tell that the old state barge which had conveyed so many Mayors to Westminster is now lying in Deptford Victualling Yard "waiting to be broken up for firewood." I take the following list of City Laureates from Daniel's Merrie England in the Olden Time : George Peele, Anthony Munday (who continued Stow's Survey of London), Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, John Squire, John Webster, Thomas Heywood, John Taylor (the water-poet-one of Ben Jonson's poetical sons), Edward Gayton and T. B. (the writer from whom I quote states that nothing is known of T. B. beyond the fact that he as well as Gayton were Commonwealth bards), John Tatham, Thomas Jordan, Matthew Taubman, and Elkanah Settle, whose chequered career included roaring as a dragon-"a dragon of green leather, of his own invention "-in a droll entitled St. George for England. Elkanah Settle did not fall into poverty owing to the lack of endeavour to retrieve his fortune, seemingly. "He was wont, when he published any party poem," says the author of The Origin of the English Drama, "to send copies round to all the chiefs of his party, accompanied with addresses in order to get pecuniary presents from them. Settle had latterly one standard elegy and epithalamium printed off with blanks which he filled up with the names of any considerable person who either died. or married, in order to extort money from them or their families." Dr. Young, in his epistle to Pope, makes reference to Settle's personification "inclosed in a case of green leather" as follows: Poor Elkanah, all other changes past, For bread, in Smithfield dragons hissed at last. The pageant for Lord Mayor's Day, 1711, was the last of the pamphlets describing the celebration which was printed as a separate publication. This pageant was never exhibited owing to the death of Prince George of Denmark. I learn from Hone's Ancient Mysteries that Sir Gilbert Heathcote was the last Lord Mayor who rode on horseback in the civic processions.1 The author of London Pageants points out that the modern successors of pageants are the transparencies exhibited on nights of illumination; for on November 12, 1740, the anniversary of Admiral Vernon's birthday, " there were bonfires and illuminations, and at Chancery Lane end was a pageant whereon was represented General Vernon and a Spaniard on his knees offering him a sword.” I will close this section of my Day-book, as the author above cited closes his volume, London Pageants, with the pious City motto Domine Dirige Nos. 1 This was in 1711. The last procession of gilded barges up the river was in 1858. V ONCE upon a time my reading way led me to Britannia's Pastorals; and before I had gone very far I found myself fascinated, not only by the poetry, but by the personality of the author. It is not surprising that "Willie" Browne endeared himself to his friends and even to his new acquaintances. "To my honest father, Mr. Michael Drayton, and my new, yet loved, friend, Mr. Will Browne, A. H. wishes a health," runs the dedication of a poem by Abraham Holland. "To his better beloved than known friend Mr. Browne" is the title of some commendatory verses by John Onley; and as we read the poetry of the seventeenth century and learn a little of the lives and friendship of the contemporary writers, a personality here and there impresses us as attractive, as well as gifted, and such. a one is the personality of William Browne. Love of nature, finely - tempered humanity, humour that humorous melancholy which is the outcome of the sensitiveness that goes to make the humorist-such are the characteristics that we read between the lines William Browne penned, as well as in the testimony of his friends; and his friends were a distinguished company, including Drayton, Selden, Ben Jonson (whose Underwoods includes lines To my dearly beloved friend, Master Browne, on his Pastorals), Chapman, Daniel, Christopher Brooke, and Wither, the Roget of the Pastorals and Eclogues. William Browne was patriotic, too, with a patriotism as sane and splendid as that of Shakespeare or Drayton. He wrote proudly, as well as lovingly of what he saw; and what he saw was England, and essentially Devon, even though great Pan himself, Thetis, nymphs, fauns, and birds and beasts endowed with magical properties played their part upon his poetic stage. Patriotism seems to be an attribute interwoven with the very fibre of the Elizabethan poets and their "children" in poetry. They were insular, perhaps; but to belong to an island, since that island was England, was their boast, not their reproach. And who but the most surly pro-everythingbut-England could fail to love the England the old writers knew--an England of glades and groves, vast forests and rich pasture-land; an England threaded with silver rivers-Thames' waves were of pure silver then-and on the silvered waves Swans innumerable floated. For flowers, too, the poets of the old days owned a rare garden : "Violets dim and sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes or Cynthia's breath"; "daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty"; "carnations, the fairest flowers o' the season"; the "richer cowslip" that "maids kiss and then bring home"; "the orange- tawny marigold," musk roses, Provençal roses; roses, "not royal in their smells alone, but in their hue" "roses damasked, red and white"; "lilies of all kinds, the flower-de-Luce being one ; the "azured hare-bell, blue as Fidèle's veins"; pansies, that "little western flower, before milk-white, now purple with love's wound," and myriads more in the poets', the shepherds', the herbalists' calendar. Elizabethan England was rich in forest trees, and rich in fruitful and flowering trees as well,-(the quince, the "clustered filbert," the apricot, the mulberry (the wisest tree, "his black from Thisbe taking "). The CEDAR proud and tall, The VINE, propped ELM, the POPLAR never dry, The ASPEN good for staves, the cYPRESS funeral; The LAUREL, meed of mighty conquerors And poets' sage; the FIR that weepeth still ; The WILLOW worn of forlorn paramours, The YEW Obedient to the bender's will, The BIRCH for shafts, the SALLOW for the mill. The war-like BEECH, the ASH for nothing ill. Spenser was "Willie" Browne's beloved father in poetry, and the lines below show his parentage and descent through Spenser from Chaucer : There stood the ELM, whose shade, so mildly dim, Doth nourish all that groweth under him. The heavy-headed PLANE tree, by whose shade The war-like YEW, by which (more than the lance) The cold-place loving BIRCH and SERVICE tree, The thick-grown HAWTHORN and the binding BRIER, |