ploits of the same individual to whose memory Fitzgeffrey's work is dedicated.

MORTON. Few men seem to have afforded more employment to the Muses than Sir Francis Drake. I recollect in a list of the works of George Peele there is a poem upon his sailing from England on one of his expeditions.

BOURNE. There is, and it well merits reading; but we will come to it presently. First look at this glorious sample of the mock sublime, by a man of the name of Thomas Greepe.

ELLIOT. I hope it is that sort of unconscious burlesque which makes the reader almost die with laughter, while the author imagines that he has produced something uncommonly fine.

wrote.

BOURNE. It is of that kind, though you will probably be able to keep your laughter within bounds. Greepe's ridiculous Ballad, for I can call it no better, was published in 1587, nine years before Fitzgeffrey The title will explain the subject: it is called "The true and perfect newes of the woorthy and valiaunt exploytes performed and doone by that valiant Knight, Syr Frauncis Drake: not onely at Sancto Domingo and Carthagena, but also now at Cales and vpon the Coast of Spayne." Observe what a glorious wood-cut of the ship Bonaventure is upon the title page.

MORTON. Magnificent!

ELLIOT. Of a piece with the poem, I hope.

BOURNE. That is quite as magnificent: witness the following extract :—

"This famous fleete sayles on their way
To Sancto Yuago they were bent;
Short of this Towne three leagues, I say,
Twelue hundred men on shore were sent.
On Nouember the seauenteene day,

With Captaines stoute to keep the way."

ELLIOT." On November the seventeen day" is a noble line, and with all the exactness of history.

MORTON. I Wonder the author omitted to state at what hour.

BOURNE. Further on it improves; and if before. Mr. Greepe has been very precise as to dates, he now becomes most minute as to circumstances.

"Their enemies fled with such great hast,
They left their roastmeate on the spit;
Hens and Chickens well crom'd and baste,
Tables couered ready to sitte:

Wine and suger they found good store
Their guests were come vnlooked for."

ELLIOT. He is quite facetious in the last line. BOURNE. And the whole is told with such a solemn seriousness.

ELLIOT. In its kind I have seldom seen any thing better. They had not only roast-meat, but hens and

1

chickens; and he does not omit to let us know that they were well crumbed and basted.

MORTON. It has been often said, that one great beauty in a poet is to remark and detail minutiæ that escape vulgar eyes: this qualification seems to have been possessed by our worthy friend in perfection.

ELLIOT. I rather think that "hens and chickens well crumbed and basted" are minutia that would not easily escape vulgar eyes. Is there any more of this delectable stuff?

BOURNE. Yes, a great deal: here is a comparison between Drake and Ulysses.

Vlysses with his Nauie great

In ten yeares space great valour wonne;
Yet all this time did no such feate,
As Drake within one yeere hath doone.
Both Turk and Pope and all our foes,
Doe dread this Drake where ere he goes."

MORTON. I remember to have read somewhere an Epigram, if it deserve the name, upon Sir Francis Drake, and the defeat of the Armada by him, which concluded with these lines, well worthy of the pen of Greepe :

"Yet more by valour than good luck,
Unto this Drake the Spaniards duck."

BOURNE. But the best part of the joke yet remains behind, for observe in the Epistle to the Reader

we have a special sentence. Greepe admits that " is not pend in lofty verse, nor curiously

his poem

handled."

ELLIOT. There he is mistaken.

BOURNE. And then he adds, with a tolerable spice of presumptuousness, "nothing can more profitte thy posteritie hereafter, than the bearing in memory so worthy a thing; for how should we know the woorthy deedes of our Elders, if those learned Poets and Historiographers had not set them downe in wryting?" enumerating Homer, Euripides, and Josephus, with whom of course he ranks himself, by virtue of this special production.

ELLIOT. There is no end to the self-delusion which poor conceited authors practise upon themselves. When we find Spenser asserting

"Even this verse, vowed to eternity,

Shall be thereof immortal monument;"

and Shakespeare declaring

(Son. Ixix.)

"Not marble, nor the gilded monument

Of princes, shall out-live this powerful rhyme;"

(Son. lv.)

we hold it a glorious consciousness of their own immortality; but when, on the other hand, we find such a poor mistaken being as Percival Stockdale, for the satisfaction of future ages, describing minutely where he stood at the time he wrote certain lines on

a lady's goldfinch, he only makes himself pitifully ridiculous. We read with a mixture of contempt and compassion.

BOURNE. Greepe, at all events, has survived the day in which he wrote, if it be only to show himself "immortally absurd."

MORTON. For aught we know he might prefer that to perfect oblivion; something like those to whom the idea of everlasting torments is more tolerable than that of complete extinction.

BOURNE. Here is another stanza worth reading in Mr. Greepe's production.

MORTON. Another stanza worth laughing at, you

mean.

BOURNE. Hear it for a finale.

"When tidings came vnto the Courte
Sir Frauncis Drake was newe come home,
Her Highness hearing this reporte,
Her grace was glad that he was come:
And all her Lords with one accord
For hys safe returne praysed the Lord."

"God saue

and then it ends in the true ballad style, our Queene of merry England." Yet an imperfect copy of this tract lately sold for many guineas.

ELLIOT. We have spent time enough now about such trash: we must not make the joke tedious. MORTON. Well, then, to something else. You said