by Peele systematically in this single instance; and as it possesses no very peculiar claims to admiration, I shall not think it necessary to quote any specimen. As an early writer of dramatic blank-verse, it is necessary to examine his plays with a little more attention, although he did not adopt it in those which were publicly performed until after the adventurous muse of Marlow had led the way. How Peele wrote it for the court in 1584, about two years before Marlow's Tamburlaine was acted, may be seen by the subsequent extract from his Arraignment of Paris. It is part of the oration' of the hero in his own defence, before Jupiter and the Immortals assembled in the Bower of Diana.

And if, in verdict of their forms divine,

My dazzled eye did swerve or surfeit more

'On Venus' face than any face of theirs,

It was no partial fault, but fault of his,

Belike, whose eyesight not so perfect was,
'As might discern the brightness of the rest.
'And if it were permitted unto men,

'Ye Gods! to parley with your secret thoughts,
'There be that sit upon that sacred seat
'That would with Paris err in Venus' praise.

'But let me cease to speak of error here ;

'Sith what my hand, the organ

of my heart,

'Did give with good agreement of mine eye,

My tongue is void [bold?] with process to maintain.' Here it will be remarked that nearly every line is formed alike, and the terminations, if not all monosyllables, are so for the purposes of the verse, which runs with all the regularity and formality of rhyme: it is, in

VOL. III.

fact, the blank-verse of a person accustomed to write rhyme, and whose ear required a ponderous syllable at the end of each line as a substitute. This remark will, in fact, apply to nearly all the blank-verse that Peele has left behind him he rarely varies his lines even by the insertion of a trochee for its termination, and then only as if he used it because it could not be avoided without inconvenience. He seems, in fact, for some time to have deemed this great ornament a defect; and even in his historical play, Edward I., of which I shall say more presently, he has been comparatively sparing in the adoption of it.

Of the plays of Peele written for public representation, I take The Battle of Alcazar to be the oldest. The proofs adduced to establish the authorship of Peele are so supported by internal evidence, that I feel no hesitation in assigning it to him*. It was written, as far as we can now decide, soon after Marlow's Tamburlaine, the success of which encouraged Peele to make an attempt of the same kind, and from which it contains a quotation. Peele himself speaks of The Battle of Alcazar in a poem he published in 1589†, and it is known to have been acted in 1591, if not earlier. When it was written, the history of the adventurer Thomas Stukely, who fell in the battle of Alcazar on

Monday, the fourth of August seventy eight,'

* See Peele's Works, by the Rev. A. Dyce, i. xxvii. edit. 1829. A Farewell, entituled to, &c., Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake, anno 1589. Stukely was also the hero of a later play.

(as Peele gives the date from the mouth of the hero himself) was well remembered; and he no doubt took the story because it was likely to be popular, because he could abuse the Catholics and compliment Elizabeth, and because it afforded the opportunity of introducing a vast deal of business in the action, and variety in the characters. The plot is conducted with unbounded licence, and the scene is changed from Portugal to Africa, and vice versa, at the pleasure and convenience of the author. It is written in an ambitious strain, not very well maintained, as if the writer wished to rival the vigour without the fire and imagination of Marlow. Undoubtedly the best lines in the piece are some which were meant to flatter the Queen and her government; but, though harmonious, they give us the idea of labour, and of pumping up on the part of the author to say something fine without attaining his object. The following are some of them

6

Sacred, imperial, and holy is her seat,

Shining with wisdom, love, and mightiness. 'Nature, that everything imperfect made,

Fortune, that never yet was constant found,
Time, that defaceth every golden show,
Dare not decay, remove or be impure:
'Both Nature, Time, and Fortune all agree
'To bless and serve her royal majesty.
'The wallowing ocean hems her round about,

'Whose raging floods do swallow up her foes,

And on the rocks their ships in pieces split,

'And even in Spain (where all the traitors dance
• And play themselves upon a sunny day)

6

Securely guard the west part of her isle:
'The south the narrow Britain sea begirts,
Where Neptune sits in triumph to direct
'Their course to hell that aim at her disgrace.
'The German seas along the east do run,
'Where Venus banquets all her water nymphs,
That with her beauty glancing on the waves
'Disdains the check of fair Proserpina.'

What is here said of Spanish traitors and of the waves swallowing up the foes of Elizabeth, may allude to the destruction of the Armada, and would fix the date of the play in the end of 1588, or in the beginning of 1589. The passage is not very intelligible as it stands, and perhaps something has been lost. The versification of the whole differs little from this specimen, and no pains have been taken by the author to render his lines less ponderous and monotonous. Couplets are scattered here and there as they could be brought in, and Stukely dies after four lines of rhyme, which is rather an unusual number in succession.

Warton has traced with considerable patience the degree of resemblance between Peele's Old Wives' Tale and Milton's Comus; expressing his opinion, which may be well founded, that the latter was derived from the former *. It yet remains to be seen whether they did not each make use of the same original narrative, which has not yet come to light : in the one case, a

* In his edition of Milton's Minor Poems, p. 136.

† One of the incidents is found in The Three Kings of Colchester, and no doubt all the others might be traced. Vide Peele's Works, i. 205, edit. 1829.

smooth versifier mingled it with a disgusting quantity of trash and absurdity; in the other case, a noble poet invested it with grandeur and dignity, set off by an equal portion of sweetness and simplicity. The Old Wives' Tale is nothing but a beldam's story, with little to recommend it but heavy prose and not much lighter blank-verse; and allowing for the early date of its production, Peele seems to have used his materials with very moderate skill, and with the display of but little fancy. Although it was not printed until 1595, it seems to bear marks of having been an early production, perhaps then printed by the author to supply some temporary necessity. That he was often put to severe trials by his poverty, and that he was not very scrupulous as to the mode of obtaining relief* is evident from his Merry Conceited Jests, to the representations of which I am disposed to give much more credit than is attached to them by the recent editor of Peele's Works. They were published soon after his death, and some of them were made the incidents of a

* One of the latest acts of his life was an imposition attempted (perhaps successfully) upon Lord Burghley: in order to obtain money from that nobleman, in January, 1596, he sent to him The Tale of Troy, a MS. poem of about 500 lines, as a new production, when, in fact, Peele had printed the piece in 1589, at the end of his 'Farewell, &c., to Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake.' Peele had been married, and we may hope, from the cause of his death, prior to 1598, (if Meres, in his Palladis Tamia, be correct,) that he was at that date a widower. He sent the poem to Lord Burghley by his 'eldest daughter,' so that he had more than one. His original letter to the Lord Treasurer on this occasion is among the Lansdown MSS., vol. 99.