Crookebackt he was, tooth-shaken, and blere-eyed ;
Wen: on three feete, and sometyme crept on foure;
With olde lame bones, that rattled by his syde;
His scalp all pilled, and hee with eld forlore,
His withred fist still knocking at Deaths dore;
Fumbling and driveling as hee drawes his breath;
For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death.
And fast by him pale Malady was placed ;
Sore sicke in bed, her colour all foregone;
Bereft of stomacke, savour, and of taste,

Ne could shee brooke no meate but broths alone;
Her breath corrupt; her kepers every one
Abhorring her; her sickness past recure,
Detesting phisicke and all phisickes cure.

But, oh, the dolefull sight that then wee see!
Wee turned our looke, and on the other side

A griesly shape of Famine mought wee see:
With greedy lookes, and gaping mouth, that cryed
And roared for meate, as shee should there have dyed;
Her body thin and bare as any bone,

Whereto was left nought but the case alone.

And that, alas! was gnawne on every where,
All full of holes; that I ne mought refrayne
From tears, to see how shee her arms could teare
And with her teeth gnash on the bones in vayne,
When, all for nought, shee fayne would so sustayne
Her starven corps, that rather seemed a shade
Than any substaunce of a creature made :

Great was her force, whome stone-wall could not stay:
Her tearing nayles snatching at all shee sawe;
With gaping jawes, that by no meanes ymay
Be satisfied from hunger of her mawe,

But eates herselfe as shee that hath no lawe;
Gnawing, alas, her carkas all in vayne,

Where you may count each sinew, bone, and vayne.

On her while we thus firmly fixt our eyes,
That bled for ruth of such a drery sight,
Lo, suddenly she shriekt in so huge wise
As made Hell gates to shiver with the might;
Wherewith a dart we sawe how it did light
Right on her brest, and therewithall pale Death
Enthrilling it, to reve her of her breath :

And by and by a dumb dead corps we sawe,
Heavy and colde the shape of Death aright,
That daunts all earthly creatures to his lawe,
Against whose force in vaine it is to fight;
Ne peeres, ne princes, nor no mortall wyght,
No Townes, ne Realmes, Cityes, ne strongest Tower,
But all perforce must yield unto his power:

His dart anon out of the corps hee tooke,
And in his hand (a dreadfull sight to see)
With great tryumph cftsoones the same hee shooke, '
That most of all my feares affrayed mee;
His body dight with nought but bones, pardė;
The naked shape of man there saw I plaine,
All save the flesh, the sinew, and the veine.

Lastly, stood Warre, in glittering armes yclad.
With visage grym, stern lookes, and blackly hewed:
In his right hand a naked sworde he had,
That to the hilts was all with bloud embrued;
And in his left (that kings and kingdoms rewed) rued

Famine and fyer he held, and therewithall,

He razed townes, and threw downe towres and all.

Cities he sackt, and realmes (that whilome flowerd
In honour, glory, and rule, above the rest)
He overwhelmde, and all theire fame devoured,
Consumed, destroyed, wasted, and never ceast,
Till he their wealth, their name, and all oppresst:
His face forehewed with wounds; and by his side
There hung his targe, with gashes deepe and wide.

Then first came Henry Duke of Buckingham,
His cloak of black all pilled, and quite forworne,
Wringing his hands, and Fortune oft doth blame,
Which of a duke had made him now her skorne;
With gastly looks, as one in maner lorne,

Oft spred his armes, stretcht hands he joynes as fast,
With ruful cheer, and vapored eyes upcast.

His cloake he rent, his manly brest hee beat;
His hayre all torne about the place it lay :
My heart so molt to see his griefe so great,
As felingly methought it dropt away;
His eyes they whirld about withouten stay:
With stormy sighes the place did so complayne,
As if his heart at ech had burst in twayne.

Thrise he began to tell his dolefull tale,

And thrise the sighes did swallow up his voyce?
At ech of which he shrieked so withall,
As though the heavens rived with the noyse;
Till at the last recovering his voyce,
Supping the teares that all his breast beraynde,
On cruel Fortune weeping thus he playnde.

