books had not emerged from childhood, or published a single copy of verses, when Elizabeth resigned the seat of kings to her cousin of Scotland.

This little volume, then, is an attempt to direct critical attention to all that was notable in English poetry from 1603 to 1625. The scope of the work has made it possible to introduce the names of many writers who are now for the first time chronicled in a work of this nature. The author believes the copious use of dates to be indispensable to the rapid and intelligent comprehension of literary history, and he has forced himself to supply as many as possible; the student will, however, not need to be reminded that in the dramatic chapters these must in large measure be regarded as conjectural. When we consider the vagueness of knowledge regarding the detail of Jacobean drama even a generation ago, it is surprising that scholarship has attained such a measure of exactitude, yet the discovery of a bundle of papers might at any moment disturb the ingenious constructions of our theoretical historians.

In selecting illustrative passages for quotation, the aim has been to find unfamiliar beauties rather than to reprint for the thousandth time what is familiar in every anthology.

E. G.

THE JACOBEAN POETS.

CHAPTER I.

THE LAST ELIZABETHANS,

QUEEN ELIZABETH died on the 24th of March, 1603, and was conducted to the grave by the poets with innumerable "mournful ditties to a pleasant new tune," as one of the frankest of the rhymsters admitted. There were "elegies" and "lamentations," "luctus" and "threnodia," at the disappearance from so large a scene of so dread a sovereign; and then, with the customary promptitude, there succeeded "panegyricks," and "congratulations," and "welcomes," and "wedding garments" addressed by humble eager versifiers to "serenissimum et potentissium Jacobum beatissimæ Elizabethæ legitime et auspicatissime succedentem." Before we consider what poetry was to be throughout the reign of the Scottish monarch so radiantly conducted to the throne of England, we may glance at what poetry had ceased to be by the time his predecessor died.

B