Wherein was Proteus carved; and over-head
A lively vine of green sea-agate spread,

Where by one hand light-headed Bacchus hùng,
And with the other wine from grapes out-wrung.
Of crystal shining fair the pavement was;

The town of Sestos call'd it Venus' glass:

For know, that underneath this radiant flour
Was Danäe's statue in a brazen tower;
Jove slyly stealing from his sister's bed,
To dally with Idalian Ganymed,

And for his love Europa bellowing loud,
And tumbling with the Rainbow in a cloud;
Blood-quaffing Mars heaving the iron net
Which limping Vulcan and his Cyclops set;
Love kindling fire, to burn such towns as Troy;
Silvanus weeping for the lovely boy

That now is turn'd into a cypress-tree,

Under whose shade the wood-gods love to be.
And in the midst a silver altar stood:

There Hero, sacrificing turtle's blood,

Vail'd to the ground, veiling her eyelids close;
And modestly they open'd as she rose:

Thence flew Love's arrow with the golden head;
And thus Leander was enamourèd.

Stone-still he stood, and evermore he gaz'd,

Till with the fire, that from his countenance blaz'd,
Relenting Hero's gentle heart was strook :
Such force and virtue hath an amorous look.
It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.

When two are stript long e'er the course begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win;

And one especially do we affect

Of two gold ingots, like in each respect :
The reason no man knows; let it suffice,
What we behold is censur'd by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight ?

He kneel'd; but unto her devoutly pray'd:

Chaste Hero to herself thus softly said,

'Were I the saint he worships, I would hear him';

And, as she spake those words, came somewhat near him.

He started up; she blush'd as one asham'd ;

Wherewith Leander much more was inflam'd.

He touch'd her hand; in touching it she trembled:
Love deeply grounded, hardly is dissembled.

These lovers parled by the touch of hands:

True love is mute, and oft amazèd stands.

Thus while dumb signs their yielding hearts entangled,
The air with sparks of living fire was spangled;

And night, deep-drench'd in misty Acheron,
Heav'd up her head, and half the world upon

Breath'd darkness forth (dark night is Cupid's day):

And now begins Leander to display

Love's holy fire, with words, with sighs, and tears;
Which, like sweet music, enter'd Hero's ears;
And yet at every word she turn'd aside,

And always cut him off, as he replied.

These arguments he us'd, and many more;
Wherewith she yielded, that was won before.
Hero's looks yielded, but her words made war :
Women are won when they begin to jar.
Thus having swallow'd Cupid's golden hook,
The more she striv'd, the deeper was she strook:
Yet, evilly feigning anger, strove she still,
And would be thought to grant against her will.
So having paus'd awhile, at last she said,
'Who taught thee rhetoric to deceive a maid?
Ay me! such words as these should I abhor,
And yet I like them for the orator.'
With that Leander stoop'd to have embrac'd her,
But from his spreading arms away she cast her,
And thus bespake him: 'Gentle youth, forbear
To touch the sacred garments which I wear.
Upon a rock, and underneath a hill,

Far from the town, (where all is whist and still,

Save that the sea, playing on yellow sand,
Sends forth a rattling murmur to the land,
Whose sound allures the golden Morpheus
In silence of the night to visit us,)

My turret stands; and there, God knows, I play
With Venus' swans and sparrows all the day.

A dwarfish beldam bears me company,

That hops about the chamber where I lie,

And spends the night, that might be better spent,

In vain discourse and apish merriment :

Come thither.' As she spake this, her tongue tripp'd,

For unawares, 'Come thither,' from her slipp'd ;

And suddenly her former colour chang'd,

And here and there her eyes through anger rang'd;
And, like a planet moving several ways

At one self instant, she, poor soul, assays,
Loving, not to love at all, and every part
Strove to resist the motions of her heart:

And hands so pure, so innocent, nay, such

As might have made Heaven stoop to have a touch,
Did she uphold to Venus, and again

Vow'd spotless chastity; but all in vain;
Cupid beats down her prayers with his wings;
Her vows about the empty air he flings:
All deep enrag'd, his sinewy bow he bent,
And shot a shaft that burning from him went;
Wherewith she strooken, look'd so dolefully,
As made love sigh to see his tyranny;

And, as she wept, her tears to pearl he turn'd,
And wound them on his arm, and for her mourn'd.

