They were introduced by Edward Blount | preceding volumes.* Surveying the whole into the complete edition of 1632. With mass of songs presented to us in these regard to Tourneur, there is no reason to anthologies, we first observe the common suppose that he was incapable of writing note which marks them all out as the songs superior to those of Ford, and not product of one period, the outcome of one inferior to Webster's. The lyrisms in his national sensibility. The style throughblank verse are magnificently poignantly out is the style of that Renaissance movefantastic. ment which took hold of England in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and which spent its force before the restoration of the Stuarts. There is no mistaking the similarity of tone and accent in all the lyrics written during that memorable space of somewhat more than fifty years. They have a spontaneity, a bird-like freshness, an irrecoverable facility of singing, which has never been recaptured in the centuries which followed. This divine quality of careless inspiration they possess in common. But when we look closer, we find that the dramatic lyrics differ in important respects from those of the song. books. The latter are always more generic, vaguer, broader in their emotion. They were intended to be sung in every place where men and women met together for society and recreation. Consequently, their authors tuned them to what Browning called "the common chord," "the C major of this life." The songs of the dramatists, on the other hand, cannot easily be detached from their context, from the situations they were meant to accentuate. The playwrights wrote them, as I have attempted to prove, in order to give the highest value, to strike the keynote of their compositions. Perhaps we ought not to ascribe deliberate intention to the authors of these stage songs. But being penetrated with the dramatic situation, this forced them, consciously or unconsciously, to a special treatment of the lays they wrote for it. Therefore, the emotion expressed is specific, definite, connected with the particular movement and motive of the plays where they occur. It follows that the dramatic song is more intense, high-pitched, and thrilling, than the lyric meant for chamber music. There is more concentrated stuff of thought and passion directed to a single psychological moment in its poetry.

Two collections of dramatic lyrics have been published in this century. The first, called "Songs from the Dramatists," by Robert Bell, has long been out of print. The second, edited by Mr. A. H. Bullen, under the title of "Lyrics from Elizabethan Dramatists," bears the date of 1889. These books, both of which are valuable, have a somewhat different scope and diverse merits. Mr. Bell begins earlier, and ends later. His first entries are the five lyrics from "Ralph Roister Doister." His last are five songs from the comedies of Sheridan. Mr. Bullen starts with Lyly, and finishes with Jasper Mayne and Thomas Forde, contemporaries of Milton. Though Mr. Bell covers a larger ground, he is neither so complete nor so scholarly as Mr. Bullen. His anthology, delightful and useful as it is, bears the air of dilettante reading and caprice. Mr. Bullen is well-nigh exhaustive within the limits he has assigned to himself. He has also reproduced for the first time many interesting pieces which were known to few but specialists. I may mention, in particular, the lyrics of Thomas Nash, all of which are well worth study; of Peter Hausted, William Habington, and Richard Brome, whose charming spring ditty from "The Jolly Beggars was unaccountably omitted by Mr. Bell. I must here express my hope that, when Mr. Bullen issues a new edition of his book, he will incorporate those earlier pieces, which we find in Bell's anthology, adding perhaps the fresh and simple April song which opens the morality of "Lusty Juventus." No scholar in England is better fitted than Mr. Bullen to unlock all the treasures of Elizabethan dramatic literature, and to present a thoroughly complete collection of its lyrics.

This mention of Mr. Bullen's recent publication calls to mind the splendid services he rendered to English literature by his publication of two volumes of "Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books," and by his edition of the works of Dr. Thomas Campion. These three books present us with a body of lyrical poetry, which was written expressly for music, but which had no connection with the drama. His fourth book, "Lyrics from Elizabethan Dramatists," invites a comparison with the three

I do not wish to assert that this is invariably the case. Examples might be culled from the drama in which the song is only interpolated as a pleasing ditty. Examples, again, might be selected from Campion, in which the song seems to demand a dramatic setting. But, broadly

have called attention, are published by Mr. John C. All the books edited by Mr. Buller, to which I Nimmo.

speaking, I think that this distinction tius von Döllinger. I was on my way to holds good. If the distinction appears witness the decennial representation of the paradoxical, its validity can be tested by a "Oberammergau Passion Play," which comparative study of the two kinds of lyrics. Paradoxes at any rate have this value, that they suggest new points of view, and stimulate the critical faculty.

