments, remaining without a rival. As the field, how- 
 ever, is so ample that even to do justice to an outline will require 
 much attention to arrangement, it will be necessary to distribute 
 what we have to offer, in this stage of our work, under the heads of 
 Bibliogi^aphy, Philology, Criticism, History, General, Local, and Per- 
 sonal, and Miscellaneous Literature; premising that as we confine 
 ourselves, in the strictest sense, to elegant literature, or what has 
 been termed the Belles Letfres, science, theology, and politics, will, 
 of course, be excluded. 
 
 Literature, which had for some centuries been confined to eccle- 
 siastics and scholars by profession, was, at the commencement of 
 Elizabeth's reign, thrown open to the higher classes of general 
 society. The example was given by the Queen herself; and the 
 nobility, the superior orders of the gentry, and even their wives and 
 daughters, became enthusiasts in the cause of letters. The novelty 
 which attended these studies, the eager desire to possess what had 
 been so long studiously and jealously concealed, and the curiosity 
 to explore and rifle the treasures of the Greek and Roman world, 
 which mystery and huagination had swelled into the marvellous, 
 contributed to excite an absolute passion for study, and for books.
 
 429 
 
 Tlie court, the ducal castle, and the baronial hall, were suddenly 
 converted into academies, and could boast of splendid libraries, as 
 well as of splendid tapestries. In the first of these, according to 
 Ascham, might be seen the Queen reading " more Greeke every day, 
 than some prebendarie of this church doth read Latin in a whole 
 week *," and while she was translating Isocrates or Seneca, it may be 
 easily conceived that her maids of honour found it convenient to 
 praise and to adopt the disposition of her time. In the second, 
 observes Warton, the daughter of a duchess was taught not only to 
 distil strong waters, but to construe Greek f ; and in the third, every 
 young lady who aspired to be fashionable was compelled, in imi- 
 tation of the greater world, to exhibit similar marks of erudition. 
 
 If such were the studious manners of the ladies, it will readily be 
 credited, that an equal, if not a greater attachment to literature 
 existed in the other sex ; in short, an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and 
 Italian, was deemed essential to the character of the nobleman and 
 the courtier ; and learning was thus i-endered a passport to promotion 
 and rank. That this is not an exaggerated statement, but founded 
 on contemporary authority, will be evident from a passage in Har- 
 rison's Description of England, where, after delineating the court, he 
 adds, — " This further is not to be omitted, to the singular commen- 
 dation of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England, that 
 there are verie few of them, which have not the use and skill of 
 sundrie speaches, beside an excellent veine of writing before time not 
 regarded. — Trulie it is a rare thing with us now, to heare of a 
 courtier which hath but his owne language. And to saie how many 
 gentlewomen and ladies there are, that beside sound knowledge of 
 the Greeke and Latine toongs, are thereto no lesse skilfull in the 
 Spanish, Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it resteth not 
 in me : sith I am persuaded, that as the noblemen and gentlemen 
 do surmount in this behalfe, so these come verie little or nothing at 
 
 * Ascham's Works, Bennet's edit, p, 24'2. speaking of Windsor, 
 f Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 491.
 
 430 
 
 all behind them for their parts, which industrie God continue, and 
 accomplish that which otherwise is wanting !" Again, a few lines 
 below, he remarks of the ladies of the court, that some of them 
 employ themselves " in continuall reading either of the holie scrip- 
 tures, or histoi'ies of our owne or forren nations about us, and diverse 
 in writing volumes of their owne, or translating of other mens into 
 our English and Latine toongs *;" employments which now appear 
 to us very extraordinary as the daily occupations of a court, but 
 were, then, the natural result of that ardent love of letters, which 
 had somewhat suddenly been diffused through the higher classes. 
 
 Were we, however, to conclude, that the same erudite taste per- 
 vaded the bulk of the people, or even the middle orders of society, 
 we should be grossly mistaken. Literature, though cultivated with 
 enthusiasm in the metropolis, was confined even there to persons of 
 high "rank, or to those who were subservient to their education and 
 amusement. In the country, to read and wTite were still esteemed 
 rare accomplishments, and among tlie rural gentry of not the first 
 degree, little difference, in point of literary information, was per- 
 ceptible between the master and his menial attendant. Of this 
 several of the plays of Shakspeare and .Jonson will afford evidence, 
 especially the comedies of the Men^y Wives of Windsor^ and Every 
 Man in his Humour, to which a striking proof may be added from 
 Burton, who wrote just at the close of the Shaksperian f- period ; 
 and, in treating of study, as a cause of melancholy, says, " I may 
 not deny, but that we have a sprinkling of our Gentry, here, and 
 there one, excellently well learned ; — but they are but few in respect 
 of the multitude, the major part (and some again excepted, that are 
 indifferent) are wholly bent for Hawks and Hounds, and carried 
 away many times with intemperate lust, gaming, and drinking. If 
 they read a book at any time, 'tis an English Chronicle, Sir Huon of 
 Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c. a play-book, or some pamphlet of 
 
 • Holinshed's Chronicles, edit. I8O7, vol. i. p. 330. 
 
 t The 1st edit, of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was published in 161 7-
 
 431 
 
 News, and that at such seasons only, when they cannot stir abroad, 
 to drive away time, their sole discourse is dogs, hawks, horses, and 
 what News ? If some one have been a traveller in Italy, or as far as 
 the Emperour's Court, wintered in Orleance, and can court his 
 mistris in broken French, wear his clothes neatly in the newest 
 fashion, sing some choice out-landish tunes, discourse of lords, ladies, 
 towns, palaces, and cities, he is compleat and to be admired : other- 
 wise he and they are much at one ; 7io difference betxmxt the master 
 and the man, but worshipful titles : wink and choose betwixt him 
 that sits down (clothes excepted) and him that holds the trencher 
 behind him." * 
 
 It is to the court, therefore, and its attendants, to the nobility, 
 higher gentry, and their preceptors, that we are to look for that 
 ardent love of books and learning which so remarkably distinguished 
 the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and which was destined, in another 
 century, to descend into, and illuminate the larger masses of our 
 population. Nothing, indeed, can more forcibly paint Elizabeth's 
 passion for books and learning, than a passage in Harrison's unadorned 
 but faithful description of her court : — " Finallie," says that interest- 
 ing pourtrayer of ancient manners, " to avoid idlenesse, and prevent 
 simdrie transgressions, otherwise likelic to be committed and doone, 
 such order is taken, that everie office hath either a bible, or the 
 booke of the acts and monuments of the church of England, or both, 
 beside some histories and chronicles lieing therein, for the exercise of 
 such as come into the same : "whereby the stranger that entereth into 
 the court of England upon the sudden, shall rather imagine himselfe to 
 come into some ptiblike schoole of the universities, where manie give eare 
 to one that readeth, than into a princes palace, if you conferre the sa?7ie 
 with those of other nations. Would to God all honorable personages 
 would take example of hir graces godlie dealing in this behalfe, and 
 shew their conformitie unto these hir so good beginnings ! which if 
 they would, then shoidd manie grievous offenses (wherewith God is 
 
 * Burton's Anatomy of Melancholj-, fol. edit. p. 84.
 
 432 
 
 highlie displeased) be cut off and restreined, which now doo reigne 
 exceedinghe, in most noble and gentlemen's houses, whereof they see 
 no paterne within hir graces gates." * Well might Mr. Dibdin apos- 
 trophize this learned Queen in the following picturesque and charac- 
 teristic terms : — " All hail to the sovereign, who, bred up in severe 
 habits of reading and meditation, loved books and scholars to the very 
 bottom of her heart ! I consider Elizabeth as a royal bibliomaniac 
 of transcendant fame ! — I see her, in imagination, wearing her favo- 
 rite little Volume of Pro^e/'sf, the composition of Queen Catharine 
 Parr, and Lady Tirwit, ' bound in solid gold, and hanging by a gold 
 chain at her side,' at her morning and evening devotions — afterwards, 
 as she became firmly seated upon her throne, taking an interest in the 
 embellishments of the Pr-ayer Book J, which goes under her own 
 name ; and then indulging her strong bibliomaniacal appetites in 
 fostering the institution for the erecting of a Library, and an Academy 
 for the study of Antiquities and History." § 
 
 * Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. i. p. 331. 
 
 f " The reader is referred to an account of a preciously bound diminutive godly book 
 (once belonging to Q. Elizabeth), in the first volume of my edition of the British Typo- 
 graphical Antiquities, p. 83. ; for which, I understand, the present owner asks the sum of 
 150/. We find that in the 16th year of Elizabeth's reign, she was in possession of « One 
 Gospell booke, covered with tissue and garnished on th' inside with the crucifix and the 
 Qucene's badges of silver guilt, poiz with wodde, leaves and all, cxij oz." Arch^ologia, 
 vol. xiii. 221. 
 
 " I am in possession of the covers of a book, bound (A. D. 1569) in thick parchment or 
 vellum, which has the whole length portrait of Luther on one side, and of Calvin on the 
 other. These portraits, which are executed with uncommon spirit and accuracy, are en- 
 circled with a profusion of ornamental borders of the most exquisite taste and richness." 
 Bibliomania, p. 158. 
 
 I " In the Prayer Book which goes by the name of Queen Elizabeth's, there is a 
 portrait of Her Majesty kneeling upon a superb cushion, with elevated hands, in prayer. 
 This book was first printed in 1575; and is decorated with wood-cut borders of consider- 
 able spirit and beauty; representing, among other things, some of the subjects of Holbein's 
 Dance of Death." 
 
 § Dibdin's Bibliomania, 2d edit. 1811, p. 329 — 331. This book, the most fascinating 
 which has ever been written on Bibliogi-aphj', is already scarce. It is composed in the 
 highest tone of enthusiasm for the art, and its dialogue and descriptions are given with a 
 mellowness, a warmth and raciness, which absolutely fix and enchant the reader.
 
 433 
 
 The example of Elizabeth, whose taste for books had been fostered 
 under the tuition of Ascham, was speedily followed by some of the 
 first characters in the kingdom ; but by none with more ardent zeal 
 then by Archbishop Parker, who was such an indefatigable admirer 
 and collector of curious and precious books, and of every thing that 
 appeitained to them, that, according to Strype, he kept constantly in 
 his house " drawers of pictures, wood-cutters, painters, limners, 
 writers, and book-binders, — one of these was Lylye, an excellent 
 writer, that could counterfeit any antique writing. Him the arch- 
 bishop customarily used to make old books compleat." * No 
 expense, .in short, was spared, by this amiable and accomplished 
 divine, in procuring the most rare and valuable articles ; his library 
 was daily increased through the medium of numerous agents, whom 
 he employed, both at home and abroad, and among these was Bat- 
 man the author of the Doome and the commentator iqypon BarfJiolame, 
 who, we are told, purchased for him not less than 6700 books " in the 
 space of no more than four years." f 
 
 To Parker succeeded the still more celebrated names of Sir Robert 
 Cotton and Sir Thomas Bodley, men to whom the nation is indebted 
 for two of the most extensive and valuable of its public libraries. 
 The enthusiasm which animated these illustrious characters in their 
 bibliographical researches is almost incredible, and what gives an im- 
 perishable interest to their biography is, that their morals were as 
 pure as their literary zeal was glowing. 
 
 Sir Thomas Bodley was singularly fortunate in the selection of 
 Dr. Thomas James for the keeper of his library, whom Camden terms 
 vir eruditus, et vere (piXo^tQx©^ :\_, and of whom Fuller says, that " on 
 serious consideration one will conclude the Library made for hm, and 
 hitn for it, like tallies they so fitted one another. Some men live like 
 mothes in libraries, not being better for the books, but the books 
 the worse for them, which they only soile with their fingers. Not 
 
 * Strype's Life of Parker, p. 415. 529. f Ibid. p. 528. 
 
 t Britannia in Monmouthshire. 
 VOL. I. 3 K
 
 434 
 
 so Dr. James, who made use of books for his own and the publique 
 good. He knew the age of a manuscript, by looking upon the face 
 thereof, and by the form of the character could conclude the time 
 wherein it was written." * 
 
 Among the lovers and collectors of curious books, during the reign 
 of Elizabeth, may be mentioned Dr. John Dee, notorious for his 
 magical and astrological lore, and who, according to his own account, 
 possessed a library of " four thousand volumes, printed and unprinted, 
 bound and unbound, valued at 2000/.," beside numerous boxes and 
 cases of very rare evidences Irish and Welsh f ; and Captain Cox of 
 Coventry, whose boudoir of romances and ballads we shall have occa- 
 sion to notice, at some length, in the succeeding chapter. 
 
 It is remarkable that the two sovereigns included in the era of 
 Shakspeare, should have felt an equally unbounded inclination to 
 study and to books. So attached was James to bibliothecal delights, 
 that when he visited the Bodleian Library in 1605, he is said by 
 Burton to have exclaimed on his departure, " if it were so that I ?nust 
 be a prisoner, if I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other 
 jjrison than this library, and to he chained together with so many good 
 authors" % Burton himself was one of the most inveterate biblioma- 
 niacs of his day ; Hearne tells us that he was a collector of " ancient 
 popular little pieces," which, together with a multitude of books of 
 the best kind, he gave to the Bodleian Library. § In the preface to 
 his curious folio, he speaks of his eyes aking with reading, and his 
 fingers with turning the leaves |[ ; and in the body of his work, under 
 the article of study, he expatiates, in the highest strain of enthusiasm, 
 on the luxury of possessing numerous books : " we have thousands of 
 authors of all sorts," he observes; " many great libraries full well fur- 
 nished, like so many dishes of meat, served out for several palates : 
 
 * Fuller's Worthies, part ii, p. 13, 
 
 t Vide Dibdin's Bibliomania, p. 347, 348. 
 
 X Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 177- 8th edit, folio. 
 
 § Vide Hearne's Benedictus, Abbas, p. iv. 
 
 II Anatomy of Melancholy, Democritus to the Reader, p. 5.
 
 435 
 
 and he is a veiy block that is affected with none of theni. — I could 
 even live' and dye with — and take more delight, true content of mind 
 in them, than thou hast in all thy wealth and sport, how rich soever 
 
 thou art. Nicholas Gerbelius, that good old man, was so much 
 
 ravished with a few Greek authors restored to light, with hope and 
 desire of enjoying the rest, that he exclaims forthwith, Arabibus 
 atque Indis omnibus erimus ditiores. We shall be richer than all the 
 Arabick or Indian Princes ; of such esteem they were with him, in 
 comparable worth and value." — He then adopts the emphatic lan- 
 guage of Heinsius : " / no sooner come into the Library, but I bolt the 
 door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose 
 nurse is idleness, their mother Ignorance, and Melancholy herself, and in 
 the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat, 
 with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great 07ies, 
 and rich men that know not this happiness. I am not ignorant in the 
 mean time," he adds, " notwithstanding this which I have said, how 
 barbarously and basely for the most part our ruder Gentry esteem of 
 libraries and books, how they neglect and contemn so great a treasure, 
 so inestimable a benefit. — For my part I pity these men, — how 
 much, on the other side, are all we bound that are scholars, to those 
 munificent Ptolomies, bountiful Mcecenates, heroical patrons, divine 
 spirits, — qui nobis hcec otia fecerunt, Nanique erit ille mihi semper Deus 
 — that have provided for us so many well furnished libraries as well 
 in our publick Academies in most cities, as in our private Colledges ? 
 How shall I remember Sir Thomas Bodley, amongst the rest, Otho 
 Nicholson, and the right reverend John Williams Lord Bishop of Lin- 
 colne, (with many other pious acts) who besides that at St. Johns 
 College in Cambridge, that in Westminster, is now likewise in Fieri 
 with a Library at Lincolne (a noble president for all corporate towns 
 and cities to imitate) quam te memorem {vir illustrissime) cjuibus 
 elogiis ?" * 
 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 176, 177. 
 3 K 2
 
 436 
 
 The passion for letters and for books, which was thus diffused 
 among the higher classes, necessarily occasioned much attention to 
 be paid to the preservation and decoration of libraries, the volumes of 
 which, however, were not arranged on the shelves in the manner that 
 we are now accustomed to see them. The leaves, and not the back, 
 were placed in front, in order to exhibit the silk strings or golden 
 clasps which united the sides of the cover. Thus Bishop Earl, 
 describing the character of a young gentleman of the University, says, 
 — " His study has commonly handsome shelves, his books neat silk 
 strings, which he shews to his father s man, and is loth to unty or take 
 down for fear of misplacing." * 
 
 To the most costly of these embellishments, the golden clasps, 
 Shakspeare has referred, both in a metaphorical and literal sense. 
 In the Twelfth Night the Duke, addressing the supposed Cesario, 
 exclaims — 
 
 " I have unclasp' d 
 
 To thee the book even of my secret soul ;" f 
 
 and in Romeo and Juliet, Lady Capulet observes, 
 
 " That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, 
 That in gold clasps locks in the golden story." \ 
 
 It appears, indeed, that the art of ornamenting the exterior of 
 books was carried, at this period, to a lavish extent, jewels, as well as 
 gold, being employed to enhance their splendour. Let us listen to 
 the directions of the judicious Peacham, on this head, a contem- 
 porary authority, who has thought it not unnecessary to subjoin the 
 best mode of keeping books, and the best scite for a library. " Have 
 a care," says he, " of keeping your bookes handsome, and well 
 bound, not casting away over much in their gilding or stringing for 
 ostentation sake, like the prayer-bookes of girles and gallants, which 
 
 * Earl's Microcosmography, p. 74. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 257, 258. Act i. sc. +. 
 
 t Ibid. vol. XX. p. 43. Act i. sc. 3.
 
 4S1 
 
 are carried to Church but for their out-sides. Yet for your owue use 
 spare them not for noting or interlining (if they be printed) for it is 
 not likely you meane to be a gainer by them, when you have done 
 with them : neither suffer them through negUgence to mold and be 
 moath-eaten, or want their strings or covers. — Suffer them not to lye 
 neglected, who must make you regarded ; and goe in torn coates, 
 who must apparell your mind with the ornaments of knowledge, 
 al}ove the roabes and riches of the most magnificent Princes. 
 
 " To avoyde the inconvenience of moathes and moldinesse, let 
 your study be placed, and your windowes open if it may be, towards 
 the East, for where it looketh South or West, the aire being ever 
 subject to moisture, moathes are bred and darkishnesse encreased, 
 whereby your maps and pictures will quickly become pale, loosing 
 their life and colours, or rotting upon their cloath, or paper, decay 
 past all helpe and recovery." * 
 
 The interior, also, as well as the exterior, of books, had acquired a 
 high degree of richness and finishing during the era of which we are 
 treating. The black-letter, Roman, and Italic, types were, in general, 
 clear, sharp, and strong, and though the splendid art of illumination 
 had ceased to be practised, in the sixteenth century, in consequence 
 of the establishment of printing, the loss was compensated for, by 
 more correct ornamental capital initials, cut with great taste and 
 spirit on wood and copper, and by engraved borders and title-pages. 
 Portraits were also frequently introduced in the initials, especially by 
 the celebrated printers Jugge, and Day, the latter of whom, patronised 
 by Archbishop Parker, became in his turn the patron of Fox the 
 martyrologist, in the first edition of whose book, 1563, and in Day's 
 edition of Dee's General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the per- 
 fecte Arte of Navigation, folio, 1577, may be found an admirable 
 specimen of this style of decoration, the capital initial C including a 
 portrait of Elizabeth sitting in state, and attended by three of her 
 ministers, f A similar mode of costly ornamenture issued from the 
 
 * The Compleat Gentleman, 2d edit. p. 54, 55. 
 
 f Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, Preliminary Disquisition, p. 35.
 
 438 
 
 presses of Grafton, Whitchurch, Bill, and Barker, and perhaps in no 
 period of our annals has this species of decorative typography been 
 canied to a higher state of perfection, Some very grotesque orna- 
 ments, it is true, and some degree of affectation were occasionally 
 exhibited in title-pages, and to one of the latter class, very common 
 in this age, Shakspeare alludes in the Second Part of King Henry IV., 
 where Northumberland, describing the approach of a messenger, says, 
 
 '• This man's brow, like to a title-leaf, 
 
 Foretells the nature of a tragick volume;"* 
 
 imagery drawn from the custom of printing elegiac poems with the 
 title-page, and every intermediate leaf, entirely black ; but, upon the 
 whole, valuable books, and especially the Bible, had more splendid 
 and minutely ornamental finishing bestowed upon their pages, than 
 has since occurred, in this country, until towards the close of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 It had been fortunate, if accuracy in typography had kept pace 
 with the taste for decoration ; but this, with few exceptions, may be 
 said never to have been the case, and about the termination of 
 Elizabeth's reign, the era of total incorrectness, as Mr. Steevens 
 remarks, commenced, when " works of all kinds appeared with the 
 disadvantage of mojre than their natural and inherent imperfec- 
 tions t ;" an assertion sufficiently borne out by the state in which the 
 dramatic poetry of this period was published. It may be added that 
 the Black-letter continued to be the prevailing type during the days 
 of Elizabeth, but seems to have nearly deserted the Enghsh press 
 before the demise of her successor. 
 
 Of what extent was the Library of Shakspeare, and of what its 
 chief treasures consisted, can now only be the subject of conjecture. 
 That he was a lover and collector of books more particularly within 
 the pale of his own language, and in the range of elegant literature, 
 is sufficiently evidenced by his own works. A Bibliotheca Shakspeariana 
 may, in fact, be drawn, from the industry of his commentators, who 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 13. t Ibid. vol. i. p. 44, 45.
 
 439 
 
 have sought for, and quoted, almost every book to which he has been 
 directly or remotely indebted. The disquisitions indeed into which 
 we are about to enter will pretty accurately point out the species of 
 books which principally ornamented his shelves, and may preclude 
 any other rematk here, than that the chief Wealth of his collection 
 consisted of Historic, Romantic, and Poetic Literature, in all their 
 various branches. 
 
 Philological or grammatical literature, as applied to the English 
 language, appears to have made little progress until after the middle of 
 the sixteenth century. We are told by Roger Ascham in 1544, the 
 period of the publication of his Toxophilus, that " as for the Latine 
 or Greeke tongue, everye thinge is so excellentlye done in them, 
 that none can do better ; in the Englishe tongue, contrary, everye 
 thinge in a maner so meanlye both for the matter and handelinge, 
 that no man can do worse. For therein the least learned, for the most 
 part, have bene alwayes most ready e to write." * The Toxophilus 
 of this useful and engaging writer, was written in his native tongue, 
 with the view of presenting the public with a specimen of a purer and 
 more correct English style than that to which they had hitherto been 
 accustomed ; and with the hope of calling the attention of the 
 learned, from the exclusive study of the Greek and Latin, to the 
 cultivation of their vernacular language. The result which he con- 
 templated was attained, and, from the period of this publication, the 
 shackles of Latinity were broken, and composition in English prose 
 became an object of eager and successful attention. 
 
 Previous to the exertions of Ascham, very few writers can be men- 
 tioned as affording any model for English style. If we except the 
 Translation of Froissart by Bourchier, Lord Berners, in 1523, and 
 the History of Richard HL by Sir Thomas More, certainly compo- 
 sitions of great merit, we shall find it difficult to produce an author 
 of much value for his vernacular prose. On the contrary, very soon 
 after the appearance of the Toxophilus, we find harmony and beauty 
 
 * Ascham's Works, Bennet's edit. p. 57.
 
 440 
 
 in English style emphatically praised and enjoined. Thus, in The 
 Arte of Rhetorike for the use of all suche as are studious of Elo- 
 quence, sette forthe in Englishe by Thomas Wilson, 1553, we are 
 informed that many now aspired to write English elegantly. " When 
 we have learned," remarks this critic, " usuall and accustomable 
 wordes to set forthe our meanynge, we ought to joyne them together 
 in apte order, that the eare male delite in hearynge the harmonic. 
 I knowe some Englishemen, that in this poinct have suche a gift in 
 the Englishe as fewe in Latin have the like ; and therefore delite the 
 Wise and Learned so muche with their pleasaunte composition, that 
 many rejoyce when thei male heare suche, and thinke muche learnyng 
 is eotte when thei maie talke with them." * The Treatise of Wilson 
 powerfully assisted the cause which Ascham had been advocating ; it 
 displays much sagacity and good sense, and greatly contributed to 
 clear the language from the affectation consequent on the intro- 
 duction of foreign words and idiom. The licentiousness, in this 
 respect, was carried, indeed, at this time, to such a height, that 
 those who affected more than ordinary refinement, either in con- 
 versation or writing, so Italianated or Latinized their English, as to 
 be scarcely intelligible to the common people. Wilson severely 
 satirizes this absurd practice. " Some," says he, " seke so farre for 
 outlandishe Englishe, that they forget altogether their mother's 
 language. And I dare sweare this, if some of their mothers were 
 alive, thei were not able to tel what thei saie : and yet these fine 
 Englishe clerkes wil saie thei speake in their mother tongue, if a man 
 should charge them for counterfeityng the kinges Englishe. — He 
 that Cometh lately out of Fraunce, will talke Frenche Englishe, and 
 never blushe at the matter. Another choppes in with Englishe 
 Italianated, and applieth the Italian phraise to our Englishe speak- 
 yno-. — The imlearned or folishe phantasticall, that smelles but of 
 learnyng (suche fellowes as have scene learned men in their dales) 
 
 Wilson's Arte of Rhetorike, fol. 85, 86.
 
 441 
 
 will so Latine their tongues, that the simple cannot but wonder at 
 their talke, and thinke surely thei speake by some revelacion. I 
 know them, that thinke Rhetorike to stande wholie upon darke 
 wordes ; and he that can catche an ynkehorne terme by the taile, 
 hym thei compt to be a fine Englishman and a good rhetorician." He 
 then adds a specimen of this style from a letter " devised by a 
 Lincolneshire man for a voide benefice," addressed to the Lord 
 Chancellor: — " Ponderyng, expendyng, and revolutyng with myself, 
 your ingent affabilitie, and ingenious capacitie, for mundane affaires, 
 I cannot but celebrate and extoll your magnificall dexteritie above all 
 other. For how could you have adapted suche illustrate prerogative, 
 and dominiall superioritie, if the fecunditie of your ingenie had not 
 been so fertile and wonderfull pregnaunt, &c." * That the same 
 species of pedantry continued to prevail in 1589, we have the testi- 
 mony of Puttenham, who, in his chapter Of Language, observes 
 that " we finde in our English writers many wordes and speaches 
 amendable, and ye shall see in some many inkhorne termes so ill 
 affected brought in by men of learning as preachers and schoole- 
 masters : and many straunge termes of other languages by Secretaries 
 and Marchaunts and travailours, and many darke wordes and not 
 usual nor well sounding, though they be dayly spok in Court." f 
 
 Before Puttenham, however, had published, another and a still more 
 dangerous mode of corruption had infected English composition. In 
 1581, John Lilly, a dramatic poet, published a Romance in two parts, 
 of which the first is entitled, Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit, and the 
 second, Euphues and his England. This production is a tissue of an- 
 tithesis and alliteration, and therefore justly entitled to the appel- 
 lation of affected ; but we cannot with Berkenhout consider it as a most 
 contemptible piece of nonsense. | The moral is uniformly good ; the 
 vices and follies of the day are attacked with much force and keenness; 
 there is in it much display of the manners of the times, and though, 
 
 * Wilson, book iii. fol. 82. 
 
 f Puttenhain's Arte of English Poesie, 1581), reprint, p. 121. 
 
 ± Berkenhout's Biographia Literaria, p. 377- note a. 
 VOL. I. 3 L
 
 442 
 
 as a composition, it is very meretricious, and sometimes absurd in point 
 of ornament, yet the construction of its sentences is frequently turned 
 with peculiar neatness and spirit, though with much monotony of 
 cadence. William Webbe, no mean judge, speaking of those who had 
 attained a good grace and sweet vein in eloquence, adds, — " among 
 whom t think there is none that will gainsay but Master John Lilly 
 hath deserved most high commendations, as he who hath stepped one 
 step farther therein than any since he first began the witty discourse 
 of his EuPHUES, whose works surely in respect of his singular eloquence 
 and brave composition of apt words and sentences, let the learned 
 examine, and make a tryal thereof through all parts of rhetoric in fit 
 phrases, in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speech, in 
 plain sense ; and surely in my judgment I think he will yield him that 
 verdict, which Quintilian giveth of both the best orators, Demosthenes 
 and Tully ; that from the one nothing may be taken away, and to the 
 other nothing may be added * ;" an encomium that was repeated by 
 Nash t. Lodge X-> and Meres §, but which should be contrasted with 
 the sounder opinion of Drayton, who, in his Epistle of Poets and Poesy, 
 mentioning the noble Sidney, 
 
 " That heroe for numbers and for prose," 
 
 observes that he 
 
 " thoroughly pac'd our language as to show 
 
 Tlie plenteous English hanil in hand might go 
 With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce 
 Our tongue from Lilly's writing then in use ; 
 Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, 
 Playing with words, and idle similies, 
 As th' English apes, and very zanies be 
 Of every thing, that they do hear and see, 
 
 * Wcbbe's Discourse of English Poetrie, 4.to. 1586. Vide Oidys's British Librarian, 
 p. 90. from which this quotation is given. 
 
 f Apology of Pierce Pennilessc, 4to. 159.3. 
 
 X Wit's Miserie and Word's Madness, 4to. 1596, p. 57. 
 
 § Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasurie, being the second part of Wit's Commonwealth, 
 1598. Meres terms him " eloquent and wittie John Lillie."
 
 443 
 
 So imitating liis ridiculous tricks, 
 
 They speak and write, all like mere lunatics." * 
 
 Yet the most correct description of the merits and defects of this once 
 celebrated author has been given by Oldys, in his Librarian, who 
 remarks that " Lilly was a man of great reading, good memory, readv 
 faculty of application, and uncommon eloquence ; but he ran into a 
 vast excess of allusion ; in sentence and conformity of style he seldom 
 speaks directly to the purpose, but is continually carried away by one 
 odd allusion or simile or other (out of natural history, that is yet fabu- 
 lous and not true in nature), and that still overborne by more, thick 
 upon the back of one another ; and through an eternal affectation of 
 sententiousness keeps to such a formal measure of his periods as soon 
 grows tiresome ; and so, by confining himself to shape his sense so 
 frequently into one artificial cadence, however ingenious or harmonious, 
 abridges that variety which the style should be admired for." f 
 
 So greatly was the style of Euphues admired in the court of Eliza- 
 beth, and, indeed, throughout the kingdom, that it became a proof of 
 refined manners to adopt its phraseology. Edward Blount, who re- 
 published six of Lilly's plays, in 1632, under the title of Sixe Court 
 Comedies, declares that " Our nation are in his debt for a new English 
 which hee taught them. Euphues and his England,''' he adds, " began 
 first that language. All our ladies were then his scollers ; and that 
 beautie in court who could not parley Euphuesme, was as little regarded 
 as shee which now there speakes not French ;" a representation cer- 
 tainly not exaggerated ; for Ben Jonson, describing, a fashionable lady, 
 makes her address her gallant in the following terms : — " O master 
 Brisk, (as it is in Euphues) hard is the choice zvhen one is compeWd, either 
 by silence to die with grief, or by speaking, to live with shame .-" upon 
 which Mr. \Vhalley observes, that the court ladies in Elizabeth's time 
 had all the phrases of Euphues by heart. X 
 
 * Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 399. 
 
 t British Librarian, p. 90. ct se(]. ^..^ 
 
 I Whalley's Works of Ben Jonson : Every Man Out of His Humour, act v. so. 10. 
 
 3 L 2
 
 444 
 
 Scarcely had corruption from this source ceased to violate the purity 
 and propriety of our language, when the fashion of interlarding com- 
 position with a perpetual series of Latin quotations commenced ; a 
 custom which continued until the close of the reign of James, and gave 
 to the style of this period a complexion the most heterogeneous and 
 absurd, being, in fact, composed of two languages, half Latin and half 
 English. Of this barbarous and pedantic habit, the works of Bishop 
 Andrews afford the mort flagrant instance ; an example which, we 
 have reason to regret, was followed too closely by Robert Burton, who, 
 when he trusts to his native tongue, has written in a style at once 
 simple and impressive. 
 
 These affectations, arising from the use of inkhorn terms, of anti- 
 thesis, alliteration, arbitrary orthography, and the perpetual intermix- 
 twe of Latin phraseology, have been deservedly and powerfully 
 ridiculed by Sir Philip Sidney and Shakspeare ; by the former under 
 the character oi Rombus, a village schoolmaster, in a masque presented 
 to Her Majesty in Wansted Garden, and by the latter in the person 
 of HoLOFERNES in Love's Labour^ Lost. The satire of Sir Philip is 
 supported with humour ; Her Majesty is supposed to have parted, by 
 her presence, a violent contest between two shepherds for the affec- 
 tion of the Lady of the May, on which event Rombus comes forward 
 \\ ith a learned oration. 
 
 " Now the thunder-thumping Jove transfused his dotes into your 
 excellent formositie, which have with your resplendent beames thus 
 segregated the enmity of these rurall animals ; I am Potentissima Do- 
 mina, a Schoole-master, that is to say, a Pedagogue, one not a little 
 versed in the disciplinating of the juvenall frie, wherin (to my laud I 
 say it) I use such geometrical proportions, as neither wanted man- 
 suetude nor correction, for so it is described. 
 
 " Parcare suhjectos, et dehellire superbos.^' 
 
 " Yet hath not the pulchritude of my vertues protected me from 
 the contaminating hands of these Plebeians ; for coming solionmodo, 
 to have parted their sanguinolent fray, they yeelded me no more
 
 445 
 
 reverence, than if I had been some Pecorius Asimis. I, even I, that 
 am, who am I ? Dixi verhus sajjiento satum est. But what said that 
 Troian jEneas, when he sojourned in the surging sulkes of the san- 
 diferous seas, Hcec olim memonasse juvebit. Well, well, ad propositos 
 revert ebo, the puritie of the verity is that a certaine Pulchra puella 
 profecto, elected and constituted by the integrated determination of 
 all this topographicall region as the soveraigne Ladie of this Dame 
 Maies month, hath beene quodammodo hunted, as you would say, 
 pursued by two, a brace, a couple, a cast of young men, to whom the 
 crafty coward Cupid had inquam delivered his dire-dolorous dart;" 
 here the May-Lady interfering calls him a tedious fool, and dismisses 
 him ; upon which in anger he exclaims, — 
 
 " O Tempori, O Moribus ! in profession a childe, in dignitie a 
 woman, in yeares a Ladie, in ceteris a maide, should thus turpifie the 
 reputation of my doctrine, with the superscription of a foole, 
 Tempori, Moribus ! * 
 
 The Schoolmaster of Shakspeare appears, from the researches of 
 Warburton and Dr. Farmer, to have been intended as a satire 
 upon John Florio, whose First Fruits, or Dialogues in Italian and 
 English, were published in 1578, his Second in 1591, and his 
 " Worlde of Wordes" in 1598. He was ludicrously pedantic, dog- 
 matic, and assuming, and gave the first affront to the dramatic poets 
 of his day, by affirming that " the plaies that they plaie in England, 
 are neither right comedies, nor right tragedies ; but representations of 
 histoiies without any decorum." f The character of Holofernes, how- 
 ever, while it caricatures the peculiar folly and ostentation of Florio, 
 holds up to ridicule, at the same time, the general pedantry and 
 literary affectations of the age ; and amongst these very particularly 
 the absurd innovations which Lilly had introduced. Sir Nathaniel, 
 praising the specimen ol' alliteration which Holofernes exhibits in his 
 " extemporal epitaph," calls it " a rare talent ;" upon which the 
 
 * Sir Philip Sidney's Works, 7th edit., 1629, foi., p. 619, 620. 
 t Reed's Sliakspearc, vol. vii. p. 86. note.
 
 446 
 
 schoolmaster comments on the compliment in a manner which pretty 
 accurately describes the fantastic genius of the author of Euphues : 
 — " This is a gift that I have, simple, simple ; a foolish extravagant 
 spirit, full of forms, figures, shajies, objects, ideas, apprehensions, 
 motions, revolutions : these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nou- 
 rished in the womb of pia mater ; and deliver'd upon the mellowing 
 of occasion ;" and subsequently in a strain of good sense not very 
 common from the mouth of this imperious pedant, he still more 
 definitely points out the foppery of Lilly both in style and pronun- 
 ciation, — " He is too picked," he remarks, "too spruce, too affected, 
 too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. — He draweth 
 out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argume?nt. 
 I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such insociable and point devise 
 companions ; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, 
 when he shoidd say, doubt ; det, when he should pronounce, debt ; 
 d, e, b, t J not d, e, t : he clepeth a calf, cauf ; half, hauf ; neighbour, 
 vocatur nebour ; neigh, abbreviated, ne : This is abhominable, (which 
 he would call abominable,) it insinuateth me of insanie ; Ne intelligis 
 domhie ? to make frantick, lunatick." * 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding these various attempts, all tending to corrupt 
 the purity of our language, and originating from the pedantic taste 
 of the age, and from a love of novelty and over-refinement, English 
 style more rapidly improved during the reigns of Elizabeth and 
 James, than has been the case in any previous, or subsequent period 
 of our annals. To establish this assertion, we have only to appeal to 
 the great writers of this era, and among these, it will be sufficient to 
 mention the names of Ralegh, Hooker, Bacon and Daniel, masters of 
 a style, at once vigorous, perspicuous, and often richly modulated. 
 If to this brief catalogue, though adequate to our pui-pose, Ave add 
 the prose of Ascham, Sidney, Southwell, Knolles, Hakewell, and 
 Peacham, still omitting many authors of much merit, it may justly 
 be affimied, that no specimens of excellence in dignified and serious 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 93. 134.
 
 447 
 
 composition could be wanting as exemplars. That tlie good sense of 
 the age was aware of the value of these writers, in point of style, 
 though surrounded by innovations supported by rank and fashion, 
 may be concluded from the admonitions of Peacham, who in his 
 chapter " Of stile, in speaking and writing," not only describes 
 the style which ought to be adopted, but enumerates the authors who 
 have afforded the best examples of it for the student. " Let your 
 style," he admirably observes, " bee furnished with solid matter, and 
 compact of the best, choice, and most familiar words ; taking heed 
 of speaking, or writing such words, as men shall rather admire than 
 understand. — Flowing at one and the selfe same height, neither 
 taken in and knit up too short, that, like rich hangings of Arras or 
 Tapistry, thereby lose their grace and beautie, as Themistocles was 
 wont to say : nor suffered to spread so fari'e, like soft Musicke in an 
 open field, whose delicious sweetnesse vanisheth, and is lost in the 
 ayre. 
 
 "To helpe yourselfe herein, make choice of those authors in prose, 
 who speake the best and purest English. I would commend unto 
 you (though from more antiquity) the Life of Richard the third, 
 written by Sir Thomas Moore ; the Arcadia of the noble Sir Philip 
 Sidney, whom Du Bartas makes one of the foure columnes of our 
 language ; the Essayes, and other peeces of the excellent master of 
 eloquence, my Lord of ^S". Albanes, who possesseth not onely elo- 
 quence, but all good learning, as hereditary both by father and 
 mother. You have then M. Hooker, his Policy : Henry the fourth, 
 well written by S. John Heyward ; that first part of our English 
 Kings, by M. Samuel Daniel There are many others I know, but 
 these will tast you best, as proceeding from no vulgar judgment."* 
 
 With regard to the state of colloquial language during this epoch, 
 it may safely be asseiled, that a reference to the works of Shakspeare 
 will best acquaint us with the " diction of common life," with the 
 tone of conversation which prevailed both in the higher and lower 
 
 * Peacham's Compleat Geatleman, 4to. 2d edit. p. 13. 53.
 
 448 
 
 ranks of society ; for the dialogue of his most perfect comedies is, by 
 many degrees, more easy, Uvely, and perspicuous, than that of any 
 other contemporary dramatic writer. 
 
 It is by no means, however, our wish to infer, from what has been 
 said in praise of the prose writers of this period, that they are to be 
 considered as perfect models in the nineteenth century ; on the con- 
 trary, it must be confessed, that the best of them exhibit abundant 
 proofs of quaintness and prolixity, of verbal pedantry and inverted 
 phraseology ; and though the language, through their influence, made 
 unparalleled strides, and fully unfolded its copiousness, energy, and 
 strength, it remained greatly deficient in correctness and polish, in 
 selection of words, and harmony of arrangement. * 
 
 These defects, especially the two latter, are to be attributed, in a 
 great measure, to philological studies being almost exclusively con- 
 fined to the learned languages, a subject of complaint with a few 
 individuals, who lamented the neglect which this classical enthusiasm 
 entailed on their native tongue. Thus Arthur Golding, in some 
 verses prefixed to Baret's Alviarie, after observing that 
 
 — " all good inditers find 
 
 Our Inglishe tung driven almost out of kind,' 
 
 Dismembred, backed, maymed, rent and tome. 
 Defaced, patched, raard, and made a skorne," 
 
 adds with great truth and good sense, 
 
 " No doubt but men should shortly find there is 
 As perfect order, as firm certeintie, 
 As grounded rules to trie out things amisse, 
 As much sweete grace, as great varietie 
 Of wordes and phrazes, as good quantitie 
 
 For verse or proze in Inglish every waie, 
 As any comen language hath this daic. 
 
 * For specimens of the prose writers of this period, the introduction of which would be 
 too digressive for the plan of this work, I venture to refer the reader to my Essays on the 
 Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, 1805, vol. ii. part 3. Essay II. on the Progress and Merits 
 of English Style; or to Burnett's Specimens of English Prose- Writers, vol. ii. 1807.
 
 449 
 
 And lucre wee given as well to like our pwtic, # 
 
 And for to dense it from the noisome weede 
 
 Of affectation which hath ovcrgrowne 
 
 Ungraciously the good and native seede, 
 
 As for to borroxve where wee have no neede : 
 
 It woidd pricke neere the learned tungs in strength. 
 Perchance, and match mee some of them at length." * 
 
 The ardour for classical acquisition was, at this time, indeed, so 
 prevalent among the learned and the great, that the mythology as 
 well as the diction of the ancients became fashionable. The amuse- 
 ments, and even the furniture of the opulent, their shows, and 
 masques, the hangings and the tapestries of their houses, and their 
 very cookery, assumed an erudite, and what would now be termed, 
 a pedantic cast. " Every thing," says Warton, speaking of this era, 
 " was tinctured with ancient history and mythology. — Wlien the 
 Queen paraded through a country town, almost every pageant was a 
 pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house of any of her nobility, 
 at entering the hall she was saluted by the Penates, and conducted to 
 her privy-chamber by Mercury. Even the pastry-cooks were expert 
 mythologists. At dinner, select transformations of Ovid's meta- 
 morphoses were exhibited in confectionary : and the splendid iceing 
 of an immense historic plumb-cake, was embossed with a delicious 
 basso-relievo of the destruction of Troy. In the afternoon, when 
 she condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with 
 Tritons and Nereids : the pages of the family were converted into 
 Wood-nymphs, who peeped from every bower : and the footmen 
 gamboled over the lawns in the figure of Satyrs." f- 
 
 In the course of a few years the same taste descended to the 
 inferior orders of society, owing to the numerous versions which 
 rapidly appeared of the best writers of Greece and Rome. The rich 
 catalogue of translations to which Shakspeare had access, may be 
 
 * Vide Preface to Baret's Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionary, English, Latin, Greek, 
 and French, bl. 1. folio, London, 1580. 
 
 f Warton's History of Englisli Poetry, vol. iii. p. 4'J2. 
 
 VOL. I. 3 M
 
 450 
 
 estimated from the very accurate list which is inserted in the Variorum 
 editions of the poet, and before the death of James the First, not a 
 single classic, we believe, of any value, remained unfamiliarized to the 
 English reader. 
 
 The height which classical learning had attained about the year 1570, 
 may be estimated from the testimony of Ascham, a most consummate 
 judge, who, quoting Cicero's assertion with regard to Britain, that 
 " there is not one scruple of silver in that whole isle ; or any one 
 that knoweth either learnyng or letter*," thus apostrophizes the 
 Roman Orator: 
 
 " But now, master Cicero, blessed be God, and his sonne Jesus 
 Christ, whom you never knew, except it were as it pleased him to 
 lighten you by some shadow ; as coveitlie in one place ye confesse, 
 saying, Veritatis tantum umbram consectamur j , as your master Plato 
 did before you : blessed be God, I say, that sixten hundred yeare 
 after you were dead and gone, it may trewly be sayd, that for silver, 
 there is more comlie plate in one citie of Englande, than is in four of 
 the proudest cities in all Italie, and take Rorne for one of them : and 
 for learning, beside the knowledge of all learned tonges and liberal 
 sciences, even your owne bookes, Cicero, be as well read, and your 
 excellent eloquence is as well liked and loved, and as trewly folowed 
 in Englande at this day, as it is now, or ever was since your own 
 tyme, in any place of Italie, either at Arpinum, where you was borne, 
 or els at Rome, where you was brought up. And a little to brag 
 with you, Cicero, where you yourselfe, by your leave, halted in some 
 point of learning in your own tongue, many in Englande at this day 
 go streight up, both in trewe skill, and right doing therein." % 
 
 Nor can this progress in the learned languages be considered as 
 surprising, when we recollect the vast encouragement given to these 
 
 * Britannici belli exitus exspectatur : constat enim adltus insulag esse munitos mirificis 
 molibus. Etiara illud jam cognitum est, neque argenti scrupuluni esse ulfum in ilia insula, 
 neque uUam spem praedae, nisi ex mancipiis : ex quibus nullos puto te Uteris, aut musicis 
 eruditos exspectare. Cic. lib. iv. Epist. ad Attic, ep. 16. 
 
 I Vide Cic. Offic. lib. iii. cap. I?. 
 
 X Ascham's Works, Bennet's edit. 4to. p. 333.
 
 451 
 
 studies, not only by the nobility but by the Queen herself; who 
 was, in tact, a most laborious and erudite author, who wrote a Com- 
 mentary on Plato, translated from the Greek two of the Orations of 
 Isocrates, a play of Euripides, the Hiero of Xenophon, and Plutarch 
 de Curiositate ; from the Latin, Sallust de Bello Jugurthino, Horace 
 de Arte Poetica, Boethius de Consolatione Philosophias, a long chorus 
 from the Hercules Qitaeus of Seneca, one of Cicero's epistles, and 
 another of Seneca's ; who wrote many Latin letters, many English 
 original works, both in prose and poetry, and who spoke five lan- 
 guages with facility. * The British Solomon, it is well known, was 
 equally zealous and industrious in the cause of learning, and both 
 not only patronized individuals, but founded and endowed public 
 seminaries ; Elizabeth was the founder of Westminster- School, and of 
 Jesus- College, Oxford, and to James the University of Edinburgh 
 owes its existence. This laudable spirit was not confined to regal 
 munificence ; in 1584, Emanuel-College, Cambridge, rose on the 
 site of the Dominican convent of Black Friars, through the exertions 
 of Sir Walter Mildmay ; and in 1594, Sidney- Sussex College, in the 
 same University, sprung from the patronage of the Dowager of 
 Thomas RadclifFe, Earl of Sussex. 
 
 Of the modern languages cultivated at this period, the Italian took 
 the lead, and became so fashionable at the court of Elizabeth, and 
 among all who had pretensions to refinement, that it almost rivalled 
 the classical mania of the day. The Queen spoke it with great purity, 
 and among those who professed to teach it, Florio, whom we have 
 formerly mentioned as the object of Shakspeare's satire, was the most 
 eminent. He was pensioned by Lord Southampton, and on the 
 accession of James, was appointed reader of the Italian language to 
 Queen Anne, with a stipend of 100/. a^year. f So popular were 
 the writers of this fascinating country, that the English language 
 was absolutely inundated with versions of the Italian poets and 
 
 * Park's edition of Lord Orford's Royal and Noble Authors, vol. i. article Elizabeth. 
 t Chalmers's Apology, p. 2 1 8. note. 
 
 3 M 2
 
 452 
 
 novellists, a consequence of which Roger Ascham bitterly complains; 
 for, lamenting the diffusion of Italian licentiousness, he exclaims, — 
 " These be the inchantmentes of Circe, brought out of Italic, to 
 marre men's maners in Englande ; much by example of ill life, but 
 more by precepts of fond books, of late translated out of Italian into 
 Englishe sold in every shop in London : — there be moe of these 
 ungratious bookes set out in printe within these few monethes, than 
 have been sene in Englande many score yeares before. — Then they 
 have in more reverence the triumphes of Petrarche, than the Genesis 
 of Moses ; they make more account of a tale in Boccace, than a storie 
 of the Bible."* 
 
 It must be allowed, we think, that the censure of Ascham partakes 
 too much of puritanic sourness ; for these " ungratious bookes " we 
 find to have been the great classics of Italy, Petrarca, Boccacio, &c. 
 writers who, though occasionally romantic in their incidents, and 
 gross in their imagery, yet presented many just views of life and 
 manners, and many rich examples of harmonious style and fervid 
 imagination. They contributed also very powerfully by the variety 
 and fertility of their fictions, to stimulate the poets of our country, 
 and especially the dramatic, who have been indebted to this source 
 more than to any other for the ground-work of their plots. It is, 
 indeed, sufficiently honourable to Italian literature, that we shall 
 find our unrivalled Shakspeare occasionally indebted to it for the 
 hints which awakened his muse. 
 
 We are not to conclude, however, that the labours of our translators 
 were confined to the poetry and romance of Italy, and that its 
 moral, historical, and didactic compositions were utterly neglected. 
 This was so far from being the case, that most of the esteemed pro- 
 ductions in these departments were as speedily naturalized as those 
 of the lighter class ; and among them we may mention two works 
 which must have had no inconsiderable influence in polishing and 
 refining the manners of our countrymen. In 1576, Robert Peterson, 
 
 * Ascham's Works, Bennet's edit. 4to. p. 253.255, 256.
 
 453 
 
 of Lincolne's-Inn, translated the Galateo of John de la Casa, a system 
 of politeness to which Chesterfield has been much indebted*; and 
 in 1588, Thomas Hobby published a version of the Cortigiano of 
 Baldassar Castiglione, a work in equal estimation as a manuel ot" 
 elegance, and termed by the Italians " the Golden Book."i 
 
 The philological attainments of this age, with respect to Greek, 
 Latin, and English, will be placed in a still more compendiously 
 clear light, by a mere enumeration of those who greatly excelled in 
 rendering their acquisition more systematic and correct. Both 
 Greek and English literature were early indebted to the labours of 
 Sir Thotnas Smith, who was appointed public lecturer at Cambridge 
 on the first of these languages, the study qf which he much facilitated 
 by a new method of accentuation and pronunciation ; publishing at 
 the same time an improved system of orthography for his native 
 tongue. These useful works were printed together in 4to. in 1568, 
 under the titles of De recta et emendata linguce Grtecce pronunciafione, 
 and De recta et emendata Imguce Anglicce scriptione. 
 
 Another equally eminent Grecian philologer appeared at the same 
 time, in the person of Sir Henri/ Savile, who was Greek preceptor to 
 Elizabeth, warden of Merton- College, and provost of Eton. He was 
 editor of the works of Chrysostom, with notes, in 8 vols, folio, 1613, 
 the most elaborate Greek production which had hitherto issued from 
 an English press : of Xenophon's Cyropasdia, and of the Steliteidici 
 of Nazianzen. He translated also into English, as early as 1581, 
 the first four books of the History of Tacitus, and his Life of Agri- 
 
 * " Galateo of Maister John Delia Casa, Archbishop of Beneuenta, or rather a trea- 
 tise of the mafiers and behauiours it behoveth a man to uze and eschewe, in his familiar 
 conversation. A worke very necessary and profitable for all gentlemen or other. First 
 written in the Italian tongue, and now done into English by Robert Paterson of Lin- 
 colnes Inne Gentleman. Satis si sapienter. Imprinted at London for Raufe Ncwbery, 
 dwelling in Fleete streate, a little above the Conduit. An. Do. 1576. 4to. 68 leaves, b. 1." 
 
 f " The Courtier of Count Baldessar Castilio, devided into foure bookes. Verie ne- 
 cessarie and profitable for young Gentlemen and Gentlewomen abiding in Court, Pailace, 
 or Place. Done into English by Thomas Hobby. London : Printed by John Wolfe, 
 1588. ito. pp.616."
 
 454 
 
 cola, accompanied by very valuable annotations, which were afterwards 
 published in a Latin version, by Gruter, at Amsterdam. 
 
 To his able assistant, also, in editing the works of Chrysostom, the 
 Rev. John Boys, much gratitude is due for his enthusiasm in the cause 
 of Grecian lore. So attached was he to this study, that during his 
 fellowship of St. John's College, Cambridge, he voluntarily gave a 
 Greek lecture every morning in his own room at four o'clock ; and, 
 what affords a still more striking picture of the learned enthusiasm 
 of the times, it is recorded that this very early prelection was regu- 
 larly attended by nearly all the fellows of his college ! 
 
 Latin Literature appears to have been cultivated with greater 
 purity and success in the prior than in the latter portion of Elizabeth's 
 reign. It is scarcely necessary to mention the great names of George 
 Buchanan and Walter Haddon, who divided the attention of the 
 classical world, and drew from Elizabeth the following terse expres- 
 sion on their comparative merits : — Buchananum omnibus antepono ; 
 Haddonum nemini postpono. * 
 
 Nor can we fail to recollect the truly admirable production of 
 Ascham, the " Schole Master ; or plain e and perfite Way of teaching 
 Children, to understand, write, and speake, the Latin Tonge :" than 
 which a more interesting and judicious treatise has not appeared 
 upon the subject in any language. 
 
 Among the most eminent Latin philologers who witnessed the 
 close of the sixteenth century, may be mentioned the name of 
 Edward Gi'ont, Master of Westminster-School, who was celebrated 
 for his Latin poetry, and who published, in 1577, Oratio de vita et 
 ohitu Rogeri Aschami, ac dictionis elegantia, cum adhortatione ad 
 adolescentulos. He died in 1601. 
 
 With Grant should be classed the master of the free-school of 
 Taunton in Somersetshire, John Bond, who subsequently practised as 
 a physician, and died in 1612. He published, in 1606, some valuable 
 commentaries, in the Latin language, on the poems of Horace, and, in 
 1614, on the Six Satires of Persius. 
 
 * Lord Orford's Royal and Noble Authors apud Park, vol. i. p. 93.
 
 * 455 
 
 Roman literature, however, in this country was under yet hioher 
 obhgations to John Rider, than to either of the preceding philolo^ers ; 
 this learned prelate being the compiler of the first dictionary in our 
 language, in which the English is placed before the Latin. It is entitled 
 A Dictionary Engl, and Latin, and Latin and English. Oxou. 1589. 
 4to. Rider was promoted to the See of Killaloe in 1612, and died in 
 1632. 
 
 In our observations on the state of the English language we have 
 noticed the labours of Ascham and Wilson as pre-eminently conducive 
 to its improvement ; the first of these writers having published two 
 excellent models for English composition, and the second having 
 presented us with a valuable treatise on rhetoric. To these should be 
 added the efforts of Richard Mtdcaster, first master of the Merchant- 
 Taylors School, who, in 1581, published his " Positions, wherein 
 those primitive circumstances be examined which are necessarie for 
 the training up of Children, either for skill in theire Booke or Health 
 in their Bodie ;" a work which was followed, in the subsequent year, by 
 " The first Part of the Elementarie, which entreateth chefely of the 
 right Writing of the English Tung." 
 
 The Positions and the Elementarie of Mulcaster, though inferior in 
 literary merit to the Scholemaster of Ascham, contributed materially 
 to the progress of English philology, as they contain many valuable 
 and acute observations on our language. 
 
 It appears, from the assertion of William BuUokar, an able 
 co-operator in the work of education, that he was the author of the 
 first English Grammar. In 1586 he printed his " Bref grammar for 
 English," which is likewise entitled in fol. 1. " W. Bullokar's abbre- 
 viation of his Grammar for English extracted out of his- Grammar 
 at larg for the spedi parcing of English spech, and the eazier coming 
 to the knowledge of grammar for other langages ;" and Warton 
 adds, in his account of Bullokar's writings, that among Tanner's 
 books was found " a copy of his bref grammar above mentioned, 
 interpolated and corrected with the author's own hand, as it appears, 
 for a new impression. In one of these manuscript insertions, he
 
 456 
 
 calls this, " the first grammar for Englishe that ever waz, except my 
 gi-ammar at large." * 
 
 It is not exactly ascertained in what year the Grammar of Be7i 
 Jonson was written, as it did not appear until after his death ; but it 
 may be safely affirmed that to this production of the once celebrated 
 rival and contemporary of Shakspeare, the English language has been 
 more indebted than to the labours certainly of any previous, and 
 we may almost add, of any subsequent, grammarian, Lowth's and 
 Murray's even not excepted. 
 
 The next branch of our present subject embraces the depart- 
 ment of Criticism, which was cultivated in this period to a great 
 extent, and we are sorry to add not seldom with uncommon bitter- 
 ness and malignity. Numerous are the writers who complain of the 
 very severe and sarcastic tone in which the critics of the age in- 
 dulged ; but one instance or two will be sufficient to prove both the 
 frequency and asperity of the art. Robert Armin, in his Address 
 Ad Lectorem hie et ubique, prefixed to The Italian Taylor and his 
 Boy, says, speaking of his pen, " I wander with it now in a strange 
 time of taxation, wherein every pen and inck-hoi-ne Boy will throw 
 up his cap at the homes of the Moone in censure, although his wit 
 hang there, not returning unlesse monthly in the wane : such is our 
 ticklish age, and the itching braine of abondance f ;" and in the 
 Troia Britannica of Thomas Heywood, the author, saluting his 
 various readers under the titles of the Courteous, the Criticke, and 
 the Scornefull, tells the latter, " I am not so unexperienced in the 
 envy of this Age, but that I knowe I shall encounter most sharpe, 
 and severe Censurers, such as continually carpe at other mens 
 labours, and superficially perusing them, with a kind of negligence 
 and skorne, quote them by the way, Thus : This is an error, that 
 was too much streacht, this too slightly neglected, heere many things 
 mjght have been added, there it might have been better followed : 
 
 * Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 346, 347. 
 
 f The Italian Taylor and his Boy. By Robert Armin, Servant to the King's most 
 excellent Majestic, 1609.
 
 457 
 
 this superriuous, tiiat ridiculous. These indeed knowing no other 
 meanes to have themselves opinioned in the ranke of understanders, 
 but bj calumniating other mens industries." * 
 
 If such proved the strain of general, we need not be surprised if 
 controversial, criticism assumed a still more tremendous aspect. 
 Between the Puritans, in the reign of Elizabeth, who carried on 
 their warfare under the fictitious appellative of Martm Mar-prelate^ 
 and the members of the episcopal church, a torrent of libels broke 
 forth, which inundated the country w^ith a deluge of distorted ridi- 
 cule and rancorous abuse. Nor were the quarrels of literary men 
 conducted with less ferocity, though perhaps with more wit. The 
 republic of letters was, indeed, infested for near twenty years, from 
 the year 1580 to 1600, with a set of Town-wits, who, void of all 
 moral principle or decent 'restraint, employed their pens in lashing 
 to death, wnth indiscriminate rage, the objects of their envy or their 
 .spleen. Of this description were those noted characters, Christopher 
 Marlow, Robert Greene, Thomas Decker, and Thomas Nash ; men 
 possessed of genius, learning, and unquestioned ability, as poets, 
 satirists, and critics ; but excessively debauched in their manners, 
 intemperate in their passions, and heedless of what they inflicted. 
 The treatment which Gabriel Harvey, the bosom-friend of Spenser 
 and Sidney, received from the scurrilous criticism of Greene and 
 Nash, was, though not altogether unprovoked, beyond all measure 
 ^ross, cruel, and vindictive. The literature and the moral character 
 of Harvey were highly respectable ; but he was vain, credulous, 
 affected, and pedantic ; he published a collection of panegyrics on 
 himself; he turned astrologer and almanack-maker, he was perfectly 
 Italianated in his dress and manner, in his style he was pompously 
 .elaborate, and he boasted himself the inventor and introducer of 
 
 * Troia Britannica; or Great Britaine's Troy. A Poem divided into xvij sevrall 
 Cantons, intermixed <vith many pleasant Poeticall Tales, Concluding with an Univcrsall 
 Chronicle from the Creation, untill these present Times. Written hy Tho. Heywood. 
 
 VOL. J. 3 N
 
 458 
 
 English Hexameters. * These foibles, together with the obscurity 
 of his parentage, his father being a rope-maker at Saffron- Walden, 
 in Essex, a circumstance of which he had the folly to be ashamed, 
 furnished to his adversaries an inexhaustible fund of ridicule and wit ; 
 and had these legitimate ingredients been unmingled with personal 
 invective and brutal sarcasm, Gabriel, who was no mean railer him- 
 self, had not been sinned against ; but the malignity of Greene and 
 Nash was unbounded ; and Harvey, who was morbidly irritable and 
 bled at every pore, catching a portion of their spirit, the controversy 
 became so outrageously virulent, that the prelates of Canterbury and 
 London, Whitgift and Bancroft, interfering, issued an order, " that all 
 Nashe's books and Dr. Harveys bookes be taken wheresoever they 
 may be found, and that none of the said bookes be ever printed here- 
 after ;" an injunction which has rendered most of the pamphlets on 
 this literary quarrel extremely scarce, particularly Harvey's " Four 
 Letters And Certaine Sonnets. Especially touching Robert Greene 
 and other Poets by him abused. Imprinted by John Wolfe 1592 ;" 
 a very curious work, which we shall have occasion to quote here- 
 after ; and Nash's " Have with you to Saffron- Walden, or Gabriel 
 Harvey's hunt is up," 1596, which includes a humorous but unmer- 
 ciful representation of Gabriel's life and ckaracter, the bitter satirist 
 exulting in the idea that he had brought on his adversary, by the 
 poignancy of his invectives, the effects of premature old age. " I 
 
 * One of his specimens of "our Englishe reformed Versifying," as he terms it, is en- 
 tiled Encomium Laiiri, and commences thus : — 
 
 " "What might I call this Tree? A Laurell? O bonny Laurell: 
 Needes to thy bowes will I bow this knee, and vayle my bonetto;" 
 
 lines which Nash, in his Foitre Letters confuted, 1593, has most happily ridiculed, repre- 
 senting Harvey walking under the " ewe-tree at Trinitie Hall," and addressing it in similar 
 terms, and making "verses of weather cocks on the top of steeples, as he did once of the 
 weather cocke of Allhallows in Cambridge : — 
 
 " O thou weathercocke, that stands on the top of All-hallows, 
 
 Come thy waies down, if thou dar'st for thy crowne, and take the wall of uss! ". 
 
 Vide Todd's Spenser, vol. i. p. tUViu
 
 459 
 
 have brought him low," he exclaims, " and shrewly broken him ; 
 look on his head, and you shall find a gray haire for everie line 1 
 have writ against him ; and you shall have all his beard white too by 
 the time he hath read over this booke." * 
 
 How great a nuisance this bevy of lampooning critics was con- 
 sidered, and to what a height their shameless effrontery was carried, 
 may be learnt from a passage in a pamphlet by Dr. Lodge, a con- 
 temporary physician of great learning and good sense, who, though 
 he terms Nash, and perhaps very justly, " the true English Aretine," 
 has drawn a picture which applies to him as accurately as to any 
 individual of the class ; " a fellow," to adopt the words of an old play 
 with respect to this very man, " that carried the deadly stocke in his 
 pen, whose muze was armed with a jag tooth, and his pen possest 
 with Hercules furyes."}- " You shall know him" (the envious 
 critic), says Lodge, " by this ; he is a foule lubber, his tongue tipt 
 with lying, his heart steeled against charity ; he walks, for the most 
 part, in black, under colour of gravity, and looks as jjale as y' 
 •wizard of the ghost xvhich cried so miserably at y' theater, like an oister 
 wife, Hamlet revenge : he is full of infamy and slander, insomuch as 
 if he ease not his stomach in detracting somewhat or some man 
 before noontide, he fals into a fever that holds him while supper 
 time ; he is alwaies devising of epigrams or scofFes and grumbles, 
 necromances continually, although nothing crosse him, he never 
 laughs but at other men's harms, briefly in being a tyrant over men's 
 fames ; he is a very Titius (as Virgil saith) to his owrfe thoughtes. 
 
 Titiique vultus inter 
 
 Qui semper lacerat comestque mentem. 
 
 The mischiefe is, that by grave demeandur and newes bearing, he 
 hath got some credite with the greater sort, and manie fowles there 
 
 * See a copious and interesting account of the controversy between Nash and Harvey, 
 in D'IsraeH's Calamities of Authors, vol. ii. p. l.ad 1!). 
 
 t The Rcturne from Parnassus; or the Scourge of Simony, publi<juuly acted by the 
 Students in St. John's College in Cambridge, 1(J06. — Vide Ancient British Drama, vol. i. 
 p. 19, 
 
 3n 2
 
 460 
 
 bee, tliat because he can pen prettilee, hold it gospell whatever he writes 
 or speakes, his custome is to preferre a foole to credite, to despiglit 
 a wise man, and no poet hves by him that hath not a flout of him. 
 Let him spie a man of wit in a taverne, he is a hare brained 
 quareller. Let a scholler write, Tush (saith he) I hke not these 
 common fellowes ; let him write well, he hath stolen it out of some 
 note booke ; let him translate, tut it is not of his owne ; let him 
 be named for preferment, he is insufficient because poore ; no man 
 shall rise in his world, except to feed his envy ; no man can con- 
 tinue in his friendship who hateth all men." He then adds the 
 following judicious advice, predicting what would be the consequence 
 of neglecting to pursue it ; — " Divine wits for many things as suf- 
 ficient as all antiquity (I speake it not on slight surmise, but con- 
 siderate judgment) to you belongs the death that doth nourish this 
 poison ; to you the paine that endure the reproofe. Lilly, the 
 famous for facility in discourse ; Spencer, best read in ancient 
 poetry ; Daniel, choice in word and invention ; Draiton, diligent 
 and formall ; Th. Nash, true English Aretine. All you unnamed 
 professors, or friends of poetry (but by me inwardly honoured) 
 knit your industries in private to unite your fames in publicke ; let 
 the strong stay up the weake, and the weake march under conduct 
 of the strong ; and all so imbattle yourselfes, that hate of vertue may 
 not imbase you. Bu if besotted with foolish vain glory, emulation 
 and contempt, you fall to neglect one another, Quod Dens omen aver- 
 tat, doubtless it will be as infamous a thing shortly to present any 
 book whatsoever learned to any Maecenas in England, as it is to be 
 headsman in any free city in Germanic." * 
 
 Turning, however, from this abuse of critical and satiric talent, 
 let us direct our attention exclusively to those productions of the 
 ai't which are distinguished as well by moderation and urbanity, as 
 by learning and acumen. 
 
 * Wits Miserle And The Worlds Madnessc. Discovering the Devils incarnate of this 
 Age. 1596. — Vide Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, vol. ii. p.lGl,lfi5.
 
 461 
 
 It is worthy of remark that in English literature, during this era, 
 nearly all the professed critical treatises, if we except those of Wilson 
 and Ascham, were employed on the subject of poetry. We shall 
 confine ourselves, therefore, to a chronological enumeration, accom- 
 panied by a few observations, of these interesting pieces. The first, 
 in the order of time, is a production of George Gascoigne the poet, 
 and was published at the close of the second edition of " The Posies 
 of George Gascoigne Esquire, Corrected, perfected, and augmented 
 by the Authour, 1575. Tarn Marti, quam Mercurio. Imprinted at 
 London by H. Bynneman for Richard Smith." It is entitled, " Cer- 
 tayne notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme 
 in English, written at the request of Master Edovardo Donati ;" and 
 was again printed in " The whole workes of George Gascoign 
 Esquyre : newlye compyled into one volume," small 4to. b. 1. 1587. 
 This little tract is more didactic than critical ; but contains several 
 judicious directions, and some sensible remarks. 
 
 Ten years after, appeared a treatise on " Scottis Poesie," from the 
 pen of King James the First, when only eighteen years of age. This 
 learned monarch commenced his career of authorship with " The 
 Essayes of a Prentise, in the Divine art of Poesie. Imprinted at 
 Edinburgh, by Thomas Vautroullier, 1585, 4to. Cum privilegio 
 Regali." The fifth article in this miscellany includes the criticism in 
 question, under the title of " Ane schort Treatise, containing some 
 reuhs and cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis poesie." 
 This is a production highly curious, as well for its manner as matter ; 
 for, not content with mere precept, the royal critic has given us 
 copious specimens of the several kinds of verse then in use. The 
 eighth chapter of this short treatise is devoted to this purpose, 
 detailing rules and examples, 1st, For king histories. 2dly, For heroic 
 acts. 3dly, For heich and grave subjects. 4thly, For tragic matters. 
 5thly, Fox fly ting or invectives. 6thly, For Sonnet verse. 7thly, For 
 Matters of love ; and 8thly, For Tenfoot verse. 
 
 Under the fifth head is given as an exemplar of the Ronyiccfulles, 
 or Tumbling verse, the lines formerly quoted from the Fli/ting of
 
 462 
 
 Montgomery, as Illustrative of a superstition peculiar to Allhallow-Eve ; 
 and under the seventh, on " love materis, " is introduced as an 
 example of " cuttit and broken verse, quhairof new formes are daylie 
 inventit according to the Poetis pleasour," the following stanza, 
 which has been rendered familiar to an English ear by the genius of 
 Burns : — 
 
 " Qulia wald have tyrde to heir that toiie, 
 Quhilk birds corroborat ay abono, 
 
 Tlirough schouting of the larkis ! 
 They sprang sa heich into the skyes, 
 Quhill Cupide walknis with the cryis 
 
 Of Nature's chapell clerkis. 
 Then leaving all the hcavins above. 
 He lichted on the eard ; 
 Lo ! how that lytill god of love 
 Before me then apjjeard. 
 So mylde-like 
 And child-like, 
 With bow thre quarters skant, 
 So moilie 
 And coy lie 
 He lukit lyke a Sant." 
 
 It is observable that James, in assigning his " twa caussis " for 
 composing this work, tells us that " albeit sindrie hes written of 
 it (poesie) in English, quhilk is lykest to our language, zit we 
 differ from thame in sindrie reulis of poesie, as ze will find be 
 experience ;" but who these sundry writers were, has not, with the 
 exception of Gascoigne's " Notes of Instruction," been hitherto 
 discovered. * 
 
 It is barely possible that the royal critic may have included in his 
 " sindrie," the next work which we have to record on the subject, 
 the production of our immortal Spenser, and entitled " The English 
 
 * For a further and more minute account of James's " Essayes," I refer the reader to 
 Pinkerton's Ancient Scotish Poems, vol. i. p. cxix. ; to Park's Royal and Noble Autiiors, 
 vol. i. p. 120; to Censura Literaria, vol. ii. p. Sfil; and to Beloe's Anecdotes of Litera- 
 ture and Scarce Books, vol. i. p. 230.
 
 46S 
 
 iPoet," a work which we lament should have been suffered to perish 
 in manuscript. Its existence was first intimated to the public in 
 1579, by E. K., in his argument to the tenth Aeglogue olthe Shep- 
 heard's Calender, with a promise, which unfortunately proved faithless, 
 of committing it to the press. Poetry, observes this commentator, 
 is " no art, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct not to be gotten 
 by labour and learning, but adorned with both ; and poured into the 
 Matte by a certaine Enthusiasmos and celestial inspiration, as the 
 Author hereof elsewhere at large discourseth in his booke called 
 The English Poet, which booke being lately come to my handes, I 
 minde also by God's grace, upon further advisement, to publish." * 
 That the taste and erudition of Spenser had rendered this critical 
 essay highly interesting, there is every reason to conclude, and though 
 the only positive testimony to its composition rests on the single autho- 
 rity which we have quoted, it is extremely probable, from the manner 
 in which its acquisition by the commentator is mentioned, that the 
 MS. had circulated, and continued to circulate, among the friends and 
 admirers of the poet, for some years. 
 
 Scarcely had the British Solomon published his juvenile criticisms, 
 when a kindred work issued from the London press, under the title 
 of " A Discourse of English Poetrie, together with the Author's 
 .Judgment touching the reformation of our English verse. By 
 William Webbe^ Graduate. Imprinted at London by John Charle- 
 wood. 4to, 1586." Black letter. 
 
 The chief purport of this pamphlet, now so rare that only three 
 copies are known to exist f, is to propose, what the author terms, a 
 " perfect platform, or prosodia of versifying, in imitation of the 
 Greeks and Latins," a scheme which, though supported by Sidney, 
 Dyer, Spenser, and Harvey, happily miscarried. " The hexameter 
 verse," says Nash, with great good sense, in his controversy with 
 Harvey, " I graunt to be a gentleman of an auncient house, (so is 
 
 * Spenser's Worts apud Todd, vol. i. p. 161. See also, vol. i. p. vii. and p. clviii. 
 f One in the King's Library, one in the late Mr. Malone's collection, and one purchased 
 liy the Marquis of Blandford, at the Roxburgh Sale, for' 6"-J/. ! '
 
 464 
 
 many an English beggar,) yet this clyme of ours hee cannot thrive 
 in ; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in ; hee goes 
 twitching and hopping in our language, like a man running upon 
 quagmires, up the hill in one syUable tod downe the dale in another, 
 retaining no part of that stately smooth gate which he vaunts himself 
 with amongst the Greeks and Latins." * 
 
 Webbe's " Discourse," however, is valuable on account of the 
 characters which he has drawn of the English poets, from Chaucer to 
 his own time. He notices, also, " Gaskoynes Instructions for versi- 
 fying ;" and, after declaring the Shepherd's Calender inferior neither 
 to Theocritus nor Virgil, he expresses an ardent wish that the other 
 works of Spenser might get abroad, and especially his " English 
 Poet, which his friend E. K. did once promise to publish." The tract 
 concludes with the author's assertion, that his " onely ende" in com- 
 piling it was " not as an exquisite censure concerning the matter," 
 but " that it might be an occasion to have the same thoroughly, and 
 with greater discretion taken in hande, and laboured by some other 
 of greater abilitie, of whom I know there be manie among the famous 
 poets in London, who both for learning and ley sure may handle the 
 argument far more pythelie." f 
 
 In 1588, Abraham Fraunce, another encourager and writer of 
 English Hexameter and Pentameter verses, published in octavo, a 
 critical treatise, a mixture of prose and verse, under the quaint title 
 of " The Arcadian Rhetoricke, or the Precepts of Rhetoricke made 
 plain by example, Greeke, Latyne, Englishe, Italyan, and Spanishe." 
 This rare volume is in the library of Mr. Malone, and is valuable, 
 observes Warton, for its English examples. % 
 
 In the same year which produced Fraunce's work, appeared the 
 Touch-Stone of Writes^ written by Edward Hake, and printed at 
 
 * Vide Nash's " Four Letters Confuted," and his " Have with ye to Saffron- Waldcn," 
 and D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, vol. i. 
 
 t Vide Oldys's British Librarian, p. 86, and Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature and 
 Scarce Books, vol. i. p. 234. 
 
 X Warton's History of English Poetry, vol.iii. p. 406.
 
 465 
 
 Loudon by Edmund Botifaunt. This little tract is employed in 
 sketching the features of the chief poets of the day ; but differs not 
 materially from Webbes Discourse of English Poetrie, from which, 
 indeed, it is principally compiled. Hake describes himself (in ano- 
 otlier of his productions called " A Touchstone for this time present,") 
 as an " attorney of the Common Pleas ;" mentions his having been 
 educated under John Hopkins, whom he terms a learned and exqui- 
 site teacher, and when criticising the Mirrour of Magistrates in his 
 Totichsfone of Wittes, speaks of its augmentor, John Higgins, as his 
 particular friend. *^ 
 
 But by far the most valuable work which was published in the 
 province of criticism, during the life-time of Shakspeare, was written by 
 George Puttenham, and entitled " The Arte of English Poesie, Con- 
 trived into three Bookes : The first of Poets and Poesie, the second 
 of Proportion, the third of Ornament. At London Printed by 
 Richard Field, dwelling in the black-Friers neere Ludgate. 1589." 
 
 This book, which seems to have been composed considerably 
 anterior to its publication, was printed anonymously, and has been 
 ascribed to Spenser and Sidney, f Bolton, whose Hypocritica was 
 written in the reign of James L, though not printed until 1722, 
 mentions Puttenham, however, as the reputed author ; and a refer- 
 ence to Bolton's manuscript, preserved in the archives at Oxford, 
 enabled Anthony Wood to announce this fact to the public. " There 
 is," says he, " a book in being called The Art of English Poesie, not 
 written by Sydney, as some have thought, but rather by one 
 Puttenham, sometime a Gentleman Pensioner to Qu. Elizab." ij; 
 
 An elegant reprint of this old critic has been lately (1811) edited 
 by Mr. Haslewood, in which, with indefatigable industry and 
 
 * Warton's History, vol. iii. p. 275. 
 
 \ " Mr. Wanley, in his Catalogue of the Harley Library, says he had been told, that 
 Edm. Spencer was the author of that book, which came out anonymous." Vide Todd's 
 Spenser, vol. i. p. clviii. 
 
 J Wood's Athenae Oxon. edit. 1691. vol. i. col. 184. 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 466 
 
 research, he has collected all that could throw light on the personal 
 and literary history of his author. His opinion of the critical 
 acumen of Puttenham, though favourable, is not too highly' coloured. 
 " Puttenham," he remarks, " was a candid but sententious critic. 
 What his observations want in argument, is made up for by the 
 soundness of his judgment ; and his conclusions, notwithstanding 
 their brevity, are just and pertinent. He did not hastily scan his 
 author, to indulge in an untimely sneer, and his opinions were 
 adopted by contemporary writers, and have not been dissented from 
 by the moderns." * 
 
 Of the same tenour are the sentiments of Mr. Gilchrist, who opens 
 his analysis of the Arte of English Poeme, with asserting that it " is 
 oil many accounts one of the most cul'ious and entertaining, and, 
 intrinsically, one of the most valuable books of the age of Elizabeth ;" 
 infinitely superior, he adds, as an elementaiy treatise on the arts, to 
 the volumes of Wilson and Webbe, " as being formed on a more 
 comprehensive scale, and illustrated by examples ; while the copious 
 intermixture of contemporary anecdote, tradition, manners, opinions, 
 and the numerous specimens of coeval poetry, no where else pre- 
 served, cotitribute to form a volume of infinite amusement, curiosity, 
 and value." f 
 
 To various parts of this interesting treatise, we shall have occasion 
 frequently to refer, when discussing the subjects of miscellaneous 
 poetry and metropolitan manners. It is indeed a store-house of 
 poetical erudition. 
 