The Induction runs to eighty stanzas, the Complaint to over a hundred. Our text is substantially that of the edition of 1587. The first of the seventy-four characters in the completed work is King Albanact of Scotland in 1085 B.C.; the last is Wolsey. King Locrinus of Britain, son of Brutus, tells his story, King Bladud and Queen Cordila also; and Julius Cæsar and half-a-dozen Roman emperors figure in the company of British notables. Sackville West edited the collected works in 1859.

George Gascoigne (1525-77), son of Sir John Gascoigne of Cardington in Bedfordshire, and descendant of the famous Chief-Justice under Henry IV., was an early dramatist (see above at page 238), one of our first satirists, an indefatigable translator, and a pioneer in many departments of literature. He studied at Cambridge, entered Gray's Inn, wrote poems, and sat in Parliament for Bedford (1557-59), but was disinherited by his father for his prodigality. He married a widow (to improve his finances), was still persecuted by creditors, set out for Holland, and served gallantly under the Prince of Orange (1572-75). Surprised by a Spanish force and taken prisoner, he was detained four months; and, on his return to England, settled at Walthamstow, where he collected and published his poems. He was praised by his own and the succeeding generation of writers, and experienced a share of royal favour;

for he accompanied the queen to Kenilworth, and supplied part of the poetical and scenic entertainments at Leicester's magnificent seat and also at Woodstock. He translated in prose and verse, from Greek, Latin, and Italian. The Complaynt of Phylomene, his first poem, was begun in 1563 and published in 1575. The Supposes, translated from I Suppositi of Ariosto, is the first prose comedy in English; Jocasta, based on the Phanissa of Euripides, is the second tragedy in English blank verse; The Glasse of Government is an original comedy; The Steele Glas is the earliest blankverse satire; and in the Notes of Instruction on Making of Verse we have the first considerable English essay on the subject. It is pathetic that already Gascoigne thought some of the standard poetic epithets were worn out: If I should undertake to wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman,' he says, 'I would neither praise hir christal eye nor hir cherrie lippe, etc. For these things are trita et obvia. How often have they done duty since! To such a zealous experimenter English literature obviously owes a deep debt, though much of his work is hopelessly tedious. It may be said for him that he sometimes attains freedom both in rhyme and in blank verse, and that his lyrics show even a certain grace and lightness of touch. In the Steele Glas, Gascoigne explains that he finds an oldfashioned mirror of steel greatly more truthful than those of glass (first made at Venice in 1300, but not in England until 1673). Common glass, beryl glass, and crystal he believes to be false:

That age is dead, and vanisht long ago,

Which thought that steele both trusty was and true,
And needed not a foyle of contraries,

But shewde al things even as they were indeede.
In steade whereof, our curious yeares can finde
The christal glass, which glimseth brave and bright.
And shewes the thing much better than it is,
Beguiled with foyles of sundry subtil sights,
So that they seeme and covet not to be.

All the more reason that, having had such a trusty steel mirror bequeathed to him, the satirist should put it to some use! Thus he can show his contemporaries their faults, as in the two following extracts (the second from the Epilogus)-drunken soldiers, false judges, usurious merchants being also not forgotten :

On the Country Gentleman.
The Gentleman which might in countrie keepe
A plenteous boorde and feed the fatherlesse
With pig and goose, with mutton, beese, and veale
(Yea, now and then a capon and a chicke),
Will breake up house and dwel in market-townes
A loitring life, and like an Epicure.

But who meanwhile defends the common welth?
Who rules the flocke when sheperds so are fled?
Who stayes the staff which shuld uphold the state?
Forsoth, good Sir, the Lawyer leapeth in-
Nay, rather leapes both over hedge and ditch,
And rules the rost : but few men rule by right.

O Knights, O Squires, O Gentle blouds yborne, You were not borne onely for your selves : Your countrie claymes some part of al your paines; There should you live, and therein should you toyle, To hold up right and banish cruel wrong, To help the pore, to bridle backe the riche, To punish vice and vertue to advaunce, To see God servde, and Belzebub supprest. You should not trust lieftenaunts in your rome, And let them sway the scepter of your charge, Whiles you meanwhile know scarcely what is don, Nor yet can yeld accompt if you were callde.

