Poitiers and Cressy tell,

When most their pride did swell,

Under our swords they fell;

No less our skill is,

Than when our grandsire great,
Clayming the regall seate,
By many a warlike feate,

Lop'd the French lillies.

The Duke of Yorke so dread,
The eager vaward led;
With the maine Henry sped,
Amongst his hench-men.
Excester had the rere,

A braver man not there,

O Lord, how hot they were
On the false French men !

They now to fight are gone,
Armour on armour shone,
Drumme now to drumme did groan,

To heare was wonder;
That with cryes they make,
The very earth did shake,
Trumpet to trumpet spake,

Thunder to thunder.

Well it thine age became,
O noble Erpingham,
Which did the signall ayme

To our hid forces;

When from a medow by,

Like a storme suddenly,

The English archery

Stuck the French horses.

With Spanish Ewgh so strong,
Arrowes a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents stung,
Piercing the weather;

None from his fellow starts,
But playing manly parts,
And like true English hearts,

Stuck close together.

When downe their bowes they threw,
And forth their bilbowes drew,
And on the French they flew ;

Not one was tardie;

Armes were from shoulders sent,
Scalpes to the teeth were rent,
Down the French pesants went,
Our men were hardie.
This while our noble King,
His broad sword brandishing,
Down the French host did ding,

As to o'r whelme it;

And many a deepe wound lent,
His armes with bloud besprent,
And many a cruell dent

Bruised his helmet.

Gloster, that duke so good,
Next of the royall blood,
For famous England stood,

With his brave brother;
Clarence, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden knight,
Yet in that furious fight

Scarce such another.

When as the luscious smell
Of that delicious land,

Above the seas that flowes,
The cleare wind throwes,
Your hearts to swell
Approching the deare strand;

In kenning of the shore
(Thanks to God first given),
O you the happy'st men,
Be frolique then,

Let cannons roare,
Frighting the wide heaven.

And in regions far

Such heroes bring yee forth,

As those from whom we came,

And plant our name

Under that starre

Not knowne unto our North.

The canzonet, 'To his Coy Love,' that begins :

I pray thee, leave: love me no more,

Call home the hart you gave me;

I but in vaine that Saint adore

That can but will not save me.

These poore halfe kisses kill me quite;
Was ever man thus served?

Amidst an ocean of delight

For pleasure to be sterved—

contains the ingenious conceit :

O Tantalus! thy paines ne'er tell,
By mee thou art prevented;
Tis nothing to be plagued in Hell,
But thus in Heaven tormented!

and ends :

Come nice thing, let thy heart alone,
I cannot live without thee.

Most famous of Drayton's short poems is the
Valediction.

Since ther's no helpe, come let us kiss and part!
Nay, I have done; You get no more of Me;
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I my selfe can free.
Shake hands for ever; Cancell all our Vowes,
And when we meet at any time againe,
Be it not seen in either of our browes
That we one jot of former Love reteyne.
Now at the last gaspe of Loves latest Breath,
When, his Pulse fayling, Passion speechlesse lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of Death,
And Innocence is closing up his Eyes,

Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From Death to Life thou might'st him yet recover.

The following (modernised in spelling) describes the setting out of Mab, Queen of the Fairies, to visit Pigwiggin, 'a fairy knight':

From the 'Nymphidia.'

Her chariot ready straight is made;
Each thing therein is fitting laid,
That she by nothing might be stay'd,
For nought must be her letting;
Four nimble gnats the horses were,
Their harnesses of gossamere,
Fly Cranion, her charioteer,
Upon the coach-box getting.

Her chariot of a snail's fine shell,
Which for the colours did excell;
The fair Queen Mab becoming well,
So lively was the limning;
The seat the soft wool of the bee,
The cover (gallantly to see)

She mounts her chariot with a trice,
Nor would she stay for no advice
Until her maids, that were so nice,

To wait on her were fitted;

But ran herself away alone;

Which when they heard, there was not one But hasted after to be gone,

As she had been diswitted.

