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The Will.

Before I sigh my last gaspe, let me breath,
Great Love, some legacies. I heere bequeath
Myne eyes to Argus, if myne eyes can see;
If they be blynd, then, Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; to 'embassadors myne eares;
To women, or the sea, my tears.
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore

By making me love her who 'had twentie more,

That I should give to none but such as had too much before.

My constancie I to the plannets give;

My truth to them who at the Court doe live;

Mine ingenuitie and opennesse

To Jesuits; to buffoones my pensivenes;
My sylence to any who abroad have been ;

My money to a Capuchin.

Thou, Love, taught'st mee, by appointing mee
To love her where no love receiv'd can bee,
Only to give to such as have an incapacitye.
My faith I give to Romane Catholiques ;
All my good woorkes unto the schismatiques

Of Amsterdam; my best civilitie

And courtshipp to an Universitie;
My modestie I give to souldiers bare;

My patience lett gamesters share.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making mee Love her, that houlds my love disparitie,

Only to give to those that count my guifts indignitie.

My reputacion I give to those

Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;
To Schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulnes;

My sicknes to phisitians, or excess;

To Nature all that I in rithme have writt;
And to my company my witt.
Thou, Love, by making me adore

Her who begot this love in me before,

Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do but

restore.

To him for whom the passing-bell next toles

I give my phisik-books; my wrytten roles

Of morrall counsells I to Bedlam give;
My brazen meddalls unto them which live
In want of bread; to them which passe amonge
All foranners, myne English toungue.
Thou, Love, by makinge me love one
Who thynks her friendshipp a fitt portionn

For younger lovers, dost my guift thus disproportion.
Therefore I'le give noe more; but I'le undoe
The world by dyinge; because Love dyes too.
Then all your bewties wilbe no more worth
Then gold in mynes, when none doe draw it forth;
And all your graces no more use will have

Then a sun-dyall in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointinge mee
To love her who doth neglect both mee and thee,
T'invent and practize that one way t' annihilate all three.

Character of a Bore-from Donne's
Fourth Satire.

Towards me did runne

A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sunne
E'er bred, or all which into Noahs arke came;
A thing which would have pos'd Adam to name.

Stranger than seven Antiquaries studies,
Than Africks monsters, Guiana's rarities,
Stranger than strangers. One who for a Dane
In the Danes massacre had sure beene slaine,
If he had liv'd then; and without helpe dies
When next the Prentises 'gainst Strangers rise.
One whom the watch at noone scarce lets goe by;
One to whom th' examining justice sure would cry:
Sir, by your priesthood, tell me what you are?'
His clothes were strange though coarse, and black
though bare;

Sleevelesse his jerkin was, and it had bin

Velvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seene)

Become Tuff-taffaty; and our children shall

See it plain rashe awhile, then nought at all.

The thing hath travail'd, and saith, speaks all tongues;
And onely knoweth what to all States belongs.
Made of th' Accents and best phrase of all these,
He speakes one language. If strange meats displease,
Art can deceive, or hunger force my taste;
But Pedants motley tongue, souldiers bumbast,
Mountebanks drug tongue, nor the termes of law,
Are strong enough preparatives to draw

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Me to beare this. Yet I must be content
With his tongue, in his tongue call'd compliment. . .
He names me, and comes to me. I whisper, God!
How have I sinn'd, that thy wraths furious rod,
This fellow, chooseth me?' He saith: 'Sir,
I love your judgment—whom do you prefer

For the best Linguist?' And I seelily
Said that I thought Calepines Dictionarie.
'Nay, but of men, most sweet sir?'-Beza then,
Some Jesuits, and two reverend men

Of our two academies, I named. Here

He stopt me, and said: 'Nay, your Apostles were
Pretty good linguists, and so Panurge was;
Yet a poor gentleman all these may pass
By travel.' Then, as if he would have sold
His tongue, he praised it, and such wonders told,
That I was faine to say: 'If you had lived, sir,
Time enough to have been Interpreter
To Babels bricklayers, sure the Tower had stood.'
He adds: If of court-life you knew the good,
You would leave lonenesse.' I said: 'Not alone
My lonenesse is, but Spartans fashion.

