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, enlarged 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 (10 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 (1836). 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 Bers, in which the Humble Bee, the Hornet, the Drone, &c., are arraigned; and an allegorical tract called Peregrinatio Scholastica. The Ite 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 world-as tutor, physician, fiddler, or shepherd. The plays are most frequently quoted for their references (not always complimentary) to dramatists of the period- to Shakespeare, Jonson, Daniel, Lodge, Drayton, Marston, Marlowe, Nash; to the poets Spenser and Constable; and to the actors Kemp and Burbage. Thus Gallio effusively praises Shakespeare as author of Venus and Adonis and Romeo and Juliet; but Gallio is a vulgar, purse-proud upstart, an ignorant pretender to culture. It is Kemp the actor who says to Burbage, 'Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; ay, and Ben Jonson too.' And other allusions to Shakespeare suggest that Shakespeare was 'the favourite of the rude half-educated strolling players as distinguished from the refined geniuses of the university.' The construction is singular and irregular: the Pilgrimage is only half the length of the first part of the Returne, and the second part is more than twice the length of the first. There is abundant wit and humour throughout, and not a little coarseness; the carrier (Hobson, celebrated by Milton), tapster, and churchwarden are as entertaining character sketches as those of the principal characters. The following is from the second and the third ‘Actus' of the Pilgrimage : Enter MADIDO alone, reading Horace Epistles. Madi. O poeet Horace! if thou were alive I woulde bestowe a cupp of sacke on thee for theise liquid verses; theise are not drie rimes like Cato's, Si deus est animus, but the true moist issue of a poeticall soule. O if the tapsters and drawers knewe what thou sayest in the commendacon of takinge of liquoure, they would score up thy prayses upon everie but and barrell; and, in faith, I care not if I doe for the benefite of the unlearned bestowe some of my English poetrie uppon thy Latin rimes, that this Romane tonge maye noe longer outface our poore Englishe skinkers. Ile onlie rouse up my muse out of her den with this liquid sacrifice, and then, have amongste youe, poets and rimers! The common people will now thinke I did drincke, and did nothinge but conferr with the ghostes of Homer, Ennius, Virgill, and they rest that dwell in this watterie region. Marke, marke! here springs a poeticall partridge! Zouns! I want a worde miserablely! I must looke for another worde in my dictionarie; I shall noe sooner open this pinte pott but the worde like a knave tapster will crie, Anon, Anon, Sir! Ey marye Sir! nowe I am fitt to write a book! Woulde anie leaden Mydas, anie mossie patron, have his asses ears deified, let him but come and give mee some prettie sprinkling to maintaine the expences of my throate, and Ile dropp out suche an encomium on him that shall imortalize him as long as there is ever a booke-binder in Englande. But I had forgotten my frind Horace. snuffe (my prettie verses!) if I turne you out of youre Romane coate into an Englishe gaberdine. Take not in [Enter PHILOMUSUS and STUDIOSO.] Philom. In faith, Madido, thy poetrie is good; Some gallant Genius doth possess thy corps. Stud. I think a furie ravisheth thy braine, Thou art in such a sweet phantasticke vaine. But tell mee, shall wee have thy companie Throughe this craggie ile, this harsh rough waye? Wilt thou be pilgrime to Parnassus' hill? Madi. I had rather be a horse to grinde in mill. Zouns! I travell to Parnassus? I tell thee its not a pilgrimage for good wits. Let slowe-brainde Athenians travel thither, those drie sober youths which can away to reede dull lives, fustie philosophers, dustie logicians. Ile turne home, and write that that others shall reade; posteritie shall make them large note books out of my writings. Naye, there is another thing that makes mee out of love with this jorney; there is scarce a good taverne or alehouse betwixt this and Parnassus; why, a poeticall spirit muste needs starve ! Philom. Naye, when thou comes to high Parnassus' hill Of Hellicons pure stream drincke thou thy fill. Madi. Nay, if I drinke of that pudled water of Hellicon in the companie of leane Lenten shadowes, let mee for a punishement converse with single beare soe long as I live! This Parnassus and Hellicon are but the fables of the poets: there is noe true Parnassus but the third lofte in a wine taverne, noe true Hellicon but a cup of browne bastard. Will youe travell quicklie to Parnassus? doe but carie youre drie feet into some drie taverne, and straight the drawer will bid youe to goe into the Halfe Moone or the Rose, that is into Parnassus; then call for a cup of pure Hellicon, and he will bringe youe a cup