 The next work which, in the order of publication, falls under our 
 notice, is Sir John Harrington's Apologie of Poetry, prefixed in 
 1591 to his Version of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. It is a pro- 
 duction of some merit, displaying both judgment and ingenuity ; but 
 is most remarkable for the earliest notice of Puttenham's Arte of 
 Poesie, and for affording a striking proof of the obscurity in which 
 
 * Haslewood's Reprint, 1811. p. xi 
 f Censura Literaria, vol. i. p. 339.
 
 467 
 
 that critic had enveloped himself with regard to its parentage ; for 
 though two years had elapsed since its publication, it appears that 
 neither the Queen, her courtiers, nor the literary world, had the 
 slightest idea of its origin, and Sir John speaks of the author under 
 the appellation of " Ignoto." " Neither," says he, " do I suppose it 
 to be greatly behoovefull for this purpose, to trouble you with tjie 
 cui-ious definitions of a poet and poesie, and with the subtill distinc- 
 tions of their sundrie kinds ; nor to dispute how high and super- 
 natural the name of a Maker is, so christened in English by that 
 tmknoiaie Godfather, that this last yeare save one, viz. 1589, set 
 forth a booke called the Art of English Poetrie : and least of all do 
 I purpose to bestow any long time to argue, whether Plato, Zeno- 
 phon, and Erasmus, writing fictions and dialogues in prose, may 
 justly be called poets, or whether Lucan writing a story in verse 
 be an historiographer, or whether Master Faire translating Virgil, 
 Master Golding translating Ovid's Metamorphosis, and my selfe in 
 this worke that you see, be any more than versifiers, as die same 
 Ignoto termeth all translators."* 
 
 Poetry, soon after the birth of this Apology, had to boast of a 
 champion of still greater prowess, in the person of Sir Philip Sidney, 
 whose Defence of Poesie was first made public in 1595. It had, how- 
 ever, been previously circulated in manuscript for some yeais ; tlaus 
 Sir John Harrington refers to it in his Apology 1591, and there is 
 reason to believe, that it was written so early as 1581 or 1582. This 
 delightful piece of criticism exhibits the taste and erudition of Sir 
 Philip in a striking light ; the style is remarkable for amenity and 
 simplicity ; the laws of the Drama and Epopoea are laid down with 
 singiUar judgment and precision, and the cause of poetry is strenu- 
 ously and successfully supported against the calumny and abuse of 
 the puritanical scowlers, one of whom had the effrontery to dedicate 
 to him his collection of scun'ility, in the very title-page of which he 
 
 • Haslewood's Puttenham, p. x. 
 
 3 2
 
 468 
 
 classes poets with pipers and jesters, and terms them the " cater- 
 pillars of the commonwealth." * 
 
 A very ingenious " Comparative Discourse of our English Poets, 
 rvitk the Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poets^'' was published by Francis 
 Meues, in 1598, under the title of Palladis Tamia, Wifs Trcasiiri/.f 
 Meres is certainly much indebted to the thirty-first chapter of the 
 first book of Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie ; but he has consi- 
 derably extended the catalogue of poets, and it should be added, that 
 his comparisons are drawn with no small portion of skill and felicity, 
 and that his criticisms are, for the most part, just and tersely 
 expressed. 
 
 Another attempt was made, at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, to introduce the Roman measures into English verse, in a 
 duodecimo entitled, " Observations in the Art of English Poesie, by 
 Thomas Campion, wherein it is demonstratively proved, and by 
 example confirmed, that the English toong will receive eight severall 
 kinds of numbers, proper to itselfe, which are all in this book set 
 forth, and were never before this time by any man attempted." Lon- 
 don ; printed by Richard Field, for Andrew Wise. 1602. 
 
 The object of this tract, which is dedicated to Lord Buckhurst, 
 whom he terms, " the noblest judge of poesie," was not only to 
 recommend the adoption of classical metres, but to abolish, if possible, 
 the use of rhime. " For this end," says he in his preface, " have I 
 studyed to induce a true forme of versefying into our language, for 
 
 * " The Schole of Abuse; containing a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players, 
 jesters, &c. and such like caterpillars of the commonwealth, by Ste. Gossen, Stud. Oxon. 
 dedicated to M. Philip Sidney, Esquier, 1579." 
 
 z " Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury. Being the second part of Wits Common Wealth. 
 By Francis Meres, Maister of Artes of both Universities. Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis 
 erunt. At London printed by P. Short, for Cuthbert Burbie, and are to be solde at his 
 shop at the Royall Exchange. 1598." Small 8vo. leaves 174. We are under many ob- 
 ligations to Mr. Haslewood for reprinting the whole of the " Comparative Discourse" in 
 the ninth volume of the Censura Literaria, as it must necessarily be to us a subject of 
 frequent reference.
 
 469 
 
 the vulgar and unartificial custoine oC riniin<>; luith, 1 know, detered 
 mnny excellent wits from the exercise of English Poesy." 
 
 In consequence of this determination, he has enforced his " Obser- 
 vations" by examples on the classic model, without rhime ; and among 
 them, at p. 12. is a specimen of what he calls Lincentiate lambicks^ 
 which is, in fact, our present blank verse. 
 
 This systematic attack upon rhime speedily called forth a consum- 
 mate master of the art in its defence ; for in 1603 appeared, " A 
 Defence of Ryme, against a pamphlet intituled, Observations in the 
 Art of Poesie, wherein is demonstratively proved that ryme is the 
 fittest harmonie of wordes that comports with our language." By 
 Samuel Daniel. 
 
 It need scarcely be said that the elegant and correct poet has obtained 
 a complete victory over his opponent, whom he censures, not so much 
 for attempting the introduction of new measures, as for his abuse of 
 rhime ; he might have shown his skill, he justly and eloquently 
 observes, " without doing wrong to the honour of the dead, wrong to 
 the fame of the living, and wrong to England, in seeking to lay re- 
 proach upon her native ornaments, and to turn the fair stream and 
 full course of her accents, into the shallow current of a loose uncer- 
 tainty, clean out of the way of her known delight. — Therefore here 
 stand I forth," he adds in a subsequent paragraph, " only to make 
 good the place we have thus taken up, and to defend the sacred monu- 
 ments erected therein, which contain the honour of the dead, the 
 fame of the living, the glory of peace, and the best power of our 
 speech, and wherein so many honourable spirits have sacrificed to 
 memory their dearest passions, showing by what divine influence they 
 have been moved, and under what stars they lived." * 
 
 Great modesty and good sense distinguish this pamphlet, in which 
 the author candidly allows that rhime has been sometimes too 
 lavishly used and where blank verse might have been substituted with 
 
 Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iii. p. 558, 559.
 
 470 
 
 better effect, and he concludes his " Defence" with some excellent 
 remarks on affectation in the choice and collocation of words, a vice 
 from which he was more free than any of his contemporaries, simpli- 
 city and purity, in fact, being the leading features of his style. 
 
 The last critic of the era to which we are limited, is Edwakd Bol- 
 ton, whose " Hypercritica ; Or a Rule of Judgment for writing or 
 reading our Historys," a small collection of tracts or essays, " occa- 
 sioned," says Warton, " by a passage in Sir Henry Saville's Epistle pre- 
 fixed to his edition of our old Latin historians, 1596,"* was supposed 
 by \\'^ood, in a note on the IMS. preserved in the Ashmolean INIuseum, 
 to have been written about 1610. But that this date is too early is 
 evident from the work itself ; for in the fourth essay, which is entitled 
 " Prime Gardens for gathering English : according to the true gage 
 or standard of the tongue about fifteen or sixteen yeai-s ago," King 
 James's poetry is spoken of in the following manner : — "I dare not 
 presume to speak of his Majesty's exercises in this heroick kind, 
 because I see them all left out in that which Montague lord bishop of 
 Winchester hath given us of his royal writings." f Now Bishop 
 Montague's edition of James's Works was not published until 1616. 
 
 The principal writers in prose and poetry, anterior to 1600, are 
 noticed in this fourth division of the Hypercritica, and the judgment 
 passed upon them is, in general, correct and satisfactory, and does 
 credit to the " sensible old English critic," as Warton emphatically 
 terms him. X 
 
 It is remarkable that the Hypercritica should ha^'e been suffered to 
 continue in its manuscript state until 1722, at which period it was 
 printed by Anthony Hall at the end of Trivet's " Annalium Conti- 
 nuatio." Oxford, 8vo. 
 
 Bolton, whom Ritson calls " a profound scholar and eminent cri- 
 tic §," was certainly a man of considerable learning, and occupied 
 
 * Walton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 278. 
 
 f Hypercritica. Addresse iv. sect. 3. p. 23;. 
 
 X Walton's History vol. iii. p. 275. § Bibliographia Poctica, p. 135.
 
 471 
 
 no small space in the public eye as an historian, philologer, and anti- 
 
 (juary. 
 
 To this enumeration it may be necessary to add some notice of 
 that industrious race of critics, termed Commentators ; a species which, 
 for thef last half century, has been employed as laboriously on old 
 Eno-lish, as formerly were the German Literati on ancient classical, 
 literature. Of this mode of illustration, which has lately thrown so 
 much light on the manners and learning of our poet's age, two early 
 and very ingenious specimens may be mentioned under the reign of 
 Elizabeth and James. The first is the Commentai*y of E. K> on the 
 Shepheards Calender of Spenser, in 1579 ; and the second, the 
 learned Notes of Selden on the first eighteen Songs of the Polyolbion 
 of Drayton, 1612 ; both productions of great merit, but especially 
 the last, which exhibits a large portion of acumen and research, united 
 to an equal share of discrimination and judgment. 
 
 Such are the chief critics on English literature who flourished 
 during the life-time of Shakspeare. That some of them contributed 
 very materially towards the improvement of polite literature, and 
 especially of poetry, by stimulating the genius and guiding the taste 
 of their contemporaries, must be readily granted, and more particu- 
 larly may these benefits be attributed to the labours of Webbe, Putten- 
 ham, Sidney, and Meres. How far the manuscripts of Spenser and 
 Bolton, at the commencement and termination of our critical era, 
 assisted to enlighten the public mind, cannot now be ascertained; 
 but as the circulation of works in this state is generally very confined, 
 we cannot suppose, even admitting the industry and admiration of 
 their favoured readers to have been strongly excited, that their effect 
 could have been either widely or permanently felt. 
 
 It would be a subject of still greater curiosity, could we determine, 
 with any approach towards precision, in what degree Shakspeare was 
 indebted, for his progress in English literature, to the authors whom 
 we have just enumerated, under the kindred branches of philology 
 and criticism.
 
 472 
 
 Of his assiduity as a reader of English books, whether original or 
 translated, his works afford the most positive and abundant proofs ; 
 and that he was peculiarly attentive to the philology of his native 
 language is to be learnt from the same source. We have already 
 noticed his satirical allusion to Florio and Lilly in the character of 
 Holofernes, and a similar stroke on the innovating pedantry of the 
 times, will be found in his Much Ado about Nothing, which was pro- 
 bably directed against another equally bold attempt to alter the whole 
 system of orthography. The experiment was made by BuUokar, of 
 whose Brief Grammar a slight mention has been given, in a book 
 entitled an Amendment of Orthographie for English Speech, 1580 ; in 
 which the author proposes not only an entire change in the established 
 mode of spelling, but a total revolution also in the practice of print- 
 ing. To level a sarcasm at the head of this daring innovator may 
 have been the aim of the poet, where he represents Benedict com- 
 plaining of Claudio, that " he xcas wont to speak jjlain, and to the 
 putpose, like an honest man, and a soldier; and now he is turned 
 Orthographee ; his xcoi'ds are a very fantastical banquet, Just so many 
 strange dishes." * 
 
 In a former part of this work we have mentioned some of the 
 books to which our great poet must have had recourse in the progress 
 even of his limited education in the country ; and on his settlement 
 in London, we cannot, with any probability, conceive, that a mind so 
 active, comprehensive, and acute, would sit down content with its 
 juvenile acquisitions, and hesitate to inspect those treatises on philo- 
 logy and criticism which had acquired the popular approbation, and 
 were adapted to the years of manhood. Not only, indeed, did he 
 peruse with avidity the Arte of Rhetoricke of Wilson, and the Scole- 
 master of Ascham, but we are convinced, from a thorough study of 
 his writings, that so extensive was his range of reading, that not a 
 translation from the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, or French 
 
 * Reed's Sliakspeare, vol. vi, p. 62, 63. Act ii. sc. 3.
 
 473 
 
 appeared, but what was soon afterwards to be found in the hands of 
 Shakspeare. His dramas, in fact, even without the aid of his inde- 
 fatigable commentators, assure us, in almost every page, that, if not 
 erudite from the possession of many languages, he was truly and sub- 
 stantially learned in every other sense ; in the vast accumulation of 
 materials drawn through the medium of translation, from the most 
 distant and varied sources. 
 
 That he had not only read, but availed himself professionally of 
 Wilson's Rhetoric, will be evident, we think, from a passage quoted 
 by Mr. Chalmers, from this critic, in support of a similar opinion. 
 Wilson has mentioned Timon of Athens in such a manner as might 
 lead Shakspeare to select this misanthrope for dramatic exhibition ; 
 but the very character and language of Dogberry seem to be antici- 
 pated in the following sketch: — " Another good fellow of the coun- 
 trey, being an officer and mayor of a toune, and desirous to speak 
 like a fine learned man, having just occasion to rebuke a runnegate 
 fellowe, said after this wise, in a greate heate : — Thou yngraine 
 and vacation knave, if I take thee any more within the circumcision 
 of my dajnpnation ; I will so con^upt thee, that all other vacation 
 knaves shall take ilsainple by thee." * 
 
 We cannot, however, coalesce with Mr. Chalmers, in considering 
 the character of Holofernes as founded on the Scholemaster of 
 Ascham, and that in drawing the colloquial excellence ascribed to the 
 pedagogue by Sir Nathaniel, the poet had in his yninds-eye the con- 
 versation at Lord Burleigh's table, so strikingly recorded by Ascham 
 in his preface. We have not the smallest doubt but that our author 
 had read, and with much pleasure and profit, the invaluable treatise 
 of that accomplished scholar ; but the general folly and pedantry of 
 Holofernes are such, notwithstanding the eulogium of his clerical 
 companion, as to preclude all idea that the character could have 
 
 * Wilson's Art of Rhetoric, p. 167, and Chalmers's Apology, p. 160. 
 VOL. I. 3 P
 
 474 
 
 been sketched from such a model ; — it is, in fact, a broad carica- 
 ture of some well known pedant of the day, and we must agree 
 with the commentators in fixing upon Florio as the most probable 
 prototype. 
 
 It will readily be granted, that, if Shakspeare were the assiduous 
 reader which we have supposed him to be, and no judge, indeed, of 
 his works can doubt it, he must have perused with peculiar interest 
 the critical treatises on poets and poetry which were published during 
 his march to fame. It will be considered, therefore, scarcely as an 
 assumption to conclude, that the works of Webbe, Puttenham, Sidney, 
 and Meres were familiar to his mind ; and though he must have 
 written with too much haste, and with too much attention to the 
 gratifications of the million, to carry their precepts, and especially the 
 strictures of Sidney, into perfect execution, yet it is very reasonable 
 to conceive that even his early works may have been rendered less 
 imperfect by the perusal of Webbe and Puttenham ; and that, as he 
 advanced in his professional career, the improved mechanism of his 
 dramas, and his greater attention to the unities, may have been in 
 some degree derived from the keen invectives of Sir Philip. 
 
 That Shakspeare, in return, contributed, more than any other poet, 
 to enrich and modulate his native language, is now freely admitted ; 
 but that he was held in similar estimation by his contemporaries, and 
 even at an early period of his poetical progress, may be inferred from 
 what Markham has said of the " poets of his age" in 1595, when 
 Shakspeare had published some of his poems, and had produced his 
 " Romeo," and from what Meres, in 1598, more specifically applies to 
 our author ; the former observing, in the Dedication of his Gentleman s 
 Academie, with reference to the Booke of St. Albans, originally pub- 
 lished in 1486, that " our tong being not of such puritie then, as at 
 this day the Poets of our age have raised it to: of whom, and in whose 
 behalf I wil say thus much, that our Nation may only thinke herselfe 
 beholding for the glory and exact compendiousnes of our longuage" 
 and the latter expressly terming our poet, from the superiority
 
 475 
 
 of liis diction and versification, " mellifluous and hony-tongued 
 Shakspeare." *' 
 
 Reverting to the subject of National Literature, we proceed to 
 notice the progress which History, General, Local and Personal, 
 may be deemed to have made, during the era to which we are 
 hmited. 
 
 History appears in every country to have been late in acquiring its 
 best and most legitimate form, and to have been usually preceded 
 by annals or chronicles, which, aspiring to no unity in arrangement, and 
 void of all political or philosophical deduction, were confined to a 
 bare chronological detail of facts. Such was the state of this impor- 
 tant branch of literature on the accession of Elizabeth ; numerous 
 chroniclers had flourished from Robert of Gloucester to Fabian and 
 Hall, but with little to recommend them, except the minuteness of 
 their register, and the occasional illustration of manners and cus- 
 toms ; and more distinguishable for credulity and prolixity than for 
 any other characteristics. 
 
 The chronicle of Holinshed, however, which appeared in 1577, and 
 a second edition in 1587, merits a higher title. It is more full and 
 complete than any of its predecessors, and less loaded with trifling 
 matter. We are much indebted to Reginald Wolfe, the Queen's 
 printer, for stimulating the historian to the undertaking, who was 
 assisted, in his laborious task, by several able coadjutors, and parti- 
 cularly by the Rev. William Harrison, whose Description of England, 
 prefixed to the first volume, is the most interesting and valuable 
 document, as a picture of the country, and of the costume, and 
 mode of living of its inhabitants, which the sixteenth century has 
 produced. 
 
 The example of Holinshed was followed, towards the close of our 
 period, by Stowe and Speed, writers more succinct in their narrative, 
 more correct in their style, and more philosophical in their matter. 
 
 * Meres's Palladis Taniia, in Censura Literaria, vol. ix. n. 46". 
 
 3p 2
 
 476 
 
 The " History of Great Britain" by Speed, the second edition of 
 which was printed under the author's care in 1620, is, in every respect, 
 a work of very great merit, whether we consider its authorities, or 
 the mode in which it is written. It is in fact a production which may 
 be read with great pleasure and profit at the present day, and makes a 
 nearer approach, than any former chronicle, to the tone of legitimate 
 history. 
 
 In the mean time, the more classical form oi' this branch of litera- 
 ture was making a rapid progress. Numerous attempts were pub- 
 lished, paitaking oi" a mixed character, neither assuming the dignity 
 of history, nor descending to the minuteness of the chronicle ; 
 Newton's History of the Saracens * and Fulbeck's Account of the 
 Roman Factions, previous to the reign of Augustus f-, may be men- 
 tioned as specimens ; but the great historians of this period, who 
 condescended to use their native tongue, were Raleigh, Hayward, 
 Knolles, Bacon, and Daniel, writers who in this province still hold no 
 inferior rank among the classics of their country. The " History 
 of the World," by Sir Walter, exhibits great strength of style, and 
 much solidity of judgment ; Hayward's Lives of the three Norman 
 Kings, and of Henry the IV. and Edward the VI., contain many 
 curious facts to which sufficient attention has not yet been paid ; his 
 diction is neat and smooth, but he adopts too profusely the classical 
 costume of framing speeches for his principal characters. Knolles's 
 " General History of the Turks" is an elaborate and useful work, 
 and its language is clear, nervous, and often powerfully descriptive. 
 Bacon's Henry the Vllth beti-ays too much of the apologist for arbi- 
 trary power, but it is otherwise of great value ; it is written from ori- 
 ginal, and now lost, materials, with vigour and philosophical acuteness. 
 But these historians are excelled, in purity of style and perspicuity 
 of narration, by Daniel, whose " History of England," closing with the 
 
 * A notable history of the Saracens. Lend. 4to. 1575. 
 
 t An historical collection of the continued factions, tumults, and massacres of tlio Ro- 
 mans before the peaceable empire of Augustus Csesar. Lond. 1600. 8vo. 1601. 4to.
 
 477 
 
 veign of Edward the Third, is a production which reflects great credit 
 on the age in which it was written. 
 
 We must not omit to mention, however, two historians, who, by re- 
 jecting their vernacular language, and adopting that of ancient Rome, 
 acquired for a time a more extended celebrity in this department. 
 Buchanan and Camden are, or should be, familiar to all lovers of 
 history and topography. The " Rerum Scoticarum Historia" of the 
 first of these historians, and the " Annales Rerum Anglicanarum et 
 Hibernicarum" of the second, are productions in deserved estima- 
 tion ; the former for the classical purity and taste exhibited in its 
 composition, the latter for its accuracy and impartiality. 
 
 Of that highly interesting and useful branch of History which is 
 included under the title of Voyages and Travels, the era of which we 
 are treating affords a most abundant harvest. The two great collectors, 
 Hakluyt and Furchas, appear within its range, compilers, whose in- 
 dustry and research need fear no rivalry. Hakluyt' s first collection 
 was published in a small volume in 1582 ; was increased to a folio in 
 1589, and to three volumes of the same size in 1598, containing up- 
 wards of two hundred voyages. The still more ample work of 
 Purchas was commenced in 1613, by the publication of the first 
 volume folio, with the title of " Purchas, his Pilgrimage, or Relations 
 of the World, and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places 
 discovered, fi-om the Creation unto this present ; in four parts." 
 This elaborate imdertaking was greatly augmented in subsequent 
 editions, of which the fourth and best was published in 1626, in five 
 volumes folio, the last four being entitled " Hakluytus Posthumous, or 
 Purchas, his Pilgrims ; containing a history of the world, in sea- 
 voyages, and land-travels, by Englishmen and others." Purchas pro- 
 fesses to include, in this immense compilation, the substance of above 
 twelve hundred authors ; it contains also the maps of JVIercator and 
 Hondius, and numerous engravings. 
 
 These vast and valuable collections are an honom- to the reions of 
 Elizabeth and James ; and, notwithstanding the industry and research 
 of the moderns, have not yet been superseded.
 
 478 
 
 To the gigantic labours of these writers, which include almost 
 every previous book on the subject of voyage or travel, may be added 
 the publications of two or three contemporaries of singular or useful 
 notoriety. In 1611, Thomas Coryate printed the most remarkable of 
 his eccentric productions, under the quaint title of " Crudities hastily 
 gobbled up in five Months Travels, in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, 
 Helvetia, some Parts of High Germany, and the Netherlands." 
 Lond. large 4to. Coryate was a man of consummate vanity, of some 
 learning, but of no judgment. Inflamed with an inextinguishable 
 desire of travelling, he walked over a great part of Europe and Asia, 
 terminating his life, " in the midst of his Indian travail," about the 
 year 1617. Nothing can be more ridiculous than the style, and often 
 the matter of his book, which is preceded by nearly sixty copies of 
 what Fuller calls mock-commending verses. " Prince Henry" says the 
 same writer, " allowed him a pension, and kept him for his servant. 
 Sweet-meats and Coriat made up the last course at all Cotirt-entertain- 
 nients. Indeed he was the courtier's anvil to trie their witts upon, 
 and sometimes this anvil returned the hammers as hard knocks as it 
 received, his bluntnesse repaying their abusivenesse." * 
 
 A still greater pedestrian than even Coryate lived, at this time, in 
 the person of William Lithgow, who published his " Travels " in 
 1614. His peregrinations were extended through Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa, and he declares, at the close of his book, that in his three 
 voyages " his painful feet have traced over (besides passages of seas 
 and rivers) thirty-six thousand and odd miles, which draweth near 
 to twice the circumference of the whole earth." His sufferings 
 through the tyranny of the Spanish governor of Malaga, who had 
 tortured, robbed, and imprisoned him, excited so much pity and 
 indignation, that, on his arrival in England, he was conveyed to 
 Theobalds on a feather-bed, being unable to stand, that King James 
 might be an eye-witness of his " martyred anatomy," as he terms the 
 
 * Fuller's Worthies of England, part iii. p. 31.
 
 479 
 
 miserable condition to which his body had been reduced. Lithgow's 
 « Travels" are entertaining, and not ill written, but they abound in 
 the marvellous, and too often excite the smile of incredulity. 
 
 The " Itinerary, or Ten Yeares Travell through Germany, Italy, 
 England," &c. a folio volume by Fines Moryson, is a production of a 
 far different cast. Moryson is a sober-minded and veracious traveller, 
 and that part of his book which relates to the manners and customs 
 of England and Scotland is peculiarly useful and interesting. He 
 was a native of Lincolnshire, and fellow of Peter-house, Cambridge. 
 " He began his Travels," relates Fuller, " May the first, 1591, over 
 a great part of Christendome, and no small share of Turky, even to 
 Jerusalem, and afterwards printed his observations in a large book, 
 which, for the truth thereof, is in good reputation, for of so great a 
 traveller, he had nothing of a traveller in him, as to stretch in his 
 reports. At last he was Secretary to Charles Blunt, Deputy of Ire- 
 land, saw and wrote the conflicts with, and conquest of Tyrone, a 
 discourse which deserveth credit, because the writer's eye guides his 
 jmi, and the privacy of his place acquainted him with many secret 
 passages of importance. He dyed about the year of our Lord 
 1614."* 
 
 In that department of history which may be termed local, includ- 
 ing topography and antiquities, the latter half of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury had many cultivators. " Persons of greatest eminence in this 
 sort of learning under queen Elizabeth," remarks Nicolson, " were 
 Humphrey Lhuyd, John Twyne, William Harrison, and WiDiam 
 Camden." j- Lluyd possessed unrivalled celebrity in his day, for 
 Camden calls him " a learned Briton, who, for knowledge in anti- 
 quities, was reputed to carry, after a sort, with him, all the credit and 
 honour." Pie wrote a variety of tracts, among which is a fragment 
 of a Commentary on Britain ; a Description of the Island of Mona ; 
 
 * Fuller's Worthies, part iii. p. 167, 1«8. 
 
 t Bishop Nicolson's Historical Library, vol. i. p. 8.
 
 480 
 
 a Description of the Coasts of Scotland ; a Chorography of England 
 and Wales ; and a Translation of Caradoc's History of Wales, subse- 
 quently published by Powel, and again by Wynn. Lluyd practised 
 physic at Denbigh in Wales, and died there about the year 1570. 
 His friend John Twyne, the translator of his Commentarioli Bri- 
 tannicEe, under the title of The Breviary of Britain, Lond. 1573, has 
 been extolled also both by Lee and Nicolson for his knowledge 
 of the history and antiquities of his country. He died in 1581, 
 leaving behind him two books of Commentaries on British History *, 
 which reached the press in 1590, and various Collectanea relative to 
 the antiquities of Britain. 
 
 We must here add to Bishop Nicolson's enumeration the name of 
 William Lambarde, the learned author of Archaionomia, sive de priscis 
 Anglorum Legibus, and of the Perambulation of Kent. This last pro- 
 duction, which was printed in 1570, is the prolific parent of our county 
 histories, works which have in our days very rapidly increased, and 
 which exhibit the estimation in which they are held, by the high 
 price annexed to their publication. 
 
 Of Harrison^a " Historical Description of the Island of Britain" 
 we have already taken due notice, and it would be superfluous, in 
 this place, to do more than mention the Britannia of Catnden. Pro- 
 ceeding therefore to the reign of James, we have to increase the 
 catalogue with the names of Stowe, Norden, Carew, and Burton. The 
 Survey of London by Stowe, is one of the most early, valuable, and 
 interesting of our topographical pieces ; and on it has been founded 
 the subsequent descriptions of Hatton, Seymour, Maitland, Noor- 
 thouck. Pennant, and Malcolm. John Norden is well known to the 
 lovers of topography by his Speculum Britannice, which was meant to 
 include the chorography of England, but unfortunately extends no 
 farther than the counties of Middlesex and Hertfordshire. Norden 
 
 * Dc Rebus Albioiiicis, Britannicis atque Anglicis Commentarioiuni, lib. duo. Lond. 
 15;)0. 8vo.
 
 481 
 
 was the projector of those useful works familiarly termed Guides, 
 having written a " Guide for English Travellers," and a " Surveyor's 
 Guide," both works of singular merit. He died about the year 
 1625. Richat'd Carew, the author of the " Survey of Cornwall," 
 first printed in 1602, and termed, by Fuller, "• the pleasant and 
 faithful! description of Cornwall," was educated at Christ-Church, 
 Oxford, where, at the early age of fourteen, though of three 
 years' standing in the University, " he was called out to dispute 
 extempore, before the Earls of Leicester and Warwick, with tlie 
 matchless Sir Philip Sidney." * The Cornwall of Carew, though 
 now superseded by the more elaborate history of Dr. Borlase, is a 
 compilation of great merit, and makes a nearer approach than Lam- 
 barde's Kent to a perfect model for county topography. Carew died 
 in 1620. 
 
 William Burton, the last writer whom we shall mention under this 
 head, though contemporary with Shakspeare for more than forty 
 years, was not an author until six years after the poet's death, when 
 he published his " Description of Leicestershire," folio ; a book 
 which, independent of its own utility, had the merit of stimidating 
 Sir William Dugdale to the composition of his admirable " History 
 of Warwickshire." Burton's work was justly considered as carrying 
 forward, on an improved scale, the plan of Lambarde and Carew ; it 
 is now, however, thrown into the shade by the most copious, and, in 
 every respect, the most complete county history which this kingdom 
 has hitherto produced, the " Leicestershire " of Mr. Nichols. Bur- 
 ton was the friend of Drayton, and brother to the author of the 
 Anatomy of Melancholy. 
 
 The third branch of History, the personal or biographical, cannot 
 boast of any very celebrated cultivator during the period to which we 
 are confined. Many ephemeral sketches, it is true, were given of 
 the naval and military commanders of the day, at a time when enter- 
 
 • Fuller's Worthies, part i. p. 205. 
 VOL. I. 3 Q
 
 482 
 
 prise and adventure enjoyed the marked protection of government ; 
 but no classical production in biography, properly so called, no en- 
 during specimen of personal history seems to have issued from the 
 press ; at least we recollect no example, worth notice, in a separate 
 form, and of the general compilers in this province, we are reduced 
 to mention the names of Fox and Fits. The " Acts and JMonuments 
 of the Church," by the first of these writers, commonly called " Fox's 
 Book of Martyrs," is a mixed composition ; hut as consisting prin- 
 cipally of personal detail and anecdote, more peculiarly belonging 
 to the department of biography. The first edition of the " Martyr- 
 ology" was published in London in 1563, in one thick volume folio, 
 and the fourth in 1583, four years before the death of the author, in 
 two volumes folio. This popular work, which was augmented to 
 three volumes folio in 1632, has vmdergone numerous editions, and 
 perhaps no book in our language has been more vmiversally read. 
 " It may regarded," remarks Granger, " as a vast Gothic building : 
 in which some things are superfluous, some irregular, and others 
 manifestly wi-ong : but which, altogether, infuse a kind of religious 
 reverence ; and we stand amazed at the labour, if not at the skill, of 
 the architect. This book was, by order of Queen Elizabeth, placed 
 in the common halls of archbishops, bishops, deans, archdeacons, and 
 heads of colleges ; and was long looked upon with a veneration next 
 to the Scriptures themselves." *" 
 
 John Pits, who died in 1616, was a writer, in not inelegant Latin, 
 of the lives of the Roman Catholic authors of England. His work, 
 which was published after his death, at Pari«, in 1619, 4to. is usually 
 known and quoted by the title of De illnstribus Anglice scriptoribus. 
 He is a bold plagiarist from Bale, partial from religious bigotry, and 
 often inaccm-ate with regard to facts and dates. 
 
 To this summary of historical literature it will be necessary to add 
 a few remarks on the translations which were made, during the era 
 
 Granger's Biographical History of England, 2d edit. 17/5. vol. i. p. 222.
 
 48S 
 
 m question, from the Greek and Roman historians, as these would 
 necessarily have much influence on the public taste, and woidd throw 
 open to Shakspeare, and to those of his contemporaries who could 
 not readily appeal to the originals, many sources of imagery and fable. 
 It appears then, that from the year 1550 to the year 1616, all the 
 great historians of Greece and Rome, had been either wholly or in 
 part, familiarized in our language. That the Grecian classics were 
 translated with any large portion of fidelity and spirit, will not easily 
 be admitted, when we find their sense frequently taken from Latin or 
 French versions ; but they still sei'ved to stimulate curiosity, and to 
 excite emulation. The two first books of Herodofus, 4to. appeared 
 in 1584; Thucydides from the French of Claude de Seysgel, by 
 Thomas Nicolls, folio, in 1550 ; a great part of Polybius, by Chris- 
 topher Watson, 8vo. in 1568 ; Diodo7'us Siculus, by Thomas Hocker, 
 4to. in 1569; Appian, 4to. in 1578; Joscjihus, by Thomas Lodge, 
 folio, in 1602; yElian, by Abraham Fleming, 4to. in 1576; Herodian, 
 from the Latin version of Pohtianus, by Nycholas Smyth, 4to. in 
 1591 ; and Plutarch's Lives, from the French of Amyot, by Sir 
 Thomas North, folio, in 1579. 
 
 The Roman writers were more generally naturalized, without the 
 aid of an intermediate version. Livy and Florus were given to the 
 world by Philemon Holland, folio, in 1600 ; Tacitus, by Sir Henry 
 Saville and Richard Grenaway, 4to. and folio, in 1591 and 1598; 
 Sallust, by Thomas Paynell, 4to., and by Thomas Heywood, folio, 
 in 1557 and 1608; Suetonius, by Philemon Holland, folio, 1606; 
 Ccesar, by Arthur Golding, 4to., 1565, and by Clement Edmundes, 
 folio, 1600 ; Justin, by Arthur Golding, 4to., 1564, and by Holland, 
 1606; Quintus Curtius, by John Brande, 8vo., 1561 ; Eutropius, by 
 Nic. Haward, 8vo., 1564, and Marcellinus, by P. Holland, folio, 1609. 
 
 Such are the chief authors, original and translated, which, in the 
 province of History, general, local, and personal, added liberally to 
 the mass of information and utility which was rapidly accumulating 
 throughout the Shakspearean era. , 
 
 3Q 2
 
 484 
 
 That our great poet amply availed himself of these stores, more 
 particularly in those dramas which are founded on domestic and 
 foreign history, every attentive reader of his works must have ade- 
 quate proof. Several, indeed, of the writers that we have enumerated, 
 though exclusively belonging to our period, and throwing much light 
 on the manners, customs, and literature of their age, came rather too 
 late for the poet's purpose ; but of those who published sufficiently 
 eai'ly, he has made the best use. Traces of his footsteps may be dis- 
 cerned in many of the authors that we have mentioned, but his 
 greatest inroads seem to have been made through the compilations of 
 Holinshcd and Hakluyt, and through the version of Plutarch by 
 North. All that was necessarv in the ininutice of fact, was derivable 
 from the labours of the faithful Holinshed; much illustration was to 
 be acquired from the manners-painting pen of Harrison ; a knowledge 
 of the globe and its marvels, was attainable in the narratives of 
 Hakluyt ; and the character and costume of Greece and Rome were 
 vividly delineated in the delightful, though translated, pages of Plu- 
 tarch. From these sources, and from a few which existed previous 
 to the commencement of the poet's age, such as the Froissart oi Lord 
 Bemers, and the Chronicle of Hall, were drawn and coloured those 
 exquisite pictures of manners, history, and individual character, which 
 fix and enrapture attention throughout the dramatic annals of Shaks- 
 peare. Indeed, from whatever mine the poet procured his ore, li,e 
 uniformly purified it into metal of the finest lustre, and it may truly 
 be added, that on the study of the " Histories" of Shakspeare, a 
 more intimate acquaintance with human nature may be founded, than 
 on any other basis. 
 
 Whilst on the subject of History, we must deviate in a slight 
 degree from our plan, which excludes the detail of science, to notice 
 two works in Natural History, from which our bard has derived 
 various touches of imagery and description ; I mean the Roman and 
 the Gothic Pliny, rendered familiar to our author by the labours of 
 Holland, and Batman ; the former having published his Translation 
 of Pliny's immense collection in 1601, folio, and the latter his
 
 485 
 
 Commentary upon Bartholome, under the title of " Batman uppon 
 Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum," in 1582, foho. 
 " Shakspeare," says Mr. Douce, speaking of Batman's Bartholome, 
 " was extremely well acquainted with this work ;" an assertion which 
 he has sufficiently established in the course of his " Illustrations."*" 
 Few, indeed, were the popular books of his day, to which our 
 author had not access, and from which he has not derived some slight 
 fact or hint conducive to his purpose. 
 
 We now approach the last branch of our present subject, Miscel- 
 laneous Literature ; a topic which, were we not restricted by various 
 other demands, might occupy a volume ; for in no era of our annals 
 have miscellaneous writers been more abundant than during the reign 
 of Elizabeth. 
 
 A set of men at this time infested the town, in a high degree dissi- 
 pated in their manners, licentious in their morals, and vindictive in 
 their resentments, yet possessing a large share of native and acquired 
 talent. These adventurers, who hung loose upon society, appear to 
 have seized upon the press for the purpose of indulging an unbounded 
 love of ridicule and raillery, sometimes excited by the mere spirit of 
 badinage and frolic, more frequently stimulated by malignity and 
 revenge, and often goaded to the task by the pressure of deserved 
 poverty. The fertility of these writers is astonishing ; the public was 
 absolutely deluged with their productions, which proved incidentally 
 useful, however, in their day, by the exposure of folly, and are 
 valuable, at this time, for the illustrations which they have thrown 
 upon the most evanescent portion of our manners and customs. 
 
 Another description of miscellaneous authors, consisted of those 
 who, attached to the discipline of the puritans, employed their pens 
 
 * As Batman's Bartholome, continues Mr. Douce, " is likely hereafter to form an 
 article in a Shakspearean Library, it may be worth adding that in a private diary written 
 at the time the original price of the volume appears to have been eight shillings." — 
 Illustrations, vol. i. p. 9. 
 
 I have lately seen a copy of Batman, marked, in a Sale Catalogue, at three guineas 
 and a half !
 
 486 
 
 in inveiofhinsr with great bitterness against the dress antl amusements 
 of the less rigid part of the community ; and a third, equally distant 
 from the levity of the first, and the severity of the second, class, was 
 occupied in calmly discussing the various topics which morals, taste, 
 and literature supplied. 
 
 As examples of the first species, no age can produce more extraor- 
 dinary characters than A^asli, Decker, and Greene ; men intimately 
 acquainted with all the crimes, follies, and debaucheries of a town- 
 life, indefatigable as writers, and possessing the advantages of learn- 
 ing and genius. Tko?nas Nash, whose character as a satirist and 
 critic, we have already given in a quotation from Dr. Lodge, dietl 
 about the year 1600, after a life spent in controversy and dissipation. 
 He had humour, wit, and learning, but debased by a plentiful portion 
 of scurrility and buffoonery ; he was born at Leostoffe in Suffolk, 
 educated at Cambridge, where he resided as a Member of St. John's 
 College, nearly seven years, and obtained great celebrity, as the 
 confuter and silencer of the puritanical Mar-prelates, a service that 
 merited the reputation which it procured him. He was the boon 
 companion of Robert Greene, whose vices he shared, and with whom 
 he acted as the unrelenting scourge of the Harveys. 
 
 Tliis terror of his opponents, this Aretine of England, though most 
 remarkable for his numerous prose pamphlets, was also a dramatic 
 poet. His productions, as enumerated by Mr. Beloe, amount to five 
 and twenty. * 
 
 TJwmas Decker, an author still more prolific, began his career as a 
 dramatic poet about the year 1597, and as a prose writer in 1603. 
 His plays, now lost, preserved, or Avritten in conjunction with others, 
 amount to twenty-eight ; but it is in his capacity as a miscellanist 
 that we have here to notice him. 
 
 His tracts, of which thirty have been attributed to him, and near 
 five and twenty may be considered as genuine, clearly prove him to 
 
 Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, vol. i. p. 260 — •2'J4,
 
 487 
 
 have been an acute observer of the fleeting I'ashions of" his age, and a 
 participator in all its follies and vices. His '* Gul's Home Booke, or 
 Fashions to please all sorts of Guls," first printed in 1609, exhibits a 
 very curious, minute, and interesting picture of the manners and 
 habits of the middle class of society, and on this account will be 
 hereafter frequently referred to in these pages. * That experience 
 had tutored him in the knaveries of the metropolis, the titles of the 
 following pamphlets will sufficiently evince. " The Belman of 
 London, bringing to Light the most notorious Villanies that are now 
 practised in the Kingdome," 1608 ; one of the earliest books profess- 
 ing to disclose the slang of thieves and vagabonds ; and remarks 
 Warton, from a contemporary writer, the most witty, elegant, and 
 eloquent display of the vices of London then extant. •)• " Lanthern 
 AND Candle Light : Or, The Bell- Man's Second Night's Walke. In 
 which he brings to light a Brood of more strange Villanies than ever 
 were till this Yeare discovered" 4to. 1612. " Villanies discovered 
 by Lanthorn and Candle Light, and the Helpe of a new Crier called 
 0-per-se-O. Being an Addition to the Belman's second Night's 
 Walke, with canting Songs never before printed." 4to. 1616. It 
 will occasion no surprise, therefore, if we find this describer of the 
 arts and language of thieving himself in a jail ; he was, in fact, con- 
 fined in the King's Bench prison from 1613 to 1616, if not longer. 
 The most remarkable transaction of his life appears to have been his 
 quarrel with Ben Jonson, who, no doubt sufficiently provoked, 
 satirizes him in his Poetaster, 1601, under the character of Crispinus ; 
 a 'compliment which Decker amply repaid in his " Satiromastjx, or 
 the Untrussing of the humorous Poet," 1602, where he lashes Ben 
 without mercy, under the designation of Horace Junior. Jonson 
 replied in an address to the Reader, introduced in the 4to. edition of 
 his play, in place of the epilogue, and points to Decker, under the 
 
 * We are much obliged to Dr. Nott, for a most elegant reprint of this interesting tract; 
 the accompanying notes are highly valuable and illustrative. 
 
 f Vide Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, Fragment of vol. iv. p. 28 — 6"4.
 
 488 
 
 appellation of the Untrusser. Decker was an old man in 1631, for in 
 his Match me in London, published in that year, he says : " I have 
 been a priest in Apollo's Temple many years, my voice is decaying 
 with my age ;" he probably died in 1639, the previous year being 
 the date of his latest production. 
 
 Of Robert Greene, the author of near fifty productions*, the 
 history is so highly monitory and interesting as to demand more than 
 a cursory notice. It affords, indeed, one of the most melancholy 
 proofs of learning, taste, and genius being totally inadequate, without 
 a due control over the passions, to produce either happiness or 
 respectability. This misguided man was born at Norwich, about the 
 middle of the sixteenth century, of parents in genteel life and much 
 esteemed. He was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, from 
 whence, at an early period of his education, he was, unfortunately 
 for his future peace of mind, induced to absent himself, on a tour 
 through Italy and Spain. His companions were wild and dissolute, 
 and, according to his own confession j , he ran headlong with them 
 into every species of dissipation and vice. 
 
 On his return to England, he took his degree of Batchelor of Arts 
 at St. John's, in 1578, and afterwards, removing to Clare-hall, his 
 Master of Arts degree in that college, 1583. We learn, from one of 
 his numerous tracts, that, immediately after this event, he visited the 
 metropolis, where he led a life of unrestrained debauchery. Greene 
 was one of those men who are perpetually sinning and perpetually 
 repenting ; he had a large share of wit, humour, fancy, generosity, 
 and good-nature, but was totally deficient in that strength of mind 
 which is necessary to resist temptation ; he was conscious, too, of his 
 great abilities, but at the same time deeply conscious of the waste of 
 
 • For a catalogue of these, as far as they have hitherto been discovered, we refer the 
 reader to Mr. Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. ii., and to Censura Literaria, vol. viii. 
 
 t In his pamphlet, .entitled The Repentaiice of Robert Greene, he informs us, that 
 " wags as lewd" as himself "drew him to march into Italy and Spaine," where b^ 
 *' saw and practised such villanie as is abhorainable to declare."
 
 489 
 
 talent which had been committed to his care. When we find, there- 
 fore, that he was intended for the church, and that he was actually 
 presented to the vicarage of Tollesbury, in Essex, on the 19th of 
 June, 1584*, we may easily conceive how a man of his temperament 
 and habits would feel and act ; he resigned it, in fact, the following- 
 year, no doubt shocked at the disparity between his profession and 
 his conduct ; for we find, from his own relation, that a few years 
 previous to this incident, he had felt extreme compunction on hear- 
 ing a sermon " preached by a godly learned man," in St. Andiew's 
 Church, Norwich, j • 
 
 It was shortly after this period that he married; and, if any thing 
 could have saved Greene from himself, this was the expedient ; tor 
 the lady he had chosen was beautiful in her person, amiable and 
 moral in her character, and we know, from the works of this unhappy 
 man, that his heart had been the seat of the milder virtues, and that 
 he possessed a strong relish for domestic life. 
 
 The result of the experiment must lacerate the feelings of all who 
 hear it ; for it exhibits, in a manner never surpassed, the best 
 emotions of our nature withering before the touch of Dissipation. 
 The picture is taken from a pamphlet of our author's, entitled 
 " Never Too Late," printed in 1590, where his career is admirably 
 and confessedly shadowed forth under the character of the Palmer 
 Francesco. It would appear from this striking narrative, if the 
 minutige, as well as the outline of it, are applicable to Greene, that 
 he married his wife contrary to the wishes of her father ; their 
 pecuniary distress was great, but prudence and affection enabled 
 them to realize the following scene of domestic felicity : — " Hee and 
 Isabel joyntly together taking themselves to a little cottage, began to 
 be as Ciceronicall as they were amorous ; with their hands thrift 
 coveting to satisfy their hearts thirst, and to be as diligent in labours. 
 
 * See Gilchrist's Examination of the Charges of Ben Jonson's enmity to Shaiispeare, 
 p. 22. 
 
 f Beioe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. ii. p. 180, 
 
 VOL. I. 3 B
 
 490 
 
 as they were affectionate in loves ; so that the parish wherein they 
 Hved, so affected them for the course of their hfe, that they were 
 counted the very mirrors of methode ; for he being a scholer, and 
 nurst up in the universities, resolved rather to live by his wit, than 
 any way to be pinched with want, thinking this old sentence to be 
 true, the •wishers and vcoulders xcere never good householders ; there- 
 fore he applied himselfe in teaching of a schoole, where by his 
 industry, hee had not onely great favour, but gate wealthe to with- 
 stand fortune. Isabel, that shee might seeme no lesse profitable, 
 then her husband carefull, fell to her needle, and with her worke 
 sought to prevent the injurie of necessitie. Thus they laboured to 
 maintain their loves, being as busie as bees, and as true as turtles, as 
 desirous to satisfie the world with their desert, as to feede the 
 humours of their own desires. Living thus in a league of united 
 virtues, out of this mutuall concord of conformed perfection, they 
 iiad a Sonne answerable to their owne proportion, which did increase 
 their amitie, so as the sight of their young infant was a double rati- 
 fying of their affection. Fortune and love thus joyning in league, to 
 make these parties to forget the stormes, that had nipped the blossom 
 of their former yeres." * 
 
 The poetry of Greene abounds still more than his prose with the 
 most exquisite delineations of rural peace and content, and the 
 following lines feelingly paint this short and only happy period of 
 his life : — 
 
 " Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, 
 
 The quiet minde is richer than a crovvne : 
 Sweete are the nights in carelesse slumber spent, 
 
 The poor estate scornes Fortune's angry trownc : 
 Such sweete content, such mindes, such sleepe, such blis, 
 Beggers injoy, when princes oil doe mis. 
 
 The homely house that harbours quiet rest, 
 The cottage that affbords no pride nor care, 
 
 * Censura Lileraria, vol. viii. p. II, 12.
 
 491 
 
 Tlir mcane that grees with country musicke best, 
 The sweete consort of mirth and musick's fare, 
 Obscured Ufa sets downe a type of blis, 
 A minde content both crowne and kingdome is." * 
 
 Deeply is It to be lamented, and with a sense, too, of humiliation 
 for the frailty of human nature, that, with such inducements to a 
 moi-al and rational life, with sufficient to support existence comfort- 
 ably, for he had some property of his own, and his wife's dowry had 
 been paid -f, and with a child whom he loved, and with a wife whom 
 he confesses was endowed with all that could endear and dignify her 
 sex, he could suffer his passions so far to subdue his reason, as to 
 throw these essentials towards happiness away ! In the year 1586 he 
 abandoned this amiable woman and her son, to revel in all the vicious 
 indulgences of the metropolis. The causes of this iniquitous de- 
 sertion may be traced in his works ; from these we learn that, in the 
 first place, she had endeavoured, and perhaps too importunately for 
 such an irritable character, to reform his evil propensities :};, and 
 secondly that on a visit to London on business, he had been fasci- 
 nated by the allurements of a courtesan §, and on this woman, whose 
 name was Ball, and on her infamous relations, for her brother was 
 afterwards hanged ||, he squandered both his own property and that 
 of his wife. 
 
 It is almost without a parallel that during the remainder of 
 Greene's life, including only six years, he was continually groaning 
 with anguish and repentance, and continually plunging into fresh 
 guilt ; that in his various tracts he was confessing his sins with the 
 
 * From Greene's Farewell to FoUie. Vide Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. vi. p. 7- 
 
 f We learn these circumstances — his having squandered his paternal inheritance and his 
 marriage portion — from his two tracts, Neva- Too Late, and Repentance, where all the 
 prominent events of his life are detailed. 
 
 t Oldyssays, that " he left his wife, for her good advice, in the year 1586," Berken- 
 hout's Biographia Literaria, p. 390. note d. 
 
 § See Censura Literaria, vol. viii. p. 13. 
 
 y Berkenhout, p. 390. note d. 
 
 3r 2
 
 492 
 
 deepest contrition, passionately apostrophizing his injured wife, im- 
 ploring her forgiveness in the most pathetic terms, and describing, 
 in language the most touching and impressive, the virtue of her whom 
 he had so basely abandoned. 
 
 He tells us, under the beautifully drawn character of Isabel, by 
 whom he represents his wife, that upon her being told, by one of his 
 friends, of his intended residence in London, and by another, of the 
 attachment which had fixed him there, she would not at first credit 
 the tale ; but, when convinced, she hid her face, and inwardly smo- 
 thered her sorrows, yet grieving at his follies, though unwilling to 
 hear him censured by others, and at length endeavouring to solace her 
 affliction by repeating to her cittern some applicable verses from the 
 Italian of Ariosto. He then adds, that she subsequently hinted her 
 knowledge of the amour to him in a letter, saying " the onely com- 
 fort that I have in thine absence is the child, who lies on his mother's 
 knee, and smiles as wantonly as his father when he was a wooer. 
 But, M'hen the boy sayes, ' Mam where is my dad, when wil he come 
 home ;' then the calm of my content turneth to a present storm of 
 piercing sorrow, that I am forced sometime to say, ' unkinde Fran- 
 cesco that forgets his Isabell. I hope Francesco it is thine affaires, 
 not my faults, that procure this long delay." * 
 
 The following pathetic song seems to have been suggested to 
 Greene by the scene just described, and is a further proof of the sin- 
 gulai- disparity subsisting between his conduct and his feelings : — 
 
 " BY A MOTHER TO HER INFANT. 
 
 Weepe not, my Wanton, smile upon my kneo, 
 When thou art old theres griefe enough for thee. 
 
 Mothers wagge, prettie boy, 
 
 Fathers sorrow, fathers joy ; 
 
 When thy father first did see 
 
 Such a boy by him and me, 
 
 * " Never Too Late." See Censura Literaria, vol. viii. p. 1 5.
 
 493 
 
 He was glad, I was woe, 
 Fortune changd made him so, 
 When he had left his prettie boy. 
 Last his sorrow, first his joy. 
 
 Weepe not, my Wanton, smile upon my knee. 
 When thou art old theres griefe enough tor thee. 
 
 Streaming teares that never stint, 
 
 Like pearle drops from a flint. 
 
 Fell by course from his eies. 
 
 That one anothers place supplies. 
 
 Thus he grieved in every part, 
 
 Teares of blond fell from his heart. 
 
 When he left his prettie boy. 
 
 Fathers sorrow, fathers joy. 
 
 Weep not, my Wanton, smile upon my knee, 
 When thou art old theres griefe enough for thee. 
 
 The wanton smilde, father wept, 
 
 Mother cried, babie lept ; 
 
 Now he crow'd more he cride. 
 
 Nature could not sorrow hide; 
 
 He must goe, he must kisse 
 
 Childe and mother, babie blisse, 
 
 For he left his prettie boy. 
 
 Fathers sorrow, fathers joy. 
 Weep not, my Wanton, smile upon my knee, 
 When thou art old theres griefe enough for thee." * 
 
 In the mean time he pursued his career of debauchery in Town, 
 whilst his forsaken wife retired into Lincolnshire. In July 1588, he 
 was incorporated at Oxford, at which time, says Wood, he was " a 
 pastoral sonnet maker, and author of several things which were 
 pleasing to men and women of his time : they made much sport, and 
 were valued among scholars." -f In short, such had been the extra- 
 vagance of Greene, that he was now compelled to write for his daily 
 support, and his biographers, probably without any sufficient founda- 
 tion, have chosen to consider him as the first of our poets who wrote 
 
 * Greene's Arcadia, 158". Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 191. 
 f Berkenhout's Biographia Literaria, p. 389. note b.
 
 494 
 
 for bread. It should be recorded, however, that his pen was employed 
 not only for himself but for his wife ; for Wood tells us, and it is a 
 mitigating fact which has been strangely overlooked by every other 
 writer, that he " wrote to maintain his wife, and that high and loose 
 course of living which poets generally follow." * We have reason, 
 indeed, to conclude, that the income which he derived from his lite- 
 rary labours was considerable, for his popularity as a writer of prose 
 pamphlets, which, as Warton observes, may " claim the appellation 
 of satires f," was unrivalled. Ben Jonson alludes to them in his 
 Every Man out of his Humour I, and Sir Thomas Overbury, describing 
 a chamber-maid, says " she reads Greenes xvorks ox>er and over ; but is 
 so carried away with the Mirror of Knighthood, she is many times 
 resolv'd to run out of herself, and become a lady-errant." § 
 
 It must be confessed that many of the prose tracts of Greene are 
 licentious and indecent ; but there are many also whose object is 
 useful and whose moral is pure. They are written with great viva- 
 city, several are remarkable for the most poignant raillery, all exhibit 
 a glowing warmth of imagination, and many are interspersed with 
 beautiful and highly polished specimens of his poetical powers. On 
 those which are employed in exposing the machinations of his infa- 
 mous associates, he seems to place a high value, justly considering 
 their detection as an essential service done to his country ; and he 
 fervently thanks his God for enabling him so successfully to lay open 
 the " most horrible Coosenages of the common Conny-Catchers, 
 Cooseners and Crosse Biters," names which in those days designated 
 the perpetrators of every species of deception and knavery. | 
 
 * Wood's Athenae Oxonienses, vol. i. col. 136. 
 
 "t History of English Poetry, Fragment of vol. iv. p. 81. 
 
 X Act ii. sc. 3. 
 
 § Vide New and choice Characters of severall Authors, together with that exquisite and 
 unniatcht poeme, The Wife ; written by Syr Thomas Overbiirie. Lond. 1615. p. 
 
 II His " trifling pamphlets of Love," as he himself terms them, (see Repentance of 
 Robert Greene,) we shall not notice; but there are two, under the titles of " Penelope's 
 Webb," and " Ciceronis Amor," which deserve mention, .is exhibiting many excellent 
 precepts and examples for the youUi of both sexes.
 
 495 
 
 But the most curious and interesting of his numerous pieces, are 
 those which relate to his own character, conduct, and repentance. 
 The titles of these, as they best unfold the laudable views with whicii 
 they were written, we shall give at length. 
 
 1. Greene s Mourning Garment, given him by Repentance at the 
 Funerals of Love, which he presents for a Favour to all young Gen- 
 tlemen that wishe to weane themselves from wanton Desires. Both 
 pleasant and profitable. By R. Greene, Utriusque Academiae in 
 Artibus Magister. Sero sed serio. Lond. 1590. 
 
 2. Greenes Never Too Late. Sent to all youthful Gentlemen, 
 decyphering in a true English Historie those particular vanities, that 
 with their frosty vapours nip the Blossomes of every Braine from 
 attaining to his intended perfection. As pleasant as profitable, being 
 a right Pumice Stone, apt to race out Idlenesse with delight and Folly 
 with admonition. By Robert Greene, In Artibus Magister. Lond. 
 1590. 
 
 3. Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. Bought with a million of Repen- 
 tance, describing the Folly of Youth, the Falshood of make-shift 
 Flatteries, the Miserie of the Negligent, and Mishaps of deceyv'ing 
 Courtezans. Published at his dying Request, and newly corrected 
 and of many errors purged. Felicem fuisse infaustum. Lond. 1592. 
 
 4. Greene's Farewell to Follie. Sent to Courtiers and Scholers, 
 as a President to warne them from the vaine Delights that drawe 
 Youth on to Repentance. Sero sed serio. By Robert Greene. 
 
 5. The Repentance of Robert Greene, Maister of Artes. Wherein, 
 by himselfe, is laid open his loose Life, with the Manner of his Death. 
 Lond. 1592. 
 
 6. Greene's Vision. Written at the instant of his death, conteyn- 
 ing a penitent Passion for the folly of his Pen. Sero sed serio. 
 By Robert Greene. 
 
 In these publications the author has endeavoured to make all the 
 reparation in his power, by exposing his own weakness and folly, by 
 detailing the melancholy effects of his dissipation, and by painting in 
 the most impressive terms the contrition which he so bitterly felt.
 
 496 
 
 In what exquisite poetry he coiUd deplore his vicious habits, and by 
 what admirable precepts he could direct the conduct of others, will 
 be learnt from two extracts taken from his " Never Too Late," in 
 the first of which the Penitent Palmer, the intended symbol of him- 
 self, repeats the following ode : 
 
 " Whilonie in the Winter's rage, 
 A Palnier old and full of age, 
 Sate and thought upon his youth, 
 With eyes, teares, and hart's ruth, 
 Beeing all with cares yblent, 
 When he thought on yeeres mispent, 
 When his follies came to minde, 
 How fond love had made him blindc, 
 And wrapt him in a fielde of woes, 
 Shadowed with pleasures shoes. 
 Then he sighed, and sayd, alas ! 
 Man is sinne, and flesh is grasse. 
 I thought my mistres hairs were gold, 
 And in her locks my hartc I folde ; 
 Her amber tresses were the sight 
 That wrapped me in vaine delight : 
 
 Her ivorie front, her pretie chin. 
 Were stales that drew me on to sin : 
 
 Her starry lookes, her christall eyes, 
 Brighter than the sunnes arise : 
 Sparkling pleasing flames of fire, 
 Yoakt my thoughts and my desire, 
 That I gan cry ere I blin. 
 
 Oh her eyes are paths to sin. 
 
 Her face was faire, her breath was sweet, 
 
 All her lookes for love was meete : 
 
 But love is folly this I know. 
 
 And beauty fadeth like to snow. 
 
 Oh why should man delight in pride, 
 
 Whose blossome like a dew doth glide : 
 
 When these supposes taught my thought. 
 
 That world was vaine, and beautic nought, 
 
 I gan to sigh, and say, alas ! 
 
 Man is sinne, and flesh is grasse." * 
 
 * Vide Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. vi. p. 9.
 
 497 
 
 The second extract, entitled The Farevccll of a friend, is supposed 
 to be addressed to Francesco the Pahiier, " by one of his companions ;" 
 such an one, indeed, as might liave saved him from ruin, had he 
 souglit for the original in real life. 
 
 " Let God's worship be thy morning's worke, and his wisdome the 
 direction of thy dayes labour. 
 
 " Rise not without thankes, nor sleepe not without repentance. 
 
 " Choose but a few friends, and try those ; for the flatterer speakes 
 fairest. 
 
 " If thy wife be wise, make her thy secretary ; else locke thy 
 thoughts in thy heart, for women are seldome silent. 
 
 " If she be faire, be not jealous ; for suspition cures not womens 
 follies. 
 
 " If she be wise, wrong her not j for if thou lovest others she will 
 loath thee. 
 
 " Let thy children's nurture be their richest portion : for wisdome 
 is more precious than wealth. 
 
 " Be not proude amongst thy poore neighbours ; for a poore mans 
 hate is perillous. 
 
 " Nor too familiar with great men ; for presumption winnes dis- 
 daine." * 
 
 The virtues of Greene were, it is to be apprehended, confined to 
 his books, they were theoretical rather than practical ; for, however 
 sincere might be his repentance at the moment, or determined his 
 resolution to reform, the impression seems to have been altogether 
 transient ; he continued to indulge, with few interruptions, his vicious 
 course, until a death, too accordant with the dissipated tissue of his 
 life, closed the melancholy scene. He died, says Wood, about 1592, 
 of a surfeit taken by eating pickled herrings and drinking Khenish 
 wine, -f • It appears that his friend Nash was of the party. 
 
 * Never Too Late, part ii. See Censura Literaria, vol. viii. p. 135, 136, 
 \ Wood's Athenes Oxon. vol. i. p. 137- 
 
 VOL. I. 3 s
 
 498 
 
 Of the debauchery, poverty, and misery of Greene, Gabriel Harvey, 
 with whom he had carried on a bitter personal controversy, has left 
 us a highly-coloured description. If the last scene of his life be not 
 exaggerated by this inveterate opponent, it presents us with a picture 
 of distress the most poignant and pathetic upon record. 
 
 " I once bemoned," relates Harvey, " the decayed and blasted 
 estate of M. Gascoigne, who wanted not some commendable parts of 
 conceit, and endevour : but unhappy M. Gascoigne, how lordly happy, 
 in comparison of most unhappy M. Greene ? He never envyed me 
 so much as I pitied him from my hart ; especially when his hostesse 
 Isam^ with teares in her eies, and sigh es from a deeper fountaine (for 
 she loved him deerely) tould me of his lamentable begging of a penny 
 pott of Malmesie ; — and how he was faine poore soule, to borrow her 
 husbandes shirte, whiles his owne was a washing : and how his 
 dublet, and hose, and sworde were sold for three shillings : and beside 
 the charges of his winding sheete, which was four shillinges, and the 
 charges of his buriall yesterday in the New-church yard neere Bedlam, 
 which was six shillinges and foure pence ; how deeply hee was 
 indebted to her poore husbande : as appeered by hys owne bonde 
 of tenne poundes : which the good woman kindly shewed me : and 
 beseeched me to read the writing beneath ; which was a letter to his 
 abandoned wife, in the behalfe of his gentle host : not so short as 
 persuasible in the beginning, and pittifull in the ending. 
 
 Doll, 
 
 I charge thee by the love of our youth, and by my soules rest, that 
 
 tJwu wilte see this man paide : for if hee and his iiife had not succoured 
 
 m^, I had died in the sireeies. 
 
 Robert Greene."* 
 
 The pity which Harvey assumes upon this occasion may justly be 
 considered as hypocritical; for the pamphlet whence the above 
 
 * Four Letters and Certaine Sonnets. Especially touching Robert Greene, and other 
 Poets by him abused. Lend. 1592. Vide Beloe's Anecdotes, vol.ii, p. 201, 202.
 
 499 
 
 extract has been taken, abounds in tlie most rancorous abuse and 
 exaggerated description of the vices of Greene, and contains, among 
 other invectives, a sonnet unparalleled, perhaps, for the keen severity 
 of its irony, and for the dreadful solemnity of tone in vdiich it is 
 delivered. It is put into the mouth of John Hm^ey, the physician, 
 who had been dead some years, but who had largely participated of 
 the torrent of satire which Greene had poured upon his brothers, 
 Gabriel and Richard. If it be the composition of Gabriel, and there 
 is reason to suppose this to be the case, from the tract in which it 
 appears, it must be deemed infinitely superior, in point of poetical 
 merit, to any thing else which he has written. 
 
 JOHN HARVEY THE PHYSICIAN'S WELCOME TO ROBERT GREENE ! 
 
 <* Come, fellow Greene, come to thy gaping grave, 
 
 Bid Vanity and Foolery farewell, 
 That overlong hast plaid the mad-brained knave, 
 
 And overload hast rung the bawdy bell. 
 Vermine to vermine must repair at last; 
 
 No fitter house for busie folke to dwell ; 
 Thy conny-catching pageants are past, 
 
 Some other must those arrant stories tell : 
 These hungry wormes thinke long for their repast ; 
 
 Come on ; I pardon thy offence to me; 
 It was thy living; be not so aghast I 
 
 A Fool and a Physitian may agree ! 
 And for my brothers never vex thyself; 
 They are not to disease a buried elfe." * 
 
 We have entered' thus flilly into the character and writings of 
 Greene, from the circumstance of his having been the most popular 
 miscellaneous author of his day, from the striking talent and genius 
 which his productions display, and from the moral lesson to be 
 drawn from his conduct and his sufferings. It may be useful to 
 remark here, that a well chosen selection from his pamphlets, now 
 
 * Vide D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, vol.ii. p. 17, 18. 
 3 S 2
 
 500 
 
 all extremely rare, would furnish one of the most elegant and inte- 
 resting volvmies in the language. * 
 
 Of the next class of miscellaneous writers, those derived from that 
 part of the commvmity which adhered to the tenets and discipline of 
 the Puritans, and who employed their pens chiefly in satirizing their 
 less enthusiastic neighbours, it will be sufficient to notice two, who 
 have attracted a more than common share of attention, as well for 
 the rancour of their animadversion, as for their rooted antipathy to 
 the stage. The first of these, Stephen Gosson, was educated at Christ 
 Church, Oxford ; on leaving the University, he went to London, 
 where he commenced poet and dramatist, and, according to Wood, 
 " for his admirable penning of pastorals, was ranked with Sir P. 
 Sidney, Tho. Chaloner, Edm. Spencer, Abrah. Fraunce, and Rich. 
 Bernfield." j- His dramatic writings, which ^ consist of a tragedy, 
 founded on Cataline's conspiracy, a comedy, and a morality, were 
 never printed. Of his devotion to the Muses, however, he soon 
 after heartily repented, as of a most heinous sin ; for, imbibing the 
 sour severity of the Puritans, he left the metropolis, became tutor in 
 a gentleman's family, in the country, and subsequently took orders, 
 declaiming in a style so vehement against the amusements of his early 
 days, as to acquire a great share of popular notoriety. The work by 
 which he is best known is entitled " The Schoole of Abuse. Contein- 
 ing a pleasaunt Invective against Poets, Plaiers, Jesters, and such 
 like Caterpillers, of a Comonwelth ; setting up the Flagge of Defiance 
 to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwai'kes by 
 prophane Writers, naturall Reason and common experience. A 
 Discourse as pleasaunt for Gentlemen that favour learning, as profit- 
 able for all that wyll follow vertue. By Stephen Gosson, Stud. 
 
 * This article has been chiefly drawn up from documents afforded by JVood, BerkenJtout, 
 Beloe's Anecdotes of Li'ferafure, D^ Israeli, and the Camira Literaria. The extracts selected 
 from his pamphlets by Mr. Beloe, in the opening of his sixth volume, will enable the reader 
 to form a pretty good estimate of the poetical genius of Greene. 
 
 f Wood's Athenae Oxon. vol, i.
 
 501 
 
 Oxon." London, 1597. This was speedily followed by another attack 
 in a pamphlet termed, " Playcs confuted in Jive Actions^ &c. Proving 
 that they are not to be sufFred in a christian common weale, &c. * ;" 
 a philippic which he dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham, as he had 
 done his Schoole to Sir Philip Sidney ; both of whom considered the 
 liberty which he had taken, rather in the light of an insult than a 
 compliment. 
 
 The warfare of Gosson, however, was mildness itself, compared 
 with that which Philip Stubbes carried on against the same host of 
 poetical sinners. This puritanical zealot, whose work we have re- 
 peatedly quoted, commenced his attack upon the public in the year 
 1583, by publishing in small 8vo. the first edition of his " Anatomie 
 of Abuses" contayning a discoverie, or briefe summarie of such 
 notable vices and imperfections as now rayne in many Christian 
 Countreyes of the Worlde : but (especiallie) in a verie famous 
 Ilande called Ailgna : &c." A second impression, which now lies 
 before me, was printed in 1595, 4to. and both it and the octavo are 
 among the scarcest of Elizabethan books. " Stubbes," remarks 
 Mr. Dibdin, " did what he could, in his Anatomy of Abuses, to dis- 
 turb every social and harmless amusement of the age. He was the 
 forerunner of that snarling satirist, Prynne ; but I ought not thus to 
 cuff him, for fear of bringing upon me the united indignation of a 
 host of black-letter critics and philologists. A large and clean copy 
 of his sorrily printed work, is among the choicest treasures of a 
 Shakspearean virtuoso." He subjoins, in a note, commencing in the 
 true spirit of bibliomaniacism, that " Sir John Hawkins calls this 
 ' a curious and very scarce book ;' and so does my friend, Mr. Utter- 
 son ; who revels in his morrocco-coated copy of it — ' Exemplar olitn 
 FarmerianumC " Then proceeding more soberly, he adds, " Let us be 
 candid, and not sacrifice our better judgments to our book-passions. 
 After all, Stubbes's work is a caricatured drawing. It has strong 
 
 • Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 288. note t.
 
 502 
 
 passages, and a few original tlioughts ; and is, moreover, one of the 
 very few works printed in days of yore, which have running titles to 
 the subjects discussed in them. These may be recommendations 
 with the bibliomaniac : but he should be informed that this volume 
 contains a great deal of puritanical cant, and licentious language : 
 that vices are magnified in it in order to be lashed, and virtues dimi- 
 nished that they might not be noticed. Stubbes equals Prynne in 
 his anathemas against Plays and Interludes ; and in his chapters upon 
 ' Dress' and ' Dancing,' he rakes together every coarse and pungent 
 phrase in order to describe ' these horrible sins' with due severity. 
 He is sometimes so indecent, that, for the credit of the age, and of a 
 virgin reign, we must hope that every virtuous dame threw the copy 
 of his book, which came into her possession, behind the fire. This 
 may reasonably account for its present rarity." * 
 
 Of the tone in which Stubbes book is written no inaccurate judg- 
 ment may be formed from the various passages which we have already 
 quoted ; but the following short extract will more fully develope, 
 perhaps, the acrimony of his pen than any paragraph that has yet 
 been brought forward. He is speaking of the neglect of Fox's 
 Book of Martyrs, " whilst other toyes, fantasies and bableries," he 
 adds, " wherof the world is ful, are suffered to be printed. Then 
 prophane schedules, sacraligious libels, and hethnical pamphlets of 
 toyes and bableries (the authors whereof may vendicate to themselves 
 no smal commendations, at the hands of the devil for inventing the 
 same) corrupt men's mindes, pervert good wits, allure to baudrie, 
 induce to whordome, suppresse virtue and erect vice : which thing 
 how should it be otherwise ? for are they not invented and excogitat 
 by Belzebub, written by Lucifer, licensed by Pluto, printed by Cerberus, 
 and set a broche to sale by the infernal furies themselves to the 
 poysning of the whole world." -j- 
 
 * Dibdin's Bibliomania, p. 366, 367, and note. 
 \ Anatomic of Abuses, sig. P, p. 7-
 
 503 
 
 The works of Gosson and Stubbes are now chiefly valuable for the 
 numerous illustrations which they incidentally give of the manners, 
 customs, dress, and diversions, of their age, and especially for the 
 light which they throw on the character and costume of the stao-e. 
 
 The progress of discussion has at length brought us to the third 
 class of Miscellaneous Writers, who may be considered as possessinc^ 
 a more decorous and philosophic cast in composition than the authors 
 who have just fallen beneath our notice. The individuals of this 
 genus, too, are numerous, but we shall content ourselves with the 
 mention of three, who were more than usually popular in their day, 
 Thomas Lodge, Abraham Fleming, and Gervase Markham. Lodge 
 was educated at Oxford, which he entered about 1573 ; he took his 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine at Avignon, and practised as a physician 
 in London, where he died in 1625. He was a dramatic poet as well 
 a miscellaneous writer, and was considered by his contemporaries as a 
 man of uncommon genius. He appears to have been, not only a 
 scholar, but a man of the world, to have possessed no small share of 
 wit and humour, and to have uniformly wielded his pen in support of 
 morality and good order. Of his pieces no doubt many have perished; 
 in his professional capacity, only one remains, a Treatise on the 
 Plague ; but the productions which acquired him most celebrity were 
 wi'itten to expose the follies and vices of the times, and of these, 
 about half a dozen are preserved. He is noAv best known by his 
 " Wits. Miserie and the Worlds Madnesse. Discovering the Devils in- 
 carnate of this Age. Lond. 1596:" a tract which, although so ex- 
 tremely rare as to be in the possession of only one or two collectors, 
 has been frequently quoted, owing to its containing some interesting 
 notices of contemporary writers. The principal faults in the literary 
 character of Lodge seem to have been a love of quaintness and affect- 
 ation ; the very titles of his pamphlets indicate the former ; the 
 alliteration in the one just transcribed is notorious, and another is 
 termed " Catharos. Diogenes in his Singularitie. Wherein is com- 
 prehended his merrie baighting fit for all men's benefits : Christened 
 by him, A Nettle for Nice Noses, 1591." From a passage in The
 
 504 
 
 Retiirne from Pernassm it is evident that he was thought to be deeply 
 tainted with Euphuism, the hterary folly of his time. The poet is 
 speaking of Lodge and Watson, both, he says, 
 
 " subject to a crittick's marginall. 
 
 Lodge for his oai'c in every paper boate, 
 He that turnes over Galen every day, 
 To sit and simper Euphue's legacy." * 
 
 Abraham Fleming, the corrector and enlarger of the second edition 
 of Holinshed's Chronicle in 1585, was prodigiously fertile, both as 
 an original writer and a translator. In the latter capacity he gave 
 versions of the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil, both in rhyme of 
 fourteen feet, 1 575, and in the regular Alexandrine without rhyme, 
 1589; of iElian's Various History in 1576; of Select Epistles of 
 Cicero, 1576, and in the same year, a Panoplie of Epistles frojyi Tully, 
 Isocrates, Pliny, and others ; of the Greek Panegyric of Synesius, and 
 of various Latin works of the fifteenth century. As an original mis- 
 cellaneous writer, his pieces are still more numerous, and, for the 
 most part, occupied by moral and religious subjects ; for example, one 
 is called The Cundyt of Comfort, 1579 ; a second. The Battel between 
 the Virtues and Vices, 1582, and a third The Diamond of Devotion, 
 1586. This last is so singularly quaint both in its title-page and divi- 
 sions, so superior, indeed, in these departments, to the titles of his 
 contemporary Lodge, and so indicative of the curious taste of the 
 times in the methodical arrangement of literary matter, as to call for 
 a further description. The complete title runs thus : " The Diamond 
 of Devotion : Cut and squared into sixe severall pointes: namelie, 1. 
 The Footepath of Felicitie. 2. A Guide to Godlines. 3. The 
 Schoole of Skill. 4. A swarme of Bees. 5. A Plant of Pleasure. 
 6. A Grove of Graces. Full of manie fruitfuU lessons availeable unto 
 the leading of a godlie and reformed life." The Footepath of Felicitie 
 has ten divisions, concluding with a " looking glasse for the Christian 
 
 * Ancient British Drama, vol. i. p. 49.
 
 505 
 
 reader ;" the Guide to GocUines, is divided into three branches, and 
 these branches into so many blossoms ; the first branch containing four 
 blossoms, the second thirteen, and the third ten ; the Schoole of Skill 
 is digested into three sententious sequences of the A. B. C. ; the 
 Swarme of Bees is distributed into ten honeycombs, including two 
 hundred lessons ; the Plant of Pleasure bears fourteen several flowers, 
 in prose and verse ; the Grove of Graces exhibits forty-two plants, 
 or Graces, for dinner and supper, and the volume concludes with " a 
 briefe praier." 
 
 From the specimens which we have seen of Fleming's composition, 
 it would appear, that his affectation was principally confined to his 
 title pages and divisions : for his prose is more easy, natural, and per- 
 spicuous, than most of his contemporaries. He was rector of Saint 
 Pancras, Soper-lane, and died in 1607. * 
 
 Gervase Markham, whom we have incidentally mentioned in various 
 parts of this work, was the most indefatigable writer of his era. He 
 was descended of an ancient family in Nottinghamshire, and com- 
 menced author about the year 1592. The period of his death is not 
 ascertained ; but he must have attained a good old age, for he fought 
 for Charles the First, and obtained a Captain's commission in his 
 army. His education had been very liberal, for he was esteemed a 
 good classical scholar, and he was well versed in the French, Italian, 
 and Spanish languages. As he was a younger son it is probable that 
 his finances were very limited, and that he had recourse to his pen as 
 an additional means of support. " He seems," remarks Sir Egerton 
 Brydges, " to have become a general compiler for the booksellers, and 
 his various works had as numerous impressions as those of Burn and 
 Buchan in our days." -j- No subject, indeed, appears [to have been 
 rejected by Markham ; husbandry, husiiifry, farriery, horsemanship, 
 
 * For catalogues of Fleming's Works, see Herbert's Typographical Antiquities ; 
 Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 402 ad 405. Tanner's Bibjiotheca, p. 287, 
 288, and Censura Literaria, No. viii. p. 313, et seq. 
 
 f Censura Literaria, vol. ii. p, 218, 
 
 VOL. I. 3 T
 
 506 
 
 and military tactics, hunting, haii'king, fowling, fishing, and archery, 
 heraldry, poetry, romances, and the drama : — all shared his attention 
 and exercised his genius and industry. * His popularity, in short, in 
 
 * As no complete catalogue of this ingenious author's productions is to be found in any 
 one writer, I have thought it desirable to endeavour to form one, noticing only the first 
 editions, when ascertained, and referring, for the full titles, to the works cited at the close 
 of this note. 
 
