of whom, says Munday, "he, a wretch, more desirous of his death than wylling his welfare, more mindfull of murther then saveguard of his soule, so bent to blindnesse that he expected not the light, strooke the stroke that returned his shame, dyd the deede that drove him to destiny, and fulfilled the fact that in the end he found folly." There were a dozen lines of rhyme before this pamphlet, in which Munday said to his "good reader"

Pamphlets
against
Edmund
Campion

and other
Romanists.

"If thou do content thee

with this my poor wish, Ere long shall be sent thee a delicate dish."

But in the next two years, except "A Covrtly Controuersie between Looue and Learning," his delicate dish consisted of six pamphlets upon the arraignment and execution of Edmund Campion-against whom Munday had played the part of an informer-and the execution of other Romanists as traitors. Honour did not sustain the arts by which Edmund Campion and his friends, Ralph Sherwin and Alexander Brian, were brought to the gallows at Tyburn on the first of December, 1581. Munday was one of three witnessesSledd and Caddy were the other two-who assisted in the cruel work by giving evidence dishonourable to themselves. Munday professed that when he was in Rome as the Pope's scholar at the Seminary, he was there under false pretences; that he went to spy, and thereupon he gave weak evidence of meetings for conspiracy against the queen. Munday put himself forward throughout the whole business. I think he believed that he was acting in the interests of true religion, and was only blinded by the passions of the time. In 1581 he published four leaves of “ an advertisement and defence for truth" against the favourers of Campion, also "a breefe discourse of the taking of Edm. Campion and divers other

Papists in Barkeshire," followed in 1582 by "A Discoverie of Edmund Campion and his Confederates, their most horrible and traiterous practises against her Majesties most royall person and the Realm whereto is added

the Execution of Edmund Campion, Raphe Sherwin, and Alexander Brian, executed at Tiborne the 1 of December. Published by A. M. sometime the Popes Scholler, allowed in the Seminarie at Roome amongst them." Munday replied also to two pamphlets that defended Campion. Then he published "A breefe and true reporte" of the execution at Tyburn of seven other priests on the twenty-eighth and thirtieth of May, 1582, with Honos alit artes for his motto still. At the execution each condemned man was in turn urged to One had the rope taken from around his neck, because he seemed to be upon the point of yielding, and then fitted again. Two of the condemned, repudiating Munday's evidence against them, derived from the time when he knew them at Rome in the Seminary, had Munday himself brought forward to wrangle with them under the gallows, as he sets forth with a satisfaction not shared by the modern reader.

retract.

Campion desired to inspire conforming Catholics in England with courage to declare their true opinions. He wished undoubtedly to see the English Church again obedient to the Pope's authority; but, while he denied Elizabeth's supremacy over the Church, he did not gainsay her temporal power, and died praying for her. Others who suffered with him were of like opinion, loyal to their consciences and wishing no ill to the queen. Some Englishmen there were who, like Nicholas Sanders, went much further—who rebelled against her whole authority, were traitors who wished to drive her from her throne, sharing the desires of Spanish and Italian priests. The devotion of the Jesuits to their Church made their influence in England a real danger, and the fear of it was magnified by passions of the day. There

is no religious hatred-the words contradict each other. But where imperfect men feel deeply they think passionately; they feel deeply about religion; passion then distorts their view of it. They fight round about the sacred temple without finding their way in. And yet their cry of strife is in its courts, and yet they do enter its courts with praise. Cries of true worship are inextricably blended with deathgroans and curses, on the way of man's long, uncompleted struggle through his savage life towards the higher life to come. That enmity to Rome, of which we shall find bitter expression in "The Faerie Queene" associated with the subtlest voice of the soul's music, is shown as a blind passion by Anthony Munday in such a passage as this, taken from his account of the executions on the twenty-eighth and thirtieth of May, 1582. John Sherte having been brought from off the hurdle to the gallows, when urged by the sheriff, said—

"No, no; I am a Catholique; in that faith I was borne, in that faith will I dye, and heere shall my blood seale it. Then Maister Sherife spake unto him (saying) By the way as you came you swore an oath, for which you willed me to beare witnesse that you were hartily sorie. Now, I pray you, let me be a witnesse that you are as hartilie sorie for offending the Queenes Majestie. Why, sir, (quoth he) I have not offended her, without it be in my religion, and if I have offended her, then I aske her forgivenesse. Maister Sherife upon this sayde unto him, Is this the fruytes of your religion, to kneele to the dead bodie of thy fellowe, and to desire his soule to pray for thee? Alas, what can it eyther helpe or hinder thee? praye then to God, and hee will helpe thee. Maister Sherife, (quoth Sherte) this is the true Catholique religion, and whatsoever is not of it is dampned. I desire his soule to pray for me, the most glorious Virgin to pray for me, and all the holy company of heaven to pray for me.

