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enumerates him among the best writ- who has been employed by the poteners of comedy, and in Ben Jonson's tate to paint her portrait; here is a celebrated epitaph upon Shakespeare soliloquy in which her passion is reoccur the lines: vealed:

Hath a painter crept farther into thy mind than a prince? Apelles than Alexander? fond wench! The baseness of thy mind bewrays the meanness of which kindleth as well in the bramble, as thy birth. But, alas affection is a fire in the oak, and catcheth hold where it first lighteth, nor where it may best burn. Larks that mount aloft in the air, build their nests below in the earth; and women that cast their eyes upon kings, may place their hearts upon vassals. A needle will become thy fingers better than a lute, and a distaff is fitter for thy hand than a sceptre. Ants live safely till they have gotten wings; and juniper is not blown up, till it hath gotten on high top. The mean ueth without pride. estate is without care as long as it contin

I should commit thee surely with thy peers, Campaspe, it is hard to judge whether And tell how far thou didst our Lily out- thy choice be more unwise, or thy chance shine, etc. unfortunate. Dost thou prefer - but stay, utter not that in words, which maketh Blount tells us that his plays "crowned thine ears to glow with thy thoughts. him with applause, and the spectators Tush, better thy tongue wag than thy with pleasure." Yet of all the produc-heart break. tions of the age they seem to me the most mediocre. The period in which they were composed between 1584 and 1589-ranks him among the preShakespearians - Kyd, Peele, Greene, Lodge, Marlowe; but his style has nothing in common with theirs, it rather resembles that of a yet earlier class of dramatic writers, such as George Gascoigne, and those others who translated or adapted classical plays for the entertainment of the universities and inns of court; indeed, the six comedies reprinted by Blount in 1632 are styled "Court Comedies," and were all originally represented before the queen by the children of Paul's on certain festivals as New Year's Night, Twelfth Night, Candlemas. All are written in prose, the plots and subjects being taken from Terence, Ovid, Pliny, etc. The language is for the most part correct and carefully finished, and is notable for a delicacy little characteristic of those free-speaking times; any one of these plays might now be read aloud in a mixed company with scarcely an omission. But while devoid of the licentious freedom of contemporary works they are equally barren of the fire, the poetry, the wit, the genius which condone that offence. Any productions more cold, more pedantic, more wearisomely uninteresting it would be diffi cult to discover; scenes intended by the author to be witty and humorous are stuffed with dull conceits and distorted words, while the serious parts are destitute both of romance and passion. Campaspeto take an example from his first play, "Alexander and Campaspe❞—is loved by Alexander, but has fallen in love with Apelles,

What a soliloquy for a love-sick damsel! And yet in this same play we find the following exquisite song of Apelles:

Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses, Cupid paid;
He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
His mother's doves and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his life, the rose
Growing on's cheek (but none knows how),
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes,
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?

Here is a lyric worthy of Greene, Peele, Fletcher, and even Shakespeare. Can it be from the same pen that wrote the preceding pedantic jargon? It must be remarked that neither this, nor several other charming songs scattered through the plays,. appeared in the original quartos, but only in Blount's edition, to which reference has been made already; this

may render their authenticity doubtful.

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and "Love's Metamorphosis," prose; the last bears the date 1601. Alexander, as here presented, is the These, then, like the other six, were very mildest of potentates, and when first represented by the children of he discovers Campaspe's love for Paul's, for, although one of the proApelles, relinquishes her with, "I per-logues informs us that " Alexander and ceive Alexander cannot subdue the Campaspe was at one time performed affections of men, though he conquer at the Blackfriars, it is evident that their countries. Love falleth like a Lyly was at no time a writer for the dew, as well upon the low grass as public theatres. Whether his muse upon the high cedar. Sparks have was purposely subdued to suit the taste their heat, ants their gall, flies their of those for whose entertainment she spleen." was evoked, or whether she was incapable of any bolder or loftier flights, it would be impossible to determine, but she certainly would not have been acceptable to the " groundlings who delighted in the "Spanish Tragedy," or "Bussy d'Ambois."

