almost at fore-front of Choyce Drollery, the very strength of its van-guard, appeared the memorable poem. Whether it were then and there for the first time in print, or borrowed from some still more rare and now-lost volume, none of us can prove. Even at this hour, a possibility remains that our resuscitation of Choyce Drollery may help to bring the unearthing of explanatory facts from zealous students. We scarcely dare to cherish hope of this. Certainly we may not trust to it. For Gerard Langbaine knew the poem well, and quoted oft and largely from it in his 1691 Account of the English Dramatick Poets. But he met with it nowhere save in Choyce Drollery, and writes of it continually in language that proves how ignorant he was of whom we are to deem the author. Yet he wrote within five-and-thirty years behind the date of its appearance; and might easily have learnt, from men still far from aged, who had read the Drollery on its first publication, whatever they could tell of "The Time-Poets:" if, indeed, they could tell anything. Five years earlier, William Winstanley had given forth his Lives of the most famous English Poets, in June, 1686; but he quotes not from it, and leaves us without an Open Sesame. Even Oldys could not tell; or Thomas Hearne, who often had remembered whatever Time forgot.

As to the date: we believe it was certainly written between 1620 (inclusive) and 1636; nearer the former year. We reconcile ourselves for the failure, by turning to such other and similar poetic groupings as survive. We listen unto Richard Barnfield, when he sings sweetly his "Remembrance of some English Poets," in 1598. We cling delightedly to the words of our noble Michael Drayton-whose descriptive map of native England, Poly olbion, glitters with varie-coloured light, as though it were a mediæval_missal: to whom, enditing his Epistle to friend Henry Reynolds-"A Censure of the Poets"the Muses brought each bard by turn, so that the picture might be faithful: even as William Blake, idealist and spiritual Seer, believed of spirit-likenesses in his own experience. And, not without deep feeling (marvelling,

meanwhile, that still the task of printing them with Editorial care is unattempted), we peruse the folio manuscripts of that fair-haired minstrel of the Cavaliers, George Daniel of Beswick, while he also, in his "Vindication of Poesie," sings in praise of those whose earlier lays are echoing now and always "through the corridors of Time :'

Truth speaks of old, the power of Poesie ;

Amphion, Orpheus, stones and trees could move ;
Men, first by verse, were taught Civilitie :
'Tis known and granted; yet would it behove

Mee, with the Ancient Singers, here to crowne Some later Quills, some Makers of our owne. Nor should we fail to thank the younger Evelyn, for such graphic sketches as he gives of Restoration-Dramatists, of Cowley, Dryden, Wycherley, "Sedley and easy Etherege;" a new world of wits, all of whose works we prize, without neglecting for their sakes the older Masters who "so did take Eliza, and our James."

Something that we could gladly say, will come in befittingly on after-pages of this volume, in the "Additional Note on Sir John Suckling's 'Sessions of the Poets,"" as printed in our Merry Drollery, Compleat, page 72.

Are we stumbling at the threshold, absit omen! even amid our delight in perusing "the Time-Poets," when we wonder at the precise meaning of the statement in our opening couplet ?

One night the great Apollo, pleas'd with Ben,
Made the odd number of the Muses ten.

By whom additional ? Who is the lady, thus elevated? We see only one solution: namely, that furnished by the conclusion of the poem. It was the Faerie Queene herself whom the God lifted thus, in honour of her English Poets, to rank as the Tenth Muse, an equal with Urania, Clio, Euterpe, and their sisterhood. Yet something

seems wanting, next to it; for we never reach a full-stop until the end of the 39th (or query, the 40th) line; and all the confluent nominatives lack a common verbal-action. Our mind, it is true, accepts intelligibly the onward rush of each and all (but later, "with equal pace each of them softly creeps"). It may be only grammatical pedantry which craves some such phrase, absent from the text, as

[While throng'd around his comrades and his peers, To list the 'sounding Music of the Spheres:]

But, since a momentary rashness prompts us here to dare so much, as to imagine the hiatus filled, let us suppose that the lost sixteenth-line ran someway thus (each reader being free to try experiments himself, with chance of more success) :

Divine-composing Quarles, whose lines aspire
[And glow, as doth with like etherial fire]
The April of all Poesy in May,

Who makes our English speak Pharsalia;

16th.