To teach by painting drunkards doth not taste
Now; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste;
No more can princes' courts-though there be few
Better pictures of vice-teach me vertue.'
He, like to a high-stretcht lute-string, squeakt: 'O sir,
'Tis sweet to talke of kings!' 'At Westminster,
Said I, the man that keeps the Abbey-tombes,
And for his price doth, with whoever comes,
Of all our Harries, and our Edwards talke,
From King to King, and all their kin can walke:
Your eares shall heare nought but Kings; your eyes

meet

Kings onely; The way to it is King's-street.'
He smack'd, and cryd, 'He's base, mechanique, coarse;
So are all your English men in their discourse.'
'Are not your French men neat?' 'Mine? as you see,
I have but one, Sir; looke, he followes me.
Certes, they are neatly cloath'd.' 'I, of this minde am,
Your onely wearing is your Grogaram.'

Not so, Sir, I have more.' Under this pitch
He would not flie. I chaff'd him; But as itch

Scratch'd into smart, and as blunt Iron grownd
Into an edge, hurts worse; so I (foole !) found
Crossing hurt me. To fit my sullennesse,
He to another key his stile doth dresse ;

And askes, what newes? I tell him of new playes:
He takes my hand, and, as a Still which stayes
A semibriefe 'twixt each drop, he niggardly,
As loath to inrich me, so tels many a ly,

More than ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes,
Of triviall houshold trash, He knowes: he knowes
When the queen frown'd or smil'd; and he knows what
A subtile Statesman may gather of that :

He knowes who loves; whom and who by poyson
Hasts to an Offices reversion :

He knows who 'hath sold his land, and now doth beg
A license, old iron, bootes, shooes, and egge-
Shells to transport; Shortly boyes shall not play
At span-counter or blow-point, but shall pay
Toll to some Courtier; and wiser than all us,
He knows what Lady is not painted. Thus
He with home-meats cloyes me.

An early poetic allusion to the Copernican system occurs in Donne :

As new phylosophy arrests the sun,
And bids the passive earth about it run.

This simile was often repeated by later poets :
When goodly, like a shipp in her full trimme,
A swann so white, that you may unto him
Compare all whitenes, but himselfe to none,
Glided along, and, as hee glided, watched,

And with his arched neck this poore fish catch't:
It mooved with state, as if to looke upon
Low things it scorn'd.

The second of Donne's five 'Prebend Sermons,' preached at St Paul's in 1625, 'a long poem of victory over death,' is, as Mr Gosse says, 'one of the most magnificent pieces of religious writing in English literature, and closes with a majestic sentence of incomparable pomp and melody':

As my soule shall not goe towards Heaven, but goe by Heaven to Heaven, to the Heaven of Heavens, so the true joy of a good soule in this world is the very joy of Heaven; and we goe thither not that being without joy we might have joy infused into us, but that, as Christ sayes, Our joy might be full, perfected, sealed with an everlastingnesse for as he promises That no man shall take our joy from us, so neither shall Death itselfe take it away, nor so much as interrupt it or discontinue it, but as in the face of Death, when he layes hold upon me, and in the face of the Devil when he attempts me, I shall see the face of God (for everything shall be a glasse, to reflect God upon me); so in the agonies of Death, in the anguish of that dissolution, in the sorrowes of that valediction, in the irreversiblenesse of that transmigration, I shall have a joy which shall no more evaporate than my soule shall evaporate, a joy that shall passe up and put on a more glorious garment above, and be joy superinvested in glory. Amen.

Donne's poems were posthumously collected and published in a one-volume quarto in 1633; his son issued a fuller edition in 1649. The son published also successive collections of sermons, prose works, and letters. Alford's edition of the poems (1839) is singularly unsatisfactory; Grosart's (in the Fuller Worthies Library') is the fullest. There is an edition by E. K. Chambers (1896), with critical

introduction by Professor Saintsbury. Izaak Walton's Life, a remarkable masterpiece of biography, was originally prefixed to some of the sermons published in 1640, and was afterwards enlarged; but Walton had insufficient information on some parts of Donne's life. Dr Jessopp's John Donne, sometime Dean of St Paul's (1897) dwells mainly on the theological side of the man; then the same author's article in the Dictionary of National Biography is note worthy. But when Mr Gosse undertook his Life and Letters he could justly say that it was 'perhaps the most imposing task left to the student of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature.' The work, issued in two volumes in 1899, is a triumph of biographical skill and literary insight. Mr Gosse arranged the letters for the first time, and shed much light on various parts of Donne's career. The bibliographical and critical information brought together by Mr Gosse is unapproached elsewhere in value.