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At Shrovetide, in the same year in which he produced "Alexander and Campaspe," "Sappho and Phaon was played before the queen by the same actors, the children of Paul's. And at the following Candlemas, "Endymion." "Endymion" is an allegorical As a writer, Lyly can only be esplay, in which, under the character of teemed as a curious fossil, and it is Cynthia, the most fulsome flattery is scarcely possible that the wheel of lavished upon "the Virgin Queen." fashion can ever bring him into vogue Endymion's love is expressed in the again.

same Sancho Panzian flow of proverbs and wise saws as that of Euphues or Campaspe. The humor of a portion of one of the scenes between the

H. LACEY.

From The Contemporary Review.

BY JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

THE learning of foreign languages,

knight and his page is drawn from THE METHOD OF TEACHING LANGUAGES.
definitions contained in the author's
Latin Grammar. The three remaining
court comedies, “Galathea," "Midas," as the example of the ancient Greeks
and "Mother Bombie" present much sufficiently shows, is an accomplish-
the same features. In "Midas "ment by no means necessary to the
occurs the following exquisite mor-
ceau; it is sung by Apollo in his con-
test with Pan :

My Daphne's hair is twisted gold,
Bright stars apiece her eyes do hold,
My Daphne's brow enthrones the Graces,
My Daphne's beauty stains all faces,

highest culture; still, there are circum-
stances, social conditions, and histor-
ical connections which justly give it a
high place in the field of popular edu-
cation. In Russia, for instance, a far-
back country only half civilized, a man
can neither do his duty to his country
nor perform his part creditably in
society without knowing French, or

On Daphne's cheek grow rose and cherry,
On Daphne's lip a sweeter berry,
Daphne's snowy hand but touch'd does German, or English, or more probably

melt,

And then no heavenlier warmth is felt,
My Daphne's voice turns all the spheres,
My Daphne's music charms all ears.
Fond am I thus to sing her praise
These glories now are turn'd to bays.

Besides these six comedies, there are three others extant, which have been assigned to Lyly: "The Woman in the Moon," in blank verse, "The Maid's Metamorphosis," in rhyme,

all the three, in addition to his mother-
tongue. England also is a remote
country, and a certain insularity of
character and culture has long marked
us off distinctively from the mass of
European nations; but our native
culture, from Chaucer downwards, has
long been so rich, and so grand, and so
various, that we have felt no urgent
need, like Russia, to complement our
linguistic deficiencies by foreign impor-

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present their claims to a place in the educational programme, with a force and a pungency which it is impossible to resist. Let the educational linguist seriously consider this, and either bring fewer languages into his programme, or improve his method of inculcation in such a fashion that three languages may be acquired in the time now necessary for one. That something effectual can be done in this latter alternative of the option, it will be the business of the present paper to consider.