 1. A Discouice of Horsemanshippc, 4to. 1593. 
 
 2. Tliyrsys and Daphne, 1593. 
 
 3. The Gentleman's Academie, or Booke of St. Albans, 4to. 1595. 
 
 4. The poem of poems, or Sions muse, contayning the divine song of king Salomon, 
 devided into eight eclogues, 8vo. 1595. 
 
 5. The most honourable tragedie of Sir Richard Grenvill knight, a heroick poem, in 
 eight-line stanzas, 8vo. 1595. 
 
 6. Devoreux. Vertues tears for the losse of the most christian king Henry, third of that 
 name, king of Fraunce : and the untimely death of the most noble and heroicall gentleman, 
 Walter Devoreux, &c., 4to. 1597- 
 
 7. Ariosto's Rogero and Rodomantho, &c. paraphrastically translated. 1598. 
 
 8. The Teares of the beloved, or the Lamentation of Saint John, &c. 4to. 1600. 
 
 9. Cavelarice, or the English Horseman, 4to. 1607- 
 
 10. England's Arcadia, alluding his beginning from Sir Philip Sydney's ending, 4to. 
 1607. 
 
 11. Ariosto's Satyres, 4to. 1608. 
 
 12. The Famous Whore, or Noble Courtezan, 4to. 1609. 
 
 13. Cure of all diseases, incident to Horses, 4to, 1610. 
 
 14. The English Husbandman in two parts, 1613. 
 
 15. The Art of Husbandry, first translated from the Latin of Cour Heresbachiso, by 
 Barnaby Googe, 4to. 1614. 
 
 16. Country Contentments ; or the Husbandman's Recreations, 4to. 1615, 
 
 17. The English Huswife, 4to. 1615. 
 
 18. Cheap and Good Husbandry, 4to. 1616. 
 
 19. Liebault's Le Maison Rustique, or the Country Farm, folio. 1616. 
 
 20. The English Horseman, 4to. 1617- 
 
 (8. How To Chuse, Ride, Traine, And Diet Both Hunting Horses And Running 
 Horses, 1599.) 
 
 22. The Inrichment of the Weald of Kent, 4to. 
 
 23. Markham's Farewel to Husbandry, 4to. 1620. 
 
 24. The Art of Fowhng, 8vo. 1621. 
 
 25. Herod and Antipater, a Tragedy, 4to. 1622. 
 
 '26. The Wliole art of Husbandry, contained in Four Bookes, 4to. 1631. 
 27. The Art of Archerie, 8vo. 1634.
 
 507 
 
 all these various branches was unrivalled ; and such was his reputation 
 as a cattle doctor, that the booksellers, aware of the value of his works 
 of this kind in circulation, got him to sign a paper in 1617, in which 
 he bound himself not to publish any thing further on the diseases of 
 " horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, s.wine, goates, &c." His books on agri- 
 culture were not superseded until the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, and the fifteenth impression of his Cheap and Good Husbandry, 
 which was originally published in 1616, is now before us, dated 1695. 
 Nor were his works on rural amusements less relished; for his Country 
 Contentments, the first edition of which appeared in 1615, had reached 
 the eleventh in 1675. The same good fortune attended him even as 
 a poet, for in England's Parnassus, 1600, he is quoted thirty-four times, 
 forming the largest number of extracts taken from any minor bard in 
 the book. He appears to have been an enthusiast in all that relates 
 to field-sports, and his works, now becoming scarce, are, in many 
 respects, curious and interesting, and display great versatility o£ talent. 
 By far the greater part of them, as is evident from their dates, was 
 written before the year 1620, though many were subsequently cor- 
 rected and enlarged. 
 
 Having thus given a sketch of three great classes of miscellaneous 
 writers, it will be necessary to add some notice of a few circumstances 
 which more peculiarly distinguished this branch of literature during 
 the life-time of our poet. 
 
 28. The Faithful Farrier, 8vo. 1635. 
 
 29. The Soldiers Exercise, 3d edit. 1643. 
 
 30. The Way to Get Wealth, 4to. 1638. 
 
 31. The English Farrier, 4to. 1649. 
 
 32. Epitome concerning the Diseases of Beasts and Poultry, Svo. 
 
 34. His Masterpiece, concerning the curing of Cattle, 4to. an edition 1662. 
 
 (10. Marie Magdalen's Lamentations, 4to. 1601.) 
 
 Numerous editions of many of these works, with alterations in the title-pages, were pub- 
 lished to the year 1700. See Censura Literaria, vol. ii. p. 217 — 225. Ritsm's Bib- 
 liographia Poetica, p. 273, 274. Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. ii. p. 244, et seq. 
 and vol. ii. p. 339. Bridges's Tkeatrum Poetanm, p. 278 — 285. Biographia Dramatica. 
 British Bibliographer, No. iv. p. 380, 38L Warton's Hist, of Engl. Poetry, vol. iii. p. 485. 
 
 3 T 2
 
 508 
 
 It is to the reign of Elizabeth, that we have to ascribe the origin of 
 genuine printed Newspapers, a mode of publication which has now 
 become absolutely essential to the wants of civilised life. The epoch 
 of the Spanish invasion forms that of this interesting innovation, for, 
 previous to the daring attempt of Spain, all public news had been cir- 
 culated in manuscript, and it was left to the sagacity of Elizabeth and 
 the legislative prudence of Burleigh to discover, how highly useful, 
 in this agitated crisis, would be a more rapid circulation of events, 
 through the medium of the press. Accordingly, in April 1588, when 
 the formidable Armada approached the shores of old England, 
 appeared the first number of The English Mercury. That it was pub- 
 lished very frequently, is evident from the circumstance that No. 50, 
 the earliest number now preserved, and which is in the British Museum, 
 Sloane MSS., No. 4106, is dated the 23d of July 1588. It resembles 
 the London Gazette of the present day, with respect to the nature 
 of its articles, one of which presents us with this curious inform- 
 ation: — " Yesterday the Scotch Ambassador had a private audience 
 of Her Majesty, and delivered a letter from the King his master, con- 
 taining the most cordial assurances of adhering to Her Majesty's 
 interests, and to those of the protestant religion ; and the young King 
 said to Her Majesty's minister at his court, that all the favour he 
 expected from the Spaniards was, the courtesy of Polyphemus to 
 Ulysses, that he should be devoured the last" * 
 
 So rapid was the progi'ess of newspapers after this memorable in- 
 troduction, that towards the close of the reign of James, Ben Jonson, 
 in his Staple of News, alludes to them, as fashionable among all ranks 
 of people, and as sought after with the utmost avidity, one consequence 
 of which was, that the greater part of what was communicated was 
 fabricated on the spot. To this grievance the poet refers in an address 
 to his readers, where, speaking of spurious news, he calls it " news 
 
 * See Chalmers's Life of Ruddiman, 8vo. p. 106. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. 
 p. 34, and Andrew's History of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 145, 156.
 
 509 
 
 made like the Times news, (a weekly cheat to draw money,) and could 
 not be fitter reprehended, than in raising this ridiculous office of the 
 Staple, wherein the age may see her own folly, or hunger and third 
 after jjublished pamphlets of nezvs, set out everi/ Saturday/, but made all 
 at home, and no syllable of truth in them." * 
 
 Another branch of miscellaneous literature which may be said to 
 have originated at this period, was that employed in the writing of 
 Characters ; a species of composition which, if well executed, neces- 
 sarily throws much light on the manners and customs of its age. 
 
 A claim to the first legitimate collection of this kind, may be 
 allotted, on the authority of Fuller, to Sir Thomas Overbury ; " he 
 was," says that entertaining compiler, " the first writer of Character's 
 of our nation, so far as I have observed."f With the exception of 
 two small tracts, descriptive of the characters of rogues and knaves J, 
 this assertion appears to be correct. Few works have been more 
 popular than Overbury's volume ; it was printed several times, accord- 
 ing to Wood, before the author's death in 1613; but the earliest 
 edition now usually met with, is dated 1614, and is, with great pro- 
 bability, supposed to be the fifth impression, for the sixth, which is 
 not uncommon, was published the subsequent year. Various alter- 
 ations took place in the title-page of this miscellany, but that of 1614 
 is as follows : — "A Wife now the Widdow of Sir Thomas Overbury. 
 Being a most exquisite and singular Poem of the Choice of a Wife. 
 \Vhereunto are added many witty Characters, and conceited Newes, 
 written by himselfe and other learned Gentlemen his friends. 
 
 Dignum laude virum musa vetat mori, 
 Caelo musa beat. Hor. Car. lib. iii, 
 
 London, Printed for Lawrence Lisle, and are to bee sold at 
 
 * Act ii., at the close. 
 t Fuller's Worthies, p. 359. 
 
 % " The Fraternitye of Uacabondes" 1565, and " A Caveat for common Cursetors 
 vulgarely called Uagabones, set forth by Thomas Herman, Esq." 1567.
 
 510 
 
 his shop in Paule's Church-yard, at the signe of the Tiger's head. 
 1614. 4to." * The characters in this edition amount to twenty-two, 
 but were augmented in the eleventh, printed in 1622, to eighty. 
 So extensive was the sale of this collection, that the sixteenth im- 
 pression appeared in 1638. 'T i~ ^3i- - 
 
 Both the poem and the characters exhibit no small share of talent 
 and discrimination. In Overbury's Wife, observes Mr. Neve, " the 
 sentiments, maxims, and observations with which it abovmds, are 
 such as a considerable experience and a correct judgment on mankind 
 alone could furnish. Tlie topics of jealousy, and of the credit and 
 behaviour of women, are treated with great truth, delicacy and per- 
 spicuity. The nice distinctions of moral character, and the pattern of 
 female excellence here drawn, contrasted as they were with the 
 heinous and flagrant enormities of the Countess of Essex, rendered 
 this poem extremely popular, when its ingenious author was no 
 more." f The prose characters, though rather too antithetical in 
 their style, are drawn Avith a masterly hand, and are evidently the 
 result of personal observation. 
 
 Numerous imitations of both were soon brought forward ; in 1614 
 appeared " The Husband. A poeme expressed in a compleat man ;" 
 small 8vo. : and in 1616, "A Select Second Husband for Sir Thomas 
 Overburie's Wife ; now a matchlesse Widow :" small Svo. ; which 
 were followed by many others. The prose characters established a 
 still more durable precedent, for they continued to form a favourite 
 mode of composition for better than a century. Of these the most 
 immediate offspring were, " Satyrical Characters" by John Stephens, 
 Svo. 1615, and " The Good and the Badde, or Description of the 
 Worthies and Unworthies of this Age. Where the Best may see 
 
 * Three editions were probably published in 161 4; for Mr. Capel, in his Prolusions, 
 8vo., notices one in 8vo., and one in 4to. stated in the title-page to be the fourth. Vide 
 Bliss's edition, of the Microcosmography, p. 258, and Censura Literaria, vol. v. p. 363, 
 
 -f Cursory Remarks on Ancient English Poets, 1789. p. 27) et seq.
 
 511 
 
 their Graces, and the Worst discerne their Basenesse," by Nicholas 
 Breton, 4to. 1616. Perhaps the most vahiable collection of cha- 
 racters, previous to the year 1700, is that published by Bishop Earle, 
 in 1628, under the title of Microcosmography, and which may be 
 considered as a pretty faithful delineation of many classes of 
 characters as they existed during the close of the sixteenth, and 
 commencement of the seventeenth, century. * 
 
 One of the earliest attempts at miscellaneous Essay-writing, since 
 become a most fashionable and popular species of literary compo- 
 sition, may likewise very justly be ascribed to a similar epoch. In 
 1601, Thomas Wright published in small octavo a collection of 
 Essays, on various subjects, which he entitled The Passions of the 
 Minde. This volume, consisting of 336 pages independent of the 
 preface, was re-issued from the press in 1604, enlarged by nearly as 
 much more matter, and in a quarto form ; and a third edition in the 
 same size appeared in 1621. 
 
 The work is divided into six books, and, from the specimens 
 which we have seen, is undoubtedly the production of a practised 
 pen and a discerning mind. It is termed by Mr. Haslewood, " an 
 amusing and instructive collection of philosophical essays, upon the 
 customary pursuits of the mind ;" and he adds, " though a relaxation 
 of manners succeeded the gloomy history of the cowl, and the 
 abolition of the dark cells of superstition ; it was long before the 
 moralist ventured to draw either example, or precept, from any other 
 source than Scripture, and the writings of the fathers. Genius run 
 riot in some instances from excess of liberty, but the calm, rational, 
 and universal essayist was a character unknown. In the present 
 work there are passages that possess no inconsiderable portion of 
 ease, spirit, and freedom, diversified with character and anecdote that 
 prove the author mingled with the world to advantage ; and could 
 
 * For an accurate Catalogue of the various Writers of Characters to the year 1 700, 
 consult Bliss's edition of Earle's Microcosmography, 1811.
 
 512 
 
 occasionally lighten the hereditary shackles that burthened the moral 
 and philosophical writer." * 
 
 It is, however, to the profound genius of Lord Bacon that we 
 must attribute the earliest legitimate specimen of essay-writing in this 
 country ; for though his " Essays on Councils, Civil and Moral," 
 were not completed until 1612, the first part of them was printed in 
 1597 ; and in the intended dedication to Prince Henry of this second 
 edition, he assigns his reason for adopting the term essay. " To 
 write just treatises," he observes, " requires leisure in the wi-iter, and 
 leisure in the reader, and therefore are not so fit, neither in your 
 Highness's princely affairs, nor in regard of my continual service, 
 which is the cause that hath made me chuse to write certain brief 
 notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have 
 called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient ; for 
 Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but essays, 
 that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of 
 epistles." -f This invaluable work, in a moral and prudential light, 
 perhaps the most useful which any English author has left to pos-. 
 terity, has been the fruitful parent of a more extensive series of 
 similar productions, collectively or periodically published, than any 
 other country can exhibit. 
 
 The age of Shakspeare was fertile, also, in what may be termed 
 Parlour-window Miscellanies ; books whose aim was to attract the 
 attention of the idle, the dissipated, and the gossipping, by inter- 
 mingling with the admonitions of the sage, a more than usual share 
 of wit, narrative, and anecdote. Two of these, as exemplars of the 
 whole class, it maybe necessary to notice. In 1589, Leonard Wright 
 published " A Display of dutie, dect rvitk sage sayings, pythie sen- 
 tences, and proper similies : Pleasant to reade, delightfidl to heare, and 
 profitable to practise ;" a collection which Mr. Haslewood calls " an 
 
 * Censura Literaria, vol. ix. p. 168. 
 
 t Bacon's Works, folio edit. 1 740, vol. iv. p. 586.
 
 513 
 
 early and pleasing specimen" of this species, of miscellaneous writino. 
 It contains observations and friendly hints on all the principal 
 circmnstances and events of life ; " certaine necessarie rules both 
 pleasant and profitable for preventing of sicknesse, and preserving of 
 health : prescribed by Dr. Dyet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman ;" and 
 concludes with " certaine pretty notes and pleasant conceits, de- 
 lightfull to many, and hurtfull to none." The author closes " A 
 friendly advertisement touching marriage," by enumerating the in- 
 felicities of the man who marries a shrew, where " hee shall finde 
 compact in a little flesh, a great number of bones too hard to 
 digest. — And therefore," adds he, " some do thinke wedlocke to be 
 that same purgatorie, which learned divines have so long contended 
 about, or a sharpe penance to bring sinnefull men to heaven. A 
 merry fellow hearing a preacher say in his sermon, that whosoever 
 would be saved, must take up and beare his cross, ran straight to 
 
 his wife, and cast her upon his back 
 
 " Finally, he that will live quiet in wedlocke, must be courteous 
 in speech, cheareful in countinance, provident for his house, carefull 
 to traine up his children in vertue, and patient in bearing the in- 
 firmities of his wife. Let all the keyes hang at her girdle, only the 
 purse at his own. He must also be voide of jelosie, which is a 
 vanity to thinke, and more folly to suspect. For eyther it needeth 
 not, or booteth not, and to be jelious without a cause is the next 
 way to have a cause. 
 
 " This is the only way, to make a woman dum : 
 
 To sit and smylc and laugh her out, and not a word, but mum." * 
 
 In 1600, appeared the first edition of " The Golden-grove, mo- 
 ralized in three hooks : A worke very necessary for all such, as would 
 know how to governe themselves, their houses, or their countrey. Made 
 by W. Vaughan, Master of Artes, and Graduate in the Civill Law." 
 
 * British Bibliographer, No. VI. p. 49. 51. 
 VOL. I, 3 u
 
 514 
 
 A second edition, " reviewed and enlarged by the Authour," was 
 printed in 1608. 
 
 Each book of this work, which displays considerable knowledge 
 both of literature and of mankind, is divided, after a ridiculous 
 fashion of the time, into plants, and these again into chapters. Tlie 
 first book, on the Supreme Being, and on man, contains eleven 
 plants, and eighty-four chapters ; the second, on domestic and private 
 duties, five plants, and thirty chapters ; and the third, upon the 
 commonwealth, nine plants and seventy-two chapters. 
 
 Great extent of reading, and much ingenuity in application, are 
 discoverable in the Golden Grove, accompanied by many curious 
 tales, and local anecdotes. It is one of the books, also, which has 
 thrown light upon the manners and diversions of its age, and will 
 hereafter be quoted on this account. Vaughan, though he professes 
 himself attached to poetry from his earliest days, and has devoted a 
 chapter to its praise, was too much of the puritan to tolerate the stage, 
 against which he inveighs with more acrimony than discrimination. 
 The passages which allude to our old English poets, we shall throw 
 together, as a specimen of his style and composition. 
 
 " JefFery Chaucer, the English poet, was in great account with 
 King Richard the Second, who gave him in reward of his poems, 
 the mannour of Newelme in Oxfordshire. — King Henry the eighth, 
 her late Maiesties father, for a few psalms of David turned into 
 English meeter by Sternhold, made him groome of his privie cham- 
 ber, and rewarded him with many great giftes besides. Moreover, hee 
 made Sir Thomas More Lord Chauncelour of this realme, whose 
 poeticall workes are as yet in great regard. — Queene Elizabeth made 
 Doctour Haddon, beyng a poet. Master of the Requests. — Neither 
 is our owne age altogether to bee dispraysed. Sir Philip Sydney 
 expelled all our English poets, in rareness of stile and matter. King 
 .James, our dread Soveraigne, that now raigneth, is a notable poet, 
 and hath lately set out most learned poems, to the admiration of all 
 his subjects.
 
 515 
 
 " Gladly I could go forward in this subject, which iji my stripling 
 yeeres pleased me beyond all others, were it not I delight to bee 
 briefe : and that Sir Philip Sydney hath so sufficiently defended it in 
 his Apology of Poetry ; and if I should proceede further in the com- 
 mendation thereof, whatsoever I write would be eclipsed with the 
 glory of his golden eloquence. Wlierefore, I stay myselfe in this 
 place, earnestly beseeching all gentlemen, of what qualitie soever 
 they bee, to advaunce poetrie, or at least to admire it, and not bee 
 so hastie shamefully to abuse that, which they may honestly and 
 lawfully obtayne." * 
 
 We shall conclude these observations on the miscellaneous litera- 
 ture of Shakspeare's time, by noticing one of the earliest of our 
 FaceticB, the production of an author who may be termed, in allusion 
 to this Jeu d^ esprit, the Rabelais of England. Had the subject of this 
 satire been less exceptionable in its nature, the popularity which it 
 acquired for a season might have been permanent ; but its grossness 
 is such as not to admit of adequate atonement by any portion of wit, 
 however poignant. It is entitled " A New Discourse of a Stale 
 Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax. Written by Misacmos to his 
 friend and cosin Philostilpnos." London, 1596 ; and is said to have 
 originated from the author's invention of a water-closet for his house 
 at Kelston. f The conceit, or pun upon the word Ajax, or a Jakes, 
 appears to have been a familiar joke of the time, and had been pre- 
 viously introduced by Shakspeare in his Love's Labours Lost, when 
 Costard tells Sir Nathaniel, the Curate, on his failure in the character 
 of Alexander, " you will be scraped out of the painted cloth for this : 
 your lion, that holds his poll-ax sitting on a close-stool, will be given 
 to A-jax : he will be the ninth worthy." X A similar allusion is to be 
 found in Camden and Ben Jonson." 
 
 * British Bibliographer, No. VIII. p. 272, 273. 
 
 f Nugae Antiquae, vol. i. p. xi. edit. 180). 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 187. Act v. »c 2. 
 
 3 u 2
 
 516 
 
 The Metamorphosis, for which Sir John published a witty apology, 
 under the appellation of An Anatoftiie of tlie Metamorphosed AJax, 
 abounds with humour and sarcastic satire, and is valuable as an illus- 
 tration of the domestic manners of the age. Either from its inde- 
 cency, however, or its severity upon her courtiers, the facetious 
 author incurred the displeasure of Elizabeth, and was banished for 
 some time from her presence. It is probably to the latter cause that 
 his exile is to be attributed ; for in a letter addressed to the knight 
 by his friend, Mr. Robert Markham, and dated 1598, he says : — 
 *' Since your departure from hence, you have been spoke of, and with 
 no ill will, both by the nobles and the Queene herself. Your book is 
 almoste forgiven, and I may say forgotten ; but not for its lacke of 
 wit or satyr. Those whome you feared moste are now bosoming 
 themselves in the Queene's grace ; and tho' her Highnesse signified 
 displeasure in outwarde sorte, yet did she like the marrowe of your 
 booke. Your great enemye. Sir James, did once mention the Star- 
 Chamber, but your good esteeme in better mindes outdid his endea- 
 vours, and all is silente again. The Queen is minded to take you to 
 her favour, but she sweareth that she believes you will make epi- 
 grams and write misacmos again on her and all the courte ; she hath 
 been heard to say, ' that merry poet, her godson, must not come to 
 Greenwich, till he hath grown sober, and leaveth the ladies sportes 
 and frolicks.' She did conceive much disquiet on being tolde you 
 had aimed a shafte at Leicester." * 
 
 The genius of Harrington was destined to revive, with additional 
 vigour, in the person of Swift, who, to an equal share of physical 
 impurity, united a richer, and more fertile vein of coarse humour and 
 caustic satire. 
 
 That Shakspeare was well acquainted with the various works which 
 we have noticed in this class of literature, and probably with most of 
 their authors, there is much reason to infer. We have already 
 
 • Nugae Antiquae, vol. i. p. 239, iilO.
 
 517 
 
 found* that he was justly offended with Robert Greene, for the 
 notice which he was pleased to take of him in his GroaCs Worth of 
 Witte bought with a Million of Repentance, and there can be no 
 doubt that the philippics of Gosson and Stubbes, being pointedly 
 directed against the stage, would excite his curiosity, and occasionally 
 rouse his indignation. Tlie very popular satires also of Nash and 
 Decker must necessarily have attracted his notice, nor could a mind 
 so excursive as his, have neglected to cull from the varied store . 
 which the numerous miscellanies, characters, and essays of the age 
 presented to his view. It can be no difficult task to conceive the 
 delight, and the mental profit, which a genius such as Shakspeare's, 
 of which one characteristic is its fertility in aphoristic precept, must 
 have derived from the study of Lord Bacon's Essays ! The apotheg- 
 matic treasures of Shakspeare have been lately condensed into a 
 single volume by the judgment and industry of Mr. Loffi, and it may 
 be safely affirmed, that no uninspired works, either in our own or any 
 other language, can be produced, however bulky or voluminous, 
 which contain a richer mine of preceptive wisdom than may be found 
 in these two books of the philosopher and the poet, the Essays of 
 Bacon, and the Aphorisms of Shakspeare. 
 
 * Part II. chap, i.
 
 518 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 VIEW OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE — SHAKSPEAUe's 
 ATTACHMENT TO AND USE OF ROMANCES, TALES, AND BALLADS. 
 
 That a considerable, and perhaps the greater, portion of Shak- 
 speare's Library consisted of Romances and Tales, we have already 
 mentioned as a conclusion fully warranted, from the extensive use 
 which he has made of them in his dramatic works. Wliat the 
 precious tomes specifically were which covered his shelves, we have 
 now no means of positively ascertaining ; but it is evident that we 
 shall make a near approximation to the truth, if we can bring forward 
 the library of a contemporary collector of romantic literature, and at 
 the same time contemporary authority for the romances then most in 
 vogne. 
 
 Now it fortunately happens, that we have not only a few curious 
 descriptions, by the most unexceptionable authors of the reigns of 
 Elizabeth and James, of the popidar reading of their day, but we 
 possess also a catalogue of the collection of one of the most enthu- 
 siastic hoarders of the sixteenth century, in the various branches of 
 romantic lore ; a document which may be considered, in fact, as 
 placing within our view, a kind offac simile of this, the most copious, 
 department of Shakspeare's book boudoir. 
 
 The interesting detail has been given us by Laneham, in his 
 
 Account of the Queen s Entertainment at Killingworth Castle, 1515. 
 The author is describing the Storial Show by a procession of the 
 
 Coventry men, in celebration of Hock Tuesday, when he suddenly 
 
 exclaims, — " But aware, keep bak, make room noow, heer they 
 
 cum. 
 
 " And fyrst Captain Cox, an od man I promiz yoo ; by profession 
 
 a Mason, and that right skilfuU ; very cunning in fens, and hardy az
 
 519 
 
 Gavin ; for hiz ton-sword hangs at hiz tablz eend ; great oversight 
 hath he in matters of storie ; For az for King Arthurz book, Huon of 
 Btirdeaus, the fooiu' sons of Aymon, Bevi/s of Hampton, The Squyre of 
 lo degree, The Knight of Courtesy, and the Lady Faguell, Frederick 
 of Gene, Syr Eglajuooiir, Syr Tryamoour, Syr Lamwell, Syr henl/ras, 
 Syr Gawyn, Olyver of the Castl, Lucres and Curialus, Virgil's Life, 
 the Castl of Ladiez, the Wide Edyth, the King and the Tanner, 
 Frier Rous, Howleglas, Gargantua, Robinhood, Adatn Bel, Clim of 
 the Clough and lVillia7n of Clondsley, the Churl and the Burd, the 
 Seven Wise Masters, the Wife lapt in a Morels Skin, the Sak full of 
 Nuez, the Seargeaunt that became a Fryar, Skogan, Collyn Clout, the 
 Fryar and the ^o_y, Elyyior Rumming, and the Nutbrooun Maid, with 
 many moe then I rehearz heere ; I beheve hee have them all at hiz 
 fingers endz. 
 
 " Then in Philosophy, both morall and naturall, I think hee be az 
 naturally overseen ; beside Poetrie and Astr-onomie, and oother hid 
 Sciencez, az I may gesse by the omberty of his books ; whearof part, 
 az I remember, The Shepherd' z Kalender, The Ship of Foolz, Danielz 
 Dreamz, the Booke of Fortune, Stans puer ad Mensam, The by way to 
 the Spitl-house, Julian of Brainford's Testament, the Castle of Love, 
 the Booget of Demaunds, the Hundred Mery Tulez, the Book of 
 Riddels, the Seaven So7'orz of Wemen, the Prooud Wives Pater A^oster, 
 the Cliapman of a Peneworth of JFiY ; Beside hiz Auncient Playz, 
 Yooth and Chariiee, Hikskorner, Nugizee, Impacient Poverty, and 
 herewith Doctor Boards Breviary of Health. What should I rehearz 
 heer, what a bunch of Ballets and Songs, all auncient ; as Broom 
 broom on Hill, So Wo iz me began, troly lo. Over a Whinny Meg, Hey 
 ding a ding. Bony lass upon a green. My hony on gave me a bek, By a 
 bank as I lay : and a hundred more he hath fair wrapt up in parch- 
 ment, and bound with a whip cord. And az for Almanacks of 
 Antiquitee (a point for Ephemeridees), I ween he can sheaw from 
 Jazper Laet of Antwarp unto Nostradam of Frauns, and thens untoo 
 oour John Securiz of Salsbury. To stay ye no longer heerin, I dare 
 say hee hath az fair a Library for theez Sciencez, and az many
 
 520 
 
 goodly monuments both in prose and pofetry, and at after noonz can 
 talk az much with out book, az ony inholder betwixt Brainford and 
 Bagshot, what degree soever he be." * 
 
 Of the library of this military bibliomaniac, who is represented as 
 " marching on valiantly before, clean trust and gartered above the knee, 
 all fresh in a velvet cap, flourishing with his ton sword," Mr. Dibdin 
 has appreciated the value when he declares, that he should have pre- 
 ferred it to the extensive collection of the once celebrated magician, 
 Dr. Dee. " How many," he observes, " of Dee's magical books he 
 had exchanged for the pleasanter magic of Old Ballads and Romances, 
 I will not take upon me to say : but that this said bibliomaniacal 
 Captain had a library, which, even from Master Laneham's imperfect 
 description of it, I should have preferred to the four thousand 
 volumes of Dr. John Dee, is most unquestionable." 
 
 He then adds in a note, in reference to the " Bunch of Ballads and 
 Songs, all ancient !— fair -wrapt up in parchment, and bound nith a 
 whip cord /" " it is no wonder that Ritson, in the historical essay 
 prefixed to his collection of Scotish So7igs, should speak of some of 
 these ballads with a zest, as if he would have sacrificed half his 
 library to untie the said ' whip cord' packet. And equally joyous, I 
 ween, would my friend Mr. R. H. Evans, of Pall- Mall, have been — 
 during his editorial labors in publishing a new edition of his father's 
 collection of Ballads— (an edition, by the bye, which gives us more 
 of the genuine spirit of the Coxean Collection than any with which 
 I am acquainted);— equally joyous would Mr. Evans have been, to 
 have had the inspection of some of these ' bonny' songs. The late 
 Duke of Roxburgh, of never-dying bibliomaniacal celebrity, would 
 have parted with half the insignia of his order of the Garter, to have 
 obtained cleaii original copies of these fascinating efiiisions !" f 
 
 Though the Romances and Ballads in Captain Cox's Library are 
 truly termed " ancient," yet it appears, from unquestionable contem- 
 
 • Nichols's Progresses, vol. i. Laneham's Letter, p. 34 — 36'. 
 ■f Dibdin's Bibliographical Romance, p. 349, 350, and note.
 
 521 
 
 porary authority, that these romances, either in their original dress 
 or somewhat modernised, were still smig to the harp, in Shakspeare's 
 days, as well in the halls of the nobility and gentry, as in the streets 
 and ale-houses, for the recreation of the multitude : thus Puttenham, 
 in his " Arte of English Poesie," published in 1589, speaking of histo- 
 rical poetry adapted to the voice, says, " we our selves who compiled 
 this treatise have written for pleasure a little brief Rotnance or histo- 
 ricall ditty in the English tong of the Isle of great Britaine in short 
 and long meetres, and by breaches or divisions to be more commo- 
 diously song to the harpe in places of assembly, where the company 
 shal be desirous to heare of old adventures and reliaunces of noble 
 knights in times past, as are those of king Arthur and his knights of 
 . the round table. Sir Bevys of Southampton, Guy of Warmicke and 
 others like ;" and he afterwards notices the " blind harpers or such 
 like taverne minstrels that give a fit of mirth for a groat, their matter 
 being for the most part stories of old time, as the tale of Sir Topas, 
 the reportes of Bevis of Southampton, Guy of War^icke, Adam Bell, 
 and Clymme of the Clough and such other old Romances or historicall 
 rimes, made purposely for recreation of the eomon people at Christ- 
 masse diners and bride ales, and in tavernes and ale-houses and such 
 other places of base resort." * 
 
 Bishop Hall, hkewise, in his Satires printed in 1598, alluding to 
 the tales that lay 
 
 •• In chimney-corners smok'd with winter fires. 
 To read and rock asleep our drowsy sires," 
 
 exclaims, — 
 
 " No man his threshold beUer knowes, than I 
 Brute's first arrival, and first victory j 
 St. George's sorrel, or his crosse of blood, 
 Arthur's round board, or Caledonian wood, 
 
 • Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, reprint of 1811, p. 93. 69. 
 V©L. I. 3 X
 
 522 
 
 Or hoi}' battles of bold Charlemaine, 
 
 What were his knights did Salem's siege maintaine: 
 
 How the mad rival of faire Angelice 
 
 Was physick'd from the new-found paradise ! * 
 
 and even so late as Burton, who finished his interesting work just 
 previous to our great poet's decease, we have sufficient testimony that 
 the major part of our gentry was employed in the perusal of these 
 seductive narratives : " If they read a book at any time," remarks 
 this-eccentric writer, " 'tis an English Chronicle, Sr. Huon of Bordeaux, 
 Amadis de Gaul &c. ;" and subsequently, in depicting the inamora- 
 toes of the day, he accuses them of " reading nothing but play books, 
 idle poems, jests, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the Seven 
 Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux, &c." -i- 
 
 These contemporary authorities prove, to a certain extent, what 
 were considered the most popular romances in the reigns of Elizabeth 
 and James ; but it will be satisfactory to enquire a little more 
 minutely into this branch of literature. 
 
 The origin of the metrical Romance may be traced to the fostering 
 influence of our early Norman monarchs, who cultivated with great 
 ardour the French language ; and it was from the courts of these 
 sovereigns that the French themselves derived the first romances in 
 their own tongue. ^ The gratification resulting from the recital or 
 chaunting of these metrical tales was then confined, and continued 
 to be for some centuries, to the mansions of the great, owing to the 
 vast expense of maintaining or rewarding the minstrels with whom, 
 at that time, a knowledge of these splendid fictions exclusively rested. 
 No sooner, however, was the art of printing discovered, than the 
 wonders of romance were thrown open to the eager curiosity of the 
 public, and the presses of Caxton and Winkin de Worde groaned 
 
 * Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 283. col. 2. 
 
 t Anatomy of Melancholy, folio. 8th edit. p. 84. col. 2. p. 177. col. 2. 
 
 i See Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. i. Introduction, 
 p. 38. ; and the Abbe de la Rue's Dissertations on the Anglo-Norman poets, Archseologia, 
 vol. xii. and xiii.
 
 523 
 
 under the production of prose versions from the romantic poesy of 
 the Anglo-Norman bards. 
 
 So fascinating were the wild incidents and nrachinery of these 
 volumes, and so rapid was their consequent circulation, that neither 
 the varied learning nor the theological polemics of the succeeding 
 age, availed to interrupt their progress ; and it was not imtil towards 
 the close of the seventeenth century, that the feats of the knight and 
 the spells of the enchanter ceased to astonish and exhilarate the halls 
 of our fathers. 
 
 In the whole course of this extensive career, from the era of the 
 conquest to the age of Milton, a poet whose youth, as he himself tells 
 us, was nourished " among those lofty fables and romances, which 
 recount, in sublime cantos, the deeds of knighthood *," perhaps no 
 period can be mentioned in which a greater love of romantic fiction 
 existed, than that which marks the reign of Elizabeth ; and this, too, 
 notwithstanding the improvement of taste, and the progress of clas- 
 sical learning ; for though the national credulity had been chastened 
 by the gradual efforts of reason and science, yet was the daring 
 imagery of romance still the favourite resource of the bard and the 
 novelist, who, skilfully blending its potent magic with the colder but 
 now fashionable fictions of pagan antiquity, flung increasing splen- 
 dour over the union, and gave that permanency of attraction which 
 only the peculiar and unfettered genius of the Elizabethan era could 
 bestow. 
 
 Confining ourselves at present, however, chiefly to the consider- 
 tion of the prose romance, we may observe, that five distinct classes 
 of it were prevalent in the age of Shakspeare, which we may desig- 
 nate by the appellations of Anglo-Nomian, Oriental, Italian, Spanish, 
 and Pastoral, Romance. 
 
 Under the first of these titles, the Anglo-Norman, we include all 
 those productions which have been formed on the metrical romances 
 
 * Sec ToJand's Life of Milton, p. 3.5. 
 
 3x2
 
 524 
 
 of the feudal or Anglo-Norman period, and to which the terms Gothic 
 or Chivalric have been commonly, though not exclusively, applied. 
 These are blended not only with much classical fiction, but with a 
 large portion of oriental fable, derived from our commerce with the 
 East during the period of the Crusades, and are principally occupied 
 either in relating the achievements of Arthur, Charlemagne, and the 
 knights engaged in the holy wars, or in chivalarising, if we may use 
 the word, the heroes of antiquity, or in expanding the wonders of 
 oi'iental machinery. 
 
 The most popular prose romance of this class was undoubtedly 
 La Morte D' Arthur, translated from various French romances by Sir 
 Thomas Malory, and printed by Caxton in 1485, a work which 
 includes in a condensed form the most celebrated achievements of the 
 knights of the Round Table. * This " noble and joyous book," as 
 it is termed by its venerable printer, was the delight of our ancestors 
 until the age of Charles the First ; and in no period more decidedly 
 so than in the reign of Elizabeth, when probably there were few 
 lordly mansions without a copy of this seducing tome, either in the 
 great hall or in the ladies bower. Such were its fascinations, indeed, 
 as to excite the apprehensions, and call forth the indignant, and 
 somewhat puritanical, strictures of Ascham and Meres ; the former 
 in his Schoole master 1571, when, reprobating the inordinate attach- 
 ment to books of chivalry, instancing " as one for example, Morte 
 Arthur, the whole pleasure of which booke," he says, " standeth in 
 two specyall poyntes, in open mans slaghter and bolde bawdrie : in 
 which booke, those be counted the noblest knights that doe kill most 
 inen without any quarrell, and commit fowlest adoultries by sutlest 
 
 * The title of this first edition, as gathered from the prologue and <;olophon, has been 
 thus given by Mr. Dibdin : — - 
 
 " A Book of The Noble Hystoryes of Kynge Arthur, aijd of certeyn of his 
 knyghtes. Whiche book was reduced in to englyshe by syr Thomas Malory knyght and 
 by me devydcd into xxi bookes chapytred and enprynted, and Jynysshed in th abbey West- 
 mestre the last day qfjiiyl the yere of our lord M.cccc. Ixxxv.. Folio." — Dibdin's Typo- 
 graphical Antiquities,- vol. i. p. 241.
 
 525 
 
 shifts : as, Syr Lancelote with the wife of King Arthure, his maister t 
 Sjr Tristram with the wife of King Marke, his imcle : Syr Lame- 
 roche with the wife of King Lote, that was his own aunte. This is 
 good stiifFe for wise men to laughe at, or honest men to take pleasure 
 at. Yet I knowe when God's Bible was banished the court and 
 Morte Arthure receaved into the princes chamber, what toyes the 
 dayly reading of such a booke may worke in the will of a yong gen- 
 tleman, or a yong maide, that liveth welthely and idlely, wise men 
 can judge, and honest men do pittie * ;" and the latter declaring in 
 his " Wits' Commonwealth," that " as the Lord de la Nonne in the 
 sixe discourse of his politike and military discourses censureth of the 
 bookes of Amadis de Gaule, which he saith are no less hurtfull to 
 youth, than the workes of Machiavell, to age ; so these bookes are 
 accordingly to be censured of, whose names follow ; Bevis of Hamp- 
 ton, Guy of Warwicke, Arthur of the Round Table, &c. -j- 
 
 That these strictures are too severe, and that the consequences 
 apprehended by these ingenious scholars did not necessarily follow, 
 we have the authority of Milton to prove ; who, so far from depre- 
 cating the study of romances as dangerous to morality, declares " that 
 even those books proved to me so many enticements to the love and 
 stedfast observation of virtue X ;" a passage which appears to have 
 kindled in the mind of a modern writer, a spirited defence of the 
 utility of these productions, even at the present day. " There is yet 
 a point of view," he remarks, " in which Romance may be regarded 
 to advantage, even in the present age. The most interesting quali- 
 ties in a chivalrous knight, are his high-toned enthusiasm, and disin- 
 terested spirit of adventure — qualities to which, when properly modi- 
 fied and directed, society owes its highest improvements. Such are 
 the feelings of benevolent genius yearning to diffuse love and peace 
 and happiness among the human race. The gorgeous visions of the 
 
 • Ascham's Works, Bennet's edit, p, 254. f Vide p. 26S. 
 
 X Toland's Life of Milton, p. 35.
 
 526 
 
 imagination, familiar to the enthusiastic soul, purify the heart from 
 selfish pollutions, and animate to great and beneficent action. Indeed, 
 nothing great or eminently beneficial ever has been, or can be effected 
 without enthusiasm — without feelings more exalted than the consi- 
 deration of simple matter of fact can produce. That Romances have 
 a tendency to excite the enthusiastic spirit, we have the evidence of 
 fact in numerous instances. Hereafter, we shall hear the great 
 Milton indirectly bearing his testimony of admiration and gratitude 
 for their inspiring influence. It is of little consequence, compara- 
 tively speaking, whether all the impressions made, be founded in 
 strict })hilosophical truth. If the imagination be awakened and the 
 heart warmed, we need give ourselves little concern about the final 
 result. The first object is to elicit power. Without power nothing 
 can be accomplished. Should the heroic spirit chance to be excited 
 by reading Romances, we have, alas ! too much occasion lor that 
 spirit even in modern times, to wish to repress its generation. Since 
 the Gallic hero has cast his malign aspect over the nations, it is 
 become almost as necessary to social security, as during the barba- 
 rism of the feudal times. There is now little danger of its beino- 
 directed to an unintdligible purpose. 
 
 " Romances, then, not only merit attention, as enabling us to 
 enter into the feelings and sentiments of our ancestors, — a circum- 
 stance in itself curious, and even necessary to a complete knowledge 
 of the history of past ages ; they may still be successfully employed 
 to awaken the mind — to inspire genius: and when this effect is 
 produced, the power thus created may be easily made to bear on any 
 point desired." * 
 
 The demand for Morte Arthur, which continued for nearly two 
 centuries, produced of course several re-impressions : the second 
 issued from the press of Winkin de Worde in 1498, the colophon of 
 which, as specified by Herbert, is singularly curious. " Here is the 
 
 * Burnet's Specimens of English Prose Writers, toI. i. p. 28/ — 289.
 
 527 
 
 ende of the hoole boke of kynge Arthur, and of his noble kn}'gtes of 
 the rounde table. That whane they were hoole togyder, there was 
 ever an c. and xi. And here is the ende of the deth of Arthur. I 
 praye you all gentylmen and gentylwymmen that rede thys boke of 
 Arthur and his knyghtes from the beginnynge to the endynge praye 
 for me whyle I am a lyue, that, God send me good utterance. And 
 when I am deed, I pray you all pray for my soule : for the translacion 
 of this boke was fynisshed the ix. yere of the regne of kyng Edwarde 
 the fourth, by syr Thomas Maleore knyght, as .Jhesu helpe him for 
 his grete myghte, as he is the servaunt of Jliesu bothe day and 
 nyghte. Emprynted fyrst by William Caxton, on whose soul God 
 have mercy." * 
 
 The re-impression of De Worde was followed by the editions of 
 Copland, East, and WiUiam Stanshy, this last being dated 1634. Of 
 the elder copies East's was probably the one most generally used in 
 the reign of Elizabeth, and it differs only in a few unessential phrases 
 from the edition of Caxton. 
 
 La Morte D'Arthur, which, by its frequent republication, kept 
 alive a taste for romantic fiction, may be considered as giving us, 
 with a few exceptions as to costume, a very pleasing though some- 
 what polished picture of the chivalric romance of the Anglo-Norman 
 period. It has the merit also of furnishing an excellent specimen of 
 purity and simplicity in style and diction ; qualities which have 
 stamped upon many of its otherwise extravagant details the most 
 decided features of sublimity and pathos. A passage in the twenty- 
 second chapter of the second book, for example, furnishes a noble 
 instance of the former, and the speech of Sir Bohort, over the dead 
 body of Sir Launcelot, towards the close of the work, is as admirable 
 a specimen of the latter. These, as short, peculiarly interesting, and 
 characteristic of the work, we shall venture to transcribe. 
 
 The description of, and the effect arising from, so simple a circum- 
 stance as that of blowing a horn, are thus painted : — 
 
 Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 81, 82.
 
 528 
 
 " So hee rode forth, and within three days hee came by a cross, 
 and thereon was letters of gold written, that said, It is not for a 
 knioht alone to ride toward this castle. Then saw hee an old hoar 
 gentleman coming toward him, that said, Balin le Savage, thou 
 passest thy bounds this way, therefore turn againe and it will availe 
 thee. And hee vanished away anon ; and so hee heard an home 
 blow as it had been the death of a beast. That blast, said Balin, is 
 blown for mee ; for I am the prize, and yet am I not dead." 
 
 Sir Ector de Maris, the brother of Sir Launcelot, after having 
 sought him in vain through Britain for seven years, has at length the 
 melancholy satisfaction of recognising the body of the hero, who had 
 just breathed his last. 
 
 " And then Sir Ector threw his shield, his sword, and his helme, 
 from him. And when hee beheld Sir Launcelot's visage, hee fell 
 downe in a sowne. And when hee awaked, it were hard for any 
 tongue to tell the dolefull complaints that he made for his brother. 
 Ah Sir Launcelot, said hee, thou were head of all christian knights, and 
 now I dare say, said Sir Bors, that Sir Launcelot, there thou liest 
 thou were never matched of none earthly knight's hands. And thou 
 were the curtiest knight that ever beare shield. And thou were the 
 truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrod horse, and thou were the 
 truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman. And thou were 
 the kindest man that ever stroke with sword. And thou were the 
 goodliest parson that ever came among presse of knights. And thou 
 were the meekest man and the gentlest that ever eate in hall among 
 ladies. And thou were the sternest knight to thy mortall foe that 
 ever put speare in the rest." * 
 
 We have taken the more notice of this work, not only as it affords 
 a pretty correct idea of what the old chivalric metrical romance 
 consisted, but as it was in Shakspeare's time the favourite book in 
 this branch of literature, and furnished Spenser with many incidents 
 
 Book III, chap, 176.
 
 529 
 
 for his " Faerie Qiieene." * It constitutes, in fact, an exemplar and 
 abrido-ment of the marvels of the Round Table, such as were dis- 
 persed through a variety of metrical tales, and can only be found 
 condensed in this production, and of which the popularity may be 
 considered as an indubitable mark of the taste of the age in which it 
 was so much admired and cherished. 
 
 If it be objected, that, though Morte Arthur was very popular, it 
 did not originate during our period, it may be answered, that many 
 prose imitations of the Anglo-Norman romance, the undoubted 
 offspring of the Elizabethan era, might, if necessary, be mentioned ; 
 but one will suffice, and this has been selected from its having main- 
 tained an influence over the public mind nearly as long as the Death 
 of Arthur. 
 
 We allude to the well-known romance entitled The Seven Chatu- 
 pions of Christendojne, written in the age of Elizabeth by Richard 
 Johnson, the author of various other productions during this and 
 the subsequent reign. In what year the first part of the Seven Cham- 
 jnons made its appearance is not known ; but the second was 
 published with the following title and date : — " The Second Part of 
 the famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendome. 
 Likewise shewing the princely Prowesse of Saint George's three 
 Sonnes, the lively Sparke of Nobilitie. With many memoriall 
 atchieuements worthy the Golden Spurres of Knighthood. Lond. 
 Printed for Cuthbert Burbie, &c. 1597." 4to. Black letter, f- If 
 Mr. Warton's opinion be correct, that Spenser was indebted to this 
 work for some incidents in the conduct of his Faerie Queene, the 
 first part must have been printed before 1590 ; and Mr. Todd, 
 indeed, seems to think that the second part " was published some 
 time after the first ij:;" a supposition which is corroborated by the 
 
 * Vide Walton's Observations on tlie Faerie Queene, and Todd's edition of Spenser's 
 Works, vol. ii. p. Ixviii. 
 
 f Vide Bibliothcca Reediana, No. 2^70, and Todd's Spenser, vol. ii. p. Ixvii. note k. 
 X Todd's Spenser, vol. ii. p. Ixvii. note. 
 VOL. I. 3 Y
 
 530 
 
 address to the reader prefixed to the second part, in which, after 
 mentioning " the great acceptance of his First Part" he nevertheless 
 deprecates the severity of criticism to which it had been exposed : 
 '■' thy courtesy," he says, " must be my buckler against the carping 
 malice of mocking jesters, that being worse able to do well, scoff 
 commonly at that they cannot mend, censuring all things, doing 
 nothing, but, monkey-like, make apish jests at any thing they see in 
 print : and nothing pleaseth them, except it savour of a scoffing 
 or invective spirit ;" passages v/hich indicate that the first part of this 
 romance had been for some length of time before the public. We 
 may also add, that Johnson is known to have been a popular writer 
 in 1592, having published in that year his " Nine Worthies of 
 London." 
 
 If we except La Morte D' Arthur, and one or two Spanish ro- 
 mances, which will be afterwards mentioned, the Seven Champions 
 appears to have been the most popular book of its class. It has 
 accumulated in a small compass the most remarkable adventures of 
 the ancient metrical romances, and has related them in a rich and 
 figurative, though somewhat turgid style. Justice has been done to 
 this compilation, once so high in repute, both by Percy and Warton : 
 the former speaks of its " strong Gothic painting," and of its adherence 
 to the old poetical legends * ; and the latter declares it to contain 
 " some of the most capital fictions of the old Arabian romance," and 
 instances the adventure of the Enchanted Fountain, f 
 
 The various editions of this once celebrated compilation attest the 
 longevity of its feme ; and though now no longer the amusement of 
 the learned and the great, yet is it far from being a stranger to the 
 literature of our juvenile libraries. A London impression appeared in 
 1755, and it has lately been reprinted in a pocket-edition of the 
 British Classics. 
 
 Having thus brought forward La Morte D' Arthur and the Seven 
 
 * Percy's Rcliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 217. 
 t Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 230. note.
 
 531 
 
 Champions as the most popular jjrose compilations in Shakspeare's 
 time from the Anglo-Norman metrical romances, we shall proceed to 
 notice two collections which were more immediatety built on an 
 ORIENTAL foundation, and which have enjoyed, both at the epoch of 
 their first translation into English in the sixteenth century, and sub- 
 sequently to a very modern date, an almost unrivalled circulation. 
 
 A little anterior to the birth of our great poet, W. Copland 
 printed, without date, a romance entitled The Seven Wise Masters, 
 a direct version from the Latin of a book published in Germany, 
 soon after the discovery of the art of printing, under the appel- 
 lation of Historia Septem Sajnentufn." This interesting series of 
 tales has been traced by Mr. Douce * to an Indian prototype ; to 
 " The Book of the Seven Counsellors, or Parables of Sendebar or 
 Sandabar," an Indian philosopher, who is supposed to have lived 
 about a century before the Christian aera. The work of this sage, it 
 appears, had been early translated into Persic, Syriac, Arabic, and, 
 from this latter, into Hebrew by Rabbi Joel, under the title of 
 Mischle Sandabar, a version which is conjectured to have been made 
 about the middle of the fourteenth century, and is believed to be the 
 only oriental manuscript of these Parables which has been subjected 
 to the press ; having been printed at Constantinople in 1517, and at 
 Venice in 1544 and 1608. A MS. of this Hebrew Sandabar is in 
 the British Museum (Harleian MSS., No. 5449.), but no English 
 version of it has been hitherto attempted. 
 
 The romance of our Indian fabulist made its next appearance, 
 though with some alterations in the incidents and names, in Greek, 
 under the title of Syntipas, of which many MSS. exist, the greater 
 number professing to be translated from the Syriac; but in the 
 British Museum is preserved a copy from the Persic, of so late a 
 date as 1667. 
 
 The first Latin version is said to have px'oceeded from the pen of 
 
 Ellis's Specimens of Early Engli.sli Metrical Romances, vol. iii. p. 1. et seq. 
 
 3 Y 2
 
 532 
 
 Jean de Hauteselve, a native of Lorraine, but the existence of such a 
 copy is now only known, from its having been translated into French 
 Averse, by an ecclesiastic of the name of Herbers, who died 1226, and 
 who, in the opening of his poem, to which he has given the singular 
 title of Dolopatos, confesses to have taken it from the " bel Latin' 
 of Hauteselve. 
 
 Another French version, however, of greater importance, as it 
 makes a nearer approach to the remote original, and has been the 
 source of numerous imitations, is preserved in the French National 
 Library, and numbered 7595. It is a MS. in verse, of the 13th 
 century, and was first noticed by Mr. Ellis, through a communication 
 from Mr. Douce, who believes it to be not only the immediate original 
 of many imitations in French prose, but the source whence an old 
 English metrical romance in the Cotton Library (Galba, E. 9.) has 
 been taken. 
 
 This poem, a large fragment of which exists in the Auchinleck 
 MS., is entire in the Cotton Library, and is written in lines of eight 
 syllables. It is entitled " The Proces of the Sevyn Sages," and 
 Mr. Ellis refers its composition to a period not later than 1330. * 
 
 The copy, however, which has given rise to the greatest number 
 of translations, is that already mentioned under the title of " His- 
 toria Septem Sapientum," the first edition of which, with a date, was 
 published by John HoelhofF at Cologne in 1490. This was very 
 rapidly transfused into the German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish, 
 English, and Scotch languages. 
 
 Of the Scotch version, which is metrical, and was undertaken by the 
 translator " at the request of his Ant Cait (Aunt Kate) in Tanstel- 
 loun Castle, during the siege of Leith," 1560, the first edition was 
 printed at Edinburgh in 1578, with the following title:— " The Sevin 
 Seages, Translatit out of Prois in Scottis Meter, Be Johne 
 RoLLAND, IN Dalkeith ; with ane Moralitie after everie Doctouris 
 tale, and siclike after the Emprice tale, togidder with ane loving and 
 
 * Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 2:?3.
 
 533 
 
 laude to everie Doctour after his awin tale, and ane exclamation and 
 outcrying when the Empreouris wife after hir fals construsit tale. 
 Imprentit at Edinburgh be John Ros, for Henry Charteries." * 
 
 The prose translation by Copland, which made its appearance 
 between the years 1550 and 1567, under the title of " The Seven 
 Wise Masters," was one of the most popular books of the sixteenth 
 century. It has undergone a variety of re-impressions, and when no 
 longer occupying its former place in the hall of the Baron and the 
 Squire, descending to a less ambitious station, it became the most 
 delectable volume in the collection of the School-boy. This change 
 in the field of its influence seems to have taken place in little better 
 than a century after its introduction into the English language ; for 
 in 1674, Francis Kirkman, publishing a version from the Italian 
 copy of this romance, which he entitles the " History of Prince 
 Erastus, son to the emperor Diocletian, and those famous philoso- 
 phers called The Seven Wise Masters of Rome," informs us, in his 
 preface, " that the book of ' The Seven Wise Masters' is in such 
 estimation in Ireland, that it was always put into the hands of young 
 children immediately after the horn-book." f 
 
 The " Book of the Seven Counsellors," in short, appears to have 
 been familiarised in the language of every civilised iiation in Asia 
 and Europe, and though often interpolated and disguised by the 
 admixture of fables from other oriental collections, and especially 
 from the fables of Pilpay, it has still preserved, through every 
 transfusion, a resemblance of its Indian type. Its admission into 
 English literature contributed to cherish and keep alive the taste 
 for Eastern romance, which had been generated during the period of 
 the Crusades, and adopted by the Anglo-Norman minstrels. 
 
 If the collection of oriental apologues, to which we have alluded 
 under the name of Pilpay, had been as early naturalised amongst us, 
 
 * This short summary has been drawn up from the larger account detailed by Mr. 
 Ellis in his Specimens of Early P'nglish Metrical Romances, vol. iii. p. 1 — 22. 
 f Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. iii, p. If,
 
 534 
 
 the effect in favour of oriental fable would probably have been 
 greater ; but it was the fate of this work, though superior in merit 
 perhaps, and of equal antiquity and similar origin with the Parables 
 of Sandabar, and alike popular in the East, not to have acquired an 
 English dress until the eighteenth century. The Heetopades of 
 Veeshnoo Sarma, the midoubted source of Pilpay's stories, we, at 
 length, possess, in a correct state, forming certainly the most inte- 
 resting series of fables extant. * 
 
 There is another set of tales, however, in their complection almost 
 entirely oriental, which not only co-operated in their effect, but also 
 in their period of introduction, with the " Seven Wise Masters," 
 from the press of Copland. 
 
 In 1577 Richard Robinson, a voluminous author who lived by his 
 pen, published " A record of ancyent historyes intituled in Latin 
 Gesta Rotnanorian ;" and in a catalogue of his productions, written by 
 himself, and preserved in the British Museum, he says of this work 
 that it was " translated (auctore ut supponitur lohane Leylando 
 antiquario) by mee perused corrected and bettered." j 
 
 This is a partial version of one of two distinct works entitled, 
 Gesta Romanorum, collections of tales in the Latin language which, 
 there is reason to suppose, originated in the fourteenth century, and 
 certainly once enjoyed the highest popularity. 
 
 Of the first, or what may be called the Continental Gesta, 
 Mr. Warton has given us a very elaborate and pleasing analysis. 
 No manuscript of this primary collection is known to exist, but it 
 was printed about 1473 ; the first six editions of it are in folio 
 
 * The common veision of Pilpay was published in 1747- It should be remarked, 
 however, that a translation from the Italian of Doni, containing many of the fables of 
 Pilpay, and professedly rendered by Doni, from the Directorium Humanae Vitae, vel 
 Parabola Antiquorum Sapientum, was given in English by Sir Thomas North, 4to. 1570, 
 and 1601, under the title of the " Moral Philosophy of Doni." From this source, there- 
 fore, Shakspeare and bis contemporaries may have been partially acquainted with this 
 collection of tales. 
 
 f Doucc's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 424.
 
 535 
 
 without dates ; three containing 152 chapters or gests each, and three 
 181 each, aiid of those printed with dates, in folio, quarto, octavo, and 
 duodecimo, a list, amounting to twenty-eight, has been published by 
 Mr. Douce, from the year 1480 to 1555 inclusive. A Dutch trans- 
 lation appeared in 1481 ; a German translation in 1439 ; the first 
 French translation with a date in 1521 ; but no English translation 
 until 1703, when only forty-five histories or gests were published, 
 the translator, either from want of encouragement, or from some other 
 cause, having only printed volume the first of his intended version. 
 
 The second or English Gesla must be considered as the discovery 
 of Mr. Douce, for Warton, not perceiving its frequent discrepancy, 
 had confounded it with the original work. It is likewise remarkable, 
 that the circumstances attending its circulation are diametrically 
 different from those accompanying the prior collection ; for while 
 numerous MSS. of the English Gesta exist in this country, not one 
 copy in the original Latin has been printed. 
 
 It appears from the researches of Mr. Douce, that this compilation 
 very soon followed the original Gesta, and that the first manuscript 
 may with great probability be ascribed to a period as early as the 
 reign of Richard the Second ; most of the MSS. however, none of 
 which have ever been found upon the continent, are of the age of 
 fiflh and sixth Henries, and of these twenty-five are yet remaining 
 preserved in the British Museum, at Oxford, and in other 
 collections. 
 
 As the English Gesta was intended as an imitation of the Co7i- 
 tinental coDection, many of its stories have, of course, been retained ; 
 but these have undergone such alterations in language, and some- 
 times in incident, together with new moralizations, and new names, 
 as to give it, with the addition of forty tales not found in its pro- 
 totype, the air of an original work. * It is not, however, so exten- 
 
 * Two of these tales, chap. ai. and 32. are iminediately taken from The Seven Wise 
 Masters, and may be found also in the Arabian Nights and Pilpay's Fables.
 
 536 
 
 sive as the foreign compilation, the most complete manuscripts 
 containing only one hundred and two stories ; yet as the sources 
 from which it has drawn its materials are, with a few exceptions, 
 correspondent, in respect to their oriental origin, with the continental 
 copy, the character which Mr. Warton has given of the primary, will 
 apply to the secondary, series. 
 
 " This work," he observes. " is compiled from the obsolete Latin 
 chronicles of the later Roman or rather German story, heightened by 
 romantic inventions, from Legends of the Saints, oriental apologues, 
 and many of the shorter fictitious narratives which came into Europe 
 with the Arabian literature, and were familiar in the ages of ignorance 
 and imagination. The classics are sometimes cited for authorities ; 
 but these are of the lower order, such as Valerius Maximus, Macro- 
 bius, Aulus Gellius, Seneca, Pliny, and Boethius. To every tale 
 a Moralization is subjoined, reducing it into a christian or moral 
 lesson. 
 
 " Most of the oriental apologues are taken from the Clericalis 
 DisciPLiNA, or a Latin Dialogue between an Arabian Philosopher 
 and Edric*his son, never printed f-, written by Peter Alphonsus, 
 a baptized Jew, at the beginning of the twelfth century, and 
 collected from Arabian fables, apothegms, and examples. :j: Some 
 are also borrowed from an old Latin translation of the Calilah 
 u Damnah, a celebrated set of eastern fables, to which Alphonsus 
 was indebted. 
 
 " On the whole, this is the collection in which a curious enquirer 
 might expect to find the original of Chaucer's Cambuscan : — 
 
 * " Edric was the name of Enoch among the Arabians, to whom they attribute many 
 fabulous compositions. Herbelot, in V. — Lydgate's Chorle and The Bird is taken from the 
 Clericalis Disciplina." 
 
 \ " MSS. Harl. 3861, and in many other libraries. It occurs in old French verse, 
 MSS. Digb. 86. membrar. " Lc Romaune de Peres Awi/'our coment il aprist et chastia son 
 Jils belement." 
 
 % " See Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, vol. iv. p. 325. seq."
 
 537 
 
 Or, if aught else great bards beside- 
 
 In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 
 
 Of turneys and of trophies hung, 
 
 Of forests and inchantments drear, 
 
 Where more is meant than meets the ear." * 
 
 Of the translations of the English Gesta, which, owing to the Latin 
 original not being known upon the continent, are solely confined to 
 the English language, three only have been noticed ; and of these, 
 the first is a manuscript in the Harleian collection, No. 7,333, of the 
 age of Henry the Sixth, containing but seventy stories, and which 
 Mr. Douce conjectures to have been produced either by Lydgate, 
 Gower, or Occleve,, as the English Gesta appears familiar to them, 
 and this version possesses not only several pieces by Lydgate, but 
 some tales from the Confessio Atnantis of Gower. f 
 
 Tlie first printed translation is said to have issued from the press of 
 Wynkyn de Worde, though without a date, and this edition has been 
 mentioned and referred to, both by Mr. Warton:f and Dr. Farmer. § 
 Neither Herbert, however, nor Mr. Dibdin, has been fortunate 
 enough to detect its existence, and if it really had, or has, a being, 
 it is probably either the manuscript version of the reign of Henry the 
 Sixth, or the translation to which Robinson alludes as the work of 
 Leland the antiquary. 
 
 - We must, therefore, look to Robinson's Translation of 1577, as 
 the only one which has met with a general and undisputed circu- 
 lation ; and this was so popular, that in 1601 it had been printed six 
 times by Thomas Easte. || The most enlarged edition, however, of 
 
 * Milton's " II Penseroso." Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. Disser- 
 tation on the Gesta Romanorum, p. v. vi. 
 
 f Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 422. 
 
 % History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 1 8. vol. iii. p. 1 xxxiii. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 229. 
 
 II According to his own assertion, in the MS. catalogue of his works in the British 
 Museum, to which he has given the title of Eupolemia. See Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. 
 p. 423. 425. 
 
 VOL. I, 3 z
 
 538 
 
 Robinson's version, contains but forty-tour stories, and it is, therefore, 
 much to be regretted, that the Harleian manuscript is not committed 
 to the press. 
 
 As this was then the only English translation accessible to the 
 public, of a collection of tales which in the original Latin, and under 
 the same name, had amused the learned and the curious for some 
 centuries, both on the continent, and for nearly the same space ot 
 time on our own island, we shall not be surprised if we find, in a 
 subsequent page, that Shakspeare has availed himself of a portion of 
 its contents, especially as its subjects, and the mode of treating them, 
 coincided with his track of reading. 
 
 The popularity of Robinson's work seems to have extended to the 
 eighteenth century ; for the last edition, which we can now recollect, 
 is dated 1703, and there is reason to think it the fifteenth, while the 
 edition immediately preceding was published in 1689, but fourteen 
 years anteriorly. 
 
 If Ascham thought he had reason to complain of the popularity of 
 Morte Arthur, and its associates, he found tenfold cause of complaint 
 in the daily increasing circulation of Italian Romances and Tales ; 
 " ten La Moiie d'Arthures" he exclaims, " doe not the tenth parte 
 so much harme, as one of these bookes made in Italie, and translated 
 in Englande.^' * 
 
 The frequent communication indeed with Italy, which took place 
 about the middle of the sixteenth century, had not only induced an 
 indiscriminate imitation of Italian manners, but had rendered the 
 literature of the Italians so fashionable, that, together with their 
 poetry, was imported into this island a multiplicity of their prose 
 fictions and tales, a species of composition that had been cultivated 
 in Italy with incredible ardour from the period of Sacchetti and 
 Boccacio. 
 
 These tales, by blending with the romantic fiction of the Normans 
 and Orientals the scenes of domestic life and manners ; by introduc- 
 
 * Ascham's Scheie Mastei-j Ben net's edit. 4to. p. 253.
 
 539 
 
 tug greater complexity and skill in the arrangement of fable and 
 greater probability in the nature and construction of incident ; by 
 intermingling more frequent and moie interesting traits of the softer 
 passions, and by exciting more powerfully the emotions of pity and 
 compassion, presented to the public a new and poignant source of gra- 
 tification, and furnished the dramatic poets and the caterers for the 
 then universal appetite for story-telling with innumerable bases for 
 })lays, tales, and ballads. * 
 
 It may be asserted, we believe, with a close approach to accuracy, 
 that in the space which elapsed between the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, and the accession of James the First, nearly all the most 
 striking fictions of the Italian novellists had found their way to the 
 English press ; either immediately translated from the original 
 Italian, or through the medium of Latin, French, or Spanish 
 versions. 
 
 Of these curious collections of prose narrative, real or imaginary 
 comic or tragic, it will be thought necessary that we should notice a 
 few of the most valuable, and especially those to which our great 
 poet has been most indebted. 
 
 One of the earliest of these works and mentioned by Laneham in 
 1575, as an article in Captain Cox's library, was entitled The Hundred 
 Merry Tales. This series of stories, though existing in English so late 
 as \Q59-\, is now unfortunately lost ; the probability, however, is, that 
 
 * A writer, whose work has just fallen into my hands, closes a long and accurate 
 analysis of the Italian Tales, with the following just observations : — " The larger works 
 of fiction," he remarks, " resemble those productions of a country which are consumed 
 within itself, while tales, like the more delicate and precious articles of traffic, which are 
 exported from their native soil, have gladdened and delighted every land. They are the 
 ingredients from which Shakspeare, and other enchanters of his day, have distilled those 
 magical drops which tend so much to sweeten the lot of humanity, by occasionally with- 
 drawing the mind, from the cold and naked realities of life, to visionary scenes and 
 visionary bUss." — Dunlop's History of Fiction, vol. ii. p. 409. 
 
 t " In The London Chaunticleres, 1659, this work, among others," remarks Mr. 
 Steevens, " is cried for sale by a ballad-man ; The Seven Wise Men of Gotham ; a 
 Hundred merry Tales; Scoggin's Jests," &c. — See Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 42. 
 
 3z 2
 
 540 
 
 it was a translation from Les Cent Nouvelles Nonvelles, printed at Paris 
 before the year 1500, and compiled from Italian writers. The 
 English copy, says Warton, was licensed to be printed by John 
 Waly, in 1557, under the title of " A Hundreth mery tales," 
 together with The freere and the boye, stans puer ad mensam, 
 and i/outhe, charite, and humylite. * It is again noticed in the 
 register of the Stationers' Company for 1581, by Ames, under the 
 article for James Roberts, and in the following manner in a black- 
 letter pamphlet of 1586 : — " Wee want not also pleasant mad headed 
 knaves that bee properly learned and well reade in diverse pleasant 
 bookes and good authors. As Sir Guy of Warwicke, the Foure 
 Sons of Aymon, the Ship of Fooles, the Budget of Demandes, the 
 Hundredth merry Tales, the Booke of Ryddles, and many other excel- 
 lent writers both witty and pleasaunt." f It is alluded to by Shak- 
 speare, in his Much Ado about Nothing, written about 1600, where 
 Beatrice complains of Benedict having declared, that she had " her 
 *' good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales." % That this collection 
 was justly entitled to the epithet nm^y has been proved by Mr. 
 Douce, from a reference to the supposed original, in which only five 
 stories out of the hundred are of a tragic cast, and where the title, in 
 the old editions, gives further propriety to the appellation, by terming 
 these tales Comptes plaisans et recreatiz pour deviser en toutes cam- 
 paignies, et Moult plaisans a raconter par tnaniere de Joyeusete. § It 
 should not be forgotten, however, that the work entitled Cento novelle 
 antiche was in existence at this period, though no translation of it is 
 known to have been made, either before or during Shakspeare's age j 
 nor is it improbable that the term A hundred merry tales, might have 
 become a kind of cant expression for an attack of personal satire ; for 
 Nashe, as Mr. Douce has observed, " in his Pappe with an hatchet,. 
 
 * History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 475. 
 
 t The English Courtier and the Cuntrey Gentleman, sig. H. 4. See Reed's Shak- 
 speare, vol. vi. p. 43. note. 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 42. Act ii. sc. 1. § Illustrations, vol. i. p. 166.
 
 541 
 
 speaks of a book tlien coining out under the title of A hundred merric 
 falcs, in which Martin Marprelate, i. e. John Penry, and his friends, 
 were to be satirized." * 
 
 Though no complete translation of the Decameron of Boccacio was 
 excuted before 1620, the greater part of his novels was given to the 
 public in 1566, by William Paynter, in his once popular collection, 
 entitled " The Pallace of Pleasure." This entertaining work occupies 
 two volumes, 4to. ; of which, the first, dedicated to Lord Warwick, 
 appeared in the year above-mentioned, " containing sixty novels out of 
 Boccacio," and the second followed in 1567, including thirty-four 
 novels, principally from Bandello, and dedicated to Sir George 
 Howard. It appears to have been the intention of the compiler to 
 liave added a third part ; for at the close of the second volume, he 
 tells us, " Bicause sodeynly, contrary to expectation, this volume is 
 risen to greater heape of leaves, I doe omit for this present time 
 Sundry Novels of mery devize, reserving the same to be joyned with 
 the rest of an other part, wherein shall succeede the remnant of 
 Bandello, specially sutch, suffrable, as the learned French man 
 Franfois de Belleforrest hath selected, and the choysest done in the 
 Italian. Some also out of Erizzo, Ser Giouanni Florentino, Para^ 
 bosco, Cynthia, Straparole, Sansovino, and the best liked out of the 
 Queene of Nauarre, and others ;" a passage which is important, 
 as showing, in a small compass, the nature and extent of his 
 resources. 
 
 What motive prevented the continuance of the work, is unascer- 
 tained ; it certainly could not be want of encouragement, for a second 
 edition of the first volume, and a third of the second, were published 
 together in 4to. in 1575, and, as the author informs us in his title, 
 " eftsones perused, corrected, and augmented" by him. The con- 
 jecture of Warton, that Painter, " in compliance with the prevaihng 
 mode of publication, and for the accommodation of universal readers, 
 
 * Illustrations, vol. i. p. 1 68.
 
 542 
 
 was afterward persuaded to print his sundry novels in the perishable 
 form of separate pamphlets," is not improbable. 
 
 The Palace of Pleasure is, without doubt, not only one of the 
 earliest, but one of the most valuable selections of tales which 
 appeared during the reign of Elizabeth ; and that it formed one of 
 the ornaments of Shakspeare's library, and one to which he was in 
 the habit of referring, the industry of his commentators has suffi- 
 ciently established. * 
 
 In the same year with the second volume of Painter's Palace, 
 appeared " Certaine Tragicall Discourses" by Geffray Fenton, in one 
 volume 4to. bl. letter. This passing pleasant booke, as Turberville 
 terms it, consists of stories principally from Italian writers, and, in 
 the dedication to Lady Mary Sydney, the author expresses his high 
 opinion of their merit, by declaring, " neyther do I thinke that oure 
 Englishe recordes are hable to yelde at this daye a Romant more 
 delicat and chaste, treatynge of the veraye theame and effectes of 
 love, than theis Hystories ;" an estimate of the value of his collection 
 in which he is borne out by his friend Turberville, who, in one of the 
 recommendatory poems prefixed to the book, says — 
 
 " The learned stories erste, and sugred tales that laye 
 
 Removde from simple common sence, this writer doth displaye : 
 Nowe men of meanest skill, what Bandel wrought may vew, 
 And tell the tale in Englishe well, that erst they never knewe : 
 Discourse of sundrye strange, and tragicall affaires. 
 Of lovynge ladyes hepless haps, theyr deathes, and deadly cares." 
 
 Mr. Warton is of opinion that Fenton's compilation " in point of 
 selection and size" is " perhaps the most capital miscellany of this 
 kind." t Ii^ size, however, it is certainly inferior to Painter's work, 
 and from a survey of its contents with which we have been indulged, 
 exliibits, in our conception, no superiority to its predecessor even 
 with regard to selection ; it merits, however, the same honour which 
 is now paying to its rival, that of a re-print. 
 
 * The Roxburghe copy of the Palace of Pleasure produced the sum of 42/. 
 -j- History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 478.
 
 543 
 
 In 1571 a series of tales, somewhat similar to Fenton's, was pub- 
 Jished under the title of " The Forest or collection of History es no lesse 
 profitable, than pleasant and necessary, doone out of Frenche into 
 English by Thomas Fortescuey This production, which forms a 
 quarto in black letter, and underwent a second, and a third edition, 
 in 1576 and 1596, includes many stories manifestly of Italian birth 
 and structure, though the work is said to have been originally written 
 in the Spanish language. 
 
 On the authority of Bishop Tanner, as reported by Warton *, we 
 have to ascribe to the year 1580, a prose version of the Novelle of 
 Bandello, next to Boccacio the most celebrated, at that period, among 
 the Italian novellists ; and more chaste perhaps than any of them in 
 his sentiments, and more easy and natural in the construction of his 
 incidents. The translation is said to be by W. W. initials which 
 Mr. Warton is inclined to appropriate, either to William Warner or 
 William Webbe. 
 
 Another collection of tales, several of which are from Giraldi 
 Cinthio and other Italian fabulists, was given to the public by George 
 Whetstone, in 1582, under the appellation of Heptameron, a term 
 which had been rendered fashionable by the popularity of a suite of 
 tales published at Paris in 1560, and entitled, " Heptameron des Nou- 
 velles de la Royne de Navarre." Whetstone possessed no inconsi- 
 derable reputation in his day ; he has been praised as a poet by Meres 
 and Webbe, and his Heptameron, though written in prose, with only 
 the occasional interspersion of poetry, had its share of contemporary 
 fame, and the still greater celebrity of furnishing some portion of a 
 plot to our great dramatic bard, -j • 
 
 The first volume of a large collection of Italian tales made its 
 appearance at Paris in 1583, under the title of Cent Histoires 
 
 * History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. -173. 
 
 t Ritson thinks that Whetstone's Heptameron was republished in 1593, under the 
 title of " Aurelia." In the Roxburghe Library, No. 6392, this romance is termed " The 
 Paragon of Pleasure, or the Christmas Pleasures of Queene Aurelia," 4to. 1593.
 
 544 
 
 Tragiques. This work, the compilation of Fr-ancis de Bellcfofrest and 
 Boisteau, was ultimately extended to seven volumes, and a part of it, 
 if not the whole, appears, on the authority of the Stationers' Register, 
 to have been translated into English, in 1596. * The edition, how- 
 ever, to which Warton alludes, must have been posthumous; for 
 Belleforrest died on January 1 st, ] 583, and that he had printed selec- 
 tions from the Italian novellists long anterior, is evident from 
 Painter's reference to them in the second volume of his Palace of 
 Pleasure, dated 1567. Probably what the historian terms the ^' grand 
 repository^'' commenced with the copy of 1583. f 
 
 Independent of these large prose collections of Italian tales, a vast 
 variety of separate stories was in circulation from the same source ; 
 and many of our poets, such as Gascoigne, Turberville, &c. % amused 
 themselves by giving them a metrical and sometimes a semi-metrical, 
 
 * Walton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 487. 
 
 f Of the Italian tales it may be useful to enumerate the best and most celebrated of 
 those which were written during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; as, in some shape 
 or other, most of them became familiar to English readers before the death of Shakspeare. 
 
 1. Cento Ncmelle Antilr. The earliest collection of Italian novels. 
 
 2. Boccacio il Decmnerone. Venet. Valdarfer. 1471. This, which is the first edition, 
 was purchased at the Roxburghe sale, by the Marquis of Blandford, for 2260/. ! 
 
 3. Novelle di Sacchetti. Sacchetti died in l-tOS. 
 
 4. Masuccio, II NovcUmo, nel quale si contengono chiquanta Novelle. — Best edition that 
 of 1484, folio. 
 
 5. Sabadino, Porretane, dove si narra Novelle settanta una. 
 
 6. Sansovino, Cento Novelle scelte da piu nobili Scrittori. 
 
 7. Giovanni Fiorentino, il Pecorone, nel quale si contengono cinquanta Novelle antiche, 
 First and best edition, 1559. 
 
 8. Novelle del Bandello, 3 vols. 4to. 1554. 
 
 9. Strajmrola, le pincevoli Notte. 2 vols. 1557. 
 
 10. Giraldi Cinthio, gli Hecatomithi, (Cento Novelle.) 4 vols. 
 
 1 1. Erizzo, le Set Giornate. (trenta cinque Novelle) Edizione prim. 4to. Ven. 1567- 
 
 12. Parabosco, i Diporti, o varo Novelle, Venet. 1,558. 
 
 13. Gramwci, la piacivol Notte, et lieto Giornn (undici Novelle), Venet. 1574. 
 
 14. Novelle di Ascanio de Mori. 4to. 1585. 
 
 15. Malespini, Ducento Novelle, 4to. 
 
 X Vide Gascoigne's Tale of Ferdinando Jeronimi, from the Italian riding tales of 
 Bartello, in his « Wecdes," and Turberville's «« Tragical Tales, translated out of sundrie 
 Itahans," 1587.
 