Joseph Hall (1574-1656), born at Ashby-dela-Zouch, in Leicestershire, studied at Cambridge, and rose through various church preferments to be Bishop of Exeter (1627) and then of Norwich (1641). In 1617 he went with James to Scotland in the design of establishing Episcopacy, and next year was a deputy to the Synod of Dort. He was accused of Puritanism, was at enmity with Laud, and in 1641, as a prelate claiming his rights in the House of Lords, was imprisoned in the Tower for seven months. His revenues were sequestrated and his property pillaged; and in 1647 he retired to a small farm near Norwich, where he lived till his death. His principal works were theological and devotional-Christian Meditations, The Contemplations on the New Testament and On the Holy Story, and a Paraphrase of Hard Texts. His sermons have a rapid, vehement eloquence well fitted to arouse and impress. He wrote against Papists and Brownists with equal fervour. In 1608 he published a remarkable series of Characters of Vertues and Vices, similar to the famous Characters of Overbury (1614). Hall's Epistles are also numerous. Fuller, who says that 'for his pure, full, plain style' Hall was called the English Seneca, judges him 'not ill at controversies, more happy at comments, very good in his characters, better in his sermons, best of all in his meditations.' He is, however, best remembered in literature for his satires, published under the title of Virgidemiarum, Sixe Bookes, in 1597-98, before he was in holy orders. In them he followed Latin models, but is rather vigorous, witty, and even scurrilous than polished. Archbishop Whitgift condemned them to be burned as licentious with works by Marlowe and Marston, but the judgment was withdrawn. Pope thought them the best poetry and the truest satire in the English language; while Hallam pronounces them rugged, obscure, and ungrammatical. Hall boldly claims to be the first English satirist :

I first adventure, follow me who list
And be the second English satirist.

He means probably the first regular satirist, following Latin models; and even then Marston was enraged by Hall's claim. Donne and Marston seem to have written about the same time; Lodge's Fig for Momus was some years earlier. Wyatt and Gascoigne, too, might claim to be reckoned,

and Nash, whether or no he was Greene's 'Young Juvenal, that biting satirist,' even though Skelton were regarded as too irregular and ribald; and Piers Plowman was, of course, very far removed from classical models. In Scotland, Dunbar and Lyndsay were persistent satirists in vernacular verse, and Buchanan both in Latin verse and Scottish prose.

The Chaplain.

A gentle squire would gladly entertain
Into his house some trencher-chapelain :
Some willing man that might instruct his sons,
And that would stand to good conditions.
First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed,
While his young master lieth o'er his head.
Second, that he do, on no default,
Ever presume to sit above the salt.

Third, that he never change his trencher twice.
Fourth, that he use all common courtesies;
Sit bare at meals, and one half rise and wait.
Last, that he never his young master beat,
But he must ask his mother to define
How many jerks he would his breech should line.
All these observed, he could contented be
To give five marks and winter livery.

The Famished Gallant.

Seest thou how gaily my young master goes,
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes;
And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side;
And picks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide?
'Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he dined to-day?
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humphrey.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier;
An open house, haunted with great resort;
Long service mixt with musical disport.
Many fair younker with a feathered crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest,
To fare so freely with so little cost,
Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say
He touched no meat of all this livelong day;
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess,
His eyes seemed sunk for very hollowness,
But could he have-as I did it mistake-
So little in his purse, so much upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.
Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip? long, low
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip.
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.
The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.
What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain,
His grandame could have lent with lesser pain?
Though he perhaps ne'er passed the English shore,
Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.
His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head,
One lock Amazon-like dishevelled,

As if he meant to wear a native cord,

If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin,
Close notched is his beard, both lip and chin;

His linen collar labyrinthian set,
Whose thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
What monster meets mine eyes in human show?
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin,
Did never sober nature sure conjoin.
Lik'st a strawn scarecrow in the new-sown field,
Reared on some stick, the tender corn to shield,
Or, if that semblance suit not every deal,

Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel. . . .

