a poaching prank. Perhaps, as one tradition states, he began his London life as horse-boy at the door of a theatre. Soon he became an actor, then part owner of a theatre, and wrote, besides minor poems, at least thirty-five plays, retiring eventually to Stratford where he died at fifty-two. Of his plays, fourteen have been classed as comedies, eleven as tragedies, and ten as histories.

Among the crowd who followed Shakespeare, the acknowledged leader is "learned" Ben Jonson, whose rule among his associates was not unlike that of Jonson Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century. He was a physically and mentally ponderous figure, whom his contemporaries thought far more likely to gain enduring fame than Shakespeare, "Fancy's child," unlearned in Latin and Greek. Jonson patterned his dramas after Latin models which Shakespeare utterly disregarded. Of the scores of plays that he wrote, some are comedies, not like Shakespeare's airy creations, but realistic, satirical pictures of contemporary life; a few are tragedies, coldly intellectual; and some twenty or thirty are masques. The masque is an artificial form of drama, of Italian origin, for many years exceedingly popular at court and among the aristocratic rich. Music, singing, dancing, elaborate stage settings and costumes were characteristic features, the slight plot being as a rule some fable or myth. The parts were taken not by professionals but by members of the nobility, who delighted in this artificial form of amateur theatricals.

How can the depth, range, and brilliancy of Elizabethan literature be explained? The popular word to conjure with Accounting for in answering this unanswerable question is Elizabethan Renaissance, the term applied to that wonliterature derful awakening which came first to Italy and gradually spread to other countries. The new interest

in Latin and Greek, the invention of printing, the discovery of America, the equally startling discoveries in the field of science, all had a stimulating effect throughout Europe. It was a period of great prosperity and peace for England, which had suddenly become a nation second to none and felt her glory. But after all the customary explanations have been made, it should be remembered that genius comes when it will, now to the home of a shoemaker, or a tanner, or to an obscure country parsonage, and now to the royal court. Sometimes those whom she touches appear in solitary splendor, like Chaucer, sometimes in groups as in Elizabeth's day. She does not always make poets, but sometimes warriors, statesmen, artists, inventors, explorers. Had we but the wisdom to see, we might possibly find that her gifts from age to age are more evenly distributed than we are apt to fancy.

Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, thirteen years before Shakespeare, twenty-three years before Bacon, thirtyElizabethan a seven years before Jonson, and seven years misleading before the appearance of the authorized term version of the Bible. The term Elizabethan, therefore, is misleading in that it is applied not only to those who wrote while the Queen was on the throne but to Jacobean writers as well; that is, to writers of the reign of James I. The literatures of the two reigns are thus grouped together because they have many characteristics in common.

and

Renaissance

Viewing broadly the output of the brief period now to be considered and comparing it with the Elizabethan, we note Reformation that a gradual change is taking place. The Elizabethans were swept along by the Renaissance, that intellectual awakening which came first to Italy upon the rediscovery of Greek and Latin literature, followed by discoveries in the realm of science which swept away many of the crude ideas which had prevailed during the Middle Ages, and a vast widening of the world through the voyages of Columbus and the later explorers. They lived moreover

in an England possessed of new glory through rapid rise to great prosperity and political prominence in which all felt that they had a part. It was a time of peace. But along with the intellectual awakening came the Reformation, a breaking away from the powerful church system which for so many centuries had bound together all western Europe with Rome as its head, and the development of the idea that there should be more freedom of thought in regard to moral and religious questions, with the Bible as a supreme guide. This moral awakening, felt strongly even in the days of Wyclif, was a great force in Elizabeth's day, though so far as literature is concerned it was subordinate to the intellectual; but in the seventeenth century it reached its climax, influencing not literature alone but the entire national life. For it is but a step from religious liberty to political freedom. England ceased to be a glorious country in which all were knit together by common sympathies. There was a great rebellion, a civil war; Charles I was beheaded; for eleven years England was a Commonwealth with the Puritans, the extremists among Protestants, in power.

The change

gradual

This great change is reflected in the writings of the period, many of which are religious or political in character, and not seldom bitterly controversial. Yet one should guard against the impression that literature ever undergoes complete revolution in a decade or even a generation; the old is ever mingling with the new. Drama, for example, the most prominent form of expression in the preceding period, remained popular, though declining in merit, tragedy becoming more artificial and sensational, and comedy ever lighter and coarser, till 1642 when all theatres throughout the realm were

Decline of

drama

closed by order of the Puritan parliament. The playhouse

remained idle till the Puritans lost their political supremacy at the Restoration in 1660. Thus ended the most wonderful series of plays the world has ever seen, rapid in its rise and in its decline, but reaching lofty heights of excellence.

With one prominent exception, the best poetry of this period is but a continuation of that remarkable chorus of songs and lyrics which began in Elizabethan Lyrics days, a chorus which dies away during the civil strife of the middle decades of the century. In Palgrave's Golden Treasury we find this period quite as well represented as the preceding, whether the number of songs or the number of writers be considered. It is a rare collection gleaned from plays, from popular songbooks, and from slender volumes by individual writers. Not a few of the pieces are anonymous, and most of the authors are represented by but two or three songs each. read the names of composers, we note that many are of brilliant Cavaliers, gentlemen followers of the Stuarts, who looked upon verse making not as a profession but as a polite accomplishment. Others are of clergymen, Catholic and Protestant, whose religious and devotional pieces form a considerable part of the whole. It is not an easy matter to characterize this body of lyrics collectively, for they are of uneven merit. It is safe to say, however, that on the whole they are less spontaneous than the Elizabethan songs, many of them showing a more conscious art, a cleverness and ingenuity, a fondness for extravagant conceits rather than deep, sincere emotion.

Herrick, who appears in the table as sole representative of this large number of song writers, was the son of a London goldsmith. Soon after leaving Cambridge he took orders, and failing to receive an appointment that would keep him near the

Herrick