"At which woords the people cryed, Away with the traytor, hang him, hang him! O Shert, (quoth Maister Sherife) forsake the whore of Roome, that wicked Antichriste, with all his abominable blasphemies and trecheries, and put thy whole confidence in Jesus Christ whereto he aunswered, O, Mr. Sherife, you little remember the day whenas you and I shall stande bothe at one bar, and I

come as witnesse against you, that you called that holie and blessed Viccar of Christ the whoore of Rome : at which words the people cried again, Hang him, hang him, Away with him!"

At the end of this pamphlet Munday invited the reader,. who desired to be "more acquainted with Romish and satanical jugglings," to read his " English Roman life," which, as soon as it could be printed, would be set forth. It was set forth in the same year 1582, as "The English Romayne Lyfe Discovering the Lives of the Englishmen at Roome, the orders of the English Seminarie, the dissention betweene the Englishmen and the Welshmen, the banishing of the Englishmen out of Roome, the Popes sending for them againe a reporte of many of the paltrie Reliques in Roome, their Vautes under the grounde, their holy Pilgrimages, &c. Written by A. M., sometime the Pope's Scholler in the Seminarie among them. Honos alit Artes. Seene and allowed. Imprinted at London by John Charlewood, for Nicholas Ling dwelling in Paules church-yarde, at the signe of the Maremaid. Anno 1582."

Other Writings until 1586.

In 1583, when he had so far profited by his zeal as to have become one of the Messengers of her Majesty's Chamber, there is entry of a book—not extant now—“The sweete Sobbes and amorous Complaints of Sheppardes and Nymphes, in a fancye composed by An. Monday," a lost piece in which Puttenham found "the most exquisite vein of a witty poetical head." In 1584 Munday published two pamphlets. One was "A Watchword to Englande to beware of Traytors and tretcherous practises," a piece which still linked treason with religion. The other was "Fidele and Fortunio the Deceipts in Love discoursed in a Comedie of two Italyan Gentlemen translated into Englishe." We leave this industrious writer for the present at the year 1586, when his contribution to literature was another book now lost, "Ant. Munday, his godly Exercise for Christian Families, containing an order of

L-VOL. IX.

Praiers for Morning and Evening, with a little catechism between the Man and his Wife."

Thomas Watson.

66

Thomas Watson, born about the time of Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne and dying in 1592, was wholly an Elizabethan poet. The thirty-five years of his age were all lived in Elizabeth's reign. He was born in London, studied in Oxford, then was in London again, and applied himself to common law. He was in Paris for a time before 1581, in which year he published a version in Latin of the "Antigone" of Sophocles. A scholar and a poet; at first writing chiefly in Latin, afterwards in English verse; appreciated as he deserved to be by Sidney, Lyly, and Peele, a friend of Spenser's-Watson was the sweetest of the purely amatory poets of Elizabeth's reign. In 1582 appeared his book with a Greek and an English title-Greek titles were then becoming fashionable "Eкαтоμrafía, or the Passionate Centurie of Love," -that is to say, a Love Passion in a Hundred Sonnets. It is said on its title-page to be "divided into two parts: whereof, the first expresseth the Authors sufferance in Loue: the latter, his long farewell to Loue and all his tyrannie." According to the old Italian method, which had been revived by Surrey, exercises upon various phases of the passion of love in sequences of sonnets were still in fashion; these poems were known as Passions. Thomas Watson had been translating sonnets of Petrarch into Latin before he wrote an English sequence of his own, and he introduced as part of his sequence of a hundred love poems three translations into Latin of three sonnets by Petrarch,* and two of his own pieces in Latin. Each of Watson's hundred poems has a prose explanation before it, and each English piece consists of three of the six-lined stanzas then called Common Verse, the stanza

“ Εκατομπαθία.

They are the sonnets beginning S'amor non è (of which Watson gives also an English version), Orche'l ciel, and Tennemi amor.