As Mr Masefield once said, you have added a name to the "He talked of Elizabethan roll of English poets, and one books and people much as that can never be overlooked. though they were alive in the Certainly his long - neglected streets outside, like the time ghost ought now to be rejoiccome back." For him the time ing in Elysium." If Campion's had not come back: it was ghost rejoiced, Bullen charac always there; and by a natural teristically uttered a note of sympathy he lived where the warning. He presently foresaw Elizabethans themselves would that Campion, lately recovered. have (and had) been at home. "now ran the risk of uncritical It was Stratford which shel- adulation," and he thought it tered him, in the heart of right that he, his only begetter, Shakespeare's own country; should thus moderate the enand Bullen had not far to go thusiasm of his readers. Moderif he would encounter the ation is, indeed, the mark of shades of Shakespeare and all Bullen's criticism. He was Drayton and other unforgotten too sound a scholar, he knew worthies of Warwickshire. And too well the drudgery of mak when he visited London, in- ing a fair text, to lose himself frequently, it was natural that in a mist of vague admiration. he should take up his abode He gathers together the few in Southwark, which might facts that can be found of remind him at once of Chau- Campion's life and character, cer's pilgrims and of Shake- and then lets him speak for speare's theatre. Nor was there himself. He was a physician; the slightest suspicion of pose he wrote a volume of Latin in this choice of abode. Bullen verse, a treatise on versifica. was incapable of pose or affec- tion, in which he condemns tation, and he visited South- the practise of rhyming, which wark not as a curious tourist, he had always followed, and indulging a whim, but as a an essay on counterpoint. For true Elizabethan, who could the rest, says Bullen, he "tells not be asked to care for a in one of his epigrams that he London which had grown up was lean, and that he envied after his time. fat men; he tells us, too, the names of a few of his friends." Though his fame stood high in his own time, "his poetry was quickly forgotten, being hidden away in music-books that nobody opened." Thus writes Bullen, and he praises especially Campion's sureness of touch and variety. 66 'Whatever he essayed," so he brings his chapter to an end, "he did well: he always found the

He writes of the Elizabethans out of the fulness of knowledge and sympathy. Thomas Campion, one of the poets celebrated in this admirable book, he brought back from oblivion. "I must congratulate you as cordially as I thank you," wrote Swinburne to Bullen when he had completed his discovery. "In issuing this first edition of Campion's works,

The rest of

itable words, whether forgotten them. ve-song or a hymn. at once a born singer summate artist." er of Bullen's disis William Bullein, ekin he was, and s in duty bound, he back to the knowledge Like Campion, Bullein etor, and, unlike Campractised his craft, and atises about it. " The ent of Health' is s works, and far less lace, in title at any 'Bulleyn's Bulwarke ce against all Sickeness, and Woundes daily assault ManBut his masterpiece, by Bullen with many , is entitled 'A Diapleasaunte and pitieein is a goodly regiinst the fever Pestia consolacion and gainst death. Newly by William Bullein, thereof' (1564). The dialogue, or rather a alogues, and it opens don citizen's house. sas clear and sonorsense of drama is All air and fire, which made his verses he north-country clear; e citizen and his doctor, speak, one heir own authentic And Bullen cites h of it to make us Drayton fell out of fashhe whole work were ion. Pope dismissed him scornsible in a fair reprint. fully and ungratefully, since and Bullein were he had surely read his epistles, brilliant recoveries. as "a mediocre poet"; and

his portraits are of Elizabethans whose names are familiar to us all-Drayton and Daniel, Chapman and Dekker. For Drayton, Bullen has, of course, a kindly feeling. He was not merely an Elizabethan ; he was also a poet, and a Warwickshire man. He knew the country round about Stratford as well as Bullen knew it, and he was filled with the patriotism which became his time and place. None has celebrated more eloquently than he the glory of England. For him St Crispin's Day is as gallant an occasion as it is for Shakespeare. And Bullen, with his sure judgment, picks out for his approval the familiar epistles which Drayton wrote to his friends, which recall the ease of Horace and foreshadow the elegance of Pope. How shall we ever forget the tribute he pays, in his epistle to Henry Reynolds, to Christopher Marlowe :

t them back from a world which had

V.-NO. MOCCIV.

"Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,

Had in him those brave translunary things

That the first Poets had; his raptures

were

For that fine madness still he did retain

Which rightly should possess a Poet's brain?"

Horace Walpole, when Mason offered him a portrait of Dray

2 M