structing the fourteen lines throughout upon two rhymes, as in Surrey's "Alas! so all things now do hold their peace" (p. 126); a form of no particular beauty, and attractive to verse-writers chiefly as an exercise of skill in rhyming. The two most important types are seen in their rival versions of the same sonnet, quoted at p. 118. Wyat follows the arrangement observed by Petrarch, and thus loosely spoken of as the Italian form; Surrey, the arrangement adopted by Shakespeare, and thus loosely spoken of as the English form. The fourteen lines of Wyat's version are divided into two parts: first a stanza of eight lines, consisting of two quatrains banded together by common rhymes; then a stanza of six lines, consisting of two tercettes, also banded together by common rhymes. In this type of sonnet, a certain variety was permitted in the disposition of the rhymes within these limits: in the banded quatrains, they might either be alternate, or successive as in Wyat's sonnet; and in the tercettes there might be two rhymes or three connected in any order that the sonneteer could devise. The form of Surrey's version, the English form, is an easier arrangement, which came into use in Italy in the beginning of the sixteenth century. In it the division into two stanzas is broken up, and the fourteen lines arranged in three independent quatrains closed in by a couplet. As we shall see, the form was adopted and regularly used by Daniel for his "Sonnets to Delia"; and from him was adopted by Shakespeare. Before the "Sonnets to Delia," the Italian form was rather the favourite with English sonneteers it was employed constantly by Sidney.

Surrey's poem composed during his imprisonment in Windsor, is claimed by Dr Nott, who edits Surrey with more than a biographer's enthusiasm, as the first specimen of our elegiac stave — four heroic lines rhyming alternately. This poem contains twelve such staves. Curiously enough, however, the whole is shut in with a final couplet, so that the poem is really a sonnet with twelve quatrains instead of three. It is a confirmation of Mr Guest's intrinsically probable conjecture that the elegiac stave arose from the breaking up of the sonnet into easier forms. Mr Guest, however, is wrong in saying that the final stage of dropping the couplet did not come on till after Milton. Elegiacs without any such appendage are found in the poems of Robert Greene.

The chief feather in Surrey's plume as a verse-writer is his introduction of blank verse. He employed it in his translation of the Second and Fourth Books of the Æneid, which is memorable also as an indication of the growing study of the ancient classics in England. Although Gawain Douglas is a prior claimant to the honour of producing the first English translation of an ancient classic (if Douglas's language is entitled to be called English), Surrey has sufficient honour in his choice of the unrhymed form.

About the same time the Italians were beginning to experiment in dispensing with rhyme; and Surrey had the good fortune, or the good sense, to apply to the translation of the great Roman epic the form that has since been established as English heroic verse. His blank verse is described by Conington as a good beginning, but "not entitled to any very high positive praise," being "languid and monotonous, and sometimes unmetrical and inharmonious." Surrey's direct knowledge of the classics preserved him as it preserved Wyat and others of the time from the gross mediæval blunders: yet it is significant of his being only among the pioneers that in his praise of Wyat he speaks of " Dan Homer's rhymes," "who feigned gests of heathen princes sung."

We should not omit to notice, among other evidences of Surrey's searching versatility and eager activity seeking vent in many forms, that he made an attempt also at pastoral poetry. His "Complaint of a dying Lover refused upon his Lady's unjust mistaking of his writing,' is put into the mouth of a shepherd. In this he followed the example of the Italian imitators of Virgil. His metre seems to be a modification of the old ballad form of long rhyming couplets: he shortens the first line of the couplet by an accent, or two syllables, thus

III.

"In Winter's just return, when Boreas gan his reign,

And every tree unclothed fast as Nature taught them plain;

In misty morning dark, as sheep are then in hold,

I hied me fast, it set me on, my sheep for to unfold.

And as it is a thing that lovers have by fits,

Under a palm I heard one cry as he had lost his wits."

- Writers of Mysteries, Moralities, " Moral Interludes":

JOHN BALE.

The writers that fall under this section lay wholly out of the current of Italian influences. The common stage did not feel these influences till later. The primitive English drama was as little affected by the causes that furthered the poetry of Wyat and Surrey as it had been a century and a half before, by the movement of which the main English outcome was Chaucer. With its firm hold of popular sympathies, through its ministration to simple inartificial wants, it continued to flourish when the spirit of Chaucer decayed, and maintained a certain struggle for existence even after the full maturity of the Elizabethan drama, of which it had, as we shall see, some claim to be considered the parent. Throughout its lease of life it was a direct response to a popular demand: it knew its audience, and gave them what they desired.

In one view, indeed, this rude religious drama cannot be held to

may be

have remained unaffected by surrounding influences. The Moralplays, in which the characters were personified virtues and vices Reason, Repentance, Avarice, Sensuality, Folly, &c. regarded as a modification produced, not by a development from within, but by the action of neighbouring forces. As the materials of one section of Chaucer's poetry were the offspring of a union between Abstraction and Sense, so the moral-plays may be looked upon as a cross between Abstraction and the Miracle-plays. It really is immaterial to this view what conclusion we adopt as to the precise transition from miracle-play to moral-play, whether we suppose the transition to have taken place by the gradual introduction of abstract personifications among Scriptural and legendary individuals, or suppose it to have taken place at a leap by the use of moral tales of personifications instead of Scripture and legend as subjects for dramatic representation. In either view, we are at liberty to regard the transition as an encroachment made by the abstracting tendency of the Middle Ages upon a simple popular entertainment.

