look on. Lionato, Leonatus, and Gerando fight, and Count Tymbri conquers all. Gerwalt and Gerando plot treason. Lionato, the old noble, and his wife Veracundia, dote on their daughter Phoenicia, a modest childish girl of sixteen, who has achieved the conquest for which Venus marked her out. She opposes to rude courtship a child's modesty, refers all to her father and mother, and Count Tymbri is thus subdued. But Gerwalt, having Gerando for an accomplice, practises to bring the lady's honour into question, and the Count, on the wedding day, sends word that he will not have her. The rest of the story runs according to the novel, truth coming to light by the repentance and confession of Gerando.

The three plays illustrating the Comedy of Errors, the Tempest, and Much Ado about Nothing, are printed consecutively in the folio, with the plays-one a Comedy of Edward III., King of England, evidently English in its structure, but, we observe, founded upon another of Bandello's novels. It is much to be deplored that the "forty more" of Ayrer's plays that were promised as a second volume by the publisher of the first never appeared. They comprised the translation

of many English plays, and would have been a treasury of reference to our critics in investigating the history of our own drama. The simple fact that Ayrer chose a piece for transformation into German would be evidence of the contemporary popularity of any work.

149

STORM ON THE MEDITERRANEAN.

[From Harington's "Ariosto," 1591, Canto xli.]

A FRENDLY gale at first their iourney fitted,
And bare them from the shore full farre away:
But afterward within a little season,

The wind discouerd his deceipt and treason.

First from the poop, it changed to the side,
Then to the prore, at last it wherled round,
In one place long it neuer would abide,

Which doth the Pilots wit and skill confound:
The surging waues swell still in higher pride,
While Proteus flocke did more and more abound,
And seeme to them as many deaths to threaten,
As that ships sides with diuers waues are beaten.

Now in their face the wind, straight in their backe, And forward this, and backward that it blowes, Then on the side it makes the ship to cracke, Among the Mariners confusion growes;

The Master ruine doubts, and present wracke, For none his will, nor none his meaning knowes, To whistle, becken, crie, it nought auailes, Somtime to strike, somtime to turne their sailes.

But none there was could heare, nor see, nor marke,

Their eares so stopt, so dazeld were their eyes,
With weather so tempestuous and so darke,

And black thick clouds, that with the storme did

rise

Frō whence somtime great gastly flames did sparke And thunderclaps, that seemd to rend the skies: Which made them in a manner deafe and blind, That no man vnderstood the Masters mind.

Nor lesse, nor much lesse fearfull is the sound,
The cruell tempest in the tackle makes,

Yet each one for himselfe some busnesse found,
And to some speciall office him betakes:

One this vntide, another that hath bound,

He the Main bowling, now restraines, now slakes: Some take an oare, some at the pumpe take

paine,

And powre the sea into the sea againe.