Hop and Mop, and Drab so clear,
Pip and Trip, and Skip, that were
To Mab their sovereign dear,

Her special maids of honour;
Fib and Tib, and Pink and Pin,
Tick and Quick, and Jill and Jin,
Tit and Nit, and Wap and Win,
The train that wait upon her.

Upon a grasshopper they got,
And, what with amble and with trot,
For hedge nor ditch they spared not,

But after her they hie them:
A cobweb over them they throw,
To shield the wind if it should blow;
Themselves they wisely could bestow
Lest any should espy them.

There is a memoir by Payne Collier in his volume of poems by Drayton for the Roxburghe Club(1856); in 1876 the Rev. R. Hooper edited the Polyolbion; A. H. Bullen published Selections from the poems in 1883; the Rev. C. Beeching, Selections from Daniel and Drayton in 1899; and since 1885 the Spenser Society has issued the Polyolbion in 3 vols. folio, and also four quarto volumes of his poems.

Josua Sylvester (1563-1618), translator of Du Bartas, was the son of a Kentish clothier, was put to trade against his will, wrote numberless poems and dedications, was groom of the chamber to Prince Henry, and in 1613 became secretary to the English merchants at Middelburg in Holland, where he died. He is now only remembered in a shadowy way as the translator of the Divine Weeks and Works of the French poet Du Bartas. The translation - or rather paraphrase was highly popular, and earned for him among his contemporaries the epithet of 'silver-tongued Sylvester.' Drayton, Drummond, Bishop Hall, Izaak Walton, and others praise the work, and Milton has been credited with copying some of its expressions. Charles Dunster even said (in 1800) that Sylvester's Du Bartas contains the prima stamina of Paradise Lost; but this is much too unqualified a statement, though no doubt Milton read Sylvester's poem in his youth, and may have got suggestions therein. Dryden in youth preferred Sylvester to Spenser, but by-and-by came to look on his verse as 'abominable fustian.'

Satan's Temptation of Eve.

As a false Lover that thick snares hath laid T'intrap the honour of a fair young Maid, When she (though little) listning ear affords To his sweet, courting, deep-affected words, Feels some asswaging of his freezing flame, And sooths himselfe with hope to gain his game; And, rapt with joy, upon this point persists, That parley'ng Citie never long resists:

Ev'n so the Serpent, that doth counterfeit
All guilefull Call t'allure us to his net;
Perceiving Eve his flattering gloze digest,
He prosecutes, and, jocund, doth not rest
Till he have try'd foot, hand, and head, and all,
Upon the breach of his new-battered wall.

No, fair (quoth he) beleeve not that the care
God hathe, Mankinde from spoyling death to spare,
Makes him forbid you (on so strict condition)
This purest, fairest, rarest Fruit's fruition:
A double fear, an envie, and a hate,
His jealous heart for ever cruciate;
Sith the suspected vertue of this Tree
Shall soon disperse the cloud of Idiocy

Which dims your eyes; and further, makes you seem (Excelling us) even equall Gods to him.

O World's rare glory! reach thy happy hand,
Reach, reach, I say: why dost thou stop or stand?
Begin thy Blisse, and do not fear the threat
Of an uncertain God-head, onely great
Through self-aw'd zeal : Put on the glistring Pall
Of immortality: doe not fore-stall
(As envious Stepdame) thy posterity
The soverain honour of Divinity.

The compound epithets of Sylvester are sometimes happy and picturesque. Campbell cited with high commendation these lines on morning :

Arise betimes, while th' Opal-colour'd Morn, In golden pomp doth May-daye's door adorn. On the other hand, some of his images are in ludicrously bad taste. Dryden says when he was a boy he was rapt into ecstasy-afterwards repented of with this notable passage (from the 'First Day of the II. Weeke'):

But, when the Winter's keener breath began
To crystallize the Baltike Ocean,

To glaze the Lakes, and bridle-up the Flouds,
And perriwig with wool the balde-pate Woods.
Two happier specimens may be added:

The Sun.

All-hail pure Lamp, bright, sacred and excelling; Sorrow and Care, Darknes, and Dread repelling: Thou World's great Taper, Wicked men's just Terror, Mother of Truth, true Beautie's only Mirror, God's eldest daughter: O! how thou art full Of grace and goodnes! O! how beautifull !