I have treated our romantic drama from the point of view of lyric poetry, and have tried to demonstrate its constant striving after lyrical expression in the handling of blank verse, and the culmination of that effort in the songs written to illustrate certain leading motives or decisive situa. tions of the action.

This position is confirmed when we pass from the Elizabethan to the Restoration playwrights. The comedy of the Restoration was essentially non-lyrical; and that is equally true of its tragedy. Even in Otway we do not discover the lyrical interbreathings which were so marked a feature of Elizabethan literature. Dryden gives us plenty of robust declamation and sonorous rhetoric; but the note of his drama is not poetical. As might be expected, the songs of this period are defective in poetic feeling and fancy. Some of Congreve's have an exquisite finish, a sparkling brilliancy; but their finish and their sparkle are those of a paste diamond. Dryden wrote rough, commonplace, and tawdry lyrics for the stage. I will quote a stanza from "The Spanish Friar," which deserves attention, not only because it illustrates the extraordinary want of charm in Dryden's stagesongs, but also because it first exemplified the metrical scheme which Swinburne adopted for his "Garden of Proserpine: "

was then very little known in England, and of which I had promised Mr. Delane a description for the Times. It was the year of the Vatican Council, and Dr. Döllinger was the foremost figure in the opposition to the dogma of Papal Infallibility, which was then in debate. For this reason, and also because of his immense learning and of his great personal charm (of which I had heard from friends of his), I was anxious to make his acquaintance. I chanced to mention my wish to Mr. Gladstone, who at once kindly offered me an introduction, and gave me, at the same time, an interesting_account of his first meeting with Dr. Döllinger twenty-five years previously. I called on Dr. Döllinger in company with a friend who bears a not very distinctively Welsh name. On greeting him, Dr. Döllinger said: "You are Welsh," and went off forthwith into a most interesting digression on the unsuspected traces of Keltic origin which still survive in the language and nomenclature of persons and places in England. His mind was a wonderful storehouse of knowledge on a vast variety of subjects, and the knowledge was so well digested and as sorted that it was ever at his command. He was a great linguist and an omnivorous reader in the literatures of Europe and America, as well as of ancient Greece and Rome. And his acquaintance with men was as various as his acquaintance with books. Hardly any man of note passed near Munich without calling - not always with an introduction on the great German theologian and scholar; and many made long journeys on purpose to see him. He was not a good correspondent; indeed, he could not have been. He was the recipient of an immense number of letters, from royalties downwards; but he never allowed his correspondence to interfere with his hours of study, and his letMr. Swinburne deserves credit for hav-ters therefore, though numerous in the ing perceived the capacities of this stanza, and for constructing the silk purse of his immortal poem out of such a veritable sow's ear.

Farewell, ungrateful traitor,

Farewell, my perjured swain! Let never injured creature

Believe a man again.

The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing:

But 'tis too short a blessing,

And love too long a pain.

From The Contemporary Review.
DR. VON DOLLINGER.
BY CANON MACCOLL.
IT was in the month of May, 1870, that
I first made the acquaintance of Dr. Igna-

aggregate, were sparse to individuals. He preferred to write in German, but wrote fluently in English, French, and Italian. He read Spanish with ease, but I do not know whether he wrote or spoke that language.