tation. Nevertheless, an obligation of | ophy and medieval scholasticism, only a serious nature lies on the natives of vague conjectures and ingenious specthis stout old island to make ourselves ulations gave the law. Without modfamiliar with the tongues of foreign ern science, therefore, a modern peoples. Like the Romans, we are, in education, like scholarship without a sense, masters of the world; and as Greek and Latin, is a body without these old civilizers found themselves bones. Botany and geology, zoology, forced to study the language of the chemistry, mechanics - all Greeks, the most cultivated people beneath their sway, so we in the wide sweep of our political interests, coming in contact with all peoples from the Thames to the Seine, from the Seine to the Nile, and from the Nile to the Ganges, have serious obligations laid on us to study the temper and the tongues of the people we strive to influence. But again the facilities of travel in these latter days are so many and so manifold that in the mere course of intelligent travel, the Englishman abroad, who is not content to Happily, in this inquiry we have not lodge in hotels where English is far to seek for a starting-point. The spoken, finds himself forced to steal a starting-point is nature. Magna est glance into German souls through natura, et prævalebit. Every child not German, into Frenchmen through organically defective learns its motherFrench, into the Italian soul through tongue as certainly as it came from its Italian, and into the soul of living mother's womb. Let us examine the Greece through living Greck. But in process. In this primary school of linaddition to this, Latin and the Greek guistic training the mother is the of the old Attic masters, in that noblest teacher; and how does she act? As of all tongues, have acquired a place in the child's observant faculties develop the higher culture of Englishmen which themselves, and are turned, now on brings them into the foreground of this interesting object, now on that, educational competition, with more fa- she accompanies the young observant miliar, and for social purposes more eye with a sound expressing the name useful, tongues; so that without men- of the object, and this sound being tioning Sanscrit and other Eastern dia- constantly repeated in conjunction with lects, which it is the special duty of the the object, is responded to by the rulers of India to cultivate, the field young speaker, as his faculty of voiceof linguistic appropriation which lies ful expression grows, and so becomes before an intelligent young English- indissolubly connected with the object. man is sufficiently formidable. The The thing seen thus becomes practiquestion then arises, how, by what method and appliances, shall the English educator hope to gain some laurels in this extensive field, without encroaching on the time necessary for other, and it may be more important, subjects of study. We live in an age of science; from the days of Bacon and Newton downwards, a minute exactness, along with a grace of descriptive detail, is found in regions where, in the good old times of Greek philos

cally one with the hearing ear, the seeing eye, and the voiceful tongue. The only points in the process, in addition to this vital conjunction, in the case of the child and the mother, are the vividness of the interest felt by the child in the act of connecting a similar sound with an interesting object, and the loving devotion of the mother in watching and drawing out the linguistic faculty of her offspring. So much for the model teacher of languages, the

mother. What now, we have to ask, the garden of flowers in the green is the specific difference between the meadow; also all living creatures that position of this primary teacher in na- habitually meet the eye and delight the ture's school, and the official person soul of a healthy young child—the dog who performs the same function in a that wags his tail, the cock that crows, village or a burgh school, or in a grand the hen that pecks the gravel for grains provincial college? The difference lies of corn, the bird that sings in the wood, simply in this: that what the mother the duck that paddles in the pond, and does incidentally, and as opportunity the trout that rises to the fly; all this offers, the school-teacher is called upon in the direct and circumambient drama to do systematically and as a formal of living interest, not grammar rules business. In this systematic action of and grey books, should form the matethe professional teacher it is plain that rial used by the teacher of languages, an immense advantage lies; an advan- just as directly as the stones from the tage so great that, if faithful to the quarry form the material out of which method of nature in its main direction, the cunning architect trims his cottage the regular teacher will train a novice or piles his palace. The advantage of to as great a familiarity with a foreign this natural method is twofold: (1) It tongue in five months as the mother or is the living things themselves, and not any unsystematic teacher can do in as the dead symbols of things, with which many years. And if this is not always the linguistic faculty of the learner is the case or, rather, if the contrary is called to correspond; (2) And, what is not seldom the case-it is simply be- even a more important matter, the cause the teacher is not careful to follow constant re-appearance of the same the leading of nature in the matter, and objects with their new designation instead of turning the classroom into a brings with it a habit of repetition in living echo-chamber of familiar sounds, the tongue of the learner, and creates as the mother does with her parlor and that familiarity between word and the nurse with her nursery, the maid- thing in which the knowledge of all servant with the whole house, and the languages essentially consists. So cook with the kitchen, he remits his much for the method of nature, which scholars all at once to an apparatus of has nothing at all to do primarily dead books, with which of course a with books. Homer, I am sure, could living boy has no living sympathy. In- neither read nor write; and Plato, in a stead of books and grammar rules, the famous passage of the "Phædrus," teacher of languages should commence maintains that letters and printed pawith giving the foreign name to all the per, though useful for record, are more familiar objects which the schoolroom hurtful than helpful to the exercise of contains, and with which it is sur- the memory, on which the knowledge rounded. The door and the window, of languages mainly depends. Neverthe teacher's rostrum and the chil-theless, books - books of reading, and dren's seats, the fire, with the tongs grammar, and declensions - have their and poker, and the coal-scuttle, the use in the study of languages, but pictures on the wall, and the lobby, always in a secondary way, as a supwhere caps and great-coats, and um-plement to what direct commerce with brellas for a rainy day, and all the the object is inadequate to provide, but paraphernalia of a well-ordered school never as a substitute. Thus the sight are marshalled in orderly array. And of the field of Bannockburn may sugnot only inside but outside the school- gest the story of the Bruce, which house, everything that meets the eye throws the spectator back into the of the observant tyro should be greeted brightest page of a book on Scottish with the new name the old castle on history; and in the same way a visit to the brae, the hollow cave in the glen, the old palace of Holyrood naturally the flowers in the meadow, the cloud-leads the inquiring mind of youth into cleaving Ben that kisses the sky, and the history of the beautiful but unfor

