afterwards reason to regret her metamorphosis; and the Muses, at the instance of Arimanthus, a wizard, (and who turns out to be the father of Eurymene, and a banished nobleman,) induce Apollo to relent, and to restore the lady to her sex, after which she is united to Ascanio. It is in the following description of the spring, near which the Graces and Muses inhabit, that the imitation of Spenser is found—

Then in these verdant fields, all richly dyed

With nature's gifts and Flora's painted pride,

There is a goodly spring, whose crystal streams, 'Beset with myrtles, keep back Phoebus' beams: There in rich seats, all wrought of ivory, 'The Graces sit, listening the melody. 'The warbling birds do from their pretty bills 'Unite in concord as the brook distils,

Whose gentle murmur, with his buzzing notes, 'Is as a base unto their hollow throats *. 'Garlands beside they wear upon their brows, 'Made of all sorts of flowers earth allows, From whence such fragrant sweet perfumes arise, 'As you would swear that place is Paradise.'

In the piece last noticed, Lyly introduced some blank-verses; but his Woman in the Moon (printed in 1597), with the exception of a few couplets, is entirely in that form of composition: it is, however, the blank-verse of a person accustomed to rhyme.

Fairy Queen, B. II., c. xii., st. 71. With reference to the four lines beginning' The warbling birds,' &c., it is, however, but fair to remember, that Spenser himself followed Tasso (Ger. Lib. xvi. 12.)

Vezzosi augelli infra le verdi fronde, &c.

and Lyly possibly resorted to the same original.

Nature, in order to satisfy the desires of certain Utopian Shepherds, who had no women among them, gives life to the statue of Pandora, bestowing upon her all gifts the envious planets descend, and declare that in turn they will employ their influence to injure the workmanship of Nature. Saturn first renders Pandora ill-tempered, Jupiter ambitious, Mars quarrelsome, Sol poetical, Venus amorous, &c. Pandora falls in love with every man she meets, and, though married to Stesias, makes secret appointments with three different shepherds. One of them, named Iphicles, in his transport, tells her:

'Will me to dive for pearl into the sea,

To fetch the feathers of the Arabian bird, The golden apples from the Hesperian wood, 'Mermaid's glass, Flora's habiliments,

• So

may I have Pandora for my love.

'Pand. He that would do all this must love me well.

And why should he love me and I not him?
Wilt thou, for my sake, go into yon grove,

'And we will sing unto the wild birds' notes,
'And be as pleasant as the western wind,

"That kisses flowers, and wantons with their leaves?'

The reign of Mercury commences next, and he renders Pandora cunning, thievish, fraudful, and eloquent; and she soon steals all her husband's jewels. Luna makes her fickle, new-fangled, and finally insane, and all her lovers discover her falsehood. Iphicles declares,

Had she been constant unto Iphicles,

'I would have clad her in sweet Flora's robes, 'Have set Diana's garland on her head,

'Made her sole mistress of my wanton flock, 'And sung in honour of her deity,

'Where now with tears I curse Pandora's name.'

And Learchus, another shepherd, says:

'The springs that smil'd to see Pandora's face,
'And leapt above the banks to touch her lips;
The proud plains dancing with Pandora's weight,
'The jocund trees that vail'd when she came near,
And in the murmur of their whispering leaves
'Did seem to say, Pandora is our queen;

• Witness how fair and beautiful she was;
'But now, alone, how false and treacherous.'

Her husband being about to kill Pandora, Nature enters, and declares that she shall no longer remain on earth, but be placed in the orb of one of the planets: choice being allowed to Pandora, she prefers the Moon. Her constant attendant, Gunophilus, is turned into a hawthorn-bush, which Stesias tears up and carries at his back: thus he becomes the man, and she 'the woman in the moon.'

Love's Metamorphosis (printed in 1601) was probably the work of Lyly at an advanced period of life, and it has not the recommendation of the ordinary, though affected graces of his style. The plot is merely this:-Three Foresters are in love with three cruel Nymphs of Ceres: they complain to Cupid, and he changes the Nymphs, one into a rock, another into a flower, and the third into a bird of Paradise. A rich farmer having cut down the favourite tree of Ceres, containing the enchanted form of Fidele, the goddess punishes him with poverty and famine, and to obtain

Ceres then remon

sustenance he sells his daughter. strates with Cupid on the wrong done to her three Nymphs, and he agrees to restore them to their shapes, if Ceres will again render the farmer wealthy and happy. Cupid's interest, on behalf of the farmer, arises out of the faithful attachment of his daughter to a youth whose affections, for a time, had been ensnared by a Syren. The whole is in prose, of which the following, where Nisa speaks of Cupid, is one of the best specimens:

'No, but I have heard him described at the full, and, as 'I imagined, foolishly: first, that he should be a god blind ' and naked, with wings, with bow, with arrows, with firebrands; swimming sometimes in the sea, and playing 'sometimes on the shore; with many other devices which 'the Painters, being the Poets' apes, have taken as great pains to shadow as they to lie. Can I think that gods, 'who command all things, would go naked? What should 'he do with wings that knows not where to fly; or he with arrows that sees not how to aim?'

Although the name of John Lyly is upon the titlepage, it may be doubted whether he had any hand in it, as it is so decidedly inferior to his other productions.

ON

GEORGE PEELE AND HIS WORKS.

WHEN Thomas Nash, in 1587, gave Peele the praise of being primus verborum artifex, he adopted a phrase which seems happily to describe the character of Peele's poetry: his genius was not bold and original, and he was wanting in the higher qualities of invention; but he had an elegance of fancy, a gracefulness of expression, and a melody of versification, which, in the earlier part of his career, was scarcely approached. In applauding Peele's Arraignment of Paris, in 1587, Nash wished to bring Marlow's Tamburlaine into discredit, because Marlow had, perhaps, in some manner given offence to Greene, with whom Nash was on terms of friendship and intimacy. To this circumstance we must attribute the rather extravagant and hyperbolical terms Nash employs on the occasion, although it is certain that at the time The Arraignment of Paris was printed, nothing of the kind, equal to it, had appeared in our language. As Peele's first extant production, it will be necessary to notice it before we proceed to his other dramatic works: all of them may be dismissed with the greater brevity, because they have been recently twice reprinted by the Rev. A. Dyce *.

*In two beautiful post 8vo. volumes. The edition I have used is the second, of 1829, which, in several important particulars, is an improvement upon the first impression of 1828.