The persons to whom Greene dedicated his love pamphlets could hardly have been friends of a ruffian, and the worthiness of aim in all these little books is not to be lost sight of when we would be judges of their author's character. Greene's "Menaphon: Camilla's Alarum to slumbering Euphues in his melancholie Cell at Silexedra," was also published in 1589, and was the book in which young Thomas Nash made his first appearance as a writer, with a long prefatory address "To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities." "Menaphon." Sidney's "Arcadia" was first published in 1590, a year later than "Menaphon"; but there is close kindred between the larger work and Greene's little love pamphlet, and there is no story of Greene's in which there are so many little poems interspersed. Menaphon is chief shepherd to Democles, King of Arcadia, who has sent adrift in a boat, without oar or mariner, his daughter Sephestia, with her husband Maximus and their infant son; Lamedon, the king's brother, resolving to go with them. Democles has lost his wife also through grief at the fate of her daughter, and his land is smitten with a plague. For remedy against the pestilence he sends two of his lords to Delphos, who bring back an oracle that no man can interpret. They must wait until time brings the answer to the riddle. Menaphon goes to the shore to see that no sheep have straggled thither to browse on sea-ivy, complains at love, and sings a song, this being the first of its two stanzas "Some say Love, Foolish Love, Doth rule and govern all the gods, I say Love, Inconstant Love, Sets men's senses far at odds. Some swear Love, Smooth'd-face Love, Is sweetest sweet that men can have : I say Love, Sour Love, Makes virtue yield as beauty's slave, That forceth wisdom to be folly's thrall." Then Menaphon sees Sephestia, with her infant and her old uncle Lamedon, cast on the shore with the wreck of their vessel. Not knowing who they are, he wonders at the beauty of the lady. Sephestia sings a lullaby to her child with the burden 66 'Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old, that's grief enough for thee." The old man, the lady, and the child are lodged by Menaphon in his own cot, where his sister Carmela is the housewife. Sephestia, who thinks her husband lost under the waves, conceals her name and rank. She calls herself Samela, parrying the love of Menaphon, who sings to her a roundelay. Samela tends the sheep of Menaphon-the fairest shepherdess in Arcady. Where's the Maximus, too, has come to shore and settled near by as a shepherd, having changed his name to Melicertus. Melicertus meets Samela. They are drawn to love, but do not recognise each other. romance when incidents look possible? Menaphon's neighbour, Doron, first describes Samela to Melicertus in a song beginning— "Like to Diana in her summer weed, Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed, Husband and wife meet as strangers at a shepherds' festival, and enter on the path of love without knowing that they have already travelled it together, although each reminds the other of the lost one. The shepherdess Pesana, who loves Menaphon, is jealous of Menaphon's regard towards Samela. Menaphon, who loves Samela, becomes jealous of Samela's regard for Melicertus, who pipes a musical description of his mistress, and at the end of a love-suit sings to her a madrigal. Samela's child, named Pleusidippus, grows. When five years old he is perfect in beauty, and has also the temper of a king. His playfellows have made him King of the May, and he shows himself to be resolute and despotic. The boy, when gathering stones and cockles on the shore, is espied by a Thessalian pirate, who carries him off, and arrays him in choice silks and Tyrian purple before sending him as peace-offering to the King of Thessaly, who delights in him and treats him as a son. So Pleusidippus becomes, by the time he is sixteen, a renowned Thessalian knight. Menaphon, thwarted in his love, has turned Samela out of doors. But her uncle has enough left wherewithal to buy her sheepcotes and a dwelling of her own. The fame of the fairest shepherdess spreads through the world. Pleusidippus, to whom her picture is shown, must away to see her, though he is plighted in marriage to the daughter of the King of Thessaly. Also the old King Democles, her father, slips away from his Court to see her. Presently we have Samela courted by her husband, by her son, and by her father, not one of them knowing who is who. Now follow plots and counterplots. Menaphon and Melicertus sing against each other an eclogue apiece, for love of Samela, with Demetes to decide their contest. Pleusidippus has been induced by Demetes to carry the lady off into a castle. Melicertus is next sent, as victor in song, to lead a tout of shepherds in attack upon the castle gates. After song, battle. Melicertus challenges Pleusidippus to single combat for the lady. Pleusidippus is ready at once. But, thinks Democles, if Pleusidippus be the victor, he will carry away the fair shepherdess to Thessaly. That must not be. Therefore, as arbiter, he allows the combat, but defers it for three days, when all shall be decided solemnly in open field. come. Meanwhile Democles sends to Court and summons his nobility