burlaine Shakespeare had in his eye in the burlesque of Pistol was a serious expression according to the author's notions of art: we reconcile it with Peele's character only by supposing it to have been an audacious experiment in rivalry of the heroics of Tamburlaine. It seems to have succeeded. The incident burlesqued in "Feed and grow fat, my fair Calipolis," was specially famous. The Moor, Muly Mahamet, with his wife Calipolis and his son, are fleeing before the army of Abdelmelec, when Calipolis grows faint from hunger. Muly rushes off the stage shouting "Famine shall pine to death, and thou shalt live;" and re-enters with a piece of flesh upon his sword— "Hold thee, Calipolis, feed, and faint no more; Meat of a princess, for a princess meet: Feed, then, and faint not, fair Calipolis; Jove's stately bird with wide-commanding wings This incident struck the popular fancy very much like Tamburlaine's entrance in a car of gold drawn by two kings with bits in their mouths; and offered a bright mark for Shakespeare's ridicule. Pistol's strong language about the Furies, Pluto's damned lake, Erebus, and tortures vile also, seems to be founded on passages in the same play. In the explanation of the dumb-show before Act I. we find the following: "Till Nemesis, high mistress of revenge, That with her scourge keeps all the world in awe, In the dumb-show before Act II. Nemesis again uses her drum, and "'Larums aloud into Alecto's ears, And with her thundering wakes whereas they lie In Act I. Muly Mahamet Seth exclaims "Sheath not your swords, soldiers of Amurath, Muly Mahamet himself ends off Act IV. with an apostrophe to the Furies, and a mad frenzy of imprecation : "You bastards of the Night and Erebus, Fiends, Furies, hags that fight in beds of steel, And lastly for revenge, for deep revenge, Whereof thou goddess and deviser art, Damned let him be, damned, and condemned to bear We see in these passages where Pistol may have caught his trick of repeating emphatic words. The facetious Peele in all likelihood piled up these agonies for popular effect with hardly less sense of their ludicrous extravagance than Shakespeare himself. In strange contrast to these mad explosions are the rich fancy and tender feeling of "David and Bethsabe" and the delicate airy wit of "The Arraignment of Paris." Campbell has quoted the finest passage in "David and Bethsabe," but the following is not much inferior. It is David's exclamation at the sight of Bethsabe approaching in obedience to his summons :— "Now comes my lover tripping like the roe, And with their murmur summon easeful sleep The following is also a sweet picture, although, perhaps, the sweetness is too surfeiting :— "The time of year is pleasant for your grace, And cast sweet balm upon his kingly head.” The sprightly art of the "Arraignment " would seem but stale in a quotation. The most elaborate joke in it seems intended to ridicule the amorous pining of Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calendar.' Colin is introduced bewailing the cruelty of Love, and commiserated by his friends Hobinol, Diggon, and Thenot shortly afterwards his hearse is brought in, and shepherds sing welladay over his untimely death. His sweetheart Thestylis woos and is rejected by a "foul crooked churl." Our knowledge of the personal jealousies and friendships of the period is imperfect and perplexing; but it is probable that the "Palin" whom Spenser mentions in Colin Clout as "envying at his rustic quill" was George Peele, and that this was the expression of the envy. V. THOMAS NASH (1558-1600?). Marlowe's unfinished tragedy of "Dido" was completed by Thomas Nash; and though this clever writer is memorable chiefly as a prose satirist, yet his name will always be remembered most naturally in connection with his poetical associates, Greene, Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele. Nash was educated at Cambridge, which he seems to have left in some disgrace, and his first essay in print was the dashing critical preface to Greene's "Menaphon" in 1587. A clever harumscarum fellow, with a quick sense of the ludicrous, and an unsparing tongue, he found admirable scope for his powers in replying to the Martin Marprelate tracts, which he did in some four or five different pamphlets in and about the year 1589. In the same year he opened up a vein of general prose satire in his 'Anatomy of Absurdity,' a general attack on whatever struck him as ridiculous in contemporary literature and manners-ranging consequently within a wide circle. In 1592 he continued his exercitations in this vein with 'Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil.' But meantime he had become involved in a quarrel with Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, and his brothers, of which a full account is given in D'Israeli's 'Quarrels of Authors.' The original cause of Nash's ire seems to have been the offensive conceit of Richard Harvey, who in the Marprelate controversy had tried "to play Jack of both sides," sneering at all parties to the dispute, and had repeated the offence in a subsequent publication, in which he went the length of terming all poets and writers about London "piperly make-plays and make-baits." Nash was thoroughly in his element in taking up such a taunt. Throughout the various pamphlets of the celebrated logomachy, he seems never to lose for a moment his feeling of complete and easy mastery over his opponent, writing always with good-humoured assurance of victory, and with the unsparing derision of one who fears no retort. In the opening of his 'Strange News,' a reply to Harvey's attack on the deceased Greene, he bids the Lord have mercy on poor Gabriel, for he is fallen into hands that will plague. him. Harvey's poetical pretensions, and, above all, his hexameters, are ridiculed in this pamphlet with wonderful spirit and direct freshness and copiousness of language. It confirms Nash's protestations that the quarrel was none of his seeking, to find him in his 'Christ's Tears over Jerusalem,' a religious and moral performance strangely different from the writer's previous effusions, making certain overtures towards reconciliation. These overtures being rejected, he returned with redoubled incisiveness to his former ways of warfare, which continued till the mouths of the antagonists were shut by the intervention of the scandalised Government. Nash was imprisoned in 1597 for his share in a play called the "Isle of Dogs," which has not been preserved. "Summer's Last Will and Testament" is the only play of his that has come down to us. It is of the nature of a Masque, in which the seasons are the prominent figures; was written for representation on the private stage of some nobleman, whose name is unknown, and was acted in 1592, though not published till 1600. On the whole it is a somewhat dull production, as the author himself seems to have felt. Frantic efforts are made to say witty and pretty things about the seasons, and to deliver striking saws about miscellaneous objects, dogs and drunkards, bookish theorists, and misanthropists. The best part of it is the song quoted in Palgrave's Treasury. Nash has no marked dramatic talent. His forte lay in what Mr Collier calls "humorous objurgation:" he throws himself into that vein with a sad want of continence, but with unflagging vivacity, and unfailing copiousness both of words and of conceptions. He tried also a tale-"Jack Wilton "—but did not succeed: he never is anything except when in the full swing of harumscarum raillery. VI. THOMAS KYD. (?) The author of "Jeronimo" (produced, in 1588) and its continuation "The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is mad again," belongs to the "robustious" school of rampant heroism. Ben Jonson's calling him the "sportive Kyd," is a joke. Kyd, however, possesses merits and a character of |