so placed out of the way of judgment, but that the same sun of discretion shineth upon us; we have our portion of the same virtues as well as of the same vices, et Catilinam quocunque in populo videas, quocunque sub axe. Time and the turn of things bring about these faculties according to the present estimation; and, res temporibus non tempora rebus servire oportet. So that we must never rebel against use; quem penes arbitrium est, et ius et norma loquendi. It is not the observing of trochaics nor their iambics, that will make our writings aught the wiser; all their poesy, and all their philosophy is nothing, unless we bring the discerning light of conceit with us to apply it to use. It is not books, but only that great book of the world, and the all overspreading grace of Heaven that makes men truly judicial. Nor can it but touch of arrogant ignorance, to hold this or that nation barbarous, these or those times gross, considering how this manifold creature man, wheresoever he stand in the world, hath always some disposition of worth, entertains the order of society, affects that which is most in use, and is eminent in some one thing or other that fits his humour and the times. The Grecians held all other nations barbarous but themselves; yet Pyrrhus, when he saw the well-ordered marching of the Romans, which made them see their presumptuous error, could say it was no barbarous manner of proceeding. The Goths, Vandals, and Longobards, whose coming down like an inundation overwhelmed, as they say, all the glory of learning in Europe, have yet left us still their laws and customs, as the originals of most of the provincial constitutions of Christendom; which well considered with their other courses of government, may serve to clear them from this imputation of ignorance. And though the vanquished never speak well of the conqueror, yet even through the unsound coverings of malediction appear those monuments of truth, as argue well their worth, and prove them not without judgment, though without Greek and Latin.

LET US BE TRUE TO OURSELVES

LET us go no further, but look upon the wonderful architecture of this state of England, and see whether they were deformed times that could give it such a form. Where there is no one the least pillar of majesty, but was set with most profound judgment, and

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borne up with the just conveniency of prince and people. court of justice, but laid by the rule and square of nature, and the best of the best commonwealths that ever were in the world; so strong and substantial as it hath stood against all the storms of factions, both of belief and ambition, which so powerfully beat upon it, and all the tempestuous alterations of humorous times whatsoever; being continually, in all ages, furnished with spirits fit to maintain the majesty of her own greatness, and to match in an equal concurrency all other kingdoms round about her with whom it had to encounter.

But this innovation, like a viper, must ever make way into the world's opinion, through the bowels of her own breeding, and is always born with reproach in her mouth; the disgracing others is the best grace it can put on, to win reputation of wit, and yet it is never so wise as it would seem, nor doth the world ever get so much by it as it imagineth; which being so often deceived, and seeing it never performs so much as it promises, methinks men should never give more credit unto it: for, let us change never so often, we cannot change man, our imperfections must still run on with us, and therefore the wiser nations have taught men always to use moribus legibusque præsentibus etiam si deteriores sint. The Lacedemonians, when a musician, thinking to win himself credit by his new invention, and be before his fellows, had added one string more to his crowd, brake his fiddle, and banished him the city, holding the innovator, though in the least things, dangerous to a public society. It is but a fantastic giddiness to forsake the way of other men, especially where it lies tolerable: Ubi nunc est respublica, ibi simus potius quam, dum illam veterem sequimur, simus in nulla.

But shall we not tend to perfection? Yes, and that ever best by going on in the course we are in, where we have advantage, being so far onward, of him that is but now setting forth; for we shall never proceed, if we be ever beginning, nor arrive at any certain port, sailing with all winds that blow, non convalescit planta quæ sæpius transfertur, and therefore let us hold on in the course we have undertaken, and not still be wandering. Perfection is not the portion of man; and if it were, why may we not as well get to it this way as another ? And suspect these great undertakers, lest they have conspired with envy to betray our proceedings, and put us by the honour of our attempts, with casting us back upon another course, of purpose to overthrow the whole action of glory,

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when we lay the fairest for it, and were so near our hopes. thank God, that I am none of these great scholars, if thus their high knowledges do but give them more eyes to look out into uncertainty and confusion, accounting myself rather beholding to my ignorance, that hath set me in so low an under-room of conceit with other men, and hath given me as much distrust as it hath done hope, daring not adventure to go alone, but plodding on the plain tract I find beaten by custom and the time, contenting me with what I see in use.