 545 
 
 form. By these means the more rugged features of the Anglo-Nor- 
 man romance, were softened down, and a style of fiction introduced 
 more varied and more consonant to nature. 
 
 The taste, however, for the wild beauties of Gothic fabling, though 
 polished and refined by the elegant imagination of the Italians, was 
 still cultivated with ardour, and, towards the close of Elizabeth's 
 reign, was further stimulated, by a fresh infusion of similar imagery, 
 through the medium of the Spanish and Portuguese Romances. 
 
 These elaborate, and sometimes very interesting productions, are 
 evidently constructed on the model of the Anglo-Norman romance, 
 though with greater unity of design, and with more attention to 
 morality. There is reason to believe, with Mr. Tyrwhitt, that neither 
 Spain nor Poi*tugal can produce a romance of this species older than 
 the era of printing*; for the manuscript of Amadis of Gaul, which 
 has been satisfactorily proved by Mr. Southey to have been the pro- 
 duction of Vasco Lobeira, and written in the Portuguese language, 
 during the close of the fourteenth centvn-y f, was never printed, and is 
 supposed to be no longer in existence ; while the Spanish version of 
 Garciordonez de Montalvo, the oldest extant, and which has, in 
 general, passed for the original, did not issue from the press before 
 the year 1510, the date of its publication at Salamanca. 
 
 This romance, beyond all doubt the most interesting of its % class, 
 is well known as one of the very few in Don Quixote's library which 
 escaped the merciless fury of the Licentiate and the Barber. " The 
 first that master Nicholas put into his hands was Amadis de Gaul in 
 four parts ; and the priest said, ' There seems to be some mystery in 
 this ; for, as I have heard say, this was the first book of chivalry 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii, p. 221, 
 
 t Vide Aikin's General Biography, vol. vi. article Lobeira. 
 
 X " Amadis of Gaul," remarks Mr. Southey," is among prose, what Orlando Furioso 
 is among metrical Romances, not the oldest of its kind, but the best." — Preliminary Essay 
 to his Translation, 4 vols. 1803. 
 
 " This" (Amadis de Gaul), says Mr. Burnet, » is perhaps one of the most beautiful 
 books that ever was written." — Specimens of English Prose Writers, vol. i. p. 289. note. 
 
 VOL. r. 4 a
 
 546 
 
 printed in Spain, and all the rest liave had their foundation and rise 
 from it ; and, therefore, I think, as head of so pernicious a sect, we 
 ought to condemn him to the fire without mercy.' — ' Not so, sir,' 
 said the barber ; ' for I have heard also, that it is the best of all the 
 books of this kind ; and therefore, as being singular in his art, he 
 ought to be spared.' — ' It is .true,' said the priest, ' and for that rea- 
 son his life is granted him." * Nor is the description which Sir 
 Philip Sidney has given of the effects of Amadis on its readers less 
 important than the encomium of Cervantes on its literary merit ; 
 " Truly," says the knight, " I have known men, that even with reading 
 Amadis de Gaul, have found their hearts moved to the exercise of 
 courtesy, liberality, and especially courage." f 
 
 The introduction of Amadis into the English language took place 
 in the year 1592, when the first four or five books were translated 
 from the French version and printed by Wolfe. X It experienced the 
 same popularity here which had attended its naturalisation in France, 
 Italy, and Spain, and seems to have been in the zenith of its reputation 
 among us at the close of the Shakspearean era; for Fynes Moryson, 
 who published his Itinerary in 1617, in his directions to a traveller 
 how to acquire languages, says, " I think no book better for his dis- 
 course than Amadis of Gaul ; for the knights errant, and the ladies of 
 courts, doe therein exchange courtly speeches, and these books are 
 in all languages translated by the masters of eloquence ;" and Bur- 
 ton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, written about the same period, 
 mentions Amadis along with Huon of Bourdeaux, as one of the most 
 fashionable volumes of his day. Such, indeed, is the merit of this 
 romance, that the lapse of four hundred years has not greatly dimi- 
 nished its attractions, and the admirable version of Mr. Southey, 
 which, by rejecting or veiling the occasional indelicacy of the original. 
 
 * Jervis's Translation of Don Quixote, vol. i. chap. 6. 
 
 t Sir Philip Sidney's Works, fol. edit, of 1629. p. 551. 
 
 t This version, which was reprinted in 1618, is by Anthony Munday.
 
 547 
 
 has removed the weightiest objections of Ascham, most deservedly 
 finds admirers even in the nineteenth century. 
 
 Another specimen of this class of romances of nearly equal popu- 
 larity with the preceding, though inferior in point of merit, may be 
 instanced in the once celebrated Po/werm of England, Avhich, like 
 Amadis of Gaul, safely passed the ordeal of the Curate of Don 
 Quixote's village : — " Let Palmerin of England," says the Licentiate, 
 " be preserved, and kept as a singidar piece : and let such another 
 case be made for it, as that which Alexander found among the spoils 
 of Darius, and appropriated to preserve the works of the poet Homer. 
 — Therefore, Master Nicholas, saving your better judgment, let this 
 and Amadis de Gaul be exempted from the fire, and let all the rest 
 perish without any further enquiry." * 
 
 Palmerin of England, like its prototype, Amadis de Gaul, is sup- 
 posed to have originated in Portugal. Mr. Southey, indeed, confi- 
 dently attributes it to the pen of Francis de Moraes ; an ascription 
 which is in direct opposition to the authority of Cervantes, who 
 asserts it to have been written by a King of Portugal. It has shared 
 the like fate, too, in this country, with regard to its translator ; An- 
 thony Munday having been the first to usher Palmerin, as well as 
 Amadis, to an English public ; in fact, though in its original garb 
 it appeared a century and a half later than the romance of Lobeira, 
 it claims priority with regard to its English dress, having been licensed 
 to Charlewood, and printed in 1580. 
 
 The multiplicity and rapid succession of extraordinary events in 
 Palmerin of England, are such as to distract the most steady 
 attention, and if it really deserved the encomium which the cui'ate 
 bestowed upon it in comparison with the rest of the worthy knight's 
 library, little surprise can be excited at the mental hallucinations 
 which the study of such a collection might ultimately produce. 
 
 Of the versions of honest Anthony, one of the most indefatigable 
 translators of romance in the reign of Elizabeth, not much can be 
 
 * Jervis's Don Quixote, vol. i. chap. 
 
 4 A 2
 
 548 
 
 said, either in point of style or fidelity. Labouring for those wlio 
 possessed an eager and indiscriminating appetite for the marvellous, 
 he was not greatly solicitous about the preservation of the manners 
 and costume of his original, but rather strove to accommodate his 
 authors to the taste of the majority of his readers. To enumerate 
 the various romances which he attempted to naturalise, would be 
 tedious and unprofitable ; the two that we have already noticed, 
 together with " Palmerin D'Oliva," and " The honorable, pleasant, 
 and rare conceited Historie of Palmendo *," were amontr the most 
 popular, and will be sufficient to impart an idea of what, among the 
 peninsular works of fiction, were most in vogue, when romances were 
 as much read as novels are in the present age. 
 
 The last species of romance, which we shall notice as fashionable 
 in Elizabeth's reign, may be termed the Pastoral. Of this class the 
 most celebrated specimen that we can mention, is the Arcadia of Sir 
 Philip Sidney, a book well known to Shakspeare, which continued 
 highly popular for near a century, and reached an eighth edition as 
 early as 1633, independent of impressions in Scotland, of which one 
 occurs before the year 1600. -j- 
 
 The Arcadia appears to have been commenced by its author for 
 the sole amusement of himself and his sister, the Countess of Pem- 
 broke, during his residence at Wilton, in 1580, and though prose- 
 cuted at various periods was left incomplete at his death in 1586. 
 The affection of the Countess, however, to whose care and protection 
 the scattered manuscripts had been assigned, induced her to publish 
 an impression of it in the year 1590, revised under her own immediate 
 
 * The first edition of Palmerin D'Oliva, translated by Anthony Munday, was published 
 by Charlewood in 1588. Vide Bibliotheca Reediana, No. 2665; and his version of Pal- 
 mendos, was printed by J. C. for Simon Watersonno (1589), 4to. bl. 1. 
 
 t In a letter from Mr. Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, dated September 1599, it is said, 
 that " the Arcadia is now printed in Scotland, according to the best edition, which will 
 make them good cheap, but is very hurtful to Ponsonbie, who held them at a very 
 high rate : he must sell as others doe, or they will lye upon his hands." — Vide Zouch's 
 Memoirs of Sir Philip Sidney, p. 361.
 
 549 
 
 direction ; since which period fourteen editions have borne testi- 
 mony to the merits of the work, and to the correctness of the echtor's 
 judgment. 
 
 To the publication of this far-famed romance, which is in many 
 respects truly beautiful, and in every respect highly moral, we 
 may attribute an important revolution in the annals of fictitious 
 writing. It appears to have been suggested to the mind of Sir 
 Philip, by two models of very different ages, and to have been built, 
 in fact, on their admixture ; these are the Ethiopic History of Helio- 
 dorus. Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and the Arcadia of Sannazaro, 
 productions as widely separated as the fourth and the sixteenth cen- 
 turies. Their connection, however, Avill be more readily explained, 
 when we recollect, that a translation of Heliodorus into English had 
 been published only three years before the commencement of Sid- 
 ney's Arcadia. This was the work of Thomas Underdowne, who 
 printed a version of the ten entire books in 1577, dedicating them to 
 Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.* That the English Heliodorus 
 was chiefly instrumental in giving this peculiar direction to the 
 genius of Sidney, was the opinion of Warton ; but we must likewise 
 recollect, that the Arcadia of Sannazaro, with which Sir Philip, as 
 an excellent Italian scholar, must have been well acquainted- j-, pre- 
 sented him with the model for his shepherds, for their costume, 
 diction, and sentiment, and that, like the English work, it is a mingled 
 composition of poetry and prose. 
 
 Dismissing many of the paraphernalia of the ancient chivalrie 
 romance, its magicians, enchanted castles, dragons, and giants, but re- 
 taining its high-toned spirit of gallantry, heroism, and courtesy, com- 
 bined with the utmost purity in morals, and with all the traditionary 
 simplicity and innocence of rural life, the pastoral romance of Sidney 
 exhibited a species of composition more reconcilable to probability 
 
 * A second edition of Underdowne's Heliodorus was printed in 1587, and a third in 
 1605, 
 f A complete edition of Sannazaro's Arcadia appeared in 1505.
 
 550 
 
 than the adventures of Arthur and Amadis, but less natural and 
 familiar than the tales of the Italians. In these last, however, virtue 
 and decency are too often sacrificed at the shrine of licentiousness, 
 whilst in the Arcadia of our countryman not a sentiment occurs 
 which can excite a blush on the cheek of the most delicate modesty. 
 To this moral tendency of Sidney's fictions, the muse of Cowper has 
 borne testimony in the following pleasing lines : — 
 
 " Would I had fall'n upon those happier days, 
 That poets celebrate ; those golden times, 
 And those Arcadian scenes, that Maro sings, 
 And Sidticy, warbler of poetic prose. 
 Nymphs were Dianas then, and swains had hearts, 
 That felt their virtues : innocence, it seems, 
 From courts dismissed, found shelter in the groves; 
 The footsteps of simplicity, imprcss'd 
 Upon the yielding herbage, (so they sing) 
 Then were not all effac'd : then speech profane. 
 And manners profligate, were rarely found; 
 Observed as prodigies, and soon reclaim'd." 
 
 Had the disciples of Sir Philip adhered to the model which he 
 constructed ; had they, rejecting merely his unfortunate attempt to 
 introduce the Roman metres into modern poetry, preserved his 
 strength and animation in description, his beauty and propriety of 
 sentiment, his variety and discrimination of character, the school of 
 Sidney might have existed at the present hour. On the contrary, 
 whatever was objectionable and overstrained in their prototype, they 
 found out the art to aggravate ; and by a monstrous and monotonous 
 overcharge of character, by a bloated tenuity of style, by a vein of 
 sentiment so quaintly exalted as to have nothing of human sympathy 
 about it, and by an indefinite prolixity of fable, they contrived to 
 outrage nature nearly as much as had been effected by the wonders 
 of necromancy and the achievements of chivalry ; and this, too, with- 
 out producing a scintillation of those splendid traits of fancy which 
 
 * Task, book iv.
 
 551 
 
 illumine, and even atone for, the wild fictions of the Anglo-Norman 
 romance. The Astrea of D'Urfe, written about twenty years after 
 Sidney's work, though sufficiently tedious, and frequently unnatural, 
 makes the nearest approach to the pastoral beauty of the Arcadia ; 
 but what longevity can attach to, or what patience shall endure, the 
 numerous and prodigious tomes of Madame Scuderi ? * 
 
 The shades of oblivion seem gathering fast even over the beautiful 
 reveries of Sidney, a fate most undoubtedly hastened by the prolix 
 and perverted labours of his successors ; and what was the fashion 
 and delight of the seventeenth century lias generally ceased to 
 charm. So great, indeed, was once the popularity of the Arcadia, 
 that its effects became an object of consideration to the satirist and 
 the historian. In 1631, we find the former thus admonishing the 
 ladies : — " Insteade of songes and musicke let them learn cookerie and 
 launderie. And instead of reading Sir Philip Sidney s Arcadia, let 
 them reade the groundes of good huswifery."]- But the grave anna- 
 list and antiquary. Fuller, has, with more good sense, vindicated the 
 study of this moral romance : — " I confess," says he, " I have heard 
 some of modern pretended wits cavil at the Arcadia, because they 
 made it not themselves : such who say that his book is the occasion 
 that many precious hours are otherwise spent no better, must 
 acknowledge it also the cause that many idle hours are otherwise 
 spent no worse than in reading thereof ":[. There is no work, in short, 
 in the department of prose-Jictioti which contains more apothegmatic 
 wisdom than the Arcadia of Sidney ; and it is to be regretted that the 
 volume which had charmed a Shakspeare, a Milton, and a Waller §, 
 
 * Among the bulky romances of this prolific lady, who died June 2. 1701, aged 94, it 
 may be worth while to enumerate a few, merely as instances of her uncommon fecunditj', 
 viz. Artaraene, ou le Grand Cyrus, 10 vols. 8vo.; Clelie, 10 vols. 8vo. ; Almahide ou 
 rEsclave Reine, 8 vols. 8vo. ; Ibrahim ou I'lllustre Bassa, 4 vols. 8vo. 
 
 t Tom of All Trades, or the plaine Pathway to Preferment, &c. By Tiiomas Powell. 
 Lond. 1631. 410. pp. 4/, 48. —Vide Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 425, 
 and 426. 
 
 t Fuller's Worthies, 1662, part ii. p. 75- 
 
 § See his Verses on Saccharissa, the Lady Dorothy Sidney.
 
 55^ 
 
 and which has been praised by Temple *, by HeyHn f , and by 
 Cowper, should be suffered, in any deference to the opinion of Lord 
 Orford J, to slumber on the shelf. 
 
 It is with pleasure, however, that we find a very modern critic not 
 only passing a just and animated eulogium on the Arcadia, but asserting 
 on his own personal knowledge, that, even in the general classes of 
 society, it has still its readers and admirers. " Nobody, it has been 
 said, reads the Arcadia. We have known very many persons who 
 have read it, men, women, and children, and never knew one who 
 read it without deep interest and admiration at the genius of the 
 writer, great in proportion as they were capable of appreciating it. 
 The verses are very bad, not that he was a bad poet, (on the con- 
 ti-ary, much of his poetry is of high merit,) but because he was then 
 versifying upon an impracticable system. Let the reader pass over 
 all the eclogues, as dull interludes unconnected with the drama, and 
 if he do not delight in the story itself, in the skill with which the 
 incidents are woven together and unravelled, and in the Shakespearean 
 power and character of language, with which they are painted ; .let 
 him be assured the fault is in himself and not in the book." § 
 
 After this brief survey of the state of romantic literature, and of 
 the various romances which were most popular, in the days of Shak- 
 speare, it will be a proper appendage, if we add a few observations on 
 the yet lingering relics of chivalric costume. That gorgeous spect- 
 acle, the Tournament, in which numerous knights engaged together 
 
 * In his Essay on Poetry. 
 
 f In his Description of Arcadia in Greece, where he tells us that the Arcadia, " besides 
 its excellent language, rare contrivances, and delectable stories, hath in it all the strains of 
 poesy, comprehendeth the universal art of speaking, and to them who can discern and will 
 observe, affordeth notable rules for demeanor both private and public." 
 
 :J: Park's edition of Royal and Noble Authors, vol. ii. p. 221. An excellent defence of 
 the Arcadia against the decision of Lord Orford, who terms it " a tedious, lamentable, 
 pedantic, pastoral romance," may be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1767s p. 57. 
 See also Sir Egerton Brydges's edition of Phillip's Theatrum Poetarum, p. 134, et seq., 
 and Zouch's Memoirs of Sidney, p. 155. 
 
 § Aikin's Annual Review, vol. iv. p. 547.
 
 553 
 
 on either side, fighting with the sword and truncheon, was latterly 
 superseded by the joust or tilting-match, consisting of a succession of 
 combats between two knights at one time, and in which the spear 
 was the only weapon used. The dexterous management of this mili- 
 tary amusement depended upon striking the front of the opponent's 
 helmet, in such a manner as either to beat him backward from his 
 horse, or break the spear in the contest. Jousting or tilting, which 
 was usually celebrated in honour of the ladies, by whom the prizes 
 were always awarded and distributed, continued to be a favourite 
 diversion with Elizabeth to the close of her reign ; she was attached 
 to the gallantry which constituted the soul of these games, and to 
 the splendour which accompanied their exhibition, and her nobles 
 were not backward in encouraging and gratifying her romantic taste. 
 Of this a remarkable instance may be adduced, in the person of Sir 
 Henry Lee, Knight of the Garter, who vowed that he would an- 
 nually, while health and strength permitted, enter the tilt-yard as his 
 sovereign's knight. The completion of this vow led to annual conten- 
 tions in the lists, and twenty-five personages of the first rank, among 
 whom are to be found Lord Leicester, Sir Christopher Hatton, &c. 
 agreed to establish a society of arms for this purpose. The presi- 
 dency of the association was resigned by Sir Henry, on the plea of 
 infirmity, in 1590, when he formally invested the Earl of Cumber- 
 land with his dignity, one of the most envied at that time, in the court 
 of Elizabeth. * 
 
 It was usual at these chivalric exhibitions, which ceased on the 
 demise of their regal patroness, for the combatants, and even the 
 men of fashion who attended as spectators, to wear a lady's favour on 
 theu' arm ; and when a knight had tilted with peculiar grace and 
 spirit, the ladies were wont to fling a scarf or glove upon him as he 
 passed; a custom which Shakspeare has attributed, as is frequent 
 
 * Pennant's London, p. 103. 
 VOL. I. 4 B
 
 554 
 
 with him, to an age long anterior to chivalric usage, for he represents 
 Coriolanus, on his way to the capitol, as thus honoured : 
 
 • " The matrons flung their gloves, 
 
 Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchiefs, 
 Upon him as he pass'd." * 
 
 It appears also, from a passage in the second part of King Henry 
 the Fourth, that an oath derived from a singular observance in the 
 days of chivalry, was common in the days of Shakspeare ; for Shallow, 
 persuading Sir John FalstafF to remain with him as his visitor, 
 exclaims, " By cock and pye, Sir, you shall not away to night t ;" an 
 adjuration which Steevens and Ridley refer to a corruption of the 
 sacred name, and to a service-boojc of the Romish church, called in 
 this country, previous to the Reformation, a pie ; but Mr. Douce has, 
 with more probability, advanced the origin to which we allude. " It 
 will, no doubt, be recollected," he observes, " that in the days of 
 ancient chivalry it was the practice to make solemn vows or engage- 
 ments for the performance of some considerable enterprize. This 
 ceremony was usually performed during some grand feast or enter- 
 tainment, at which a roasted peacock or pheasant, being served up by 
 ladies in a dish of gold or silver, was thus presented to each knight, 
 who then made the particular vow which he had chosen, with great 
 solemnity. When this custom had fallen into disuse, the peacock 
 nevertheless continued to be a favourite dish, and was introduced on 
 the table in a pie, the head, with gilded beak, being proudly elevated 
 above the crust, and the splendid tail expanded. Other birds of 
 smaller value were introduced in the same manner, and the recol- 
 lection of the old peacock vows might occasion the less serious, or 
 even burlesque, imitation of swearing not only by the bird itself, but 
 also by the pie ; and hence probably the oath by cock and pie." X 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvi. p. 84., and Malone's note. 
 •)■ Ibid. vol. xii. p. 213. Act v. sc. 1. 
 t Donee's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 472.
 
 555 
 
 As all persons beneath the rank of an esquire were precluded, by 
 the laws of chivalry, from taking any part in the celebration of justs 
 and tournaments, while at the same time, a strong desire of imitation 
 was excited in the public mind, by the attractive nature of these 
 diversions, it soon became an object with the commonality to establish 
 something which might bear a striking resemblance to the favourite 
 amusements of their superiors. Hence the origin of tilting at the 
 quintain, which we have already noticed in the chapter on Rural 
 Diversions, and of tilting at the ring and on the water ; sports, of 
 which even the Queen herself condescended not unfrequently to be a 
 spectator- 
 Tilting at the ring was considered as the most respectable of the 
 three amusements, and was generally practised as a preparatory 
 exercise to the knightly feat of jousting. The ring was suspended at 
 a fixed height, in a sheath, by the contrivance of two springs, and 
 the object of the tilter was, while riding at full speed, to thrust the 
 point of his lance through the ring, drawing it, by the strength of his 
 stroke, from its sheath, and bearing it away on the summit of his 
 lance. In this pastime, the horses, as well as the men, required 
 constant training and practice, and, on the day of contest, the palm 
 of victory was adjudged to him who in three courses, for this number 
 was allowed to each candidate, carried the point of his lance the 
 oftenest through the ring. 
 
 Of these games the most vulgar, but the most productive of mer- 
 riment, was that of tilting on the water, in which the combatants, 
 standing in the centre of their respective boats, were armed with a 
 lance and shield, and he was esteemed the conqueror, who, by a 
 dexterous management of his weapon, contrived to strike his adver- 
 sary in such a manner as to overturn him in the water, while he 
 himself remained firm and stationary. With this curious exhibition 
 it would appear that the Queen was highly gratified, on her visit to 
 Sandwich, " where certain wallounds that could well swym, had 
 prepared two boates, and in the middle of each boate was placed a 
 borde, upon which borde there stood a man, and so they met toge- 
 
 4b 2
 
 556 
 
 ther, with either of them a staff and a shield of wood ; and one of 
 them did overthrow another, at which the Queene had good sport."* 
 
 To jousting, and to tilting at the ring, some of the most remarkable 
 relics of expiring chivalry, and of which the latter had attained to 
 almost scientific precision at the commencement of the seventeenth 
 century, Shakspeare has several allusions in the course of his dramas.-j- 
 The most striking of these refers to an accident which not unfre- 
 quently occurred, when a knight, unable to manage his horse with 
 due skill, suffered it to deviate sideways in its career, the consequence 
 of which was, that instead of breaking his lance in a direct line 
 against his adversary's helmet, it was broken across his breast, a cir- 
 cumstance deemed highly dishonourable, as the result either of 
 timidity or want of dexterity: — " O, that's a brave man !" says Celia, 
 speaking of Orlando, in As You Like It, " he writes brave verses, 
 speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, 
 quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover ; as a puny tilter, that 
 spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble goose." X 
 
 It was about this period too, the close of the sixteenth centuiy, 
 that another remnant of romantic usage became nearly extinct. We 
 allude to the profession of the Minstrel, which, until the year 1597, 
 had been cherished or tolerated in this country, from an era as 
 ancient as the conquest. 
 
 During the reign of Elizabeth, indeed, the character of the Minstrel, 
 combining the offices of the poet, the singer, and the musician, and 
 that of the Jestour, or mere reciter of tales and gestes, gradually lost 
 their importance and respectability, and were no longer protected by 
 the noble and the opulent. On the accession of the Queen, however, 
 and for about twenty years afterwards, instances may be adduced 
 
 * Nichols's Progresses, vol. i. p. 56., the year 1573. 
 
 t See Comedy of Errors, act iv. so. 2. Henry IV. Part I. act ii. sc. 3. Romeo and 
 Juliet, act iii. sc. 1. Love's Labour's Lost, act v. sc. 2. Taming of the Shrew, act i. 
 sc. 1. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. pp. 124, 125. Act iii. sc. 4.
 
 557 
 
 where the Mhistrel appears to have acted in his genuine capacity, 
 that is, as the sole depository of the poems which he chaunted, 
 and not, as was subsequently the case, the fabricator of songs and 
 ballads merely for the press. The latest specimens of what may 
 be termed the old Minstrelsy, Dr. Percy assigns to the years 1569 
 and 1572, when the ballads entitled " The Rising in the North," and 
 " Northumberland betrayed by Douglas," were produced. * Between 
 the Minstrel-ballads and those written merely for the press, a marked 
 difference was usually perceptible, the former exhibiting greater 
 rudeness of language, with a more northern cast in their structure ; 
 gi'eater irregularity in metre, and incidents more romantic, wild, 
 and chivalric ; while the latter presented altogether a southern 
 dialect, more correct versification, incidents, though occasionally 
 pathetic, comparatively tame and insipid, and a costume more 
 modern and familiar. Of this last kind, were the numerous ballads 
 of the reign of James the First, frequently collected together, and 
 published under the appellation of Garlands. 
 
 There is reason to suppose, notwithstanding the declining state of 
 the minstrel tribe, that some attention was yet paid to their appear- 
 ance and dress ; that their ancient distinguishing costume was well 
 known, and sometimes imitated, and that, especially in the prior 
 half of the Elizabethan era, a peculiar garb was still attached to their 
 office. We are warranted in these inferences by contemporary 
 authority: Laneham, in his description of Elizabeth's entertainment 
 at Killingworth Castle, in 1575, mentions his having been in company 
 with a person who was to have performed the character of an 
 ancient Minstrel before the Queen, " if meete time and place had 
 been foound for it." This man, who was probably a member of the 
 profession, entertained some worshipful friends, of which Laneham 
 was one, with a representation of the part which he should have 
 enacted at the Earl of Leicester's ; and it is remarkable that this 
 
 Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. pp. liv. 285. 295.
 
 558 
 
 assumed minstrel is styled, " a squire minstrel of Middihex, that 
 travaild the ctmtree thys soomer season untofayrz andwoorshipfall menz 
 houzez ; a strong proof that the character, in all its full costimie, was 
 not considered as sufficiently bizarre and obsolete to render such an 
 assertion improbable. " A person very meete seemed he for the 
 purpose ; (we here drop the author's absurd orthography ;) of a xlv 
 years old, apparelled partly as he would himself His cap off, his 
 head seemly rounded tonster-wise ; fair kembed, that with a sponge 
 daintily dipt in a little capon's grease, was finely smoothed to make 
 it shine like a mallard's wing ; his beard smugly shaven ; and yet his 
 shirt after the new trink, with ruffs fair-starched, sleeked, and glister- 
 ing like a pair of new shoes : marshalled in good order : with a 
 stetting stick, and stout that every ruff stood up like a wafer. A 
 side gown of Kendal green, after the freshness of the year now ; 
 gathered at the neck with a narrow gorget, fastened afore with a white 
 clasp and a keeper close up to the chin, but easily for heat to undo 
 when he list : seemly begirt in a red caddis girdle ; from that a pair of 
 capped Sheffield knives hanging a to side (one on each side) : out 
 of his bosom drawn forth a lappet of his napkin, edged with a blue 
 lace, and marked with a true love, a heart, and a D. for Damian ; for 
 he was but a batchelor yet. 
 
 " His gown had side sleeves down to midleg, slit from the shoulder 
 to the hand, and lined with white cotton. His doublet-sleeves of 
 black worsted : upon them a pair of poynets of tawny chamblet, laced 
 along the wrist with blue threaden joints ; a wealt toward the hand of 
 fustian anapes : a pair of red neather stocks ; a pair of pumps on his 
 feet, with a cross cut at the toes for cornes ; not new, indeed, yet 
 cleanly blacked with soot, and shining as a shoeing horn. About his 
 neck, a red ribband suitable to his girdle : his harp in good grace 
 dependent before him : his wrest * tied to a green lace, and hanging 
 by. Under the gorget of his gown a fair flagon chain of pewter (for 
 
 Wresi — the key with which the hai-p is tuned.
 
 559 
 
 silver) ; as a squire minstrel of Middlesex, that travelled the country 
 this summer season, unto fairs and worshipful mens houses. From 
 his chain hung a scutcheon, with metal and colour, resplendent upon 
 his breast, of the ancient arms of Islington. — After three lowly 
 courtsies, 'he' cleared his voice with a hem and reach, and spat out 
 Avithal; wiped his lips with the hollow of his hand for filing his 
 napkin, tempered a string or two with his wrest, and after a little 
 warbling on his harp for a prelude, came forth with a solemn song, 
 warranted tor story out of King Arthurs acts." * 
 
 In 1592, Henry Chettle, describing Anthony Noxc-Now, an aged and 
 celebrated minstrel of his own time, represents him as " an od old 
 fellow ; low of stature, his head covered with a round cap, his body 
 with a tawney coate, his legs and feete truste uppe in leather buskins, 
 his gray haires and furrowed face witnessed his age, his treble viol in 
 his hande j- ;" from which it would appear that even to the last the 
 members of this tuneful tribe were distinguished by some peculiarity 
 of dress. 
 
 In the mean time, however, they were becoming, through the 
 dissoluteness of their manners, obnoxious to government, and con- 
 temptible in the public estimation. Stubbes, in the first edition of his 
 Anatomie of Abuses, 1583, terms them a parcel of drunken sockets, 
 and baudy parasites, that " raunge the countries," he observes, 
 " riming and singing of unclean, corrupt, and filthy songs in tavernes, 
 ale-houses, innes, and other publike assemblies. — There is no ship," 
 he exclaims, " so laden with merchandize, as their heads are pestred 
 with al kinds of baudy songs, filthy ballades, and scurvy rymes, 
 serving for every purpose, and for every company. For proof 
 whereof," he subjoins, " who bee baudier knaves than they? who 
 uncleaner than they ? who more licentious, and looser minded than 
 they ? and brieflie, who more inclined to all kind of insolency and 
 leudness than they? — I think that al good minstrels, sober and 
 chast musitions, may dance the wild Moris through a needles eye." 
 
 * Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. 
 f Kind Harts Dreame, sig. B. 2.
 
 560 
 
 He subsequently adds that, notwithstanding their immorality, " every 
 toune, citie, and countrey, is full of these rainstrelles to pipe up a 
 daunce to the devill." 
 
 That this description is not much exaggerated by the puritanical 
 severity of its author, is evident from the language of Puttenham, a 
 courtier and polite writer, who calls this degraded race " cantabanqui" 
 singers " upon benches and barrels heads — minstrels that give a fit 
 of mirth for a groat — in taverns and ale-houses, and such other places 
 of base resort * ;" a picture corroborated by the authority of Bishop 
 Hall, who a few years afterwards, speaking of the exhilarating effect 
 of his own satirical poetry, says it is 
 
 " Much better than a Paris-garden beare. 
 Or prating poppet on a theater, 
 Or Mh7ice's "whistling to his tabouret, 
 Selling a laughter for a cold meal's meat." f 
 
 The character which Shakspeare attributes to the minstrel race of 
 this period, is in accordance with the preceding passages. In the ori- 
 ginal edition of his Rape of Lucrece, which appeared in 1594, he 
 draws his heroine exclaiming, 
 
 " Feast-Ending minstrels, tuning my defame, 
 Will tie the hearers to attend each line." % 
 
 The epithet in Italics very distinctly points out the vagrant life of 
 these attendants on merriment and good cheer. They were accus- 
 tomed to travel the country, in search of bride-ales, Christmas 
 dinners, fairs, &c., and wherever they could get access to the halls 
 of the gentry and nobility. 
 
 It is in the Winter s Tale, however, that the minstrel of our poet's 
 age is but too faithfully depicted. In the person of Autolycus, whom 
 
 * Arte of English Poesie, reprint, p. G9. 
 
 t Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 273. col. 1. Book iv. sat. 1. 
 
 X Malone's Supplement to Shakspeare's Plays, vol. i. p. 521.
 
 561 
 
 we have already noticed, when describing the country wake, is to be 
 found, in colours faithful to nature, the very object of Stubbe's satire, 
 a composition very curiously blending the various functions of the 
 minstrel, the pedlar, and the rogue. 
 
 No harshness therefore can be attributed to the act of Queen 
 Elizabeth, which in 1597 nearly annihilated an occupation so vilely 
 associated and degraded. In the fourth chapter of this statute the 
 law enacts that " all fencers, bearwards, common players of enter- 
 ludes, and minstrells, wandering abroad; all juglers, tinkers, 
 pedlars, &c. shall be adjudged and deemed i^ogues, vagabonds, and 
 sturdy beggers ;" a clause which, very deservedly, put an end to a 
 profession which, though once highly respectable and interesting, no 
 longer had a claim to public support ; a clause which enabled Dr. Bull 
 to say, with much truth, 
 
 " Beggars they ai-e with one consent, 
 And Rogues, by Act of Parliament." * 
 
 Of the use which Shakspeare made of the various romances, tales, 
 and ballads which undoubtedly occupied a large portion of his library, 
 an accurate estimate may be formed from a close inspection of his 
 dramas. It will be found, that, with the exception of the Historical 
 plays, derived either from English chronicles or translations of 
 classic story, the residue of his dramatic productions may be traced 
 to sources exclusively existing within the regions of romantic litera- 
 ture. As we shall have occasion, however, hereafter to notice the 
 origin of each drama, as it passes before us in chronological suc- 
 cession, it will merely be necessary in this place, in order to afford 
 some proof of his familiarity with these fictions, to select a few 
 specimens of his allusion to them from the body of his plays. 
 
 • See Ritson's Ancient Engleish Metrical Romancecs, vol. i. Dissertation on Romance 
 and Minstrelsy, p. ccxxiv. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 C
 
 That our poet was well acx^iuiiuted with tlie celebrated Ron\aiice, 
 entitleil 3fort tfJfthmr, the most popular of its class, would have 
 btvti readily admitted from the known course of his studies, even if 
 he had not once alluded to it in tl\e course of his works. In the 
 Second Pari, however, of King Hcnrt/ the Fourth, lie makes SJiaUorc, 
 vaunting of his youthful feats to Falstaffe, say. " I was then Sir 
 Dogontt in Aiihitrs show*-" a line upon which INIr. Douce observes, 
 '• Wliatever part Sir Dagonet took in this sliow would doubtless be 
 borrowe^l from IMallory's romance of the JMort Artwx, which had 
 been tx>mpiled in the reign of Heiiry VII. Wluu thoro occurs rela- 
 tinir to Sir Daiionet wjis extracted from the excellent and ancient 
 story of Tristan dt Lconnoi^, in which Dagonet is represented as the 
 fool of king Arthur f- ;" a character certainly well adaptet.! to the 
 powers of the worthy justice. 
 
 It should, however, be remarked, that the A/ihiirs sJun.- in this 
 passage was not, what it might at first be supposed, an exact repre- 
 sentation ot' the ancient chivalric costume of that romantic Prince 
 and his kniglvts, but principally an exinbition of Jtvhcrif by a toxiv- 
 philite societv, of which Richard Rv>binson, tlie translator of the 
 Eno;hsh Gesta, has given us an account under the title of •• The 
 AuHcient Oiticr SiKUctie, and Unifte Laudable, of Prince Arthttrc and 
 his kmghtlt^ Armori/ of the Round Table, With a Thn'cfold A^<erfion 
 friendii/ inJxivoM- and furthattnce of English Archerif at this d<^" 
 1 58a 4to. t 
 
 These city-worthies, to the number of tlt\y-eight, it would seem, 
 had for some time assumed the arms and the names of the knights of 
 die Romid TjU>le, and Robinson, who the year before had publishe*! 
 a translation of Leland's Afscrtio Arthvrii, thought proper to deilicate 
 his Ancient OnU^r to ^I. Thomas Smith. Esq.. the then Prince Arthur 
 of this fellowship, and compliments him by deducing liis society 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. l-i4. Act iii. sc ^ 
 f Douce's Ilhistrations, toL L p. 4(55. 
 I British Bibliograptier, No. II. p. 1S5.
 
 563 
 
 from the establishment of the round table in the reign of Edward the 
 First. " But touching your famous order and fellowship of knights 
 in shooting, though in K. E. L his time (ann. 1279) a valiant Knight 
 and manlv ^lortimer at Kenelworth appointed a knightly game, 
 which was called the Round Table of lOO knights and so manie 
 Ladies (nameth not expressely shooting to be one) yet for exercise of 
 armes thither came many warlike knightes of divers kingdomes. 
 And the most famous and victorious king E. 3. builded at ^^ in- 
 chester (ann. 1344) an house called the Round Table of an exceeding 
 compasse, to the exercise of like or farre greater Chevahy therin : — 
 So the most famous, prudent, politlke and grave prince K. Henry 
 the 7 was the first Phenix in chusing out a number of chiefe Archers 
 to give drily attendance upon his person, whom he named his Garde, 
 But the high and mighty renowned prince his son. K. H. 8. (ann. 
 1509) not onely with great prowes and praise proceeded Ln that 
 which his father had be^on ; but also added greater diOTitv unto the 
 same, like a most roial renowned Da\-id. enacting a good and godly 
 statute (ann. 33. H. 8. cap. 9.) for the use and exercise of shooting in 
 everj- degree. And furthermore for the maintenance of the same 
 laudable exercise m this honourable citv of London bv his gratious 
 charter confirmed mito the worshipfiil citizens of the same, this your 
 now famous order of Knights of Prince Arthures Roimd Table or 
 Societv ; like as in his life time when he sawe a good Archer in- 
 deede, he chose him and ordained such a one for a knight of the 
 same order." * 
 
 As this " friendly and franke fello-sfhip of Prince Arthur's 
 Knightes," as Mulcaster terms it in his Positions +, bore little resem- 
 blance to its celebrated archet^-pe in any point of chivalric observ- 
 ance, beyond the name ; and as archery had ceased to be an object 
 with government in a militar\- light, and was considered indeed, in 
 
 * Brirish Biblisgnipber, No. II. p. 126, 12?. 
 
 T PusitioKs conceruittg the traimng up of Children, London, 15SI and 15S7. no. 
 chap. 3«vi. 
 
 4 c 2
 
 564 
 
 the reign of James I., as a mere pastime, the society, though respect- 
 able in the days of Robinson and Mulcaster, soon dwindled into 
 contempt, an idle mockery of an institution which had originally 
 been great and imposing. 
 
 In Much Ado about Nothing, our author very distinctly refers 
 to another of Captain Cox's romances, Huon of Bourdeaux, a pro- 
 duction of equal popularity with Morte Arthure, and which was 
 translated into English by Lord Berners, in the reign of Henry the 
 Eighth *, under the title of Sir Hugh of Bourdeaux. Benedict being 
 informed of the approach of Beatrice, addresses Don Pedro in the 
 following terms : — " Will your grace command me any service to the 
 world's end ? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes, 
 that you can devise to send me on ; I will fetch you a tooth-picker 
 now from the farthest inch of Asia ; bring you the length of Prester 
 John's foot ; fetch you a hair of the great Chains beard ; do you any 
 embassage to the Pigmies, rather than hold three word's conference 
 with this harpy." f The passage in Italics, together with the spirit 
 of the context, will be discovered in the subsequent command and 
 achievement. 
 
 " Thou must goe to the citie of Babylon to the Admiral Gaudisse, 
 to bring me thy hand full of the heare of his beard, and foure of his 
 greatest teeth. Alas, my lord, (quoth the Barrons,) we see well 
 you desire greatly his death, when you charge him with such a 
 
 message." % 
 
 " He opened his mouth, and tooke out his foure great teeth, and 
 then cut off his beard, and tooke thereof as much as pleased him." § 
 
 * The original, the Histoire de Huon de Bordeaux, was ushered into the world at the 
 Fair of Troyes in Champagne, in the first century of printing. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 51. Act ii. sc. 1. 
 
 I Huon of Bourdeaux, chap. xvii. 
 
 § Chap. xlvi. edit, of 1601. Lord Berners's translation underwent three editions. The 
 original has had the honour of giving birth to the Chef d'Oeuvre of Wieland—" the child 
 of his genius," observe the Monthly Reviewers, " in moments of its purest converse with 
 the all-beauteous forms of ideal excellence;— the darling of his fancy, born in the sweetest
 
 565 
 
 This version of Lord Berners furnished Shakspeare with the name, 
 though not with the character, of Oberon. 
 
 The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth supplies us with a 
 reference to the ancient romance of tS/r Bevis of Southampton. In 
 the combat between Horner and his servant Peter, the former ex- 
 claims — " Peter, have at thee with a downright blow, as Bevis of 
 Southampton fell iqjon Ascapart." * 
 
 Tliis romance, which forms the fourth article in the Coventry 
 Library, was once highly popular, though possessing little merit. 
 It was printed by Pynson, and issued twice from the press of Cop- 
 land, and once from that of East. It has been since frequently 
 republished, in various forms, for the amusement of the juvenile 
 part of the community. 
 
 Of the hero of the tale, Selden has left us the following notice in 
 his notes on the Polyolbion : — " Abovit the Norman invasion was 
 Bevis famous with the title of Earl of Southampton ; Duncton in 
 Wiltshire known for his residence. — His sword is kept as a relique 
 in Arundel Castle ; not equalling in length (as it is now worn) that 
 of Edward 3, at Westminster." f 
 
 Shakspeare has done further honour to this legend, by putting two 
 lines of it into the mouth of Edgar. Bevis, being confined in a 
 dungeon, was allowed neither meat nor corn, but 
 
 " Rattes and myce and such smal dere 
 Was his meate that seven yere ;" 
 
 of her excursions amid the ambrosial bowers of fairy-land ; — the Oberon, — an epic poem, 
 popular beyond example, yet as dear to the philosopher as to the multitude ; which, during 
 the author's lifetime, has attained in its native country all the honours of a sacred book ; 
 and to the evolution of the beauties of which, a Professor in a distinguished university has 
 repeatedly consecrated an entire course of patronized lectures." New Series, vol. xxiii. 
 
 p. 576. 
 
 The beauties of Oberon are now accessible to the mere English scholar, through the 
 medium of Mr. Sotheby's version, which, though strictly faithful to the German, has the 
 spirit and harmony of an original poem. 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xiii. p. 249. Act ii. sc. 3. 
 
 t Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 189. col. 1. — Polyolbion, canto ii.
 
 566 
 
 a distich which the supposed madman in Lear has thus, almost 
 verbally, adopted : — 
 
 " But mice, and rats, and such small deer. 
 Have been Tom's food for seven long year." * 
 
 Dr. Percy has observed that Shakspeare had doubtless often heard 
 this metrical romance sung to the harp f ; the popularity of these 
 legends, indeed, was such that, towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, 
 most of them were converted into prose, a degradation which befel 
 Sir Bevis, Sir Guy of Warwick, and many others 'of equal celebrity. 
 To this last romance Shakspeare has an allusion in his King Jolm^ 
 where the bastard speaks of 
 
 " Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man," % 
 
 the defeat of this Danish Goliah, in single combat, by Sir Guy, being 
 one of the leading features of the story. 
 
 It is highly probable, that the achievement ascribed to King 
 Richard, in this play, of tearing out the lion's heart §, was immedi- 
 ately derived from a copy of the old metrical romance in the poet's 
 library. It is true that the chronicles of Fabian and Rastall have de- 
 tailed this fiction, and there is no doubt, from the same authority ; 
 but the metrical legend of Richard Coeur de Lion being one of the 
 most popular of the Anglo-Norman romances, and having been thrice 
 printed, twice by W. De Worde, and once by Will. Copland, there 
 is much reason to conclude that an acknowledged lover, and col- 
 lector, of this branch of literature would prefer taking his imagery 
 from the poem itself, more especially if it rested upon his shelves. 
 
 It appears from this romance, that Richard not only tore out the 
 heart of the lion, but, dipping it in salt, eat it before the eyes of the 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 475. Act iii. sc. 4. 
 
 •)■ Reliques of Ancient Enghsh Poetry, vol, iii. p. xxiii. 
 
 \ Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 363. Act i. sc. 1. 
 
 $ Ibid. p. 367, King John, act i. sc. 1.
 
 567 
 
 astonished king of Almain, a feat which instantly drew from His 
 Majesty the pecnliar appellation which designates the tale : — 
 
 " Yevis, as I undcrstaiul call, 
 This is a devil, ami no man, 
 That has my strong lion y-slawe, 
 The heart out of his body drawe, 
 And has it eaten with good will ! 
 He may be called, by right skill, 
 King y-christened of most reno\vn, 
 Strong Richard Cceur de Lion! " * 
 
 The play of Henry the Fifth furnishes a reference to the fifth 
 article in Lanehani's catalogue of the Coxean collection. Fluellen 
 compelling Pistol to eat his leek, tells him, — " You called me yester- 
 day, mountain-squire ; but I will make you to-day a squire of low 
 degree." "f 
 
 This romance, which was licensed to John Kynge on the tenth of 
 June 1560 J, and printed by William Copland before 1570 §, was one 
 of the most popular of the sixteenth century, and possesses some 
 striking traits of manners, and several very curious poetical sketches. 
 It is twice alluded to by Spenser || in his Faerie Queene, and has 
 been supposed, though probably without sufficient foundation, to 
 have existed in manuscript anterior to the age of Chaucer. II 
 
 There are some scenes in Shakspeare which appear to have been 
 originally derived from Oriental fable. Thus, in Twelfth Night, the 
 leading ideas of Malvolio's soliloquy (act ii. sc. 5.), bear a strong re- 
 
 * Vide Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. ii. p. 201., and 
 Weber's Metrical Romances, vol. i. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 502. Act v. sc. 1. 
 
 X Ritson's Ancient Engleish Metrical Romancees, vol. iii. p. 344. 
 
 § Vide Garrick Collection in Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 400. 
 
 II Todd's Spenser, vol. v. p. 313. 36?. 
 
 f This poet is conjectured to have thrown some ridicule on the Squire of Low Degree, 
 in his rhyme of Sir Thopas ,- but Ritson remarks, that this romance " is never mentioned 
 by any one writer before the sixteenth century ; nor is it known to be extant in manur 
 script; and, in fact, the Museum copy is the onely one that exists in print." Romancees, 
 vol. iii. p. 345.
 
 568 
 
 semblance, as Mr. Tyrrwhitt observes, to those of Alnaschar, in 
 The Arabian Nights Entertainments ; an observation which has drawn 
 from Mr. Steevens the following curious and pertinent note : — 
 
 " Many Arabian fictions had found their way into obscure Latin 
 and French books, and from thence into English ones, long before 
 any professed version of The Arabian Nights Entertainments had ap- 
 peared. I meet with a story similar to that of Alnaschar, in The 
 Dialoge of Creatures Moralysed, bl. 1. no date, but probably printed 
 abroad : ' It is but foly to hope to moche of vanyteys. Whereof it 
 is told in fablis that a lady uppon a tyme delyuered to her mayden a 
 galon of mylke to sell at a cite. And by the waye as she sate and 
 restid her by a dyche side, she began to thinke y' with ye money of 
 the mylke she wolde bye an henne, the which shulde bring forth 
 chekyns, and when they were grownyn to hennys she wolde sell 
 them and by piggis, and eschaunge them into shepe, and the shepe 
 into oxen ; and so whan she was come to richnesse she sholde be 
 married right worshipfully unto some worthy man, and thus she 
 rejoycid. And when she was thus marvelously comfortid, and 
 ravished inwardely in her secrete solace thinkynge with howe great 
 joye she shuld be ledde towarde the churche with her husbond on 
 horsebacke, she sayde to her self. Goo wee, goo wee, sodaynelye 
 she smote the grounde with her fote, myndynge to spurre the horse ; 
 but her fote slypped and she fell in the dyche, and there laye all her 
 mylke ; and so she was farre from her purpose, and never had that 
 she hopid to have. Dial. 100, LL. ij b." * 
 
 We may also refer the Induction to the Tatning of the Shrew to the 
 same source, to The Sleeper awakened, in the Arabian Nights* a tale 
 which seems to have crept from its oriental fountain through every mo- 
 dern European language. Its earliest appearance in English that can 
 now be traced, is derived from the information of Mr. Warton, who in- 
 forms us that his friend Mr. Collins, the celebrated lyric poet, had in his 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol, v. p. 326. note.
 
 569 
 
 possession a collection of short comic stories in prose, " sett forth by 
 maister Richard Edwards, mayster of her Majesties revels," and with the 
 date of 1570. This book, which was printed in the black letter, con- 
 tained the story of the Induction, and was, there is little doubt, the 
 source whence Shakspeare and the author of the elder Taming of the 
 Shrew drew their outline.* A similar tale is the subject of a ballad 
 in the Pepysian collection, which has been published by Percy t» and 
 it is to be found also in Sir Richard Barckley's Discourse on the 
 Felicitie of Man, 1598, in Goulart's Adjnirable and Manorable His- 
 tories, translated by E. Grimstone, 1607 ; in Burton's Anatomic of 
 Melancholy, 1615 ; in The Apothegms of King James, King Charles, 
 the Marquis of Worcester, &c. 1658, and in Winstanley's Historical 
 Rarities, 1684. X Some of the Arabian Tales and some of the 
 Fables of Pilpay may be traced in The Seven Wise Masters, and in 
 the English Gesta Roynanorum. 
 
 To romances of Italian origin and structure, such as were exhibited 
 m English versions often mutilated and incorrect, our author's obli- 
 gations are so numerous, particularly with regard to the formation of 
 plot, that, referring to a future consideration of each play for further 
 illustration on these subjects, we shall only remark in this place, that 
 many of the faults which have been ascribed to Shakspeare's want of 
 judgment in the conduct of his dramas, are attributable to the neces- 
 sity he was under, either from want of power or want of time, of 
 applying to versions and imitations in lieu of the originals ; a species 
 of accommodation which frequently led him to adopt the mistakes of 
 a wretched translation, when a reference to the Italian would imme- 
 diately have induced a better choice. This will account for many of 
 the charges which Mrs. Lennox has brought against the poet, in 
 respect to deficiency of skill in the arrangement of his incidents. § 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 5., and Warton's Hist, of Poetry, vol. ili. p. 294. 
 f Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. p. 254. 
 
 :j; See Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. pp. 201, 202., and Donee's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 342. 
 § See Shakspeare Illustrated, by Mrs. Lennox, 3 vols. 12mo. 1754. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 D
 
 570 
 
 The First Part of King Henry the Fourth presents us with an 
 allusion to one of those Spanish romances which became so populai 
 towards the close of Elizabeth's reign. Falstaff, in answer to the 
 Prince, who had told him, that he saw no reason why he should " be 
 so superfluous to demand the time of the day," replies, " Indeed, 
 you come near me now, Hal : for we, that take purses, go by the 
 moon and seven stars ; and not by Phoebus, — he, that -wandering 
 hnight so fair."* 
 
 The romance to which this passage stands indebted, is entitled, in 
 the best and most complete edition, " Espeio de Principes, y Caval- 
 leros. En el qual se cuentan los immortales hechos de Cavallero del 
 Febo, &c. &c., four parts, folio, and is the subject of the Barber's 
 eulogium in Don Quixote. " He (the Don) had frequent disputes 
 with the priest of his village, who was a learned person, and had 
 taken his degrees in Ciguenza, which of the two was the better 
 knight, Palmerin of England, or Amadis de Gaul. But master 
 Nicholas, barber-surgeon of the same town, affirmed, that none ever 
 came up to the Knight of the Sun" f 
 
 This production, the first part of which was translated into 
 English, under the title of The Myrrmir of Knighthood, was well 
 known in Shakspeare's time ; the second part of the first book having 
 been printed in the black letter, by Thomas Este, in 1585. J The 
 whole occupies three volumes in 4to., and in it the Knight of the 
 Sun is represented not only as " most excellently faire" but as a 
 prodigious wanderer ; so that FalstafF, who, by an easy association, 
 digresses from Phoebus to this solar knight-errant, has very compen- 
 diously combined his characteristics. 
 
 It is probable that the celebrated passage in Hamlet's soliloquy, 
 where the prince speaks of 
 
 * Reed's Shakspcare, vol. xi. p. 191. Act i. sc. 2. 
 
 f Jarvis's Don Quixote, vol. i. part i. chap. 1 . Sharpe's edit. p. 3. 
 
 t Vide Bibliotheca Reediana, No. 2661.
 
 571 
 
 " The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
 No traveller returns," * 
 
 ma}^ have been founded on a similar idea in the Spanish romance 
 entitled Pahnerin cCOliva. The translation of Palmerin was first 
 piinted in 1588, and in Part II. chap. 3. the reader must be struck 
 with the following words, — " before he took his journey wherein no 
 creature returneth agaie." Now, as Hamlet, according to the chro- 
 nological arrangement of Mr. Malone, was not written until 1596, 
 and Palmerin d'Oliva may certainly be reckoned among the most 
 fashionable romances of its day, the conjecture is entitled to atten- 
 tion. It is necessary, however, to add, that we are altogether 
 indebted for it to a learned and ingenious correspondent in the 
 British Bibliographer, whose initial signature is W. and whose 
 acquaintance with romantic lore appears to be equally accurate and 
 profound, -y 
 
 To this gentleman we are under further obligation for the confir- 
 mation of a supposition made by JMr. Douce, who, commenting on 
 this part of Hamlet's soliloquy, refers it to a passage in the History of 
 Valentine and Orson, and adds, — " It is probable that there was an 
 edition of Valentine and Orson in Shakspeare's time, though none 
 such is supposed now to remain.''^ 
 
 Such an edition, it appears, is in the possession of the corres- 
 pondent of Sir Egerton Brydges, who has given us a description of 
 it, together with the following title, as drawn from the colophon : — 
 " The historic of the two valyante brethren Valentyne and Orson, sCmes 
 vn to the Emperour of Greece. Imprinted at London over a gaynst 
 St. Margaretes Churche in Lothbery be William Coplande" Small 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 173. Act iii. sc. I. 
 
 f British Bibliographer, No. II. p. 148. 
 
 X Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 240. — Mr. Douce observes, that the " oldest 
 (edition) we know of is that of 1649, printed by Robert Ibbitson. In 1586, The old 
 book of Valentine and Orson was licensed to T. Purfoot." P. 240. 
 
 4d 2
 
 572 
 
 4to. b. 1. sig. I. i. 5. wood-cuts.* The antiquity of this copy, though 
 without date, is ascertained by the circumstance, that Will. Copland, 
 the printer, died between the years 1568 and 1569 ; and there is even 
 reason to suppose, that this is but a re-impression, for, after the 
 table of contents, a short note states, " Here endeth the table newly 
 con'ecte." -f 
 
 The reference of Mr. Douce is to page 63 of the edition of 1694, 
 in which occurs a sentence which undoubtedly bears a striking resem- 
 blance to the lines of Shakspeare: — " I shall send some of you here 
 present i7ito suck a country, that you shall scarcely ever return again to 
 bring ty dings of your valour.":}: 
 
 That our great poet was as well versed in the pages of Valentine 
 and Orson, as have been the school-boys of this country for the last 
 century, is our firm belief " It would be difficult," says the pos- 
 sessor of Copland's edition, " to find a reader of the present day, who 
 had not in the hour of childhood voted a portion of his scanty stipend 
 to the purchase of ' Valentine and Orson,' and withdrawn for a few 
 hours from more laborious exercises, or amusements, to peruse its 
 fascinating pages ;" and equally difficult would it have been, in 
 Shakspeare's days, to have found a person of liberal education, who 
 had not devoted a portion of his leisure to the perusal of this simple 
 but energetic romance. 
 
 From the numerous corresponding passages, however, cited by our 
 author's commentators, from the period of Catullus to the seven- 
 teenth century, it would seem that the idea, and even the terms in 
 which it has been expressed, may be considered as a kind of common 
 property, and consequently rather a mark of coincidence than 
 imitation. 
 
 Of the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, the best pastoral romance, 
 and one of the most popular books of its age, Ave cannot be surprised 
 that Shakspeare shoidd have been an ardent admirer, and that occa- 
 
 * British Bibliographer, No. V. p. 469. f Ibid. p. 470. 
 
 t Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 240.
 
 573 
 
 sioimlly he should have been indebted to it ibr an incident or an 
 image. The first scene of the fourth act, in the Two Gentlemen of 
 Ve7-otia, in which Valentine accepts the captainship of a band of out- 
 laws, appears to be founded on that part of the Arcadia where 
 Pyrocles, released from prison by the Helots, consents to be their 
 leader and captain. * 
 
 More certainly is the episode of Gloster and his sons, in King 
 Lear, derived from the same work, the first edition of which, pub- 
 lished in 1590, being divided into chapters, exhibits one with this 
 title : — " The pitifull state and storie of the Paphlagonian unkinde 
 king, and his kinde sonne : first related by the sonne, then by the 
 blind father." The subsequent editions omit the divisions into 
 chapters, and in the copy before us, which is the seventh impression, 
 the story commences at page 132, being part of the second book. 
 As no other source for this narrative than the Arcadia, has hitherto 
 been traced, and as the similarity of incident is considerable, there 
 can be little doubt but that this portion of King Lear must confess its 
 obligation to the romance. 
 
 The appellation, also, given to Cupid, in a passage in Much Ado 
 about Nothing, is evidently to be referred to a line in the Arcadia. 
 Don Pedro, speaking of Benedict, says, " he hath twice or thrice cut 
 Cupid's bow-string, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him." f 
 It has been conjectured, that the word in Italics should be hcnch-man, 
 a page or attendant ; but to decide the question it is only necessary 
 to quote the words of Sidney : — 
 
 " Millions of yeares this old drivell Cupid lives ; 
 
 While still more wretch, more wicked he doth prove: 
 Till now at length that Jove him office gives, 
 At Juno's suite, who much did Argus love, 
 
 In this our world a hangman for to be 
 
 Of all those fooles that will have all they see." X 
 
 * Arcadia, book i. p. 29. 7th edit. 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 87. Act iii. sc, 2. 
 
 I Book ii. pp. 153, 154. edit, of 1629.
 
 574 
 
 If, from this catalogue of allusions, our author's intimacy with the 
 romances of his age, may be considered as proved, his familiarity 
 with the ballads and songs of the same period will not be deemed less 
 extensive, or less admitting of demonstration. Throughout his dramas, 
 indeed, a peculiar partiality for these popular little pieces is very 
 manifest ; he delights to quote them, wherever he can find a place 
 for their introduction, and his own efforts in this line of poetry are 
 often of the utmost simplicity and beauty. 
 
 How strongly he felt this predilection for the strains of our elder 
 minstrelsy, and how exquisitely he has expressed his attachment to 
 them, must be in the recollection of all who have ever read, or seen 
 performed, his admirable comedy of the Twelfth Night, in which 
 the Duke exclaims, — 
 
 " Give me some musick : — but that piece of song, 
 That old and antique song we heard last night, 
 Methought it did relieve my passion much ; 
 More than light airs and recollected terms, 
 Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times : — 
 Mark it, Caesario ; it is old, and plain : 
 Tlie spinsters and the knitters in the sun, 
 And the free maids, that weave their thread with bones, 
 Do use to chaunt it ; it is silly sooth, 
 And dallies with the innocence of love. 
 Like the old age." * 
 
 Before we notice, however, the ballads which Shakspeare has 
 quoted, or to which he has alluded, it will be satisfactory, if, to the 
 articles specified in Captain Cox's " Bunch of Ballets and Songs," 
 we add a few more of similar popularity, and from a source equally 
 rare and authentic. In the British Bibliographer, Mr. Haslewood 
 has given us a description of the fragment of a tract in his possession, 
 entitled The World's Folly, printed, as he concludes, from the 
 type, before 1600, and from which, " as every allusion," he justly 
 observes, « to our early ballads is interesting," he has obliged his 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. pp. 305. 307, 308. Act ii. sc. 4.
 
 575 
 
 readers with some very curious quotations. " The author," he 
 remarks, " appears to describe the purgatory of Folly. He wanders 
 from room to room, and to each new character assigns a ballad, that 
 may be presumed was distinguished for popularity. A man, whose 
 credit had decayed by trusting servants, and had commenced botcher, 
 ' had standing by him, for meate and drinke, a pot of strong ale, 
 which was often at his nose, that it kept his face in so good a colour, 
 and his braine in so kinde a heate, as forgetting part of his forepassed 
 pride, in the good humour of grieving patience, made him with a 
 hemming sigh, ilfavourdly singe the ballad of Mliilom I was : to the 
 tune of Tom Tinker.' An old man, shaking with palsy, who, * having 
 beene a man of some possessions, and with too fat feeding of horses, 
 too high keeping of hawkes, and too much delighting in banquetinges, 
 through lacke of husbandrie, was forced to leave himself without 
 lande ; . . . after many a deepe sighe, with a hollow voice, in a 
 solemne tune, with a heavie hearte fell to sing the song of Oken leaves 
 began wither: to the tune o£ Heavilie, heavilie.' A dapper fellow that in 
 his youth had spent more than he got on his person, ' fell to singe the 
 ballad of the blinde beggar : to the tune of Heigh ho.' The general 
 lover, having no further credit with beauty, ' howled out the dittie of 
 When I was faire and young : to the tune of Fortune, The next is 
 whimsically described as ' one that was once a virgin, had beene a 
 little while a mayde, knew the name of a wife, fell to be a widdow,' 
 and finally a procuress ; ' she would sing the Lamentation of a sinner: 
 to the tune of Welladat/e.' A decayed prostitute, who had become 
 laundress to the house, ' stood singing the ballet of All a greene 
 willowe: to the famous tune of Ding Dong.' A man with good 
 personage, with a froward wife, ' hummed out the balled of the 
 breeches: to the tune of Never, never.' His termagant spouse drewe 
 from her pocket ' a ballad of the tinker's wife that beate her husbande' 
 To the last character in the fragment is also given Raleigh's ballad. 
 He was ' one that had beene in love, sat looking on his mistresse 
 picture, making such a legge to it, writing such verses in honour to 
 it, and committing such idolatrie with it, that poore man, I pittied
 
 576 
 
 him : and in his behalfe sorrowed to see how the Foole did handle 
 him : but there sat he, hanging his head, hfting up the eyes, and with 
 a deepe sigh, singing the ballad of Come live with me and be my love : 
 to the tune of adieu my deereJ* " * 
 
 It is, notwithstanding, to the dramas of our poet, that we must 
 look for more copious intimations relative to the ballad-poetry of the 
 sixteenth century, and of the first ten years of the reign of James the 
 First. The list which we shall collect from his works, in the order in 
 which they are usually published, will sufficiently evince his love for 
 these productions, and, at the same time, afford a pretty accurate 
 eniuneration of those which were esteemed the most popular of his 
 age. 
 
 Yet, in forming this catalogue of Shakspearean ballads and songs, it 
 may be necessary to premise, that it is not our intention to comment 
 on the original pieces of our author in this branch of poetry, which 
 will fall under consideration in a subsequent chapter ; but merely to 
 confine our notices to his quotations from and allusions to the min- 
 strel strains of others. We commence, therefore, with the ballad of 
 Queen Dido, which the poet had no doubt in view, when he repre- 
 sents Gonzalo in the Tempest so familiar with her name and history, f 
 That this was a favourite song with the common people appears from 
 a passage in a scarce pamphlet quoted by Mr. Ritson, and published in 
 1604. " O you ale-knights, you that devoure the marrow of the 
 mault, and drinke whole ale-tubs into consumptions ; that sing Queen 
 Dido over a cupp, and teU strange newes over an ale-pot." X Dr. 
 Percy, who has published a correct copy of this old ballad from his 
 folio MS. collated with two different printed copies, both in black 
 letter, in the Pepysian collection, terms it " excellent ;^ an epithet 
 
 * British Bibliographer, No. X. pp. 559, 560. This fragment, says Mr. Haslewood, 
 " is in black letter, one sheet, and bears signature C." 
 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 60. Act ii. sc. 1. 
 
 X Jacke of Dover, his quest of Inquirie, or his privy Search for the veriest Foole in 
 England, 4to. —Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 60. note 4.
 
 577 
 
 jiistl_y merited, for, though blended with the manners of a Gothic age, 
 it is certainly both pathetic and interesting. 
 
 Mrs. Ford, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, speaking of FalstafF's 
 proposals, says, that his disposition and his words " do no more 
 adhere and keep place together than the hundredth psalm to the tune 
 of Green Sleeves^ * This seems to have been a very popular song 
 about 1580, for it is licensed several times during this year, and 
 entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, under the titles of 
 " A newe northerne ditty e of the Lady Green Sleeves" and " A new 
 Northern Song of Greeyi Sleeves, beginning 
 
 " The bonniest lass in all the land." 
 
 It is mentioned by Beaumont and Fletcher in The Loyal Subject , 
 but is supposed to be now no longer extant. 
 
 In the same play, FalstafF alludes to another old song, which was 
 entitled Fortune my foe f, enumerating all the misfortunes incident to 
 mankind through the instability of fortune. Of this ballad, which is 
 mentioned by Brewer in his Lingua^, twice by Beaumont and 
 Fletcher §, and by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy ||, the tune 
 is said to be the identical air now known by the song of " Death and 
 the Lady ;" and the first stanza, observes Mr. Malone, was as follows : — 
 
 " Fortune, my foe, why dost thou frown on me ? 
 And will my fortune never better be ? 
 Wilt thou, I say, for ever breed my pain, 
 And wilt thou not restore my joys again ?" f 
 
 Sir Hugh Evans, in the first scene of the third act of this ** play, 
 quotes, though from his trepidation very inaccurately, four lines from 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 64. and note by Steevens. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 130. Act iii. sc. 3. 
 
 + Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 219. col. I. Act iii. sc ?• 
 
 § Custom of the Country, act i. sc. 1. Tlie Knight of the Burning Peetle, act v. 
 
 II Anatomy of Melancholy, edit. 1632. p. 576. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 131. note S. •* Ibid. p. 110. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 E
 
 578 
 
 two of the most popular little madrigals at the close of the sixteenth 
 century, entitled The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, and The 
 Nymph^s Reply to the Shepherd; the first written by Christopher 
 Marlow, and the second by Sir Walter Raleigh. These had been 
 attributed, however, to Shakspeare, in consequence of their being- 
 included in a copy of his smaller poems printed by William Jaggard 
 in 1599. This edition being published during the life-time of the 
 poet, gave currency to the ascription ; but in the year following Mar- 
 low's poem appeared in England's Helicon, with his name annexed, 
 and Raleigh's with his usual signature of Ignoto * ; and Isaac Walton, 
 in the first edition of his Comjileat Angler, printed in 1653, has 
 attributed these pieces to the same authors, describing them as " that 
 smooth song, which was made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty 
 years ago ; and — an Answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter 
 Raleigh in his younger days — old fashioned poetry," he adds, " but 
 choicely good ; I think much better then the strong lines that are 
 now in fashion in this critical age." f Had Marlow written nothing 
 but this beautiful song, he would yet have descended to posterity as 
 an excellent poet ; the imitations of it have been numerous. 
 
 The Tii-elfth Night presents us with a variety of fragments of 
 ballads, songs, and catches ; Sir Andrew Ague-cheek calls for the 
 catch of Thou Knave, of which the words and musical notes are given 
 by Sir J. Hawkins % ; Sir Toby compares Olivia to Peg-a Ramsay, 
 a licentious song mentioned by Nash among several other ballads, 
 such as Rogero, Basilino, Turhelony, All the Floxters of the Broom, 
 Pepper is black, Green Sleeves, Peggie Ramsie ; and immediately 
 afterwards this jovial knight quotes several detached lines from as 
 many separate ballads, for instance, Three merry men be tee ; There 
 d-icelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady ; the twelfth day of December ; 
 
 * England's Helicon, 3d edit., reprint of 1812. p. 214, 215. 
 t Compleat Angler, Bagster's edit. 1808. pp. 147, 148. 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 293. Act ii. sc. 3.
 
 579 
 
 Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone. * Of these the first 
 was a burden common to many ancient songs, and is called in The 
 Old Wives Tale, by George Peele, 1595, an Old Proverb, and is thus 
 given : — 
 
 " Three menie men, and three merrie men, 
 And three merrie men be wee ; 
 I in the wood, and thou on the ground, 
 And Jack sleepes in the tree :" f 
 
 an association which acquired such notoriety as to become the fre- 
 quent sign of an ale-house, under the appellation of The Three 
 Merry Boys. The second is the first line and the burden of a ballad 
 which was Hcensed by T. Colwell, in 1562, under the title of The 
 goodly and constant Wyfe Susatma. It is preserved in the Pep}'sian 
 collection, and the first stanza of it has been quoted by Dr. Percy in 
 his Reliques t ; the burden lady, lady, is again alluded to by Mercutio 
 in Romeo and Juliet, act ii. sc. 4. The third has not been traced to 
 its source, but the fourth, and the subsequent hnes, are taken, with 
 a little variation, from Corydons Fare-well To Phillis, published in a 
 little black letter miscellany, called " The Golden Garland of Princely 
 Delights," and reprinted entire by Dr. Percy. § 
 
 In act iv, sc. 2. the clown is introduced singing part of the first 
 two stanzas of a song which has been discovered among the ancient 
 MSS. of Dr. Harrington of Bath, and there ascribed, though perhaps 
 not correctly, to Sir Thomas AVyat. It is evident that Shakspeare 
 trusted to his memory in the quotation of these popular pieces, for 
 most of them deviate, in some degree, from the originals ; in the 
 present instance, the first two lines, as given by the clown, 
 
 " Hey Robin, jolly Robin, 
 
 Tell me how thy lady does," 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. pp. 294—297. 299. 
 
 f Ibid. V. p. 296. note by Steevens. 
 
 :{; Vol. i. p. 220. $ Reliques, vol. i. p. 220. 
 
 4 E 2
 
 580 
 
 are substituted for the opening stanza of the old song : — 
 
 « A Robyn, 
 
 Jolly Robyn, 
 Tell me how thy leman doeth, 
 And thou shalt knowe of myn." * 
 
 The commencement of a madrigal, the composition of William 
 Elderton, is sung by Benedict, in Much Ado about Nothing . 
 
 " The god of love, 
 That sits above," &c. f 
 
 and a song beginning in a similar manner, is mentioned by Mr. Rit- 
 son, to be in Bacchus Bountie, 4to. bl. 1. 1593 ; Elderton's produc- 
 tion was parodied by a puritan of the name of Birch, under the title 
 of " The Complaint of a Sinner." % 
 
 In Loves Labour s Lost a sweet air, as Armado terms it, commenc- 
 ing with the word Concolinel, is sung by Moth §, but no further 
 intimation is given ; and in another part of the same comedy, the 
 burden of an ancient ditty is chaunted by Roseline and Boyet [( 
 In As You Like It Touchstone quotes a stanza from a ballad of which 
 the first line is sweet Oliver, and which appears to be the same with 
 the ballad of 
 
 " O sweete Olyver 
 
 Leave me not bcTiinde thee, 
 
 entered by Richard Jones, on the books of the Stationers' Company, 
 August 6th, 1584 H ; and in the subsequent act, Orlando alludes to a 
 madrigal under the title of Wit whither wilt. ** 
 
 Airs Well that Ends Well affords but two passages from the min- 
 strel poesy of the day, which are put into the mouth of the clown ; 
 
 * Percy's Reliques, vol. i. p. 194. 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 1 66. 
 § Ibid. vol. vii. p. 51. Act iii. sc. 1. 
 % Ibid. vol. viii. p. 119. Act iii. sc. 3. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 166. n6te. 
 
 11 Ibid. p. 82. Act iv. sc. 1. 
 
 ** Ibid. p. 144. Act iv. sc. I.
 
 581 
 
 one of these is evidently taken from a ballad on the Sacking of Troy, 
 and the other seems to have been the chorus of a song on courtship 
 or marriage. * 
 
 From the Taming of the Shrew we collect the initial lines of two 
 apparently very popular ballads ; the first beginning IVJiere is the life 
 tJiat late I led fj which is likewise quoted by Ancient Pistol X-> and 
 referred to in A gorgioiis Gallery of gallant Inventions, 4to. 1578; 
 there is also a song or sonnet with this title, observes Mr. Malone, in 
 a handeful of pleasant Delites, containing sundrie new Sonets, &c. 1584, 
 where we read of " Dame Beautie's replie to the lover late at libertie, 
 and now complaineth himselfe to be her captive, intituled, Where is 
 the life that late I led : 
 
 " The life that erst thou led'st, my friend, 
 Was pleasant to thine eyes," &c. § 
 
 The second fragment with which Petruchio has favoured us, com- 
 mencing 
 
 *' It was the friar of orders grey, 
 As he forth walked on his way," \] 
 
 has given rise to one of the most pleasing and pathetic of modern 
 ballads, founded on a professed introduction of as many of our poet's 
 ballad fragments as could consistently be adapted. " Dispersed throuo-h 
 Shakspeare's plays," says the ingenious associator, " are innumerable 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. pp. 238 — 240. Act i. sc. 3. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 131. Act iv. sc. 1. — There appears to be allusions to 
 two catches in this scene. Grumio exclaims " Jire,Jire ; cast on no wafer," which Judge 
 Blackstone traces to the following old catch in three jjarts : — 
 " Scotland burneth, Scotland burneth. 
 
 Fire, fire; Fire, fire; 
 
 Cast on some more water." 
 Grumio a little afterwards calls out, "Why, Jack hoy! hoboy!" \.\\e beginning, as 
 Sir John Hawkins asserts, of an old round in three parts, of which he has given us the 
 musical notes. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 244. § Ibid. vol. ix. p. 131. note, 
 
 y Ibid. vol. ix. p. 132. Act iv. sc. 1.
 
 582 
 
 little frao-ments of ancient ballads, the entire copies of which could 
 not be recovered. Many of these being of the most beautiful and 
 pathetic simplicity, the editor was tempted to select some of them, 
 and with a few supplemental stanzas to connect them together, and 
 form them into a little Tale." * That much taste and poetic spirit, 
 too-ether with a very successful effort in combination, have been 
 exhibited in this little piece, the public approbation has unequivocally 
 decided. 
 
 To the character of Autolycus, in the Winter's Tale, a very humo- 
 rous exemplar of the fallen state of the minstrel tribe, we are in- 
 debted for some illustration of the prevalency of ballad-writing at the 
 commencement of the reign of James the First. Most of the songs 
 attributed to this adroit rogue, are, there is reason to think, the com- 
 position of Shakspeare, with the exception of the catch beginning 
 Jog on, jog on, the foot-patli xsay f ; but, in his capacity of ballad-ven- 
 der, he throws considerable light on the subjects to which these 
 motley strains were devoted. He is represented as having ballads of 
 all descriptions, and " the prettiest love-songs for maids" — " and 
 where some stretch-mouth'd rascal would, as it were, mean mischief, 
 and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the maid to answer. 
 Whoop, do me no harm, good man ; puts him off, slights him, with 
 Wlioop, do me no harm, good man." :j: Accordingly at the Fair he is 
 applied to for these precious wares : — 
 
 * Percy's Reliques, vol. i. p. 259. 
 
 \ Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 328. Act iv. sc. 2. 
 
 \ Ibid. p. 346. Act iv. sc. 3. — We shall add, in this note, in order to complete the 
 catalogue, all the fragments of ancient minstrelsy that have escaped our enumeration in 
 the text. 
 
 In Troilus and Cressida, Pandarus, lamenting the approaching departure of Cressida, 
 expresses his sorrow by quoting an old song beginning — 
 
 " O heart, o heart, o heavy heart, 
 
 Why sigh'st thou without breaking." 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 393. 
 
 Hamlet, bantering Polonius, quotes part of the first stanza of a ballad entitled, Jcphtha, 
 Judge of Israel. This has been published by Dr. Percy, retrieved, as he relates, from
 
 583 
 
 " Clo. What hast here? ballads? 
 
 Moj}. Pray now, buy some : I love a ballad in print, a'-life : for then we are sure they 
 are true. 
 
 Aid. Here's one to a very doleful tunc, How a usurer's wife was brought to bed of 
 
 utter oblivion by a lady, who wrote it down froip memory as she had formerly heard it 
 sung by her father. — Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 142.; and Percy's Reliques, vol. i. 
 p. 189. 
 
 It is probable that Hamlet, who appears to have been well versed in ballad-lore, has 
 again introduced two morsels from this source, in his dialogue with Horatio on the con- 
 duct of the king at the play: they strongly mark his triumph in the success of his plan for 
 unmasking the crimes of his uncle : — 
 
 " Why let the strucken deer go weep," &c. 
 
 " For thou dost know, O Damon dear," &c. 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. pp. 212. 21 'I. 
 
 lago in the drunken scene with Cassio, in the view of adding to his exhilaration, sings 
 a portion of two songs; the first apparently a chorus, — 
 
 " And let me the canakin, cHnk, clink," &c. 
 the second, 
 
 " King Stephen was a worthy peer," 
 
 from a humorous ballad of Scotch origin, preserved by Percy in his Reliques, vol. i. 
 p. 204. — Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. pp. 334. 336. 
 
 In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio, in the following passage, alludes to two ballads of con- 
 siderable notoriety : — 
 
 " Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim. 
 When king Cophetua lov'd the beggar maid " 
 
 the first line referring to the celebrated ballad of Adam Bell, Clijm of the Clough, and Wil- 
 liam of Cloudesly, and the second to A7«^ Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid ; popular pieces 
 which are again the objects of allusion in Much Ado ahout Nothing, act i.; and in the 
 Second Part of Henry IV. act v. sc. 3. — Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 77- ; and Percy's 
 Reliques, vol. i. pp. 154. 198. 
 