On the Court Ladies.

Beholde, my lorde, what monsters muster here,
With Angels face and harmfule helish harts,
With smyling lookes, and deep deceitful thoughts,
With tender skinnes and stony cruel mindes,
With stealing steppes, yet forward feete to fraude.
Behold, behold, they never stande content,
With God, with kinde, with any helpe of arte,
But curle their locks with bodkins and with braids,
But dye their heare with sundry subtill sleights,
But paint and slicke till fayrest face be foule,
But bumbast, bolster, frisle, and perfume:

They marre with muske the balme which nature made,
And dig for death in dellicatest dishes.

The yonger sorte come pyping on apace,
In whistles made of fine enticing wood,

Till they have caught the birds for whom they birded.
The elder sorte go stately stalking on,

And on their backs they beare both land and fee,
Castles and towres, revenewes and receits,
Lordships and manours, fines, yea, fermes and al.
What should these be? Speak you, my lovely lord.
They be not men, for why, they have no beards;
They be no boyes which weare such side long gowns ;
They be no Gods, for al their gallant glosse;
They be no divels, I trow, that seme so saintish.
What be they? Women masking in men's weedes-
With dutchkin dublets, and with jerkins jaggde,
With Spanish spangs and ruffes fet out of France,
With high copt hats and feathers flaunt-a-flaunt—
They, to be sure, seem even wo to men, indeed!

The Arraignment of a Lover.

At Beautyes barre as I dyd stande,
When False Suspect accused mee,
'George,' quod the judge, 'holde up thy hande,

Thou art arraigned of flatterye ;
Tell, therefore, howe wylt thou bee tryed,
Whose judgment here wylt thou abyde?'

'My Lord,' quod I, 'this lady here,
Whom I esteeme above the rest,
Doth knowe my guilte, if any were;

Wherefore hir doome shall please me best. verdict Let hir bee judge and jurour bothe, To trye mee guiltlesse by myne oathe.'

Quoth Beautie: 'No, it fitteth not

A prince hirselfe to judge the cause;
Wyll is our justice, well you wot,
Appointed to discusse our Lawes ;
If you will guiltlesse seeme to goe,
God and your countrey quitte you so.'

Thomas Tusser (1524-80) was, in Fuller's words, 'successively a musician, schoolmaster, serving-man, husbandman, grazier, poet, more skilful in all than thriving in any vocation.' Sprung of a good stock near Witham, in Essex, he was trained especially in singing and music, became a chorister at St Paul's and elsewhere, studied at Eton and Cambridge, and lived at court for ten years as retainer and musician to Lord Paget. He then tried farming both in Suffolk and in Norfolk, but without success; about 1559 was a singer in Norwich Cathedral; farmed taxes in Essex; became a servant at Trinity Hall, Cambridge; but died in London, a prisoner for debt, in 1580. His highly didactic poem, a Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, first published in 1557, is a series of practical directions for farming, expressed in always rude but not always dull and sometimes quite pointed dactylic verse, and many proverbs are traced back to him. There was also a Hundreth Poyntes of Good Husserit;

and the two were finally expanded (1573) into Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandry united to as many of Good Huswifery, of which there have been a score of reprints and editions, including one in Scott's edition of the Somers Tracts, and one for the English Dialect Society by Payne and Herrtage in 1878. He has been called the British Varro; Scott praises his minute and comprehensive observation, his quaint and pointed style.

The following verses, not consecutive, will show his shrewdness and common-sense, as well as his uncouth notion of ' poetry':

Of mastiues and mungrels, that many we see, a number of thousands, too many there be : Watch therefore in Lent, to thy sheepe go and looke, for dogs will have vittels by hooke and by crooke.

Good Ploughman look weekly of custom and right for rostmeat on Sundaies and Thursday at night : This dooing and keeping, such custom and guise, they call thee good huswife, they loue thee likewise.

As cat a good mouser is needful in house

because of hir commons she killeth the mouse : So rauening currs, as a meany do keep,

makes maister want meat and his dog to kill sheepe.

In medow or pasture (to grow the more fine) let campers be camping in any of thine: Which if ye do suffer, when low is the spring, you gaine to your self a commodious thing.