A part of old St Paul's Cathedral was called Duke Humphrey's Walk, from a tomb erroneously supposed to be that of the famous Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester; it was the resort of beggars, lank rupts, and dinnerless poor gentlemen, who were playfully said to dine with Duke Humphrey.

Upon the Sight of a Tree Full-blossomed. Here is a tree overlaid with blossoms. It is not pos sible that all these should prosper; one of them must needs rob the other of moisture and growth. I do not love to see an infancy over-hopeful; in these pregnant beginnings one faculty starves another, and at last leaves the mind sapless and barren. As, therefore, we are wont to pull off some of the too frequent blossoms, that the rest may thrive; so it is good wisdom to moderate the early excess of the parts, or progress of over-forward childhood. Neither is it otherwise in our Christian profession; a sudden and lavish ostentation of grace may fill the eye with wonder, and the mouth with talk, but will not at the last fill the lap with fruit. I et me not promise too much, nor raise too high expectations of my undertakings; I had rather men should complain of my small hopes than of my short performances.

Upon a Redbreast coming into his Chamber. Pretty bird, how cheerfully dost thou sit and sing; and yet knowest not where thou art, nor where thou shalt make thy next meal, and at night must shroud thyself in a bush for lodging! What a shame is it for me, that see before me so liberal provisions of my God, and find myself set warm under my own roof, yet am ready to droop under a distrustful and unthankful dulness! Had I so little certainty of my harbour and purveyance, how heartless should I be, how careful! how little list [inclination] should I have to make music to thee or myself! Surely thou comest not hither without a Providence God sent thee not so much to delight as to shame me, but all in a conviction of my sullen unbelief, who, under more apparent means, am less cheerful and confident. Reason and faith have not done so much in me, as in thee mere instinct of nature; want of foresight makes thee more merry, if not more happy here, than the foresight of better things maketh me. O God! thy providence is not impaired by those powers thou hast given me above these brute things; let not my greater helps hinder me from a holy security, and comfortable reliance on thee.

Upon hearing of Music by Night.

How sweetly doth this music sound in this dead season! In the daytime it would not, it could not sc much affect the ear. All harmonious sounds are advanced by a silent darkness. Thus it is with the glad tidings of salvation; the gospel never sounds so sweet as in the night of preservation, or of our own private affliction. It is ever the same; the difference is in car

disposition to receive it. O God! whose praise it is to 'give songs in the night,' make my prosperity conscionable, and my crosses cheerful.

Upon the Sight of an Owl in the Twilight. What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead; to hide her head all the day long in an ivy bush, and at night, when all other birds are at rest, to fly abroad, and vent her harsh notes. I know not why the ancients have sacred this bird to wisdom, except it be for her safe closeness and singular perspicacity; that when other domestical and airy creatures are blind, she only hath inward light to discern the least objects for her own advantage. Surely thus much wit they have taught us in her: That he is the wisest man that would have least to do with the multitude; That no life is so safe as the obscure; That retiredness, if it have less comfort, yet less danger and vexation; lastly, That he is truly wise who sees by a light of his own, when the rest of the world sit in an ignorant and confused darkness, unable to apprehend any truth save by the helps of an outward illumination. Had this fowl come forth in the daytime, how had all the little birds flocked wondering about her, to see her uncouth visage, to hear her untuned notes! She likes her estate never the worse, but pleaseth herself in her own quiet reservedness. It is not for a wise man to be much affected with the censures of the rude and unskilful vulgar, but to hold fast unto his own well-chosen and well-fixed resolutions. Every fool knows what is wont to be done; but what is best to be done, is known only to the wise.

:

Upon the Sight of a Great Library.

What a world of wit is here packed up together! I know not whether this sight doth more dismay or comfort me it dismays me to think that here is so much that I cannot know; it comforts me to think that this variety yields so good helps to know what I should. There is no truer word than that of Solomon-there is no end of making many books: this sight verifies. There is no end; indeed, it were pity there should: God hath given to man a busy soul, the agitation whereof cannot but through time and experience work out many hidden truths; to suppress these would be no other than injurious to mankind, whose minds, like unto so many candles, should be kindled by each other. The thoughts of our deliberations are most accurate; these we vent into our papers. What a happiness is it that without all offence of necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient Worthies of Learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them of all my doubts! --that I can at pleasure summon whole synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgments in all points of question which I propose! Neither can I cast my eye casually upon any of these silent masters but I must learn somewhat. It is a wantonness to complain of choice. No law binds me to read all; but the more we can take in and digest, the better-liking must the mind needs be blessed be God that hath set up so many clear lamps in his Church; now none but the wilfully blind can plead darkness; and blessed be the memory of those his faithful servants, that have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these precious papers, and have willingly wasted themselves into these during monuments, to give light unto others!

