equal to that which Robert Greene has given of his own. We gather it from his prose tales and autobiographical papers, and from the address which he wrote on his deathbed to Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele. After leaving Cambridge he tells us that he travelled through Spain and Italy with some congenial comrades, "consuming the flower of his youth, and seeing and practising such villany as is abominable to declare." When he returned to England he took up his residence in London with people of bad character, and learned the tricks of thieves and sharpers. These he afterwards exposed in a curious pamphlet, called A Notable Discovery of Coosnage. "In London," he says, "I was drowned in pride. Gluttony with drunkenness was my only delight. Young in years, though old in wickedness, I became an author of plays, and a penner of love pamphlets." In the midst of the confession of these faults he describes the gnawing of his conscience and the dread of damnation which a sermon that he heard impressed upon his mind. When he tried to repent, his old companions taunted him and lured him back to dissipation. He was deserted by his virtuous friends and became a blasphemer of God. In this narrative we see the man himself openly disclosed to us in the strength of his passions and the weakness of his will, in his dread of judgment, and his impotence to lead a better life. Suddenly, under the influence of nobler aspirations, he marries a woman of good family and gentle breeding. But the old devil returns and persuades him to desert his wife, and squander her fortune among vagabonds and gamblers. A sister of a condemned felon bears him a son at this period of his life, whom he names Infortunatus." Yet even in this utter degradation, noble speeches, sweet songs of pastoral life, pathetic tales of love and innocence, and delicate descriptions of natural beauty, flow from his pen. His soul is like a battlefield in which the good and evil strive for mastery, or like a hideous ruin overgrown with weeds, but visited by gleams of heavenly sunshine. The last act of Greene's life is the most piteous of all. We find him alone, attended only by a poor cordwainer's wife, unable from the lack of clothes to leave his bed, and dying of a surfeit. None of his boon companions visit him; but he remembers their bad lives, and warns them passionately to flee the wrath which has descended on his head. We possess this letter to his friends, and also one in which he addressed his injured wife. When Greene was dead, his landlady who had nursed him, and to whom he owed ten pounds, placed a wreath of bays upon his head and buried him. His funeral cost her four shillings for his winding-sheet, and six shillings and fourpence for the burial dues. She sold his sword and doublet for three shillings.

Such were the men who wrote the multitude of plays of which we have a scanty remnant, men with whom Shakspeare lived and thought and worked, who knew him familiarly, who classed him with Heywood and Decker, who praised him for "his right happy and copious industry," or who, like Ben Jonson, wished that he had learned to decimate his lines. When we reflect upon their lives, we are stirred with wonder at the vast activity of their intellect. They thought and felt with

energy. They used their vigour in rivalry with one another and in most laborious studies. They squandered their health on pleasures of the most exciting kind. Yet those who were not cut off by disease lived long and never idle lives. The force of their brains must have been prodigious. It must be remembered that men had but just turned their attention to literary pursuits, and that the intellects of previous generations had not been debilitated by continual studies or a sedentary life. On the contrary, the dramatists were descended from ancestors who led an animal existence, breeding strong passions during the wars of many centuries, and storing up physical energy in agricultural and other outof-door pursuits. Nor must it be supposed that all of them were so indigent and profligate as those we have described. Out of the thirty eminent dramatists and the minor ones who during more than half a century wrote for the eleven theatres of London, many were men of good repute, and some were distinguished by their noble birth. Beaumont So did Davenant and and Fletcher both sprang from gentle families.

Killigrew. Ford was a respectable lawyer, and Webster a grave and thoughtful man. Lodge became an eminent physician. Ben Jonson, though poor and eccentric in his habits, won the respect of all classes, and was a friend of gentlemen and scholars. Chapman is represented to us as a literary courtier of the most refined description. These men among themselves enjoyed the charms of thoroughly congenial society. They met at the Mermaid or some other tavern, under the dictatorship of Jonson, conversed, and called each other by familiar names. Heywood, in some genial verses, has enumerated all the Toms and Jacks, the Kits and Franks and Robins, of these friendly meetings. He says,

Mellifluous Shakspeare, whose enchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will;
And famous Jonson, though his learned pen
Be dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.

It may readily be understood that jealousies sprang up between them. The quarrels of Jonson and Marston are well known. But they seem to have been amicably adjusted, and on the appearance of some new play by one of the society, the other poets greeted it with commendatory verses. It is remarkable that though Shakspeare received many of these marks of admiration, not a single line of praise conferred by him upon a brother bard has been preserved to us. Still, notwithstanding this brighter aspect of theatrical society, the tone of the stage was determined by men like Greene and Marlowe; nor can we fail to sympathize to some extent with the furious onslaught made by Prynne and other puritans upon their evil lives and influence. It is to be regretted that in the zeal of these reformers, many works of English genius have been lost irretrievably.

Notwithstanding the great powers of our dramatists, the stage could not have been developed without an audience eager in its interests, intelligent in its sympathy with the authors, and capable of stimulating them in their exertions. The public to which they appealed was the