It is with some timidity we let this stand: but, as the text is left intact, our friends will pardon us; and foes we never quail to meet. As to BEN JONSON, see our "Sessions," in Part iv. Of BEAUMONT and FLEtcher, we write in the note on final page of Choyce Drollery, p. 100. Of "Ingenious SHAKESPEARE we need say no more than give the lines of Richard Barnfield in his honour, from the Poems in diuers humors, 1598 :

A REMEMBRANCE OF SOME ENGLISH POETS.

Liue Spenser euer, in thy Fairy Queene:
Whose like (for deepe Conceit) was neuer seene.
Crownd mayst thou bee, unto thy more renowne,
(As King of Poets) with a Lawrell Crowne.

And Daniell, praised for thy sweet-chast Verse:
Whose Fame is grav'd in Rosamonds blacke Herse.
Still mayst thou liue: and still be honored,

For that rare Worke, The White Rose and the Red.

T

And Drayton, whose wel-written Tragedies
And sweet Epistles, soare thy fame to skies.
Thy learned Name, is æquall with the rest ;
Whose stately Numbers are so well addrest.

And Shakespeare thou, whose hony-flowing Vaine,
(Pleasing the World) thy Praises doth obtaine.
Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece (sweete and chaste) -
Thy Name in fames immortall Booke hath plac't.
Liue euer 'you, at least in Fame liue euer :

Well may the Bodye dye, but Fame dies neuer.

The praise of MASSINGER will not seem overstrained; although he never affects us with the sense of supreme genius, as does Marlowe. The recognition of GEORGE CHAPMAN'S grandeur, and the power with which this recognition is expressed, show how tame is the influence of Massinger in comparison. There need be little question that it was to Dekker's mind and pen we owe the nobler portion of the Virgin Martyr. Massinger, when alongside of Marlow, Webster, and Dekker, is like Euripides contrasted with Æschylus and Sophocles. We think of him as a Playwright, and successful; but these others were Poets of Apollo's own body-guard. Drayton sings :

Next MARLOW, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had, his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.

ROBERT DABORNE is chiefly interesting to us from his connection in misfortunes and dramatic labours with Massinger and Nat Field; and as joining them in the supplication for advance of money from Philip Henslow, while they lay in prison. The reference to Daborne's clerical, as well as to his dramatic vocation, and to his having died (in Ireland, we believe, leaving behind him sermons,) Amphibion by the Ministry," confirms the general belief.

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Jo: SYLVESTER'S translation of Du Bartas, 1621 THOMAS MAY's of Lucan's Pharsalia, GEORGE SANDYS' of Ovid's Metamorphoses, need little comment here; some being referred to, near the end of our volume.

DUDLEY DIGGES (1612-43), born at Chilham Castle, near Canterbury (now the seat of Charles S. Hardy, Esq.); son of Sir Dudley Digges, Master of the Rolls, wrote a reverent Elegy for Jonsonus Virbius, 1638. L[eonard] Digges had, fifteen years earlier, written the memorial lines beginning "Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellows give | The World thy Workes:" which appear at beginning of the first folio Shakespeare, 1623.

TO SAMUEL DANIEL'S high merits we have only lately awakened his "Complaint of Rosamond" has a sustained dignity and pathos that deserve all Barnfield's praise; the " Sonnets to Delia" are graceful and impressive in their purity; his "Civil Wars" may seem heavy, but the fault lies in ourselves, if unsteady readers, not the poet thus we suspect, when we remember the true poetic fervour of his Pastoral,

O happy Golden Age!

and his Description of Beauty, from Marino.

وو

Of "Heroick DRAYTON we write more hereafter: He grows dearer to us with every year. His "Dowsabell is on p. 73. Was his being coupled as a "PoetBeadle," in allusion to his numerous verse-epistles, showing an acquaintance with all the worthies of his day, even as his Polyolbion gives a roll-call of the men, and a gazetteer of the England they made illustrious? For, as shown in the Apophthegmmes of Erasmus, 1564, Booke 2nd, (p. 296 of the Boston Reprint,) it is "the proper office and dutie of soche biddelles (who were called in latin Nomenclators) to have perfecte knowlege and remembrance of the names, of the surnames, and of the titles of dignitees of all persones, to the ende that thei maie helpe the remembraunce of their maisters in the same when neede is." To our day the office of an Esquire Beddell is esteemed in Cambridge University. But, we imagine, George Wither is styled a "Poets Beadle" with a very different significance. It was the