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THOMAS TUSSER, born in Essex about 1523, wrote an agricultural poem, called the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, which in simple verse gives a good picture of English peasant life at that day. He died about 1580.

ROBERT GREENE, one of Shakspere's predecessors in the dramatic art, was born at Norwich or Ipswich about 1560. Having received his education at Cambridge, he travelled in Italy and Spain, and on his return to London plunged deep into the lowest debauchery. From about 1584 his pen was busied in the production of plays and love-pamphlets, which soon made him very popular. A surfeit of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine threw him into a mortal sickness, during which he was supported by a poor shoemaker. His miserable and premature death took place in 1592. More than forty works are ascribed to his pen. He takes rank among our early English dramatists, next below the vigorous Marlowe.

ROBERT SOUTHWELL, whose short and suffering life began in 1560, was a native of St. Faiths in Norfolk. Educated at the English college of Douay, he entered the Society of Jesuits at sixteen. In 1584 he returned to England as a missionary, and there he

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laboured for eight years in secret, penal laws being then extreme. Arrested at last, he lay in prison for three years, and in 1595 was hanged at Tyburn tree. His poems, of which the longest are St. Peter's Complaint and Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears, being chiefly written in prison, have a tone of deep melancholy resignation.

SAMUEL DANIEL, born in 1562 near Taunton in Somersetshire, was a contemporary of Shakspere and Jonson. His principal poems are, A History of the Wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and a dialogue in defence of learning, styled Musophilus. His education was received at Oxford; he was afterwards tutor to Anne Clifford, who became Countess of Pembroke; and with other court preferments he held a post somewhat like that of our poetlaureate. His death took place in 1619 on a farm in his native shire. Shut in his garden-house in Old Street, St. Luke's, he gave up the best part of a quiet, studious life, to the composition of those graceful and pensive works, whose style obtained for him the name of “The well-languaged Daniel."

MICHAEL DRAYTON, author of the Polyolbion, is thought to have been born in Warwickshire about 1563, and to have begun life as a page. This threw him into the society of noble patrons, by whom his talents were soon recognised. The "Polyolbion," finished in 1622, takes a poetical ramble over England, collecting together, in thirty ponderous books, descriptions of scenery, wild country legends, antiquarian notes, and various other glearings from the land. In spite of an unhappy subject, the genius of a true poet shines out in many passages of this work. Among Drayton's other works are historical poems entitled the Baron's Wars and England's Heroical Epistles, and an exquisitely comical fairy piece called Nymphidia. Dying in 1631, he found a tomb in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE merits somewhat longer notice than any other of our earliest dramatists, for it was he who prepared the way for the mighty creations of Shakspere, by establishing the use of a lofty and polished blank-verse in our English plays. Born at Canterbury in 1563-4, he passed to Cambridge, where he

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THE PLAYS OF MARLOWE.

graduated as M.A. in 1587. Like some other wild-living college men of that day, he took to the stage as a means of earning his daily bread, and, what perhaps he valued more, of paying his daily tavern-bill. The riotous, licentious life of this gifted man, came to a sad and speedy end. He had barely reached the age of thirty when he died, the victim of a low pot-house scuffle. A servingman, whom he was struggling to stab, seizing his wrist, turned the point of his own dagger upon himself. It pierced through his eye to the brain, and he died of the wound not long afterwards.

Marlowe's first great play, Tamburlaine the Great, is thought to have been brought out while the author's name was still on the Cambridge books. Then followed the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, in which noble justice is done to the weird story that haunts the memory of the great printer of Mayence. The Jew of Malta, and Edward II., an historical drama, are the chief remaining works of Marlowe. The first of these probably suggested Shakspere's Shylock, while the second may have turned the pen of our greatest dramatist into the field of English history. Though much disfigured with bombastic rant, the style of Marlowe, when uplifted by a great theme, often reaches a grandeur and a power to which few poets attain.

SIR HENRY WOTTON, a gentleman of Kent, born there at Bocton Hall in 1568, may be named among the poets of his time. He was ambassador at Venice, and afterwards Provost of Eton-the friend of Izaak Walton, and an early discoverer of Milton's transcendent merit. The Reliquia Wottoniana were published in 1651, twelve years after the author's death.