And surely methinks these great wits should rather seek to adorn, than to disgrace the present, bring something to it, without taking from it what it hath; but it is ever the misfortune of learning, to be wounded by her own hand. Stimulos dat æmula virtus; and when there is not ability to match what is, malice will find out engines, either to disgrace or ruin it, with a perverse encounter of some new impression; and, which is the greatest misery, it must ever proceed from the powers of the best reputation, as if the greatest spirits were ordained to endanger the world, as the gross are to dishonour it; and that we were to expect ab optimis periculum, a pessimis dedecus publicum. Emulation, the strongest pulse that beats in high minds, is oftentimes a wind, but of the worst effect; for whilst the soul comes disappointed of the object it wrought on, it presently forges another, and even cozens itself, and crosses all the world, rather than it will stay to be under her desires, falling out with all it hath, to flatter and make fair that which it would have.

THOMAS DEKKER

[Nothing, or next to nothing, is known of Dekker's life.

From a vague reference of his own it would seem that he was born about the sixth or seventh

decade of the sixteenth century. He was married before 1594-if indeed the register on which this inference is grounded refers to him. He had pretty

"

certainly begun to write for the stage some years before 1600: and he seems to have been alive as late as 1637. But scarcely a figure in the whole shadowy Elizabethan calendar is more shadowy than his. His works in prose, verse, and drama, with their dates in some cases, are almost the only certain things we know about him. Of the first division-the only one which concerns us here the chief are The Wonderful Year and A Bachelor's Banquet, both belonging to the year 1603, and a series of pamphlets (mostly similar to the 'cony-catching" pieces of Greene) which range from 1606 to 1609. Among these rank The Seven Deadly Sins of London, News from Hell, The Gull's Hornbook (the best known of all), The Bellman of London, Lanthorne and Candle Light, The Dead Term (long vacation), Work for Armourers, and The Raven's Almanack. The Four Birds of Noah's Ark, a devotional work, dates from 1613. It would appear that Dekker's later years were entirely devoted to the stage-at least we have no prose extant that seems to date from them.]

THE prose works of Dekker belong to a very curious division of English literature which has never since its own day been widely read, and which is not very easy to characterise briefly to those who have not read it. This division consists of those pamphlets in the reigns of Elizabeth and James which were not devoted to polemical or didactic purposes, and which obviously aimed at little or nothing more than providing amusement. Comparatively rare as examples of it are now, it must have had a considerable circulation at the time, for it was almost entirely the work of men who lived by their pens, and who would evidently have written something else if this had not brought them in money. Its two chief subdivisions were the Euphuist romance, and an odd kind of olio or miscellany of satire, moral reflection, and scraps from books, attempts to pourtray the ways and habits of the lower and looser London society of the time. It is impossible to tell how

far this kind of picture of manners, to the class of which Dekker's prose work chiefly belongs, is a genuine reproduction of fact, and how far it is "made up" for literary purposes. Sketches of Bohemia by Bohemians always have something factitious and suspicious about them, and perhaps this is not, in Dekker's case, lessened by the fact that some of his work in this kind is translation or adaptation-as of The Gull's Hornbook from Dedekind's Grobianus, and of the Bachelor's Banquet, from the famous French satire of the Quinze Joies du Mariage. Yet there is much freshness and apparent fidelity in the details, despite the reminiscences of books that constantly occur.

Dekker has few obvious idiosyncrasies or mannerisms of style. It does not seem that he was a university man, and he is less prodigal of scraps of learning and tags of Latin than his academic contemporaries, though his work is not absolutely lacking in such things. The Euphuist simile and the abuse of alliteration, which abound in some of his earlier fellows, are also by no means prominent in him. Contrariwise, his prose has much of the simple and natural grace which is perceptible in the best parts of his plays, and it sometimes seems rather wasted on the ephemeral and barren fashion of composition which, as a hack writer, he probably had no choice but to adopt.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.