THOMAS LODGE.

[THOMAS LODGE was born in Lincolnshire about 1556, entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1573, and died of the plague at Low Leyton, in Essex, in 1625 The most important of his numerous works are, Scilla's Metamorphosis, 1589; Rosalynde Euphues' Golden Legacy, 1590; Phillis, 1593; A Fig for Momus, 1595; A Margarite of America, 1596.]

Lodge was the least boisterous of the noisy group of learned wits who, with Greene and Marlowe at their head, invaded London from the universities during the close of Elizabeth's reign. He began to write as early as 1580, and was among the first who adopted the style invented by Lyly in his Euphues; but it was not until Greene had successfully composed several romances in this manner that Lodge came forward and surpassed both Greene and Lyly in his lovely fantastic pastoral of Rosalynde, composed under a tropical sky, as the author sailed with Captain Clarke between the Canaries and the Azores. During the next ten years Lodge was very prolific, closing this part of his career with the Margarite of America, an Arcadian romance, so named because the poet was in Patagonia when he wrote it. By this time, or soon after, all the young men of genius with whom he had associated were dead, and Lodge retired from literary life, and settled down as a physician. He lived on almost to the birth of Dryden; but his place as a poet is among the immediate followers of Spenser and precursors of Shakespeare.

In some respects Lodge is superior to most of the lyrical poets of his time. He is certainly the best of the Euphuists, and no one rivalled him in the creation of a dreamy scene, 'out of space, out of time,' where the loves and jousts of an ideal chivalry could be pleasantly tempered by the tending of sheep. His romances, with their frequent interludes of fine verse, are delightful reading, although the action flags, and there is simply no attempt at characterisation. A very courtly and knightly spirit of morality

perfumes the stately sentences, laden with learned allusion and flowing imagery; the lovers are devoted beyond belief, the knights are braver, the shepherds wiser, the nymphs more lovely and more flinty-hearted than tongue can tell; the courteous amorous couples file down the long arcades of the enchanted forest, and find the madrigal that Rosader or the hapless Arsinous has fastened to the balsam-tree, or else they gather round the alabaster tomb of one who died for love, and read the sonnet that his own hand has engraved there. This languid elegant literature was of great service in refining both the language and the manners of the people. There was something false no doubt in the excessive delicacy of the sentiment, something trivial in the balanced rhythm and polish of the style; but both were excessively pretty, and both made possible the pastoral and lyrical tenderness of the next half-century. Among all the Elizabethans, no one borrowed his inspiration more directly from the Italians than Lodge; he was fortunately unaware of the existence of Marini, but the influence of Sannazaro and of the school of Tasso is strongly marked in his writings.

As a satirist Lodge is weak and tame; as a dramatist he is wholly without skill; as a writer of romances we have seen that he is charming, but thoroughly artificial. It is by his lyrical poetry that he preserves a living place in literature. His best odes and madrigals rank with the finest work of that rich age. In short pieces of an erotic or contemplative character he throws aside all his habitual languor, and surprises the reader, who has been toiling somewhat wearily through the forest of Arden, by the brilliance and rapidity of his verse, by the élan of his passion, and by the bright turn of his fancy. In his best songs Lodge shows a command over the more sumptuous and splendid parts of language, that reminds the reader of Marlowe's gift in tragedy; and of all the Elizabethans Lodge is the one who most frequently recalls Shelley to mind. His passion in the Rosalynde has a little of the transcendental and ethereal character of the Epipsychidion, while now and again there are phrases so curiously like Shelley's own, that we are tempted to believe that the rare quartos of Lodge must have passed through the later poet's hands. One such example is the

'A Turtle sate upon a leafless tree,

Mourning her absent fere,'