 The same play will afford us three or four additional references ; Mercutio, ridiculing 
 the old Nurse, gives us a ludicrous fragment commencing " Afi old hare hoar," vol. xx. 
 p. 116.; and Peter, after calling for two songs called Heart's ease, and Mi/ heart is full of 
 ■woe, attempts to puzzle the musicians by asking for an explanation of the epithet silver in 
 the first stanza of A So7ig to the Lute in Musicke, written by Richard Edwards, in the 
 " Paradise of Daintie Devises," and commencing, 
 
 " Where griping griefs the hart would wounde." 
 
 Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 220. 222. 
 and Percy's Reliques, vol. i. p. 1 96,
 
 584 
 
 twenty money-bags at a burden ; and how she longed to eat adder's heads, and toads car- 
 bonadoed. 
 
 Mop. Is it true, think you ? 
 
 Aut. Very true ; and but a month old. 
 
 Dor. Bless me from marrying a usurer ! 
 
 Aut. Here's the midwife's name to't, one mistress Taleporter; and five or six honest 
 wives that were present : Why should I carry lies abroad ? 
 
 Mop. 'Pray you now, buy it. 
 
 Clo. Come on, lay it by : And let's first see more ballads ; we'll buy the other things 
 anon. 
 
 Aut. Here's another ballad, Of a fish, that appeared upon the coast, on Wednesday 
 the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against 
 the hard hearts of maids: it was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold 
 fish, for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her : The ballad is very pitiful, 
 and as true. 
 
 Dor. Is it true, think you? 
 
 Aut. Five justices' hands at it ; and witnesses, more than my pack will hold. 
 
 Clo. Lay it by too : Another. 
 
 Aut. This is a merry ballad ; but a very pretty one. 
 
 Mop. Let's have some merry ones. 
 
 Aut. Why, this is a passing merry one ; and goes to the tune of. Two maids "mooing a 
 man : there's scarce a maid westward, but she sings it; 'tis in request, I can tell you." * 
 
 The request, in fact, for these popular pieces of poetry was then 
 infinitely greater than has since obtained in more modern times ; not 
 a murder, or an execution, not a battle or a tempest, not a wonderful 
 event or a laughable adventure, could occur, but what was imme- 
 diately thrown into the form of a ballad, and the muse supplied what 
 humble prose now details to us among the miscellaneous articles of a 
 news-paper ; a statement which is fully confirmed by the observation 
 of another character in this very play, who tells us that " such a deal 
 of wonder is broken out within this hour, that ballad-makers cannot 
 oe able to express it." f 
 
 In the Second Part of King Henry the Fourth FalstafF enters a room, 
 in the Boar's Head Tavern, singing the first two lines of a ballad 
 which Dr. Percy has reprinted under the title of Sir Lancelot Du 
 
 Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. pp.353 — 355. Act iv. so. 3 
 Ibid. p. 403. Act v. sc. 2. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 403. Act v. sc. 2,
 
 585 
 
 Lake. * This, which is merely a metrical version of three chapters 
 froin the first part of Mortc Arthur, is quoted imperfectly by the 
 knight, owing to the interruptions attending his situation ; the open- 
 ing lines of the ballad are, 
 
 " "When Arthur first in court began, 
 And was approved king," 
 
 which FalstafF mutilates and alters, by omitting the last word of the 
 first line, and converting approved into worthy-f ; the version and 
 quotation, it may be remarked, are strong proofs of the popularity of 
 the romance. 
 
 To the admirably drawn character of Silence in this play, we are 
 indebted for several valuable fragments of popular poesy. This 
 curious personage, who, when sober, has not a word to say, is no 
 sooner exhilarated by the circling glass, than he chaunts forth an 
 abundance of unconnected stanzas from the minstrelsy of his times. 
 Having nothing original in his ideas, no fund of his own on which to 
 di'aw, he marks his festivity by the vociferous repetition of scraps of 
 catches, songs, and glees. We may, therefore, conceive the poet to 
 have appropriated to this simple justice in his cups, the most gene- 
 rally known and, of course, the favourite, convivial songs of the age. 
 They are of such a character, indeed, as to warrant the belief, that 
 there was not a hall in Shakspeare's days but what had echoed to 
 these jovial strains ; a conclusion which almost imperatively calls for 
 the admission of a few, as specimens of the vocal hilarity of our 
 ancestors, when warmed, according to Shallow's confession, by " too 
 much sack at supper." % 
 
 9 
 
 " Sil. Do nothing but eat and make good cheer, (Ringing.) 
 
 And praise heaven for the merry year ; 
 
 * ReHques, vol, i. p. 214. f Reed's Shakspearc, vol. xii. p. 78. 
 
 t Reed's Shakspeave, vol. xii. p. 232. Act v. sc. 3. 
 
 VOL. 1. 4 F
 
 586 
 
 When flesh is cheap and females dear, * 
 And lusty lads roam here and there. 
 So merrily, 
 And ever among so merrily. 
 Fal. There's a merry heart ! — Good master Silence, I'll give you a health for that 
 anon. — 
 
 Sil. Be merry, be merry, my wife's as all; f 
 
 For women are shrews, both short and tall : 
 'Tis merry in hall, when beards v/ag all, 
 And welcome merry shrove-tide. 
 
 Be merry, be merry, &C. 
 Fal, I did not think, master Silence had been a man of this mettle. 
 Sil. A cup of wine, that's brisk and fine, 
 And drink unto the leman mine ; 
 And a merry heart lives long-a. 
 Fal, Well said, master Silence. 
 
 Sil. And we shall be merry; — now comes in the sweet of the night. 
 2^12/. Health and long life to you, master Silence. 
 
 Sil, Fill the cup and let it come; 
 
 I'll pledge you a mile to the bottom." % 
 
 After drinking another bumper, and singing another song, allusive 
 to the rights of pledging, Do me light, And dub me knight § ; and 
 quoting the old ballad of Robin Hood, and the Pindar of Wakejield \\ , 
 master Silence is carried to bed, fully saturated with sack and good 
 cheer. 
 
 A character equally versed in minstrel lore, and equally prodigal of 
 his stock, though wanting the excuse of inebriation, has been drawn 
 by Beaumont and Fletcher, in the person of Old Merrythought in their 
 Knight of the Burning Pestle % ; but, in point of nature and humour, 
 it is a picture which falls infinitely short of Shakspeare's sketch. 
 
 Many of the old songs, or rather the fragments of them, which are 
 scattered through the dramas of our poet, either proceed from the 
 
 * Dear is here to be remembered in its double sense. — Farmer. 
 
 f My wife's as all, that is, as all women are. — Steevens. 
 
 X Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. pp. 232 — 236. Act v. sc. 3. 
 
 § Ibid. p. 237. II Ibid. p. 241. 
 
 H This play was first printed in the year 1613.
 
 587 
 
 professed clown or fool of the play, or are given as the wild and de- 
 sultory recollections of derangement, real or feigned ; the ebullitions 
 of a broken heart, and the unconnected sallies of a disordered mind. 
 
 Shakspeare's fools may be considered, in fact, as exact copies of the 
 living manners and costume of these singular personages, who, in his 
 era, formed a necessary part of the household establishment of the 
 great. To the due execution of their functions, a lively fancy, and a 
 copious fund of wit and sarcasm, together with an unlimited licence of 
 uttering what imagination and the occasion prompted, were essential ; 
 but it was likewise required, that bitterness of allusion, and asperity 
 of remark, should be softened by the constant assumption of a playful 
 and unintentional manner. For this purpose, the indirect method 
 of quotation, and generally from ludicrous songs and ballads, is resorted 
 to, with the evident intention of covering what would otherwise have 
 been too naked and too severely felt. Thus, in an old play, entitled 
 A very mery and pythie Comedy, called, The longer thou livest the more 
 Foole thou art, printed about 1580' the appearance of a character of 
 this description is prefaced by the following stage-note : — " Entreth 
 Moros, counterfaiting a vaine gesture and a foolish countenance, syng- 
 ing thefoote of many songs, as fools were wont."* 
 
 The simple yet sarcastic drollery of the fool, and the wild ravings 
 of the madman, have been alike employed by Shakspeare, to deepen 
 the gloom of distress. In the tragedy of Lear it is difficult to ascertain 
 whether the horrors of the scene are more heightened by the seeming 
 thoughtless levity of the former, or by the delirious imagery of the 
 latter. The greater part of the bitterly sportive metres, attributed to 
 the fool, in this drama, appears evidently to have been written for the 
 character ; and as the reliques drawn from more ancient minstrelsy, 
 seem rather the foot or burden of each song, than the commence- 
 ment, and are at the same time of little poetical value, we shall forbear 
 enumerating them. The fragments, however, allotted to Edgar are 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 366, note. 
 4f 2
 
 588 
 
 both characteristic, and apparently initial ; the line which Mr. Steevens 
 asserts to have seen in an old ballad, 
 
 " Thi'ough the sharp hawthown blows the cold wind," * 
 
 is SO impressive as absolutely to chill the blood ; and the legendary 
 pieces beginning 
 
 " Saint Withold footed thrice the wold," f 
 
 and 
 
 " Child Rowland to the dark tower came," % 
 
 are reliques which well accord with the dreadful peculiarity of his 
 situation. The two subsequent quotations are from pastoral songs, of 
 which the first, 
 
 " Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me," § 
 
 as Mr. Malone observes, has a marked propriety, alluding to an asso- 
 ciation then common ; for in a description of beggars, published in 
 1607, one class of these vagabonds is represented as counterfeiting 
 madness ; 
 
 " they were so frantique 
 
 They knew not what they did, but every day 
 
 Make sport with stick and flowers like an antique ; — 
 One calls herself poor Besse, the other Tom" 1| 
 
 The second seems to have been suggested to the mind of Edgar by 
 some connection, however distant and obscure, with the business of 
 the scene. Lear fancies he is trying his daughters ; and the lines of 
 Edgar, who is appointed one of the commission, allude to a trespass 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 4G3, and 490, note. This finely descriptive line, Dr. 
 Percy has interwoven in his ballad of The Friar of Orders Gray. 
 f Reed's Shakspeare vol. xvii. p. 4712. Act iii. sc. 4. 
 
 X Ibid. p. 478. Act iii. sc. 4. § Ibid. p. 484. Act iii. sc. 6. 
 
 II Ibid. p. 485, note by Malone.
 
 589 
 
 which takes place in consequence of the folly of a shepherd in neglect- 
 ing his charge, — the lines appear to be the opening stanza of a lyric 
 pastoral. " A shepherd," remarks Dr. Johnson, " is desired to pipe, 
 and the request is enforced by a promise, that though his sheep be in 
 the corn, i. e. committing a ti'espass by his negligence — yet a single 
 tune upon his pipe shall secure them from the pound. 
 
 " Sleepest, or wakest thou, jolly shepherd? 
 Thy sheep be in the corn ; 
 And for one blast of thy minikin mouth, 
 Thy sheep shall take no harm." * 
 
 If the assumed madness of Edgar is heightened by the casual repe- 
 tition of these artless strains, how is the real distraction of the heart- 
 broken Ophelia augmented in its pathos by a similar appeal ! The 
 interesting fragments which she sings, certainly do not produce their 
 effect, as Sir Joshua Reynolds imagined, by marking an " utter in- 
 sensibility to her own misfortunes f ;" for they manifestly refer both 
 to her father's death, and to her own unfortunate attachment, their 
 influence over the heart being felt as the consequence of this indirect 
 allusion. v 
 
 Of the first three fragments, which appear to be parts of the same 
 ballad, and, as the king observes, are a " conceit upon her father," the 
 two prior have been beautifully incorporated by Dr. Percy in his Friar 
 of Orders Gray : 
 
 " How should I your true love know, 
 From another one? 
 By his cockle hat and staff, 
 And his sandal shoon." 
 
 He is dead and gone, lady, 
 
 He is dead and gone ; 
 At his head a grass-green turf, 
 
 At his heels a stone." % 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 486. 
 t Ibid. p. 278— 280. Act iv. sc. 5. 
 
 f Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 278. note.
 
 590 
 The first line of the third, 
 
 " White his shroud as the mountain snow," 
 
 has been parodied by Chatterton, in the Mynstrelle's Songe in (Ella, 
 
 " Whyte his rode as the sommer snowe." 
 The subsequent songs, beginning 
 
 " Good morrow, 'tis Saint Valentine's day, 
 
 and 
 
 « By Gis, and by Saint Charity," * 
 
 were, there is little doubt, suggested to the fair sufferer's mind, by an 
 obscure and distant association with the issue of her unfortunate amour, 
 a connection, however, which is soon dissipated by reverting to the 
 fate of her father, the scene closing with two fragments exquisitely 
 adapted to unfold the workings of her mind on this melancholy 
 event. 
 
 " They bore him barefac'd on the bier — 
 And in his grave rain'd many a tear." f 
 
 " And will he not come again ? 
 And will he not come again ? 
 
 No, no, he is dead, 
 
 Go to thy death-bed, 
 He never will come again, Sc." % 
 
 passages of which Dr. Percy has admirably availed himself in his F^-iar 
 of Orders Gray, and to which the Mynstrelle's song in (Ella is indebted 
 for its pathetic burden : 
 
 " Mie love ys dedde, 
 
 Gonne to his deathe-bedde, 
 
 Alle underre the wyllowe tree." § 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p, 281, 282. Act iv. sc. 5. 
 
 t Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 292. Act iv. sc. 5. \ Ibid, p. 299. Act iv. sc. 5. 
 
 § Poems, supposed to have been written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and others. 
 Cambridge edition, 1794, p. 70,
 
 591 
 
 The vacillation of poor Ophelia amid her heavy afflictions is 
 rendered strikingly apparent by the insertion of two ballad lines 
 between the stanzas last quoted, which, again manifestly allude to her 
 lover: — 
 
 " Opk. You must sing, Doim a-doim, an you call him adown-a. O, how the wheel 
 becomes it ! It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter. " • 
 
 « For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy." f 
 
 We may remark that the expression, " 0, hoxo the wheel becornes 
 it .'" is meant to imply the popularity of the song, that 
 
 " The spinsters and the knitters in the sun 
 Do use to chaunt it, 
 
 a custom which, as exercised in the winter, is beautifully exemplified 
 by Mr. JNIalone, in a passage from Sir Thomas Overbury's characters, 
 1614 : — " She makes her hands hard Avith labour, and her head soft 
 with pittie ; and when winter evenings fall early, sitting at her merry 
 wheele, she sings a defiance to the giddy wheele of fortune." % 
 
 In the church-yard scene of this play, one of the grave-diggers, after 
 amusing himself and his companion by queries, which, as Mr. Steevens 
 observes, " perhaps composed the chief festivity of our ancestors by 
 an evening fire || ; sings three stanzas, though somewhat corrupted 
 either by design or accident, of " A dyttie or sonet made by the lord 
 Vans, in the time of the noble queue Marye, representing the image 
 of death." § This poem was originally published in Tottel's edition 
 of Surrey and Wyat, and the Poems of Uncertain Authors ; the 
 earliest poetical miscellany in our language, and first printed in 1557 
 imder the title of " Songes and sonettes by the right honourable Henry 
 Howard, late earl of Surrey, and other." To this very popular col- 
 lection, which underwent many editions during the sixteenth cen- 
 
 * Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 293. f Ibid. p. 298. 
 
 X Ibid. p. 294. note. || Ibid, p. 322, note -1. 
 
 $ Warton's Hist, of Eng. Poetry, vol. iii. p. 45.
 
 592 
 
 tury*? Slender alludes, in the Merry Wives ofWindsor,where he exclaims, 
 « I had rather than forty shillings, I had my book of Songs and Sonnets 
 here f ;" from which we may conclude that this was the fashionable 
 manual for lovers in the age of Elizabeth. Lord Vaux's lines have 
 been reprinted by Dr. Percy, who remarks on the apparent corruptions 
 of Shakspeare's transcript, that they were " perhaps so designed by 
 the poet himself, the better to suit the character of an illiterate 
 clown." X 
 
 No fragment of our minstrel poetry has been introduced by Shak- 
 speare with greater beauty and effect, than the melancholy ditty which 
 he represents Desdemona as singing, under a presentiment of her 
 approaching fate : 
 
 " Dcs. My mother had a maid call'd — Barbara ; 
 She was in love; and he, she lov'd, prov'd mad, 
 And did forsake her : she had a song of — willow, 
 An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune, 
 And she died singing it: That song to-night, 
 Will not go from my mind ; I have much to doj 
 But to go hang my head all at one side. 
 And sing it like poor Barbara." § 
 
 Of this song of willow, ushered in with such a powerful appeal to 
 the heart, Dr. Percy has given us a copy in his Reliques || ; it is in 
 two parts, and proves that the poet has not only materially altered 
 the few lines which he quotes, but has changed also the sex of its 
 subject ; for in the original in the Pepys collection, it is entitled " A 
 Lover's Complaint, being forsaken of his Love." 
 
 From the ample, we may almost say complete, enumeration, which 
 we have now given, of the fragments selected by Shakspeare from the 
 minstrel-poetry of his country, together with the accompanying 
 remarks, may be formed, not only a tolerably accurate estimate of the 
 
 * Namely in 1565, 1567, 1569, 1574, 1585, 1587, &c. 
 
 -]■ Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 27. 
 
 t Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. p. 186. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 172. Act iv. sc. 3. || Vol. i. p. 208.
 
 593 
 
 most popular songs of this period, but a clear idea of the use to whicii 
 Shakspeare has applied them. * They will be found, in fact, with 
 scarcely any exceptions, either elucidatory of the business of the scene, 
 illustrative of the progress of the passions, or powerfully assistant in 
 developing the features and the shades of character. 
 
 It will appear also, from the view which has been taken of romantic 
 literature, as comprehending all the branches noticed in this chapter, 
 that its influence, in the age of our poet, was great and universally 
 diffused ; that he was himself, perhaps more than any other individual, 
 if we except Spenser, addicted to its study and partial to its fictions ; 
 and that, if we take into consideration, what will hereafter be 
 mentioned, the bases of his various plays, he may be affirmed to have 
 availed himself of its stores often with great skill, and with as much 
 frequency as the nature of the province which he cultivated, would 
 admit. 
 
 * To form a complete enumeration of the songs of the Elizabethan era, it would be 
 necessary not only to consult all the dramatic writers of this age, but to acquire a perfect 
 series of the very numerous Collections of Madrigals which were published during the same 
 period. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 G
 
 594 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CURSORY VIEW OF POETRY, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE DRAMA, DURING THE AGE 
 
 OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 The space which elapsed between the birth and the death of Shak- 
 speare, from April 1564 to April 1616, a period of fifty-two years, 
 may be pronounced, perhaps, the most fertile in our annals, with 
 regard to the production of poetical literature. Not only were the 
 great outlines of every branch of poetry chalked out with skill and 
 precision, but many of its highest departments were filled up and 
 finished in a manner so masterly as to have bid defiance to all subse- 
 quent competition. Consequently if we take a survey of the various 
 channels through which the genius of poetry has been accustomed 
 to diffuse itself, it will be found, that, during this half century, every 
 province had its cultivators ; that poems epic and dramatic, historic 
 and didactic, lyric and romantic, that satires, pastorals, and sonnets, 
 songs, madrigals, and epigrams, together with a multitude of trans- 
 lations, brightened and embellished its progress. 
 
 On a subject, however, so productive, and which would fill 
 volumes, it is necessary, that, in consonancy with the limits and due 
 keeping of our plan, the utmost solicitude for condensation be ob- 
 served. In this chapter, accordingly, which, to a certain extent, is 
 meant to be introductory to a critical consideration of the miscel- 
 laneous poems of Shakspeare, the dramatic writers are omitted ; 
 a future section of the work being appropriated to a detail of their 
 more peculiar labours for the stage. 
 
 After a few general observations, therefore, on the poetry of this 
 era, it is our intention to give short critical notices of the principal 
 bards who flourished during its transit ; and with the view of affording 
 some idea of the extensive culture and diffusion of poetic taste, an
 
 595 
 
 alphabetical table of the minor poets, accompanied by slight memo- 
 randa, will be added. An account of the numerous Collections of 
 Poetry which reflect so much credit on this age, and a few remarks 
 and inferences, more particularly with respect to Shakspeare's study 
 of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries in miscellaneous 
 poetry, will complete this portion of our subject. 
 
 The causes which chiefly contributed to produce this fertility in 
 poetical genius may, in a great measure, be drawn from what has 
 been already remarked under the heads of superstition, literature, and 
 romance. 
 
 The sun of philosophy and science, which had just risen with the 
 most captivating beauty, and which promised a meridian of uncom- 
 mon splendour, had not yet fully dissipated those mists that for 
 centuries had enveloped and darkened the human mind. What 
 remained, however, of the popular creed, was much less gross and 
 less contradictory to common experience, than what had vanished 
 from the scroll ; these reliques were, indeed, such, as either appealed 
 powerfully to a warm and creative imagination, or were intimately 
 connected with those apprehensions which agitate the breast of man, 
 when speculating on his destiny in another and higher order of 
 existence. 
 
 Under the first of these classes may be included all that sportive, 
 wild, and terrific imagery which resulted from a partial belief in the 
 operations of fairies, witches, and magicians, and in the reveries of 
 the alchemist, the rosicrusian, and the astrologer; and under the 
 second will be found, what can scarcely be termed superstition in 
 the customary sense, that awful and mysterious conception of the 
 spiritual world, which supposes its frequent intervention, through 
 the agency either of departed spirits, or superhuman beings. 
 
 The opinions which prevailed with regard to these topics in the 
 days of Shakspeare, were such as exactly suited the higher regions 
 of poetry, without giving any violent shock to the deductions of 
 advancing philosophy. The national credulity had been, in fact, 
 greatly chastised through the efforts of enquiry and research, and 
 
 46 2
 
 596 
 
 though it may still appear great to us, was in perfect accordance with 
 the progress of civilisation, and certainly much better calculated for 
 poetic purposes than has been any subsequent though purer creed. 
 
 The state of literature, too, was precisely of that kind which 
 favoured, in a very high degree, the nurture of poetical genius. The 
 vocabulary of our language was rich, beyond all example, both in 
 natives and exotics ; not only in " new grafts of old withered words *," 
 but in a multitude of expressive terms borrowed from the learned 
 languages ; and this wealth was used freely and without restriction, 
 and without the smallest apprehension of censure. 
 
 An enthusiastic spirit for literary acquisition had been created and 
 cherished by the revival, the study, and the translation of the ancient 
 classics ; and through this medium an exhaustless mine of imagery 
 and allusion was laid open to our vernacvxlar poets. 
 
 Nor were these advantages blighted or checked by the fastidious 
 canons of dictatorial criticism. Puttenham's was the only Art of 
 Poetry which had made its appearance, and, though a taste for dis-. 
 cussion of this kind was rapidly advancing, the poet was yet left 
 independent of the critic ; at liberty to indulge every flight of ima- 
 gination, and every sally of feeling ; to pursue his first mode of 
 conception, and to adopt the free diction of the moment. 
 
 The age of chivalry and romance, also, had not yet passed away ; 
 the former, it is true, was verging fast towards dissolution, but its 
 tone was still exalting and heroic, while the latter continued to throw 
 a rich, though occasionally a fantastic light over every species of 
 poetic composition. In short, the unrestricted copiousness of our 
 language, the striking peculiarities of our national superstition, the 
 wild beauties of Gothic invention, and the playful sallies of Italian 
 fiction, combined with a plentiful infusion of classic lore, and ope- 
 rating on native genius, gave origin, not only to an unparalleled 
 number of great bards, but to a cast of poetry unequalled in this 
 
 * Preface to Gondibert. Vide Chalmers's English Poets, vol.vi. p. 351.
 
 591 
 
 country for its powers of description and creation, for its simplicity 
 and energy of diction, and for its wide dominion over the feelings. 
 
 If we proceed to consider the versification, economy, and sentiment 
 of the Elizabethan poetry, candour must confess, that considerable 
 defects will be found associated with beauties equally prominent, 
 especially in the first and second of these departments. We must 
 be understood, however, as speaking here only of rhymed poetry, for 
 were the blank verse of our dramatic poets of this epoch included, 
 there can be no doubt but that in versification likewise the palm 
 must be awarded to Shakspeare and his contemporaries. Indeed, 
 even in the construction of rhyme, the inferiority of our ancestors is 
 nearly, if not altogether, confined to their management of the pen- 
 tameter couplet; and here, it must be granted, that, in their best 
 artificers of this measure, in the pages of Daniel, Drayton, and 
 Browne, great deficiencies are often perceptible both in harmony 
 and cadence, in polish and compactness. It has been said by a very 
 pleasing, and, in general, a very judicious critic, that " the older 
 poets disdained stooping to the character of syllable-mongers ; as their 
 conceptions were vigorous, they trusted to the simple provision of 
 nature for their equipment; and though often introduced into the 
 world ragged, they were always healthy." * Now versification is to 
 poetry, what colouring is to painting, and though by no means 
 among the higher provinces of the art, yet he who disdains its cul- 
 tivation, loses one material hold upon the reader's attention ; for, 
 though plainness and simplicity of garb best accord with vigour, 
 sublimity, or pathos of conception, raggedness can never coincide in 
 the production of any grand or pleasing effect. 
 
 It is remarkable, however, that, in lyrical composition, the poets of 
 Elizabeth's reign, so far from being defective in harmony of metre, 
 frequently possess the most studied modulation ; and numbers of 
 
 * Headley's Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. Introduction, p. 19. 
 edit. 1810.
 
 598 
 
 their songs and madrigals, as well as many stanzas of their longer 
 poems constructed on the model of the Italian octava rinia, exhibit 
 in their versification so much high-finishing, and such an exquisite 
 polish, as must render doubtful, in this province, at least, the assumed 
 superiority of modern art. 
 
 A more striking desideratum in the poetry of this era has arisen 
 from a want of economy in the use of imagery and ornament, aud in 
 the distribution of parts as relative to a whole. That relief, which is 
 produced by a judicious management of light and shade, appears to 
 have been greatly neglected j the eye, after having been fatigued by 
 an unsubdued splendour and warmth of style, suddenly passes to an 
 extreme poverty of colouring, without any intermediate tint to 
 blend and harmonize the parts; in short, to drop the metaphor, 
 after a prodigal profusion of imagery and description, the exliausted 
 bard sinks for pages together into a strain remarkable only for its 
 flatness and imbecillity. To this want of union in style, may be 
 added an equal defalcation in the disposition, connection, and de- 
 pendency of the various portions of an extended whole. These 
 requisites, which are usually the result of long and elaborate study, 
 have been successfully cultivated by the moderns, who, since the 
 daj^s of Pope, have paid a scrupulous attention to the mechanism of 
 versification, to the consonancy and keeping of style, and to the 
 niceties and economy of arrangement, 
 
 We can ascribe, however, to the poets of Elizabeth's reign the 
 greater merit of excelling in energy and truth of sentiment, in sim- 
 plicity of diction, in that artless language of nature which irre- 
 sistibly makes its way to the heart. To excite the emotions of 
 sublimity, of terror, of pity, an appeal to the artificial graces of 
 modern growth will not be found successful ; on the contrary, ex- 
 perience has taught us, that in the higher walks of poetry, where 
 sensations of grandeur and astonishment are to be raised, or where 
 the passions in all their native vigour are to be called forth, we 
 must turn to the earlier stages of the art, when the poet, unshackled 
 by the overwhelming influence of venerated models, unawed by the
 
 599 
 
 frowns of criticism, and his flow of thought undiverted by any labo- 
 rious attention to the minutiae of diction and cadence, looked abroad 
 for himself, and drew fresh from the page of surroundino- nature, 
 and from the workings of his own breast, the imager)-, and the 
 feelings, which he was solicitous to impress. In consequence of 
 this self-dependence, this appeal to original sources, the poetry of 
 the period under our notice possesses a strength, a raciness, and 
 verisimilitude which have since very rarely been attained, and which 
 more than compensate for any subordinate defects in the ornamental 
 departments of metre, or style. 
 
 It is conceivable, indeed, that a poet may arise, who shall happily 
 combine, even in a long poem of the highest class, the utmost refine- 
 ments of recent art, with the originality, strength, and independency 
 of our elder bards ; it is a phenomenon, however, rather to be wished 
 for than expected, as the excellencies peculiar to these widely- 
 separated eras appear to be, in their highest degree, nearly incom- 
 patible. Yet is the attempt not to be given up in despair ; in short 
 poems, especially of the lyric species, we know that this union has 
 been effected among us ; for Gray, to very lofty flights of sublimity, 
 has happily united the utmost splendour of diction, and the utmost 
 brilliancy of versification ; and even in a later and more extended 
 instance, in " The Pleasures of Hope" by Mr. Campbell, we find 
 some of the noblest conceptions of poetry clothed in metre exqui- 
 sitely sweet and polished, and possessing at the same time great 
 variety of modulation, and a considerable share of simplicity in its 
 construction. 
 
 If, however, upon the large scale, which the highest cast of poetry 
 demands, the studied harmony of later times be found incapable of 
 of coalescing with effect, there can be no doubt what school we 
 should adopt ; for who would not prefer the sublime though un- 
 adorned conception of Michael Angelo to the glowing colouring even 
 of such an artist as Titian? 
 
 Of the larger poems of the age of Shakspeare, the defects may be 
 considered as of two kinds, either apparent only, or real j under the
 
 GOO 
 
 first may be classed that want of higli-finishing which is the result, 
 partly of its incompatibility with greatness of design, and partly as 
 the effect of a just taste ; for much of the minor poetry of the reign 
 of Elizabeth, as hath been previously observed, is polished even to 
 excess ; while under the second are to be placed the positive defects 
 of want of union in style, and want of connection and arrangement in 
 economy ; omissions not resulting from necessity, and which are 
 scarcely to be atoned for by any excellencies, however transcendent. 
 
 It is creditable to the present age, that in the higher poetry several 
 of our bards have in a great degree reverted to the ancient school ; 
 that, in attempting to emulate the genius of their predecessors, they 
 have judiciously adopted their strength and simplicity of diction, 
 their freedom and variety of metre, preserving at the same time, 
 and especially in the disposition of their materials, and the keeping 
 of their style, whatever of modern refinement can aptly blend with 
 or heighten the effect of the sublime, though often severely chaste 
 outline, of the first masters of their art. 
 
 That meretricious glare of colouring, that uniform though 
 seductive polish, and that monotony of versification, which are but 
 too apparent in the school of Pope, and which have been carried to a 
 disgusting excess by Darwin and his disciples, not only vitiate and 
 dilute all developement of intense emotion, but even paralyse that 
 power of picturesque delineation, which can only subsist under an 
 uncontrolled freedom of execution, where, both in language and 
 rhythm, the utmost variety and energy have their full play. He who 
 in sublimity and pathos has made the nearest approach to our three 
 immortal bards, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, and who may, 
 therefore, claim the fourth place in our poetical annals, the lamented 
 Chatterton ; and he who, in the present day, stands unrivalled for 
 his numerous and masterly sketches of character, and for the 
 truth, locality, and vigour of his descriptions, the poet of Marmion 
 and of Rokeby ; are both well known to have built their fame upon 
 what may be emphatically termed the old English school of poesy. 
 The difference between them is, that while both revert to the
 
 601 
 
 costume and imagery of the olden time, one adlieres, in a great mea- 
 sure, to the language of his day, while the other must be deemed a 
 laborious though not very successful imitator of the phraseology and 
 extrinsic garb of the remote period to which, for no very laudable 
 purpose, he has assigned his productions. 
 
 These few remarks on the poetry of our ancestors being premised, 
 the critical notices to which we have alluded, may with propriety 
 commence ; and in executing this part of the subject, as well as in 
 the tabular form which follows, an alphabetical arrangement will be 
 observed. 
 
 1. Beaumont, Sib John. Though the poems of this author were 
 not published, yet were they written, during the age of Shakspeare, 
 and consequently demand our notice in this chapter. He was the 
 elder brother of Francis the dramatic poet, and was born at Grace- 
 dieu, in Leicestershire, in 1582. He very early attached himself to 
 poetical studies, and all his productions in this way were the amuse- 
 ments of his youthful days. Of these, the most elaborate is entitled 
 « Bosworth Field," a very animated, and often a very poetical detail 
 of the circumstances which are supposed immediately to precede and 
 accompany this celebrated struggle. The versification merits pecu- 
 liar praise ; there is an ease, a vigour, and a harmony in it, not 
 equalled, perhaps, by any other poet of his time; many of the 
 couplets, indeed, are such as would be distinguished for the beauty 
 of their construction, even in the writings of Pope. An encomium 
 so strong as this may require some proofs for its support, and among 
 the number which might be brought forward, three shall be adduced 
 as specimens not only of finished versification, but of the energy and 
 heroism of the sentiments which pervade this striking poem. 
 
 " There he beholds a high and glorious throne, 
 Where sits a king by lawrell garlands knowne, 
 Like bright Apollo in the Muses' quires, 
 His radiant eyes are watchful! heavenly fires ; 
 Beneath his feete pale Envie bites her chaine, 
 And snaky Discord whets her sting in vaine." 
 
 VOL. I. 4 H
 
 602 
 
 Ferrers, addressing Richard, exclaims, — 
 
 " I will obtaine to-day, alive or dead. 
 
 The crownes that grace a faithful! souldiers head. 
 ' Blest be thy tongue,' replies the king, ' in thee 
 The strength of all thine ancestors I see, 
 Extending warlike armes for England's good, 
 By thee their heire, in valour as in blood.'" 
 
 On the flight of Catesbj, who advises Richard to embrace a 
 similar mode of securing his personal safety, the King indignantly 
 answers, 
 
 " Let cowards trust their horses' nimble feete, 
 And in their course with new destruction meete; 
 Gaine thou some houres to draw thy fearefull breath : 
 To me ignoble flight is worse than death." 
 
 Of the conclusion of Bosworth Field, Mr. Chalmers has justly 
 observed, that " the lines describing the death of the tyrant may be 
 submitted with confidence to the admirers of Shakspeare." * 
 
 The translations and miscellaneous poems of Sir John include 
 several pieces of considerable merit. We would particularly point 
 out Claudian's Epigram on the Old Man of Verona, and the verses 
 on his " dear sonne Gervase Beaumont." 
 
 Sir John died in the winter of 1628, aged forty-six. 
 
 2. Breton, Nicholas. Of this prolific poet few authenticated 
 facts are known. His first publication, entitled, " A small handfull 
 of fragrant flowers," was printed in 1575 ; if we therefore allow him 
 to have reached the age of twenty-one before he commenced a 
 writer, the date of his birth may, with some probability, be assigned 
 to the year 1554. The number of his productions was so great, that ei 
 character in Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady, declares that he 
 had undertaken " with labour and experience the collection of those 
 thousand pieces — of that our honour'd Englishman, Nich. Breton." -j- 
 Ritson has given a catalogue of twenty-nine, independent of his 
 
 * Chalmers's English Poets, vol. vi. p. 4. f Act ii.
 
 603 
 
 contributions to the " Phoenix Nest" and " England's Helicon," and 
 five more are recorded by Mr. Park in the Censura Literaria, * 
 Most of these are poetical, some a mixed composition of rhyme and 
 prose, and a few entirely prose ; they are all extremely scarce, cer- 
 tainly not the consequence of mediocrity or want of notice, for they 
 have been praised by Puttenham f. Meres :{;, and Phillips ; and one of 
 his most beautiful ballads is inserted in "The Muse's Library," 1740. 
 After a lapse of twenty-five years, Dr. Percy recalled the attention 
 of the public to our author by inserting in his Reliques the same 
 piece which Mrs. Cowper had previously chosen §; in 1801 Mr. 
 Ellis favoured us with eight specimens, from his pamphlets and 
 " England's Helicon ||," and Mr. Park has since added two very 
 valuable extracts to the number. H These induce us to wish for 
 a more copious selection, and at the same time enable us to declare, 
 that as a lyric and pastoral poet he possessed, if not a splendid, yet 
 a pleasing and elegant flow of fancy, together with great sweetness 
 and simplicity of expression, and a more than common portion of 
 metrical harmony. 
 
 He is supposed, on the authority of an epitaph in the church of 
 Norton, a village in Northamptonshire, to have died on the 22d of 
 June 1624. • 
 
 3. Browne, William, was born at Tavistock, in Devonshire, in 
 1590, and, there is reason to suppose, began very early to cultivate 
 his poetical talents ; for in the first book of his Britannias Pastorals, 
 which were published in folio, in 1613, when in his twenty-third 
 year, he speaks of himself, " as weake in yeares as skill'," an expres- 
 
 * Vol.ix. p. 163. 
 
 f Arte of English Poesic, reprint of 181 1, p. 49. 
 X Vide Censura Literaria, vol. ix. p. 47. 
 § Percy's Reliques, vol. iii. p. 62. 
 H Specimens of the Early English Poets, vol. ii. p. 240. 
 f Censura Literaria, vol.ix. pp. 159. 161. 
 
 ' Shaw's Staffordshire, vol. i. p. 442. Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, p. 143. 
 f Chalmers's English Poets, vol. vi. p. 268. coU 2. 
 
 4 H 2
 
 604 
 
 sion which leads to the supposition that his earlier pastorals were 
 written before he had attained the age of twenty. Indeed all his 
 poetry appears to have been written previous to his thirtieth year. 
 In 1614, he printed in octavo, The Shepherds Pipe, in seven 
 eclogues ; in 1616, the second part of his Britannias Pastorals was 
 given to the public, and in 1620, his Inner Temple Mask is supposed 
 to have been first exhibited. 
 
 Browne enjoyed a large share of popularity during his life-time ; 
 numerous commendatory poems are prefixed to the first edition of 
 his pastorals ; and, in a copy of the second impression of 1625, in 
 the possession of Mr. Beloe, and which seems to have been a presen- 
 tation copy to Exeter College, Oxford, of which Browne was a 
 member and Master of Arts, there are thirteen adulatory addi-esses 
 to the poet, from different students of this society, and in the hand- 
 writino- of each. * Among his earliest eulogists are found the great 
 characters Selden, Drayton, and Jonson, by whom he was highly 
 respected both as a poet and as a man ; and as a still more imperish- 
 able honour, we must not forget to mention, that he was a favourite 
 with our divine Milton. 
 
 Until lately? however, he has been under little obligation to sub- 
 sequent times ; nearly one hundred and fifty years elapsed before a 
 third edition of his poems employed the press ; this came out in 
 1772, under the auspices of Mr. Thomas Davies, and, with the 
 exception of some extracts in Hayward's British Muse, this long 
 interval passed without any attempt to revive his fame, by any judi- 
 cious specimens of his genius, f' A more propitious era followed the 
 republication of Davies ; in 1787, Mr. Headley obliged us with some 
 striking proofs of, and some excellent remarks on, his beauties ; in 
 1792, his whole works were incorporated in the edition of the poets, 
 by Dr. Anderson ; in 1801, Mr. Ellis gave further extension to his 
 fame by additional examples, and in 1810 his productions again 
 
 * Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, vol. vi. p. 58. et seq. 
 f It is sufficient praise, however, to remark, that Milton, both in his L' Allegro and his 
 Lycidas, is under many obligations to our author.
 
 605 
 
 became a component part of a body of English poetry in the very ela- 
 borate and comprehensive edition of the Enghsh Poets, by Mr. 
 Chalmers. 
 
 Still it appears to us, that sufficient justice has not, since the era 
 of Milton, been paid to his talents ; for, though it be true, as Mr. 
 Headley has observed, that puerilities, forced allusions, and conceits, 
 have frequently debased his materials ; yet are these amply atoned 
 for by some of the highest excellencies of his art ; by an imagination 
 ardent and fertile, and sometimes sublime ; by a vivid personification 
 of passion ; by a minute and truly faithful delineation of rural 
 scenery ; by a peculiar vein of tenderness which runs through the 
 whole of his pastorals, and by a versification uncommonly varied and 
 melodious. With these are combined a species of romantic extra- 
 vagancy which sometimes heightens, but more frequently degrades, 
 the effect of his pictures. Had he exhibited greater judgment in the 
 selection of his imagery, and greater simplicity in his style, his claim 
 on posterity had been valid, had been general and undisputed. 
 Browne is conjectured by Wood to have died in the winter of 1645. * 
 
 4. Chalkhill, John. This poet was the intimate friend of Spen- 
 ser, a gentleman, a scholar, and, to complete the encomium, a man 
 of strict moral character. He was the author of a pastoral history, 
 entitled, Thealma and Clearchus ; but " he died," relates Mrs. Cooper, 
 " before he could perfect even the Fable of his poem, and, by many 
 passages in it, I half believe, he had not given the last hand to what 
 he has left behind him. However, to do both him and his editor 
 
 * We are told by Prince, in his " Worthies of Devonshire," that as Browne " had 
 honoured his country with his sweet and elegant Pastorals, so it was expected, and he also 
 entreated a little farther to grace it by his drawing out the line of his poetic ancestors, 
 beginning in Joseph Iscanus, and ending in himself." Had this design been executed, 
 how much more full and curious had our information been witli regard to Shakspcare and 
 his contemporaries, and how much is it to be lamented that so noble a scheme was re- 
 linquished. 
 
 Since these critical notices were written. Sir Egerton Brydges has favoured the vvorld 
 with some hitherto unpublished poems of Browne; productions which not only support 
 the opinions given in the text, but which tend very considerably to heighten our estimation 
 of the genius and imagination of this fine old bard.
 
 606 
 
 justice, if my opinion can be of any weight, 'tis great pity so beautiful 
 a relique should be lost ; and the quotations I have extracted from it 
 will sufficiently evidence a fine vein of imagination, a taste far from 
 being indelicate, and both language and numbers uncommonly har- 
 monious and polite."* 
 
 The editor alluded to by Mrs. Cooper was the amiable Isaac 
 Walton, who published this elegant fragment in 8vo. in 1683, when 
 he was ninety years old, and who has likewise inserted two songs by 
 Chalkhill in his « Complete Angler." f 
 
 The pastoral strains of Chalkhill merit the eulogium of their female 
 critic ; the versification, more especially, demands our notice, and 
 may be described, in many instances, as possessing the spirit, variety, 
 and harmony of Dryden. To verify this assertion, let us listen to the 
 following passages ; describing the Golden age, he informs us, 
 
 " Their sheep found cloathing, earth provided food, 
 And Labour drest it as their wills thought good : 
 On unbought deUcates their hunger fed, 
 And for their drink the swelling clusters bled : 
 The vallies rang with their delicious strains, 
 And Pleasure revell'd on those happy plains." 
 
 How beautifully versified is the opening of his picture of the 
 Temple of Diana ! 
 
 " Within a little silent grove hard by, 
 Upon a small ascent, he might espy 
 A stately chapel, richly gilt without. 
 Beset with shady sycamores about : 
 And, ever and anon, he might well hear 
 A sound of music steal in at his ear 
 As the wind gave it Being : so sweet an air 
 Would strike a Syren mute and ravish her." 
 
 Pourtraying the cell of an Enchantress, he says, 
 
 " About the walls lascivious pictures hung, 
 Such as whereof loose Ovid sometimes sung. 
 
 Muses Library, 1741. p. 315. t Bagster's edit. 1808. p. 156.276.
 
 607 
 
 On eitlicr side a crew of dwarfisli Elves, 
 Held waxen tapers taller than themselves: 
 Yet so well shajvtl unto their little stature, 
 So angel-like in face, so sweet in feature; 
 Their i-ich attire so diff'ring, yet so well 
 Becoming her that wore it, none could tell 
 Which was the fairest ■ ." * 
 
 JMr. Beloe, in the first volume of his Anecdotes, p. 70., has given 
 us a Latin epitaph on a John Chalkhill, copied from Warton's History 
 of Winchester. This inscription tells us, that the person whom it 
 commemorates died a Fellow of Winchester College, on the 20th of 
 May, 1679, aged eighty ; and yet Mr. Beloe, merely from similarity 
 of name and character, contends that this personage must have been 
 the Chalkliill of Isaac Walton ; a supposition which a slight retro- 
 spection as to dates, would have proved impossible. Walton, in the 
 title-page of Thealma and Clearchus, describes Chalkhill as an 
 acquaintant and friend of Edmund Spenser ;" now as Spenser died in 
 •January, 1598, and the subject of this epitaph, aged 80, in 1679, the 
 latter must consequently have been born in 1599, the year after 
 Spenser's death ! The coincidence of character and name is certainly 
 remarkable, but by no means improbable or unexampled. 
 - 5. Chapman, George, who was born in 1557 and died in 1634, aged 
 $eventy-seven, is here introduced as the principal translator of his 
 age ; to him we are indebted for Homer, Musseus, and part of Hesiod. 
 His first published attempt on Homer appeared in 1592 f, under 
 the title of " Seaven Bookes of the Shades of Homere, Prince of 
 Poets ;" and shortly after the accession of James the First, the entire 
 Iliad was completed and entitled, " The Iliads of Homer, Prince of 
 Poets. Never before in any language truly translated. With a 
 comment upon some of his chief places : done according to the 
 Greeke." 
 
 * Muses Library, pp. 317. 319. 327. 
 
 t See- Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 83. llitson has erroneously dated this publication 
 
 1598.
 
 608 
 
 This version, which was highly prized by his contemporaries, is 
 executed in rhymed couplets, each line containing fourteen syllables ; 
 a species of versification singularly cumbrous and void of harmony ; 
 and, notwithstanding this protracted metre, fidelity is, by no means, 
 the characteristic of Chapman. He is not only often very para- 
 phrastic, but takes the liberty of omitting, without notice, what he 
 could not comprehend. It has been asserted by Pope, that a daring 
 fiery spirit, something like what we might imagine Homer himself to 
 have written before he arrived to years of discretion, animates his 
 translation, and covers his defects * ; an opinion which seems rather 
 the result of partiality than unbiassed judgment ; for though Chap- 
 man is certainly superior to his successor Hobbes, and occasionally 
 exhibits some splendid passages, he must be considered by every 
 critic of the present day as, in general, coarse, bombastic, and often 
 disgusting ; a violator, indeed, in almost every page, of the dignity 
 and simplicity of his original. 
 
 The magnitude and novelty of the undertaking, however, deserved 
 and met with encouragement, and Chapman was induced, in 1614, 
 to present the world with a version of the Odyssey. This is in the 
 pentameter couplet ; inferior in vigour to his Iliad, but in diction and 
 versification more chaste and natural. Of his Musaeus and his 
 Georgics of Hesiod, we shall only remark that the former was printed 
 in 1616, the latter in 1618, and that the first, which we have alone 
 seen, does not much exceed the character of mediocrity. As an original 
 writer, we shall have to notice Chapman under the dramatic depart- 
 ment, and shall merely add now, that he was, in a moral light, a very 
 estimable character, and the friend of Spenser, Shakspeare, Marlowe, 
 Daniel, and Drayton. 
 
 6. Churchyard, Thomas. This author merits notice rather for the 
 quantity than the quality of his productions, though a few of his pieces 
 deserve to be rescued from utter oblivion. He commenced a writer. 
 
 * Vide Pope's Preface to the Iliad ; and Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. 
 p. 442, 443.
 
 609 
 
 according to his own account*, in the reign of King Edward the 
 Sixth, and as Wood informs us that at the age of seventeen he went 
 to seek his fortune at court, and lived four years with Howard Earl 
 of Surry, who died 1546, it is probable that he was born about 1524, 
 Shrewsbury had the honour of producing him, and he continued 
 publishing poetical tracts until the accession of James the First. 
 Ritson has given us a catalogue, which might be enlarged, of seven- 
 teen of his publications, with dates, from 1558 to 1599, independent 
 of a variety of scattered pieces ; some of these are of such bulk as to 
 include from twelve to twenty subjects, and in framing their titles 
 the old bard seems to have been very partial to alliteration ; for we 
 have Churchyards Chippes, 1575; Churchyards Choice, 1579; 
 Churchyards Charge, 1580; Churchyards Change; Churchyards 
 Chance, 1580; Churchyards Challenge, 1593; and Churchyards 
 Charity, 1595. f In the " Mirror for Magistrates," first published in 
 1559, he contributed " The Legend of Jane Shore," which he after- 
 wards augmented in his " Challenge," by the addition of twenty-one 
 stanzas ; this is perhaps the best of his poetical labours, and contains 
 several good stanzas. His " Worthiness of Wales," also, first pub- 
 lished in 1587, and reprinted a few years ago, is entitled to preserv- 
 arion. This pains-taking author, as Ritson aptly terms him, died 
 poor on April 4th, 1604, after a daily exertion of his pen, in the 
 service of the Muses, for nearly sixty years. 
 
 7. Constable, Henry, of whom little more is personally known, 
 than that he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts at St. John's 
 College, Cambridge, in 1579 % ; that he was compelled to leave his 
 native countrv from a zealous attachment to the Roman Catholic 
 religion, and that, verituring to return, he was imprisoned in the 
 
 • In his " Challenge," he tells us, that his first publication was " a book named Davie 
 Dicars Dream, in King Edward's dales." 
 
 f This publication, which was likewise called " A Musicall Coii&ort of licavenly Har- 
 monic," is not mentioned by Ritson, 
 
 X Vide Bibliographia Poetica, p. 169. 
 
 VOL. I, 4 J
 
 610 
 
 Tower of London, but released towards the close of 1604. * Con- 
 stable possessed unrivalled repulation with his contemporaries as a 
 writer of sonnets ; Jonson terms his muse " ambrosiack f i" in The 
 Return from Parnassus, 1606, we are told that 
 
 " Sweet Constable doth take the wondring ear 
 And lays it up in willing prisonment ;" | 
 
 and Bolton calls him " a great master in English tongue," and adds, 
 " nor had any gentleman of our nation a more pure, quick, or higher 
 delivery of conceit; witness among all other, that Sonnet of his 
 before his Majesty's Lepanto." § In consequence of these encomia 
 more modern authors have prolonged the note of praise ; Wood 
 describes him as " a noted English poet || ;" Hawkins, as the " first, 
 or principal sonnetteer of his time H, " and Warton, as " a noted 
 sonnet-writer." ' 
 
 To justify the reputation thus acquired, we have two collections of 
 his sonnets still existing; one published in 1594, under the title of 
 " Diana, or the excellent conceitful sonnets of H. C. augmented with 
 divers quatorzains of honorable and learned personages, devided into 
 viij Decads ;" and the other a manuscript in the possession of Mr. 
 Todd, consisting of sonnets divided into three parts, each part 
 containing three several arguments, and every argument seven 
 sonnets. "" 
 
 From the specimens which we have seen of his Diana, and from 
 the sonnet extracted by Mr. Todd from the manuscript collection, 
 there can be little hesitation in declaring, that the reputation which 
 
 * Vide Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. ; and Winwood's Memor. vol. ii. 
 p. 36. 
 
 f Underwood's edit, of 1640, folio, p. 196. 
 
 X Ancient British Drama, vol. i. p. 49. col. 1. 
 
 § Brydge's Theatrum Poetarum, p. 268. 
 
 II Athenae Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 14. 
 
 H Origin of the English Drama, vol. iii. p. 212. 
 
 Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 292. note. 
 ' Todd's Milton, 2d. edit. vol. vi. p. 439.
 
 611 
 
 Constable once enjoyed, was built upon no stable foundation, and that 
 mediocrity is all which the utmost indulgence of the present age can 
 allow him. 
 
 8. Daniel, Samuel, a poet and historian of no small repute, was 
 born near Taunton, in Somersetshire, in 1562. Having received a 
 classical education at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and being afterwards 
 enabled to pursue his studies under the patronage of the Earl of 
 Pembroke's family, he became the most correct poet of his age. He 
 commenced author as early as 1585, by a translation of Paulus 
 Jovius's Discourse of rare Inventions ; but his first published 
 poems appear to have been his Delia, a collection of Sonnets, with 
 the complaint of Rosamond, 1592. He continued to write until 
 nearly the close of his life, for the Second Part of his History of 
 England was pubhshed in 1618, and he died on the 14th of Octo- 
 ber 1619. 
 
 Of the poetry of Daniel, omitting for the present all notice of his 
 dramatic works, the most important are his Sonnets ta Delia, the 
 History of the Civil War, the Complaint of Rosammid and the Letter 
 from Octavia to Marcus Antonius ; the remainder consistino- of occa- 
 sional pieces, and principally of Epistles to his friends arid patrons. 
 
 The Sonnets are; not generally constructed on the legitimate or 
 Petrarcan model ; but they present us with some beautiful versifica- 
 tion and much pleasing imagery. The " Civil Wars between the two 
 houses of Lancaster and York," the first four books of which were 
 published in 1595, and the eighth and last in 1609, form iht metgrium 
 opus of Daniel, and to which he looked for fame with posterity. 
 That he has been disappointed, must be attributed to his having too 
 rigidly adhered to the truth of history ; for aspiring rather at the cor- 
 rectness of the annalist than the fancy of the poet, he rarely attempts 
 the elevation of his subject by any flight of imagination, or digres- 
 sional ornaments. Sound morality, prudential wisdom, and occasional 
 touches of the pathetic, delivered in a style of then imequalled 
 chastity and perspicuity, will be recognised throughout his work ; 
 but neither warmth, passion, nor sublimity, nor the most distant trace 
 
 4i 2
 
 612 
 
 of enthusiasm can be found to animate the mass. In the Complaint 
 of Rosamond, and in the Letter from Octavia, he has copied the 
 manner of Ovid, though with more tenderness and pathos than are 
 usually found in the pages of the Roman. 
 
 In short, purity of language, elegance of style, and harmony of ver- 
 sification, together with an almost perfect freedom from pedantry 
 and affectation, and a continual flow of good sense and just reflection, 
 form the merits of Daniel, and resting on these qualities he is enti- 
 tled to distinguished notice, as an improver of our diction and taste ; 
 but to the higher requisites of his art, to the fire and invention of 
 the creative bard, he has few pretensions. 
 
 Daniel was the intimate friend of Shakspeare, Marlowe, Chap- 
 man, Camden, and Cowel ; and was so highly esteemed by the 
 accomplished Anne, Countess of Pembroke, that she not only erected 
 a monument to his memory in Beckington church, Somersetshire, 
 but in a full length of herself, at Appleby Castle in Cumberland, had 
 a small portrait of her favourite poet introduced. * This partiality 
 seems to have sprvmg from a connection not often productive of at- 
 tachment ; Daniel had been her tutor when she was only thirteen 
 years old, and in his poems he addresses an epistle to her at this early 
 age, which, as Mr. Park has justly said, " deserves entire perusal for 
 its dignified vein of delicate admonition." f Dissatisfied with the 
 opinions of his contemporaries as to his poetical merit, which ap- 
 pears to have been similar to the estimate that we have just given :|:, 
 he relinquished the busy world, and spent the closing years of his Hfe 
 in the cultivation of a farm. 
 
 * Percy's Reliques, vol. i. p. 328. 
 
 f Park's Royal and Noble Authors, vol. iii. p. 167. note. 
 
 X Thus Drayton speaks of him as 
 
 " too much historian in verse. 
 
 His rhimes were smooth, his metres well did close ; 
 
 But yet his manner better fitted prose;" 
 and Bolton describes his works as containing " somewhat a flat, but yet withal a very pure 
 and copious English, and words as warrantable as any man's, and fitter perhaps for prose 
 than measure."
 
 613 
 
 9. Davies, Sir John, was born at Chisgrovc in Wiltshire in 1570. 
 Though a lawyer of great eminence, he is chiefly knoAvn to posterity 
 through the medium of his poetical works. His Nosce Teipswn, or 
 poem on the Immortality of the Soul, on which fame rests, was pub- 
 lished in 1599, and not only secured him the admiration of his 
 learned contemporaries, among whom may be recorded tlie great 
 names of Camden, Harrington, Jonson, Selden, and Corbet, but 
 accelerated his professional honours ; for being introduced to James 
 in Scotland, in order to congratulate him on his accession to the 
 throne of England, the king, on hearing his name, enquired " if he 
 was Nosce Teipswn ? and being answered in the affirmative, gra- 
 ciously embraced him, and took him into such favour, that he soon 
 made him his Solicitor, and then Attorney-General in Ireland." * 
 
 Beside this philosophical poem, the earliest of which our lan- 
 guage can boast, Sir John printed, in 1596, a series of Epigrams, 
 which were published at Middleburg, at the close of Mar- 
 lowe's translation of Ovid's Epistles, and in the same year the first 
 edition of his " Orchestra, or a poeme of dauncing ;" these, with 
 twenty-six acrostics on the words Elizabetha Regina, printed in 
 1599, and entitled " Hymns of Astraea," complete the list of his 
 publications. 
 
 His " Nosce Teipsum" is a piece of close reasoning in verse, 
 peculiarly harmonious for the period in which it appeared. It 
 possesses, also, wit, ingenuity, vigour and condensation of thought, 
 but exhibits few efforts of imagination, and nothing that is either 
 pathetic or sublime. In point of argument, metaphysical acuteness 
 and legitimate deduction, the English poet is, in every respect, supe- 
 rior to his classical model Lucretius ; but how greatly does he fall 
 beneath the fervid genius and creative fancy of the Latian bard ! 
 
 Sir John died suddenly on the 7th of December 1626, in the fifty- 
 seventh year of his age. 
 
 * Br^dges's Theatium Poetarum, p. 273.
 
 614 
 
 10. Davors, John. Of' this poet little more is known, than that he 
 pubhshed, in 1613, the tbllovving work : "The Secrets of Angling : 
 teacliing the choicest Tooles, Baits, and Seasons, for the taking of 
 any Fish, in Pond or River : practised and familiarly opened in three 
 Bookes." 12mo. 
 
 Upon a subject so technical and didactic, few opportunities for 
 poetical imagery might naturally be expected ; but Davors has most 
 happily availed himself of those which occurred, and has rendered 
 his poem, in many places, highly interesting by beauty of senti- 
 ment, and warmth of description. A lovely specimen of his powers 
 may be found in the " Complete Angler" of Isaac Walton *, and the 
 following invocation, from the opening of the First Book, shall be 
 given as a further proof of the genuineness of his inspiration, and 
 with this additional remark, that his versification is throughout sin- 
 gularly harmonious : — 
 
 « You Nimphs that in the springs and waters sweet, 
 
 Your dwelling have, of every hill and dale, 
 And oft amidst the meadows green do meet 
 
 To sport and play, and hear the nightingale. 
 And in the rivers fresh do wash you feet. 
 
 While Progne's sister tels her wofuU tale : 
 Such ayd and power unto my verses lend, 
 As may suffice this little worke to end. 
 
 And thou, sweet Boyd, that with thy wat'ry sway 
 
 Dost wash the Cliifes of Deignton and of Week, 
 And through their rocks with crooked winding way. 
 Thy mother Avon runnest soft to seek ; 
 
 In whose fair streams, the speckled trout doth play. 
 The roch, the dace, the gudgin, and the bleike: 
 
 Teach me the skill with sjender line and hook 
 
 Tci take each fish of river, pond, and brook." 
 
 A second edition of " The Secrets of Angling," " augmented 
 with many approved experiments," by W. Lawson, was printed in 
 1652, and a third would be acceptable even in the present day. 
 
 * Vide Bagster's edit. p. 128-
 
 615 
 
 11. Donne, John, D.D. The greater part of the poetry oftliis prelate, 
 though not pubhshed, was written, according to Ben Jonson, beibve 
 he was twenty-five years of age; and as he was born in London in 
 1573, he must consequently be ranked as a bard of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. His poems consist of elegies, satires, letters, epigrams, divine 
 poems, and miscellaneous pieces, and procured for him, among his 
 contemporaries, through private circulation and with the public when 
 printed, during the greater part of the seventeenth century, an extra- 
 ordinary share of reputation. A more refined age, however, and a 
 more chastised taste, have very justly consigned his poetical labours 
 to the shelf of the philologer. A total want of harmony in versifica^ 
 tion, and a total want of simplicity both in thought and expression, 
 are the vital defects of Donne. Wit he has in abundance, and even 
 erudition, but they are miserably misplaced ; and even his amatory 
 pieces exhibit little else than cold conceits and metaphysical subtle- 
 ties. He may be considered as one of the principal establishers of a 
 school of poetry founded on the worst Italian model, commencing 
 towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, continued to the decease of 
 Charles the Second, and including among its most brilliant cultivators 
 the once popular names of Crashaw, Cleveland, Cowley, and Sprat. 
 
 Dr. Donne died in March 1631, and the first edition of his poems 
 was published by his son two years after that event. 
 
 12. Drayton, Michael, of an ancient family in Leicestershire, was 
 born in the village of Harshul, in the parish of Atherston, in War- 
 wickshire, in 1563. Tliis voluminous and once highly-popular poet 
 has gradually sunk into a state of undeserved oblivion, from which he 
 can alone be extricated by a judicious selection from his numerous 
 works. These may be classed under the heads of historical, topogra- 
 phical, epistolary, pastoral, and miscellaneous poetry. The first includes 
 his Barons Warres, first published in 1596 under the title of" Morti- 
 meriades ; the lamentable Civil Warres of Edward the Second, *nd 
 the Barons;" hh Legends^wxiiien before 1598 and printed in an 
 octavo edition of his poems in 1613, and his Battle of Agincourt. It 
 cannot be denied that in these pieces there are occasional gleams of
 
 616 
 
 imagination, many just reflections, and many laboured descriptions, 
 delivered in perspicuous language, and generally ift -smooth versifi- 
 cation ; but they do not interest the heart or elevate the fancy ; they 
 are tediously and minutely historical, void of passion, and, for the 
 most part, languid and prosaic. The second department exhibits the 
 work on which he rested his hopes of immortality, the elaborate and 
 highly-finished Poly-olbion, of which the first eighteen songs made 
 their appearance in 1612, accompanied by the very erudite notes of 
 Selden, and the whole was completed in thirty parts in 1622. The 
 chief defect in this singular poem results from its plan ; to describe 
 the woods, mountains, vallies, and rivers of a country, with all their 
 associations, traditionary, historical, and antiquarian, forms a task 
 which no genius, however exalted, could mould into an interesting 
 whole, and the attempt to enliven it by continued personification has 
 only proved an expedient which still further taxes the patience of the 
 reader. It possesses, however, many beauties which are poetically 
 great; numerous delineations which are graphically correct, and a 
 fidelity with regard to its materials so unquestioned, as to have 
 merited the reference of Hearne and Wood, and the praise of Gough, 
 who tells us that the Poly-olbion has preserved many circumstances 
 which even Camden has omitted. It is a poem, in short, which will 
 always be consulted rather for the information that it conveys, than 
 for the pleasure that it produces. 
 
 To England's Heroical Epistles, which constitute the third class, 
 not much praise can now be allotted, notwithstanding they were once 
 the most admired of the author's works. Occasional passages may, it 
 is true, be selected, which merit approbation for novelty of imagery 
 and beauty of expression ; but nothing can atone for their wanting 
 what, from the nature of the subjects chosen, should have been their 
 leading characteristic — pathos. 
 
 It is chiefly as a pastoral poet that Drayton will live in the memory 
 of his countrymen. The shepherd's reed was an early favourite ; for 
 in 1593 he published his " Idea : the Shepherd's Garland, fashioned 
 in nine Eglogs : and Rowland's Sacrifice to the nine Muses," which
 
 617 
 
 were reprinted under the title of Pastorals, and with the addition of a 
 tenth eclogue. His attachment to rural imagery was nearly as 
 durable as his existence ; for the year previous to his death he 
 brought forward another collection of pastorals, under the title of 
 The Muses El'mum. Of these publications, the first is in every 
 respect superior, and gives the author a very high rank among rural 
 bards ; his descriptions are evidently drawn from nature ; they often 
 possess a decided originality, and are couched in language pure and 
 unaiFected, and of the most captivating simplicity. 
 
 The miscellaneous productions of Drayton include a vast variety of 
 pieces; odes, elegies, sonnets, religious effusions, &c. &c. To specify 
 the individual merit of these would be useless ; but among them are 
 two which, from their peculiar value, call for appropriate notice. A 
 most playful and luxuriant imagination is displayed to much advan- 
 tage in the Nt/mphidia, or The Court of Fairy, and an equal degree of 
 judgment, together with a large share of interest, in the poem 
 addressed to his loved friend Henry Reynolds, On Poets arid Poesy. 
 These, with the first collection of pastorals, part of the second, and 
 some well-chosen extracts from his bulkier works, would Jbrm a most 
 fascinating little volume. Drayton died on December 23. 1631, and 
 was buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 13. Dbummond, William. The birth of this truly elegant poet is 
 placed at Hawthornden in Scotland, on the 13th of December, 1585, 
 and the publication of the first portion of his Sonnets, in 1616, entitles 
 him to due notice among these critical sketches. 
 
 A disappointment of the most afflictive nature, for death snatched 
 from him the object of his affection almost immediately after she had 
 consented to be his, has given a peculiar and very pathetic interest 
 to the greater part of his poetical compositions, which are endeared 
 to the reader of sensibility by the charm resulting from a sincere and 
 never-dying regret for the memory of his earliest love. 
 
 His poetry, which has never yet been properly arranged, consists 
 principally of poems of a lyrical cast, including sonnets, madrigals, 
 epigrams, epitaphs, miscellanies, and divine poems. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 k
 
 618 
 
 Of these classes, the first and second exhibit numerous instances of 
 a versification decidedly more polished and elegant than that of any 
 of his contemporaries, and to this technical merit is frequently to be 
 added the still more rare and valuable distinctions of beauty of 
 expression, simplicity of thought, delicacy of sentiment, and tenderness 
 of feeling. Wliere he has failed, his faults are to be attributed to the 
 then prevailing taste for Italian concetti ; to the study of Marino, and 
 his French imitators, Bellay and Du Bartas. These deviations from 
 correct taste are, however, neither frequent nor flagrant, and are 
 richly atoned for by strains of native genius, and the felicities of 
 unaffected diction. * 
 
 Drummond was the intimate friend of Drayton, the Earl of Stirling, 
 and Ben Jonson ; the latter holding him in such estimation as to 
 undertake a journey to Scotland on foot, solely for the pui-pose of 
 enjoying his company and conversation. How far this meeting con- 
 tributed to enhance their mutual regard, is doubtful ; no two cha- 
 racters could be more opposed, the roughness and asperity of Jonson 
 ill according with the elegant manners of the Scottish poet, whose 
 manuscript memoranda relative to this intendew plainly intimate his 
 disapprobation of the disposition and habits of his celebrated guest ; 
 but, unfortunately, at the same time, display a breach of confidence, 
 and a fastidiousness of temper, which throw a shade over the integrity 
 of his own friendship, and the rectitude of his own feelings. 
 
 This accomplished bard died on the 4th of December 1649, aged 
 sixty-three, and though his poems wei*e republished by Phillips, the 
 nephew of Milton, in 1656, with a high encomium on his genius, he 
 continued so obscure, that in 1675, when the Theatrum Poetarum of 
 the same critic appeared, he is said to be " utterly disregarded and laid 
 aside f ;" a fate which, strange as it may seem, has, vmtil these few 
 
 * Lord Woodhouslee, speaking of our author's poem entitled, Forth Feasting, observes 
 that it " attracted the envy as well as the praise of Ben Jonson, is superior, in harmony 
 of numbers, to any of the compositions of the contemporary poets of England ; and is, in 
 its subject, one of the'most elegant panegyrics that ever were addressed by a poet to a 
 prince." — Life of Lord Kaimes. 
 
 f Theatrum Poetarum, p. 195. original edition.
 
 619 
 
 years, almost completely veiled the merit of one of* the first poets 
 of the sister kingdom. 
 
 14. Faiuefax, Edward. The singular beauty of this gentleman's 
 translation of Tasso, and its influence on English versification, demand 
 a greater share of notice than is due to any poetical version preceding 
 that of Pope. He was the son of Sir Thomas Fairefax, of Denton in 
 Yorkshire, and early cultivating the enjoyment of rural and domestic 
 life, retired with the object of his affections to Newhall, in the parish 
 of Fuyistone, in Knaresborough foi'est, where he usefully occupied 
 his time in the education of his children, and the indulgence of 
 literary pursuits. His " Godfrey of Bulloigne," the work which has 
 immortalised his name, was written whilst he was very young, was 
 published in 1600, and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 This masterly version, which for the last half century has been 
 most undeservedly neglected, has not hitherto been superseded by 
 any posterior attempt. Though rendered line by line, and in the 
 octave stanza of the Italians, it possesses an uncommon share of 
 elegance, vigour, and spirit, and very frequently exhibits the facility 
 and raciness of original composition. That it contributed essentially 
 towards the improvement of our versification, may be proved from 
 the testimony of Dryden and Waller, the former declaring him 
 superior in harmony even to Spenser, and the latter confessing that 
 he owed the melody of his numbers to a studious imitation of his 
 metrical skill. * 
 
 It is greatly to be regretted that the original poetry of Fairefax, with 
 the exception of one piece, has been suffered to perish. It consisted 
 
 * Dr. Johnson was of opinion that the translation of Mr. Hoole would entirely super- 
 sede the labours of Fairefax. With no discriminating judge of poetry, however, will this 
 ever be the case; there is a tameness and mediocrity in the version of Mi-. Hoole, which 
 must always place it far beneath the spirited copy of the elder bard. Had Mr. Brookes 
 completed the Jerusalem with the same harmony and vigour which he has exhibited in the 
 first three books, a desideratum in English literature had been supphcd, and the immortal 
 poem of Tasso had appeared clothed in diction and numbers worthy of the most polished 
 era of oyr poetry. 
 
 4k 2
 
 o, 
 
 620 
 
 of a poetical history of the Black Prince, and twelve Eclogues, of 
 which the fourth is preserved by Mrs. Cooper in her Muses' Library. 
 This lady informs us that the eclogues were all written after the 
 accession of King James to the throne of England ; that they were 
 occupied by " important subjects relating to the manners, characters, 
 and incidents of the times he lived in ; that they were pointed with 
 many fine strokes of satire ; dignified with wholesome lessons of 
 morality, and policy, to those of the highest rank; and some modest 
 hints even to Majesty itself;" and that the learning they contained 
 was " so various and extensive, that, according to the evidence of his 
 son, (who has written large Annotations on each,) no man's reading, 
 beside his ov/n, was sufficient to explain his references effectually." * 
 
 Fairefax died about the year 1632 ; and, beside his poetical works, 
 was the author of several controversial pieces, and of a learned essay 
 on Demonology. 
 
 15. FiTZGEFFREY, Charles, was a native of Cornwall, of a genteel 
 family, and was entered a commoner of Broadgate's hall, Oxford, in 
 1592, Having taken his degrees in arts, and assumed the clerical 
 profession, he finally became rector of St. Dominic in his own county. 
 In 1596, he published a poem to the memory of Sir Francis Drake, 
 entitled " Sir Francis Drake his honorable Life's commendation ; 
 and his tragicall Deathe's lamentation ;" 12mo. This' poem, which 
 possesses no small portion of merit, is dedicated, in a sonnet, " to the 
 beauteous and vertuous Lady Elizabeth, late wife unto the highlie 
 renowned Sir Francis Drake, deceased," and is highly spoken of by 
 Browne and Meres ; the former declaring that he unfolded 
 
 " The tragedie of Drake in leaves of gold ;" f 
 
 and the latter asserting that " as C. Plinius wrote the life of Pom- 
 ponius secundus, so yong Cha. Fitz-Geffray, that high-touring falcon, 
 
 * Muses Library, 1741. p. 363. 
 
 •j- Chalmers's English Poets, vol. vi. p. 295. col.
 
 621 
 
 Imtli most gloriouvsly penned the honourable hie and death of worthy 
 Sir Francis Drake."* 
 
 As the poetry of Fitzgeffrey is very little known, we shall give the 
 Sonnet to Lady Drake as a pleasing specimen of his genius: 
 
 " Divorc'd by Deatli, but wedded still by Love, 
 
 For Love by Death can never be divorc'd ; 
 
 Loe ! England's dragon, thy true turtle dove. 
 
 To seeke his make is now agalne enforc'd. 
 Like as the sparrow from the kestrel's ire, 
 
 Made his asylum in the wise man's fist: 
 So, he and I, his tongues-man, do require 
 
 Thy sanctuary, envie to resist. 
 So may heroique Drake, whose worth gave wings 
 
 Unto my Muse, that nere before could fly. 
 And taught her tune these harsh discordant strings 
 
 A note above her rurall minstrelsy. 
 Live in himselfe, and I in him may live; 
 Thine eyes to both vitality shall give." f 
 
 Beside his volume on Drake, Fitzgeffrey was the author of a 
 collection of Latin epigrams, in three books, under the title of 
 AffanicB, printed in 8vo., 1601, and of a religious poem, called " The 
 Blessed Birth-day," 1634, 4to. He lived highly respected both as a 
 poet and divine, and died at his parsonage-house in 1636-7. 
 
 16. Fletcher, Giles, the elder brother of Phineas Fletcher, was 
 born in 1588, took the degree of bachelor of divinity at Oxford, and 
 died at his rectory of Alderton, in Suffolk, in 1623. The production 
 which has given him a poet's fame, was published in 1610, under the 
 title of " Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over 
 and after Death," Cambridge, 4to. It is written in stanzas of eight 
 lines, and divided into four parts, under the appellations of Chrisfs 
 Victory in Heaven, his Triumph on Earth, his Triumph over Death, 
 and his Triumph after Death. 
 
 This is a poem which exhibits strong powers of description, and a 
 
 * Censura Literaria, vol. ix. p. 53. 
 
 t Vide British Bibliographer, No. VIL p. 118.
 
 622 
 
 great command of language ; it is, however, occasionally sullied by 
 conceits, and by a frequent play upon words, of which the initial 
 stanza is a striking proof. Our author was an ardent admirer of 
 Spenser, and has in many instances successfully imitated his pic- 
 turesque mode of delineation, though he has avoided following him 
 in the use of the prosopopeia. 
 
 17. Fletcher, Phineas, who surpassed his brother in poetical 
 genius, took his bachelor's degree at King's College, Cambridge, in 
 1604, and his master's degree in 1608. Though his poems were not 
 published until 1633, there is convincing proof that they were 
 written before 1610 ; for Giles, at the close of his " Christ's Victory," 
 printed in this year, thus beautifully alludes not only to his brother's 
 Purple Island, but to his eclogues, as previous compositions : — 
 
 « But let the Kentish lad, that lately taught 
 His oaten reed the trumpets silver sound, 
 Young Thyrsilis ; and for his music brought 
 The willing spheres from Hcav'n, to lead around 
 The dancing nymphs and swains, that sung, and crown'd 
 Eclectas Hymen with ten thousuisd flowers 
 Of choicest praise, and hung her heav'nly bow'rs 
 With saffron garlands, dress'd for nuptial paramours: 
 
 Let his shrill trumpet, with her silver blast 
 Of fair Eclccta, and her spousal bed, 
 Be the sweet pipe, and smooth encomiast : 
 But my green Muse, hiding her younger head, 
 Under old Camus's flaggy banks, that spread 
 
 Their willow locks abroad, and all the day 
 
 With their own wa'try shadows wanton play : 
 Dai-es not those high amours, and love-sick songs assay." * 
 
 It is, indeed, highly probable, that they were composed even 
 before he took his bachelor's degree ; for, in the dedication of his 
 " Purple Island" to his learned friend, Edward Benlowes, Esq., he 
 terms them " raw essays of my very unripe years, and almost 
 childliood."t 
 
 Chalmers's English Poets, vol.vi. p. 79. col. 2. t Ibid, vol.vi. p. 81.
 
 The " Purple Island" is an allegorical description, in twelve 
 cantos, of the corporeal and intellectual functions of man. Its 
 interest and effect have been greatly injured by a too minute investi- 
 gation of anatomical facts ; the first five cantos being little else than a 
 lecture in rime, and productive more of disgust than any other sensa- 
 tion. In the residue of the poem, the bard bursts forth with 
 unshackled splendour, and the passions and mental powers are 
 personified with great brilliancy of imagination, and great wai-mth of 
 colouring. Like his brother, however, he is defective in taste ; the 
 great charm of composition, simplicity, is too often lost amid the 
 mazes of quaint conception and meretricious ornament. Yet are 
 there passages interspersed through this allegory, of exquisite tender- 
 ness and sweetness, alike simple and correct in diction, chaste in 
 creative power, and melodious in versification. 
 
 The " Piscatory Eclogues," to novelty of scenery, add many pas- 
 sages of genuine and delightful poetry, and the music of the verse is 
 often highly gratifying to the ear ; but many of the same faults are 
 discernible in these pieces, which we remarked in the " Purple 
 Island ;" pedantry and forced conceits occasionally intrude, and, 
 though the poet has not injured the effect of his delineations by 
 coarseness, or rusticity of expression, he has sometimes forgotten the 
 simple elegance which should designate the pastoral muse. 
 
 Our author was presented to the living of Hilgay, in Norfolk, in 
 1621, and died there about the year 1650. 
 
 18. Gascoigne, George, the son of Sir John Gascoigne, was 
 descended from an ancient family in Essex, and, after a private edu- 
 cation under the care of Stephen Nevinson, L.L.D. he was sent to 
 Cambridge, and from thence to Gray's Inn, for the purpose of study- 
 ing the law. Like many men, however, of warm passions and strong 
 imagination, he neglected his profession for the amusements and 
 dissipation of a com-t, and having exhausted his paternal property, 
 he found himself under the necessity of seeking abroad, in a military 
 capacity, that support which he had failed to acquire at home. He 
 accordingly accepted a Captain's commission in Holland, in 1572,
 
 624 
 
 under William Prince of Orange, and having sisnalised his couraoe 
 at the siege of Middleburg, had the misfortune to be captured by 
 the Spaniards near Leyden, and, after four month's imprisonment, 
 revisited his native covmtry. 
 