of pure hypocrise, that will make youe speake leapinge lines and dauncinge periodes. Why, give mee but a quart of burnt sacke by mee, and if I doe not with a pennie worth of candles make a better poeme than Kinsaders Satyrs, Lodge's Fig for Momus, Bastard's Epigrams, Leichfild's Trimming of Nash, Ile give my heade to anie good felowe to make a memento mori of! O the genius of xijd! A quart will indite manie livelie lines in an houre, while an ould drousie Academicke, an old Stigmaticke, an ould sober Dromeder, toiles a whole month and often scratcheth his witts' head for the bringinge of one miserable period into the worlde! If therefore you be good felowes or wise felowes, travel noe farther in the craggie way to the fained Parnassus; returne whome with mee, and wee will hire our studies in a taverne, and ere longe not a poste in Paul's churchyarde but shall be acquainted with our writings. Philom. Nay then, I see thy wit in drincke is drounde; Wine doth the beste parte of thy soule confounde. Stud. Let Parnass be a fond phantasticke place, Yet to Parnassus Ile hould on my pace. But tell mee, Madido, how camest thou to this ile? Madi. Well, Ile tell youe; and then see if the phisicke of good counsel will worke upon youre bodies. I tooke shippinge at Qui mihi discipulus, and sailed to Propria quae maribus; then came to As in praesenti, but with great danger, for there are certaine people in this cuntrie caled schoolmaisters, that take passingers and sit all day whippinge pence out of there tayls; these men tooke mee prisoner, and put to death at leaste three hundred rodes upon my backe. Henc traveled I into the land of Sintaxis, a land full of joyners, and from thenc came I to Prosodia, a litell iland, where are men of 6 feete longe, which were never mentioned in Sir John Mandefilde's cronicle. Hence did I set up my unluckie feete in this ile Dialectica, where I can see nothinge but idees and phantasmes; as soone as I came hither I began to reade Ramus his mapp, Dialectica est, &c.; then the slovenlie knave presented mee with such an unsavorie worde that I dare not name it unless I had some frankensence readie to perfume youre noses with after. Upon this I threw away the mapp in a chafe, and came home, cursing my witless head that woulde suffer my headless feete to take such a tedious journey. Philom. The harder and the craggier is the waye Ofte pleasure got with paine wee dearlie deeme; Madi. Come on, Come on, Tullie's sentences! Leave youre pulinge of prouerbs, and hearken to him that knowes whats good for youe. If you have anie care of youre eyes, blinde them not with goinge to Parnassus; if you love youre feete, blister them not in this craggie waye. Staie with mee, and one pinte of wine shall inspire youe with more witt than all they nine muses. Come on! Ile lead you to a merie companie! Stud. Fie, Philomusus! 'gin thy loitringe feet The burnt sacke made a sweet oration I love the Muses better than before. But tell mee, what lande do wee travell in? In the second part of the Returne Ingenioso and Judicio discuss Spenser, and Ingenioso gives his 'censure' in these lines : A sweeter swan than ever sung in Poe, They continue to call the roll of poets and dramatists, and after dealing summarily with Constable, Daniel, Lodge, Drayton, Watson, and others, proceed : Ingenioso [reads:] Christopher Marlowe. Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell. [Reads:] Benjamin Jonson. Jud. The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England. Ing. A meere empyrick, one that getts what he hath by observation, and makes onely nature privy to what he indites; so slow an inventor, that he were better betake himselfe to his old trade of bricklaying; a bould whorson, as confident now in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of a brick.[Reads] William Shakspeare. Jud. Who loves not Adons love or Lucrece rape? Two of these lines are also read: O were I on Parnassus hill Or had of Helicon my fill. Mossie is apparently stupid; single beare is small beer; bastard was a sweet Spanish wine; hypocrise is hippocras; W. Kinsayder' was a nom de guerre of Marston's; Thomas Bastard published epigrams in 1598, and Richard Lichfield wrote against Nash in 1597; stigmaticke, a branded criminal, may be playfully used here for a graduate; dromeder, a laborious pedant; Propria quae mari bus, &c., are scraps from the Latin grammar; Mandefilde, Mandeville; the 'mapp' to this land of Petrus Ramus is his Dialectical Partitiones (1543), formulating a complete revolt against Aristotelianism and Scholasticism; Tullie is Cicero; bezolinge or bezzling is carousing, guzzling, from the same root as embezzle. Thomas Dekker, born in London about 1570, was a most prolific dramatic author, but only a few of his plays were printed. His life was irregular, and he spent some years in the King's Bench and other prisons as a prisoner for debt. He is last heard of in 1637. In 1600 he published The