whole English nation, from Elizabeth down to the lowest ragamuffin of the streets. In the same wooden theatres sat lords and ladies, citizens and common porters, sailors, pickpockets, and country folk. The houses were of two kinds, pablic and private, the difference between them being that the former were larger and more rude, being only partly covered in by a thatched shed or "heaven," and partly open to the air, while the latter were small and entirely enclosed. By paying a penny you were admitted to the yard, an open space in the centre of the house, where people stood and walked about. Only the lower classes frequented this part of the theatre, whence came the name of "groundling." Galleries and private boxes, which they also called " rooms," were reserved for families who paid a little more. But the most distinguished seat of all was on the stage itself, where young men sat and showed their finery, and smoked, and laughed, and mocked the actors. They were provided for a shilling with three-legged stools, or else they lay upon their cloaks. Often these gallants disturbed the play so much that the groundlings in the yard would pelt them with stones and oranges, and not unfrequently they came to blows. Or perhaps the actors were at fault, and then the people cried out, and got upon the boards and beat them off, or pulled the woodwork of the theatre about their ears. Before the curtain rose the audience ate and drank, flirted and played at cards, groaned and mewed like cats, and made a hubbub far worse than one may hear at Astley's now-a-days. The exhibitions took place always in the afternoon. The smaller covered theatres were illuminated by torches and candles. The larger houses needed no artificial light. Wet or fine, the audience did not care. They stood up happy in hot sun or drenching rain upon the mud-floor of the yard, to gaze upon the state of Tamburlaine, or to listen to the soliloquies of Hamlet. All the theatres were situated in low parts of the city near the Thames. They were frequently burned down and easily rebuilt, resembling nothing better than the sheds and awnings of a country circus. It is clear from this description how genuine must have been the inspiration of poets who could write for such a stage, and how strong were the interests of an audience who could tolerate its inconvenience and understand its aims.

In tracing the circumstances under which our theatre was developed, it has been impossible to take more than a rapid and passing glance at the works of those great dramatic poets who surrounded Shakspeare, and who with him exerted so powerful an influence over the formation of our language and our literature. We are too apt to forget that any authors held the stage except him whom England and the world has idolized. This, however, is an error of our indolence. In his lifetime he seemed one among many, pre-eminent it is true, but as a colleague rather than as a king. Even now, in looking back upon the period, we can trace the brilliancy of many planets hardly inferior to the sun whose name was Shakspeare.

any

How We Did Mont Blang.

THE ascent of Mont Blanc is usually called a very cockney affair. Moreover, it has been talked about, and written about, and lectured about, till one might suppose that every part of the mountain, from the Hotel in Chamonix to the summit of the Calotte, was as well known to the British public as the hills which stand about London. But one member, at least, of the British public, had always found it impossible to make out, from of the numerous histories of ascents, what there really was of difficulty, and what of danger, in reaching the highest point of Europe; and with the view of satisfying himself on this question he determined upon trying to accomplish the task. The training gone through in preparation for the struggle amounted to two days on a sofa in Geneva, with threatenings of bilious fever, and incessant attention to a leg which medical skill said might be patched up sufficiently for ordinary walking-these being the results of many hot, fatiguing days among the lower mountains, and corresponding nights of unsuccessful skirmishing with the population of Continental beds.

Call this ill-trained person, ignorant of glaciers, G., and his companion, a young fellow of seventeen, who had spent a fortnight in creditable ice excursions, H. The guide was a Zermatt man, whom they had taken with them to Chamonix, and when P. P. are given as his initials any connoisseur of high mountains will know that a better guide could not have been found. As a cheerful practical proof of the absence of danger in the ascent, there arrived simultaneously at Chamonix the complete leg and foot of one of the party lost in 1820, which had been found that afternoon on the Glacier des Boissons, and was exhibited to the new arrivals before burial.

It had been intended to take one porter from Chamonix to the sleeping place on the Grands Mulets, to carry the necessary provisions, But and another to accompany the party to the summit as under-guide. when they applied at the bureau for a porter, the chef-guide proved to G. with much politeness, from the printed regulations, that it was impossible to attempt the ascent without one guide and one porter for each monsieur. The règlement declares that this number is necessary for courses dangereuses. G. claimed exemption on the ground that, as no one could call the Mont Blanc a dangerous course, the rule must have been But when politeness and made for the Breven or the Mauvais Pas. reason have failed with a Frenchman, chaff is scarcely likely to succeed, and the chef merely bowed' stiffly, and remarked that if monsieur would pardon him, the Mont Blanc was the most dangerous of the many courses

dangereuses of the règlement, and he could not possibly supply less than three men to assist P, P.

P. P. being a Swiss, and therefore impatient of interference with the liberty of mankind, agreed with the Herrs that under no circumstances would they submit, after he had vainly suggested that as one of the members of the Alpine Club had the same name as G., the difficulty might be evaded, for members of that Club can take what number of guides they choose. When he had listened to a homily on the immorality of his suggestion, he made off into the village, and by good fortune found a Courmayeur man, who was on the point of returning home. This man was of course not bound by the laws of the place respecting guides and porters for Mont Blanc, and he agreed to make a fourth to the summit, and to carry his share of food and night-clothing to the Grands Mulets; but the chef-guide heard of the arrangement in some roundabout way, and illegally captured and concealed the Courmayeur man, and so reduced the party to their elements again. Fortune did not therefore cease to smile upon their efforts, for P. P. discovered a master-shoemaker who was anxious to make the ascent, and would be only too glad to accompany the party pour son plaisir, and carry half the things. Of course he was to be paid something, privately, but for all public purposes he was a gentleman at large, and the chef-guide dared not meddle with him. And thus they were at length complete, one guide, two Herrs, and one mastershoemaker.

The amount of food to be carried may be imagined from the following copy of the bill :

Ferdinand Eisenkraemer, of the Hôtel Royal, possesses, for three months in the year, a secretary, who manages all these matters. The guide of the party meditating an ascent goes to the bureau of this gentleman, and orders provisions for Mont Blanc for so many persons, and the secretary puts up what he thinks proper. It is evident, also, that he charges what he thinks proper. The present secretary is a schoolmaster, whose pupils are handed over to his wife for the Chamonix season, and let us hope that she inculcates those lessons of moderation and honesty which her husband is meanwhile putting in practice. He is a man of friendly manner, and of much imagination, which last has developed itself in a new table of