undergrowth of English literature, as if in a single tropical night, burst into wave after wave of sudden blossom, produced so much and developed so rapidly that the closest study is needed to detect the stages of poetic progress.

. Heywood was not one of those poets on whom the gaze of all critics turns, as to a star whose beams lend themselves to infinite analysis; it is easy enough to divide the clear rays in his one pencil of light. He is a poet who will never, in future, want his friends, but who will scarcely claim one lover. It is not possible to be enthusiastic over the memory of a gossip so cheerful, garrulous, and superficial as this haunter of the Strand and the Exchange. He has a thousand entertaining things to tell us about the shops and the shop-girls; about the handsome young gallants, and the shocking way in which they waste their money; about the affectations of citizen fathers, and the tempers of citizen mothers. He is the most confirmed button-holer of our poetical acquaintance; and if he were only a little more monotonous, he would be universally voted a bore. Somehow or other, he has a little group of listeners always around him; it is not easy to drag one's self away till his stories are finished. His voice trembles as he tells us the strangest, saddest tale of how this or that poor girl came to shame and sorrow-of how such a noble gentleman, whom we must have often seen in the streets, lost all his estate, and died in want; and though there is nothing new in what he tells us, and though he hurries with characteristic timidity over every embarrassing or painful detail, we cannot help paying his loquacity the tribute of our laughter and our tears.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1894, The Jacobean Poets, pp. 117, 122.

Facile and most productive of dramatists, visited at moments by the golden touch of lyric inspiration.-SCHELLING,

FELIX E., 1895, A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics, p. xxix.

As a historical or mythological playwright, working on material derived from classic legends or from English annals, he shows signs now and then, as occasion offers, of the sweet tempered manliness, the noble kindliness, which won the heart of Lamb something too there is in these plays of his pathos, and something of his humour: but if this were all we had of him we should know comparatively little of what we now most prize in him. this we find most in the plays dealing with English life in his own day but there is more of it in his romantic tragicomedies than in his chronicle histories or his legendary compilations and variations on the antique. He is Eng

Of

lish of the English in his quiet, frank, spontaneous expression, suppression is no longer either possible or proper, of all noble and gentle and natural emotion. . . . His prose, if never to be called masterly, may generally be called good and pure: its occasional pedantries and pretentions are rather signs of the century than faults of the author and he can tell a story, especially a short story, as well if not better than many a better-known writer. I fear, however, that it is not the poetical quality of his undramatic verse which can ever be said to make it worth reading: it is, as far as I know, of the very homeliest homespun ever turned out by the very humblest of workmen. His poetry, it would be pretty safe to wager, must be looked for exclusively in his plays: but there, if not remarkable for depth or height of imagination or of passion, it will be found. memorable for unsurpassed excellence of unpretentious elevation in treatment of character.-SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1895, The Plays of Thomas Heywood, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 38, pp. 397, 402, 410.

hath in a jesting way, in some of his Books, delivered much Smart-Truth of this present times.-FULLER, THOMAS, 1662, Worthies of England, ed. Nichols, vol. II, p. 344.

The celebrated Nathaniel Ward, whose wit made him known to more Englands than one.-MATHER, Cotton, 1702, Magnalia Christi Americana.

This work is in its manner one of the most quaint and pedantick of a period. when quaintness and pedantry were the fashion; and in its principles one of the most violent and enthusiastick of an age when violence and enthusiasm were almost universal. . . . This book had several editions in England and in this country; it is now scarce, and costs in England about thirty shillings.-TUDOR, WILLIAM, 1815, North American Review.

The most quaint and far fetched in vigorous expression of the early political and religious tracts generated in New England, is that piece of pedantic growling at toleration, and pungent advice to British Royalty, inclosing a satire on the fashionable ladies of the day, the production of Nathaniel Ward, Pastor of the Church at Ipswich, which is entitled the "Simple Cobler of Agawam."-DUYCKINCK, EVERT A. AND GEORGE L., 1855-65-75, Cyclopœdia of American Literature, ed. Simons, vol. I, p. 23.

It is a tremendous partisan pamphlet, intensely vital even yet, full of fire, wit, whim, eloquence, sarcasm, invective, patriotism, bigotry. One would have to search long among the rubbish of books. thrown forth to the public during those hot and teeming days, to find one more authentically representing the stir, the earnestness, the intolerance, the hope, and the wrath of the times than does this book. TYLER, MOSES COIT, 1878, A History of American Literature, 1607-1676, vol. I, p. 230.

