was a partaker of those splendid festivities; and as lovers are known to think themselves most unobserved when most in a crowd of company, no occasion can be imagined more likely to encourage those petty indiscretions which would betray their secret to the keen-sighted few, than the crowded and bustling scenes of pleasure in which they were engaged. "I saw, but thou couldst not," is the sly remark of Oberon.

And this suggests the inquiry, who was it that witnessed the dangerous secret? Who was it from whom Shakespeare, if not personally present, could have acquired his circumstantial knowledge of the mysterious event? I have already hinted the connection of this dark story with the melancholy fate of a near and distinguished kinsman of our Poet: the time for its development has now arrived; and I cannot but think, from the painful interest it must have excited in the family circle, that from this catastrophe we may deduce a very probable conjecture as to the authentic information the allegory rests upon, and the source of our Poet's familiar acquaintance with the facts.

Edward Arden, of Parkhall, in Warwickshire, was, at this period, the head of the Arden family. He and Mary Shakespeare, the mother of William, were the lineal descendants of Walter Arden P (or Ardern, as the name was sometimes spelled) and Alionora, daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden, in Buckinghamshire; they were consequently nearly akin, and inherited in common a portion of that independent blood which, in a succeeding generation, animated the great and virtuous Hampden in his struggles against the abused prerogatives of Royalty. Young Arden sustained the name and honours of his family with an independent spirit: but in 1583 he fell a victim to the vengeance of the implacable Leicester, on the pretence, indeed, of high treason against the Queen, but in reality, for the higher treason of having scorned the pretensions of the

• See p. 24.

P This couple flourished in the reign of Henry the Seventh. Edward Arden was descended from JOHN, their eldest son, and Mary Shakespeare from ROBERT, their fifth son.-See Life of Shakespeare, Boswell's, Malone.

overbearing "Upstart," a discovered his guilty intrigue, and boldly taxed him with the crime. Dugdale's account of the matter is too essential to the story to be degraded to a footnote; I shall therefore, at the risk of repetition, transcribe it into the text.

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"This Edward," quoth he, in his account of the Arden family," though a Gentleman not inferiour to the rest of his ancestors in those virtues wherewith they were adorned, had the hard hap to come to an untimely death, in the 27th of Elizabeth : the charge laid against him being no less than high treason against the Queen, as privie to some foul intentions that Master Somervil, his son-in-law, (a Roman Catholic) had towards her person for which he was prosecuted with so great rigour and violence by the Earl of Leicester's means, whom he had irritated in some particulars, (as I have credibly heard) partly in disdaining to wear his livery, which many of this county of his rank thought, in those days, no small honour to them, but chiefly for galling him by certain harsh expressions, touching his private accesses to the Countess of Essex, before she was his wife; that, through the testimony of one Hall, a priest, he was found guiltie of the fact, and lost his life in Smithfield."

It is beyond our purpose to investigate the extent of Arden's guilt against the Queen: the charge was probably false, or greatly exaggerated. His offence against Leicester, the real cause of his calamity, is the proper subject of our inquiry. This was two-fold: he had scorned to wear the Favourite's livery, when others of his rank in the county thought it an honour to do so: and he had taxed the adulterer with his secret crime.

66

q Upstart." Et ut homini novo detraxerat" is the expression of Camden.-An. Eliz. 1583.

r Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, ii. 931.

s Camden insinuates as much. "This woful end of this Gentleman, " quoth he, "who was drawn in by the cunning of the Priest, and cast by his evidence, was generally imputed to Leicester's malice. "-An. Eliz. 1583. Somervil, Arden's son-in-law, who made a rash attempt on the Queen's life, was evidently deranged.-Ibid.