[Paradise-The Gospel of Labour.] Every earth was not fit for Adam, but a garden; a paradise. What excellent pleasures, and rare varieties, have men found in gardens planted by the hands of men! And yet all the world of men cannot make one twig, or leaf, or spire of grass. When he that made the matter undertakes the fashion, how must it needs be, beyond our capacity, excellent! No herb, no flower, no tree, was wanting there, that might be for ornament or use; whether for sight, or for scent, or for taste. The bounty of God wrought further than to necessity, even to comfort and recreation. Why are we niggardly to ourselves, when God is liberal? But for all this, if God had not there conversed with man, no abundance could have made him blessed. Yet, behold! that which was man's storehouse was also his workhouse; his pleasure was his task paradise served not only to feed his senses, but to exercise his hands. If happiness had consisted in doing nothing, man had not been employed; all his delights could not have made him happy in an idle life. Man, therefore, is no sooner made than he is set to work neither greatness nor perfection can privilege a folded hand; he must labour, because he was happy; how much more we, that we may be! This first labour of his was, as without necessity, so without pains, without weariness; how much more cheerfully we go about our businesses, so much nearer we come to our paradise.

The Hypocrite.

A hypocrite is the worst kind of player, by so much as he acts the better part: which hath always two faces, ofttimes two hearts: that can compose his forehead to sadness and gravity, while he bids his heart be wanton and careless within; and, in the mean time, laughs within himself, to think how smoothly he hath cozened the beholder: in whose silent face are written the characters of religion, which his tongue and gestures pronounce, but his hands recant: that hath a clean face and garment, with a foul soul: whose mouth belies his heart, and his fingers belie his mouth. Walking early up into the city, he turns into the great church, and salutes one of the pillars on one knee; worshipping that God which at home he cares not for: while his eye is fixed on some window, on some passenger; and his heart knows not whither his lips go: he rises and, looking about with admiration, complains of our frozen charity; commends the ancient. At church he will ever sit where he may be seen best; and in the midst of the sermon pulls out his tables in haste, as if he feared to lose that note; when he writes either his forgotten errand or nothing: then he turns his Bible with a noise, to seek an omitted quotation; and folds the leaf, as if he had found it; and asks aloud the name of the preacher, and repeats it; whom he publicly salutes, thanks, praises, invites, entertains with tedious good counsel, with good discourse, if it had come from an honester mouth. He can command tears, when he speaks of his youth; indeed because it is past, not because it was sinful: himself is now better, but the times are worse. All other sins he reckons up with detestation, while he loves and hides his darling in his bosom. All his speech returns to himself, and every occurrent draws in a story to his own praise. When he should give, he looks about him, and says, 'Who sees me?' No alms, no prayers fall from him, without a witness; belike, lest God should deny, that

he hath received them: and, when he hath done, lest the world should not know it, his own mouth is his trumpet to proclaim it. . . . In brief, he is the stranger's saint; the neighbour's disease; the blot of goodness; a rotten stick in a dark night; a poppy in a corn field; an ill tempered candle with a great snuff, that in going out smells ill; an angel abroad, a devil at home; and worse when an angel than when a devil.

The Busy-body.

