Dante's picture," but it was a design that haunted him for many years. Originally it had been his idea to join forces with Southey; but gradually the thought of collaboration died out and the scheme developed into one for a history of England from 1775 to be exhibited in a series of letters. That some part of this work was actually written we are informed in one of Landor's political pamphlets entitled "Letters of a Conservative," in which he speaks of his original intention as being well known ΤΟ many distinguished men; the title which he intended to give the work being bestowed on the pamphlet instead. In those letters he had attempted, he says, "to trace and to expose the faults and fallacies of every administration from the beginning of the year 1775;" but they were all thrown into the fire. Landor, like Collins, was in the habit of putting his compositions in the fire when anything happened to excite his temper, which, as we know, was very easily excited. As early as 1811, when Longman rejected his "Count Julian," he committed his new tragedy of "Ferranti and Giulio" to the flames, with a vow that no verse of his should thereafter be committed to anything else. Fortunately his resentment did not last very long; but at times it would break out again, and the destruction of more manuscripts would be necessary to appease it.

Much that Ben Jonson wrote went also into the fire, but not with his will. In his poem on the burning of his library Jonson gives a list of the lost manuscripts, one of which was the narrative of his journey into Scotland. While he was in that country he informed Drummond of his intention to write such an account, and at the same time spoke of a "fisher or pastoral" play that was engaging his thoughts, the scene of which was to be laid near Loch Lomond. Both these works are. missing; the former is known to have been burned, the second was probably never written. It would have been a particularly interesting play in view of the dramatist's problematical Scot

tish descent. There is not much doubt that his forbears were of Border origin, and two of his lost plays certainly dealt with Scottish subjects, "The Scot's Tragedy" and "Robert the Second, King of Scots;" on the other hand there is the statement that the objection taken to "Eastward Ho" by those in authority was that it contained “something against the Scots." One may assume, however, that on the whole his attitude towards the Scottish people would have been more complimentary than that of his namesake of the eighteenth century. Besides this play he had it in his heart to write an epic to celebrate the heroes of his own time, and another to perform a similar kind office for the famous women of the same age; but neither of these projects came to anything.

Elizabethan writers seem to have been quite conscious of the greatness of their own time, and were anxious to leave no doubtful record of it behind them. Many years before the idea of his "Heroologia" had come to Jonson there was a young writer exercising his satirical pen on the people he saw around him. This led him incidentally to a defence of plays and, in the course of a spirited attack upon the actor's enemies, Nash takes occasion to commend the English practitioners in that profession, especially the subsequent founder of Dulwich College, famous Ned Allen. "If I ever write anything in Latin (as I hope one day I shall)," he says, "not a man of any desert here amongst us but I will have up. Tarleton, Ned Allen, knell, Bentley shall be made known to France, Spain, and Italy and not a part that they surmounted in more than other but I will there note and set down with the manner of their habits and attire." Unfortunately Nash died before he could carry out his intention. Had he achieved his desire our scanty knowledge of the Elizabethan stage would have received a valuable supplement, though if he had persevered in his design to use Latin for his purpose his book would have lost a great charm in the eyes of those who are able to ad

be imagined when we remember that Heywood was writing for the theatres as early as the first performance of "The Merchant of Venice," and composed his last civic pageant when the Long Parliament was sitting, that his experience was that of actor, playwright, and sharer in the company, that he was a graduate of Cambridge, and above all that he had lived on terms of comparative intimacy with all the men that have made that age the most glorious in the annals of our literature. And in spite of Browning we should be glad to have the memoirs of those men written by an associate. As it is, however, Shakespeare can still smile at our curiosity,-curiosity not necessarily idle or vulgar.

mire the virility and flexibility of Nash's to the historian of our early drama may idiomatic style. But there was another work alluded to more than once by the writers of that age whose manuscript, could it be found, would be worth its weight in gold to the New Shakespeare Society. The author was Thomas Heywood, one of the most prolific writers on record, who confessed to have written, either wholly on in part, no less than two hundred and twenty plays, and whose other labors, epic, satiric, historical, didactic, would in themselves have earned for any man the title of voluminous. The work he proposed to himself was Johnson's task in the following century, only it was more inclusive in its plan. The design was in his mind for many years in spite of the incessant fluency of his pen. As an instance of the speed of his composition his "Nine Books of We ask and ask: thou smilest and art still. Various History Concerning Women" may be adduced, a folio of nearly five hundred pages, which, he declares, was conceived, begun, executed, and printed in seventeen weeks. Evidently he found that his "Lives of the Poets" required greater labor and more careful handling than the work about women, for as early as 1614 we get a hint of his intention; again in 1624 he speaks of his resolution, and eleven years later he alludes to it in his "Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels" as a work "which hereafter I hope by God's assistance to commit to the public view; namely, the lives of all the poets foreign and modern, from the first before Homer to the novissimi and last, of what nation or language soever." Seeing that Heywood was alive in 1648, if not later, it seems that this work should be regarded as a lost book rather than as an unwritten one, but the result to posterity is the same. Most likely he was still struggling with his mass of materials when the troublous times of the Civil War came upon him. The theatres were closed; actors and playwrights were sunk in poverty and disgrace, and information concerning poets by a player and dramatist was at a serious discount. What the recovery of his manuscript would mean