A man may be highly intellectual and wonderfully learned without being neces sarily a good talker. It is impossible to define a good talker, for the accomplishment is infinitely various. There are divers styles of good talking, each excellent in its way, and there are men who

excel in more styles than one, of whom the late Mr. Robert Browning may be given as an example. In general society his conversation was so light and sparkling, so full of anecdote and repartee and breezy fun, that admirers of his poetry who met him for the first time were sometimes grievously disappointed. They had pic tured to themselves a man of austere and dignified mien, who spoke like his poems, instead of which they met a very cheery, well dressed, old gentleman whose speech was by no means oracular, but was, on the contrary, an excellent specimen of good dinner talk. But Browning could talk in a very different strain when the opportunity presented itself. I remember a summer evening, two years ago, when, after retiring from the dinner-table, he started a discussion on the doctrine of evolution, from which the conversation passed to Plato's dialogues; and Browning's conversation was so brilliant and stimulating that the hours sped on without reckoning; and when we thought it was verging upon midnight we found that it was already the dawn of another day. Browning, so far from feeling tired, playfully proposed that we should continue the discussion till breakfast.

bishop took his place among the minority of the Council, but he yielded at last, and excommunicated Dr. Döllinger for not following his example. Yet I never heard Dr. Döllinger speak bitterly of him. On the contrary, he made excuses for him; urged that he had acted under pressure from Rome; pleaded that he had more piety than strength of character; and declared that he was bound to act as he did, or resign his see. To illustrate the archbishop's esprit exalté, which subordinated his judgment to his religious emotions, Dr. Döllinger one day told me the following anecdote, on the authority of Archbishop Scherr himself. When the archbishop received information from Rome that he was to be presented with the archi episcopal pallium on a given day, he immediately began to prepare himself for this great honor by devoting the interval to retirement and religious exercises. The pallium is generally, but not invariably, made by the nuns of one of the Roman convents from the wool of lambs kept on purpose - a fact which added to the honor of the gift. On the stated day, the archbishop's servant announced the arrival of the messenger with the pall. The archbishop expected a special envoy from To this class of talkers Dr. Döllinger the Vatican and a formal investiture sancbelonged. He seldom dined out; but he tified by the papal benediction, instead of once did me the bonor of dining with me which there walked into his presence a in the Four Seasons Hotel, Munich, to Jewish banker with a bundle under his meet some friends of both sexes, includ- arm, out of which he presently produced ing the present vicar of Leeds and Mrs. the pall with a bill for £200. Keenly as Talbot. He charmed the ladies, young Dr. Döllinger entered into the humor of and elderly, with the brightness and light- the story, he really told it as an illustraness of his conversation, and with his tion of the archbishop's simplicity of charfamiliarity with topics which they had acter, and by way of excusing his conduct supposed must have been beneath his no- in excommunicating himself. "To him," tice. He was full of humor, and I have he said, "the dogma presents no insupernever known a man who had a keener able difficulty, and he cannot understand sense of the ridiculous, or laughed more why it should present any to me. heartily. But there was no malice in his bows to authority, and cannot see that humor; like sheet-lightning, it irradiated authority has no more to do with historical without hurting the objects on which it facts than it has to do with mathematical played. I can confirm Mr. Gladstone's facts." He was always prone to make experience in affirming that I never heard excuses for the bishops who accepted the Dr. Döllinger speak an unkind word even dogma of infallibility—even for those of those whom he might reasonably have who had been among its most prominent regarded as his adversaries. Archbishop opponents at the Vatican Council. Scherr, of Munich, was a personal friend showed me once a letter from one of the of Dr. Döllinger, and was at first one of latter, in which the writer- a distinthe opponents of the dogma of infallibil-guished prelate - declared that he was in ity. At the railway station of Munich, sad perplexity. He had proclaimed the as he was starting to attend the Vatican dogma, he said, while still remaining in Council, he assured Dr. Döllinger that in the same mind in which he had opposed the event (which the archbishop thought it at the Council. "But what could I improbable) of the dogma being proposed in the Council, it should have his determined opposition. For a time the arch

He

He

do?" he asked. "Can one be in the Church and be out of communion with the pope? Yet can it be right to proclaim