Shoemaker's Holiday, or the Gentle Craft, and The Pleasant Comedy of Old Fortunatus. The first of these pieces is one of the most entertaining of the old comedies, though it is based on the incredible assumption that a soldier, nobly born, has deserted an important military command in the French war and become a Dutch-speaking journeyman to a London shoemaker on the very slender chance that, being thus in London, he may prosecute his suit to the Lord Mayor's daughter. But the racy, somewhat Falstaffian, talk of Simon Eyre and his journeymen is the feature of the play, sometimes inconsequent rattle, sometimes pithy sense. Thus, when the Lord Mayor says to Simon, Ha, ha, ha! I had rather than a thousand pounds I had an heart but half so light as yours,' the shoemaker replies, "Why, what should I do, my Lord? A pound of care pays not a dram of debt. Hum, let's be merry whiles we are young old age, sack and In sugar will steal upon us ere we be aware.' Fortunatus, the second comedy, abounds in poetry of rare beauty. Dekker's next play was Satiromastix (1602), which held up to ridicule Ben Jonson, with whom he had collaborated and quarrelled. 1603 Dekker published a pamphlet, The Wonderful Year, which gives a heart-rending account of the plague. In the very amusing tract, The Bachelor's Banquet, he describes the ills of henpecked husbands. His most powerful writing is in The Honest Whore (1604; Part ii. 1630), an uncompromising picture of contemporary manners which at times becomes painfully realistic. Middleton seems to have assisted Dekker in the first part. With Webster he wrote the Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat, Westward Ho, and Northward Ho. The Bellman of London (1608) pamphlet gives a lively account of London vagabonds; and the subject is pursued in Lanthorn and Candlelight (1608). In both of these works Dekker made a free use of A Caveat or Warening for Commen Cursetors Vulgarely called Vagabones, published in 1566 or 1567 by Thomas Harman, a Kentish squire, and accordingly did not escape the charge of plagiarism. In The Gull's Hornbook (1609) the life of a towngallant is racily depicted after a German model. The brisk comedy, The Roaring Girl (1611), is partly by Dekker, but chiefly by Middleton. With Massinger he wrote the Virgin Martyr; Lamb was doubtless right in ascribing to Dekker the most beautiful scene (II. i.). The Sun's Darling is partly by Ford. The Whore of Babylon (1607) is a coarsely vehement exhibition of Protestantism by way of allegory on the Spanish Armada. A powerful tragedy, The Witch of Edmonton (posthumously published in 1658), was written by Dekker, Ford, and (probably) Rowley (see below at page 478). Charles Lamb says Dekker has poetry enough for anything; Mr A. H. Bullen thinks his best plays rank with the masterpieces of the Elizabethan drama ;' and Mr Swinburne finds the 'wild wood-notes of passion and fancy and pathos in Dekker's best moments' remind him of Shakespeare; while Dr Ward holds that, spite of his lyrical gift, his humour, and his pathos, he lacks distinction, and is limited in inventive imagination, rude in form, and coarse in thought. In the Poetaster Jonson, in the character of Horace, very pointedly satirised Dekker and Marston, charging Dekker with arrogancy, impudence, and other faults. In Dekker's reply there is naturally more raillery and abuse than wit or poetry, but it was well received by the play-going public. Horace is thus amusingly introduced as in the act of concocting an ode : To thee whose forehead swells with roses, Whose most haunted bower Gives life and scent to every flower, Whose most adoréd name encloses Things abstruse, deep and divine; Whose yellow tresses shine Bright as Eoan fire. For I to thee and thine immortal name, For I to thee and thine immortal name In-sacred raptures flowing, flowing, swimming, swim ming: In sacred raptures swimming, Immortal name, game, dame, tame, lame, lame, lame, In sacred raptures flowing, will proclaim [no !]. For I to thee and thine immortal name, In flowing numbers filled with spright and flame (Good, good!) In flowing numbers filled with spright and flame. Horace by-and-by complains that his lines were The error is not mine, but in their eye Dekker, happily enough, makes his Crispinus reply: Horace, Horace, To stand within the shot of galling tongues Some snakes must hiss, because they're born with sting... Do we not see fools laugh at heaven and mock Dekker's Honest Whore was enthusiastically praised by Hazlitt, as combining the simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry ;' 'simplicity and extravagance, homeliness and quaintness, tragedy and comedy.' Passages like the following, spoken by a long-suffering husband whose patience has been sore taxed by a capricious wife, are memorable: Duke. What comfort do you find in being so calm? Candido. That which green wounds receive from sovereign balm. Patience, my lord! why, 'tis the soul of peace: |