DISTURBERS OF PEACEFUL UNION

BUT for that we are forced to expect yet some longer time, before we can have these informations together, and in the mean space are much urged by the request of divers good men, as also by the intemperate manner of proceeding in the authors of these late books (whosoever they be) to set forth somewhat for a stay or stop, for that these men cease not to write most opprobriously without all regard of truth or modesty, and do promise more daily in the same kind: therefore have we yielded to this necessity (though sore against our wills) hoping that shortly the other will be ready to succeed also, albeit our hearty desire should be, that the authors of these infamous books, and of this most scandalous division in our Church, would so enter into themselves, and christianly correct their own doings, as both this and that might be spared, and all join again in the sweet union of peace, which is needful for our work in hand, and was enjoyed by us before this animosity of a few hath put all a-fire, to their heavy judgment no doubt, according to the Apostle's threat, if seriously they seek not to remedy the matter in the time: and we do say of a few, for that we cannot persuade ourselves that all those who by divers occasions are named in these books for discontented, have given consent to have them written in the style they go in, and much less to be printed, and published to the world, for we have a far different opinion of their modesty, and Christian spirit, so as these books must needs be presumed to have been published either by some one or few discomposed passionate people, or by some heretic, or other enemy to dishonour them all, and discredit our cause and nation, and so as to such we shall answer, and not against our brethren whom we love most entirely, and of whose prayers we desire to be partakers, as them, and we, and you, all of the sweet and holy Spirit of Jesus our Saviour; to Whom we commend you most heartily this first of July 1601.

(From the Preface to the Same.)

STEPHEN GOSSON

[Stephen Gosson, who, though a man evidently of considerable ability, owes most of his fame, as not uncommonly happens, to his having provoked the unfavourable notice of men of more ability than himself, was a Kentish man by birth. He would seem to have been born in 1555 or a little earlier : he entered at Oxford in 1572 (being assigned by some to Christ Church, by others with more assurance of authority to Corpus), and took his bachelor's degree in 1576. He then appears to have gone to London and commenced at once poet, playwright, and player. His pastorals were highly thought of, but the few fragments of his verse which are extant are no great things. Of his plays we have, given by himself, the titles of three, Catiline's Conspiracies, of course a tragedy; Captain Mario, a comedy; and Praise at Parting, a "moral." It does not seem quite so certain that he actually appeared on the stage, but both from his adversaries' remarks (though Lodge's "player" might simply mean " 'playwright") and his own excuses it is probable. However this may be, he seems to have experienced a sudden and violent conversion, which led him to give up the theatre, to take a tutorship, and then to take orders. There is no space here for the details of the controversy excited by his School of Abuse (1579) the most important part or result of which was Sidney's Defence of Poesy, or Apology for Poetry. Gosson, who had dedicated his pamphlet to Sidney himself, repeated the dedication in his Ephemerides of Phialo (1579) a book of the Lyly kind, to which an Apology for the School of Abuse itself is added: though he addressed the Plays Confuted (1582) which concludes the series to Sidney's father-in-law, Walsingham. He survived the debate many years, successively holding a curacy at Stepney, the Crown living of Great Wigborough in Essex, and that of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, and writing a few small works, some of which have survived. He died on the 17th February, 1623-4, at the age of sixty-nine.]

GOSSON has been spoken of above as a man of ability, and this he certainly was. The very short interval between the appearance of Euphues and that of the School of Abuse shows that he must rather have mastered the Lylyan style in the same circumstances and situations as Lyly than have directly borrowed it from his fellow at Oxford. Nor does he push such imitation as there is to the extremes which were common, and which in

