Sylvain, from the dedication to which it may be inferred that Munday, if the translator, had been in the army,—a supposition aided by A Ballad made by Ant. Munday, of the Encouragement of an English Soldier, to his Fellow-Mates, which was licensed to John Charlewood in 1579. A Banquet of Daintie Conceits, first identified by Mr. Collier, was published in 1588. The character of "a learned antiquarian," ascribed to him on his monument, is strengthened by a new edition of Stowe's Survey, which he published in 1618, with additions that he states himself to have received from the author's own hands. The subsequent catalogue of plays, which Munday wrote either alone or in conjunction with others, is derived by Mr. Collier, in his Supplement to Dodsley, from the materials supplied by Malone: 1. Mother Redcap. By Munday and Drayton. Dec. 1597. Not printed. 2. The Downfal of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. By Munday. February 1598. Printed in 1601. 3. The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. By Munday and Chettle. February 1598. Printed in 1601. 4. The Funeral of Richard Cordelion. By Robert Wilson, Chettle, Munday, and Drayton. May 1598. Not printed. 5. Valentine and Orson. By Richard Hathwaye and Munday. July 1598. Not printed. 6. Chance Medley. By Robert Wilson, Munday, Drayton, and Dekker. August 1598. Not printed. 7. Owen Tudor. By Drayton, Hathwaye, Munday, and Wilson. January 1600. Not printed. 8. Fair Constance of Rome. By Munday, Hathwaye, Drayton, and Dekker June 1600. Not printed. 9. Fair Constance of Rome. Part II. By the same authors. June 1600. Not printed. 10. The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey. By Munday, Drayton, Chettle, and Wentworth Smith. Nov. 12, 1601. Not printed. 11. Two Harpies. By Munday, Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, and Webster. May 1602. Not printed. 12. The Widow's Charm. By Munday. July 1602. Printed in 1607, as Malone conjectures, under the title of "The Puritan; or, the Widow of Watling-street," and ascribed to Shakspeare. 13. The Set at Tunnis. By Munday. 1602. It has been suggested that this play may be the same with "The World toss'd at Tennis," by Middleton and W. Rowley, and that Munday had only a share in the authorship. 14. The first part of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle. By Munday, Drayton, R. Wilson, and R. Hathwaye. Of this play two editions were published in 1600, the one with, the other without, the name of Shakspeare on the titlepage; but Mr. Malone discovered, from the registers of the Stationers' Company, that he was not concerned in it. JOHN LYLY. (Born 1554, died circa 1601.) John Lyly, born in the Weald of Kent, in 1554, was admitted of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1571. He proceeded B.A. in 1573, and in 1574 wrote a letter to Lord Burleigh, couched in terms of the most extravagant adulation, entreating his influence to have him made a fellow of the college. What the result of the application was does not appear; but we find that he proceeded M.A. in 1577. In 1578, or the early part of 1579, he was rusticated for, as he himself states, "having glanced at some abuses." He removed to Cambridge, and thence to London, where he became a follower of the court; and, by the favour of Lord Burleigh, was recommended to Queen Elizabeth, who, it is said, was highly pleased with him, and honoured some of his plays, of which he wrote nine, with patronage of a practical kind. The first thing he published was a romance called Euphues (1579), which being composed in a new kind of language, its phraseology became so much the vogue, that all the ladies were his scholars,— she who did not speak Euphuism being as little regarded at court as though she could not speak French. He appears to have been at one time in the service of Lord Oxford, in some position of trust, and to have been dismissed for a breach of that trust; an imputation, however, which he strenuously repudiates. Before 1589 he had produced six dramatic pieces, chiefly written for court entertainments; and to these he subsequently added three others, seven of the nine being in prose, one in rhyme, and one in blank verse: 1. Alexander and Campaspe; 2. Sappho and Phaon; 3. Galathea; 4. Midas; 5. Mother Bombie; 6. Maid's Metamorphosis; 7. Endymion; 8. Woman in the Moon; 9. Love's Metamorphosis. Besides these productions, Lyly was also the author of a tract called Pap with a Hatchet (1589), which was written against Martin Mar-Prelate, and is, says Mr. Collier, so lively a piece of satirical bantering, as to afford some evidence that this was the style to which Lyly's talents naturally tended. Our author, who was at one time a candidate for the office of Master of the Revels, died, it is conjectured, not long after 1601; in which year his last play, Love's Metamorphosis, was printed. NICHOLAS BRETON. (1555-1624.) We have scarcely any personal memorials of this poet. Mr. Ellis doubtingly identifies him with one Nicholas Breton, poet, born about 1555, the son of Captain John Breton, of Tamworth in Staffordshire, and who died, in 1624, at an estate he had purchased at Norton in Northamptonshire. Nicholas Breton, the satirical and humorous poet, was, at all events, living within the dates so given; for his second production, The Works of a Young Wit, was published in 1577. Ritson gives a long list of his numerous effusions, the general character of which may be collected from the titles of a few of them: Pasquil's Passe and Passeth not (1600); Cornu-Copia, Pasquil's Night-Cap, or an Antidote for the Head-Ache; A Mad World, my Masters; Mistake me not, or a Merry Dialogue betweene two travellers, the Taker and Mistaker; and so on. A work of his, of another class, is indicated by Sir Egerton Brydges, The Pilgrimage to Paradise. THOMAS LODGE. (1556-1625.) Thomas Lodge, born of a respectable family in Lincolnshire, in 1556, was entered as a servitor at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1573. His poetical talents here early developed themselves in various pieces of considerable merit; and