JOHN DONNE, Dean of St. Paul's, was born in London in 1573. He deserves remembrance as a very learned man, who began the list of what critics call the Metaphysical poets. Beneath the artificial incrustations which characterize this school, Donne displays a fine vein of poetic feeling. He is also noted in our literary history as the first writer of satire in rhyming couplets. Upon his death in 1631 his body was buried in Westminster Abbey.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER united their high

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talents in the production of fifty-two plays. In this dramatic partnership Beaumont probably followed the bent of his mind by writing chiefly tragedy. Fletcher, a lighter and more sunny spirit, was fonder of the comic muse. Beaumont, the son of a judge, was born in Leicestershire in 1586; he studied at Oxford and the Inner Temple, but was cut off in the bloom of manhood in 1615. Fletcher, a bishop's son, was born in 1576, and died of the plague in 1625. The works of these men were very popular in their own day, even more so than those of Shakspere and Jonson. They have about them an elegance, a spirit, and a light amusing wit, reflecting the gay sprightliness of the upper classes to which their authors belonged; but they are also deeply stained with that viciousness of thought and speech which then prevailed in even the highest circles of English society.

GILES and PHINEAS FLETCHER were cousins of the dramatist. Phineas, who was Rector of Hilgay in Norfolk, lived from 1584 to 1650. Giles, who was Rector of Alderton in Suffolk, was the younger; but the dates of his birth and death are uncertain. The Purple Island of Phineas is a poem descriptive of the human body with its rivers of blood, and the human mind, of which Intellect is prince. From the pen of Giles came Christ's Victory and Triumph, a sacred poem—a work of much higher merit as a whole.

PHILIP MASSINGER, a great dramatist of his day, was born about 1584. Of his life we know absolutely nothing, but that he spent a year or two at Oxford; wrote plays for the London theatres after 1604; like many of his theatrical brethren found his money sometimes running low; and one morning in 1640 was found dead in his bed at Southwark. Eighteen of his plays have lived; but only one, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, is now brought upon the stage. Sir Giles Overreach, a greedy, crafty money-getter, is the great character of this powerful drama. A calm and dignified style, with little passionate fire, characterizes the pen of Massinger.

WILLIAM DRUMMOND of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, born in 1585, was the finest Scottish poet of his day. Living by the romantic Esk, he caught a deeper inspiration from its beauty.

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DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

Though not a poet-laureate by appointment, he had all the feelings of one, and lavishly poured forth his sweet verses in praise of royalty. The Flowers of Zion, Tears on the Death of Moeliades (Prince Henry), The River of Forth Feasting, and his Sonnets, are his chief poetical works. Ben Jonson paid him a visit at Hawthornden, and the Scottish poet has been blamed for making notes, not always complimentary, of his rough guest's habits and character. These notes, however, he did not publish himself. Drummond died in 1649.

JOHN FORD, a Devonshire man, born in 1586, was another of the brilliant dramatic brotherhood adorning this period. Deep tragedy was Ford's excellence. Uniting dramatic authorship with his practice as a lawyer, he contrived to avoid those abysses of debt and drink in which many brightening stars of the time quenched their young lustre. Hallam says that Ford has "the power over tears;" but his themes are often so revolting, that compassion freezes into disgust. Three of his tragedies are the Brother and Sister, Love's Sacrifice, and The Broken Heart. He wrote also an historical play, Perkin Warbeck. Ford died about 1639.

THOMAS CAREW, born in 1589, of an ancient Gloucestershire family, was one of the brilliant courtier poets who clustered round the throne of the first Charles. His lyrics are, on the whole, graceful and flowing, though often deeply tainted with immorality and irreligion. The masque, Calum Britannicum, is a work from his pen produced by order of the king. The thoughtless gaiety and license of his life cost him many bitter tears, as he lay in 1639 upon his death-bed.

WILLIAM BROWNE, born in 1590, was a native of Tavistock in Devonshire. He wrote pastoral poetry, taking his inspiration from Spenser. His life was chiefly spent in two noble families, those of Caernarvon and Pembrcke. Britannia's Pastorals is the name of his chief work. It is rich in landscape painting, but utterly deficient in the display of character. Browne died in 1645 at Ottery-St-Mary in his native shire.

ROBERT HERRICK, poet and divine, was perhaps the sweetest of the lyrists who sang in the seventeenth century. Born in Cheap

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