tunate Queen Mary, and the Episcopal | natural sequence, through the direct despotism of the Stuarts. But even picturing of a living imagination; and here historical and topographical books, this sequence, while furnishing the however excellent, are to be used by the learner of languages only in a secondary way. On a visit to Holyrood the teacher must first describe viva voce to the learner all the speaking facts that stir his soul in that rich repository of patriotic memories, and next day cause him to repeat viva voce as much of his vivid explanation as he has managed to carry off. Then, and only then, does the province of printed books and reading in the acquisition of languages come naturally and without prejudice into play.

mental picture-gallery in the first place, will have a reflex action in cultivating the memory; for the learner will in this way see that the verses of a song or a ballad follow one another as necessarily as the acts of a drama, and not only are in such and such an order, but must be so. This dramatic sequence of the verses of a well-constructed lyrical poem is specially characteristic of the Scottish popular songs, as compared with the songs of sentiment in the voicing of which our modern public singers are so fond of displaying their In the next place, with regard to the power. Take, for instance, "The function of books to be used in a sec- Bounie Hoose o' Airlie," "Tak' yer ondary way, as a supplement to the Auld Cloak aboot Ye," or the humormaterials of familiar dialogue the ous ballads of "Duncan Gray," the main thing here will be to prepare a "Laird o' Cockpen," and the "Barrin' series of books rising from stage to o' the Door," which cannot be sung stage, of variety and expanse of matter effectively without a progressive idenand style, but all starting from the tification with the progressive stages material supplied by the living dia- of the situation; but this dramatic elelogue. Thus, if Bannockburn has ment, though particularly dominant in been viewed and discussed in its main the Scottish ballad, forms an essential features by living appeal through the feature in all popular poetry, as in object to the ear and voice, some chap-"Was blasen die Trompeten " ters of the great war of Scottish inde- other historical songs of the German pendence may wisely be read by the liberation war in 1813, and in the learner from a book of topographical," Death of Nelson," the "Battle of historical, and descriptive natural his- the Nile," and other most popular extory in the foreign tongue, with the double object of enlarging his views beyond what the narrow range of dialogue can supply, and furnishing him with a breadth and variety of expression which belong to the written rather than to the spoken style of language; but always he will be called upon by the wise teacher to express with grace, in the foreign tongue, the larger range of thought and feeling to which he has been introduced by his books.

" and

pressions of our patriotic seamanship.

So much for reading; but there is one sort of books, commonly employed in the acquisition of foreign tongues, of which our method has as yet taken no account - viz., grammars. Is grammar not a science? And is it not a science, though abstract and formal, which bears the same relation to a proficient in any language that the study of anatomy does to the medical practitioner? Assuredly, in all good teachIn connection with books and read-ing of languages, grammar will have its ing the teacher will not neglect the opportunity presented by books, of improving the imaginative faculty, while professionally he is only inculcating a new system of vocables. In reading an historical ballad, for instance, the learner must be trained to call up the different scenes of the story in their

place; but it comes in as the regulator of voiceful material, not the precedent. A regulating power is by its very nature secondary; it cannot come into play till there is something to regulate. Take an example: pointing to the sun when teaching Greek, I say before my tyro in his first lesson, 'O ñλios háμñetai,

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