The camping recommended for improving pasture is football-playing; and 'camping fields' are still known where the word camping or kemping is no longer used for the game. Tusser sometimes varies his usual verse with a rhythm of shorter lines, which partly anticipates Shenstone and Cowper, as in these lines in praise of having fields enclosed or fenced :

The countrie inclosed I praise,

the tother delighteth not me,
For nothing the wealth it doth raise
to such as inferiour be.
Now both of these partly I know;

here somewhat I mind for to show.

There swineherd that keepeth the hog,
there neatherd with cur and his horne,
There shepheard with whistle and dog
be fense to the medow and corne;
There horse being tied to a balk
is ready with theefe for to walke.

In winter

North winds send haile, South winds bring raine, East winds we bewaile, West winds blow amaine; North-east is too cold, South-east not too warme, North-west is too bold, South-west doth no harme. In spring

The North is noier to grass of all suites,
The East a destroyer to hearbs and al fruites.

In summer

The South with his showers refresheth the corne, The West to al flowers may not be forborne.

In autumn

The West as a father all goodness doth bring,
The East, a forbearer, no maner of thing;
The South, as vnkind, draweth sicknes too neere,
The North as a friend maketh all again cleere.

Though winds do rage, as winds were wood,
And cause spring-tides to raise great flood;
And lofty ships leaue anker in mud,
Bereauing many of life and of bloud;
Yet, true it is, as cow chewes cud,
And trees, at spring, doth yeeld forth bud,
Except wind stands as neuer it stood,
It is an ill wind turnes none to good.

mad

In his Farmers' Year (1899) Mr Rider Haggard follows, but in prose, the example of Tusser, who more than three hundred years earlier tilled the land in the same county of Norfolk; he repeatedly quotes Tusser-less in appreciation of his poetry than in approval of his sentiments and opinions. Tusser knew perfectly what to do with dogs that take to lamb-killing, and how to employ branches of trees to eke out hay and straw as fodder: 'Good lamb is worth gold' then as now; but, alas! by reason of the bad times for farmers, Mr Haggard seems to be less confident than his predecessor that

Good farme and well stored, good housing and drie, Good corne and good dairie, good market and nie; nigh Good shepherd, good tilman, good Jack and good Gill, Make husband and huswife their coffers to fil; though even these aids are necessary to ward off total ruin.

Queen Elizabeth deserves a niche in the literary history of the period named from her reign. Born in 1533, she was queen from 1558 to 1603. She was one of the learned ladies of her time, like Lady Jane Grey, Mildred Cooke (afterwards the Countess of Burghley), and Sir Thomas More's daughter Margaret; had many accomplishments; and was well and widely read—a better classic, it would appear, than Lady Jane, and more proficient in modern tongues. She translated Boethius as well as Sallust. When she was Ascham's pupil she could already speak Latin easily, Greek moderately well, and French and Italian as perfectly as English. And her mastery of her mother-tongue is borne witness to by every recorded saying or letter of hers; her style reflects her powerful, subtle mind-terrible and insinuating by turns, cold and

stately or playful and genial, unmistakably direct and trenchant or impenetrably oracular, as she willed it to be, but always memorable. Her poems, though, like her beauty, praised in her own time as unsurpassable, are less triumphant, but show at least, as Bishop Creighton puts it, that 'she was infected with the poetical fury of the times.' When in Mary's reign she was practically imprisoned in the gatehouse of Woodstock, she wrote with charcoal on a shutter this not unpoetical and quite characteristic expression of her ill-humour:

Oh Fortune how thy restless wavering state
Hath wrought with care my troubled wit,
Witness the present prison whither fate

Could bear me and the joys I quit.
Thou caus'dst the guilty to be loosed
From bonds wherein an innocent enclosed,
Causing the guiltless to be strait reserved

And freeing those that death had well deserved.
But by her envy can be nothing wrought.
So God send to my foes all they have wrought.
Quoth Elizabeth, Prisoner.