 He now resumed his profession and his apartments at Gray's Inn ; 
 but in 1575, on his return from accompanying Queen Elizabeth in 
 her progress to Kenelworth Castle, he fixed his residence at his 
 " poore house," at Walthamstow, where he employed himself 
 in collecting and publishing his poems. He was not long- 
 destined, however, to enjoy this literary leisure ; for, according to 
 George ^Vhetstone, who was " an eye-witness of his godly and cha- 
 ritable end in this world *," he expired at Stamford, in Lincolnshire, 
 on the 7th of October, 1577, when he was probably under forty 
 years of age. f- 
 
 The poetry of Gascoigne was twice collected during his life-time ; 
 firstly, in 1572, in a quarto volume, entitled, " A Hundreth sundrie 
 Flowres bounde up in one small Poesie. Gathered partely (by trans- 
 lation) in the fyne outlandish Gardins of Euripides, Ovid, Petrarke, 
 Ariosto, and others : and partly by invention, out of our owne 
 fruitefuU Orchardes in Englande: Yielding sundrie sweet savors of 
 
 * Whetstone published a pamphlet, entitled, " A Remembrance of the wel imployed 
 life and godly end of George Gaskoigne Esquire, who deceased at Stalmford in Lincolnc 
 Shire, the 7th of October 1577« The reporte of George Whetstone Gent, an eye wit- 
 ness of his Godly and charitable end in this world. Forma nulla Fides. Imprinted At 
 London for Edward Aggas, dwelling in Pauls Churchyard and are there to be solde." 
 " Since the antiquities of poetry," observes Mr. Chalmers, " have become a favourite 
 study, many painful inquiries have been made after this tract, but it could not be found in 
 Tanner's Library, which forms part of the Bodleian, or in any other collection, private or 
 public, and doubts were entertained whether such a pamphlet had ever existed. About 
 three years ago, however, it was discovered in the collection of a deceased gentleman, a 
 Mr. Voight, of the Custom-house, London, and was purchased at his sale by Mr. Malone. 
 It consists of about thirteen pages small quarto, black letter, and contains, certainly not 
 much life, but some particulars unknown to his biographers."— English Poets, vol. ii. 
 p.447, 4'18. 
 
 t For further particulars of his life see Chalmers's English Poets, vol. ii. p. 447. et 
 seq., Censura Literaria, vol. i. p. 110., and British Bibliographer, vol. i. 73.
 
 625 
 
 Tragical, Comical, and Morall Discourses, both pleasaunt and profit- 
 able to the well smellyng noses of learned Readers. Meritum petere, 
 grave. At London, Imprinted for Richarde Smith ;" and secondly 
 in 1575, with the title of " The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire. 
 Corrected, perfected and augmented by the Authour. Tarn Martiy 
 quam Mercurio. Imprinted at London by H. Bynneman for Richard 
 Smith." The edition is divided into three parts, under the appel- 
 lation of Flowers, Hearhes, and Weedes, to which are annexed 
 " Certayne notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or 
 ryme in English, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati." 
 
 Besides these collections, Gascoigne published separately, " The 
 Glasse of Government. A Tragical Comedie," 1575. " The Steele 
 Glas. A Satyre," 1576. " The Princely Pleasures, at the Court at 
 Kenelworth," 1576 ; and " A Delicate Diet for daintie mouthde 
 Drunkards," a prose tract, 1576. After his death appeared, in 1586, 
 his tract, entitled, " The Droome ofDoomes Day;" and in 1587, 
 was given to the world, a complete edition of his works, in small 
 quarto, black letter. 
 
 Gascoigne, though patronised by several illustrious characters, 
 among whom may be enumerated, Lord Grey of Wilton, the Earl of 
 Bedford, and Sir Walter Raleigh, appears to have suffered so much 
 from the envy and malignity of his critics, as to induce him to inti- 
 mate, that the disease of which he died, was occasioned by the 
 irritability of mind resulting from these attacks ; and yet, as far as we 
 have an opportunity of judging, his contemporaries seem to have 
 done justice to his talents ; at least Gabriel Harvey * and Arthur 
 Hallf, Nash:!:, Webbe ||, and Puttenham§, have together praised 
 him for his wit, his imagination, and his metre ; and in the Glosse 
 
 * Gratulationcs Valdinenses, edit. Binneman, 1578, 4to. lib. iv. p. 22. 
 t In his Dedication prefixed to his Translation of Ten Boolts of Homer. 
 X In his Address to Gentlemen Students, prefixed to Green's Arcadia. 
 § Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586. 
 II Arte of Poesie, 1589, reprint, p. 51. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 L
 
 626 
 
 to Spenser's Calender, he is styled " the very chief of our late 
 rymers. * 
 
 The poetry of our author has not, in modern times, met with all 
 the attention which it deserves ; specimens, it is true, have been 
 selected by Cooper, Percy, Warton, Headley, Ellis, Brydges, and 
 Haslewood; but, with the exception of the re-impi-ession of 1810, in 
 Ml-. Chalmers's English Poets, no edition of his works has been pub- 
 hshed since 1587. This is the more extraordinary, for, as the inge- 
 nious editor just mentioned has remarked, " there are three respects 
 in which his claims to originality require to be noticed as aeras in a 
 history of poetry. His Steele Glass is among the first specimens of 
 blank verse in our language ; his Jocasta is the second theatrical 
 piece written in that measure ; and his Supposes is the first comedy 
 wi'itten in prose. "f- Warton has pronounced him to have " much 
 exceeded all the poets of his age in smoothness and harmony of 
 versification J, an encomium which peculiarly applies to the lyrical 
 portion of his works, which is indeed exquisitely polished, though 
 ■not altogether free from aiFectation and antithesis. Among these 
 pieces, too, is to be discovered a considerable range of fancy, much 
 tenderness and glow of sentiment, and a frequent felicity of expres- 
 sion. In moral and didactic poetry, he has likewise afforded us 
 proofs approaching to excellence, and his satire entitled " The Steele 
 Glass," includes a curious and minute picture of the manners and 
 customs of the age. 
 
 To the " Supposes" of Gascoigne, a translation from the Suppotiti 
 of Ariosto, executed with peculiar neatness and ease, Shakspeare 
 has been indebted for a part of his plot of the " Taming of the 
 Shrew." § 
 
 19. Greene, Robert. Of this ingenious and prolific writer, we 
 
 * Todd's Spenser, vol. i. p. 191. Glosse to November, 
 
 f Chalmers's English Poets, vol. ii. p. 455. 
 
 % Observations on the Fairy Queen, vol. ii. p. 1 68. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 144. note 4.
 
 627 
 
 have already related so many particulars, that nothing more can be 
 wanting here, than a brief character of his poetical genius. Were his 
 poetry collected from his various pamphlets and plays, of w^hich 
 nearly fifty are known to be extant, a most intex'esting little volume 
 might be formed. The extreme rarity, however, of his productions, 
 may render this an object of no easy attainment ; but of its effect a 
 pretty accurate idea may be acquired from what has been done by 
 Mr. Beloe, who, in his Anecdotes of Literature, has collected many 
 beautiful specimens from the following pieces of our author. Tullies 
 Love, 1616; Penelojies Web, 1601 ; Fareveell to Follie, 1617; Never 
 Too Late, 1590 ; History of Arbasto, 1617 ; Arcadia, or Menaphor, 
 1589; Orphanio7i, 1599; Philo7nela, 1592.* 
 
 Though most of the productions of Greene were written to supply 
 the wants of the passing hour, yet the poetical effusions scattered 
 through his works betray few marks of haste or slovenliness, and 
 many of them, indeed, may be classed among the most polished and 
 elegant of their day. To much warmth and fertility of fancy, they 
 add a noble strain of feeling and enthusiasm, together with many ex- 
 quisite touches of the pathetic, and so many impressive lessons of 
 morality, as, in a great measure, to atone for the licentiousness of 
 several of his prose tracts, i^ 
 
 20. Hall, Joseph, Bishop of Exeter and Norwich, was born on the 
 first of July 1574, at Brestow Park, Leicestershire. He was admitted 
 of Emanuel College, Cambridge, at the age of fifteen, and when 
 twenty-three years old, published his satires, under the title of Virgi- 
 demiarum, Sixe Bookes. First Three Bookes of Tooth-less Satyrs : 
 1. Poetical; 2. Academicall; 3. Moral; printed by T. Creede for 
 R. Dexter 1597. The Three last Bookes of Byting Satyrs, by 
 
 * Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 191. etscq. ; and vol. vi. p. 1.21. 
 
 f The reprint which has just appeared of our author's Philomela, is a proof, however, 
 that his prose was occasionally the medium of sound instruction ; for the moral of this 
 piece is unexceptionable. We may also remark, that the confessions wrung from him in 
 the hour of repentance are highly monitory, and calculated to make the most powerful and 
 salutary impression. 
 
 4l 2
 
 628 
 
 R. Bradock for Dexter, 1598. Both parts were reprinted together in 
 1599, and have conferred upon their author a just claim to the appel- 
 lation of one of our earliest and best satiric poets. Of the legitimate 
 satire, indeed, he appears to have given vis the first example, an 
 honour upon which he justly prides himself, for, in the opening of his 
 prologue, he tells us 
 
 " I first adventure, with fool-hardy might, 
 To tread the steps of perilous despight: 
 I first adventure, follow me who list, 
 And be the second English satirist." 
 
 On the re-publication of the Virgidemiarum at Oxford, in 1752, 
 Gray, in a letter to Dr. Wliarton, speaking of these satires, says, 
 " they are full of spirit and poetry, as much of the first as Dr. Donne, 
 and far more of the latter * ;" and Warton, at the commencement 
 of an elaborate and extended critique on Hall's poetic genius, in the 
 Fragment of his fourth volume of the History of English Poetry, 
 gives the following very discriminative character of these satires. 
 They " are marked," he observes, " with a classical precision, to 
 which English poetry had yet rarely attained. They are replete 
 with animation of style and sentiment. The indignation of the 
 satirist is always the result of good sense. Nor are the thorns of 
 severe invective unmixed with the flowers of pure poetry. The 
 characters are delineated in strong and lively colouring, and their 
 discriminations are touched with the masterly traces of genuine 
 humour. The versification is equally energetic and elegant, and the 
 fabric of the couplets approaches to the modern standard. It is no 
 inconsiderable proof of a genius predominating over the general taste 
 of an age when every preacher was a punster, to have written verses, 
 where laughter was to be raised, and the reader to be entertained 
 with sallies of pleasantry, without quibbles and conceits. His chief 
 fault is obscurity, arising from a remote phraseology, constrained 
 
 Mason's Gray, p. 224.
 
 629 
 
 combinations, unfamiliar allusions, elliptical apostrophes, and abrupt- 
 ness of expression. Perhaps some will think that his manner betrays 
 too much of the laborious exactness and pedantic anxiety of the 
 scholar and the student. Ariosto in Italian, and Regnier in French, 
 were now almost the only modern writers of satire ; and I believe 
 there had been an Eno;lish translation of Ariosto's Satires. But 
 Hall's acknowledged patterns are Juvenal and Persius, not without 
 some touches of the urbanity of Horace. His parodies of these poets, 
 or rather his adaptations of ancient to modern manners, a mode of 
 imitation not unhappily practised by Oldham, Rochester, and Pope, 
 discover great facility and dexterity of invention. The moral gravity 
 and the censorial declamation of Juvenal, he frequently enlivens with 
 a train of more refined reflection, or adorns with a novelty and variety 
 of images." * 
 
 The Satires of Hall exhibit a very minute and curious picture of 
 the literature and manners, the follies and vices of his times, and 
 numerous quotations in the course of our work will amply prove the 
 wit, the sagacity, and the elegance of his Muse. Poetry was the 
 occupation merely of his youth, the vigour and decline of his days 
 being employed in the composition of professional works, calculated, 
 by their piety, eloquence, and originality, to promote, in the most 
 powerful manner, the best interests of morality and religion. This 
 great and good man died, after a series of persecution from the repub- 
 lican party, at his little estate at Heigham, near Norwich, on the 
 8th of September 1656, and in the eighty-second year of his age. 
 
 21. Harington, Sir John. Among the numerous translators of 
 the Elizabethan period, this gentleman merits peculiar notice, as 
 having, through the medium of his Ariosto, " enriched our poetry by 
 a communication of new stores of fiction and imagination, both of the 
 romantic and comic species, of Gothic machinery and familiar man- 
 ners." j- His version of the Orlando Furioso, of which the first 
 
 * Vide Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 226. 
 f Warton's Hist, of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 485.
 
 630 
 
 edition was published in 1591, procured him a large share of celebrity. 
 Stowe, in his Annals, has classed him among those excellent poets 
 which worthily flourish, in their own works, and lived together in 
 Queen Elizabeth's reign*;" and Fuller -j-, Philips, Dryden, and others, 
 to the middle of the eighteenth century, have spoken of him in terms 
 of similar commendation. In point of poetical execution, however, 
 his translation, whatever might be its incidental operation on our 
 poetic literature, must now be considered as vulgar, tame, and inaccu- 
 rate. Sir John was born at Kelston near Bath, in 1561, and died 
 there in 1612, aged fifty-one. His " Epigrams," in four Books, were 
 published after his death; first in 1615, when the fourth book alone 
 was printed ; again in 1618, including the whole collection; and a 
 third time in 1625, small 8vo. 1 The poetical merit of these pieces 
 is very trifling, but they throw light upon contemporai-y character 
 and manners. § 
 
 22. JoNSON, Benjamin. Of this celebrated poet, the friend and 
 companion of Shakspeare, a very brief notice, and limited to his 
 
 * Nugae Antiquae, apud Park, vol. i. p. xxii. 
 
 f This writer terms Sir John "one of the most ingenious poets of our English nation," 
 and says "he was a Poet in all things, save in his \yealth, leaving a fair estate to a learned 
 and religious son." — Worthies, part iii. p. 28. 
 
 :j: They were also annexed to the third edition of the Translation of " Orlando Furioso," 
 fol. 1634. 
 
 § The popularity of these epigrams, notwithstanding their poetical mediocrity, may be 
 estimated fi'om the opinion of the publisher of the edition of 1625. " If in poetry," he 
 remarks, " heraldry were admitted, he would be found in happiness of wit near allied to 
 the great Sidney : yet but near ; for the Apix of the Coelum Empyrium is not more inac- 
 cessible, than is the height of Sidney's poesy, which by imagination we may approach, by 
 imitation never attain to." — Dedication to George Villiers Duke of Buckingham. 
 
 A subsequent writer has also gifted them with extraordinary longevity,: — 
 
 " Still lives the Muse's Apollonian son. 
 The Phoenix of his age, rare Harington ! 
 Whose Epigrams, when time shall be no more, 
 May die, perhaps, but never can before." 
 
 Beedome's Poemsj 1641. 
 
 Vide Nugae Antiquae, vol. i. p. xxiii.
 
 631 
 
 minor pieces, will here be necessary, as his dramatic woi-ks and 
 some circmnstances of his life, will hereafter occupy their due share 
 of attention. His poems were divided by himself into " Epigrams," 
 " The Forest," " Under-woods," and a translation of " Horace's Art 
 of Poetrie ;" to which his late echtors have added, " Miscellaneous 
 Pieces." The general cast of these poems is not such as will recom- 
 mend them to a modern ear ; they are but too often cold and 
 affected ; but occasionally, instances of a description the very reverse 
 of these epithets, are to be found, where simplicity and beauty of 
 expression constitute the prominent features. It is chiefly, if not 
 altogether, among his minor pieces in the lyric measure that we 
 meet with this peculiar neatness and concinnity of diction : thus, in 
 " The Forest," the lines from Catullus, beginning " Come, my Celia, 
 let us prove," and the well-known song 
 
 " Drink to me only with thine eyes ;" 
 
 in the " Underwoods," the stanzas commencing 
 
 " For Love's sake kisse roe once again ;" 
 " Or scorne, or pittie on me take ;" 
 
 and, among his " Songs," these with the initial lines 
 
 " Queene and huntresse, chaste and faire;" 
 " Still to be neat, still to be drest;" 
 
 are striking proofs of these excellencies. 
 
 We must also remark that, among his " Epistles" and Miscel- 
 laneous Pieces," there are discoverable a few very conspicuous 
 examples of the union of correct and nervous sentiment with 
 singular force and dignity of elocution. Of this happy combination, 
 the Lines to the Memory of Shakspeare, an eulogium which will 
 claim our attention in a future page, may be quoted as a brilliant 
 model.
 
 632 
 
 23. Lodge, Thomas, M. D. This gentleman, though possessing 
 celebrity, in his day, as a physician, is chiefly entitled to the atten- 
 tion of posterity as a poet. He was a native of Lincolnshire, and 
 born about 1556 ; educated at Oxford, of which he became a member 
 about 1573, and died of the plague at London, in September 1625. 
 He has the double honour of being the first who published, in our 
 language, a Collection of Satires, so named, and of having suggested 
 to Shakspeare the plot of his As You Like It. Philips, in his 
 Theatrum Poetarum, characterises him as " one of the writers of 
 those pretty old pastoral songs, which were very much the strain of 
 those times * ;" but has strangely overlooked his satirical powers ; 
 these, however, have been noticed by Meres, who remarks, that 
 " as Horace, Lucilius, Juvenal, Persius and LucuUus are the best for 
 Satyre among the Latins, so with us in the same faculty, these are 
 chiefe : Piers Plowman, Lodge, Hall of Emanuel CoUedge in Cam- 
 bridge, the author of Pigmalion's Image, &c. f The work which 
 gives him precedence, as a writer of professed satires, is entitled 
 " A Fig for Momus ; containing pleasant Varietie, included in 
 Satyrs, Eclogues, and Epistles, by T. L. of Lincolnes Inne, Gent." 
 1595. X It is dedicated to " William, Eaiie of Darbie," and though 
 published two years before the appearance of Hall's Satires, possesses 
 a spirit, ease and harmony, which that more celebrated poet has not 
 surpassed. Than the following lines, selected from the first satire, we 
 know few which, in the same department, can establish a better claim 
 to vigour, truth, and melody ; — 
 
 " All men are willing with the world to haulte, 
 B'".t no man takes delight to knowe his faulte — 
 Tell bleer-eid Linus that his sight is cleere, 
 Heele pawne himselfe to buy thee bread and beere ; — 
 Find me a niffgard that doth want the shift 
 To call his cursed avarice good thrift; 
 
 * Edition of 1800, by Sir Egerton Brydges, p. 197, 198. 
 
 t Vide Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. ii. p. H*. X ^^^^ p. 115.
 
 633 
 
 A rakchell sworne to protligalitie, 
 
 That dares not terme it libcralitie; 
 
 A letcher that hath lost both flesh and fame, 
 
 That holds not letchcrie a pleasant game : — 
 
 Thus with the world, the world dissembles still, 
 
 And to their own confusions follow will, 
 
 Holding it true felicitie to flie. 
 
 Not from the sinnc, but from the seeing eie." * 
 
 The debt of Shakspeare to our author is to be found in a pamphlet 
 entitled " Rosalynde : Euphues Golden Legacie, found after his 
 Death in his Cell at Silexdra, by T. L. Gent." The poetical pieces 
 interspersed through this tract correspond with the character given 
 of Lodge's composition by Phillips ; for they are truly pastoral, and 
 are finished in a style of great sweetness, delicacy, and feeling. Want 
 of taste, or want of intimacy with this production, has induced 
 Mr. Steevens to give a very improper estimate of it ; " Shakspeare," 
 he remarks, " has followed Lodge's novel more exactly than is his 
 general custom when he is indebted to such worthless originals ; and 
 has sketched some of his principal characters, and borrowed a few 
 expressions from it." f' 
 
 The poetry of Lodge is to be gleaned from his pamphlets ; parti- 
 cularly from the two which we have mentioned, and from the two 
 now to be enumerated, namely, " Phillis : honoured with pastorall 
 sonnets, elegies and amorous delights. Where-unto is annexed, the 
 tragicall complaynt of Elstred," 1593, 4to., and " A most pleasant 
 historic of Glaucus and Scilla : with many excellent poems, and 
 delectable sonnets," 1610, 4to. He contributed, likewise, to the 
 Collections termed The Phoenix Nest, 1593, and England'' s Helicon, 
 1600 ; and in the Preface, by Sir Egerton Brydges, to the third 
 edition of the latter Miscellany, so just a tribute is paid to his genius 
 as imperatively demands insertion ; more particularly if we consider 
 the obscurity into which this poet has fallen. " In ancient writings," 
 
 * Vide Beloe on Scarce Books, vol. ii. pp. 115 — 117- 
 f Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 3. 
 VOL. I. 4 M
 
 634 
 
 observes the critic, " we frequently meet with beautiful passages ; but 
 whole compositions are seldom free from the most striking inequali- 
 ties ; from inharmonious verses ; from lame, or laboured and quaint 
 expressions ; and creeping or obscure thoughts. In Lodge we find 
 whole pastorals and odes, which have all the ease, polish, and ele- 
 gance of a modern author. How natural is the sentiment, and how 
 sweet the expression of the following in Old Damons Pastoral : 
 
 " Homely hearts do harbour quiet ; 
 
 Little fear, and mickle solace; 
 States suspect their bed and diet : 
 
 Fear and craft do haunt the palace. 
 Little would I, little want I, 
 
 Where the mind and store agreeth ; 
 Smallest comfort is not scanty ; 
 
 Least he longs that little seeth. 
 Time hath been that I have longed, 
 
 Foolish I to like of folly, 
 To converse vt-here honour thronged. 
 
 To my pleasures linked wholly : 
 Now I see, and seeing sorrow 
 
 That the day consum'd returns not : 
 Who dare trust upon to-morrow, 
 
 When nor time nor life sojourns not !" 
 
 " How charmingly he breaks out in The Solitary Shepherd's 
 Song : — 
 
 " O shady vale, O fair enriched meads, 
 
 O sacred flowers, sweet fields, and rising mountains ; 
 O painted flowers, green herbs where Flora treads, 
 Refresh'd by wanton winds and watry fountains !" 
 
 " Is there one word or even accent obsolete in this picturesque 
 and truly poetical stanza? 
 
 " But if such a tender and moral fancy be ever allowed to trifle, is 
 there any thing of the same kind in the whole compass of English 
 poetry more exquisite, more deKcately imagined, or expressed with 
 more finished and happy artifice of language, than Rosalind's Madri- 
 gal, beginning —
 
 635 
 
 " Love in my bosom, like n bee, 
 Doth suck his sweet : 
 Now with his wings he plays with me, 
 
 Now with his feet. 
 Within mine eyes he makes his rest ; 
 His bed amidst my tender breast ; 
 My kisses are his daily feast ; 
 And yet he robs me of my rest. 
 Ah, wanton, will ye ? " — 
 
 " Compare Dr. Lodge not only with his cotemporaries but his suc- 
 cessors, and who, except Breton, has so happily anticipated the taste, 
 simplicity, and purity of the most refined age." * 
 
 Beside his miscellaneous poetry. Lodge published two dramatic 
 pieces f , and may be considered as a voluminous prose writer. Seven 
 of his prose tracts are described by Mr. Beloe X> ^^^ he translated the 
 works of Josephus and Luc. An. Seneca. § 
 
 24. Mablow, Chuistopher. As the fame of this poet, though once 
 in high repute as a dramatic writer, is now supported merely by one 
 of his miscellaneous pieces, which is, indeed, of exquisite beauty, it 
 has been thought necessary briefly to introduce him here ; a more 
 extended notice being deferred to a subsequent page. His earliest 
 attempt appeared in 1587, when he was about twenty-five years of 
 age, in a Translation of Coluthus's Rape of Helen into English rhyme. 
 This was followed by " Certaine of Ovid's Elegies," licensed in 1593, 
 but not printed until 1596. His next and happiest version was 
 given to the public in 1598, under the title of " The Loves of Hero 
 and Leander," being, like the preceding, a posthumous publication ; 
 for the author died prematurely in 1593, leaving this translation, of 
 which the original is commonly but erroneously ascribed to Musaeus, 
 imfinished. Phillips, in his character of Marlow, comparing him with 
 Shakspeare, says, that he resembled him not only in his dramatic 
 
 * British Bibliographer, No. II. Preface to England's Helicon, pp. (», 7- 
 
 ■f Biographia Dramatica, vol. i. p. 287- edit. 1782. 
 
 J Vol. ii. p. 159. et seq. 
 
 § Phillips's Theatrum apud Brydges, p. 199. 
 
 4 M 2
 
 636 
 
 circumstances, " but also because in his begun poem of Hero and 
 Leander, he seems to have a resemblance of that clean, and unsophis- 
 ticated wit, which is natural to that incomparable poet." * Marlow 
 translated also " Lucans first booke, line for line," in blank verse, 
 which was licensed in 1593, and printed in 1600 ; but the production 
 which has given him a claim to immortality, and which has retained 
 its popularity even to the present day, first made its appearance in 
 " England's Helicon," under the appellation of The Passionate Shep- 
 heard to his Love. Of an age distinguished for the excellence of its- 
 rural poetry, this is, without doubt, the most admirable and finished 
 pastoral. 
 
 25. Marston, John, who has a claim to mtroduction here, from 
 his powers as a satirical poet. In 1598, he published " The Meta- 
 morphosis, or Pigmalion's Image. And certaine Satyres." Of these 
 the former is an elegant and luxurious description of a well-known 
 fable, and to this sportive effusion Shakspeare seems to allude in his 
 " Measure for Measure," where Lucio exclaims, " Wliat, is there 
 none of Pygmalion's images, newly made woman, to be had now?"-)- 
 His fame as a satirist was established the year following, by the 
 appearance of his " Scourge of Villanie. Three Bookes of Satyres." 
 
 A reprint of these pieces was given to the world by Mr. Bowles, in 
 the year 1764, who terms the author the " British Persius,'" and 
 adds, that very little is recorded of him with certainty. " Antony a 
 Wood," he remarks, " who is generally exact in his accounts of men, 
 and much to be relied upon, is remarkably deficient with respect to 
 him ; indeed there seems to be little reason to think he was of 
 Oxford : it is certain from his works, that he was of Cambridge, 
 where he was cotemporary with Mr. Hall, with whom, as it appears 
 from his satyre, called Reactio, and from the Scourge of Villanie, 
 sat. 10., he had some dispute. — It has not been generally known who 
 
 • Theatrum Poetarum, edit, of 1800, p. 113. ' 
 t Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 318. Actiii. sc. 2.
 
 637 
 
 Was the author of Pigmahon and the five satyres : but that they 
 belong to INIarston is clear from the sixth and tenth satyres of the 
 Scourge of Villanie : and to this may be added the evidence of the 
 collector of England's Parnassus, printed 1600, who cites the five 
 first lines of the dedication to opinion, prefixed to Pigmalion by the 
 name of J. Marston, p. 221." 
 
 " These satyres," says Mr. Warton, " in his observations on Spenser, 
 contain many well drawn characters, and several good strokes of a 
 satyrical genius, but are not, upon the whole, so finished and classical 
 as Bishop Hall's : the truth is, they were satyrists of a different cast : 
 Hall turned his pen against his cotemporary writers, and particularly 
 versifiers ; Marston chiefly inveighed against the growing foibles and 
 vices of the aoe."* 
 
 There is undoubtedly a want of polish in the satirical muse of 
 Marston, which seems, notwithstanding, the result rather of design 
 than inability ; for the versification of " Pigmalion's Image," is in 
 many of its parts highly melodious. Strength, verging upon coarse- 
 ness, is, however, the characteristic of the " Scourge of Villanie," 
 and may warrant the assertion of the author of " The Returne from 
 Parnassus," that he was " a ruffian in his stile." "f Yet he is highly 
 complimented by Fitz-Geoffry, no mean judge of poetical merit, 
 who declares that he is 
 
 • satyraruin proxima primae, 
 
 Primaque, fas primas si numerare duas." % 
 
 26. NiccoLs, RicHAKD. This elegant poet was born in 1584, was 
 entered of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1602, and took his bachelor's 
 degree in 1606. In 1607, he published " The Cuckow, a Poem," 
 in the couplet measure, which displays very vivid powers of descrip- 
 tion. His next work was a new and enlarged edition of " The 
 
 * Miscellaneous Pieces of Antient English Poesie, preface. 
 
 f Ancient British Drama, vol. i. p. 49. 
 
 X AfFaniag, lib, ii. Ad Johannem Marstonium.
 
 638 
 
 Mirror for Magistrates," dated 1610, and to which, as a third and 
 last part, he has added, with a distinct title, " A Winter Night's 
 Vision. Being an Addition of such Princes, especially famous, who 
 were exempted in the former Historic. By Richard Niccols, Oxon. 
 Magd. Hall, &c." Tliis supplement consists of an Epistle to the 
 Reader, a Sonnet to Lord Charles Howard, an Induction, and the 
 Lives of King Arthur ; Edmund Ironside ; Prince Alfred ; Godwin, 
 Eai-l of Kent ; Robert Curthose ; King Richard the First ; King 
 John ; King Edward the Second ; the two young Princes mur- 
 dered in the Tower, and King Richard the Third ; a selection, to 
 which, with little accordancy, he has subjoined, in the octave stanza, 
 a poem entitled " England's Eliza : or the victorious and triumphant 
 reigne of that vii-gin empresse of sacred memorie, Elizabeth Queen e 
 of Englande, &c." This is preceded by a Sonnet to Lady Elizabeth 
 Clere, an Epistle to the Reader, and an Induction. 
 
 Niccols' addition to this popular series of Legends merits consi- 
 derable praise, exhibiting many touches of the pathetic, and several 
 higlily-wrought proofs of a strong and picturesque imagination. In 
 the Legend of Richard the Third, he appears to have studied with 
 great effect the Drama of Shakspeare. 
 
 In 1615, our author published " Monodia : or, Waltham's Com- 
 plaint upon the Death of the most virtuous and noble Lady, late 
 deceased, the Lady Honor Hay ;" and in the subsequent year, an 
 elaborate poem, under the title of " London's Artillery, briefly con- 
 taining the noble practise of that worthie Societie ; with the moderne 
 and ancient martiall exercises, natures of armes, vertue of Magis- 
 trates, Antiquitie, Glorie and Chronography of this honourable 
 Cittie." 4to. * This work, dedicated to " the Right Honourable 
 Sir John JoUes, Knight, Lord Maior," &c. is introduced by two 
 Sonnets, a Preface to the Reader, and a metrical Induction ; it consists 
 of ten cantos, in couplets, with copious illustrative notes; but, in 
 
 * British Bibliographer, vol. i. p. 363.
 
 639 
 
 point of poetical execution, is greatly inferior to his Cuckovv, and 
 Winter Night's Vision. Niccols, after residing several years at 
 Oxford, left that University for the capital, where, records Wood, 
 he " obtained an employment suitable to bis faculty."* 
 
 27. Raleigh, Sib Walter. Of this great, this high-minded, but 
 unfortunate man, it will not be expected that, in his military, naval, 
 or political character, any detail should here be given ; it is only with 
 Sir Walter, as a poet, that we are at present engaged, and therefore, 
 after stating that he was born in 1552, at Hayes Farm, in the parish 
 of Budley in Devonshire, and that, to the eternal disgrace of James 
 the First, he perished on a scaffold in 1618, we proceed to record 
 the singular circumstance, that, until the year 1813, no lover of our 
 literature has thought it necessary to collect his poetry. The task, 
 however, has at length been performed, in a most elegant and 
 pleasing manner, b}' Sir Egerton Brydges f , and we have only to 
 regret that the pieces which he lias been able to throw together, 
 should prove so few. Yet we may be allowed to express some sur- 
 prise, that two poems quoted as Sir Walter's in Sir Egerton's edition 
 of Phillips's " Theatrum Poetarum," should not have found a place 
 in this collection. Of these, the first is attribvited to Raleigh, on the 
 authority of MSS. in the British Museum, and is entitled, " Sir 
 Walter Raleigh in the Unquiet Rest of his last Sickness," a produc- 
 tion equally admirable for its sublimity and Christian morality, and for 
 the strength and concinnity of its expression :j: ; the second, of which 
 the closing couplet is quoted by Puttenham § as our author's, is 
 given entire by Oldys from a transcript by Lady Isabella Thynne, 
 where it is designated as " The Excuse written by Sir Walter 
 Raleigh in his younger years ||," and though vitiated b}' conceit, 
 
 * Athenoe Oxon. vol. i. col. 402. 
 
 f " The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh : now first collected. With a Biographical and 
 Critical Introduction :" Dedicated to William Bolland, Esq. 
 % Phillips's Theatrum apud Brydges, p. 308, ;509, 
 § Arte of English Poesie, reprint of 181 1. p. 168. 
 II Phillips's Theatrum apud Brydges, p. 314, 315.
 
 640 
 
 appears to be well authenticated. These, together with two frag- 
 ments preserved by Puttenham*, would have proved welcome 
 additions to the volume, and, with the exception of his " Cynthia," a 
 poem in praise of the Queen, and now lost, might probably have 
 included all that has been attributed to the muse of Raleigh. 
 
 The poetry of our bard seems to have been highly valued in his 
 own days ; Puttenham says, that " for dittie and amorous ode, I 
 finde Sir Walter Rawleygh's vayne most loftie, insolent, and pas- 
 sionate f ;" and Bolton affirms, that " the English poems of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh are not easily to be mended :j: ;" opinions which, even 
 in the nineteenth century, a perusal of his poems will tend to con- 
 firm. Of vigour of diction, and moral energy of thought, the pieces 
 entitled, " A Description of the Country's Recreations i'^ a " Vision 
 upon the Fairy Queen ;" the " Farexu'ell" and the Lines written in 
 " his last Sickness," may be quoted as exemplars : and for amatory 
 sweetness, and pastoral simplicity, few efforts will be found to surpass 
 the poems distinguished as " Phillidas Love-call " " The Shepherd's 
 Description of Love;' the " Answer to Marlow,'' and " The Silent 
 
 over. 
 
 The general estimate of Raleigh as a poet, has been sketched by 
 Sir E. Brydges with his usual felicity of illustration, and as the 
 impression with which he has favoured the public is very limited, 
 and must necessarily soon become extremely scarce, a transcript 
 from this portion of his introductory matter, will have its due value 
 with the reader. 
 
 " Do I pronounce Raleigh a poet? Not, perhaps, in the judg- 
 ment of a severe criticism. Raleigh, in his better days, was too much 
 occupied in action to have cultivated all the powers of a poet, which 
 require solitude and perpetual meditation, and a refinement of 
 sensibility, such as intercourse with business and the world deadens ! 
 
 * Arte of English Poesie, reprint, p. 165. 167. t I^id. p. 51. 
 
 X Vide Phillips's Theatrum apud Brydges, p. 2Q9.
 
 641 
 
 " But, perhaps, it will be pleaded, that his long years of imprison- 
 ment gave him leisure for meditation, more than enough ! It has 
 been beautifully said by Lovelace, that 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars a cage," 
 
 SO long as the mind is free. But broken spirits, and indescribable 
 injuries and misfortunes, do not agree with the fervour required by 
 the Muse. Hope, that ' sings of promised pleasure,' could never visit 
 him in his dreary bondage ; and Ambition, whose lights had hitherto 
 led him through difficulties and dangers and sufferings, must now 
 have kept entirely aloof from one, whose fetters disabled him to 
 follow as a votary in her train. Images of rural beauty, quiet, and 
 freedom might, perhaps, have added, by the contrast, to the poign- 
 ancy of his present painful situation ; and he might rather prefer the 
 severity of mental labour in unravelling the dreary and comfortless 
 records of perplexing History in remote ages of war and bloodshed, 
 than to quicken his sensibilities by lingering amid the murmurs of 
 Elysian waterfalls ! 
 
 " There are times when we dare not stir our feelings or our 
 fancies ; when the only mode of reconciling ourselves to the excru- 
 ciating pressure of our sorrows is the encouragement of a dull 
 apathy, which will allow none but the coarser powers of the intellect 
 to operate. 
 
 " The production of an Heroic Poem would have nobly employed 
 this illustrious Hero's mighty faculties, during the lamentable years 
 of his unjust incarceration. But how could He delight to dwell on 
 the tale of Heroes, to whom the result of Heroism had been oppression, 
 imprisonment, ruin, and condemnation to death ? 
 
 " We have no proof that Raleigh possessed the copious, vivid, 
 and creative powers of Spenser ; nor is it probable that any culti- 
 vation would have brought forth from him fruit equally rich. But 
 even in the careless fragments now presented to the reader, I think 
 we can perceive some traits of attraction and excellence which, 
 
 VOL. I. 4 N
 
 642 
 
 perhaps, even Spenser wanted. If less divei'sified than that gifted 
 bard, he would, I think, have sometimes been more forcible and 
 sublime. His images would have been more gigantic, and his 
 reflections more daring. With all his mental attention keenly bent 
 on the busy state of existing things in political society, the range of 
 his thoughts had been lowered down to practical wisdom ; but other 
 habits of intellectual exercise, excursions into the ethereal fields of 
 fiction, and converse with the spirits which inhabit those upper 
 regions, would have given a grasp and a colour to his conceptions as 
 magnificent as the fortitude of his soul ! "* 
 
 28. SacKville, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, was born at Withyam, 
 in Sussex, in 1527. -f Though a statesman of some celebrity in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, his fame with posterity rests entirely on his 
 merits as a poet, and these are of the highest order. He possesses 
 the singular felicity of being the first writer of a genuine English 
 tragedy, and the primary inventor of « The Mirrour for Magis- 
 trates;" two obligations conferred upon poetry of incalculable 
 
 extent. 
 
 Of Gorboduc, which was acted in 1561, and surreptitiously printed 
 in 1563, we shall elsewhere have occasion to speak, confining our 
 notice, in this place, to his celebrated Induction and Legend of Henry 
 Duke of Buckingham, which were first published in the Second Part 
 and Second Edition of Baldwins Mirrour for Magistrates, printed in 
 1563. To this collection we are, indeed, most highly indebted, if the 
 observation of Lord Orford be correct : — " Our historic plays," he 
 remarks, " are allowed to have been founded on the heroic narratives 
 in the Mirrour for Magistrates ; to that plan, and to the boldness of 
 lord Buckhurst's new scenes, perhaps we owe Shakspeare !" J 
 
 * Biographical and Critical Introduction, pp. 43 — ^e. 
 
 t The date of this nobleman's birth has been variously given : thus Ritson affirms in 
 his Bibliographia, p. 324., he was born in 1536; and Sir Egerton Brydges in his edition 
 of the " Theatrum Poetarum," also expressly tells us, that " Sackville was not born till 
 153G," p. 66; but in « The British Bibliographer" he has corrected this assertion, and 
 places his nativity in 1527, which is the true era, as he died aged 81, in 1608. 
 
 t Park's edition of Lord Orford's Royal and Noble Authors, vol. ii. p. 130.
 
 643 
 
 Our gratitude to this nobleman will be still further enhanced, when 
 we recollect, that he was more assuredly a model for S])enser, the 
 allegorical pictures in his Induction being, in the opinion of Warton, 
 " so beautifully drawn, that, in all probability, they contributed to 
 direct, at least to stimulate, Spenser's imagination." In fact, who- 
 ever reads this noble poem of Lord Buckhurst with attention must 
 feel convinced, that it awoke into being the allegorical groupes of 
 Spenser ; and that, in force of imagination, in pathos, and in awful 
 and picturesque delineation, it is not inferior to any canto of the 
 Fairie Queen. Indeed from the nature of its plan, the scene being 
 laid in hell, and Sorrow being the conductor of the hapless com- 
 plainants, it often assumes a deeper tone and exhibits a more sombre 
 hue than the muse of Spenser, and more in consonance with the 
 severer intonations of the harp of Dante. How greatly is it to be 
 lamented that the effusions of this divine bard are limited to the 
 pieces which we have enumerated, and that so early in life he 
 deserted the fountains of inspiration, to embark on a troubled sea of 
 politics. Lord Buckliurst died, full of honours, at the Council-Table 
 at ^V^litehall, on April 19th, 1608, aged eighty-one. 
 
 Sir Egerton Brydges, speaking of his magnificent seat at Knowle 
 in West-Kent, tells us, that, " though restored with all the freshness 
 of modern art, it retains the character and form of its Elizabethan 
 splendour. The visitor may behold the same walls, and walk in the 
 same apartments, which witnessed the inspiration of him, who com- 
 posed The Induction, and the Legend of the Duke of BiicMngham ! 
 He may sit under the same oaks, and behold, arrayed in all the 
 beauty of art, the same delightful scenery, which cherished the day- 
 dreams of the glowing poet ! Perchance he may behold the same 
 shadowy beings glancing through the shades, and exhibiting them- 
 selves in all their picturesque attitudes to his entranced fancy !" * 
 
 29. Southwell, Robert. This amiable but unfortunate Roman 
 Catholic Priest was born at St. Faith's in Norfolk, 1560 ; he was 
 
 * British Bibliographer, No. IV. p. 295. 
 4 N 2
 
 644 
 
 educated at the University of Douay, became a member of the 
 Society of Jesus at Rome, when but sixteen, and finally prefect in 
 the English college there. Being sent as a missionary to England, 
 in 1584, he was betrayed and apprehended in 1592, and after being 
 imprisoned three years, and racked ten times, he was executed, as an 
 agent for Popery, at Tyburn, on the 21st of February 1595. 
 
 Whatever may have been his religious intemperance or enthusiasm, 
 his works, as a pOst and a moralist, place him in a most favourable 
 light ; and we are unwilling to credit, that he who was thus elevated, 
 just, and persuasive in his writings, could be materially incorrect in 
 his conduct. In 1595, appeared his " Saint Peters Complaint, with 
 other poems :" 4to., which went through a second impression in the 
 same year, and was followed by " Mceoniae. Or certaine excellent 
 poems and spiritual Hymns ; omitted in the last impression of Peter's 
 complaint ; being needefull thereunto to be annexed, as being both 
 divine and wittie," 1595-1596. 4to. These two articles contain his 
 poetical works ; his other publications, vmder the titles of " Marie 
 Magdalen's Funerall Tears ;" " The Triumphs over Death ; or a 
 consolatorie Epistle, for afflicted minds, in the effects of dying 
 friends," and " Short Rules of Good Life," being tracts in prose, 
 though interspersed with occasional pieces of poetry. 
 
 The productions of Southwell, notwithstanding the unpopularity of 
 his religious creed, were formerly in great request ; " it is remark- 
 able," observes Mr. Ellis, " that the very few copies of his works 
 which are now known to exist, are the remnant of at least seventeen 
 different editions, of which eleven were printed between 1593 and 
 1600." * The most ample edition of his labours was printed in 1620 
 in 16mo., and exhibits five distinct title-pages to the several pieces 
 which we have just enumerated. 
 
 Bolton in his " Hypercritica," written about 1616, does credit to 
 his taste, by remarking that " never must be forgotten St Peter's 
 Complaint, and those other serious poems, said to be father Soutli- 
 
 * Specimens of the Early English Poets, 1st edit. vol. ii. p. 166'.
 
 645 
 
 wells : the English whereof, as it is most proper, so the sliarpness 
 and light of wit is very rare in them." * From this period, however, 
 oblivion seems to have hidden the genius of Southwell from observa- 
 tion, luitil Warton, by reproducing the criticism of Bolton, in the 
 third volume of his History of English Poetry 1781, recalled attention 
 to the neglected bard. Two years afterwards, Mr. Waldron, in his 
 notes to Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd, gave us three specimens of 
 Southwell's poetry; Mr.Headley reprinted these in 1787 f ; Mr, Ellis 
 extracted an additional piece from the " Moeoniae" in 1801 ; in 1802 
 Ritson presented us with a list of his writings accompanied by the 
 notes of Mr. Parkf ; and lastly, in 1808, Mr. Haslewood favoured us 
 with an essay on his life and works. § 
 
 Both the poetry and the prose of Southwell possess the most 
 decided merit ; the former, which is almost entirely restricted to 
 moral and religious subjects, flows in a vein of great harmony, per- 
 spicuity, and elegance, and breathes a fascination resulting from the 
 subject and the pathetic mode of treating it, which fixes and deeply 
 interests the reader. 
 
 Mr. Haslewood, on concluding his essay on Southwell, remarks, 
 that " those who ' least love the religion,' still must admire and praise 
 the author, and regret that neither his simple strains in prose, nor his 
 ' polished metre,' have yet obtained a collected edition of his works 
 for general readers." The promise of such an edition escaped from 
 the pen of Mr. Headley ; at least it was his intention to re-publish 
 " the better part of Southwell's poetry ;" but death, most unhappily, 
 precluded the attempt. 
 
 30. Spenser, Edmund. This great poet, who was born in London 
 in 1553^, has acquired an ever-during reputation in pastoral and epic 
 poetry, especially in the last. His " Shepheard's Calender : contein- 
 
 * Vide Warton, vol. iii.; or, Phillips's Theatrum apiid Brjclgts, p.26S. 
 
 f Select Beauties of Antient English Poetry, vol. ii. Kelt's edit. pp. 2. 5. 86. 
 
 X Bibliographia Poetica, p. 340, 341. 
 
 § Censura Literaria, vol. vi. p. 285 — 298.
 
 646 
 
 ing twelve aeglogues, proportionable to the twelve monethes," was 
 published in 1579; it is a work which has conferred upon him the 
 title of the Father of the English pastoral, and has almost indissolubly 
 associated his name with those of Theocritus and Virgil. Yet two 
 great defects have contributed deeply to injure the popularity of his 
 Calender ; the adoption of a language much too old and obsolete for 
 the age in which it was written, and the too copious introduction of 
 satire on ecclesiastical affairs. The consequence of this latter defect, 
 this incongruous mixture of church polemics, has been, that the 
 aeglogues for May, July, and September, are any thing but pastorals. 
 Simplicity of diction is of the very essence of perfection in pastoral 
 poetry ; but vulgar, rugged, and obscure terms, can only be produc- 
 tive of disgust ; a result which was felt and complained of by the con- 
 temporaries of the poet, and which not all the ingenuity of his old 
 commentator, E. K., can successfully palliate or defend. The pieces 
 which have been least injured by this " ragged and rustical rudeness," 
 as the scholiast aptly terms it, are the pastorals for January, June, 
 October and December, which are indeed very beautiful, and the 
 genuine offspring of the rural reed. 
 
 It is, however, to the Fairie Queene that we must refer for a just 
 delineation of this illustrious bard. It appears to have been com- 
 menced about the year 1579 ; the first three books were printed in 
 1590, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth, in 1596. ^Vli ether the remain- 
 ing six books, which were to have completed the design, were finished 
 or not, continues yet unascertained ; Browne, the author of Britan- 
 nias Pastorals *, and Sir Aston Cokainf, consider the poem to have 
 been left nearly in its present unfinished state ; while Sir James 
 Ware asserts :[. that the latter books were lost by the carelessness of 
 the poet's servant whom he had sent before him into England on the 
 breaking out of the rebellion, and, what seems still more to the pur- 
 
 * Book ii. Song 1. See Chalmers's English Poets, vol. vi. p. 276. col. 2. 
 
 t Poems, edit. 1658. p. 8. 
 
 X Preface to Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, 1 633,
 
 647 
 
 pose, Sir John Stradliiig, a contemporary of Spenser, and a highly 
 respectable character, positively declares that some of his manuscripts 
 were burnt when his house in Ii-eland was fired by the rebels. * 
 Now, as two cantos of a lost book, entitled The Legend of Constancy, 
 were actually published in 1609 as a part of Spenser's manuscripts 
 which had escaped the conflagration of his castle, it is highly probable 
 that the declaration of Sir John Stradling is correct, and that the 
 poet, if he did not absolutely finish the Fairie Queene, had made con- 
 siderable progress in the work, and that his labours perished with his 
 mansion. 
 
 The defects which have vitiated the Shepheard's Calender, are not 
 apparent in the Fairie Qiieene ; the charge of obsolete diction, which 
 has been so generally urged against the latter poem, must have arisen 
 from the just censure which, in this respect, was bestowed upon the 
 former, and the transference may be considered as a striking proof of 
 critical negligence, and of the long-continued influence of opinion, 
 however erroneous. The language of the Fairie Queene is, in fact, 
 the language of the era in which it was written, and even in the pre- 
 sent day, with few and trifling exceptions, as intelligible as are the 
 texts of Shakspeare and Milton, f 
 
 Had Spenser, in this admirable poem, preserved greater unity 
 in the construction of his fable ; had he, following the example of 
 Ariosto, employed human instead of allegorical heroes, he would 
 
 * Epigrammatum Libri quatuor, 1607, P- 100. For this striking testimony we are in- 
 debted to Mr. Todd's valuable edition of Spenser, vol. i. p. cxxi. 
 
 f To the charge of " critical negligence," in this respect, I am sorry to say, that I 
 must plead guilty in my " Literary Hours;" where, in delineating the character of 
 Spenser, I have brought forward this accusation of obsolete diction, witiiout the proper 
 discrimination. Vide Literary Hours, 3d edit. vol. ii. p. 161. — In every other respect 
 I consider the criticism as correct. I had then read Spenser but twice through; a further 
 familiarity with the Fairie Queene has induced me to withdraw the censure, and to accede 
 to the opinion of Mr. Malone, who conceives the language of the Fairie Qiieeiie to have 
 been " perfectly intelligible to every reader of poetry in the time of Queen Elizabeth, 
 tliough the Shejiheards Calendar was not even then understood without a commentary." — 
 See his Dryden's Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 94,
 
 648 
 
 undoubtedly have been at once the noblest and most interesting of 
 poets. But, as it is, the warmest admirer of his numerous 
 excellencies must confess, that the Personifications which con- 
 duct the business of the poem, and are consequently exposed to 
 the broad day-light of observation, are too unsubstantial in their 
 form and texture, too divested of all human organisation, to become 
 the subjects of attachment or anxiety. They flit before us, indeed, 
 as mere abstract and metaphysical essences, as beings neither of this 
 nor any other order of planetary existence. A witch, a fairy, or a 
 magician, is a creation sufficiently blended with humanity, to be 
 capable of exciting very powerful emotion ; but the meteor-shades 
 of Holiness or Chastity, personally conducting a long series of ad- 
 ventures, is a contrivance so very remote from all earthly, or even 
 what we conceive of supernatural, agency, as to baffle and revolt 
 the credulities of the reader, however ductile or acquiescent. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding these great and obvious errors in the very 
 foundation of the structure, the merits of Spenser in every other 
 respect are of so decided and exalted a nature, as to place him, in 
 spite of every deduction, in the same class with Homer, Dante, 
 Shakspeare, and Milton. His versification is, in general, uncommonly 
 sweet and melodious ; his powers of description such, with respect 
 to beauty, fidelity, and minute finishing, as have not since been 
 equalled ; while in strength, brilliancy, and fertility of imagination, it 
 will be no hyperbole to assert, that he takes precedence of almost 
 every poet ancient or modern. 
 
 One peculiar and endearing characteristic of the Fairie Queene, is 
 the exquisite tenderness which pervades the whole poem. It is impos- 
 sible indeed to read it without being in love with the author, without 
 being persuaded that the utmost sweetness of disposition, and the 
 purest sincerity and goodness of heart distinguished him who thus 
 delighted to unfold the kindest feelings of our nature, and whose 
 language, by its singular simplicity and energy, seems to breathe 
 the very stamp and force of truth. How grateful is it to record, that 
 the personal conduct of the bard corresponded with the impression
 
 649 
 
 resulting from his works ; that gentleness, humility, and piety, were 
 the leading features of his life, as they still are the most delightful 
 characteristics of his poetry. * 
 
 Yet amiable and engaging as is the general cast of Spenser's 
 genius, he has nevertheless exhibited the most marked excellence 
 as a delineator of those passions and emotions which approach to, or 
 constitute, the sublime. No where do we find the agitations of 
 fear, astonishment, terror, and despair, drawn with such bold and 
 masterly relief; they start in living energy from his pen, and bear 
 awful witness to the grandeur and elevation of his powers. 
 
 It is almost superfluous to add, after what has been already 
 observed, that the morality of the Fairie Queene is throughout pure 
 and impressive. It is a poem which, more than any other, inculcates 
 those mild and passive virtues, that patience, resignation, and forbear- 
 ance, which owe their influence to Christian principles. While vice 
 and intemperance are developed in all their hideous deformity, those 
 self-denying efforts, those benevolent and social sympathies, which 
 soften and endear existence, are painted in the most bewitching 
 colours : it is, in short, a work from the study of which no human 
 being can rise without feeling fresh incitement to cherish and 
 extend the charities of life. 
 
 Spenser died comparatively, though not actually, indigent, on the 
 16th of January, 1598, 
 
 31. Stirling, William Alexander, Earl of. This accomplished 
 nobleman was born at Menstrie, in the county of Clackmannan, 
 Scotland, 1580, a descendant of the family of Macdonald. He was 
 a favourite both of James the First, and of his son Charles, and by 
 the latter was created Viscount Canada, and subsequently Earl of 
 
 * It is impossible to view the portrait prefixed to Mr. Todd's valuable edition of 
 Spenser, without being incredulous as to its authenticity. There is a pertnoss and satirical 
 sharpness in its expression very inconsistent, not only with the disposition of the poet, but 
 with the features given to him in every other representation, of which the leading character 
 is an air of pensive sweetness. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 o
 
 650 
 
 Stirling. From an early period he gave promise of more than com- 
 mon genius, and his attachment to poetry was fostered, as in 
 Drummond, by the sorrows of unrequited love. To the stimulus of 
 this powerful passion we are indebted for his " Aurora : containing 
 the first Fancies of the Author's Youth," 4to., which was published, 
 together with some other pieces, in 1604. This elegant production, 
 the solace of a rural retreat, on his return from a tour on the conti- 
 nent, consists of one hundi-ed and six sonnets, ten songs or odes, 
 some madrigals, elegies, &c., and places the talents of the writer in a 
 very favourable point of view : for the versification is often peculiarly 
 harmonious, and many beauties, both in imagery and sentiment, are 
 interspersed through the collection, which, though a juvenile pro- 
 duction, must be pronounced the most poetical of his works. The 
 diction approximates, indeed, so nearly to that of the present century, 
 that a specimen may be considered as a curiosity, and will confirm 
 the assertion of Lord Orford, that he " was greatly superior to the 
 style of his age.""* With the exception of a little quaintness in the 
 second line, the subsequent sonnet will equal the expectation of the 
 reader : — 
 
 SONNET X. 
 
 « I SWEARE, Aurora, by thy starrie eyes. 
 
 And by those golden lockes whose locke none slips. 
 
 And by the corall of thy rosie lippes, 
 
 And by the naked snowes which beautie dies ; 
 
 I sweare by all the jewels of thy mind, 
 
 Whose like yet never worldly treasure bought, 
 
 Tliy solide judgement and thy generous thouglit. 
 
 Which in this darkened age have clearly shin'd : 
 
 I sweare by those, and by my spotless love. 
 
 And by my secret, yet most fervent fires, 
 
 That I have never nurc'd but chast desires, 
 
 And such as modestie might well approve. 
 
 Then since I love those vertuous parts in thee, 
 
 Shouldst thou not love this vertuous mind in me ?" f 
 
 * Royal and Noble Authors apud Park, vol. v. p. 73. 
 t Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 298.
 
 651 
 
 The remaining poems of Stirling consist of fonr tragedies in 
 alternate rhyme, termed by their author " monarchicke ;" namely, 
 Darius, published in 1603; Croesus, in 1604; and the Alexandrean 
 Tragedy, and Julius Cassar, in 1607. These pieces are not calculated 
 for the stage; but include some admirable lessons for sovereign 
 power, and several choruses written with no small share of poetic 
 vigour. With the Aurora in 1604, appeared his poem entitled, " A 
 Pargenesis to the Prince," a production of great value both in a moral 
 and literary light, and which must have been highly acceptable to a 
 character so tiaily noble as was that of Henry, to whose memory he paid 
 a pleasing tribute, by printing an " Elegie on his Death," in 1612. 
 
 The most elaborate of this nobleman's works was given to the 
 public at Edinburgh, in 1614, in 4to., and entitled, " Domes-day ; or 
 the great Day of the Lord's Judgment." It is divided into twelve 
 Houres or Cantos, and has an encomium prefixed by Drnmmond. 
 Piety and sound morality, expressed often in energetic diction, form 
 the chief merit of this long poem, for it has little pretension to either 
 sublimity or pathos. It had excited, however, the attention of 
 Addison ; for when the first two books of Domes-day were re-printed 
 by A. Johnstoun in 1720, their editor tells us, " that Addison had 
 read the author's whole works with tire greatest satisfaction ; and had 
 remarked, that ' the beauties of our ancient English poets were too 
 slightly passed over by modern writers, who, out of a peculiar 
 singularity, had rather take pains to find fault than endeavour to 
 excel.' " * 
 
 Lord Stirling i-epublished the whole of his poetical works, with 
 the exception of the " Aurora," in 1637, in a folio volume, including 
 a new but unfinished poem, under the title of Jonathan. This 
 impression had undergone a most assiduous revision, and was the last 
 labour of its author, who died on the 12th of February, 1640, in his 
 sixtieth year. 
 
 * Orford's Royal and Noble Authors apud Park, vol. v. p. 76. 
 
 4o 2
 
 652 
 
 32. Sydney, Sir Philip, one of the most heroic and accomplished 
 characters in the annals of England, was born at Penshurst *, in West 
 Kent, on Nov. 29th, 1554, and died at the premature age of thirty-one, 
 on the 17th of October, 1586, having been mortally wounded on the 
 26th of the preceding September, in a desperate engagement near 
 Zutphen. " As he was returning from the field of battle," records 
 his friend. Lord Brooke, " pale, languid, and thirsty with excess of 
 bleeding, he asked for water to quench his thirst. The water was 
 brought ; and had no sooner approached his lips, than he instantly 
 resigned it to a dying soldier, whose ghastly countenance attracted 
 his notice — speaking these ever-memorable words ; This man's 
 necessity is still greater than mine."-f' 
 
 Had Sir Philip paid an exclusive attention to the poetical art, 
 there is every reason to suppose that he would have occupied a 
 master's place in this department ; as it is, his poetry, though too 
 often vitiated by an intermixture of antithesis and false wit, and by 
 an attempt to introduce the classic metres, is still rich with frequent 
 proofs of vigour, elegance, and harmony. His " Arcadia," originally 
 published in 1590, abounds in poetry, among which are some pieces 
 of distinguished merit. In 1591, was printed his " Astrophel and 
 Stella," a collection of one hundred and eight sonnets, and eleven 
 songs, and of these several may be pronounced beautiful. They 
 were annexed to the subsequent editions of the Arcadia, together 
 with " Sonets," containing miscellaneous pieces of lyric poetry, 
 several of which had appeared in Constable's " Diana," 1594. To 
 these may be added, as completing his poetical works, fifteen contri- 
 butions to " England's Helicon," a few sonnets in " England's Par- 
 nassus," three songs in " The Lady of May, a masque," subjoined 
 to the Arcadia, two pastorals in Davison's poems, 1611, and an 
 English version of the Psalms of David. 
 
 * " Its rude grandeur, its immense hall, its castellated form, its numerous apartments, 
 well accord with the images of chivalry, which the memory of Sydney inspires." — British 
 Bibliographer, vol. i. p. 293. 
 
 f Zouch's Life of Sydney, 4to. p. 256.
 
 653 
 
 That Sydney possessed an exqnisite taste for, and a critical know- 
 ledge of poetry, is sufficiently evident from his eloquent " Defence 
 of Poesy," first published in 1595. This, with his Collected Poetry, 
 would form a very acceptable reprint, especially if recommended by 
 an introduction from the elegant and glowing pen of Sir Egerton 
 Brydges, whose favourite Sydney avowedly is, and to whom he has 
 already paid some very interesting tributes. * 
 
 The moral character of this great man equalled his intellectual 
 energy ; and the last years of his short life were employed in trans- 
 lating Du Plessi's excellent treatise on the Truth of Christianity. 
 
 33. Sylvester, Joshua, a poet who has lately attracted a consi- 
 derable degree of attention, from the discovery of his having furnished 
 to Milton the Prima Stamina of his Paradise Lost, f He wa« edu- 
 cated by his uncle, William Plumb, Esq., and died at Middleburgh, 
 in Zealand, on the 28th of September, 1618, aged fifty-five. His 
 principal work, a translation of the " Divine Weeks and Works" of 
 Du Bartas, was commenced in 1590, prosecuted in 1592, 1598, 1599? 
 and completed in 1605, since which period it has undergone six 
 editions ; three in quarto, and three in folio, the last being dated 
 1641. 
 
 Both the version of Sylvester, and his original poems, published 
 with it, are remarkable for their inequality, for great beauties, and 
 for glaring defects. His versification is sometimes exquisitely melo- 
 dious, and was recognised as such by his contemporaries, who distin- 
 guished him by the appellation of " silver-tongued Sylvester." J His 
 diction also is occasionally highly nervous and energetic, and some- 
 times simply elegant ; but much more frequently is it disfigured by 
 tumour and bombast. Of the golden lines which his Du Bartas con- 
 
 * Vide Poems, 1807, 12mo. 4th. edit.; and British Bibliographer, vol. i. p. 81 — 105. 
 and 289 — 295. Censura Literaria, vol. ii. p. 175.etseq.; and vol, iii. p. 389. 
 
 f Considerations on Milton's Early Reading, and the Prima Stamina of his Paradise 
 Lost; together with Extracts from a Poet of the Sixteenth Century. In a Letter to 
 William Falconer, M.D., from Charles Dunster, Esq. M. A. London, 1800. 
 
 t Vide Wood's Athense, vol. i. p. 594.; and Phillips's Theatrum.
 
 654 
 
 tains, it may be necessary to furnish the reader some proof, and the 
 following, we imagine, cannot fail to excite his surprise : 
 
 " O tlirice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares 
 Of city-troubles, and of state affairs ; 
 And, serving Ceres, tills with his own team 
 His own free land, left by his friends to him ! — ■ 
 And leading all his life at home in peace, 
 Always in sight of his own smoke ; no seas, 
 No other seas he knows, nor other torrent, 
 Than that which waters with his silver current 
 His native meadows : and that very earth 
 Shall give him burial, which first gave him birth. 
 
 To summon timely sleep, he doth not need 
 iEthiops cold rush, nor drowsy poppy seed. 
 The stream's mild murmur, as it gently gushes. 
 His healthy limbs in quiet slumber hushes; — 
 
 all self-private, serving God, he writes 
 
 Fearless, and sings but what his Jieart indites, 
 'Till Death, dread Servant of the Eternal Judge, 
 Comes very late to his sole-seated Lodge. — 
 
 Let me, Good Lord ! among the Great unkenn'd, 
 My rest of days in the calm country end : 
 My company, pure thoughts, to work thy will, 
 My court, a cottage on a lowly hill." * 
 
 So popular was this version in the early part of the seventeenth 
 century, that Jonson, no indiscriminate encomiast, exclaims, in an 
 epigram to the translator, 
 
 " Behold ! the rev'rend shade of Bartas stands 
 Before my thought, and in thy right commands. 
 That to the world I publish for hiin this, 
 ' Bartas doth wish thy English now were his.' 
 So well in that are his inventions wrought, 
 As his will now be the translation thought ; 
 
 * For further observations on, and numerous extracts from, Sylvester's Du Bartas, see 
 Dunster's Considerations, and Drake's Literaiy Hours, 3d edit, vol. iii. Nos. 49, 50, 
 and 51.
 
 655 
 
 Thiiic the original ; and France shall boast 
 No more the maiden glories she has lost." * 
 
 The greatest compliment, however, which Sylvester has received, is 
 the imitation of Milton. 
 
 The virtues of Sylvester were superior to his talents ; he was, in 
 fact, to adopt the language of one of his intimate friends, a poet 
 
 " Whom Envy scarce could hate; whom all admir'd, 
 Who liv'd beloved, and a Saint expir'd." j- 
 
 34. TuRBERviLLE, George, a younger son of Nicholas Turberville, 
 of ^'Vllitechurch, in Dorsetshire, a gentleman of respectable family, 
 was born about the year 1540. He was educated at Winchester and 
 Oxford, and in 1562 became a member of one of the Inns of Court. 
 Here the reputation which he had acquired for talents and the dis- 
 patch of business, obtained for him the appointment of secretary to 
 Thomas Randolph, Esq., ambassador to the Court of Russia, and, 
 whilst in this country, he employed his leisure in writing poems 
 descriptive of its manners and customs, addressed to Spenser, Dancie, 
 and Park, and afterwards published in Hakluyt's Voyages, 1598, 
 vol. i. pp. 384, 385. 
 
 On his return from this tour, he added greatly to his celebrity, as 
 a scholar and a gentleman, by the publication of his " Epitaphes, 
 epigrams, songs, and sonets, with a discourse of the friendly affec- 
 tions of Tymetes to Pyndara his ladie," 8vo. 1567. This year, 
 indeed, appears to have been fully occupied by him in preparing his 
 works for the press ; for, during its course, independent of the col- 
 lection just mentioned, he printed " The Heroycall Epistles of the 
 learned Poet Publius Ovidius Naso : with Aulus Sabinus aunsweres 
 to certaine of the same," 8vo., and " The Eclogs of the poet B. 
 Mantuan Carmelitan, turned into English verse, and set forth with 
 
 * One of the Epigrams prefixed to the folio edition of Sylvester's Works. Ten pages 
 in the copy of 1611 are occupied by commendatory Poems on the Translator, 
 f Lines by Viccars, under the portrait of Sylvester, in the edition of 1641.
 
 656 
 
 the argument to every eglogue." 12mo. These productions, with his 
 " Tragical Tales, translated in time of his troubles, out of Sundrie 
 Italians, with the argument and L'Envoye to ech tale," printed in 
 1576, and again in 1587, with annexed " Epitaphs and Sonets, and 
 some other broken pamphlettes and Epistles," together with some 
 pieces of poetry in his " Art of Venerie," and in his " Booke of 
 Faulconrie or Hanking," 1575, and a few commendatory stanzas 
 addressed to his friends, form the whole of his poetical works. 
 
 Turberville enjoyed, as a writer of songs, sonnets, and minor poems, 
 a high degree of popularity in his day ; it was not, however, calcu- 
 lated for durability, and he appears to have been forgotten, as a poet, 
 before the close of the seventeenth century. His muse has expe- 
 rienced a temporary revival, through the medium of Mr. Chalmers's 
 English Poets, and to the antiquary, and lover of old English liter- 
 ature, this reprint will be acceptable ; but, for the general reader, he 
 will be found deficient in many essential points. Fancy, it is true, 
 may be discovered in his pieces, although forced and quaint ; but of 
 nature, simplicity, and feeling, the portion is unfortunately small. 
 Occasional felicity of diction, a display of classical allusion, and 
 imagery taken from the amusements and customs of the age, are not 
 wanting ; but the warmth, the energy, and the enthusiasm of poetry 
 are sought for in vain. 
 
 Our author survived the year 1594, though the date of his death is 
 not known. 
 
 35. TussEE, Thomas, one of the most popular, and, assuredly, 
 one of the most useful of our elder poets, was born, according to 
 Dr. Mavor, about 1515, and died about 1583.* The work ^which 
 ushers him to notice here, and has given him the appellation of the 
 English Varro, was published in 1557, and entitled " A Hundreth 
 Good Pointes of Husbandrie," a small quarto of thirteen leaves. It 
 was shortly followed by " One Hundreth Good Poyntes of HuswifFry ;" 
 and in 1573, the whole was enlarged Avith the title of " Five Hun- 
 
 * Vide Preliminary Dissertation to his edition of Tusser, pp. 5. 13. 20, 21. 25.
 
 657 
 
 dreth Points of Good Husbandry, united to as many of Good Hus- 
 wifery." The most complete edition, however, and the last in the 
 author's life-time, was printed in 1580. So acceptable did this 
 production prove to the lovers of poetry and agriculture, that it 
 underwent nineteen editions during its first century, and Dr. Mavor's 
 edition, published in 1812, forms the last, and twenty-fourth. The 
 mutilated state of the old copies, indeed, exemplifies, more than any 
 thing else, the practical use to which they were subjected ; " some 
 books," remarks Mr. Haslewood, " became heir-looms from value, 
 and Tusser's work, for useful information in every department of 
 agriculture, together with its quaint and amusing observations, per- 
 haps passed the copies from father to son, till they crumbled away in 
 the bare shifting of the pages, and the mouldering relic only lost its 
 value, by the casual mutilation of time."* That the estimation in 
 which the poems of Tusser were held by his contemporaries, might 
 lead to such a resvdt, it may be allowable to conclude from the assertion 
 of Googe, who, speaking of our author's works, says, that " in his 
 fancie, they may, without any presumption, compare with any of the 
 Varros, Columellas, or Palladios of Rome."!' 
 
 The great merit of Tusser's book, independent of the utility of its 
 agricultural precepts, consists in the faithful picture which it deli- 
 neates of the manners, customs, and domestic life of the English 
 farmer, and in the morality, piety, and benevolent simplicity, which 
 pervade the whole. In a poetical light its pretensions are not great. 
 The part relative to Husbandry is divided into months, and written in 
 quatrains, of eleven syllables in each line, which are frequently con- 
 structed with much terseness, and with a happy epigrammatic brevity. 
 The abstracts prefixed to each month, are given in short verses of 
 four and five syllables each ; and numerous illustrative pieces, and 
 nearly the whole of the Huswifery, present us with a vast variety of 
 
 • British Bibliographer, No. III. p. 286. 
 
 f Preface to his Translation of Conradus Heresbachius, printed in 1596, and 1601. 
 VOL. I. 4 P
 
 658 
 
 metres, among which, as Ritson has observed, " may be traced the 
 popular stanza which attained so much celebrity in the pastoral 
 ballads of Shenstone."* Little that can be termed ornamental, 
 either in imagery or episode, is to be found in this poem ; but the 
 sketches of character and costume, of rural employment and 
 domestic economy, are so nmnerous, and given with such fidelity, 
 raciness, and spirit, as to render the work in a very uncommon 
 degree interesting and amusing. 
 
 36. Warner, William. Of the biography of this fine old poet, 
 little has descended to posterity. He is supposed to have been born 
 about the year 1558 ; and that he died at Am well in Hertfordshire, 
 and was by profession an attorney, are two of the principal facts 
 which, by an appeal to the parish register of Amwell, have been 
 clearly ascertained. In a note to his poem on this village, Mr. Scott 
 first communicated this curious document : — " 1608 — 1609. Master 
 William Warner, a man of -good yeares, and of honest reputation : 
 by his profession an atturnye of the Common Pleas: author of 
 Albion's England, diynge suddenly in the night in his bedde, without 
 any former complaynt or sicknesse, on Thursday night, beeinge the 
 9th day of March : was buried the Saturday following, and lyeth in 
 the church at the corner, under the stone of Gwalter Fader." f 
 
 The lines which gave occasion to this extract form a pleasing 
 tribute to the memory of the bard : 
 
 " He, who in verse his Country's story told, 
 
 Here dwelt awhile ; perchance here sketch'd the scene, 
 "Where his fair Argentile, from crowded courts 
 For pride self-banish'd, in sequester'd shades 
 Sojourn'd disguis'd, and met the slighted youth 
 Who long had sought her love — the gentle bard 
 Sleeps here, by Tame forgotten" 
 
 The words in Italics which close this passage, were not at the 
 time they were written correctly true, for Warner had then been a 
 
 * Bibliogi'aphia Poetica, p. 374-. 
 
 t See Sharpe's British Poets, No.LXXIX. p. 17- note 20.
 
 659 
 
 subject of great and judicious praise, both to Mrs. Cooper and 
 Dr. Percy ; and, since the era of Scott, he has been imitated, re- 
 edited, and hberally applauded-i He is conjectured to have been a 
 native of Warwickshire, to have been educated at Magdalen Hall, 
 Oxford, and to have left the University without a degree, for the 
 purpose of cultivating his poetical genius in the metropolis. His 
 Albion s England, on which his fame is founded, was first printed in 
 1586, when the poet was probably about eight and twenty. It un- 
 derwent six subsequent editions during the author's life-time, namely, 
 in 1589, 1592, 1596, 1597, 1602, and 1606. * 
 
 This extensive poetic history, which is deduced from the deluge 
 to the reign of Elizabeth, is distributed into twelve books, and con- 
 tains seventy-seven chapters ; it is dedicated to Henry Gary, Lord 
 Hunsdon, under whose patronage and protection Warner appears to 
 have spent the latter portion of his life. Such was the popularity of 
 " Albion's England," that it threw into the shade what had formerly 
 been the favourite collection, the " Mirror for Magistrates ;" Warner 
 was ranked by his contemporaries, says Dr. Percy, on a level with 
 Spenser ; they were called the Homer and Virgil of their age j- j 
 and Meres, speaking of the English tongue, declares, that by his 
 (Warner's) pen, it " was much enriched and gorgeously invested in 
 rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments." f Less hyperbolical, 
 and, therefore, more judicious praise, was allotted him by Drayton, 
 who, after noticing his incorrectnesses, adds with a liberal spirit — 
 
 " yet thus let me say 
 
 For my old friend, some passages there be 
 In him, which I protest have taken me 
 With almost wonder, so fine, so clear, and new. 
 As yet they have been equalled by few ;" § 
 
 a decision which subsequent criticism has confirmed. 
 
 * Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, p. 384. 
 
 f Reliques, vol. ii. p. 239. 4th edit. 
 
 % Wit's Academy, part ii. p. 280. edit, of 1598. 
 
 § Of Poets and Poesy, Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 399. col. 2. 
 
 4p 2
 
 660 
 
 One of his most pleasing episodes, " Argentile and Curan," was 
 inserted by Mrs. Cooper in her " Muses' Library," who justly terms 
 it " a tale full of beautiful incidents, in the romantic taste, extremely 
 affecting, rich in ornament, wonderfully various in stile, and, in 
 short, one of the most beautiful pastorals I ever met with." * This 
 was again republished by Percy in his " Reliques f," and finally 
 honoured by Mason in the third volume of his Poems, 1796, where 
 it forms a Legendary Drama in Jive acts, written on the old English 
 model. Ritson, Headley, and Ellis, have furnished us with additional 
 extracts, and at length Albion's England has found its place in the 
 body of our English Poetry through the taste and exertions of 
 Mr. Chalmers, t 
 
 Ease, simplicity, and pathos, are the leading virtues of Warner's 
 muse. He eminently excelled in depicting rural and pastoral life, 
 and in developing those simple and touching emotions which pervade 
 the innocent and artless bosom. His vices were those of his age, 
 and may be included under the heads of indelicacy, inequality, and 
 quaintness ; these expunged, his finer parts strongly interest our 
 affections, and endear to us the memory of the good old bard. 
 
 37. Watson, Thomas, a once popular writer of sonnets, was born in 
 London, and educated at Oxford, whence he returned to the metro- 
 polis for the purpose of practising the law. In 1581, his principal 
 poetical work was entered on the Stationers' books, and afterwards 
 published with the following title, though without date : — " The 
 EKATOMHAeiA, or Passionate Centurie of Love, divided into two 
 Parts : whereof the first expresseth the Author's Sufferance in Love : 
 the latter, his long Farewell to Love and all his Tyrannic. Composed 
 by Thomas Watson, Gentleman ; and published at the Request of 
 certeine Gentlemen his very Friends." 
 
 Of this Collection, which occupies a thin 4to., black letter, with 
 a sonnet on each page, an admirable critical analysis has been given 
 
 * Edit. 1741. p. 157. + Vol.ii. p. 238. J Vol. iv. p. 499.
 
 661 
 
 by Sir Egerton Brydges, in the twelfth number of tlie British 
 Bibliographer, accompanied by seventeen specimens of the sonnets, 
 and from this critique, and from the Theatrum Poetarum, edited by 
 the same elegant scholar, we have drawn our account, for the original 
 is so scarce, as to be of hopeless acquisition. 
 
 It will strike the reader, in the first place, that the poems which 
 Watson termed Sonnets, have no pretensions, in point of mechanism 
 and form, to the character of the legitimate sonnet. Instead of the 
 beautiful though artificial construction of the Petrarcan model, they 
 consist of eighteen lines, including three quatrains in alternate rhyme, 
 and a couplet appended to each quatrain ; a system of verse totally 
 destitute of the union and dignity which distinguish this branch of 
 poetry in the practice of the Italians. It should be remarked, how- 
 ever, that our poet has occasionally given us a sonnet in Latin verse, 
 in which he confines himself to fourteen lines, and, as he observes, 
 in the Introduction to his sixth sonnet, " commeth somwhat neerer 
 unto the Italian phrase than the English doth." * Watson was, 
 indeed, an elegant Latin poet, and in the matter prefixed to his first 
 and sixth sonnets, informs us that he had written a poem " De 
 Remedio Amoris," and that he was then " busied in translating 
 Petrarch his sonnets into Latin, — which one day may perchance 
 come to light." f In fact there appears to be more of true poetry in 
 his Latin than in his English verse ; for though to the " Centurie of 
 Love" must be attributed great purity, correctness, and perspicuity of 
 diction, and a versification uncommonly polished, harmonious, and 
 well sustained, yet the soul of poetry, tenderness, simplicity, and 
 energy of sentiment, will be found wanting. In their place Watson 
 has bestowed upon us a multitude of metaphysical conceits, an 
 exuberant store of classical mythology, and an abundance of learned 
 allusion ; but, to adopt the interesting observations of the critic 
 mentioned in the preceding paragraph, " to meditate upon a subject. 
 
 British Bibliographer, No. XII. p. 7. t Ibid. p. 5. T.
 
 662 
 
 till it is broken into a thousand remote allusions and conceits ; to 
 accustom the mind to a familiarity with metaphysical subtleties and 
 casual similitudes in contradictory objects, is to cultivate intellectual 
 habits directly opposite to those from whence real poetry springs ; 
 and to produce effects directly opposite to those which real poetry is 
 intended to produce. 
 
 " The real poet does but pursue, fix, and heighten those day- 
 dreams which every intellectual being more or less at times indulges ; 
 though the difference of the degree, as well as of the fi-equency, in 
 which individuals indulge them, is incalculable ; arising from the 
 difference of mental talent and sensibility, as well as of cultivation. 
 But who is there in whose fancy some absent image does not occa- 
 sionally revive? And who is there so utterly dull and hard, that 
 in him it arises unassociated with the slightest emotion of pain or 
 pleasure ? Yet in what abundance and richness of colouring such 
 images are constantly springing up in the mind of the poet ? Visions 
 adhere to the boughs of every tree ; and painting what he sees and 
 feels with his natural enthusiasm, he carries the reader of sensibility 
 along with him ; kindles his fainter ideas into a fiame ; draws forth 
 the yet weak impression into body and form ; and irradiates his 
 whole brain with his own light. The chords of the heait are touched ; 
 and wHle thus played upon produce enchanting music ; till, as the spell 
 is silent, the object of this borrowed inspiration is astonished to find, 
 that all this brilliant entertainment sprung from the wand of the 
 poetical magician. 
 