other instances (such as Lodge's answer to his own attack) show the thing to be mainly imitative. There can be very little doubt that there was considerable justification for his attack as far as the moral and social side of the matter went and it is to be observed that both his direct and his indirect traversers (for Sidney nowhere directly attacks the School of Abuse) take no small license in extending his indictment from dramatic poetry in particular to poetry in general. It is true that Gosson had to some extent laid himself open to this, especially in the exordium of the School of Abuse. As for his own work, it is rather a pity that the whole extant part of it, which is not bulky and which hangs pretty closely together, has never been reprinted together, while part of it is still difficult to get at. The School of Abuse, the Apology for it, and the Plays Confuted form a connected series, the tone of which increases in gravity and religiosity as it goes on. The Ephemerides of Phialo, which accompanied the Apology, while following very close in the track of Euphues, in its dealings with friendship, love, and so forth, both in manner and substance, glances frequently in the main direction of Gosson's ascetic and reforming thought. The four following. passages will, I think, fairly represent his four chief works. And however unwilling we may be to countenance a line of argument which would have deprived us of one of the greatest divisions of English literature, I think Gosson must receive credit at once for absolute purity of intention, and for no small literary and intellectual power. His thought and argument, though narrow, are by no means without acuteness, his illustrations and ornaments digress much less than is usual with his contemporaries into mere random display of learning and wit, and his style is better knit than is usual with any but the greatest of them. He was evidently a very fair scholar, his Latin preface to the Literarum studiosis in Oxoniensi Academia, prefixed to the Ephemerides being well written, and his scholarship seems to have had much of the good and little of the bad influence which it was likely to exert on his English. It has been rather usual, and not unnatural in the circumstances, to think of him as a dunce and an enemy to the Muses, but few, I think, who give him a fair reading will take this view.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

MODERN LUXURY

CONSIDER with thy self (gentle reader) the old discipline of England, mark what we were before, and what we are now. Leave Rome a while, and cast thine eye back to thy predecessors, and tell me how wonderfully we have been changed, since we were schooled with these abuses. Dion saith that English men could suffer watching and labour, hunger and thirst, and bear of all storms with head and shoulders: they used slender weapons, went naked, and were good soldiers, they fed upon roots and barks of trees, they would stand up to the chin many days in marshes without victuals; and they had a kind of sustenance in time of need, of which if they had taken but the quantity of a bean, or the weight of a pea, they did neither gape after meat, nor long for the cup a great while after. The men in valour not yielding to Scythia, the women in courage passing the Amazons. The exercise of both was shooting and darting, running and wrestling, and trying such maisteries as either consisted in swiftness of feet, agility of body, strength of arms, or martial discipline. But the exercise that is now among us, is banqueting, playing, piping, and dancing, and all such delights as may win us to pleasure, or rock us on sleep.

Oh what a wonderful change is this! Our wrestling at arms is turned to wallowing in ladies' laps; our courage to cowardice; our running to riot, our bows into bolles, and our darts to dishes. We have robbed Greece of gluttony, Italy of wantonness, Spain of pride, France of deceit, and Dutchland of quaffing. Compare London to Rome, and England to Italy, you shall find the theatres of the one, the abuses of the other, to be rife among us. Experto crede, I have seen somewhat, and therefore I think I may say the more. In Rome when plays or pageants are shown, Ovid chargeth his pilgrims to creep close to the saints, whom they serve, and shew their double diligence to lift the gentlewomen's

robes from the ground, for soiling in the dust, to sweep motes from their kirtles, to keep their fingers in use, to lay their hands at their backs for an easy stay; to look upon those whom they behold, to praise that which they commend, to like everything that pleaseth them, to present them pomegranates to pick as they sit; and when all is done, to wait on them mannerly to their houses. In our assemblies at plays in London, you shall see such heaving and shoving, such itching and shouldering, to sit by women; such care for their garments, that they be not trod on; such eyes to their laps, that no chips light in them; such pillows to their backs, that they take no hurt; such masking in their ears, I know not what: such giving them pippins to pass the time; such playing at foote saunt without cards; such ticking, such toying, such smiling, such winking, and such manning them home when the sports are ended, that it is a right comedy to mark their behaviour, to watch their conceits, as the cat for the mouse, and as good as a course at the game itself, to dog them a little, or follow aloof by the print of their feet, and so discover by slot where the deer taketh soil.

If this were as well noted as ill seen, or as openly punished as secretly practised, I have no doubt but the cause would be seared to dry up the effect, and these pretty rabbits very cunningly ferreted from their burrows. For they that lack customers all the week, either because their haunt is unknown, or the constables and officers of their parish watch them so narrowly, that they dare not queatche, to celebrate the Sabbath, flock to theatres, and there keep a general market of vice.

(From The School of Abuse.)

THE EVILS OF STAGE PLAYS

PLAYS are so tolerable, that Lactantius condemneth them flatly, without any manner of exception, thinking them, the better they are penned, or cunninglier handled, the more to be fled; because that by their pleasant action of body and sweet numbers flowing in verse, we are most enchanted. And Tully, a heathen, crying out against poetry, for placing bawdy Cupid among the gods, uttereth these words in the end: De comedia loquor, quæ si hæc flagitia non probaremus, nulla esset omnino; I speak of plays,