This early New England Sartor Resartus spoke freely that which he thought, and satirized sharply those thoughts, words, and deeds, in Old and New England, which he deemed harmful. He was not always polished, temperate, consistent, fair, or even funny; but he contrived to say some things effectively and nearly all things plainly, notwithstanding a cumbrous, punning, and pedantic style. He was a pseudo Hans Sachs in prose, talking from his cobbler's bench, and trying to mend manners and morals. This literary device, however, proved rather burdensome, and was not constantly kept in mind. Ward felt that he was writing in earthquaking times, and he outspoke as a warning guide and prophet. A theoretical believer in religious and political freedom, he was as much afraid of anarchy and free-thought as he was of priestcraft and oppression. He wanted to whip others, while saving his own back. The moral which the Anglican drew from the book must have been: See what your Puritanism amounts to! Ward's moral was: Crush dissent from our dissent; make our social laws still more rigid. He goes so far, indeed, that we half believe the whole thing a reductio ad absurdum, written in the interests of episcopacy and monarchy. "I am not tolerant," he seems to shout to his English accusers; "I am as anxious to get rid of those who disagree with me, -RICHARDas you are to get rid of me. SON, CHARLES F., 1887, American Literature, 1607-1885, vol. 1, p. 101.

This pungent satire, published at London in 1647, inveighs, sometimes with a caustic drollery, sometimes with a right manly vehemence, against the principle of religious toleration, the vanities of womankind, and the state of contemporary English politics.-BATES, KATHARINE LEE, 1897, American Literature, p. 28.

GENERAL

CORIDON: I will sing a song, if anybody will sing another; else, to be plain with you, I will sing none: I am none of those that sing for meat, but for company: I say, "Tis merry in hall, when men sing all."

PISCATOR: I'll promise you I'll sing a song that was lately made at my request, by Mr. William Basse, one that hath made the choice songs of the Hunter in his Career, and of Tom of Bedlam, and many others of note; and this that I will sing is in praise of angling.-WALTON, ISAAC, 1653, The Complete Angler, ch.

V.

Basse's poetry is characterised by a pleasant homeliness of language and versification and by an enthusiastic love of country life. It derives an historical interest from Izaak Walton's honourable mention of it, and from the homage paid to Shakespeare by its author. The long interval of fifty-one years between the production of the first and last poems bearing Basse's signature has led Mr. J. P. Collier to conjecture that there were two poets of the same name, and he attributes to an elder William Basse the works published in 1602, and to a younger William Basse all those published later. The internal evidence offered by the poems fails, however, to support this conclusion.-LEE, SIDNEY, 1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. III, p 374.

The fate of Basse is perhaps one of the most pathetic, paradoxically speaking, in the history of oblivion. Forgotten poets, or rather poets remembered by a very few, are plentiful. The number of quite forgotten poets it is obviously impossible to estimate. Evidently Basse does not belong to those, else we should not be speaking of him. But he is as near to them as a man may well be. Α breath nearer and he had tumbled over into the pitchy darkness. His singularity is this, that whereas the nearly forgotten poet was usually somewhat of a figure in his own day, and had at least the pleasure of seeing his name on a title-page, Basse, though occasionally referred to by his contemporaries, and evidently of some account amongst them, was certainly not a figure, and his best work, that which he had so carefully filed and polished, has lain in manuscript for two hundred and forty

years. So had they gone on lying had it. not occurred to Messrs. Ellis and Elvey, who possess the manuscripts, to ask Mr. Warwick Bond to edit them, and to publish them in the sumptuous volume before me. It was a sweet, charitable act. Poor Basse! if he could only know. would he exclaim, with Herrick (whom he probably lived long enough to read), "Like to a bride come forth my book at last!" Of course, his publishers will have sent him a copy!-LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD, 1893-95, Retrospective Reviews, vol. 1, p.

256.

How

Basse, though an elaborate is a very tame and tedious rhymer, whose vein of Spenserian richness soon wore out, and left nothing but an awkward and voluble affectation behind it.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1894, The Jacobean Poets, p. 157.

On the whole, however, it is impossible to regard him as anything but a diluted Spenserian. His flat pastoral fertility is more curious than edifying, and prompts the suspicion that there must have been just a touch of friendly log-rolling about Walton's praise of his lyric gift, since it is not greatly conspicuous in the pair of pieces mentioned, neither of which excels the "Angler's Song."-DOBSON AUSTIN, 1894, Old English Songs, Introduction, p.

xii.

One of the feebler of Spenser's imitators, published "Three Pastoral Elegies. of Anander, Anetor, and Muridella" (1602), and left at his death the manuscript of nine other "Eclogues."

Basse is perhaps better known as the author of an "Elegy" on Shakespeare, and of an "Angler's Song," quoted in Walton's "Compleat Angler."-CHAMBERS, EDMUND K., 1895, English Pastorals, p. 178.

His initials, "W. B.," have led to some confusion with Browne, whose friend he was, to whose "Pastorals" he wrote commendatory verses, and whom he a good deal resembles in his own poems of the same kind, his "Urania," his "Polyhymnia" (only surviving in fragments), and other pieces. But he is only a curiosity, and a very weak poet, though it may be a little stronger than any other outsider of the Browne-Wither group, Christopher Brooke, whose poems have also been printed.SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 363.