 " If this be the secret of true poetry, what is he who seeks to 
 convey images so unnatural, that no one had ever even an imperfect 
 glimpse of them before, and no one can sympathize with them when 
 expressed ? Can he whose thoughts find no mirror in the minds of 
 others be a poet ? Is not a metaphysical poet a contradiction of terms ? 
 
 " He who adopts these principles, will think of Watson as I do. — 
 Has he painted the natural emotions of the mind, or the heart ? Has 
 he given 
 
 " A local habitation and a name"
 
 663 
 
 to those * airy nothings' which more or less haunt every fancy ? Or 
 has he not sat down rather to exercise the subtlety of his wit, than to 
 discharge the fulhiess of his bosom ?" * 
 
 Yet has Watson, with these vital defects, been pronounced by 
 Mr. Steevens superior as a sonneteer to Shakspeare-j-; a preference 
 which we shall have occasion to consider in the chapter appropriated 
 to the minor poems of our great dramatist. 
 
 Beside the " Hekatompathia," Watson published, in 1581, a Latin 
 translation of the Antigone of Sophocles; in 1582, " Ad Olandum 
 de Eidogiis serenissimse nostras Elizabethse post Anglorum proelia 
 cantatis, Decastichon ;" in 1586, a Paraphrase in Latin verse of the 
 " Raptus Helenae," of Coluthus ; in 1590, an English Version of 
 Italian Madrigalls, and " Meliboeus, a Latin Eclogue on the Death of 
 Sir Francis Walsingham," 4to. ; in 1592, he printed " Amintae 
 Gaudia," in hexameter verses, 4to. ; and beside other fugitive pieces, 
 two poems of his are inserted in the " Phoenix Nest," 1593, and 
 in " England's Helicon," 1600. 
 
 Watson has been highly praised by Nash Xi by Gabriel Harvey §, 
 and by Meres ; the latter asserting that " as Italy had Petrarch, so 
 England had Thomas Watson." || He is supposed to have died 
 about the year 1595, for Nash, in his " Have with you to Saffron 
 Walden," printed in 1596, speaks of him as then deceased, adding, 
 that " for all things he has left few his equals in England." 
 
 38. WiLLOBiE, Henry. From the Preface of Hadrian Dorrell, to 
 the first edition of Willobie's " Avisa" in 1594, in which he terms 
 the author, " a young man, and a scholar of very good hope," there 
 is foundation for conjecturing that our poet was born about the year 
 1565. It appears also from this prefatory matter that, " being desi- 
 
 * British Bibliographer, No. XI I. p. 3, 4. f Reed's Shakspearc, vol.i. p. 31. 
 
 t Epistle prefixed to Greene's Menaphon. 
 
 § Foure Letters andcertaino Sonnets, 1592. 
 
 II Censura Literaria, vol. ix. p. 47-
 
 664 
 
 rous to see the fashions of other countries for a time, he not long 
 sithence departed vohnitarily to her majestie's service," and that 
 Dorrell, in his friend's absence, committed his poem to the press. * 
 He gave it the following title, " Willobie his Avisa ; or the true 
 picture of a modest Maide and of a chast and constant wife. In hex- 
 ameter t verse. The like argument whereof was never heretofore 
 published :" 4to. A second edition was published by the same editor 
 in 1596, with an Apology for the work, dated June 30, and concluding 
 with the information, that the author was " of late gone to God." A 
 fourth impression " corrected and augmented," consisting of 72 leaves 
 4to., made its appearance in 1609 J, with the addition of " the victorie 
 of English Chastitie never before published," and subscribed " Thomas 
 Willoby/?-a/e?' Henrici Willoby nuper defuncti." 
 
 Mr. Haslewood conjectures from Dorrell' s calling Willobie his- 
 chamber-fello-ii', and then dating his Preface from his chamber in 
 
 * In the Apologie of Dorrell, dated 1596, and annexed to the second edition, he tells 
 us, that " this poetical fiction was penned by the author at least for thirty and five yeares 
 sithence." " If there was sufficient ground for this assertion," remarks Mr. Haslewood, 
 «« it fixes the time of the composition about 1561, and supposing the author then, as 
 seems reasonable to presume, to have attained liis twenty-first year, it places the time of 
 his birth, as conjecturally fixed by Mr. Ellis, at 1540. However, some doubt arises 
 whether this inference is not contradicted by the preface of 1594; which describes the 
 author not only as « a scholar of very good hope,' but also as a ' young man,' who, de- 
 sirous of seeing the fashions of other countries, had, ' not long sithence,' departed volun- 
 tarily in Her Majesty's service. Here the most enlarged meaning bestowed on the 
 expression ' not long sithence,' can neither explain the sentence that calls him a ' scholar 
 of very good hope,' nor that of a « young man,' whereby they shall be terms applicable to 
 a person who had written thirty years before, and from the above inference might have 
 been then in the fifty-fourth year of his age. It is probable the preface may be relied on ; 
 otherwise the author's departure from this country will be found too remote for the term 
 of any voluntary engagement, civil or miltary, that could be attached to foreign service. 
 Dorrell's subsequent anachronism may be ascribed to inadvertency : to a zealous, but 
 hurried attempt to parry the attack of the critic, by the supposed youth of the writer j and 
 by fixing the composition at a period sufficiently early to prevent an unfavourable com- 
 parison with more recent productions." British Bibliographer, No. XIV. p. 242. 
 f The term hexameter is here meant to designate stanzas consisting of six lines. 
 X Ritson dates this fourth impression 1609, but Mr. Haslewood 1605 : see Brit. 
 Bibliogr., No. XIV. p.241.
 
 665 
 
 Oxford ;" and from a passage in the " Avisa" itself, that our author 
 was educated in that university, and that he was a native of Kent. * 
 We are told likewise by Dorrell, in his " Apologie," that his friend 
 had written a poem entitled " Susanna," which still remained in 
 manuscript. 
 
 The " Avisa," which consists of a great number of short cantos, is 
 written to exemplify and recommend the character of a chaste woman, 
 under all the temptations to which the various situations incident to 
 her life, expose her. " In a void paper," says the editor, " rolled up 
 in this book, I found this very name Avisa, written in great letters, a 
 pretty distance asunder, and under every letter a word beginning with 
 the same letter, in this forme: — 
 
 A. V. I. S. A. 
 
 Amans. Vxor. Inviolata. Semper. Amanda. 
 
 That is, in effect, A loving wife that never violated her faith is 
 alwayes to be beloved. Wliich makes me conjecture, that he minding 
 for his recreation to set out the idea of a constant wife (rather describ- 
 ing what good wives should do than registring what any hath done,) 
 devised a woman's name that might fitly expresse this woman's nature 
 whom he would aime at : desirous in this (as I conjecture) to imitate 
 a far off, either Plato in his commonwealth, or More in his Utopia." j- 
 Prefixed are two commendatory copies of verses, of which the second, 
 signed Contraria Contrariis, is remarkable for an allusion to Shak- 
 speai-e's " Rape of Lucrece," and will be noticed hereafter. 
 
 Of invention and enthusiasm, the poet's noblest boast, few traits 
 are discoverable in the Avisa, nor can it display any vivid delineation 
 of passion ; but it occasionally unfolds a pleasing vein of description, 
 and both the diction and metre are uniformly clear, correct, and flow- 
 ing. Indeed, the versification may be pronounced, for the age in 
 which it appeared, peculiarly sweet and well modulated, and the whole 
 
 * Brit. Bibllogr., No. XIV. p. 213. f Ibid., p. 245. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 Q
 
 666 
 
 poem, in language and rhythm, makes a close approximation to 
 modern iisuage. 
 
 29. Wither, George. This very voluminous writer is introduced 
 here, in consequence of his Juvenilia, which constitute the best of his 
 works, having been all printed or circulated before the death of Sliak- 
 speare. He was born at Bentworth, near Alton in Hampshire, in 
 1590, and, after a long life of tumult, vicissitude, and disappointment, 
 died in his seventy-eighth year in 1667. He continued to wield his 
 pen to the last month of his existence, and more than one hundred 
 of his pieces, in prose and verse, have beeen enumerated by Mr. Park 
 in a very curious and elaborate catalogue of his works. * We shall 
 confine ourselves, however, for the reason already assigned, to that 
 portion of his poetry which was in circulation previous to 1616. 
 
 It appears from Wither's own catalogue of his works f , that four of 
 his earliest poems, entitled " Iter Hibernicum," " Iter Boreale," 
 " Patrick's Purgatory," and " Philarete's Complaint," were lost in 
 manuscript. The first of his pviblished productions was printed in 
 1611, under the title of" Abuses Stript and Whipt : or SatyricaU 
 Essays. Divided into two Bookes ;" 8vo., to which were annexed 
 " The Scourge," a satire, and " Certaine Epigrams." This book, he 
 tells us I, was written in 1611, and its unsparing severity involved 
 him in persecution, and condemned him for several months to a prison. 
 It was nevertheless highly popular, and underwent an eighth impres- 
 sion in 1633. 
 
 An elegant writer in the British Bibliographer has subjoined the 
 following very just and interesting remarks to his notice of these 
 poignant satires. " The reign of King James," he observes, " was 
 not propitious to the higher orders of poetry. All those bold features, 
 which nourished the romantic energies of the age of his predecessor, 
 had been suppressed by the selfish pusillanimity and pedantic policy 
 
 * Brit. Bibliogr., No. III. p. 17, et seq. 
 
 f At the end of his " Fides Anglicanse," 1 660. 
 
 J In his " Warning-piece to London," 1665.
 
 667 
 
 ot" this inglorious monarch. Loving flattery and a base kind of 
 hixurious ease, he was insensible to the ambitions of a gallant spirit, 
 and preferred the cold and barren subtleties of scholastic learning to 
 the breathing eloquence of those who were really inspired by the 
 muse. Poetical composition therefore soon assumed a new character. 
 Its exertions were now overlaid by learning, and the strange conceits 
 of metaphysical wit took place of the ci'eations of a pure and unso- 
 phisticated fancy. It was thus that Donne wasted in the production 
 of unprofitable and short-lived fruit the powers of a most acute and 
 brilliant mind. It was thus that Phineas Fletcher threw away upon 
 an unmanageable subject the warblings of a copious and pathetic 
 imagination. The understanding was more exercised in the ingenious 
 distortion of artificial stores, than the faculties which mark the poet 
 in pouring forth the visions of natural fiction. 
 
 " Such scenes as youthful poets dream, 
 On summer eve, by haunted stream, 
 
 were now deemed insipid. The Fairy Fables of Gorgeous Chivalry 
 were thought too rude and boisterous, and too unphilosophical for the 
 erudite ear of the book-learned king ! 
 
 " As writers of verse now brought their compositions nearer to the 
 nature of prose, the epoch was favourable to the satyrical class, for 
 which so much food was furnished by the motley and vicious manners 
 of the nation. Wither, therefore, bursting with indignation at the 
 view of society which presented itself to his young mind, took this 
 opportunity to indulge in a sort of publication, to which the prosaic 
 taste of the times was well adapted ; but he disdained, and, perhaps, 
 felt himself unqualified, to use that glitter of false ornament, which was 
 now substituted for the true decorations of the muse. ' I have arrived,' 
 says he *, ' to be as plain as a pack-saddle.' — ' Though you under- 
 stand them not, yet because you see this wants some Ji7ie phrases and 
 
 * Vide Preface to " Abuses Stript and Whipt." 
 4q 2
 
 668 
 
 flourishes, as you find other men's writings stuffed withal, perhaps you 
 will judge me unlearned.' — ' Yet I could with ease have amended it ; 
 for it cost me, I protest, more labour to observe this plainness, than 
 if I had more poetically trimmed it.' " * 
 
 The plainness of which Wither here professes himself to have been 
 studious, forms one of the noblest characteristics of his best Avritings. 
 Dismissing with contempt the puerilities and conceits which deformed 
 the pages of so many of his contemporaries, he cultivated, with almost 
 uniform assiduity, a simplicity of style, and an expression of natural 
 sentiment and feeling, which have occasioned the revival of his 
 choicest compositions in the nineteenth century f, and will for ever 
 stamp them with a permanent value. 
 
 Returning to his Juvenilia, we find that in 1612 he published in a 
 thin quarto, " Prince Henrie's Obsequies ; or mournfuU Elegies upon 
 his Death. With a supposed Interlocution betweene the Ghost of 
 Prince Henry and Great Britaine ;" which was followed the succeeding 
 year by his " Epithalamia : or Nuptiall Poemes," 4to., on the marriage 
 of Frederick the Fifth, with Elizabeth, only daughter of James the 
 First. These pieces have been re-printed, by Sir Egerton Brydges, in 
 his " Restituta :" the Obsequies contain forty-five elegiac sonnets, 
 succeeded by an Epitaph, the Interlocution, and a Sonnet of Death, in 
 Latin rhymes, with a paraphrastic translation. Among the numerous 
 sonnet-writers of the age of Shakspeare, Wither claims a most respect- 
 able place, and many of these little elegies deserve a rescue from ob- 
 livion. We would particularly point out Nos. 14 and 17, from which 
 an admirable sonnet might be formed by subjoining six lines of the 
 former to the first two quartuorzains of the latter, and this without 
 
 * Brit. Bibliogr., No. I. p. 4, 5. 
 
 t A Selection from Wither's Works, in three volumes 8vo., was promised, five years 
 ago, by a gentleman of Bristol. In 1785 Mr. Alexander Dalrymple published Extracts 
 from his Juvenilia ; and " Fidelia," " Faire Virtue," " The Shepheard's Hunting," and 
 " Abuses Stript and Whipt," are now separately reprinting from the press of Longman 
 and Co.— October 1814.
 
 669 
 
 the alteration of a syllable ; the octave will then consist of a soliloquy 
 by the poet himself, and the sestain be addressed to Elizabeth the 
 sister of Prince Henry ; a transition which is productive of a striking 
 and happy effect: — 
 
 *' Thrice happy had I been, if I had kept 
 Within the circuit of some httle Village, 
 In ignorance of Courts and Princes slept, 
 Manuring of an honest halfe-plough tillage : 
 Or else, I would I were as young agen 
 As when Eliza, our last Phcoiix died ; 
 My childish yeares had not conceived then 
 What 'twas to lose a Prince so dignified : — 
 Thy brother's well: and would not change estates 
 With any prince that reigns beneath the skie : 
 No, not with all the world's great potentates : 
 His plumes have born him to eternitie ! — 
 
 He shall escape (for so th' Almighty wills) 
 The stormy Winter of ensuing ills." * 
 
 In 1614, our author published " A Satyre written to the King's 
 most excellent Majestie," 8vo. ; and " The ShejjJierds Pipe,"" 8vo. ; the 
 latter, a production of high poetical merit, having being composed in 
 conjunction with Browne, the author of Britannia's Pastorals. 
 
 In 1615, appeared " Tlie Shepheards Hunting : Being certaine 
 Eglogues, written during the time of the Author's imprisonment in 
 the Marshalsey," 8vo. This was intended as a continuation of the 
 " Shepheard's Pipe," and is fully equal, if not superior, to the prior 
 portion : Phillips, indeed, speaking of Wither, says, " the most of 
 poetical fancy, which I remember to have found in any of his 
 writings, is in a little piece of pastoral poetry, called The Shepherd's 
 Hunting.'''' ■\ 
 
 The next work with which Wither favoured us, though not 
 published for general circulation before 1619, yet, as the stationer, 
 
 * Restituta, No. VI. p. 394, 395. 
 
 f Theatrum Poetarum, edition of 1675.
 
 670 
 
 G«orge Norton, tells us, had been " long since imprinted for the use 
 of the author, to bestow on such as had voluntarily requested it in 
 way of adventure ;*' words which seem to intimate, that it had been 
 dispersed for the purpose of pecuniary return, and probably with the 
 intent of supporting the bard during his imprisonment in the Mar- 
 shalsea. It has accordingly a title-page which implies a second 
 impression, and is termed " Fidelia. Newly corrected and aug- 
 mented." This is a work which ought to have protected the memory 
 of Wither from the sarcasms of Butler, Swift, and Pope ; for it displays 
 a vein of poetry at once highly elegant, impassioned, and descriptive. 
 To Fidelia was first annexed the two exquisite songs, reprinted by 
 Dr. Percy, commencing 
 
 " Shall I, wasting in dispaire," 
 
 and 
 
 " Hence away, thou Syren, leave me." * 
 
 We shall close the list of those works of Wither that fall within the 
 era to which we are limited, by noticing his " Faire Virtue : tlie 
 Mistresse of Phil'arete," 8vo. This beautiful production, glowing with 
 all the ardours of a poetic fancy, was one of his earliest compositions, 
 and is alluded to in his " Satire to the King," in 1614, before which 
 period there is reason to suppose it was widely circulated in manu- 
 script ; for in a prefatory epistle to the copy of 1622, published by 
 John Grismand, but which was originally prefixed to an anonymous 
 edition printed by John Harriot, and not now supposed to be in 
 existence, Wither tells us, that " the poem was composed many years 
 agone, and, unknown to the author, got out of his custody by an ac- 
 quaintance ;" and he adds, " when I first composed it, I weU liked 
 thereof, and it well enough became my years." To high praise of 
 this work in its poetical capacity, Mr. Dalrymple has annexed the 
 
 Reiiqucs, vol. iii., 4th edit. p. 190—264.
 
 671 
 
 important remark, that it unfolds a more perfect system of female 
 tuition than is any where else to be discovered. 
 
 The great misfortune of Wither was, that the multitude of his sub- 
 sequent publications, many of which were written during the effer- 
 vescence of party zeal, and are frequently debased by coarse and vulgar 
 language, overwhelmed the merits of his earlier productions. Yet it 
 must be conceded, that his prose, during the whole period of his au- 
 thorship, generally exhibits great strength, perspicuity, and freedom 
 from aifectation ; and on the best of his poetical effusions we may 
 cheerfully assent to the following encomium of an able and impartial 
 judge: — 
 
 " If poetry be the power of commanding the imagination, conveyed 
 in measure and expressive epithets. Wither was truly a poet. Perhaps 
 there is no where to be found a greater variety of English measure 
 than in his writings, (Shakspeare excepted,) more energy of thought, 
 or more frequent developement of the delicate filaments of the 
 human heart," * 
 
 40. WoTTON, Sir Henry. This elegant scholar and accomplished 
 gentleman was forty-eight years of age when Shakspeare died, being 
 born at Boughton-Hall in Kent, in 1568. His correspondence with 
 Milton on the subject of Comus in 1638, is on record, and it is highly 
 probable that, on his return from the continent in 1598, after a long- 
 residence of nine years in Germany and Italy, he would not long- 
 remain a stranger either to the reputation or the person of the great 
 Dramatic Luminary of his times. 
 
 Having mentioned these great poets as contemporaries of Sir 
 Henry Wotton, it may be a subject of pleasing speculation to conjec- 
 tm-e how far they could be personally known to each other. The 
 possibility of some intercourse of this kind, though transient, seems 
 to have forcibly struck the mind of an elegant poet and critic of the 
 
 Dalrymple's Extracts from Witlier's Juvenilia, 1785.
 
 672 
 
 present day ; speaking of Comus, presented at Ludlow-Castle in 1634, 
 he remarks, — " Much it has appeared to me of the Shaksperean diction 
 and numbers and form of sentiment may be traced in this admirable 
 and delightful Drama : in which the streams of the Avon mix with 
 those of the Arno, of the Miticius, and the Uissus. Part of Milton's 
 affectionate veneration, beside what arises from congenial mind, may 
 have arisen from personal respect. At the death of Shakspeare, 
 Milton was in his eighth year. 
 
 " Heroum laudes et facta Parentum 
 
 Jam legerc, et quae sit poterat cognoscere Virtus." 
 
 " It is hardly probable that they never met. Shakspeare, if they 
 did see each other, could not but be charmed with the countenance 
 and manners of a boy like Milton : and Milton, whose mind was 
 never childish, and whose countenance at ten has the modest but 
 decisive character of his high destiny, would feel the interview : his 
 young heart would dilate, and every recollection would bring Shak- 
 speare, once seen and heard, to his remembrance and imagination 
 with increasing force." * 
 
 The most powerful circumstance which militates against this 
 interesting supposition, is, that, if such an interview had taken place, 
 we should, in all probability, have found it recorded in the minor 
 poems, Latin or English, of Milton, who has there preserved many of 
 the occurrences of his youthful days, and would scarcely have failed, 
 we think, to put the stamp of immortality on such an event. 
 
 The poetry of Wotton, though chiefly written for the amusement 
 of his leisure, and through the excitement of casual circumstances, 
 possesses the invaluable attractions of energy, simplicity, and the 
 most touching morality ; it comes warm from the heart, and whether 
 employed on an amatory or didactic subject, makes its appropriate 
 impression with an air of sincerity which never fails to delight. Of 
 
 * " Laura : or an Anthology of Sonnets." By Capel Lofft. 5 vols. Preface, vol. i. 
 p. cxliv. cxiv.
 
 673 
 
 this description are the pieces entitled, " A Farewell to the Vanities 
 of the World;" the " Character of a Happy Life," and the Lines on 
 the Queen of Bohemia. One of his earUest pieces, being " written 
 in his youth," was printed in Davison's " Poetical Rapsody," 1602, 
 and his Remains were collected and published by his amiable friend 
 Isaac Walton. Sir Henry died. Provost of Eton, in December 1639, 
 in the seventy-third year of his age. 
 
 In di-awing up these Critical Notices of the principal poets who, 
 independent of the Drama, flourished during the life-time of Shak- 
 speare, we have been guided chiefly by the consideration of their posi- 
 tive merit, or great incidental popularity ; and few, if any, who, on 
 these bases, call for admission, have probably been overlooked. 
 There is one poet, however, whose memory has been preserved by 
 Phillips, and of whom, from the high character given of him by this 
 critic, it may be necessary to say a few words ; for if the following 
 eulogium on the compositions of this writer be not the result of a 
 marked partiality, it should stimidate to an ardent enquiry after 
 manuscripts so truly valuable. 
 
 " John Lane, a fine old Queen Elizabeth's gentleman, who was 
 living within my remembrance, and whose several Poems, had they 
 not had the ill fate to remain unpublisht, when much better meriting 
 than many, that are in print, might possibly have gained him a name 
 not much inferior, if not equal to Drayton, and others of the next 
 rank to Spencer ; but they are aU to be produc't in manuscript, 
 namely his ' Poetical Vision,^ his ' Alarm to the Poets,' his ' Twelve 
 Months,' his ' Guy of Warwick, a Heroic Poem (at least as much 
 as many others that are so entitled), and lastly his ' Supplement to 
 Chaucer s Squire s Tale.' " * 
 
 It has happened unfortunately for Lane, that the only specimen of 
 his writings which has met the eye of a modern critic, has proved a 
 source of disappointment. Warton, after recording that a copy of 
 
 * Theatrum Poetarum apud Brydges, p. 318, 319. 
 VOL. I. 4 R
 
 674 
 
 Lane's supplement to Chaucer existed in the Ashmolean Museum at 
 Oxford, adds, " I conceived great expectations of him on reading 
 Phillips's account. But I was greatly disappointed, for Lane's per- 
 formance, upon perusal, proved to be not only an inartificial imitation 
 of Chaucer's manner, but a weak effort of invention." * This disco- 
 very, however, shoidd not arrest all future research ; for. his four pre- 
 ceding poems, of which the latter two must necessarily, from their 
 titles, be of considerable length, may yet warrant the decision of 
 Phillips, t 
 
 To this brief summary of Master-Bards we shall now subjoin, in a 
 tabular and alphabetic form, a catalogue of those numerous minor 
 poets who were content to follow in the train of more splendid talent. 
 In carrying this arrangement into execution it will not be necessary, 
 after the example of Ritson, to dignify with the name of poet every 
 
 * Observations on Spenser, vol. i. p. 155, 156. 
 
 t It may be useful in this note, to place, in immediate juxta-position, the names of the 
 Poets whom we have thus enumerated, as leaders of a great portion of their Art, during 
 a period of half a century. 
 
 1 . Beaumont, Sir John. 
 
 21. 
 
 Harrington, 
 
 2, Breton. 
 
 22. 
 
 Jonson. 
 
 3. Browne. 
 
 23. 
 
 Lodge. 
 
 4. ChalkhilL 
 
 24. 
 
 Marlow. 
 
 5. Chapman. 
 
 25. 
 
 Marston. 
 
 6. Churchyard. 
 
 26. 
 
 Niccols. 
 
 7- Constable. 
 
 27. 
 
 Raleigh. 
 
 8. Daniel. 
 
 28. 
 
 Sackville. 
 
 9. Davies. 
 
 29. 
 
 Southwell. 
 
 10. Davors. 
 
 30. 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 11. Donne. 
 
 31. 
 
 Stirling. 
 
 12. Drayton. 
 
 32. 
 
 Sydney. 
 
 13. Drummond. 
 
 33. 
 
 Sylvester. 
 
 14. Fairfax. 
 
 34. 
 
 Turberville. 
 
 15. Fitzgefirey. 
 
 35. 
 
 Tusser. 
 
 16. Fletcher, Giles. 
 
 36. 
 
 Warner. 
 
 17. Fletcher, Phineas. 
 
 37. 
 
 Watson. 
 
 18. Gascoigne. 
 
 38. 
 
 Willobie. 
 
 19. Greene. 
 
 39. 
 
 Wither. 
 
 20. H%11. 
 
 40. 
 
 Wotten. 
 
 Lane.
 
 675 
 
 individual who contributed a single copy of verses, as a tribute to 
 contemporary merit — a prostitution of the title which appears truly 
 ridiculous ; for though bulk be no proof ot excellence, yet were 
 we to assign the name of poet to every penner of a stanza, the majo- 
 rity of those who barely read and write, might be included in the 
 list. To those alone, therefore, who either published themselves, or 
 had their productions thrown into a collective form by others, will 
 the appellation be allotted. 
 
 With a view to simplicity and brevity, the Table will consist but 
 of three parts ; the first, occupied by the names of the poets ; the 
 second, by abbreviated titles of their works, with their dates ; and the 
 third, in order to prevent the frequent repetition of similar epithets, 
 will contain arbitrary marks, designative of the general merit of their 
 writings, and forming a kind of graduated scale. Thus jnediocrity 
 will be designated by i broad black line ( |) ; excellence will be 
 expressed by eight asterisks before the mark of mediocrity, 
 (******** j), and absolute worthlcsmcss by eight after it (|********) ; 
 while the intermediate shades p'' Tierit will be sufficiently pointed 
 out by the intervening asterisks. Occfjional notes, where peculiarity 
 of any kind may call for them, will be added. 
 
 On this plan of tabular construction, the tediousness of i mere 
 catalogue willj in a great measure, be avoided; and, at the same 
 time, an adequately accurate view be given of the multiplicity and 
 diffusion of poetical composition which pervaded this fertile period. 
 
 4r 2
 
 676 
 
 TABLE of Minor Miscellaneous Poets, during the Age of Shakspeare. 
 
 SCALE. 
 
 
 li^ -^ & 
 
 AcHELEY, Thomas. " A most lamentable and tragical His- 
 
 torie:' 12mo. - - - - 1576 
 
 A translation from a novel of Bandello - - I* 
 
 Anderson, James. Ane godly treatis, calit the first and 
 
 second cumming of Christ, with the tone of the 
 
 wintersnycht. 16mo. Edin. - - 1595 |* 
 
 Andrews, Thomas. The Unmasking of a feminine Ma- 
 
 chiavell. 4to. - - - _ 1604 |* 
 
 Anneson, James. Carolana, that is to say, a Poeme in 
 
 Honour of our King, Charles-James, Queen 
 
 Anne, and Prince Charles, &c. 4to. - 1614 
 Arthington, Henry. Principall Points of Holy Profession. 
 
 4to. ----- 1607 I** 
 Aske, James. Elizabetha Triumphans. 4to. Blank Verse. 1588 |* 
 AvALE, Lemeke. a Commemoration or Dirge of bastarde 
 
 Edmonde Boner. 8vo. - - - 1659 | 
 
 Balnevis, Henry. Confession of Faith, conteining how the 
 
 troubled man should seeke refuge at his God. 
 
 12mo. Edin. - - - - 1584 | 
 
 Barnefielde, Richard. Cynthia with certeyne Sonnettes 
 
 and the Legend of Cassandra. - - 1594 |
 
 677 
 
 Ihe Affectionate Shepherd. 16mo.t - - 1595 *| 
 
 The Encomion of Lady Pecunia. 4to. - - 1598 | 
 Barnes, Barnabe. Parthenophil and Parthenope. Sonnettes, 
 
 Madrigals, Elegies and Odes. - - 1593 *| 
 
 A Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnettes. % - 1595 *| 
 Bastard, Thomas. Chrestoleros. Seven Books of Epi- 
 grams. 8vo. § - - - - 1595 *| 
 Batman, Stephen. The Travayled Pylgrime. 4to. - 1569 |*** 
 Beverley, Peter. The History of Ariodanto and Jeneura. 
 
 Bvo. 2d edit. From Ariosto. - - 1600 | 
 
 BiESTON, Roger. The Bayte and Snare of Fortune. Folio. 
 
 ten leaves. No date. || 
 Blenerhasset, Thomas. The Seconde Part of the Mirrour 
 
 for Magistrates. 4to. - - -1578|* 
 
 Bourcher, Arthur. A Fable of j!EsopYe.x?,\^eA. 8vo. 1566 
 Bourman, Nicholas. A Friendelie Well Wishinge to such 
 
 as endure. A Ballad. _ - - 1581 
 
 Bradshaw, Thomas. The Shepherd's Starve. 4to. - 1591 
 Brathwayte, Richard. The Golden Fleece, with other 
 
 poems. Sm. 8vo. _ _ _ 1611 | 
 
 f " Here, through the course of twenty sonnets, not inelegant, and which were exceed- 
 ingly popular, the poet bewails his unsuccessful love for a beautiful youth, by the name of 
 Ganymede, in a strain of the most tender passion, yet with professions of the chastest 
 affection." Warton's Hist. vol. ill. p. 405. — It was the fashion, at this period, to imitate 
 the second Eclogue of Virgil. 
 
 I The Sonnets of Barnes, which are written in strict adherence to the recurring rima 
 of the Italian school, frequently possess no inconsiderable beauties. The Sonnet on Con- 
 tent, selected by Mr. Beloe (vol. ii. p. 78.), from Parthenophil, is highly pleasing and 
 harmonious, and at least twenty of his centenary may be pronounced, both in imagery and 
 versification, above mediocrity. 
 
 § Sheppard, in his Poems, 1651, remarks that "none in England, save Bastard and 
 Harington, have divulged epigrams worth notice." A beautiful specimen of his Epigrams 
 is given by Mr. Park, in Censura Literaria, vol. iv. p. 375. 
 
 II To this poet, Nash dedicated his « Strange Newes," &c. 15!)2, in the subsequent 
 curious terms : " To the most copious carminist of our time, and famous persecutor of 
 Priscian, his verie friend maister Apis lapis." — Vide Ritson, p. 131. note.
 
 678 
 
 The Poets Willow, or the Passionate Shepherd. 8vo. 
 
 1614 I 
 A Strappado for the Divell. Epigrams and Satyres. 
 8vo. ----- 1615 I 
 Brice, Thomas. The Courte of Venus Moralized. - 1567 
 Songes and Sonnettes. - - - 1567 
 
 Broughton, Rowland. A Brief e Discourse of the Lyfe and 
 Death of the late Right High and Hon"" Sir 
 Will"' Pawlet, Knight. - - - 1572 |** 
 
 Brooke, Thomas. Certayne Verses in the time of his 
 imprisonment, the day before his deathe. 
 Norwich. - _ _ - 1570 
 
 Brooke, Christopher. Elegy on Prince Henry. - 1613 
 
 Eclogues. Dedicated to W™ Browne, f - 1614 | 
 
 Bryskett, Lodowick. The Mourning Muses of Lod. 
 Bryskett upon the deathe of the most noble Sir 
 Philip Sydney knight. % - - 1587 *| 
 
 Bug, Sir George. Aaip^'^- UoXua-Tupoivoi;. An Eclog treating 
 of Crownes, and of Garlandes, and to whom of 
 right they appertaine. 4to. - - 1605 *| 
 
 f For an account of this author, see liritish Bibliographer, No. VIII. p. 235. In this, 
 as in other instances, I have only inserted the pieces published during the life of Shak- 
 speare. 
 
 X Two pieces by this writer, entitled " The Mourning Mu- j of Thestylis," and " A 
 Pastorall Aeglogue upon the Death of Sir Philip Sidney," have V.en inserted in Spenser's 
 Works (Todd's " lit. vol. viii. p. 66. .t sec.), and probably form the content" of " The 
 Mourning Muses." Hp i' ^ scribed by Spenser as a swain 
 
 " Of gentle wit aud d.dntie sweet device," 
 
 and if, as Ritson asserts, (Bibliograph. Poet. p. U6,) « we probably owe much that has 
 descended to us of the incomparable " Faery Queen," to this poet, we are greatly his 
 debtors indeed. That Bryskett had importuned his friend for the continuance of his im- 
 mortal poem, is evident from Spenser's thirty-third sonnet, which pleads, as an excuse, dis- 
 appointment in love, and closes with the following petitionary couplet : — 
 
 " Cease thcr, till she vouchsafe to grawnt me rest ; 
 
 Or lend you me ani-'ther living breast." Vol. viii. p. IS?, 
 
 Bryskett succeeded Spenser as Clerk of the Council of Munster.
 
 679 
 
 Carew, Richard. " Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Reco- 
 verie of Hierusalem." First Five Cantos trans- 
 lated from Tasso. First edition, no date. 
 Second, 4to. - - _ . 1594 |* 
 
 Carpenter, John. A SorrowfuU Song for sinfull soules. 
 8vo. - - - - _ 1586 
 
 Chester, Robert. " Loves Martyr, or Rosalins Com- 
 plaint." From the Italian of Torquato Coeliano. 
 " With the true Legend of famous King Ar- 
 thur." t - - - . . 1601 I* 
 Chettle, Henry. The Pope's pitiful Lamentation for the 
 death of his deere darling Don Joan of Aus- 
 tria. 4to. - - _ _ 1578 
 « The Forest of Fancy " Consisting of apothegmes, 
 histories, songs, sonnets, and epigrams. 4to. 
 
 1579 
 
 A Dolefull Ditty or sorowful sonet of the Lord 
 
 Daily, some time King of Scots. - - 1579 I 
 
 Chute, Anthony. Beawtie Dishonoured, written under the 
 
 title of Shore's Wife. 4to. - - 1593 
 
 Procris and Cephalus. J - - _ 1593 |* 
 
 Clapham, Henoch. A Brief e of the Bible' s History ; Drawne 
 
 first into English poesy, 8vo. Edin. - 1596 |*** 
 Copley, Anthony. Loves Owle: an idle conceited Dia- 
 logue betwene Love and an Olde-man. 4to. 
 
 1595 
 A Fig for Fortune. 4to. - _ - 1596 |** 
 
 Cottesford, Thomas. A Prayer to DannyeU. - 1570 
 
 f To these poems by Chester, are added on the first subject, which, he tells us, " alle- 
 gorically shadows the truth of love, in the constant fate of the phoenix and turtle," poems 
 by Shakspeare, Jonson, Marston, Chapman, and others. — Vide Ritson, p. 159. 
 
 X Ritson remarks, — " This is probably the poem alluded to in the Midsummer-Nighfs 
 Dream : — 
 
 " Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true. 
 As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you." Page 1 70.
 
 680 
 
 Cotton, Roger. Jn Annor of Proofe, brought from the 
 
 Tower of David. 4to. - - - 1596 
 
 A Spiritiiall Song. 4to. _ _ _ 1596 
 
 CuLROSE, Elizabeth. Ane Godly Dream. 4to. Edin. 1603 | 
 
 CuTwoDE, T. Caltha-poetaruni, or the Bumble Bee, 4to. 
 
 1599 
 
 Davidstone, Johne. Ane Brief Commendation of Up- 
 
 richtnes, &c. in Inglis Meter. 4to. - 1573 
 
 A Memorial of the Life and Death of two worthye 
 
 Chrittians. In English Meter. 8vo. - 1595 
 
 Davies, John. The Scourge of Folly. Consisting of saty- 
 
 ricall Epigramms, &c. 8vo. - - 1611 
 
 Humours Heavn on Earth. - - 1605 
 
 Microcosmos. The Discovery of the Little World, 
 
 with the government thereof. 4to. - - 1603 
 
 The Muses Sacrifice ; or Divine Meditations. 12mo. 
 
 1612 
 Wittes Pilgrimage, (by Poeticall Essaies,) Through 
 
 a World of amorous Sonnets, &c. 4to. f 16 
 
 A Select Second Husband for Sir Thos. Overburie's 
 
 Wife. Small 8vo. - - - 1616 
 
 Miruyn in Modum. ^ - - ^ 1602 |** 
 
 Davison, Francis. 1 Sonnets, Odes, Elegies, Madrigals, and 
 
 Davison, Walter, j Epigrams, by Francis and Walter 
 
 Davison, brethren. ]2mo. § - - 1602 *| 
 
 f That Wittes Pilgrimage was written before 1611, is evident from its being alluded 
 to in his Scourge for Paper-Persecutors : annexed to the Scourge of Folly, printed in this 
 year. 
 
 X Beside these productions here enumerated, Davies published, in 1617, " Wits 
 Bedlam," 8vo. ; containing not less than 400 Epigrams, and about 80 Epitaphs. This 
 writer usually designated himself by the title oi John Davies of Hereford, — See Censura 
 Literaria, vols. i. ii. v. vi. Brit. Bibhographer, No. VIII., Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii., and 
 Wood's Athenae Oxon. vol. i. p. 445. He also wrote The Holy Rood, or Christ's Crosse, 
 1609. 
 
 § These poetical brothers published their poems with the above title, in a valuable Col- 
 lection of Metrical Miscellanies, called " A Poetical Rapsodie," 1602, which will be
 
 681 
 
 Delone, Thomas. Strange Histories, or songes and sonnets 
 
 of kinges, princes, dukes, lords, ladyes, knights, 
 
 and gentlemen : &c. 4to. f ^'- - 1612 |* 
 
 Derricke, John. The Image of Irelande. 4to. - - 1581 |* 
 
 DowRicKE, Ann. The French Historie. 4to. - - 1589 
 
 Drant, Thomas. A Medicinable Morall, that is, the two 
 
 bookes of Horace his satyres, englyshed, &c. 
 
 4to. - - - - - 1566 
 
 Horace his Arte of Poetrie, pistles, and satyres, en- 
 
 glished. 4to. _ - - - 1567 
 
 Greg. Nazianzen, his epigrammes, and spirituall 
 
 sentences. 8vo. | - - - 1568 |* 
 
 Edwardes, C. The Mansion of Myrthe - - 1581 
 
 Elderton, William. Eldertons Solace in tyme of his sick- 
 ness, contayning sundrie sonets upon many 
 pithe parables. - - - _ 1578 |* 
 
 Various Ballads ^xovi\\560 to % - - 1590 |* 
 
 Elviden, Edmond. The Closet of Counselles. Translated 
 
 noticed hereafter. They are'introduced in the Table as being the principal contributori, 
 and as distinguishing their pieces by a separate title or division. 
 
 f This writer was the most popular ballad-maker of his day ; he was by trade a silk- 
 weaver, and the compiler of various Garlands, under the titles of "The Garland of Good 
 Will ;" " The Garland of Delight," &c. &c. Nash, in his « Have with you to Saffron- 
 Walden," 15'J6, says, that " his muse from the first peeping forth, hath stood at livery at 
 an alehouse wispe, never exceeding a penny a quart day nor night ; and this deere yeare, 
 together with the silencing of his looms, scarce that; he being constrained to betake him- 
 self to carded ale: whence it proceedeth, that since Candlemas, or hisjigge oi John for the 
 King, not one mei-rie dittie will come from him, but The thunder-bolt against swearers, 
 Rej)e?it England repent, and The strange judgements of God." 
 
 \ Drant was a copious Latin Poet, having published two miscellanies under the titles 
 of Sylva, and Poemata Varia. 
 
 § A quotation from one of the songs or ballads of this drunken rhymer, is to be found 
 in Much Ado about Nothing, (Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 196.) commencing 
 
 " The god of love, 
 That sits above." 
 
 VOL. I. 4 s
 
 682 
 
 and collected out of divers aucthors into English 
 verse. 8vo. _ _ - - 1569 
 
 The History of Pisistratus and Catanea. 12mo. 
 
 Evans, Lewes. The Fyrste twoo Satars or Poi/ses of Orace. 
 
 1564 
 
 Evans, William. Thamesiades, or Chastities Triumph. Svo. 
 
 tl602 *| 
 
 Fenner, Dudley. The Song of Songs. Translated out of 
 the Hebrue into Englishe Meeter. Svo. - 1587 
 
 Fennor, William. Fennors Descriptions. 4to. % - 1616 |* 
 
 Ferrers, George. Legends of Dame Eleanor Cobham and 
 Humfrey Plantagenet — in the Myrrour for 
 Magistrates, edition § - - - 1578 |* 
 
 Fetherstone, Christopher. The Lamentations of Jerernie, 
 in prose and meeter, with apt notes to singe 
 them withall. 8vo. _ - _ 1587 
 
 Fleming, Abraham. The Bucolikes of P. Virgilius Mara, 
 
 with alphabeticall annotations. - - 1575 |* 
 
 The Georgiks or Ruralls : conteyning four books. 
 
 4to. II - - - - - 1589 I* 
 
 Fletcher, Robert. An Epitaph or briefe Lamentation for 
 the late Queene. 4to. - - - 1603 
 
 Fraunce, Abraham. The Lamentations of Amintas for the 
 
 f This poem, of which a prior edition is noticed in Gensura Literaria, vol, v. p. 34.9, 
 as published in 4to. 1600, is conjectured by Ritson, p. 201, to have been the production 
 of William Evans, who is well known to the lovers of old English poetry, by his eulogiuni 
 prefixed to the first edition of Spenser's " Faerie Queene," 1590. The Thamesiades, 
 which consists of three books or cantos, is written with vigour, and exhibits some pleasing 
 poetical pictures. 
 
 X This thin volume of 22 leaves, consists of seven poetical speeches " spoken before the 
 King and Queens most excellent Majestie, the Prince his highnesse, and the Lady Eliza- 
 beth's Grace." 
 
 § He contributed also to the previous editions of 1559 and 1563. 
 
 11 The " Georgiks" were added to a new version of the " Bucolikes," forming one 
 volume, 4to. Both are in regular Alexandrines without rhyme.
 
 683 
 
 death of Phillis : paraphrastically translated out 
 of Latine into English hexameters. 4to. 1588 |* 
 " The Arcadian Rhetoricke" Verse and Prose. 8vo. 
 
 1588 I* 
 The Countess of Pembrolte's Emanuel. Containing 
 the nativity, passion, burial, and resurrection 
 of Christ : togeather with certaine psalmes of 
 David. 4to. - - - - 1591 |* 
 
 The Countesse of Pembroke's Ivychurch. Conteining 
 the affectionate life, and unfortunate death of 
 Phillis and Amyntas. 4to. f - - 1591 |* 
 
 The Third Part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Ivy- 
 church: entitled: Amintas Dale. 4to. - 1592 |* 
 Heliodorus's Ethiopics. Svo. :{: - - 1591 |* 
 
 Freeman, Thomas. Rub and a Great Cast : and Runne, and 
 a Great Cast. The second bowle. In 200 
 Epigrams. 4to, § - - - - 1614 | 
 
 FuLVTELL, Ulpian. The Flower of Fame. Containing the 
 bright RenoAvne, and most fortunate raigne of 
 King Henry the viij. 4to. - - 1575 |** 
 
 Gale, Dunstan. Pyramus and Thisbe. || - - 1597 *| 
 
 t This production consists of a pastoral and an elegy; the former being a translation 
 of the Aminta of Tasso. 
 
 % Fraunce also published in a work of his, entitled " The Lawyers Logicke," 1588, an 
 hexameter version of Virgil's Alexis. His affectation of Latin metres has condemned him 
 to oblivion , for as Phillips justly remarks, " they neither become the English, nor any 
 other modern language." — Edit, apud Brydges, p. 109. 
 
 § Wood tells us (Ath. Oxon. vol. i. p. 398.}, that Freeman was held in esteem by 
 Donne, Daniel, Chapman, and Shakspeare; and to these poets, and to Spenser, he has 
 addressed epigrams. For numerous specimens of this poet, see Warton, vol. iv., Ellis, 
 and Park in Censura Lit. vol. iv. p. 129. 
 
 II This poem was afterwards annexed to Greene's " History of Arbasto," 1617, where 
 it is termed " a lovely poem." It was reprinted in 1626. On Greene's authority, I have 
 ranked it beyond mediocrity. 
 
 4 s 2
 
 684 
 
 Gamage, William. Linsi- Woolsie : or Two Centuries of 
 
 Epigrammes. 12mo. f - - -1613 |***** 
 
 Garter, Barnard. The Tragicall History of two English 
 Lovers. 8vo. _ _ _ _ 1565 
 
 GiFFORD, Humphrey. A Fosie of Gillofloxoers, eche differ- 
 ing from other in colour and odour, yet all 
 sweete. 4to. - - - - 1580 *| 
 
 GoLDiNG, Arthur. The xv. Boolces of P. Ovidius Naso, 
 entytuled Metamorphosis, a worke very plea^- 
 saunt and delectable. 4to. - - 1567 *| 
 
 GooGE, Barnaby. The Zodiake of Life, written by the 
 godly and learned poet Marcellus Pallingenius 
 Stellatus, wherein are conteyned twelve bookes. 
 Newly translated into English Verse. 4to. 1565 | 
 The Popish Kingdo7ne, or reigne of Antichrist. 
 Written in Latine verse by Thomas Naogeorgus, 
 and Englyshed by Barnaby Googe. 4to. ; 
 The overthrow of the Gowte : written in 
 verse, by Chr. Balista, translated by 
 8vo. § - - - - 
 
 Gordon, Patrick. The Famous History of the 
 Bruce, in heroic verse. 4to. 
 
 Gorges, Sir Arthur. The Olymjnan Catastrophe, dedi- 
 cated to the memory of the most heroicall Lord 
 
 I A collection which consists, observes Mr. Park, " of the saddest trash that ever as- 
 sumed the name of Epigrams; and which, with a very slight alteration, well merits the 
 sarcasm bestowed by Shenstone on the poems of a Kidderminster bard : — 
 
 " Thy verses, friend, are liiisey Vioolsey stuff, 
 
 And we must own — you've measur'd out enough." 
 
 Censura Lit. vol. v. p. 348. 
 
 X The " Popish Kingdome" consists of four books, of which the last contains a curious 
 
 and interesting description of feasts, holidays, and Christmas games ; including, of course, 
 
 many of the customs, and almost all the amusements of the period in which it was written. 
 
 § Besides these works, Googe published in 1563, " Eglogs, Epitaphs, and Sonnets," 
 
 12mo. 
 
 X 1570 
 
 1 
 
 Latin 
 
 
 B. G. 
 
 
 - 1577 
 
 1 
 
 Valiant 
 
 
 - 1615 
 
 *l
 
 685 
 
 Henry, late illustrious Prince of Wales, &c. 
 
 By Sir Arthur Gorges, Knight, f - 1612 
 
 Lucans Pharsalia . containing the Civill Warres 
 
 betweene Caesar and Pompey. Written in La^- 
 
 tine Heroicall Verse by M. Annaeus Lucanus. 
 
 Translated into English verse by Sir Arthur 
 
 Gorges, Knight. | - - -1614 ^J 
 
 GossoN, Stephen. Speculum Humanum. In stanzas of 
 
 eleven lines. § _ _ _ _ 1580 | 
 
 Grange, John. His Garden : pleasant to the eare and 
 
 delightful to the reader, if he abuse not the 
 
 scent of the floures. 4to. || - - 1577 |* 
 
 Greene, Thomas. A Poets Vision and a Prince's Glorie. 
 
 4to. - - - _ _ 1603 
 
 f " A Poem in manuscript, of considerable length, together with some Sonnets, pre- 
 served amongst numerous treasures of a similar nature, which belonged to the late Duke 
 of Bridgewater, and now belong to the Marquis of Stafford." — Todd's Spenser, vol. i. 
 p. 87- Mr. Todd has given us a specimen of Sir Arthur's talents, by the production of a 
 Sonnet from this manuscript treasure, which indicates no common genius, and induces us 
 to wish for tlie publication of the whole. 
 
 X Sir Arthur was the intimate friend of Spenser, who lamented the death of Lady 
 Gorges in a beautiful elegy entitled " Daphnaida : " he has recorded, likewise, the con- 
 jugal aflfection and the talents of her husband, under the name of Alcj/on, in the following 
 elegant lines: — 
 
 " And there is sad ATcyon, bent to monrne, 
 Though fit to frame an everlasting dittie. 
 Whose gentle spright for Daphne's death doth tourne 
 Sweet layes of love to endlesse plaints of pittie. 
 Ah pensive boy, pursue that brave conceipt. 
 In thy sweet eglantine of Meriflure, 
 Lift up thy notes unto their wonted height, 
 That may thy Muse and mates to mirth allure." 
 
 Todd's Spenser, vol. viii. p. 23. 
 
 § This poem was printed, says Ritson, at the end of Kenton's " Mirror of man's life," 
 
 1580. Gosson is introduced here in consequence of the celebrity attributed to him by 
 
 Wood, who declares, that "for his admirable penning of pastorals, he was ranked with 
 
 Sir P. Sidney, Tho. Chaloner, Edm. Spenser, Abrah. Fraunce, and Rich. Bernfield." 
 
 II This forms the second part of a work by the same writer, called " The Golden 
 Aphroditis," and consists of 19 pieces, four of which are in prose.
 
 G86 
 
 Greepe, Thomas. The time and perfect Neisses of the 
 woorthy and valiaunt exploytes, performed and 
 
 doone by that valiant knight Syr Frauncis 
 Drake. 4to. f - - - - 1587 |* 
 
 GRE\^LE, Sir Fulke. Poems, viz. 
 
 Ccelica, a collection of 109 songs. - - I 
 
 A Treatise of Human Learning, in 150 stanzas. | 
 
 Upon Fame and Honour, in 86 stanzas. - .| 
 
 A Treatise of Wars, in 68 stanzas. - - | 
 
 Remains, consisting of political and philosophical 
 
 poems. ----- I 
 
 Poems in England's Helicon. % - - 1600 | 
 
 GrRiFFiN, B. " Fidessa, more chaste than kinds." A collec- 
 tion of amatory sonnets. 12mo. - - 1596 
 Griffith, William. The Epitaph of the worthie Knight 
 Sir Henry Sidney, Lord President of Wales. 
 Small 8vo. - - - - 1591 |* 
 Grove, Matthew. The most famous and tragical histone 
 of Pelops and Hippodamia. Whereunto are 
 adjoyned sundrie pleasant devises, epigrams, 
 songes, and sonnettes. 8vo. - - 1587 
 Grymeston, Elizabeth. Miscellanea — Meditations — Me- 
 
 moratives. § - - - - 1604 |* 
 
 Hake, Edward. A Commemoration of the most prosperous 
 and peaceable raigne of our gratious and deere 
 soveraigne lady Elizabeth. 8vo. - - 1575 | 
 
 A Touchstone for the time present, &c 12mo. 1574 |* 
 
 f Greepe's poem has been, through mistake, attributed by Mr. Beloe to Thomas 
 Greene; and Ritson, by a second error, charged with its omission. — Vide Anecdotes, 
 vol. ii. p. 89, 
 
 X These pieces, written before 1620, were collected in his Works, folio, 1633, and in 
 his " Remains," 1670. 8vo. 
 
 $ Vide Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 109.
 
 687 
 
 Of Gold's Kingdom and this unhelping age, described 
 in sundry poems. 4to. - - - 1604 
 
 Hall, Arthur. " Ten Books of Homers Iliades" Trans- 
 lated from the French of Hugues Salel. 
 
 4to.t - - - - - 1^^^ I** 
 
 Hall, John. The Courte of Vertue, contayning many holy 
 or spretuall songes, sonnettes, psalms, balletts, 
 and shorte sentences, &c. 16mo. - 1565 
 
 Harbert, Sir William. Sidney, or Barij^enthes, briefely 
 shadowing out the rare and never-ending laudes 
 of that most honorable and praise-worthy gent. 
 Sir Philip Sidney, knight. 4to. - - 1586 
 
 Harbert, William. A Prophesie of Cadwallader, last 
 
 Kingofthe Britaines, &c. 4to.:i. - 1604 | 
 
 Harvey, Gabriel. Four Letters and Certaine Son- 
 nets. § - - - - 1592 I* 
 
 Hawes, Edward. Trayterous Percyes and Catesbyes Proso- 
 popeia. 4to. - - - - 1606 
 
 Heath, John. Two Centuries of Epigrammes. 12mo. 1610 | 
 
 Herbert, Mary. A Dialogue betweenc two shepheards, in 
 praise of Astrea, by the Countesse of Pem- 
 broke. II - - - - 1602 I 
 
 Hey WOOD, Jasper. Various Poems and Devises.% - 1576 | 
 
 f Warton observes, that " this translation has no other merit than that of being the 
 first appearance of a part of the Iliad in an English dress." — Vol. iii. p. 440. 
 
 X Ritson appears to have confounded these two writers, Sir William, and William 
 Harbert, and classed them as one. The latter speaks of his tmripened yeares in 1604. — 
 Vide British Bibliographer, No. IV. p. 300. 
 
 § Beside these Sonnets, amounting to twenty -three, Harvey was the introducer of the 
 miserable attempts to imitate the Latin metres, and boasts in this publication of being the 
 first who exhibited English hexameters. 
 
 II The celebrated sister of Sir Philip Sydney. 
 
 f All that are printed of these, appear in the Paradise of Daintie Devises, of the date 
 annexed. He had previously translated three tragedies from Seneca, and died in 1598.
 
 688 
 
 Hevwood, Thomas. Troia Britanica : or, Great Britaine's 
 Troy. A Poem, devided into 17 severall Can- 
 tons, &c. t - - - - 1609 
 
 HiGGiNS, John. The First Part of the Mirour of Magis- 
 trates, contayning the falles of the first infortu- 
 nate Princes of this Lande : from the comming 
 of Brute to the incarnation of ovir Saviour, &c. 
 4to.t ----- 1575 
 
 Holland, Robert. The Holie Historie of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ's nativitie, life, actes, 
 miracles, doctrine, death, passion, resurrection 
 and ascension : gathered into English meeter, 
 &c. BvQ. § _ - - . 1594 
 
 Howell, Thomas. The Arbor of Amitie ; wherein is com- 
 prised pleasant poems and pretie poesies. 
 12mo. II - - - - 1568 
 
 Thomas Ho-weWs Devises for his owne exercise and 
 his friend's pleasure. 4to. - - 1581 
 
 Hubbard, William, The Tragicall and Latnentable His- 
 torie of two faythfull mates, Ceyx kynge of 
 Thrachyne, and Al clone his Wife. - 1569 
 
 f A writer known to greater advantage by his Hierarchic of the Blessed Angels, folio, 
 1635 ; a work of singular curiosity and much amusement. 
 
 :}: Higgins termed this thejirst part, merely in reference to the collection by Baldwin 
 in 1559, which, commencing at a much later period, was afterwards called "the last part." 
 Higgins's publication, in 1575, contains 17 Legends from Albanact to Irenglas; but in 
 1587 he edited an edition of the Mirrour, including Baldwin's part, and with the addition 
 of 24 Legends of his own composition, which carries forward his department tothe death 
 of Cai'acalla. 
 
 § In the Dedication of this work, the fashionable reading of the times is thus repro- 
 bated : — " Novelties in these days delight dainty eares, and fine filed phrases to fit some 
 fantasy's, that no book except it abound with the one or the other, or both of these, is 
 brooked of them. Some read Gascoyne, some Guevasia, some praise the Palace of Plea- 
 sure, and the like, whereon they bestow whole days, yea, some whole months and years, 
 that scarce bestow one minute on the Bible, albeit the work of God." 
 
 II For specimens of this volume, which is supposed to be unique, see British Biblio- 
 grapher, No. II. p. 105.
 
 689 
 
 Hudson, Thomas. The Historic of Judith in forme of a 
 
 Poeme. Translated from Du Bartas. 8vo. 1584 |* 
 
 Hume, Alexander. Hynmes, or Sacred Songes, wherein 
 
 the right Use of Poesie may be espied. Edin. 
 
 4to. - - - . - - 1599 
 
 HuNNis, William. A Hi/ve full of Hunuye, contayning the 
 
 firste booke of Moses called Genesis. 4to. 1578 |** 
 A Handfull of Honisuckles. - _ _ 1578 I* 
 
 Seven Sobs of a Sorrowfull Soule for Sinne, Sec. &c. 
 
 24to. - - - - - 1585 |r 
 
 Jackson, Richard. The Battle ofFloddon in nine fits, f 1564 | 
 Jeney, Thomas. A Discours of the present troobles in 
 Fraunce, and miseries of this time, compyled 
 by Peter Ronsard, gentilman of Vandome ; — 
 translated by Thomas Jeney, gentilman. 4to. 
 
 1568 
 
 Jenynges, Edward. The Notable Hystory of two Faithfull 
 
 Lovers, named Alfagus and Archelaus. Whearin 
 
 is declared the true figure of amytie and freynd- 
 
 ship. 4to. - - _ _ 1574 
 
 Johnson, Richard. The Nine Worthies of London, ^to. \592 ■* 
 
 Anglorum Lachrymce, in a sad passion, complayning 
 
 the death of our late Queene Elizabeth. 4to. 
 
 1603 I* 
 Kelly, Edmund. Poems on Chemistry, and on the Philo- 
 sophers Stone. J - - - _ 1591 I 
 Kempe, William. A Dutifull Invective against the moste 
 haynous treasons of Ballard and Babington, &c. 
 . 4to. - - - . _ 1587 I 
 
 t An edition of this "famous old ballad" was published by Thomas Gent of York, 
 about 1740, who tells us, that it was " taken from an antient manuscript, which was 
 transcribed by Mr. Richard Guy, late schoolmaster at Ingleton, in Yorkshire." Subse- 
 quent editions have been published by Lambe and Weber. 
 
 X Printed in Ashmole's Theatrum Chemiciim Britannicum. 
 VOL. I. 4 T 
 
 **
 
 690 
 
 Kendall, Timothy. *' Flowers of Epigrammes, out of sun- 
 drie the most singular authors, as well auncient 
 as late writers." To which, as a second part, 
 are added 
 TrifleSi by Timothie Kendal, devised and written 
 (for the moste part) at sundrie tymes in his 
 yong and tender age. 16mo. f - - 1577 
 
 Knell, Thomas. An Epitaph on the life and death of 
 D. Boner, sometime unworthy Bishop of Lon- 
 don, &c. 8vo. - - - - 1569 
 Answere to the most heretical and trayterous papis- 
 tical bil, cast in the streets of Northampton, 
 &c. - - - - - 1570 
 
 Kyffin, Maurice. The Blessednes of Brytaine, or a cele- 
 bration of the Queene's holy day, &c. 4to. 1587 
 
 f Perhaps the only piece above mediocrity in Kendall's Epigrams is the following 
 which I consider as very happily rendered : — 
 
 « MARTIAL. 
 
 To Himselfe. 
 
 Martial, the thinges that do attaine 
 The hapy life be these I finde : 
 The riches left, not got with paine ; 
 The fruitefull ground, the quiet minde. 
 
 The egall frend ; no grudge no strife ; 
 No charge of rule, nor governaunce ; 
 Without disease the healthftill life; 
 The household of continuance. 
 
 The mean dyet, no delicate fare ; 
 True wisdome joynd with simplenes; 
 The night discharged of all care, 
 Where wine the wit may not oppresse. 
 
 The faithfull wife without debate ; 
 
 Such sleepes as may beguile the night ; 
 
 Content thyself with thine estate, 
 
 Ne wishe for death, nor feare his might." Fol. 1 8, b.
 
 691 
 
 Leighton, Sir William. The Teares or Lamentations of a 
 
 Sorrowfull Soule. 4to. - - - 1613 |* 
 
 Lever, Christopher. Queene Elizahetli's Teares; or Her 
 resolute bearing the Christian Crosse, &c. 4to. 
 
 1607 I* 
 
 LiNCHE, Richard. The Fountahie of Ancient Fiction. 
 Wherein is lively depictured the Images and 
 Statues of the Gods of the Ancients, &c. Done 
 out of Italian into English. Verse and Prose. 
 4to. t - - - - - 1599 *| 
 
 Lisle, William. Babilon, a part of the seconde weeke of 
 
 Guillaume de Saluste Seigneur du Bartas, with 
 
 the Commentarie, and marginall notes of 
 
 S. G. S. - - - - 1596 I** 
 
 The Colonyes of Bartas, with the commentarye of 
 
 S. G. S. + - - - - 1597 I** 
 
 Lloyd, Lodowick. The Pilgrimage of Queenes. § - 1573 |* 
 Hilaria : or the triumphant feast for the fift of 
 
 August. - - - - 1607 I* 
 
 LoK, Henry. The Booke of Ecclesiastes ; and Sundry 
 
 f This writer transcends mediocrity in consequence of the singular purity and harmony 
 of his diction and versification. The subsequent lines, forming the prior part of a sonnet, 
 have the air of being written rather in the 19th than the 16th century : — 
 
 " Hard is his hap who never finds content, 
 
 But still must dwell with heavy-thoughted sadnesse : 
 Harder that heart that never will relent, 
 
 That may, and will not turne these woes to gladnesse ; 
 
 Then joies adue, comfort and mirth, farewell ; 
 
 For I must now exile me from all pleasure. 
 Seeking some uncouth cave where I may dwell. 
 
 Pensive and solitarie without measure." 
 
 X For an account of this author, and of a poem of his printed in 1631, see Wood's 
 Fasti, vol. i. col. 117; and Censura Literaria, vol. i. p. 291. 
 
 § A poem in Alexandrines, printed at the end of the first edition of his " Pilgrimage 
 of Princes." 
 
 4t 2
 
 692 
 
 Christian Passions, contayned in two hundred 
 
 Sonnets. 4to. f _ _ _ 1597 |*** 
 
 LovELL, Thomas. A Dialogue betrveen Custome and Veritie, 
 
 concerning the use and abuse of dauncing and 
 
 minstrelsie. 8vo. - - - 1581 
 
 Marbeck, John. The Holie Historie of King David. 
 
 4to. ----- 1579 
 
 Markham, Gervase. The Poem of Poems, or Sion's Muse, 
 
 contayning the divine song of king Saloman, 
 
 devided into eight eclogues. Svo. - 1595 | 
 
 The Most Honorable Tragedy of Sir Richard Gren- 
 
 viU knight ; a heroick poem. Svo. - 1595 | 
 
 " Devoreux. Vertues Tears for the losse of the most 
 Christian King Henry, third of that name, king 
 of Fraunce ; and the untimely death of the 
 most noble and heroicall gentleman, Walter 
 Devoreux." From the French of Madam 
 Geneuuesne Petau Maulette. 4to. - - 1597 *| 
 The Tears of the Beloved, or the Lamentation of 
 St. John, containing the death and passion of 
 Christ. 4to. - - - - 1600 | 
 
 Marie Magdalens La?nentations for the losse of her 
 
 Master Jesus. 4to.:j: - - - 1601 | 
 
 Ariostd's Satyres. 4to. § - - - 1608 
 
 f Tlie 200 Sonnets are followed by 100, entitled " Sundry affectionate Sonets of a 
 feeling conscience;" by 20, called "An Introdution to peculiar prayers," and by 59, 
 termed " Sonnets of the Author to divers." In " The Return from Parnassus," Lok is 
 thus, not undeservedly, sentenced to oblivion : — " Locke and Hudson, sleep you, quiet 
 shavers, among the shavings of the press, and let your books lie in some old nook amongst 
 old boots and shoes : so, you may avoid my censure." — Ancient British Drama, vol. i. 
 p. 49. 
 
 } This is attributed to Markham on the authority of Mr. Haslewood. See British 
 Bibliographer, No. IV. p. 381. 
 
 § Mr. Park conceives this translation to be the production of Robert Tofte, ratbter than 
 of Markham. — Ritson's Bibliographia, p. 2/4, note.
 
 693 
 
 The Famous Whore, or Noble Curtizan, conteining 
 the lamentable complaint of Paulina, the 
 famous Roman curtezan, sometimes Mrs. unto 
 the great cardinall Hypolito, of Est. 4to. 1609 | 
 Maxwell, James. The Laudable Life, and Deplorable 
 Death, of our late peerlesse Prince Henry, &c. 
 4to. - _ - _ - 1612 \* 
 
 MiDDLETON, Christopher. The Historie of Heaven, con- 
 taining the poetical fictions of all the starres in 
 the firmament. 4to. - - - 1596 
 
 The Legend of Humplwey Duke of Gloucester, 
 4to. ----- 1600 
 MiDDLETON, Thomas. The Wisdome of Solomon para- 
 phrased, 4to. _ - - - 1597 
 Montgomery, Alexander. The Chen'ie and the Slae, Edin. 
 
 4to.f ----- 1595 **| 
 Muncaster, Richard. Noenia Consolans, or a comforting 
 
 complaint. Latin and English. 4to. - 1603 |* 
 Munday, Anthony. The Mirrour of Mutabilitie. Selected 
 
 out of the sacred Scriptures. 4to. - 1579 |* 
 
 The Pain of Pleasure. 4to. - - - 1580 |* 
 
 The Fountayne of Fame. 4to. - - 1580 |* 
 
 The Sweet Sobbes and Amorous Complaints of Shep- 
 
 pardes and Nymphes. - - - 1583 |* 
 
 f It is to be regretted that no complete edition of the Works of Montgomery has 
 hitherto been pubhshed. Those printed by Foulis and Urie in 1751 and 1754, are very 
 imperfect; but might soon be rendered fliithful by consulting the manuscript collection of 
 Montgomery's Poems, presented by Drunnnond to the University of Edinburgh. This 
 MS., extending to 158 pages 4to., contains, beside odes, psalms, and epitaphs, 70 sonnets, 
 written on the Petrarcan model ; and, if we may judge from the six published by Mr. 
 Irving, exhibiting a considerable portion of poetic vigour. T/ie Chenie and the Slae, 
 which, as the critic just mentioned observes, " has maintained its popularity for the space 
 of two hundred years," must be pronounced in some of its parts, beautiful, and, as a whole, 
 much above mediocrity. Sibbald has printed ten of our author's poems in the third 
 volume of his Chronicle of Scottish Poetry.
 
 694 
 
 Mundays Strangest Adventure that ever happened. 
 
 4to. - . _ _ _ 1601 I* 
 
 Murray, David. " The Tragicall Death of Sophonisba " 
 in seven line stanzas, to which is added Ccelia : 
 containing certaine Sonets. 12mo. f - 1611 *| 
 
 Newton, Thomas. Atropoion Delion: or the Death of 
 
 Deha, with the teares of her funerall. 4to. 1603 | 
 A Pleasant New History : or, a fragrant posie made 
 of three flowers, rosa, rosalynd, and rose- 
 mary. X - - _ _ 1604 I 
 
 Nicholson, Samuel. Acolastus, his after witte. 4to. 1600 
 
 Nixon, Anthony. The Christian Navy, wherein is playnely 
 described the perfect course to sayle to the 
 haven of happiness. 4to. - - 1602 
 
 NoRDEN, John. The Storehouse of Varieties, an elegiacall 
 
 poeme. 4to. - - - -1601| 
 
 A Pensive Soules Delight. 4to. - - 1603 
 
 The Labyrinth of Mans Life, or Vertues Delyght, 
 
 and Envie's Opposite. § 4to. - - 1614 |* 
 
 OvERBUBY, Sir Thomas. A Wife : now the Widdow of Sir 
 Thomas Overburye : being a most exquisite 
 and singular poem of the Choise of a Wife. 
 4to. 4th edition. || - - - 1614 *| 
 
 f The Sonnets of Murray appeared five }-ears anterior to those of Drummond, and 
 though not equal to the effusions of the bard of Hawthornden, are yet entitled to the 
 praise of skilful construction and frequently of poetic expression. A -copy is now seldom 
 to be met with ; but specimens may be found in Campbell's History of Poetry in Scot- 
 land, and in Censura Literaria, vol. x. p. 374, 3/5. 
 
 X This poet, who, in the former part of his life, practised as a physician, at Butley, in 
 Cheshire, was a Latin poet of some eminence, and one of the translatoi's of Seneca's Tra- 
 gedies, published in 1581. 
 
 § For a specimen of this poem, see Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 104. 
 
 II Though said to be the fourth edition, this copy is supposed by Mr. Neve to be reaflly 
 the first impression. (See Cursory Remarks on Ancient English Poets, 17SS5 p- 27.) 
 Few poems have been more popular than Overbury's " Wife ;" owing partly to the good
 
 695 
 
 Pakkes, William. The Curfaine-Drauer of the World: 
 or, the Chamberlaine of that great Inne of 
 Iniquity, &c. 4to. -j- - - - 1612 *| 
 
 Parrot, Henry. The Mouae Trap. Consisting of 100 
 
 Epigrams. 4to. - - - - 1G06 | 
 
 The More the Merrier : containing three-score and 
 
 odde headlesse epigrams, &c. 4to. - 1608 | 
 
 « Epigrams." Containing 160. 4to. - - 1608 | 
 
 Laquei Ridicidosi : or Springes for Woodcoks. In 
 2 books. 12mo. ; - - - 1613 | 
 
 Partridge, John. The Most Famouse and Worthie Historic 
 of the worthy Lady Pandavola, &c. 8vo. 1566 
 The Worthye Historie of the most noble and 
 valiaunt knight Plasidas, &c. 8vo. - 1566 
 
 The Notable Historie of two famous princes Astianax 
 and Polixona. 8vo. _ _ _ 1566 
 
 Payne, Christopher. Christenmas-Carrolles - - 1569 
 
 Peacham, Henry. Minei^a Britanna, or a Garden of He- 
 
 roical Devises. 4to. _ _ _ 1612 *| 
 
 Peele, George. A Farexeell, entituled to the famous and 
 fortunate generalls of our English forces : Sir 
 John Norris and Syr Francis Drake, knights, 
 
 sense with which it abounds, and partly to the interesting and tragic circumstances which 
 accompanied the author's fate. It was speedily and frequently imitated; in 1614, appeared 
 " The Husband. A poeme expressed in a compleat man," by an anonymous writer ; in 
 1G16, " A Select Second Husband fm- Sir Thomas Overburie's WiJ'e," by John Davies of 
 Hereford; in 1619, " The Description of a Good Wife" by Richard Brathwaite; and in 
 the same year, " A Happy Husband, or Directions for a Maid to chuse her Mate," by 
 Patrick Hannay. These pieces are inferior to their prototype, which, though not dis- 
 playing much poetic inspiration, is written with elegance and perspicuity. 
 
 f This work is a composition of verse and prose. Mr. Douce terms Parkcs a " writer 
 of great ability and poetical talents, though undeservedly obscure." Vide Illustrations, 
 vol. ii. p. 75. 
 
 X Warton, in the Fragment of his fourth volume of the History of English Poetry, re- 
 marks at p. 73, that many of Parrot's epigrams " are worthy to be revived in modern 
 collections." The Laquei contain many of the epigrams which he had previously 
 published.
 
 696 
 
 &c. Whereunto is annexed a tale of Troy. 
 4to. - - - _ _ 1589 I* 
 
 Polyhymnia describing the honourable triumphs at 
 
 tylt, before her Majestie, &c. 4to. - 1590 |* 
 
 The Honour of the Garter: displaied in a poeme 
 
 gratulatorie, &c. 4to. f - - - 1593 |* 
 
 Peend, Thomas De la. The Pleasant Fable of Hennaphro- 
 
 ditus and Sahnacis. 8vo. - - - 1565 |* 
 
 The Historie of John Lord Mandozze. From the 
 
 Spanish. 12mo. X - - - 1565 |* 
 
 Percy, William. Sonnets to the fairest C(elia. 4to. - 1594 |** 
 Petowe, Henry. The Second Part of the Loves of Hero 
 
 and Leander, &c. 4to. - - - 1598 |* 
 
 Philochasander and Elanira the faire Lady of Bri- 
 
 taine, &c. 4to. § _ _ _ 1599 j* 
 
 Elizabetha quasi vivans, Elizas funerall, &c. 4to. 1603 
 
 The Whipping of Runawaies. - - 1603 
 
 Pett, Peter. Times Journey to seek his Daughter Truth, 
 
 and Truths letter to Fame, of England's 
 
 excellencie. 4to. _ „ _ 1599 
 
 Phillip, John. A Rare and Strange Historicall Novell of 
 
 Cleomenes and Sophonisba, surnamed Juliet ; 
 
 very pleasant to reade. 8vo. - - 1577 
 
 A Conunemoration of the Right Noble and Vertuous 
 
 Ladye Margrit Duglases Good Grace, Countes 
 
 of Lennox, &c. f - - - 1578 I* 
 
 f Peele, who will afterwards be noticed as a dramatic poet, may be classed with 
 Scoggan, Skelton, and Tarleton, as a buffoon and jester. He died before 1598, and his 
 " Mei'rie conceited Jests" were published in 4to. in 1627. 
 
 X An ample analysis of " The Historie of Lord Mandozze," has been given in the 
 British Bibliographer, No. X. p. 523. ; and No. XI. p. 587. Of the poetry of this very 
 rare veision, little laudatoi'y can be said. 
 
 § Of this scarce poem, unknown to Ritson, the reader will find a description by Mr. 
 Haslewood in the British Bibliographer, No. III. p. 214. 
 
 H Mr. Beloe conjectures this " Commemoration," not noticed by Ritson, to have been 
 the production of a writer different from xhe John Phillip of the Bibliographia (p. 299.),
 
 697 
 
 Phiston, William. A Lamentacion of Englande, for the 
 Right Reverent Father in God, John Ivele, 
 Doctor of Divinitie : and Bisshop of Sarisburie. 
 8vo. f - - - - 1571 I* 
 
 The Welspring of Wittie Conceights, 4to. % - 1584 |« 
 
 Plat, Hugh. The Floures of Philosophies with the Pleasures 
 
 of Poetrie annexed to them, &c. Svo. § - 1572 |* 
 
 Powell, Thomas. The Passionate Poet, with a description 
 of the Thracian Ismarus, in verse, 4to. - 1601 
 
 PsESTON, Thomas. A Geliflower or swete marygolde, where- 
 in the frutes of teranny you may beholde. 1569 I* 
 
 Pricket, Robert. A Souldiers Wish unto his Sovereign 
 
 Lord, King James. 4to. - - - 1603 |* 
 
 Proctor, Thomas. Pretie Pamphlets. 4to. || - - 1578 *| 
 
 PuTTENHAM, George, Partheniudes. IF - - 1579' |* 
 
 and assigns for his reason, the signature, at the conclusion, namely, John P/ii/!lips ; but it 
 is remarkable that the inscription, copied by Mr. Beloe, runs thus; " To all Right Noble, 
 Honorable, Godiye and Worshipfull Ladyes, John Phillip wisheth," &c. a variation in the 
 orthography which warrants an inference as to their identity. Vide Beloe, vol. il. p. 111. 
 et seq. 
 
 f Mr. Haslewood supposes this poem to have been written by William Phiston, of 
 London, Student; who is considered by Herbert, p. 1012., as the same person mentioned 
 by Warton, vol. iii. p. 308. under the appellation of W. Phist. — See Brit. Bibliogr. 
 ▼ol. V. p. 569. 
 
 X Ritson, in his Bibliographia, says, that no one except Warton appears to have met 
 with this publication ; extracts from it, however, may be found in the Monthly Mirror, 
 vol, xiv. p. 1 "J. 
 
 5 These Flowers are the production of one of the most celebrated agriculturists of the 
 I6th century, the author of the "Jewell House of Art and Nature;" the " Paradise of 
 Flora ;" the " Gai-den of Eden," &c. &c. ; but, in his poetical capacity, they prove, as 
 Mr. Park remarks, that he " did not attain to ♦ a plat of rising ground in the territory of 
 Parnassus.' " — Censura Lit. vol. viii. p. "J. 
 
 II These are printed in the latter part of the miscellany, entitled " A Gorgeous Gallery 
 of Gallant Inventions." 
 
 f Beside these verses in honour of Elizabeth, Puttenham wrote the " Isle of Great 
 Britain," a little brief romance ; " Elpine," an eclogue ; " Minerva," an hymn ; and, 
 throughout his " Arte of Poesie," are interspersed a number of verses, epigrams, epitaphs, 
 trail slat ions, imitations, &c. Mr. Haslewood has prefixed a copy of the Partheniades to his 
 reprint of " The Arte of English Poesie,'' I fill. 
 
 VOL. L 4 U
 
 698 
 
 Ramsey, Laurence. Ramsies Farewell to his late lord and 
 master therle of Leicester - - 1588 
 
 Rankins, William. Seven Satyres, &c. - , - 1596 
 
 Raynolds, John. Dolarnys Primerose ; or the first part of 
 the Passionate Hermit, &c. Written by a 
 Practitioner in Poesie and a stranger amongst 
 Poets. 4to. t - - - - 1606 *| 
 
 RicEj Richard. An Invective against vices taken for vertue : 
 gathered out of the Scriptures, &c. 8vo. 1581 
 
 Robinson, Richard. The Rexearde of Wickednesse, dis- 
 coursing the simdrye monstrous abuses of 
 wicked and ungodly Worldelings, &c. 4to. 1574 |** 
 A Dyall of Dayly Contemplacion, or divine Exercise 
 
 of the Mind, &c. Verse and Prose. % - 1578 |** 
 
 Rolland, John. Ane Treatise callit the Court of Venus, 
 devidit into four Buikes. Edin. 4to. - 1575 
 The Sevin Seages, translatit out of Prois into Scottis 
 meiter. Edin. 4to. § - - - 1578 | 
 
 RossE, J. The Authors Teares upon the death of his 
 honorable freende Sir William Sackvile knight 
 of the ordre de la Colade in Fraunce : sonne 
 
 t For specimens of this poem, the British Bibliographer, No. II. p. 153., may be con- 
 sulted. Why it was called Dolarny's Primerose does not appear. Reynolds possesses 
 some merit as a descriptive poet. 
 