With respect to the first, the question naturally arises, when could it have been that Arden and the gentry of his rank in Warwickshire were expected to appear in "the livery" of Leicester, or wearing the badge which would have marked them of his retinue? There may, indeed, have been other occasions; but we can imagine none so probable as that of the magnificent reception of the Queen at Kenilworth, when its haughty Lord would be most anxious to exhibit his power and influence, and when, as a servile compliance would have been most acceptable to his pride, a sturdy independence would have been most sure to provoke his resentment. In the preceding year, Arden had served the office of High Sheriff of the County, an office conferring temporary rank as the head of the gentry, and almost necessarily involving his attendance, in duty and compliment to Her Majesty. We may, therefore, assume his presence: nor is the conjecture far stretched which would suppose his sturdy independence on this occasion to have been the original provo

cation.

The second branch of his offence was that of having reproached Leicester with his "private accesses to the Countess of Essex, before she was his wife." They were married soon after the death of the Earl of Essex. To what period, then, can this reproach apply, but to that brief preceding one, of which the festivities of Kenilworth form about the middle point? The priracy alluded to is exactly the circumstance hinted at by Oberon, when he says he saw what others could not. Now, though these things do not amount to proof, yet, coupled with the circumstantial narrative given by his kinsman, they furnish grounds of a very probable conjecture, that Edward Arden was present at the Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth, and there discovered that dangerous secret which ultimately cost him his life, and menaced his family with ruin." At all events, we have in this

t See List of High Sheriffs of Warwickshire, Dugdale's Antiq. ii. in loc. u Somervil, his son-in-law, laid violent hands upon himself in prison: his wife and their daughter, Mrs. Somervil, were arraigned and condemned

transaction the certain source of our Poet's interest in the Kenilworth mystery and of his accurate acquaintance with its details. He was nineteen years of age at the death of his kinsman: he may, therefore, have heard the story from his own lips: or, as it could not have failed, in connection with his untimely fate, to have formed the frequent theme of family conversation, it must have embodied itself amongst our young Poet's earliest conceptions. Have we not, then, in the connection between the death of Edward Arden and the guilty secret of the Lady Essex, the grounds of a probable conclusion, that her Ladyship is the person intended to be designated under the allegory of the "little western flower." v

Should those facts, however, and the probabilities already relied upon, fall short of satisfactory proof, we have still in reserve a body of collateral evidence hitherto unexplored and unsuspected, which, if I be not altogether mistaken, will bring to the most incredulous minds all the satisfaction of which such a subject—the solution of a poetical allegory-is susceptible, or which a matter of such little real importance demands of the reason. It is LYLIE'S ENDYMION.

as accessories, but, with the Priest, were spared. Arden was but six and thirty years of age when he suffered. Camd. An. Eliz. 1583, and Dugdale ut antea.

v See p. 87, seq.

PART II.

LYLIE'S ENDYMION.

CONTENTS.

Court Comedies of John Lylie, the Euphuist: ENDYMION; MIDAS; their personal "application."-Prologue and Epilogue of the Endymion; analysis of its fable.-The ancient mythos; Endymion in love with Cynthia; beloved by Tellus; feigns with the latter; her jealousy and revenge; his fortunes clouded; thrown into a perpetual sleep.-Cynthia's compassion; Floscula's sympathy.- Tellus banished to the Castle in the Desert.— Cynthia despatches messengers to Thessaly, Greece, and Egypt, for a remedy.

Corsites, guardian of the Castle, enamoured of his prisoner, Tellus; at her desire, endeavours to remove the body of Endymion from the bank of Lunary on which he sleeps; fails; is punished and ridiculed.

Eumenides, on his way to Thessaly, meets with Geron; hears of a remedy; at a great self-sacrifice obtains the secret; accompanied by his old friend, returns.-Cynthia performs the cure; Endymion restored; the agents of his misfortune discovered; state of his passions between Cynthia and Tellus; the latter forgiven; married to Corsites, and permitted to retain the picture of Endymion, which she had wrought in her confinement.— Eumenides rewarded with the hand of Semele; Floscula's reserved affection for Endymion.-Geron reconciled to his wife Dipsas.-" Application"