century, and Shakespeare's name, during the most splendid part of his career, heads another and later group of dramatists. Of the writings of all these men, with the exception of Nash, a considerable quantity, both dramatic and miscellaneous, has been preserved. Of Nash's three dramas, only one, a kind of pastoral masque, entitled Summer's Last Will and Testament, has come down to us. It was acted in 1592 and published in 1600, and contains the following song :

SPRING.

Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king ;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo.

The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo.

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo.
Spring, the sweet Spring!

JOHN WEBSTER.

(1570-1640.)

WEBSTER and Dekker were partners in writing plays. Webster also wrote for the stage independently, and ranks among the chief of the minor Elizabethan tragic dramatists. Charles Lamb compared the Dirge from The White Devil with the ditty in Shakespeare's Tempest commencing "Full fathom five thy father lies," and added, "As that is of the water, watery, so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling which seems to resolve itself into the elements which it contemplates.”

A DIRGE.1

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men :
Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And, when gay tombs are robbed, sustain no harm :
But keep the wolf far thence that's foe to men ;
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

THOMAS MIDDLETON.

(1570-1627.)

THOMAS MIDDLETON, another of the Elizabethan playwriters, was by birth a Londoner. He began his career late in the century, and his principal works belong to the last years of Elizabeth's reign. Many of his plays were constructed in conjunction with Dekker, Jonson, and other dramatists.

THE PREPARATION FOR EXECUTION.2

Hark! now everything is still:

The screech-owl and the whistler shrill

Call upon our dame aloud

And bid her quickly don her shroud.

Much you had of land and rent ;

Your length in clay's now competent.3
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed.

Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
Since their conception, birth, are weeping,

Their life a general mist of error,

Their death a hideous storm of terror.

Strew your

hair with powders sweet,

Don clean linen, bathe your feet,

1 From The White Devil or Vittoria Corrombona, 1612.

2 From The Duchess of Malfy, 1623.

3 Enough.

And, the foul Fiend more to check,

A crucifix let bless your neck.

'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day;
End your groan, and come away.

SIR JOHN DAVIES.

(1570-1626.)

IN the last years of Elizabeth's reign there began to appear among our non-dramatic poets and versifiers a new school, distinct from the pastoral, or imaginative, school of poetry of which Sidney and Spenser continued the acknowledged heads. These new writers were afterwards called the "philosophical poets," which was, however, by no means a correct definition of them. A better one would have been "expository poets"; for they were poets who employed the verse form in literature for the purpose of expounding scientific and theological theories, and whose intellects were so constituted that they could carry on the business of thinking and of exposition more effectively in verse than in prose. The most eminent writers in this school were Davies and Donne. The Nosce Teipsum (Know Thyself) of Davies, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth in 1599, was a very remarkable exposition of the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul. Davies's method of treating the subject was a novel one. Some of his arguments, although expressed in a sing-song verse metre, were extremely involved and subtle; but when he wrote more simply,

"Again, how can she but immortal be

When, with the motions of both will and wit,
She still aspireth to Eternity,

And never rests till she attain to it?"

his logic justified itself in the people's hearts, and Nosce Teipsum became one of the favourite poems of the age. It was five times printed during the author's life; and Davies, who in 1598 had been ejected from the Society of the Middle Temple, of which he was a member, for having thrashed a

man within the sacred precincts of that Inn of Court, rose during James's reign from one legal distinction to another, until he attained the Attorney-generalship of Ireland. He was knighted by James in 1607. An earlier production of Davies was a poem on dancing, entitled Orchestra, published in 1596.

FROM NOSCE TEIPSUM.

OPINIONS ABOUT THE SOUL.

One thinks the Soul is air; another, fire;
Another, blood diffused about the heart;
Another saith the elements conspire,

And to her essence each doth give a part.

Musicians think our souls are harmonies;

Physicians hold that they complexions be;
Epicures make them swarms of atomies,

Which do by chance into our bodies flee.

Some think one general Soul fills every brain,
As the bright sun sheds light in every star;
And others think the name of soul is vain,

And that we only well-mixed bodies are. . .

Some place it in the root of life, the heart;
Some in the river-fountain of the veins ;
Some say she's all in all, in every part;
Some say she's not contained, but all contains.

MYSELF.

I know my body's of so frail a kind
As force without, fevers within, can kill ;
I know the heavenly nature of my mind;
But 'tis corrupted both in wit1 and will.

I know my soul hath power to know all things,
Yet is she blind and ignorant in all;

I know I am one of Nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest thing am thrall.

1 Knowledge.
Ꮓ

I know my life's a pain, and but a span ;

I know my sense is mocked with everything;
And, to conclude, I know myself a Man;
Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.

SPARKS OF LIGHT.

Yet hath the Soul a dowry natural,

And sparks of light some common things to see,
Not being a blank where nought is writ at all,
But what the writer will may written be.

For Nature in man's heart her laws doth pen,
Prescribing truth to wit and good to will,
Which do accuse, or else excuse, all men
For every thought or practice, good or ill.

And yet these sparks grow almost infinite,
Making the World and all therein their food;
As fire so spreads as no place holdeth it,

Being nourished still with new supplies of wood.

DR. JOHN DONNE.

(1573-1631.)

DR. JOHN DONNE, Chaplain in Ordinary to James I., and Dean of St. Paul's, belonged by birth to the golden age of Elizabethan poetry; but he outlived its decline, and Charles I. had been king for six years when he died. His descent is interesting. His maternal grandfather was John Heywood, the witty epigrammatist and author of Merry Interludes, who died about 1565, in Queen Mary's reign. By his mother also he was descended from the family of the famous and learned Sir Thomas More (1480-1535), Lord Chancellor of England and the author of Utopia. The poetical writings of Donne which are best known are his Satires and The Progress of the Soul. He also wrote a number of Elegies, Lyrics, Letters in verse, and occasional pieces. The Satires were produced between 1593 and 1597, that is to say from the poet's twentieth to his twenty-fourth year. They were, however, not printed