Bishop Creighton accepts as probably genuine the famous impromptu made when her sister the queen caused her to be plied with questions about her belief in transubstantiation :

Christ was the Word that spake it,
He took the bread and brake it,
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

Her best-known poem or exercise in verse is the so-called sonnet, selected by Puttenham in Elizabeth's lifetime as a specimen of the 'gorgious,' and by him described as 'a ditty of her Maiesties owne making, passing sweete and harmonicall.' Puttenham expressly says it refers to Elizabeth's alarm at the intrigues of her prisoner Mary Queen of Scots (the daughter of Debate'); Bishop Creighton thinks it must have been written soon after Norfolk's execution. Here we follow Puttenham's version:

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,

And wit me warnes to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy.

For falshood now doth flow, and subject faith doth ebb, Which would not be, if reason rul'd or wisdome wev'd the webbe.

But clowdes of tois untried do cloake aspiring mindes, Which turne to raigne of late repent, by course of changed windes.

The toppe of hope supposed, the roote of ruth will be, And frutelesse all their graffed guiles, as shortly ye shall

see.

Then dazeld eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds, Shalbe unseeld by worthy wights, whose foresight fals

hood finds,

The daughter of debate, that eke discord doth sowe, Shal reap no gaine where former rule hath taught stil peace to growe.

No forreine bannisht wight shall ancre in this port, Our realme it brookes no strangers force, let them elswhere resort.

Our rusty sworde with rest shall first his edge employ To polle their toppes that seeke such change and gape for joy.

In some versions doubt in the first line is dread; subject faith is subjects'; raigne of late repent is the rain of a too late repentance.'

At page 228 will be found Sir James Melville's 'interview' with the queen, and his notes of her conversation. The following, written in August 1588 after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, is from the Camden Society's volume (1849) of her letters to James VI. :

Now may appeare, my deare brother, how malice conioined with might, strivest [sic] to make a shameful end to a vilanous beginning, for, by Gods singular fauor, having ther flete wel beaten in our narow seas, and pressing with all violence to atcheue some wateringplace, to continue ther pretended invation, the winds have carried them to your costes, wher I dout not the shal receaue smal succor and les welcome, vnles thos lords [the Catholic earls] that so traitors like wold belie ther own prince, and promis another king reliefe in your name, be suffred to live at libertye, to dishonor you, peril you, and aduance some other (wiche God forbid you suffer them live to do). Therfor, I send you this gentilman [Sir Robert Sidney, afterwards Earl of Leicester], a rare younge man and a wise, to declare unto yov my ful opinion in this greate cause, as one that neuer wyl abuse you to serve my owne turne; nor wyl you do aught that myselfe wold not perfourme, if I wer in your place. You may assure yourselfe that, for my part, I dout no whit but that all this tirannical, prowd, and brainsick attempt wil be the beginning, thogh not the end, of the ruine of that king that most unkingly, euen in mids of treating peace, begins this wrongful war. He hath procured my greatest glory that ment my sorest wrack, and hath so dimmed the light of his svnshine, that who hathe a wyl to obtaine shame let them kipe his forses companye. But for al this, for yourselfe sake, let not the frends of Spain be suffred to yeld them forse; for thogh I feare not in the end the sequele, yet if by leaving them unhelped you may increase the English harts unto you, you shal not do the worst dede for your behalfe; for if aught should be done, your excuse wyl play the boiteux, if you make not sure worke with the likely men to do hit. Looke wel unto hit, I besiche you.

The necessity of this mattir makes my skribling the more spidye, hoping that you wyl mesure my good affection with the right balance of my actions, wiche to you shalbe euer such as I haue professed, not douting of the reciproque of your behalfe, according as my last messengier unto you hathe at large signefied, for the wiche I rendar you a milion of grateful thankes togither, for the last general prohibition to your subiects not to fostar nor ayde our general foe, of wiche I dout not the obseruation, if the ringeleaders be safe in your hands; as knoweth God, who euer haue you in his blessed kiping, with many happy yeres of raigne. Your most assured louing sistar and cousin, ELIZABETH R.

To my verey good brother the king of Scotts.

She wrote French with almost equal freedom and vigour. But in spite of her mental gifts and acquirements, it must be added that Elizabeth · does not seem to have really cared for literature or interested herself in learned men. She paid no special heed to Shakespeare's plays when they