Plurality of Worlds.

I'l ne'r beleeve that the Arch-Architect,
With all these Fires the Heav'nly Arches deckt
Onely for Shew, and with these glistring shields
T'amaze poor Shepheards watching in the fields.
I'l ne'r beleeve that the least Flowr that pranks
Our Garden borders, or the Common banks,
And the least stone that in her warming Lap
Our kind Nurse Earth doth covetously wrap,
Hath some peculiar vertue of its own;

And that the glorious Stars of Heav'n have none.
Of the parallels between Sylvester and Milton
that have been pointed out, we quote two.
Milton in his version of Psalm cxxxvi. has :

The ruddy waves he cleft in twain
Of the Erythræan main.

Now, Sylvester had in his Du Bartas given :
His dreadful voice to save his ancient sheep
Did cleave the bottom of the Erythræan deep;
and in Bethulia's Rescue:

Where th' Erythræan ruddy billows roar.
Milton, again, in the same psalm wrote:
But full soon this did devour

The tawny king with all his power;

echoing Sylvester's

But contrary the Red Sea did devour

The barbarous tyrant with his mighty power.

This certainly does seem to argue Milton's familiarity with Sylvester's works, and the fact that Sylvester's words had impressed themselves on Milton's memory. But the parallels, of which these are perhaps as observable as any, mainly affect mere incidental expression. And, unlike the one-legged William Lauder (1680?-1771), who tried by parallels real and garbled to prove Milton a deliberate copier of other men's ideas and phrases and lines, Dunster expressly says: 'Nothing can be further from my intention than to insinuate that Milton was a plagiarist or servile imitator; but I conceive that, having read these sacred poems of very high merit, at the immediate age when his own mind was beginning to teem with poetry, he retained numberless thoughts, passages, and expressions therein so deeply in his mind that they hung inherently in his imagination, and became as it were naturalised there.'

Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas began to appear in 1592, but was not completed till 1611. Some of his original pieces have quaint titles such as were then affected by many authors; for example: Lachrymæ Lachrymarum, or the Spirit of Teares distilled for the ontymely Death of the incomparable Prince Panaretus (Henry, son of King James I.), 1612; Tobacco Battered and the Pipes Shattered about their Eares, that idlely Idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, or at least-wise over-love so loathsome Vanitie, by a Volley of Holy Shot thundered from Mount Helicon (1615). Dunster's book was called Considerations on Milton's Early Reading (1800.) Grosart reprinted Sylvester's works (2 vols. 4to, 'Chertsey Worthies' serie) in 1880.

Christopher Marlowe was by far the greatest of Shakespeare's precursors in the drama-a fiery spirit, who gave character and energy to the stage (see above at page 241), and was the first English writer who had perfect command of sonorous and varied blank verse. Born at Canterbury, and baptised on the 26th of February 1564, he was the son of a shoemaker, but through the aid of a local patron he was admitted into the King's School of his native town. Thence he proceeded in 1581 to Benet or Corpus College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1583, and M.A. in 1587. How he occupied himself after taking his bachelor's degree is not known; he may have served as a soldier in the Low Countries. Tamburlaine the Great was successfully brought out on the stage in 1587, was printed in 1590, and long continued a favourite. Shakespeare makes ancient Pistol quote jestingly the awkward line :

Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia !

But amidst the rant and fustian of Tamburlaine there are passages of great beauty and grandeur, and the versification justifies Ben Jonson's compliment to Marlowe's mighty line.' Marlowe and his hero had in them something of the audacity, the overreaching ambition and self-confidence, of the Renaissance, illustrated in the lofty lines (leading up, however, to an anti-climax!):

Our souls whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all-
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

It was Marlowe who revolutionised the diction of the popular drama, adopting in place of rhymed couplets the blank verse heretofore associated with classical dramas of the Senecan type. And of blank verse, till now conventional and monotonous, he fashioned a new and powerful instrument of dramatic expression, not merely by shifting the accent freely, but by substituting trochees, dactyls, tribrachs, and spondees for the inevitable iambi of his predecessors; yet Nash and Greene both affected to think slightingly of blank verse as managed by him. The following specimen of Marlowe's sonorous exaggeration is a description of Tamburlaine, who, at first spoken of at the royal court as a 'sturdy Scythian thief' and 'a paltry Scythian with his Tartarian rout,' is to be easily taken captive, but looms larger and larger on the historic canvas:

Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned,
Like his desire lift upwards and divine;
So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders, as might mainly bear
Old Atlas' burthen. 'Twixt his manly pitch
A pearl more worth than all the world is placed :
Wherein by curious sovereignty of art
Are fixed his piercing instruments of sight,
Whose fiery circles bear encompassed

A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres,
That guides his steps and actions to the throne
Where Honour sits invested royally.

Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion,
Thirsting with sovereignty and love of arms;
His lofty brows in folds do figure death;
And in their smoothness amity and life.
About them hangs a knot of amber hair,
Wrapped in curls, as fierce Achilles' was,

On which the breath of heaven delights to play,
Making it dance with wanton majesty.
His arms and fingers, long and sinewy,

Betokening valour and excess of strength;

In every part proportioned like the man

Should make the world subdued to Tamburlaine,

lifted

Tamburlaine at the close of the first part thus addresses his queen :

Then sit thou down, divine Zenocratė ;
And here we crown thee Queen of Persia,

And all the kingdoms and dominions That late the power of Tamburlaine subdued. As Juno, when the giants were suppressed, That darted mountains at her brother Jove, So looks my love, shadowing in her brows Triumphs and trophies for my victories; Or, as Latona's daughters, bent to arms, Adding more courage to my conquering mind. His second play, The Tragical History of Dr Faustus (1604; 2nd ed. 1616), based on the familiar folk-tale, exhibits a far wider range of dramatic power than his first. The hero studies necromancy, and makes a solemn disposal of his soul to Lucifer, on condition of having a familiar spirit at his command and unlimited enjoyment for twenty-four years; during which period Faustus visits different countries, 'calls up spirits from the vasty deep,' and revels in luxury and splendour. At length the time expires, the bond becomes due, and evil spirits enter, amidst thunder and lightning, to claim his forfeit life. From this plot Marlowe constructed a powerful though irregular play. Passages of terrific grandeur and thrilling agony are intermixed with low humour and preternatural machinery, sometimes grotesque or ludicrous. The play is, indeed, rather a series of detached scenes than a complete drama; and some of the scenes (especially the comic parts in the second edition) are obviously not Marlowe's. The ambition of Faustus is a sensual, not a lofty ambition. A feeling of curiosity and wonder is excited by his necromancy and his compact with Lucifer; but we do not fairly sympathise with him till all his disguises are stripped off and his meretricious splendour is succeeded by horror and despair. Then when he stands on the brink of everlasting ruin, waiting for the fatal moment, imploring yet distrusting repentance, a scene of entrancing interest, fervid passion, and overwhelming pathos carries captive the sternest heart and proclaims the triumph of the tragic poet. Mr Bullen holds that the greater part of the matter added in the 1616 edition (that used by Charles Lamb, for example) is certainly not Marlowe's workmanship, and that only an insane critic would maintain that the comic scenes even of the 1604 edition are from his pen. Marlowe knew he had not the gift of humour, and probably, Mr Bullen thinks, never attempted to write a comic scene. We follow the text of 1604 as given by Bullen. The first extract is a part of Faustus's soliloquy and conversation with Valdes and Cornelius. 'German Valdes' is doubtless a slip or misprint for Juan de Valdes (1500-44), a Spanish heretic, often confused with his twin-brother Alfonso, who died at Vienna Latin secretary to Charles V. Juan's 'Dialogue between Mercury and Charon' roused the Inquisition, so that he had to flee to Italy; he was an influential mystic, probably antiTrinitarian, not a magician. Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), a great German occult philosopher, had also the repute of being a magician.

Faustus. How am I glutted with conceit of this! Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please, Resolve me of all ambiguities,

Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I'll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
I'll have them read me strange philosophy

And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;

I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg,
I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad ;
I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces ;
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp's bridge1
I'll make my servile spirits to invent.

Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS.

Come, German Valdes and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference.
Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius,

Witten

berg.

Know that your words have won me at the last To practise magic and concealed arts : Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy That will receive no object, for my head But ruminates on necromantic skill. Philosophy is odious and obscure, Both law and physic are for petty wits; Divinity is basest of the three, Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile : 'Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me. Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt; And I that have with concise syllogisms Gravelled the pastors of the German church, And made the flowering pride of Wertenberg Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits On sweet Musaus 2 when he came to hell, Will be as cunning as Agrippa was, Whose shadow made all Europe honour him. (From Scene i.) 1 At the siege of Antwerp by Parma in 1585, a fire-ship laden with explosives blew up the bridge. 2 Musæus in Hades (Eneid, Book vi.).

Faustus's questions to Mephistophilis and the answer of the evil genius flash lurid light :

Faust. And what are you that live with Lucifer? Meph. Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer, Conspired against our God with Lucifer,

And are for ever damned with Lucifer.

Faust. Where are you damned?

Meph. In hell.

Faust. How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

Meph. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Think'st thou that I who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

(From Scene iii.)

The conversation of the Master with his scholars in the last (sixteenth) scene—there is no division into acts-when Faustus's time has come, is much shorter and better in the 1604 edition :

Faust. Ah, gentlemen!

1st Scholar. What ails Faustus?

Faust. Ah, my sweet chamber-fellow, had I lived with thee, then had I lived still, but now I die eternally. Look, comes he not, comes he not?

1st Sch. Oh my dear Faustus, what imports this fear? 2nd Scholar. Is all our pleasure turned to melancholy? 3rd Scholar. He is not well with being over-solitary. 2nd Sch. If it be so, we will have physicians, and Faustus shall be cured.

1st Sch. 'Tis but a surfeit, sir; fear nothing.

Faust. A surfeit of deadly sin that hath damned both body and soul.

2nd Sch. Yet, Faustus, look up to Heaven; remember God's mercies are infinite.

Faust. But Faustus's offences can never be pardoned: the serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus. O gentlemen, hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pants and quivers to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years, oh, would I had ne'er seen Wertenberg, never read book! and what wonders have I done, all Germany can witness, yea, all the world: for which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world; yea, Heaven itself, Heaven the seat of God, the throne of the blessed, the kingdom of joy-and must remain in Hell for ever, Hell, ah Hell, for ever! Sweet friends, what shall become of Faustus being in Hell for ever?

2nd Sch. Yet, Faustus, call on God.

Faust. On God, whom Faustus hath abjured! on God, whom Faustus hath blasphemed! Ah my God, I would weep, but the devil draws in my tears. Gush forth blood instead of tears. Yea, life and soul! Oh, he stays my tongue: I would lift up my hands, but see, they hold them, they hold them!

Scholars. Who, Faustus?

Faust. Lucifer and Mephistophilis. Ah gentlemen, I gave them my soul for cunning!

Scholars. God forbid !

Faust. God forbade it indeed, but Faustus hath done it for the vain pleasure of four-and-twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity. I writ them a bill with mine own blood; the date is expired: the time is come, and he will fetch me.

1st Sch. Why did not Faustus tell of this before, that divines might have prayed for thee?

Faust. Oft have I thought to have done so; but the devil threatened to tear me in pieces if I named God; to fetch me body and soul if I once gave ear to divinity; and now 'tis too late. Gentlemen, away! lest you perish with me.

2nd Sch. Oh, what shall we do to save Faustus? Faust. Talk not of me, but save yourselves, and depart. 3rd Sch. God will strengthen me; I will stay with Faustus.

1st Sch. Tempt not God, sweet friend, but let us into the next room and there pray for him.

Faust. Ay, pray for me, pray for me; and what noise soever you hear, come not unto me, for nothing can

rescue me.

2nd Sch. Pray thou, and we will pray, that God may have mercy upon thee.

Faust. Gentlemen, farewell; if I live till morning, I'll visit you if not-Faustus is gone to hell. Scholars. Faustus, farewell.

[Exeunt Scholars. The clock strikes eleven.