His estate is too narrow for his mind; and therefore he is fain to make himself room in others' affairs; yet ever in pretence of love. No news can stir but by his door neither can he know that which he must not tell. What every man ventures in Guiana voyage, and what they gained, he knows to a hair. Whether Holland will have peace, he knows; and on what conditions, and with what success, is familiar to him ere it be concluded. No post can pass him without a question; and rather than he will lose the news, he rides back with him to appose [question] him of tidings: and then to the next man he meets, he supplies the wants of his hasty intelligence, and makes up a perfect tale; wherewith he so haunteth the patient auditor that after many excuses he is fain to endure rather the censure of his manners in running away, than the tediousness of an impertinent discourse. His speech is oft broken off with a succession of long parentheses; which he ever vows to fill up ere the conclusion; and perhaps would effect it, if the others' ear were as unweariable as his tongue. If he see but two men talk and read a letter in the street, he runs to them, and asks if he may not be partner of that secret relation; and if they deny it, he offers to tell, since he may not hear, wonders: and then falls upon the report of the Scottish Mine, or of the great fish taken up at Lynn, or of the freezing of the Thames; and, after many thanks and dismissions, is hardly entreated silence. He undertakes as much as he performs little. This man will thrust himself forward, to be the guide of the way he knows not; and calls at his neighbour's window, and asks why his servants are not at work. The market hath no commodity which he prizeth not, and which the next table shall not hear recited. His tongue, like the tail of Sampson's foxes, carries firebrands; and is enough to set the whole field of the world on a flame. Himself begins table-talk of his neighbour at another's board; to whom he bears the first news, and adjures him to conceal the reporter: whose choleric answer he returns to his first host, enlarge with a second edition: so, as it uses to be done in the fight of unwilling mastiffs, he claps each on the side apart, and provokes them to an eager conflict. There can no Act pass without his Comment; which is ever far-fetched, rash, suspicious, delatory. His ears are long, and his eyes quick; but most of all to imperfections; which as he easily sees, so he increases with intermeddling. . . He labours without thanks; talks without credit; lives without love; dies without tears, without pity; save that some say, 'It was pity he died no sooner.'

...

Hall's works, including also a Latin satirical romance of an unknown country in Terra Australis, called Mundus Alter et Idem, were edited by the Rev. Josiah Pratt (ro vols. 1808), Peter Hall (12 vols. 1837-39), and the Rev. Philip Wynter (10 vols., Oxford, 1863). The satires have been republished by Warton, Grosart (1879), and others. There is a Life by the Rev. George Lewis (1886).

John Day, dramatist, has since 1897 been identified with John Dey, who, according to college records, was the son of a yeoman at Cawston in Norfolk, born 1574, and entered Caius College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1592. Of his work practically nothing was known till 1881, save that with Chettle he produced the extant play, The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, which owes but little to the well-known ballad in Percy's Reliques. He had a share in over a score of plays, often in collaboration with Chettle, Dekker, Haughton, and others. But little of his handiwork was accessible till in 1881 Mr Bullen reprinted five plays by him; an allegorical masque, The Parliament of Bees, in which the Humble Bee, the Hornet, the Drone, &c., are arraigned; and an allegorical tract called Peregrinatio Scholastica. The lie of Guls is a mixture of romance, allegory, and fun, without much dramatic consistency. Humour out of Breath is an Arcadian play, slight in texture, dealing with the adventures of the daughters of a banished Duke of Mantua and of the sons of his enemy, the Duke of Venice. Day shows everywhere more grace and fancy than constructive power or consistency. The academic trilogy The Pilgrimage to Parnassus and the Returne (quoted below) have also been attributed, on no sufficient grounds, to Day.

See Mr Bullen's Introduction to Day's Plays (1881), Ward's Dramatic Literature, and Mr Swinburne's article on Day in the Nineteenth Century for October 1897.

The Pilgrimage to Parnassus.—A play of this name was acted at St John's College, Cambridge, at Christmas of 1598; a sequel, called the Returne from Parnassus, in 1599; and a second part of the Returne in 1601. This second part of the Returne has often been reprinted; the two earlier plays of this academic series were only known by name till, found in Hearne's collection by Mr Macray, they and their sequel were published by him in 1886, a complete Parnassian trilogy. They may be taken as the most notable specimen of the academic plays which were a conspicuous feature of the time. Sometimes the classical plays merely were acted by the students; gradually new Latin plays on classical models became common; and by-and-by, in spite of academic and court prohibitions, the new plays came to be wholly or partly in English. These especially shed a strange and vivid light on contemporary university life, and give a melancholy picture of the misery and humiliation of those who then sought to make a precarious livelihood by learning or letters.

In the Pilgrimage to Parnassus we have the travels to the Mountain of the Muses of Philomusus and Studioso through Logic Land and Rhetoric Land and Philosophy Land in spite of the seductions of Madido and his wine-cup, Stupido, and Amoretto. The Returne from Parnassus, in two parts, shows the struggles of the same pilgrims to find, after their sojourn in the heights of poetry, a footing in this workaday

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