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several suggestions must have interested him deeply because he carried his research back to Polydore. In the lines on the Druids he combined that historian's account with Pliny's, interweaving details in a way which reminds one of Milton. To show clearly the stages of this process, I shall subjoin both accounts to the passage of Drayton:

Sometimes within my shades, in many an ancient wood,
Whose often-twined tops great Phoebus' fires withstood,
The fearless British Priests, under an aged oak,
Taking a milk-white bull, unstrained with the yoke,
And with an axe of gold from that Jove-sacred tree
The Mistletoe cut down; then with a bended knee
On th' unhew'd altar laid, put to the hallow'd fires:
And whilst in the sharp flame the trembling flesh expires,
As their strong fury mov'd (when all the rest adore)
Pronouncing their desires the sacrifice before,

Up to th' eternal heav'n their bloodied hands did rear:

And, whilst the murmuring woods ev'n shudd'red as with fear,
Preach'd to the beardless youth, the soul's immortal state,

To other bodies still how it should transmigrate,

That to contempt of death them strongly might excite.100

Pliny's version is this:

Misselto is passing geason and hard to be found upon the Oke; but when they [Druids] meet with it, they gather it very devoutly and with many ceremonies: . . . And when they are about to gather it, after they have well and duly prepared their sacrifices and festivall cheare under the said tree, they bring thither two young bullocks milke white, such as never yet drew in yoke at plough or waine . . .: which done, the priest . . . climbeth up into the tree, and with a golden hook or bill cutteth it off. . .: then fall they to kill the beasts aforesaid for sacrifice, mumbling many oraisons and praying devoutly.101

It will be noticed that Pliny does not mention here the Druidical theory of transmigration. That, the poet doubtless borrowed from Polydore:

100 Ll. 415-29. Drayton was much preoccupied with the Druids. He has descriptions of them in vr, 220 ff., 309-16, x, 264-68, and viп, 261-66. This last passage is certainly derived from Polydore or Camden, from portions of their works quoted later in this article.

101 Naturall Historie. London. 1601. (Holland's translation) Vol. I, 497. Selden, in his note (п, 35), paraphrases Pliny in such a manner that the extent of Drayton's dependence is disguised (see note 70). It is possible that he was translating direct from Pliny and disregarding Holland.

These Druides enformed youthe that sowles didd not perishe, but after deathe passe from one to an other, that soe they might allure them to vertue bie the contempte of deathe.102

There are still details to be accounted for, which may possibly be supplied by a second discussion of Druids by Polydore. Tacitus, he says, is authority for the fact that Paulinus Suetonius once attacked the Isle of Mone and was amazed by the appearance of its inhabitants,

the women runninge emong the men in terrible attire like ghostes with their heare spredde abroade, with fire brandes in their hands, and theire preestes, beinge Druides, that is to say, of hethen religion, sainge their accursed prayers, and holdinge uppe their handes towardes heaven.. In them [the woods] the people of the ile thought it lawful and acceptable to God to make their altars smell of the bloode of their captives.103

In the foregoing passage may be found at least suggestions for the "hallow'd fires" (fire brands), for the "trembling flesh," for the "strong fury" (women in terrible attire like ghosts), and certainly for "Up to th' eternal heav'n their bloodied hands did rear." 104

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103 Polydore Vergil's English History, from an Early Translation. London, 1846 (Printed for the Camden Society). P. 50. This edition was printed from a manuscript preserved among the Mss. of the old royal library in the British Museum. It is not unlikely that Drayton had access to the manuscript; his wording is very close. For example, he uses the expression" contempte of deathe" whereas in the Latin it is metu mortis. The whole passage in Latin is this (Anglicae Historiae. Basel, 1570. P. 27):

"Tradebant autem Druides inventuti animas non interire, sed ab aliis post mortem, transire ad alios, ut sic eam metu mortis neglecto, ad virtutem excitarent."

103 Ibid., p. 18. The Latin will be found in the 1570 edition on p. 11. We know the poet read this passage because he uses it as the basis for some lines in the previous Song. See Song viii, 11. 261-66.

104 I am indebted to Mr. Vernam Hull for the suggestion that Drayton might have used Camden's Britannia in this passage. It is true that Camden embodies both the mistletoe ceremony (consult 1610 ed., p. 14) and the Druids' theory of transmigration (Ibid., p. 13). But several details make it reasonably certain that Drayton consulted Polydore. Camden says merely, "This one point principally they are desirous to perswade their scholars, That our soules are immortall, and after death passe out of one man into another; and by this meanes they suppose men, setting behinde them all feare of death, are most of all stirred up unto vertue."

Some light, it is hoped, has been shed by the foregoing study on the literary methods of the poet Drayton. It is clear that for the lines between 177 and 436, or for more than half the Song he drew on a single book or on works very probably suggested by that book. In the same way he drew on Hakluyt's Principall Navigations for most of Song Nineteen.105 But the conclusion that it was Drayton's practice so to depend upon a single work must be deferred till Mr. Hull, writing his thesis at Harvard on the sources of Polyolbion, and Professor J. William Hebel, who is preparing a variorum edition of the poet's works, have turned in their evidence. Princeton University.