 X Of this work, not mentioned by Ritson, an account has been given by Mr. Haslewood 
 in Censura Literaria, vol. iv. p. 241. The " Rewarde of Wickednesse" is written on the 
 plan of the " Mirror for Magistrates," and was composed during the author's night-watches 
 as one of the sentinels employed to guard the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. Robin- 
 son is supposed to be author of " The ruffull tragedy of Hemidos and Thelay," licensed 
 in 1570. 
 
 § To Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, vol. iii. p. 287., and to Restituta, No. III. 
 p. 177'» I refer the reader for the only account which I can recollect of this obscure 
 writer. Irving and Pinkerton merely mention the titles of his poems. Mr. Gillies, in a 
 very interesting article in the Restituta, has given us an ample specimen of his " Seven 
 Sages."
 
 699 
 
 to the right ho. the lorde Buckhurst Anno 
 Dni.f ----- 1592 *| 
 
 Rous, Francis. Thule, or Veiiues Historie. In two Iwoks. 
 
 ^ The first booke 4to. - . _ 1598 
 
 Rowland, Samuel. 1. The Betraying of Christ, &c. 4to. 
 
 1598 
 
 2. The Famous History of Guy Earle of Warwicke. 
 
 4to. - - - - - 
 
 3. The Letting of Humours Blood in the head- 
 
 vaine: &c. 4to.| - _ - 1600 
 
 4. Looke to it for He stabbe ye. 4to. - - 1 604 
 
 5. Detnocritus. _ - - - 1607 
 
 6. Humors Looking- Giasse. 8vo. - - 1608 
 
 7. Hell Broke Loose, &c. 4to. 
 
 8. Doctor Merrieman, or nothing but mirth. 4to. 
 
 1609 
 
 9. Martin Markal, beadle of Bridewell. 4to. - 1610 
 
 10. The Knave of Clubs, or 'tis merrie when Knaves 
 
 meet. 4to. - - - - 1611 
 
 11. The Knave of Heartt. 4to. § 
 
 12. More Knaves Yet; the Knaves of Spades and 
 
 Diamonds. 4to.|t > - - 1613 
 
 13. The Melancholie Knight. 4to. IF - - 1615 
 
 t Ritson says, that this is "a poem in 16'8 six-line stanzas, of considerable merit, and 
 with great defects : a 4to. MS. in th.c possession of Francis Douce, Esq." — Vide Biblio- 
 graphia Poetica, p. 315. 
 
 X Several extracts from this work, consisting of seven satires, have been given by 
 Warton in his Fragment of Vol. IV. See also Censura Literaria, vol. vi. p. 2/7. ; and 
 Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 125., where further notices of this medley may be found. 
 It went through subsequent editions in 160/ and 1611. 
 
 § This poem and the three succeeding are not recorded by Ritson. See Censura Lit. 
 Yol.ii. p. 150., in an article by Mr. Gilchrist. 
 
 II For a description of this copy see Brit. Bibliogr., No. V. p. 648. 
 
 ^ Curious specimens from this publication have been given by Mr. Haslewood in the 
 Biit. Bibliographer, No. X. jj. 549. 
 
 4 u 2
 
 700 
 
 14, Tis Merrie xchen Gossips Meet ; newly enlarged, 
 
 with divers songs. 4to. t ~ - *| 
 
 Sabie, Francis. Pan his Pipe : conteyning three pastorall 
 
 Eglogues in Englyshe hexameter ; with other 
 
 dehghtfull verses. 4to. - - - 1595 *| 
 
 The Fissher-mans Tale : of the famous Actes, Life 
 
 and love of Cassander a Grecian Knight. 4to. 
 
 1595 I 
 Flora's Fortune. The second part and finishing of 
 
 the Fisherman's Tale, &c. J - - 1595 | 
 
 Saker, Aug. The Labirinth of Liberty. - - 1579 
 
 Sampson, Thomas. Fortune's Fashion, Pourtrayed in the 
 
 troubles of the Ladie Elizabeth Gray, wife to 
 
 Edward the Fourtli, 4to. - - 1613 |* 
 
 Sandford, James. Certayne Poems dedicated to the queenes 
 
 moste excellent majestic. 8vo. § - - 1576 
 ScoLOKEK, Anthony. Daiphantus, or the Passions of Love, 
 
 4to. - - - - - 1604 
 
 Scot, Gregory. A Briefe Treatise agaynst certaine errors 
 
 of the Romish Church. 12mo. - - 1570 
 
 ScoTT, Thomas. Four Paradoxes: of Arte, of Lawe, of 
 
 Warre, of Service. Small 8va || - - 1602 **| 
 
 f Of this voluminous pamphleteer, five more pieces are enumerated by Ritson, published 
 posterior to 1616. Though a rapid and careless writer, he occasionally exhibits consider- 
 able vigour, and has often satirized with spirit the manners and follies of his period. He 
 may be justly classed as surmounting mediocrity, and he is therefore designated as such at 
 the close of this article. 
 
 X This poem, and the Fisherman's Tale, are written in blank verse, a species of com- 
 position in which Sabie had been preceded by Surrey, Gascoigne, Turberville, Riche, 
 Peele, Higgins, Blenerhasset, Aske, Vallans, Greene, Breton, Chapman, Marlowe, &c. 
 A copious analysis of these pieces has been given by Mr. Haslewood in No. V. of the 
 British Bibliographer, from p. 4-88. to 503. ; but neither the genius nor the versification of 
 Sabie merit much notice : his Pan, however, contains some beautiful rhymed lines. 
 
 5 Annexed, says Ritson, to his " Hours of Recreation or after dinners," 1576, 8vo. 
 
 II The " Four Paradoxes" occupy four portions, each consisting of 18 six-line stanzas 
 and the whole is terminated by three additional ones, entitled his " Resolution." The
 
 701 
 
 Scott, Thomas. Phi/!omi/t?iie, or Phllomythologle : wherein 
 Outlandish Birds, Beasts, and Fishes, are 
 taught to speake true Enghsh plainely. f 1616 |* 
 
 Smith, Jud. A Misticall Devise of the spiritual! and godly 
 love between Christ the spouse, and the Church 
 or congregation. Firste made by the wise 
 prince Salomon, and now newly set forth in 
 Verse, &c. Small 8vo - - 1575 |** 
 
 Smith, William. Chloris, or the complaint of the pas- 
 sionate despised shepheard. 4to. - - 1596 
 
 SooTHERN, John. Pandora, the Musique 6f the Beautie of 
 
 his Mistresse Diana. 4to. :(: - - 1584 |***** 
 
 Stanyhuest, Richard. The First Four Bookes of VirgiVs 
 ^neis, translated into English heroicall verse 
 by Richard Stanyhurst : with other poeticall 
 devises thereto annexed. 4to. § - - 1583 |****** 
 
 specimens of this poem adduced by Mr. Park in Censura Literaria, vol. iii. and iv., speak 
 highly in its favour, and seem to justify the following encomium : — " There is much 
 manly observation, forcible truth, apt simile, and moral pith in the poem itself; and it 
 leaves a lingering desire upon the mind, to obtain some knowledge of a writer, whose 
 meritorious production was unheralded by any contemporary verse-man, and whose name 
 remains unrecorded by any poetical biographer." — Vol. iii. p. 376. 
 
 f Ah accurate account of this volume, which was republished in 1622 and 1640, may 
 be found in Censura Literaria, vol. iii. p. 381. " From the great disparity of merit 
 between this and the preceding article," observes Mr. Park, " there is little reason to 
 suppose them by the same author, though they bear the same name." 
 
 J A perfect copy of this miserable collection of poems, consisting of sonnets, elegies, odes, 
 odellets, &c. was purchased, at a sale, by Mr. Triphook for twelve g-uineas. The only 
 copy before known was without a title, from which Ritson has given a full account, though, 
 at the same time, he terms the author an " arrogant and absurd coxcomb," and condemns 
 him for his " wretched style, profligate plagiarism, ridiculous pedantry, and unnatural con- 
 ceit." — Vide Bib. Poetica, p. 337. et seq. 
 
 § An ample and interesting description of Stanyhurst, and his translation, will be found 
 in Censui-a Literaria, vol. iv. pp. 225. 354., the production of Mr. Haslewood. Nash 
 has not exaggerated when, alluding to this poet, he says, " whose heroical jwetry infired, 
 I should say inspired, with an hexameter furye, recalled to life whatever hissed barbarism 
 hath been buried this hundred yeare; and revived by his ragged quill such carterly va- 
 rietie, as no hedge plowman in a countrie but would have held as the extremitic of
 
 702 
 
 Storer, Thomas. The Life and Death of Thomas Wolsei/f 
 cardinal!, divided into three parts : his aspiring, 
 triumph, and death. 4to. j- - - 1599 *| 
 
 Stubbs, Philip. A View of Vanitie, and Allarum to Eng- 
 land, or retrait from sinne. 8vo. - - 1582 |^ 
 Stewart, James the First, King of England. The Essayes 
 of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie. 4to. 
 Edin. t _ - _ _ 1584 |* 
 
 His Majesties Poeticall Exercises at Vacant Houres. 
 
 4to. Edin. § - - - 1591 |* 
 
 Tarlton, Richard. Toyes : in Verse. - - 1576 
 
 Tragicall Treatises, conteyninge sundrie discourses 
 and pretie conceipts, bothe in prose and verse. 
 
 1577 
 
 Tarlton s Repentance, or his farewell to his frendes 
 
 in his sickness, a little before his deathe. || 1589 
 
 clownerie : a patterne whereof I will propound to your judgment, as near as I can, being 
 part of one of his descriptions of a tempest, which is thus : — 
 
 " Then did he make heaven's vault to rebound 
 With rounce robble bobble, 
 Of ruffe raffe roaring, 
 
 With thicke thwacke thurly bouncing." 
 
 Nash's Preface to Greene's Arcadia. 
 \ Storer's Life of Wolsey, which is about to be reprinted, has a claim upon our atten- 
 tion, both for its matter and manner : he was a contributor also to " England's HeHcon," 
 and has been highly extolled by his friend Fitzgeffrey, in Affanis, lib. i. 
 
 X The most interesting part of this volume, from the nature of its subject, is " Ane 
 schort Treatise conteining some Reulis and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis 
 Poesie," in which the regal critic observes, that " sindrie hes written of it in English," an 
 assertion which would lead to the supposition that some of our earliest critics had perished ; 
 for Gascoigne's " Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse or 
 Rhyme," 1575, appears now to be the only piece of criticism on poetic composition which 
 preceded James's " Essayes." 
 
 5 The Poetical Exercises contain but two poems, — the <' Furies," translated from Du 
 Bartas, and " The Lepanto," an original piece. Several minor poems, introduced into 
 his own works and those of others, some sonnets and a translation of the psalms, were 
 written by James after his accession to the English throne. 
 
 II Of this far-famed comedian and jester, Fuller says, that " when Queen Elizabeth was 
 serious (I dare not say sullen) and out of good humour, he could undumpish her at his
 
 703 
 
 Taylor, John. Heaven s Blessing and Earth's Joy, &c. on 
 the marriage of Frederick Count PaLatine, and 
 the Princess Elizabeth ; inchiding Epithalamia, 
 &c. - - - - - 1613 I** 
 
 The Nijjping or Snipjymg of Abuses, or the Wool- 
 gathering of Wit. j- _ _ _ 1614 j** 
 ToFTE, RoBERTE. Two Tales translated out of Ariosto, 
 &c. With certaine other Italian stanzas and 
 proverbes. 4to. - _ _ 1597 I* 
 
 Laura. The toyes of a traveller ; or the feast of 
 fancie, divided into 3 parts. 4to. - - 1597 
 
 Orlando Inamorato. The three first bookes, &c. 
 Done into English heroicall verse. 4to. - 1598 
 
 Alba, the month's minde of a melancholy lover. 8vo. 
 
 1598 
 
 Honours Academy, or the famous pastorall of the 
 faire shepherdesse Julietta. Verse and prose. 
 Folio. - - - - 1610 I 
 
 The Fruits of Jealousie. Contayning the disastrous 
 Chance of two English Lovers, overthrowne 
 through meere Conceit of Jealousie. 4to. % 1615' |** 
 
 pleasure. Her highest favourites would in some cases go to Tarlton before they would go 
 to' the Queen, and he was their usher to prepare their advantageous accession to her. In 
 a word,' he told the Queen more of her faults than most of her chaplains, and cured lier 
 melancholy better than all her physicians." Indeed, in the language of a contemporary, 
 
 " Of all the jesters in the lande 
 He bare the praise awaie." 
 
 Vide Ritson Bibl. p. 359. 
 f Of this voluminous scribbler, whose rhyming spirit, remarks Granger, did not eva- 
 porate with his youth, who lield the pen much longer than he did the oar, and who was 
 the poetaster of half a centurj', I have only been able to insert two of his earliest pro- 
 ductions, the remainder being subsequent to 16 HI, and extending to 1653. He was thirty- 
 two when Shakspeare died ; and " the waterman," observes Mr. Chalmers, " must have 
 often sculled Shakspeare, who is said to have lived on The Bankside."' — Apology, p. 101. 
 :j; The Fruitcs of Jealousie, a long poem in octave measure, may be found at the close 
 of The Blazon of Jealousie, translated from the Italian of Varchi, of which an account is 
 given in Censura Literaria, vol. iv. p. 403.
 
 704 
 
 TBFEfio, William. A Daintie Nosegay of divers smelles, 
 containing many pretie ditties to diverse effects. 
 
 1577 
 
 Tl'dor, Elizabeth, Queen of England. Two Little An- 
 ihemes, or things in meeter of hir majestie. f 
 
 1578 I* 
 
 Turner, Richard. Nosce Te [Humors.) X - - 1607 
 
 TwYNE, Thomas. The whole xij Bookes of the CEneidos of 
 Virgin. Whereof the first ix. and part of the 
 tenth, were converted into English meeter by 
 Thomas Phaer esquier, and the residue sup- 
 plied, and the whole worke together newly set 
 forth, by Thomas Twyne gentleman. 4to. 1573 |* 
 
 Tye, Christopher. A Notable Historye of Nastagio and 
 Traversari, no less pitiefull than pleasaunt, 
 translated out of Italian into English. 12mo. 
 
 1569 
 
 Underdowne, Thomas. Ovid his Invective against Ibis. 
 
 8vo. ----- 1569 *| 
 The Excelhnt Historye of Theseus and Ariadne, &c. 
 Written in English Meeter. 8vo. - 1566 *| 
 
 t Beside these anthems, which were licensed to her printer, Christ. Barker, Nov. 15., 
 her Majesty wrote a variety of small pieces, some of which have been preserved by Hentz- 
 ner, Puttcnham, and Soothern, and reprinted by Percy, Ellis, and Ritson. The fourteenth 
 Psalm also, and the Speech of the Chorus in the second Act of the Hercules CEtaus of 
 Seneca, have been published by Mr. Park, the latter poem being a specimen of blank 
 verse. — Vide Park's Royal and Noble Authors, vol. i. p. 102. 
 
 Of the execrable flattery which was systematically bestowed on this monarch, the fol- 
 lowing eulogium upon her poetry, is a curious instance. After enumerating the best poets 
 of his age, Puttenham thus proceeds: — "But last in recitall and first in degree is the 
 Queene our soveraigne Lady, whose learned, delicate, noble Muse, easily surniounteth all 
 the rest that have written before her time or since, for sence, sweetnesse and subtillitie, be 
 it Ode, Elegie, Epigram, or any other kinde of poeme, Heroick, Lyricke, wherein it shall 
 . please her Majestie to employ her penne, even by as much oddes as her owne excellent 
 estate and degree exceedeth all the rest of her most humble vassalls." — The Arte of Eng- 
 lish Poesie, reprint, p. 5 1 . 
 % A Collection of Epigrams.
 
 705 
 
 Vallans, William. A Tale of Two Swannes, &c. 4to. 1590 
 
 Vennabd, Richard. " The Miracle of Nature" and other 
 poems. 4to. t - - - - 1601 
 
 Verstegan, Richard. Odes : in imitation of the Seaven 
 Penitential Psalms. With sundry other poemes 
 and Ditties, tending to devotion and pietie. 
 8vo. ----- 1601 I* 
 
 Warren, William. A Pleasant New Fancie, of a fond- 
 ling's device, intituled and cald. The nurcerie 
 of names, &c. 4to. - _ - 1581 
 
 Webbe, William. The First and Second Eclogues of Virgil. 
 In English hexameters, and printed in his 
 " Discourse of English Poetrie." - 1586 |* 
 
 Webster, William. The Moste Pleasant and Delightful 
 Historic of Curan, a prince of Danske, and the 
 fayre princesse Argentill, &c. 4to. % - |* 
 
 Wedderbubn. Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spi- 
 rituall Songs, collectit out of sundrie partes of 
 the Scripture, with sundrie of other Ballates 
 changed out of Prophane Sanges, for avoyding 
 of Sinne and Harlotrie. 12mo. Edin. § - 1597 |* 
 
 Weevee, John. A Little Book of Epigrams. 8vo. - 1599 
 
 The Mirror of Martyrs, or the life and death of 
 
 that thrice valiant capitaine and most godly 
 
 martyre, Sir John Oldcastle knight, lord Cob^ 
 
 ham. 18mo. -. - r - 1601 
 
 f These poems were published m a tract entitled " The Right Way to Heaven, and 
 the true testimony of a faithfull and loyall subject," 1601. 
 
 X This copy is without date, but a second edition was printed in 1617; it is a miserable 
 paraphrase of Warner's exquisite episode. 
 
 § Of this Collection Lord Hailes published a specimen in 1765; in 1801, Mr. J. Gr. 
 Dalyell reprinted the whole, with the Scotish poems of the 16th century. Edin. 2 vols. 
 12mo. ; and Mr. Irving has given some notices of the author in his Scotish poets, 2 vols. 
 Svo. 1804. 
 
 VOL. I. 4 X
 
 * 
 
 706 
 
 Wenman, Thomas, Tlie Legend of Mary, Queen of Scots, 
 
 with other Poems, f - - - 1601 | 
 
 Wharton, John. Whartoiis Dreame : conteyninge an in- 
 vective agaynst certaine abhominable cater- 
 pillars, &c. 4to. - - _ 1578 
 
 Whetstone, George. The Rocke of Regard .- divided into 
 foure parts. The first, the Castle of Delight, 
 &c. The second, the Garden of Unthriftinesse, 
 &c. The thirde, the Arbour of Virtue, &c. ; 
 and the fourth, the Orchard of Repentance, 
 4to. X - - - - - 1576 I 
 
 A Report of the Vertues of the right valiant and 
 worthy knight S. Frauncis, Lord Russell, 4to. § 
 
 1585 I 
 
 Whitney, Geoffrey. A Choice of Emblemes, and other 
 
 devises. 4to. . _ - - 1586 |* 
 
 Fables or Epigrams. 4to. || - - - 1586 
 
 Wilkinson, Edward. Isa/iac's Inheritance; dew to ovr 
 high and mightie Prince, James the sixt of 
 Scotland, &c. 4to. - - - 1603 |* 
 
 WiLLET, Andrew. Sacrorum Emblematum Centura una, in 
 Latin and Enghsh verse. 4to. f 
 
 WiLLYMAT, William. A Princes Looking Glasse, or a 
 
 Princes Direction, &c. 4to. - - 1603 |* 
 
 t Wenman's Legend and Poems have lately been printed by Mr. Fry, in an octavo 
 yplume, from a quarto manuscript of 52 leaves. The Legend appears to have been in- 
 tended for insertion in the Mirror for Magistrates. 
 
 X For a very full account of " The Rocke of Regard," by Mr. Park, see Censura Lit. 
 vol. V. p. 1. 
 
 § This poem of 90 seven-line stanzas, is annexed to Bindley's " Mirror of True Honour 
 and Christian Nobility," &c. 1585. 4to. 
 
 II Of Whitney's Emblemes, which, being printed at Leyden, is a very rare book, a de- 
 scription will be found in Censura Lit. vol. v. p. 233. 
 
 t Willet's Emblems were written before 1 598, as Meres alludes to them in his " Pal- 
 ladis Tamia."
 
 707 
 
 Wyrley, William. Lord Chandos. The glorious life and 
 honourable death of Sir John Chandos, &c. 
 4to. - - - - - 1592 I** 
 
 Capitall de Buz. The honourable life and languish- 
 ing death of Sir John de Gralhy Capitall de 
 Buz. 4to.t - - - - 1592 I** 
 
 Yates, James. The Castell of Courtesie, whereunto is 
 adjoyned The Holde of Humilitie ; with the 
 Chariot of Chastitie thereunto annexed. Also 
 a Dialogue betweene Age and Youth ; and 
 other matters herein conteined. 4to. | - 1582 |* 
 
 YoNG, Bartholomew. Diana of George of Montemayer. 
 Translated out of Spanish into English. Prose 
 and Verse. Folio. § - - - 1598 *| 
 
 ZoucHE, Richard. The Dove, or Passages of Cosmo- 
 graphy, by Richard Zouche, Civilian of New 
 College, in Oxford. (| - - - 1613 | 
 
 Several articles in this table, it will be observed, are without any 
 mark designating their merit in the scale, a defalcation which has 
 occurred from our not having been able to procure either the works 
 themselves, or even specimens of them, a circumstance not exciting 
 wonder, if we consider the extreme rarity of the greater part of the 
 pieces which form the catalogue. 
 
 f These biographical poems were added to the author's " True use of Armorie," 1592, 
 4to. Of the first poem an extract is given in Censura Lit. vol. i. p. 149, 150. 
 
 X A copy of these poems, apparently unique, is in the possession of Mr. Park, who has 
 communicated a description of it in Censura Lit. vol. iii. p. 175. 
 
 § This romance, which abounds with poetry, is of the pastoral species ; it is written on 
 the plan of Sidney's Arcadia, and, like it, exhibits many beautiful passages both in prose 
 and verse : twenty-seven of its poetical effusions have been inserted in " England's Helicon," 
 and several have been lately reprinted in " Restituta," No. VIL accompanied by some in- 
 teresting remarks from the pen of Sir Egerton Brydges. 
 
 II For a specimen of this poem, which " is a concise geographical description of three- 
 quarters of the world, Asia, Africa, and Europe, in the manner of Dionysius," and which 
 Mr. Beloe believes to be unique, see his Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 74. 
 
 4x2
 
 708 
 
 Another result which may immediately strike the reader will be, 
 that of one hundred and ninety-three poets included in this list, so 
 few should have risen even one degree above mediocrity, and so 
 many should have fallen below it ; but it should be recollected that the 
 nobler bards, amounting to forty, had been previously enumerated, 
 and that poetic excellence is, at all times, of very rare attainment. 
 
 The most legitimate subject of admiration, indeed, arising from 
 a review of these details, is the extraordinary fecundity of the 
 Shakspearean era ; that in the course of fifty-two years, and inde- 
 pendent of any consideration of dramatic effort, or of the various 
 contributors to collections of poetry, nearly two hundred and thirty-three 
 bards in the miscellaneous department should have been produced : 
 and these, not the writers of scattered or insulated verses, but the 
 publishers of their own collected works. 
 
 A still more heightened conception of the fertility of the period 
 will accrue from a survey of its numerous Poetical Miscellanies, 
 a species of publication which constitutes a remarkable feature of 
 the age. 
 
 Before the reign of Elizabeth, only one production of the kind had 
 made its appearance, namely, the Collection, called by Tottel " The 
 Poems of Uucertaine Auctors," and appended to his edition of Surrey 
 and AVyat in 1557. But, diu*ing the first year after the accession of 
 our maiden queen, appeared the Mirrour for Magistrates, a quarto 
 volume containing nineteen legends or characters drawn from English 
 history. The plan originated with Sackville, who, not finding leisure 
 to write more than an Induction and the Legend of Henry Duke of 
 Buckingham, transferred the completion of the work to Richard 
 Baldwyne and George Ferrers, who were further assisted in its pro- 
 secution by Churchyard, Phayer, Skelton, Dolman, Seagers, and Cavyl. 
 A second edition, of what may be termed Baldwyne's Mirrour, was 
 printed in 1563, with the addition of eight legends ; a third issued 
 from the press in 1571, and a fourth in 1575. With the exception 
 of Sackville's two pieces, on which an eulogium has already been given.
 
 709 
 
 mediocrity may be said to cliaracterise the productions of" Baldwyne 
 and his associates. 
 
 In the same year which produced the fourth edition of Baldwyne's 
 Collection, a new series of Legends was published in 4to. by John 
 Higgins, which, commencing at an earlier period than his predecessor's 
 work, he entitled " The firste Part of the Mirour for Magistrates." 
 This portion commences, after an Induction, with the legend of King 
 Albanact, the youngest son of Brutus, and terminates with that of 
 Lord Irenglas, " slayne about the yeere befoi'e Christ ;" including 
 seventeen histories, the sole composition of Higgins. It was reprinted, 
 with little or no alteration, in 1578, and occasioned Baldwyne's prior 
 publication to be called " The Last Part." 
 
 The year 1578, however, not only produced this second impression 
 of Higgins's Mirrour, but witnessed a fifth and separate edition of 
 Baldwyne's labours, with the addition of two legends, and an inter- 
 mediate part written by Tho?nas Blener-Hasset, containing hi;elve 
 stories, and entitled "The Secondepart of the Mirrour of Magistrates, 
 conteining the falles of the infortunate Prixices of this Lande : from 
 the Conquest of Csesar unto the commyng of Duke WiUiam the 
 Conquerer," 4to. 
 
 A much more complete edition of this very curious collection of 
 of poetic biography at length appeared in 1587, under the care of 
 Higgins, who, blending Baldwyne's pieces with his own former pub- 
 lications, and adding greatly to both parts, produced a quarto volume 
 consisting of seventy-three legends. 
 
 Enlarged and improved as this impression must necessarily be 
 deemed, it was still further augmented, and, in fact, digested anew by 
 Richard Niccols, who, in 1610, published his copy of the work with 
 the following title: " A Mirrour for Magistrates, being a true Chronicle- 
 history of the untimely falles of such unfortunate princes and men of 
 note as have happened since the first entrance of Brute into this Hand 
 untill this our age. Newly enlarged with a last part called a Winter 
 Night's Vision, being an addition of such Tragedies especially famous
 
 710 
 
 as are exempted, in the former Historic, with a poem annexed called 
 
 Ensland''s Eliza." 
 
 Niccols's edition forms a thick quarto of eight hundred and seventy- 
 five pages, including ninety legends, and embracing, with the excep- 
 tion of four pieces, all the parts previously published, in chronological 
 order, and super-adding an induction and ten poems of his own com- 
 position. He has taken the liberty, however, of modernising and 
 abbreviating some of the earliest stories, with the view of rendering 
 the series more acceptable to his contemporaries. 
 
 Of the Mirror f 07' Magistrates, the poetical merit must, of course, 
 be various and discrepant. Sackville stands pre-eminent and apart, 
 the author, indeed, of a poem, which, for strength and distinctness of 
 imagery, is almost unrivalled. Next, but with many a length between, 
 Niccols claims our attention for sweetness of versification, perspicuity 
 of diction, and occasional flights of fancy. In his legend of Richard 
 the Third, he is evidently indebted to Shakspeare, and his poem 
 assumes, on that account, a higher imaginative tone. The other 
 writers of this bulky collection are as much inferior to Niccols, as he 
 is to Sackville. The best production of Higgins is his legend of 
 Queen Cordelia ; and from Baldwyne and Ferrers, a few stanzas, 
 animated by the breath of poetry, might be quoted ; but Blener- 
 Hasset seldom, if ever, reaches mediocrity. 
 
 The popularity of this work, and its influence on our national poetry 
 throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, were very 
 considerable. Even in its earliest and most unfinished state it had 
 attracted the 'admiration of Sir Philip Sidney, who says, " I account 
 the Mirrour of Magistrates, meetely furnished of beautiful partes * ;" 
 and in its last and most perfect form, it seems to have been considered 
 as a book necessary to the accomplished gentleman ; for in Chapman's 
 Comedy, entitled May-Day, and printed in 1611, a character versed 
 in the elegant literature of the time, is described as " One that 
 
 * Sidney's Works, 7th edit., foL, 1629, p. 561.
 
 711 
 
 has read Marcus Aurelius, Gesta Romanorum, and the Mhrour of 
 Magisfrafes." * 
 
 That this Collection contributed to accelerate the progress of dra- 
 matic poetry, and to familiarise the events of our history, there can 
 be little doubt, if we reflect that, previous to its appearance, historical 
 plays were scarcely known ; that its pages present us with innumerable 
 specimens of dramatic speeches, incidents, and characters, and that it 
 has thrown into a metrical form the most interesting passages of the 
 ancient chroniclers, a medium through which the best parts of those 
 massive compilations soon descended to the lower orders of society. 
 
 The next work which calls for our attention is The Paradyse of 
 Daynty Devises, originally published in 1576 with the following 
 title :< — " The Paradyse of daynty devises, aptly furnished with sundry 
 pithie and learned inventions : devised and written for the most part 
 by M. Edwards, sometimes of her Majesties Chappel : the rest by 
 sundry learned Gentlemen, both of honor, and worshippe : viz. 
 
 S. Barnarde. Jasper Heywood. 
 
 E. O. F. K. 
 
 L. Vaux. M. Bewe. 
 
 D. S. R. Hill. 
 
 M. Yloop, with others. 
 Imprinted at London, by Henry Disle, dwellyng in Paules Church- 
 yard, at the South west doore of Saint Paules Church, and are there 
 to be solde," 4to. 
 
 Though, until the late re-print by Sir Egerton Brydges, this mis- 
 cellany had become extremely raref, yet numerous editions of it 
 were called for during the first thirty years of its existence. In 1577, 
 and 1578, Disle again published it in quarto, and it is remarkable for 
 being the only book of his printing which has reached the present 
 
 • May-Day; a wiUie comedie. Divers times acted at "The Blacke Fryers;" 4to. 
 Act iii. fol. 39. 
 
 t A copy of this Miscellany, of the edition of 1580, sold at the Roxburghc Sale, foi- 
 551. 13s. !
 
 712 
 
 age. The edition of 1578 differs, in some respects, from the preced- 
 ing, and from all, in including a poem by George Wlietstone, no 
 where else discoverable. 
 
 A fourth edition, from the press of Disle, appeared in 1580, varying 
 so greatly from the earlier copies, that it omits eighteen poems con- 
 tained in the first impression, and substitutes eighteen others in their 
 place. 
 
 In 1585, the public attention was fixed on a fifth edition by Edward 
 Wliite, who also republished the work in 1596 and 1600 in 4to. The 
 two latter impressions were printed by Edward Allde for White, and 
 exhibit some variations from the copy of 1580, omitting four pieces 
 in that edition, and adding seven new ones. Beside these, there was 
 an edition, without date, printed by Allde for WTiite, and constituting 
 an eighth impression. 
 
 That a CoDection which ran through so many editions in so short 
 a period, must possess a considerable share of merit, will be a natural 
 inference ; nor will the readers of the Reprint lately published be dis- 
 appointed in such an expectation. It is true that the Paradise of 
 Daintie Devises contains no piece of such high poetic character as the 
 Induction of Sackville ; for its contributions are chiefly on subjects of 
 an ethic and didactic cast ; bvit it displays a vast variety of short com- 
 positions, on love, friendship, and adversity ; on the consolations of a 
 contented mind, on the instability of human pleasures, and on many 
 of the minor morals and events of life. These are expressed, in many 
 instances, with simplicity and vigour, and often with a flow of versi- 
 fication and perspicuity of diction, which, considering the age of 
 their production, is truly remarkable. If no splendour of imagery, 
 or sublimity of sentiment, arrest the attention, it cannot be denied 
 that several of these poems make their way to the heart, by attrac- 
 tions resulting from a clear perception, that the writers wrote from 
 their own unadulterated feelings, from the instant pressure of what 
 they suffered or enjoyed. 
 
 Of the contributors to this Miscellany, which, in its most perfect 
 state, consists of one hundred and twenty-four poems, more than one
 
 713 
 
 half was communicated by six individuals ; by Lord Vaux fourteen 
 pieces ; by Richard Edwardes fourteen ; by William Hunnis twelve ; 
 by Francis Kinwelmarsh ten ; by Jasper Heywood eight ; and by the 
 Earl of Oxford seven. 
 
 The compositions of Lord Vaux are uniformly of a moral and 
 pensive cast, and breathe a spirit of religion and resignation often 
 truly touching, and sometimes bordering on the sublime. Of this 
 description more particularly are the poems entitled " Of the insta- 
 bilitie of youth;" "Of a contented mind;" and on "Beying asked the 
 occasion of his white head," from the last of which a few lines will 
 afford a pleasing specimen of the pathetic tone and unaffected style 
 of this noble bard: — 
 
 " These heeres of age are messingers, 
 Whiche bidd me fast, repent and praie : 
 Thei be of death the harbingers, 
 That doeth prepare and dresse the waie, 
 Wherefore I joye that you mai see, 
 Upon my head such heeres to bee. 
 
 Thei be the line that lead the length, 
 How farre my race was for to ronne : 
 Thei saie my yongth is fledde with strength, 
 And how old age is well begonne. 
 The whiche I feele, and you maie see. 
 Upon my head such lines to bee." * 
 
 Of a character still higher for poetic power are the effusions of 
 Richard Edwards, who excels alike in descriptive, ethic, and pathetic 
 strains. Of the first, his two pieces called " May" and " I may not" 
 are, with the exception of the third stanza of the latter poem, very 
 striking instances ; of the second, he has afforded us several proofs ; 
 and of the last, his lines on the maxim of Terence, Amantium irce 
 amoris redintegratio est, form one of the most lovely exemplifications 
 
 * Reprint by Sir Egerton Brydges, 1810. p. 44. 
 VOL. I. 4 Y
 
 714 
 
 in the language. Of the opening stanza it is scarcely possible to 
 resist giving a transcription : — 
 
 " In going to my naked bed, as one that would have slept, 
 I heard a wife syng to her child, that long before had wept : 
 She sighed sore and sang full sore, to bryng the babe to rest, 
 That would not rest but cried still in suckyng at her brest : 
 She was full wearie of her watche, and grieved with her child, 
 She rocked it and rated it, untill on her it sinilde : 
 Then did she saie nowe have I founde the proverbe true to prove. 
 The fallyng out of faithfull frends renewing is of love." * 
 
 " The happiness of the illustration," remarks Sir Egerton Brydges, 
 " the facility, elegance, and tenderness of the language, and the exqui- 
 site turn of the whole, are above commendation ; and show to what 
 occasional polish and refinement our literature even then had arrived. 
 Yet has the treasure which this gem adorned, Iain buried and inac- 
 cessible, except to a few curious collectors, for at least a century and 
 
 an half." f- 
 
 Edwards has a song of four stanzas " In commendation of Musick," X 
 of which the first has been quoted by Shakspeare in Romeo and 
 Juliet §, affording a proof, if any were wanted, that the madrigals of 
 Edwai'ds were very popular in their day. 
 
 Of the poetry of William Hunnis the more remarkable features are 
 a peculiar flow of versification, and a delicate turn upon the words, 
 which approximate his songs, in an extraordinary degree,, to the 
 standard of the present age. By dividing his lines of sixteen sylla- 
 bles into two, this similarity becomes more apparent ; for instance, — 
 
 " When first mine eyes did view and mark 
 Thy beauty fair for to behold, 
 And when mine eares gan fust to hark 
 The pleasant words that thou me told ; 
 1 would as then I had been free 
 From ears to hear and eyes to see. 
 
 * Reprint, p. 42. f Preface to his reprint, p. vi. % Reprint, p. 55. 
 
 § Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. '212, Act iv. sc. 5.
 
 715 
 
 And when in mind I did consent 
 To follow thus my fancy's will, 
 And when my heart did first relent 
 To taste such bait myself to spill, 
 I would my heart had been as thine. 
 Or else tliy heart as soft as mine. * 
 
 O flatterer false, thou traitor born, 
 What mischief more might thou devise, 
 Than thy dear friend to have in scorn. 
 And him to wound in sundry wise? 
 Which still a friend pretends to be, 
 And art not so by proof I see. 
 
 Fie, fie, upon such treachery." f 
 
 From the ten contributions by Kinwelmarsh, three may be selected 
 as pleasing, both from their sentiment and melody, viz. " On learn- 
 ing ;" " All thinges are vain," which is a truly beautifid poem ; and 
 " The complaint of a Sinner," | Neither the productions of Hey- 
 wood, nor of the Earl of Oxford, surmount mediocrity. 
 
 Of the remaining writers who assisted in forming this collection, 
 M. Bew has written five pieces ; Arthur Bourcher, one ; M. Candish, 
 one ; Thos. Churchyard, one ; G. Gashe, one ; Richard Hill, seven ; 
 Lodoiiick Lloyd, one ; T. Marshall, two; Barnaby Rich, one; D. Sands, 
 five ; M. Tho7m, two ; Yloop, two, and there are five with the signature 
 of My lucke is losse. There are sixteen poems also with initials only- 
 subjoined, and seven anonymous contributions. Most of th^se con- 
 sist of moral precepts versified, and, though little entitled to the 
 appellation of poetry, from any display either of imagery or invention, 
 are yet of high value as developing the progress both of literary and 
 intellectual cultivation. 
 
 The popularity of Edwards's Miscellany produced, two years after- 
 ward, another collection of a similar kind, under the title of " A Gor- 
 Gious Gallery of Gallant Inventions. Garnished and decked 
 with Divers Dayntie Devises, right delicate and delightfull, to recreate 
 
 Reprint, p. 57, 58. f Ibid. p. 65. | Ibid. p. 14. S7. 87. 
 
 4 Y 2
 
 716 
 
 eche modest minde withall. First framed and fashioned in sundrie 
 formes, by Divers Worthy Workemen of late dayes : and now joyned 
 together and builded up : By T. P. Imprinted at London, for 
 Richard Jones. 1578." 
 
 Of this work, " one copy only," relates Mr. Park, " is known to 
 have survived the depredation of time. This was purchased by 
 Dr. Farmer, with the choice poetical stores of Mr. Wynne, which had 
 been formed in the seventeenth century by Mr. Narcissus Luttrell. 
 At Dr. Farmer's book-sale this unique was procured by Mr. Malone ; 
 from whose communicative kindness a transcript was obtained, which 
 furnished the present repi'int. One hiatus, occasioned by the loss of 
 a leaf, occurs at p. 102, which it will be hopeless to supply, unless 
 some chance copy should be lurking in the corner of a musty chest, a 
 family-library, or neglected lumber-closet ; though, in consequence of 
 the estimation in which all antiquated rarities are now held, even 
 such hiding-places have become very assiduously explored." * 
 
 By the Initials T. P. we are to understand Thomas Proctor, the 
 editor of this " Gorgious Gallery," and who has been noticed in the 
 preceding table on account of his " Pretie Pamphlets," which com- 
 mence at p. 125 of Mr. Park's Reprint. His verses following this 
 title are numerous, and in various metres, and indicate him to have 
 been no mean observer of life and manners. If he display little of 
 the fancy of the poet, he is not often deficient in moral weight of sen- 
 timent, and though not remarkable for either the melody or correct- 
 ness of his versification, he may be considered as having passed the 
 limits of mediocrity. 
 
 Of the other contributors our information is so scanty, that we can 
 only mention AyitJiony Mundaij and O'iH-en Roi/den, and this in conse- 
 quence of the first having prefixed a copy of verses " In commenda^ 
 tion of this Gallery," and the second a more elaborate poem, " To the 
 curious company of Sycophants." It is probable that they were both 
 coadjutors in the body of the work. 
 
 * Vide Heliconia, Part I. Advertisement.
 
 717 
 
 The " Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions" consists of seventy- 
 four poems, and some, especially the " History of Pyramus and 
 Thisbie," of considerable length. Too many of them are written in 
 drawling couplets of fourteen syllables in a line, and with too flagrant 
 a partiality for the meretricious garb of alliteration. * There appears 
 to be also too Uttle variety in the selection of topics, and some of the 
 pieces are reprinted from " Tottel's Miscellany" and the " Paradyse 
 of Dayntie Devises." It must be pronounced, indeed, inferior to 
 these its predecessors in the essential points of invention, harmony 
 of metre, and versatility of style, though it seems to have shared with 
 them no small portion of popular favour ; for Nashe, in his life of 
 .Tacke Wilton, 1594, alluding to the Gardens of Rome, says, that " to 
 tell you of their rare pleasures, their batlis, their vineyards, their 
 galleries, were to write a second part of the Gorgious Gallerk of Gal- 
 lant Devices.''^ f 
 
 In 1584 was published, in l6mo., " A Handefull of Pleasant 
 Delites : containing Sundrie new Sonets and delectable Histories in 
 divers kindes of meeter. Newly devised to the newest tunes, that 
 are now in use to be sung : everie sonet orderly pointed to his proper 
 tune. With new additions of certain songs, to verie late devised 
 notes, not commonly knowen, nor used heretofore. By Clement 
 Robinson : and divers others. At London, printed by Richard 
 -Jliones : dwelling at the signe of the Rose and Crowne, neare Hol- 
 burne Bridge." 
 
 Only one copy of the printed original of this Miscellany, which is 
 in the Marquis of Blandlbrd's library, is supposed to be in existence. 
 The editor, Clement Robinson, if all the pieces unappropriated to 
 others, be of his composition, must be deemed worthy of high praise 
 for numerous productions of great lyric sweetness in point of versi- 
 
 * For a notable instance of this figure, \\q refer the reader to " The Lover in Bond- 
 age," at p. 50. of Mr. Park's reprint. Not Holofernes himself could nioie " affect the 
 letter." 
 
 f Quoted by Mr. Park in the Advertisement to his reprint.
 
 718 
 
 fication, and composed in a vein of much perspicuity with regard to 
 diction. His associates, as far as we have any authority from the 
 work itself, amount only to five ; and these, "with the exception of 
 Leonard Gibson, who claims only one piece, consist of names un- 
 known elsewhere in the annals of poetry. Two effusions are attri- 
 buted to J. To/nson ; two to Peter Picks ; one to Thomas Richardson, 
 and one to George Mannington. This last production, denominated 
 " A sorrowfuU Sonet," if we make allowance for a commencement 
 too alliterative, possesses a large share of moral pathos, and unaffected 
 simplicity. * 
 
 Thirty-two poems occupy the pages of this pleasing little volume, 
 among which, at p. 23., is A Nerv Courtly Sonet of the Ladi/ Green- 
 sleeves, to the new tune of Greensleeves, alluded to by Shakspeare in 
 the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act ii. Sc. 1., and which throws some 
 curious light on the female dress of the period. 
 
 In point of interest, vivacity, and metrical harmony, this compi- 
 lation has a decided superiority over the " Gorgious Gallery of Gallant 
 Inventions." It is, in a great measure, formed of ballads and songs, 
 adapted to well-known popular tunes, and, though its poets have 
 been arbitrarily confined in the structure of their verse by the pre- 
 composed music, yet many of their lyrics have a smoothness and 
 sweetness in the composition of their stanzas, which may even arrest 
 the attention of a modern ear. 
 
 To the publication of Clement Robinson succeeded, in 1593, " The 
 Phcenix Nest. Built up with the most rare and refined workes of 
 Noblemen, worthy Knights, gallant Gentlemen, Masters of Arts, and 
 brave Scholers. Full of varietie, excellent invention, and singular 
 delight. Never before published. Set foorth by R. S, of the Inner 
 Temple, Gentleman. Imprinted at London, by John Jackson, 4to." 
 
 The opening of Mr. Park's " Advertisement" to his Reprint of this 
 Collection includes so much just, and elegantly expressed, criticism 
 
 Heliconia, Part II. p. 85.
 
 719 
 
 on our elder poetry, and on Shakspeare, that we seize with pleasure 
 the opportunity ot" transferring it to our pages. 
 
 " Between the Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions," he remarks, 
 " printed in 1578, and the present miscellany in 1593, an interval of 
 only fifteen years, there will be traced no inconsiderable advance 
 towards poetical elegance and sentimental refinement. Watson, 
 Breton, Peele, and Lodge, contributed very materially to the grace, 
 and melody, and strength, of our amatory, lyric, and satiric verse ; 
 while Spenser, Daniel, and Drayton enlarged the sphere of the alle- 
 goric, and historic, and descriptive Muse. But the magnitude of the 
 works of the two latter poets, owing to the subjects they unhappily 
 selected, has conduced to deaden that reputation which several of 
 their minor effusions were calculated to keep alive. The very labours 
 which might otherwise have extended their fame, have fatally con- 
 tracted it. Their ponderous productions are incorporated indeed 
 with the late general collections of British Poets, but where is the 
 poetic amateur who peruses them ? They resemble certain drugs in 
 a family-dispensary, which, though seldom if ever taken, still eke out 
 the assemblage. From reading the fair specimens put forth by 
 Mr. Ellis, many may be allured to covet the entire performances of 
 our elder bards : but should these be obtained, the^^ will probably be 
 found (as Mr. Steevens said by the Shakspearian quartos) of little 
 more worth than a squeezed orange. The flowers will appear to have 
 been culled and distilled by the hand of judgment ; and the essence 
 of early poetry, like most other essences, will be discovered to lie in 
 a narrow compass. ' Old poets in general,' says Mr. Southey, ' are 
 only valuable because they are old.' It must be allowed that few 
 poems of the Elizabethan aera are likely to afford complete satisfac- 
 tion to a mere modern reader, from the fastidious delicacy of modern 
 taste. Some antiquated alloy, either from incongruous metaphor or 
 infelicitous expression, will commonly jar upon h.is mind or ear. The 
 backward footstep of Time will be audible, if not visible. Yet the 
 songs of our unrivalled Shakspeare combine an almost uniform excep- 
 tion to this remark. They are exquisite in thought, feeling, language,
 
 720 
 
 and modulation. They blend simplicity with beauty, sentiment with 
 passion, picture with poesy. They unite symmetry of form with con- 
 sistency of ornament, truth of nature with perfection of art, and must 
 ever furnish models for lyric composition. As a sonnet-writer Shak- 
 speare was not superior to some of his contemporaries : he was cer- 
 tainly inferior to himself In lighter numbers and in blank verse, 
 peculiar and transcendent was his excellence. His songs never have 
 been surpassed, his dramas never are likely to be." *' 
 
 Of the editor of the Phoenix Nest, intended by the initials R. S., 
 no certain information has been obtained. The work has been 
 attributed to Richard Stanyhurst, Richard Sfaplcton, and to Robert 
 Southwell, by Coxeter, by Warton, and by Waldron; but their claims, 
 founded merely on conjecture, are entitled to little confidence. It is 
 perhaps more interesting to know, that the chief contributors to this 
 miscellany were among the best lyric poets of their age, that Thotnas 
 Watson, Nicholas Breton, and, above all, Thomas Lodge, assisted the 
 unknown editor. Not less than sixteen pieces have the initials of 
 this last bard, and many of them are among the most beautiful pro- 
 ductions of his genius. Beside these, George Peele. William Sinith, 
 Matthew Roydon, Sir William Herbert, the Earl of Oxford, and several 
 others, aided in completing this elegant volume. 
 
 The " Phoenix Nest," which comprehends not less than seventy- 
 nine poems, is certainly one of the most attractive of the Elizabethan 
 miscellanies, whether we regard its style, its versification, or its 
 choice of subject, and will probably be deemed inferior only to 
 " England's Helicon," which, indeed, owes a few of its beauties to 
 this work. 
 
 Of the valuable Collection thus mentioned, the first edition made 
 its appearance in 1600, with the following title-page : " England's 
 Helicon. 
 
 Casta placent superis 
 
 pura cum veste venite, 
 Et manibus puris 
 
 sumite fontis aquam. 
 
 * Heliconia. Part III. Advertisement.
 
 721 
 
 At London. Printed by J. R. for John Flasket, and are to be sold in 
 Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Beare." 4to. 
 
 The second edition was published in 1614, and entitled, " England's 
 Helicon, or the Muses Harmony. 
 
 The Courts of Kings lieare no such straines, 
 As daily lull the Rusticke Swaines. 
 
 London : Printed for Richard More ; and are to be sould at his shop 
 in S. Dunstanes Church-yard." 8vo. 
 
 England's Helicon, which, in its first impression, contained one 
 hundred and fifty poems, and in its second one hundred and fifty- 
 nine, has the felicity of enrolling among its contributors all the 
 principal poets of its era. These, enumerated alphabetically, are as 
 follow : — Richard Barnefield has two pieces ; T/iofnas Bastard, one j 
 Edinund Bolton, five ; Nicholas Breton, eight ; Christopher Brooke, 
 one ; William Bromne, one ; Henry Constable, four ; John Davis, 
 one ; Michael Drayton, five ; Sir Ed-ward Dyer, six ; John Ford, one ; 
 Robert Greene, seven ; Fulke Grevile, two ; John Gough, one ; How- 
 ard, Earle of Surrie, two ; Howell, one : William Hiinnis, two ; 
 Thomas Lodge, ten ; Jervis Markham, two ; Christopher Marlow, one ; 
 Earle of Oxenfoi^d, one : George Peele, three ; Sir Walter Raleigh, 
 fourteen ; William Shakspeare, two ; Sir Philip Sidney, fourteen ; 
 William Smith, one ; Edmund Spenser, three ; Shepherd Tonie, seven ; 
 Thomas Watson, five; John Wootton, two, and Bartholomew Yong, 
 twentj'-five. Of anonymous contributions there are sixteen. 
 
 Amid this galaxy of bards we cannot fail to distinguish for their 
 decided superiority, the productions oi Breton, Greene, Lodge, Marlow, 
 and Raleigh, which might confer celebrity on any selection. The 
 principal feature, indeed, of England's Helicon is its pastoral beauty, 
 and in this department how few have surpassed, or even equalled, the 
 exquisite strains of Lodge or Marlow ! 
 
 *' It cannot be idle or useless," remarks Sir Egerton Brydges, " to 
 study this early Collection of Pastoral compositions. Here is the 
 
 VOL. I. 4 z
 
 722 
 
 fountain of that diction, which has since been employed and 
 expanded in the description of rural scenery. Here are the openings 
 of those reflections on the imagery of nature, in which subsequent 
 poets have so much dealt. They show us to what occasional excel- 
 lence, both in turn of thought and polish of language, the literature 
 of Queen Elizabeth had arrived ; and how little the artificial and 
 incumbered prose of mere scholars of that time exhibits a just speci- 
 men of either the sentiment or phrase of the court or people! 
 In the best of these productions, even the accentuation and rhythm 
 scarce differs from that of our days. Lodge and Breton in particu- 
 lar, who are characterised by their simplicity, are striking proofs of 
 this! — 
 
 " To such as could enjoy the rough and far-fetched subtlety of 
 metaphysical verses, this Collection must have appeared inexpressibly 
 insipid and contemptible. To those whose business it was to draw 
 similitudes from the most remote recesses of abstruse learning, how 
 childish must seem the delineation of flowers that were open to every 
 eye, and images which found a mirror in every bosom ! ! 
 
 " But, O, how dvdl is the intricate path of the philosopher, how 
 uninteresting is all the laboured ingenuity of the artist, compared 
 with the simple and touching pleasures which are alike open to the 
 peasant, as to the scholar, the noble, or the monarch ! It is in the 
 gift, of exquisite senses, and not in the adventitious circumstances of 
 birth and fortune, that one human being excels another ! 
 
 " The common air, the sun, the skies, 
 To him are opening Paradise." 
 
 " We are delighted to see reflected the same feelings, the same 
 pleasures from the breasts of our ancestors. We hear the voices of 
 those bearded chiefs, whose portraits adorn the pannels of our halls 
 and galleries, still bearing witness to the same natural and eternal 
 truths ; still inveighing against the pomp, the fickleness, and the 
 treachery of courts ; and uttering the songs of the shepherd and the
 
 723 
 
 woodman, in language that defies the changes of time, and speaks to 
 all ages the touching effusions of the heart. 
 
 " If some little additional prejudice in favoux- of these compositions 
 be given by the association in our ideas of their antiquity, if we 
 connect some reverence, and some inci'eased force, with expressions 
 which were in favourite use with those who for two centuries have 
 slept in the grave, the profound moral philosopher will neither blame 
 nor regret this effect. It is among the most generous and most 
 ornamental, if not amono- the most useful habits of the mind ! 
 
 " Such are among the claims of this Collection to notice. But the 
 seal that has been hitherto put upon this treasure ; the deep oblivion 
 in which the major parts of its contents have for ages been buried, 
 ought to excite curiosity, and impart a generous delight at its revival. 
 Who is there so cold as to be moved with no enthusiasm at draw- 
 ing the mantle from the figure of Time? For my part, I confess 
 how often I have watched the gradual developement with eager and 
 breathless expectation ; and gazed upon the reviving features till my 
 warm fancy gave them a glow and a beauty, which perhaps the reality 
 never in its happiest moments possessed." * 
 
 That very nearly two hundred years should have elapsed between 
 the second and third editions of this miscellany is a striking proof of 
 the neglect to which even the best of our ancient poetry has been 
 hitherto subjected. The rapidly increasing taste of the present age, 
 however, for the reliques of long-departed genius, cannot fail of 
 precluding in future any return of such undeserved obscurity. 
 
 In 1600 the industry of Robert Allot presented the public with a 
 large collection of extracts from the most popular poets of his times, 
 under the title of " England's Parnassus : or the choysest flowers of 
 our moderne poets, with their poeticall comparisons. Descriptions 
 of Bewties, Personages, Castles, Pallaces, Mountaines, Groves, Seas, 
 Springs, Rivers, &c. Whereunto are annexed other various dis- 
 courses, botli pleasant and profitable." Small 8vo. pp. 510. 
 
 * England's Helicon, reprint of 1812; Irltroduction, p. xx. xxi. xxii. 
 
 4z 2
 
 724 
 
 Had the editor of this curious vohune, beside citing the names of 
 his authors, added the titles of the works from which he culled his 
 specimens, an infinity of trouble would have been saved to subse- 
 quent research ; yet the deficiency has served, in a peculiar manner, 
 to mark the successful progress of modern bibliography. When 
 Oldys wrote his Preface to Hayward's British Muse, which was first 
 published in 1738, he complains grievously of this omission, observ- 
 ing that most of Allot's poets " were now so obsolete, that not 
 knowing what they wrote, we can have no recourse to their works, if 
 still extant." * Since this sentence was written, such has been the 
 industry of our literary antiquaries, that almost every poem which 
 Allot laid under contribution in forming his volume, has been ascer- 
 tained, and rendered accessible to the curious enquirer ; and so far 
 from the writers being obsolete, after nearly eighty years have been 
 added to their antiquity, we may venture to affirm that, excepting 
 about half-a-dozen, they are as familiar to us as the poets of the 
 present reign. It is but just, however, to acknowledge that a con- 
 siderable portion of this intimacy may be ascribed to Allot's book, 
 which, by its numerous passages from bards rendered scarce by 
 neglect, has stimulated the bibliographical enthusiasm of the last 
 twenty years to achieve their detection. An enumeration of the 
 contributors to England's Parnassus, will serve to illustrate and confirm 
 these remarks : — 
 
 1. Thomas Achelly. 
 
 11. Charles Fitzgeffrey. 
 
 2. Thomas Bastard. 
 
 12. Abraham Frannce. 
 
 3. George Chapman. 
 
 13. George Gascoigne. 
 
 4. Thomas Churchyard. 
 
 14. Edward Gilpin. 
 
 5. Henry Constable. 
 
 15. Robert Greene. 
 
 6. Samuel Daniel. 
 
 16. Sir John Harrington. 
 
 7. John Davies. 
 
 17. John Higgins. 
 
 8. Thomas Dekkar. 
 
 18. Thomas Hudson. 
 
 9. Michael Drayton. 
 
 19. James, King of Scots. 
 
 10. Edmund Fairfax. 
 
 20. Benjamin Jonson. 
 
 * Preface, pp. 8, 9. This Collection of Hayward's had three different titles ; the last 
 dated 1741. The second edition is called " The Quintissence of English Poetry."
 
 725 
 
 21. 
 
 Tlioinas Kytl. 
 
 33. 
 
 Edmund Spenser. 
 
 2'>. 
 
 Thomas Lodge. 
 
 81. 
 
 Thomas Storcr. 
 
 23. 
 
 Gervase Markham. 
 
 35. 
 
 Surrey, Earl of. 
 
 24. 
 
 Christopher Marlowe. 
 
 36. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 25. 
 
 John Marston. 
 
 37. 
 
 Joshua Sylvester. 
 
 26. 
 
 Christopher Middleton. 
 
 33. 
 
 George Turberville. 
 
 27. 
 
 Thomas Nash. 
 
 39. 
 
 William Warner. 
 
 28. 
 
 Oxford, Earl of. 
 
 40. 
 
 Thomas Watson. 
 
 29. 
 
 George Peele. 
 
 41. 
 
 John Weever. 
 
 30. 
 
 Matthew Roydon. 
 
 42. 
 
 William Weever. 
 
 31. 
 
 Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. 
 
 43. 
 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
 
 32. 
 
 William Shakspeare. 
 
 
 
 Though Oldys has severely blamed the judgment of the editor in 
 his selection of authors and extracts, yet a much more consummate 
 critic, the highly-gifted Warton, considers him as having exhibited 
 taste in his choice, and it must be acknowledged that the volume 
 has preserved many exquisite passages from poets who, but for 
 this selection, had probably been irrecoverably merged in oblivion. 
 
 In the same year with England's Parnassus came forth another 
 compilation, to which its editor, John Bodenham, gave the following 
 title : " Bel-vedere, or the Garden of the Muses. 
 
 Quem referent Museb vivet, dum robora tellus, 
 Dum caelum Stellas, dum vehit amnis aquas. 
 
 Imprinted at London, by F. K. for Hugh Astley, dwelling at Saint 
 Magnus Corner. 1600." Small 8vo. pp. 236. 
 
 This collection, which underwent a second impression in 1610, 
 with the omission of its first appellative, Bel-vedere, though it con- 
 tain a vast number of quotations, is, on two accounts, inferior to the 
 " Parnassus." In the first place, no authors' names are annexed to 
 the extracts, and, in the second, a much greater defect has arisen 
 from the editor's determination to confine his specimens to one or 
 two lines at most, a brevity which almost annihilates the interest of 
 the work. To obviate, however, in some degree, the inconveniences 
 arising from the first of these plans, he has recourse, in his Proemiwriy 
 to the following detail, which, as it gives a very curious narrative of 
 the construction of the book, will have its due value with the reader : —
 
 726 
 
 " Now that every one may be fully satisfied concerning this 
 Garden, that no man doth assume to him-selfe the praise thereof, or 
 can arrogate to his owne deserving those things, which have been 
 derived from so many rare and ingenious spirits ; I have set down 
 both how, whence, and where, these flowres had their first spring- 
 ing, till thus they were drawne together into the Muses Garden ; 
 that every ground may challenge his owne, each plant his particular, 
 and no one be injured in the justice of his merit. 
 
 " First, out of many excellent speeches, spoken to her Majestie, 
 at tiltings, triumphes, maskes, and shewes, and devises perfourmed 
 in prograce : as also out of divers choise ditties sung to her ; and 
 some especially, proceeding from her owne most sacred selfe ! Here 
 are great store of them digested into their meete places, according 
 as the method of the worke plainly delivereth. Likewise out of 
 private poems, sonnets, ditties, and other wittie conceits, given 
 to her honourable Ladies and vertuous Maids of Honour; accord- 
 ing as they could be obtained by sight, or favour of copying, a 
 number of most wittie and singular sentences. Secondly, looke 
 what workes of poetrie have been put to the world's eye, by that 
 learned and right royall king and poet, James King of Scotland ; 
 no one sentence of worth hath escaped, but are likewise here 
 reduced into their right roome and place. Next, out of svmdrie 
 things extant, and many in private, done by these right honourable 
 persons following : 
 
 Thomas, (Henry) Earl of Surrey. Mary Countess "of Pembrooke. 
 
 The Lorde Marquesse of Winchester. Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 " From poems and workes of these noble personages extant : 
 
 Edward, Earle of Oxenford. Sir Edward Dyer. 
 
 Ferdinando, Earle of Derby. Fulke Grevile, Esq. 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir John Harrington. 
 
 " From divefs essayes of their poetrie ; some extant among other 
 honourable personages writings, some from private labours and 
 translations.
 
 727 
 
 Edmund Spencer. Thomas Churcliyaid, Escj. 
 
 Heny Constable, Esq. Tho. Nash. 
 
 Samuel Daniell. Tho. Kidde. 
 
 Thomas Lodge, Doctor of Pliysicke. Geo. Pecle. 
 
 Thomas W^atson. Robert Greene. 
 
 Michaell Drayton. .Tosuah Sylvester. 
 
 John Davies. Nicolas Breton. 
 
 ■ Thomas Hudson. Gervase Markluini. 
 
 Henrie Locke, Esq. Thomas Storer. 
 
 John Marstone. Robert Wilmot. 
 
 Chr. Marlowe. Chr. Middleton. 
 
 Benjn. Johnson. Richard Barnefield. 
 William Shakspeare. 
 
 " These being moderne and extant poets, that have lived together; 
 from many of their extant workes, and some kept in private. 
 
 Thomas Norton, Esq. Thomas Atchelow. 
 
 George Gascoigne, Esq. George Whetstones. 
 
 Frauncis Hindlemarsh, Esq. 
 
 " These being deceased, have left divers extant labours, and many 
 more held back from publishing, which for the most part have 
 been perused, and their due right here given them in the Muses 
 Garden. 
 
 " Besides, what excellent' sentences have been in any presented 
 Tragedie, Historic, Pastorall, or Comedie, they have been likewise 
 gathered, and are here inserted in their proper places." * 
 
 It will be perceived that eleven poets are here enumerated, who 
 had no share in England's Parnassus ; and it may be worth while to 
 remark, that, among the verses prefixed in praise of the book, are 
 some lines by R. Hathway, whom Mr. Malone conjectures to have 
 been the kinsman of Ann Hathaway, the wife of our immortal 
 bard, f 
 
 * The curious Preface, from which we have given this long extract, is only to be found 
 in the first edition of the Belvedere ; its omission in the second is a singular defect, as it 
 certainly forms the most interesting part of the impression of 1600. 
 
 f See Malone's Inquiry.
 
 728 
 
 A small contribution of pieces by a few of the chief poets of the 
 age, was, in 1601, annexed to a production by Robert Chester, 
 entitled, " Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint, allegorically 
 shadowing the Truth of Love in the constant fate of the Phoenix and 
 Turtle. A poem, enterlaced with much varietie and raritie ; now 
 first translated out of the venerable Italian Torquato Caeliano, by 
 Robert Chester. With the true legend of famous King Arthur, the 
 last of the nine worthies ; being the first Essay of a new British poet : 
 collected out of authenticall records. To these are added some nen» 
 coinpositlons of several modem -writers ; whose names are subscribed to 
 their severall <workes; upon the first subject; viz. the Phoenix and 
 Turtle." 
 
 These new compositions have the following second title immediately 
 preceding them: " Hereafter follow divei'se poetical essaies on the former 
 subject ; viz. the Turtle and Phoenix. Done by tJie best and chiefest of 
 our inodern writet^s, with their names subscribed to their particular 
 workes. Never before extant. And now first consecrated by them all 
 generally to the love and merit of the tndy noble Knight, Sir John 
 Salisburie." 
 
 The only known copy of this collection was in Major Pierson's 
 possession, and it is solely from Mr. Malone, to whom we are 
 indebted for the above titles, that we learn the names of the prin- 
 cipal contributors ; these are Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Marston, and 
 Chapman. * Shakspeare's contribution forms the twentieth poem in 
 " The Passionate Pilgrim," commencing 
 
 " Let the bird of loudest lay," &c. 
 
 A miscellany upon a more extensive scale than the preceding, and 
 of great value for the taste exhibited in its selection, succeeded in 
 1602, under the appellation of " A Poetical RapsodIe ; containing 
 diverse Sonnets, Odes, Elegies, Madrigals, Epigrams, Pastorals, 
 
 Supplement to Shakspeare, vol, i. p. 732.
 
 720 
 
 Effloo-ues, with other Poems, both in Rime and Measured Verse, 
 For varietie and pleasure, the hke never yet published. 
 
 The Bee and Spider by a diverse power, 
 
 Sucke hony and poyson from the selfe-same flower. 
 
 London. 12mo.' 
 
 The editor and principal contributor, was Francis Davison, a poet 
 of no mean talents, and son of that Secretary of State, who expe- 
 rienced in so remarkable a degree the duplicity of Elizabeth, in 
 relation to Mary Queen of Scots. In an Address to the Reader, he 
 thus accounts for the form which the volume assumes: — "Being 
 induced by some private reasons, and by the instant entreaty of 
 speciall friends, to suiFer some of my worthlesse poems to be pub- 
 lished, I desired to make some written by my deere 'friends Anonymoi, 
 and my deerer Brother, to beare them comparly : both, without their 
 consent ; the latter being in the low-country warres, and the rest 
 utterly ignorant thereof My friends names I concealed ; mine owne 
 and my brother's, I willed the printer to suppresse, as well as I had 
 concealed the other, which he having put in without my privity, we 
 must now undergo a sharper censure perhaps than our namelesse 
 workes should have done ; and I especially. For if their poems be 
 liked, the praise is due to their invention ; if disliked, the blame 
 both by them and all men will be derived upon me, for publishing 
 that which they meant to suppresse." 
 
 He then enters upon a defence of poetry, experience proving, he 
 remarks, " by examples of many, both dead and living, that divers 
 delighted and excelling herein, being princes or statesmen, have 
 gouerned and counselled as wisely ; being souldiers, have commanded 
 armies as fortunately ; being lawyers, have pleaded as judicially and 
 eloquently ; being divines, have written and taught as profoundly ; 
 and being of any other profession, have discharged it as sufficiently, 
 as any other men whatsoever ;" and concludes by alleging, as an 
 excuse " for these poems in particular, that those under the name of 
 
 VOL. I. 5 A
 
 730 
 
 Anonymos were written (as appeareth by divers things to Sir Philip 
 Sidney living, and of him dead) almost twenty years since, when 
 poetry was farre from that perfection to which it hath now attained : 
 that my brother is by profession a souldier, and was not eighteen 
 years old when he writ these toys : that mine owne were made most 
 of them sixe or seven yeares since, at idle times as I journeyed up 
 and downe during my travails." 
 
 The division of the *' Rapsodie" more peculiarly occupied by 
 these kindred bards, is that including " Sonnets, Odes, Elegies, 
 JVIadrigals, and Epigrams, by Francis and Walter Davison, brethren ;" 
 and they were assisted in that, and the residue of the work, by 
 Spenser, Sidney, Sir John Davis, Mary Countess of Pembroke, 
 Thomas Campion, Thomas Watson, Charles Best, Thomas Spelman, 
 and by others, whose initials are supposed to indicate Henry 
 Constable, Walter Raleigh, Henry Wotton, Robert Greene, Andrew 
 Willet, and Joshua Sylvester. * 
 
 The " Poetical Rapsodie" is dedicated by Davison in a sonnet, 
 " To the most noble, honorable, and worthy Lord William Earl of 
 Pembroke, Lord Herbert of CardiiFe, Marmion, and St. Quintine," 
 and was successively republished with augmentations in 1608, 1611, 
 and. 1621. It may be said to present us, not only with a felicitous 
 choice of topics, but it claims the merit of having pi-eserved several 
 valuable poems not elsewhere to be discovered, and which, owing to 
 the rarity of the book, although four times subjected to the press, 
 have not, until lately, attracted the notice that is due to them. 
 
 Independent of the ten miscellanies which we have now enu- 
 merated, an immense multitude of Airs, Madrigals, and Songs, set 
 to music, and printed in Pai*ts, were published during the latter part 
 of the reign of Elizabeth, and during the reign of James the First. 
 These Collections contain a variety of lyric poems not elsewhere to 
 be met with, and which were either written expressly for the Com- 
 
 • Sec Censura Litcraria, vol. i. p. 229.
 
 731 
 
 posers, or selected by the latter from manuscripts, or rare and 
 insulated printed copies. Foremost among these Professors of 
 Music, who thus indirectly contributed to enrich the stores of 
 English Poetry, stands William Byrd. This celebrated composer's 
 first printed work in English was licensed in 1587, and has the fol- 
 lowing title : — " Teno7\ Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs of sadnes and pielie, 
 made into musicke of Jive parts : whereof some of them going a broad 
 amo7ig divers, in untrue coppies, are heere truely corrected, and the 
 other being Songs very rare and newly composed, are heere published, 
 for the recreation of aU such as delight in Musicke. By William Byrd, 
 one of the. Gent, of the Queene's Maiesties Royall Chappell." 4to. 
 
 The volume is dedicated to Sir Christopher Hatton ; and he tells 
 his reader, in an epistle subscribed the most assured friend to all 
 that love or learne musicke, William Byrd, — " heere is offered unto 
 thy courteous acceptation, musicke of sundi-ie sorts, and to content 
 divers humors. If th«u bee disposed to pray, heere are psalmes. If 
 to bee merrie, heere are sonets. If to lament for thy sins, heere are 
 songs of sadnesse and pietie. If thou delight in musicke of great 
 copasse, heere are divers songs, which beeing originally made for 
 instruments to expresse the barnlony, and one voyce to pronounce 
 the dittie, are now framed in all parts for voyces to sing the same. 
 If thou desire songs of smal compasse and fit for the reach of most 
 voyces, heere are most in number of that sort." 
 
 Next to Byrd, whose publications of this kind are numerous, we 
 may mention Thomas Morley, no less remarkable for his skill in 
 music, and for his fertility in the production of ynadrigals, ballets, and 
 canzonets. How fashionable and universal had become the practice 
 of singing these compositions at every party of amusement, may be 
 drawn from one of the elementary works of this writer: — " Being at 
 a banquet," he relates, " supper being ended, and music books 
 brought to table^ the mistress of the house, according to custom, 
 presented me with a part, earnestly intreating me to sing ; when, 
 after many excuses, I protested unfeignedly that I could not, ciei-y 
 
 5 A 2
 
 732 
 
 one began to wonder, yea, some whispered to others demanding how I 
 was brought up.^^ * 
 
 Of the various collections of lyric poetry adapted to music and 
 published by Morle}-, who died about the period of the accession of 
 James the First, we shall notice two ; one as indicatory ot" the manners 
 of the age, and the other of the estimation in which the science was 
 held by our composer, who seems, on this occasion, to have partaken 
 the enthusiasm of Shakspeare ; for in a dedication, "To the Worship- 
 full Sir Gervis Clifton, Knight," prefixed to " Madrigals to five 
 voyces. Selected out of the best apjjroved Italian Authors. By 
 Thomas Morley, Gentleman of Mr Maiesties Royall Chappell, 1598," 
 he tells his worthy patron, " I ever held this sentence of the poet, 
 as a canon of my creede ; That whom God loveth not, they love not 
 Musique. For as the Art of Musique is one of the most Heavenly 
 gifts, so the very love of Musique (without art) is one of the best 
 engrafted testimonies of Heavens love towards us." 
 
 In 1601, Morley published in quarto, " Cantus Madrigales. The 
 triumphes of Oriana, to 5 and 6 voices : composed by divers 
 severall aucthors," — a collection remarkable for its object, as it 
 consisted of twenty-five songs, composed by twenty-four several 
 musicians, for the express purpose of commemorating the beauty 
 and virginity of Elizabeth, under the appellation of Oriana, and who 
 was now in the sixty-eighth year of her age, one, among innumerable 
 proofs, of the extreme vanity of this singular woman. 
 
 That a great proportion of these musical miscellanies consisted of 
 translations from the Italian, is evident from the publications of Byrd 
 and Morley, and from the Musica Transalpina of Nicolas Yonge, 
 printed in two parts, in the years 1588 and 1597, where, however, 
 equal industry appears to have been exerted in collecting English 
 songs ; the dedication, indeed, points out very distinctly the sources 
 
 * Vide Morley's Plaine and easie Introduction to Piactical Miisicli.
 
 733 
 
 "whence these popular works were derived. " I endeavoured," says 
 Yonge, " to get into my hands all such English songes as were praise 
 wortliie, and amongst others I had the hap to find in the hands of 
 some of my good friends certaine Italian Madrigales translated most 
 of them five years ago by a gentleman for his private delight." The 
 two parts of Musica Transalpina contain eighty-one songs. 
 
 It seems probable, indeed, from Orlando Gibbons & dedication of 
 his " First set of Alardrigals and Mottets" to Sir Christopher Hatton, 
 dated 1612, that the courtiers of that period sometimes employed 
 themselves in writing lyrics for their domestic Lutenists ; for Orlando 
 tells his lord, — " They were most of them composed in your own house, 
 and do therefore properly belong unto you as lord of the soil ; the 
 language they speak you j^i'ovided them ; I only furnished them with 
 tongues to utter the same." It may be, however, that Sir Christopher 
 was only a selector of poetry for the lyre of Gibbons. 
 
 To enumerate the multitude of music-stricken individuals, who, 
 during this period, were occupied in procuring and collecting lyric 
 poetry for professional purposes, would fiU a volume. Among the 
 most indefatigable, may be mentioned John Wilbye, Thomas Weelkes^ 
 John Doxdand and Robert Jones ; " The Miisicall Dream" 1609, and 
 " The Muse's Gardin of Delights," 1610, by the last of these gentle- 
 men, wex'e held in gi-eat esteem. 
 
 We cannot close this subject, indeed, without acknowledging our 
 obligations to this numerous class for the preservation of many most 
 beautiful specimens of lyric poetry, which, it is highly probable, 
 without their care and accompaniments, would either not have 
 existed, or would have perished prematurely. * 
 
 * For specimens of these interesting collections, I refer my reader to Censura Literaria, 
 vol. ix. p. I. etseq.; vol. x. pp. 179. 294.; and to the British Biblioi^rapher, No. IV. 
 p. 343.; No. V. p. 563.; No. VI. p. 59. ; No. IX. p. 42?.; No. XI. p^652.; No. XII. 
 p. 48. ; and No. XV. p. 386. A well-chosen selection from the now scarce volumes of 
 these Professors of Vocal Music would be a valuable present to the lovers of English 
 poetry.
 
 734 
 
 As a fwrther elucidation of the Poetical Literature of this period, 
 and with the view of condensing its retrospect, by an arrangement 
 under general heads, it may prove satisfactory, if we briefly throw into 
 classes, the names of those poets who may he considered as having 
 given ornament or extension to their art. The following divisions, 
 it is expected, will include all that, in this place, it can now be neces- 
 sary to notice. 
 
 Epic Poetrt). 
 
 Historic. 
 
 Lyric. 
 
 Didactic, 
 
 Satiric. 
 
 Sonnet. 
 
 Pastoral. 
 
 Translators. 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Sackville. 
 
 Gascoigne. 
 
 Tusser. 
 
 Lodge. 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Chapman. 
 
 
 Higgins. 
 
 Greene. 
 
 DaviesSirJ. 
 
 Hall. 
 
 Sidney. 
 
 Chalkhill. 
 
 Harrington 
 
 
 Niccols. 
 
 Raleigh. 
 
 Davors. 
 
 Marston. 
 
 Constable. 
 
 Marlow. 
 
 Fairfax. 
 
 
 Warner. 
 
 Breton. 
 
 Fletcher G. 
 
 Donne. 
 
 Watson. 
 
 Drayton. 
 
 Sylvester. 
 
 
 Daniel. 
 
 Lodge. 
 
 
 Wither. 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Fairefax. 
 
 Golding. 
 
 
 Drayton. 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 
 
 Daniel. 
 
 Brown. 
 
 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Jonson. 
 
 
 
 Drayton. 
 
 
 
 
 Marlov/. 
 
 Wotton. 
 
 
 
 Barnes. 
 
 
 
 
 Fitzgeffirey. 
 
 Wither. 
 
 
 
 Barnefield. 
 
 
 
 
 Storer. 
 
 
 
 
 Smith. 
 
 
 
 
 Wiilobie. 
 
 
 
 
 Stirling. 
 
 
 
 
 Beaumont. 
 
 
 
 
 Drummond. 
 
 
 
 We have thus, in as short a compass as the nature of the subject 
 would admit, given, we trust, a more accurate view of the poetry of 
 the Shakspearean era, as it existed independent of the Drama, than 
 has hitherto been attempted. 
 
 That Shakspeare was an assiduous reader of English Poetry ; that 
 he studied with peculiar interest and attention his immediate prede- 
 cessors and contemporaries, there is abundant reason to conclude 
 from a careful perusal of his vohime of miscellaneous poetry, which 
 is modelled on a strict adherence to the taste which prevailed at the 
 opening of his career. The collection, indeed, may, with no impro- 
 priety, be classed under the two divisions of Historic and Lyric 
 poetry ; the former concluding " Venus and Adonis," and the " Rape 
 of Lucrece," and the latter the " Sonnets," the " Passionate Pilgrim," 
 and the " Lover's Complaint." 
 
 The great models of Historic poetry, during the prior portion of 
 Shakspeare's life, were the " Mirror for Magistrates" and " Warner's 
 Albion's England;" but for the mythological story of Venus and
 
 735 
 
 Adonis, though deviating in several important circumstances from it^ 
 prototype, we are probably indebted to Golding's Ovid ; and for the 
 Rape of Lucrece and the structure of the stanza in which it is com- 
 posed, to the reputation and the metre of the Rosamond of Daniel, 
 printed in 1592. For the Sonnets, he had numerous examples in 
 the productions of Spenser, Sidney, Watson, and Constable; and, 
 through the wide field of amatory lyric composition, excellence of 
 almost every kind, in the form of ode, madrigal, and song, might be 
 traced in the varied effusions of Gascoigne, Greene and Raleigh, 
 Breton and Lodge. 
 
 How far our great bard exceeded, or fell beneath, the models which 
 he possessed ; in what degree he was independent of their influence, 
 and to what portion of estimation his miscellaneous poetry is justly 
 entitled, will be the subjects of the next chapter, in which we shall 
 venture to assign to these efforts of his early days a higher rank in the 
 scale of excellence than it has hitherto been their fate to obtain. 
 
 END Oi- THL FIBST v6LUMK. 
 
 Printed by A. Straiian, 
 Printer? S»r<reT, London,
 
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