to come to him within three days and bring ten thousand men. They He hides the army somewhere near,* and when the day comes, after Melicertus and Pleusidippus had well battered each other, “Democles, seeing his time, that both of them were sore weakned, gave the watchword, and the ambush leapt out, slaughtered manie of the shepheards, put the rest to flight, tooke the two champions prisoners, and sacking the castle carried them and the fair Samela to his Court, letting the shepheardesse have her libertie, but putting Melicertus and Pleusidippus into a deepe and darke dungeon." Where's the romance when incidents look possible? * Yet there were no innkeepers. "Smith. Pray, Mr. Bayes, is not this a little difficult that you were saying e'en now, to keep an army thus concealed in Knightsbridge? Bayes. In Knightsbridge? stay. Johnson. No, not if the innkeepers be his friends. Bayes. His friends! Ay, sir, his intimate acquaintance; or else, indeed, I grant it could not be."--The Rehearsal. Doron, left to pay suit to Carmela, sings with her an eclogue in which he asks to kiss her toes, but she replies, "Ah, leave my toe and kisse my lips, my love." The imagery of the eclogue is drawn from calves, waggon ruts, kitchen stuff, cherry juice, cucumbers, hogs' tusks, and "the steame of apple pies.' It is of this eclogue and its images ---not of the euphuism which the shepherds generally talk throughout the book-that Greene adds, "if it be stufft with prettie similies and farre fetcht Metaphores; thinke the poore Country Louers knewe no further comparisons than came within compasse of their Countrey Logicke." Democles set Pleusidippus free, lest the King of Thessaly should come and revenge his knight. Unable to prevail with Samela, Democles gave her free licence to visit Melicertus, then accused her of adultery, by help of a confederate gaoler, and without further witness Melicertus and Samela were condemned to die together on the scaffold. When they were brought forth, Pleusidippus, sitting by Democles, turned to him and said -- "Is it not pity that such divine beauty should be wrapped in cinders?" "No," quoth Democles, "where the anger of a king must be satisfied." Pleusidippus wrapt his face in his cloak and wept. Democles gave the word, the death-stroke was just about to fall on Melicertus, when there stept out an old woman attired like a prophetess, who cried, "Hold!" The prophetess then told who the victims were, and who was Pleusidippus-explained also how the time was come to which the mystical rhymes of the oracle had pointed. "At this the people gave a great shout, and the olde woman vanisht." Pleusidippus leapt from his seat and covered his mother with his robe. Democles stared with joy at his daughter-Sephestia, not Samela. Maximus knew his wife. Democles impaled the head of Pleusidippus with the crown and diadem of Arcady. He also made his brother duke in Arcady. After Pleusidippus had been crowned, they all made haste to the wedding of King Pleusidippus with the daughter of the King of Thessaly. Menaphon, when he heard how high he had aspired, "left such lettice as were too fine for his lips and courted his old love Pesana, to whom shortly after he was married. And lest there should be left anything unperfect in this pastorall accident, Doron smudgde himself vp, and iumped a marriage with his old friend Carmela.” Nash's address "To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities" - his first utterance in print-prefixed to Nash to Greene's "Menaphon," is to be taken as the work of a clever youth of two-and-twenty, fresh from a residence of nearly seven years at St. John's College, Cambridge. He thwacks about with an air-bladder of confident opinion; thinks much of the two Universities, as well he may, and most of St. John's College, Cambridge, as in duty bound: cares for good work, and has a vaguely vigorous contempt. for triflers, learned or unlearned, in the world of literature that he now is entering. He rightly objects to inkhorn phrases, and himself has to unlearn a few-as he will, in fact, unlearn them. He only uses them now while unknown to the world, by way of showing himself scholar. After this first letter, we do not find in his writing such confusion of tongues as in the opening of his address to the "courteous and wise Gentlemen Students": "To you he appeals that knew him ab extrema pueritia, whose placet he accounts the plaudite of his pains; thinking his day labour was not altogether lavished sine linea, if there be anything of all in it that doth olere Atticum in your estimate. I am not ignorant how eloquent our gowned age is grown of late; so that every mechanical mate abhors the English he was born to, and plucks, with a solemn periphrasis, his ut valeo from the inkhorn." We may smile at this way of asserting the validity of homely English, but Nash meant what he said, and lived to prove that he had full faith in his mother tongue. After praising Sir Thomas Elyot and Sir Thomas More, Nash loyally ascribes to St. John's College, Cambridge, the revival of learning in England; "yet was not knowledge fully confirmed in her monarchy amongst us till that most famous and fortunate nurse of all learning, St. John's in Cambridge, that at that time was as an University in itself: |