Moral-plays, in whatever way they were suggested, were common throughout the fifteenth century, and had not quite died out at the end of the sixteenth. They, as well as Mysteries, were largely used by the advocates and the opponents of the Reformation to promote their respective views. To give some idea of their nature, we may look at "The World and the Child," Mundus et Infans, which is called "a proper new interlude," showing the estate of childhood and manhood. It has no regard for the unity of time it conducts a child from the cradle to the grave without change of scene. It has no plot: it is really a descriptive or panoramic dialogue, in which the Prince of this World holds conversations with a human creature at various stages of its existence, giving his commands to it, and receiving at the end of every seven years an account of its proceedings. The outline is something like this. Mundus enters boasting of his palace, his stalled horses, his riches, his command of mirth and game. He is prince of power and of plenty; and he smites with poverty all that come not when he calls. Infans next tells us that he is a child like other children, "gotten in game and in great sin," and complains of his nakedness and poverty. He beseeches Mundus to clothe him and feed him

"Sir, of some comfort I you crave
Meat and cloth my life to save,
And I your true servant shall be."

1 Mr Collier gives a particular account of "Nature," a morality by Henry Medwall, chaplain to Cardinal Morton. See Mr

-Hist. of Dram. Poet. ii. 298.

Collier's work for a complete account of our primitive drama,

Mundus hearkens to his prayer, gives him gay garments, names him Wanton, and bids him return for further consideration when fourteen years are come and gone. Wanton is delighted, and repeats with great zest the various amusements and tricks of sportive boydom-top-spinning, biting and kicking, making mouths at his seniors and skipping off, telling lies, dancing, playing at cherry-pit, whistling, plundering orchards, harrying nests. It is considered quite enough for Wanton simply to recapitulate those recreations to give the audience to understand that he has lived through them; and after the recapitulation he says

"But, sirs, when I was seven year of age

I was sent to the World to take wage,
And this seven year I've been his page

And kept his commandement.

Now I will wend to the World and worthy emperor.

Hail, Lord of great honour!

This seven year I have served you in hall and in bower
With all my true intent."

Mundus has not left the stage all this time, and he returns a gracious answer, calling Wanton his darling dear. He christens him anew Lust and Liking, and bids him enjoy all game and glee and gladness, and come again at the end of seven years. After another speech, enumerating the doings of lusty youth, Lust and Liking returns aged twenty-one, ready for further orders. Mundus christens him Manhood, and bids him worship seven kings, which are no other than the seven deadly sins Pride, Envy, Wrath, Covetousness, Sloth, Gluttony, Lechery. Manhood promises to honour them all, and presently announces himself a stalwart and stout lord, of wide dominion and wide fame. While he is boasting of his might and main, Conscience passes by, and they have a dialogue, Conscience discoursing good counsel, meeting at first with much insolence, but ultimately succeeding in making Manhood very uncomfortable. Manhood is glad when Conscience says farewell, although he admits the truth of what he has said. Folly next enters, brimful of audacious impertinence, and after some disputation, persuades Manhood that he is a better leader than Conscience. Just as Manhood is about to follow Folly, Conscience returns, and finding it impossible to restrain Manhood, calls in the aid of Perseverance. Before Perseverance has well explained his functions, Manhood returns in the guise of Age, lamenting his bowed body and his former service of the seven deadly sins. In this mood he is converted, receives the name of Repentance, and so the play ends.

Another piece of this class, with more pretence to plot and vivacity, is "Hick-Scorner," also written during the reign of Henry VIII. The personages are Freewill and Imagination (two dissolute

characters, companions of Hick-Scorner); Pity (who tries to mediate between these two worthies when they quarrel, and is seized upon, after the usual fate of peace-makers, by both the wranglers and put in the stocks); and Perseverance and Contemplation (who succeed in reclaiming Freewill and Imagination to a virtuous life). This play gives a really lively picture of manners; Hick-Scorner representing the travelled gallant; Freewill and Imagination, the "rufflers," profligate swaggering fellows, not very particular in their ways of making money; Pity, the good man who laments the degeneracy of the age, and thinks that wickedness was never so prevalent as in his own time; and Perseverance and Contemplation, ideals of virtuous conduct and humane desire for the good of mankind.

The influence of this popular drama in forming public opinion. was deeply respected by Henry and his successors, who framed acts and issued proclamations lamenting the inquietation of their people by diversity of opinion, and interdicting all plays that had not received the royal sanction. Both Mysteries and Moralities were used to leaven the popular mind with sound doctrine.

JOHN BALE (1495-1563), a zealous reformer, favoured by Cromwell, forced to flee the country after his death in 1540, recalled by Edward VI. and made Bishop of Ossory, exiled under Mary, restored once more at the accession of Elizabeth, wrote no less than nineteen plays to promote the Reformation. "God's Promises," reprinted in Dodsley's Old Plays, was written in 1538, and entitled "A Tragedy or Interlude, manifesting the chief promises of God unto man by all ages in the old law, from the fall of Adam to the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ." The composition is much more solid than that of the "World and the Child," but the plan of the work is very much the same. It is divided into seven Acts, in each of which God sustains a dialogue with a Scriptural patriarch or a prophet: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, John the Baptist. Each of the Acts begins with a declaration of God's anger against man, proceeds with deprecating entreaties from the representative of man, and ends with a promise of mercy. The pious author thus embraces within his play the chief promises of a Saviour, as made to Adam, Abraham, David, and Isaiah. Three other mysteries by Bale are extant-"The Three Laws, of Nature, Moses, and Christ;" "John the Baptist's Preaching in the Wilderness ;" and "The Temptation of Christ." This last is called by the author a comedy.1

1 Bale, says Mr Collier, was the first to apply, or rather to misapply, the words tragedy" and comedy to dramatic representations in English. Mr Collier attributes to him also the curious play King Johan, a "morality" with a political intention, and historical characters mixed with such abstractions as "Civil Order," "Treason," and "Verity." - Camden Society, 1838.