THE POETRY OF ROBERT GREENE.* THE Oxford University Press deserves

the hearty congratu- lation of all students of English literature for this handsome edition of the poetical works of Robert Greene, the first— The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by J. Churton Collins. 2 vols. Oxford : at the Clarendon Press. [18s. net 1

except for Dr. Grosart's privately printed issue of the com- plete works—that has appeared since Pickering's in 1831.

For Greene is one of those poets whose renown is yet un- fulfilled. Charles Lamb, who did so much to revive the reputation of the Elizabethan dramatists, says nothing about Greene ; and yet, if he had lighted on that very pleasant though queerly titled comedy, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, he must have found some word of appreciation for its tender love-scenes and good-humoured mirth. The anthologists of the nineteenth century have done Greene's credit a wrong, not only by ignoring, but by misrepresenting him. His prose romances were interspersed with songs, after the Italian fashion introduced into England by Sir Philip Sidney, and George Ellis in his Specimens of the Early English Poets collected half-a-dozen of them, omit- ting the best. From these Palgrave borrowed for the Golden Treasury quite the dullest; so that the ordinary lover of lyrical poetry who knows Greene only by the smooth lines to Samela, with their conventional inventory of beauties, knows nothing of Greene's character- istic merits. And the critics have been apathetic. Mr.

Saintsbury in his Elizabethan Literature, after discussing Greene's dramas, promises to speak of the lyrical poems later on in the volume, and forgets to do so. Even Mr. Swinburne, who gives Greene a couple of lines in his sonnet-sequence on the old dramatists-

" Greene garlanded with February's few flowers

Ere March came in with Marlowe's rapturous rage "-

while he does more than justice to Greene's originality as a playwright—be was quite certainly Marlowe's pursuivant and not his harbinger—is a little severe in limiting his garland to flowers without scent. Mr. Churton Collins,

therefore, who edits this edition, had a chance to say a plain word, once for all, on Greene's many virtues. And he takes his opportunity. But even he is so far touched with the traditional spirit of depreciation that he contrasts Greene's best poems unfavourably with the best of Lodge's, while allowing his ordinary level to be higher. " In spontaneity and grace Rosalynda's Madrigal is incomparably superior to Menaphon's song. In finish and felicity of expression Menaphon's picture of the maid with the dallying locks must yield to Rosader's picture of Rosalynda." With all respect to the Professor of English Literature in the University of Birmingham, we must meet this criticism with a frank dis- agreement. Lodge was a physician who in his leisure hours wrote verses of more than average skill, which in a large number of instances he conveyed without acknowledgment from Ronsard and Desportes ; and though be occasionally achieved in this way an unequivocal success, as in his version of "La terre, naguere glacee," his original composi- tions lack the golden cadence of poesy. It is easier to feel their deficiencies than to express them in words. But we have only to put a well-known couplet of Lodge's- " A turtle sat upon a leafless tree Mourning her absent fere "- by the side of Shelley's

" A widow bird sat mourning for her love Upon a wintry bough," to appreciate the difference between minor and major poetry. The opening stanza of Rosalind's madrigal, which Professor

Collins ranks so highly, is as follows :-

" Love in my bosom like a bee

Doth suck his sweet : Now with his wings he plays with me,

Now with his feet.

Within mine eyes he makes his nest, His bed amidst my tender breast ; My kisses are his daily feast, And yet he robs me of my rest ;

Ah wanton, will ye ?"

Here it is surely unnecessary to point out that the poet has not been at the pains to determine upon his image. Is Love represented as a bee or as a baby ? In either case, what is he doing with a " nest " But apart from this unnecessary comparison with Lodge, Mr. Collins shows himself appreciative of Greene's lyrical genius. He speaks of the exquisite simplicity of Sephestia's song-

" Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,

When thou art old there's grief enough for thee"—

and of the tranquil beauty of the song beginning " Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content." He finds the love poems " charming," and instances in especial the one that begins : " Ah were she pitiful as she is fair, Or but as mild as she is seeming so,

Then were my hopes greater than my despair ; Then all the world were heaven, nothing woe";

and also the " sonetto " What thing is love ? " in which he conjectures that Shakespeare may have found inspiration for his 129th Sonnet. The text of this, as of Greene's poems generally, is in a bad etate, and Mr. Collins has done little or nothing to improve it ; but one verse may be quoted without calling in the aid of emendation :- "'Tis now a peace, and then a sudden war,

A hope consumed before it is conceived; At hand it fears and menaceth afar, And he that gains is most of all deceived ; It is a secret hidden and not known Which one may better feel than write upon."

Everybody must allow in reading verse of this sort that he has to do with a master ; and Greene hardly ever falls below this level, and not infrequently rises above it. What a gentle grace, for example, there is in the opening lines of Menaphon's Roundelay :-

"When tender ewes brought home with evening sun Wend to their folds,

And to their holds

The shepherds trudge when light of day is done !"

But perhaps the crown and flower of all Greene's lyrical work, alike for the spontaneity and the careful balance of its writing, is the " Shepherd's Wife's Song " .- " Ah, what is love P It is a pretty thing, As sweet unto a shepherd as a king, And sweeter too :

For kings have cares that wait upon a crown, And cares can make the sweetest love to frown : Ah then, ah then,

If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What Lady would not love a shepherd swain ?

His flocks are folded, he comes home at night, As merry as a king in his delight,

And merrier too : For kings bethink them what the state require, Where shepherds careless carol by the fire. Ah then, ah then.

If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What Lady would not love a shepherd swain?"

There are four stanzas more, all formed on the same pattern, and nothing could be sweeter and blither.

Mr. Churton Collins has worked through all the materials for Greene's biography, but has made no substantial additions to what was already known. He contributes an interesting introduction to the plays, in which he ranks Greene as " un- doubtedly one of Shakespeare's masters " ; summing up his influence in the following sentence : " Shakespeare owes as much in romantic comedy to Greene as he owed to Marlowe

in history and tragedy." With that judgment we are entirely in agreement; but to say that is not to say that Greene's genius was as exceptional as Marlowe's. Even the idyllic freshness of some of the scenes in Friar Bacon, and the lyrical sweetness of a good deal of the writing in that and in James IV., are not likely to secure for those plays to-day as many readers as Faustus or Edward II. For a specimen of Greene's more careful dramatic style we will quote from James IV. a speech of Ida, daughter of the Countess of Arran—both well-drawn characters—to her mother:

"Madame, by right this world I may compare Unto my work, wherein with heedful care The heavenly workman plants with curious hand, As I with needle draw, each thing on land Even as he list. Some men like to the rose Are fashioned fresh; some in their stalks do close, And, born, do sudden die; some are but weeds, And yet from them a secret good proceeds. I with my needle, if I please, may blot The fairest rose within my cambric plot ; God with a beck can change each worldly thing, The peer to earth, the beggar to the King. What then hath man wherein he well may boast, Since by a beck he lives, alive is lost ? "

We make Mr. Collins a present of the emendations in this passage.