It will be noticed that Camden has the scholars and not youth taught, and that Drayton's phrase contempt of death is lacking. In the Latin edition of 1607 (London), which the poet may have used instead of the English, not even scholars are mentioned (see p. 10), and the expression is again metu mortis.

105 See my article Drayton and the Voyagers, Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. XXXVIII, 530-56.

CLASSICAL LIVES IN THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES

BY DOUGLAS BUSH

The 1587 edition of that curious antique, The Mirror for Magistrates, contained, from the pen of the illustrious Higgins, a number of pieces on Roman emperors. The rulers chosen to make public confession of their iniquitous careers are Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Severus, Geta, Caracalla. The Polychronicon and Lanquet's Chronicle have been named as the sources for these Lives,' but they supplied only a small proportion of the material. Indeed this section of the Mirror is a very characteristic-veracity will not permit a more alluring adjective-manifestation of the average Elizabethan mind, in its naive mingling of ancient, mediaeval, and Renaissance elements in one capacious mediaeval punch-bowl.

The life of Julius, one of the two longest, is told in fifty-one stanzas. The title, like all the titles, indicates that the chief interest lies in the "fall"-" How Caius Iulius Caesar which first made this Realme tributary to the Romaynes, was slayne in the Senate house, about the year before Christ, 42." After mentioning his earlier messages to the upper world conveyed through "Bocas" and Lydgate, the great man tells, in stumping stanzas, of his "petegrue," his youth, his becoming a flamen, his betrothal to Cossutia. This material apparently comes from Suetonius.* Plutarch is quoted as authority for his personal appearance." Then follows a long account of the campaigns against Britain; Caesar sends from Gaul to demand tribute, and the Britons refuse it, being "of Priame's bloud." In the twenty-seventh stanza Irenglas is introduced his life had preceded Caesar's-and the story is told of Irenglas, Elenine, Andogeus, and Cassibelan. Since the

1 James Davies, "A Myrroure for Magistrates," considered with special reference to the sources of Sackville's contribution, (Leipsic, 1906), p. 25. * Mirror for Magistrates, ed. Haslewood, 1, 260 ff.

* Lydgate, Fall of Princes, London, 1558, Book VI, c. 12, p. cxlviii. • Seutonius, Divus Julius, cc. 1, 45.

Stanza 8; Plutarch, Julius XVII; North's Plutarch (Tudor Translation), I, 17. Apart from this item, Plutarch does not appear to have served as a source; at any rate he lacks a number of details which are in the Mirror.

Life of Irenglas is only an expansion of an episode in the Life of Caesar, what Dr. H. Zimmermann has said of the sources of the former may be cited here:

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Die Geschichte des Lord Irenglas findet sich nicht bei Lanquet, Stow, und Hardyng, in Kürze dagegen in den Flores; noch gedrängter ist sie behandelt im Chron. of St. Albans, breiter nur bei Galfrid, Fabyan, und Grafton.

Der Eigenname Irenglas steht genau so in dem Chron. of St. Albans; bei Fabyan heisst der Held Irreglas oder, wie bei Grafton, Hirelda . . . Das Turnier zwischen Irenglas und Elenine und der daraus hervorgehende ernste Kampf schliesst sich in der Hauptsache an Graftons Erzählung an, ist jedoch vom Dichter mit manchen Ausschmückungen versehen . . . Die Hauptquelle für diese Tragödie war also zweifellos Grafton. Einige Punkte sind aus Galfrid genommen, während das Chron. of St. Albans die Namen der Helden lieferte."

Stanzas 35-39 sketch the civil wars, and may have been based on Suetonius, or any one of innumerable epitomes. Stanzas 43-47 describe the various omens and warnings which Caesar had shortly before his assassination. These I do not find in the chroniclers

though Higden has some different ones. All these omens, connected with the tomb of Capys, the grief-stricken horses, Spurina, the dreams of Caesar and Calpurnia, occur in Suetonius, in the same order and with practically the same details as in the Mirror.? The account of Spurina and the assassination (stanzas 47-48) also follows Suetonius quite closely. The last three stanzas emphasize the moral, and the dictator, reckoning up his manifold sins and wickedness, decides that he was justly done to death.

Thus the material for the life of Julius is taken almost wholly from Suetonius and Grafton. Lanquet has only a couple of pages on him, and gives scarcely any of the information used by Higgins."

* Quellenuntersuchungen zum ersten Teil von J. Higgins' Mirror for Magistrates, (Munich, 1902), pp. 70-73. The incidents in question appear in Grafton's Chronicle, ed. H. Ellis, (London, 1812), pp. 52 ff., and also in Fabyan's Chronicle, ed. Ellis, 1811, pp. 31 ff.

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Suetonius, Julius, c. 81. Higden mentions the astronomer's warning, but does not give his name (Polychronicon, ed. J. R. Lumby, London, 1872, Bk. III, c. 42, Vol. iv, p. 208). Dio Cassius (XLIV, 17) gives some omens, but could not be the source. Plutarch's list (Julius, c. LXIII) is mostly different from that in the Mirror.

8 Suetonius, Julius, cc. 81-82.

• Lanquet, Coopers Chronicle, ed. London, 1565, pp. 84 ff.

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