that these were, many of them, of the satirical kind, may perhaps account for his having left college, as it would seem, prematurely, and without honours. In 1582 we find him anathematised by Stephen Gosson, 66 as a vagrant person, visited by the heavy hand of God;" whence it has been inferred that, on leaving the university, he had betaken himself to the stage as a livelihood. In 1584 he was a student of Lincoln's Inn, and in this phase of his career produced several of his works, and among them his Alarum against Usurers. Between this period and 1590, he had, he himself informs us, "fallen from books to arms," and sailed with Captain Clarke to the island of Terceira and the Canaries; and again, in his Margarite of America, published 1596, he tells us that the work was "written in the Straits of Magellan, while on a voyage with Cavendish." In the previous year, 1595, had appeared his Fig for Momus, a collection of satires, epistles, and eclogues, many of them characterised by merit of a high order. In one of these, Lodge, speaking in his own person, under the anagrammatical title of Golde, thus declares his resolution to abandon the ill-requited profession of poetry: "Which sound rewards, since this neglected time Repines to yield to men of high desert, I'll cease to ravel out my wits in rhyme, For such who make so base account of art; I'll write and judge, peruse, commend, and burn." From Wood's account it would seem as though the more profitable pursuit selected by Lodge was that of physic, the Oxford biographer informing us that he went to study medicine at Avignon. This study must either have been very brief, or it must have commenced after 5 Nov. 1596, the date, "from my house at Low Layton," of our poet's Wit's Misery, and the World's Madness. Whatever the occupation to which he applied himself, it seems to have engaged his whole time, for we have no literary memorials of him after 1596, unless a Treatise of the Plague, by Dr. Thomas Lodge, published in 1603, is to be considered his; the reason against which supposition is the author's statement in the dedication, that he "was bred and brought up in the city of London," which our Thomas Lodge was not. It is a question, in like manner, to which of the two Thomas Lodges-if they be two, and not one and the same—are to be attributed a translation of Josephus (1609), and of L. A. Seneca (1614). Thomas Lodge, the poet, who is said to have been a Roman Catholic, and as such greatly patronised (in his physician phase) by his co-religionists, "made his last exit (of the plague, I think) in September 1625, leaving then behind him a widow, called Joan." As a poet, Collier places him in a rank superior to Greene, and in some respects inferior to Kyd. A collection of his pastoral and lyrical pieces, published in 1819, contains many specimens of beautiful versification, elegant thoughts, and natural imagery. From a novel by him, first published in 1590, under the title of Rosalynde, Euphue's Golden Legacy, found after his death in his cell at Silexedra, &c., Shakspeare took the story of As you like it; and of this production the critic just quoted (who has reprinted this tale in his Shakespeare Library) says, "that no higher praise can well be given to it; our admiration of many portions of it will not be diminished by a comparison with the work of our great dramatist." Other writings of Thomas Lodge are: 1. A Defence of Stage Plays, in three divisions: Defence of Poetry; Defence of Music; Defence of Plays, 1580. This tract is now excessively rare; a rarity accounted for by Lodge himself, who, in his Alarum against Usurers, says, "By reason of the slenderness of the subject (because it was in defence of plaies and play-makers), the godly and reverend that had to deal in the cause, misliking it, forbad the publishing." It was upon, as Lodge complains, a private unperfect coppye" of this suppressed pamphlet that Gosson penned his answer to the " Defence," entitled "Plays confuted in Five Actions." 66 2. An Alarum against Usurers: containing tryed experiences against worldly abuses, &c. Hereunto are annexed the delectable historie of Forbonius and Prisceria; with the lamentable complaint of Truth over England. 1584. 3. Scilla's Metamorphosis; interlaced with the unfortunate love of Glaucus. Whereunto is annexed the delectable discourse of the Discontented Satyre. 1589. 4. Catharos: Diogenes in his Singularitie, &c., christened by him "A Nettle for Nice Noses." 1591. 5. Euphue's Shadow. Tract. 1592. 6. The Life and Death of William Longbeard, the most famous and wittie English traitor, borne in the citie of London, accompanied with many other most pleasant and prettie histories. 1593. 7. Phillis; honoured with Pastoral Sonnets, Elegies, and Amorous Delights. Whereunto is annexed the tragycall complaynt of Elstred. 1593. 8. The Wounds of Civil War. Lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla, &c. Tragedy. 1594. 9. A Looking-glasse for London and England: a Tragi-Comedy. 1594. In this play our author was assisted by Robert Greene. The drama is founded upon Holy Writ, being the history of Jonah and the Ninevites. 10. The Devill conjured. 1596. GEORGE CHAPMAN. (1557-1634.) George Chapman was born in the year 1557, conjecturally at Hitchen in Hertfordshire. In 1574 he went to Trinity College, Oxford, "where," says Wood, "he was observed to be most excellent in the Latin and Greek tongues, but not in logic or philosophy; and therefore, I presume, was the reason why he took no degree there.” In 1576 he came up to London, where he commenced a friendship with the best poets and writers of his time; and was shortly after noticed by Sir Thomas Walsingham, whose son afterwards continued to countenance him. Eventually he had the honour to rank among his patrons Henry Prince of Wales, and Carr Earl of Somerset; but the one dying, and the other being disgraced, it is questionable if he derived advantage equal to what he might have hoped from their distinguished notice. The share also that he had in writing Eastward Hoe! might have been a considerable hindrance to |