Other men of genius have made resolutions and formed projects, but few have let the world into the secrets of their studies so habitually or so ingenuously as Coleridge. A poem planned was to him as good as a poem written, and as real. The question of presentation was a subordinate one to him, but to us it is an all-important matter; and it is not altogether selfish to complain that he kept so much of the fruit of his imagination to himself, denying us the pleasure of a share in the feast. Almost as soon as he reached Germany he set about a history of German poetry which was to occupy two quarto volumes; he also contemplated a complete translation of Lessing and Wieland, and was particularly anxious about a life of the former poet. Later on he intended a life of Wallenstein to be prefixed to his translations from Schiller, but it was abandoned either because of the reason he himself alleges, or because of his habitually "sloth-jaundiced" temperament. His friends all bewailed this characteristic. "To rely on you whole quartos!" says Southey quoting his friend's promise, “dear Coleridge. the smile that comes with that thought is a very melancholy one. Cottle de

for

the poet

reading from his note-book the titles of no less than eighteen separate works which he had made up his mind to write, and not one of which ever saw the light. The work which advanced most nearly to completion was, according to the same authority, "Translations of the Modern Latin Poets" in two volumes octavo, of which Coleridge had really proceeded so far as to print a prospectus. It is easy to follow Cottle's lead and make fun of poor Coleridge for inconsistencies and discrepancies which all can see; but if any one is disposed to condemn him, let him read this passage from his "Table Talk," in which the dreamer pleads extenuation with all the sensitive eloquence that at all times characterized him, and then perhaps the judgment will not be so harsh.

From Good Words. THE PATRIOT SONGS OF GREECE. The interposition of Greece in the troubles of Crete carries one's thoughts back to that stormy period, between 1770 and 1830, which closed with the recognition of the independence of the kingdom of Greece. It was a time rich in story and song-a Homeric time in the country of Homer; and it is singular how little it is remembered in this country or rather how little many of its most picturesque episodes have ever been known.

Perhaps the best possible way to enlist the sympathy and interest of the general reader in this past time is to give a few renderings of some of the popular songs of that epoch-songs which yet linger in remote corners of Greece, where there are still aged grandfathers who can remember the heroes of some of the later ballads.

We must explain, to begin with, that this long protracted conflict between Greece and Turkey was mainly a guerilla warfare, carried on by Greek Highlanders dwelling on the mountains

to which their forefathers had been driven as to well-nigh impregnable fortresses. of These men were called "Klephts," and from time to time their numbers were augmented by the people of the plains, as tyranny became too bitter, or taxation too extortionate.

There are two sides to every question. If thou hast genius and poverty to thy lot, dwell on the foolish, perplexing, imprudent, dangerous, and even immoral, conduct of promise-breach in small things, of want of punctuality, of procrastination in all its shapes and disguises. . . . But if thy fate should be different, shouldst thou possess competence, health and ease mind, and then be thyself called upon to judge such faults in another so gifted-O! then, upon the other view of the question, say, Am I in ease and comfort, and dare I wonder that he, poor fellow, acted so and so? Dare I accuse him? Ought I not to shadow forth to myself that, glad and luxuriating in a short escape from anxiety, his mind over-promised for itself; that, want combating with his eager desire to produce things worthy of fame, he dreamed of the nobler when he should have been producing the meaner, and so had the meaner obtruded on his moral being, when the nobler was making full way on his intellectual. . . . Take him in his whole-his head, his heart, his wishes, his innocence of all selfish crime, and, a hundred years hence, what will be the result? The good-were it but a single volume that made truth more visible, and goodness more lovely, and pleasure at once more akin to virtue and, self-doubled, more pleasurable! And the evil-while he lived, it injured none but himself: and where is it now? In his grave. Follow it not thither.

It may be noted that these songs-as is always the case with songs which spring, simple and strong, from the heart of a people are dramatic in form, and waste no words either in "description" or "sentiment." They have been intended for sympathetic and comprehending ears, on which every phrase would tell for its full value.

One of the oldest of these ballads recounts how certain Moslem rulers, desiring the death of a leading "Klepht,” sought to compass it by guile, sending on the errand a Moslem who had been on friendly terms with the Greek. But the Moslem's heart failed him at the treachery, and though he did not refuse his errand he avowed it.