was obviously indebted to Lyly; for the inward character of his poetical matter less obviously, but more essentially, to Spenser, whose antiquated idioms, even, he affected to cherish. The publication of Euphues just preceded his apprenticeship in letters, and without question stimulated him to the production of his first work. He never reached the sententious force and persuasive morality of Lyly's extraordinary master-piece, but he made this form of literature acceptable to a less exacting taste. His own pastorals enjoyed a very wide success, and were imitated with more or less talent by Lodge, Dickenson, and other writers of less note. They were delicate blossoms of exotic growth, appealing wholly to a literary taste, and, being unable to hold their ground after the close of the sixteenth century, they were completely swept away by the tide of realistic pamphlets, coarse comedies, and sensational tragedies. It is impossible to regret this, because, although these tales of Arcadia and Silistria were full of sweetness and tender beauty, they were foreign to our native habit of mind, and their prevalence might have doomed us to some such tradition of artificial poetry as the example of Petrarch so long inflicted on Italian literature. The lyrics of Greene show a sense of colour that recalls the masters of Italian painting in the century that preceded him, and it was certainly in the art of the south of Europe that he formed his favourite conception of the brown shepherd and rosy nymph reclining in a whispering boscage of green shadow, to whom appears in vision 'the God that hateth sleep, Clad in armour all of fire, Hand in hand with Queen Desire.' His employment of metre and rhythm were in unison with this golden style of imagery. His metres are very various, and are usually in direct analogy with the theme in hand. Doron glorifies Samela in a stanza that sounds like the tramp of a conquering army, while Menaphon laments the precarious and volatile nature of love in lines that rise and fall with the rush of a swallow's flight. Towards the end of his life Greene lost something of this metrical elasticity, and adopted for most of his ideas a sober sixline stanza; his only long poem, A Maiden's Dream, is written in rime-royal. It is not easy to say much of the shorter pieces of Greene which is not also true of all the best verses of the early Elizabethan period. He is the type of that warm brood of poetic youth that still sings in chorus from the dells of England's Helicon, or the Paradise of Princely Pleasures. Life and the whole world of youthful pleasures attract him with their delight, and he hastens to clothe himself in a gay silken doublet, and to throw away his forefather's Puritan coat of hodden gray. But anything more specific and definite than this it would scarcely be safe to say. Greene has not Lodge's individuality of style, nor does he approach his finest flights, but he is more nearly allied to him than to any other of his contemporaries. It will probably seem to a careful reader that his ordinary level of writing was sustained at a higher point than Lodge's. In his rapid passages of octosyllabic verse Greene sometimes comes very close to Barnefield, and, through that mysterious and exquisite poet, to the juvenile manner of Shakespeare, with whom, as is well known, he cultivated a lively spirit of rivalry. But the most curious and notable thing, after all, about Greene's poetry is that, in all its sylvan sweetness, it should have proceeded from the lawless bully, whose ruffled hair and long red beard became a beacon and terror to all good citizens, till in the midst of his 'villainous cogging and foisting,' and all his rascally sleights, he was carried off in the thirty-second year of his life by a surfeit of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings. Upon the poor dishonoured head of this strange genius, the wretched woman who was with him when he died set a garland of bay-leaves, in a happy prescience of the tenderness with which posterity would pardon all his sins for the sake of his pure and beautiful verses. EDMUND W. GOSSE. SEPHESTIA'S SONG TO HER CHILD. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee; Father's sorrow, father's joy; Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, Father's sorrow, father's joy. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. The wanton smiled, father wept, Mother cried, baby leapt ; More he crowed, more we cried, He must go, he must kiss Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. SAMELA. Like to Diana in her summer weed, Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye, Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed, As fair Aurora in her morning grey, Decked with the ruddy glister of her love, Like lovely Thetis on a calmèd day, When as her brightness Neptune's fancy move, Shines fair Samela; Her tresses gold, her eyes like glassy streams, Her teeth are pearl, the breasts are ivory Of fair Samela; Her cheeks, like rose and lily yield forth gleams, Her brow's bright arches framed of ebony; Thus fair Samela Passeth fair Venus in her bravest hue, And Juno in the show of majesty, For she's Samela, Pallas in wit; all three, if you well view, Yield to Samela. FAWNIA. Ah, were she pitiful as she is fair, Or but as mild as she is seeming so, Then were my hopes greater than my despair, Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand, That seems to melt even with the mildest touch, Then knew I where to seat me in a land, Under wide heavens, but yet [I know] not such. So as she shows, she seems the budding rose, Ah, when she sings, all music else be still, She comforts all the world, as doth the sun, Shine in my arms, and set thou in my breast! THE PALMER'S ODE IN 'NEVER TOO LATE.' Old Menalcas, on a day, As in field this shepherd lay, Once was young and full of glee. As I lay and kept my sheep, Clad in armour all of fire, With her face to feed mine eye; |