conscientiously a country dance, in stiff gowns of unmistakable print, rather high in the waist, and adorned by nothing more fantastic than a large white apron and a ruff. Their tresses may be luxuriant, but they are modestly concealed beneath smooth muslin caps. The sweet music, excelling the diapason of the spheres, proceeds from a person seated on the ground, who vigorously blows the bagpipes. The gallants are not seen, the particular dance being apparently a pas seul, undertaken by each girl in competition with the others.

since it is recorded that so many gentlemen carried about with them for a twelvemonth the Dover favor of yellow.

For nearly forty years these games were held every year in Whitsunweek, and at the same place, till they became more famous than any sports of a similar kind held elsewhere. The gentry crowded to them in a vast concourse from a radius of sixty miles. Yet so ephemeral is the memory of these events, that we should know nothing about them but a faint rumor, and absolutely nothing about their founder, if it had not been for Captain Dover's personal charm of character and his friendships with a variety of literary men. In 1636 there was published a little volume of verse, entitled "Annalia Dubrensia, or Celebration of Captain Robert Dover's Cotswold Games." This is one of the rarest books of that period, and was practically inaccessible to students. The Rev. A. B. Grosart, whose zeal for our early literature is unbounded, has increased the heavy debt which lovers of old English poetry already owe him, by reprinting for a select number of subscribers this fascinating little book, thereby preserving it from all chance of destruction. It is adorned with the rude frontispiece to which I have referred. At the top of this woodcut we see Dover Castle, with two of its cannons in the act of rattling to the skies;" on the left of this the virgins are dancing, while to the right cudgel-playing, leaping, and wrestling are represented. Below this are the tents, and a square plaque, which may be a facsimile of Dover's yellow favor. In the centre of the cut, persons of quality are feasting at a long table. Then follow the horse-racing and the coursing, while the foreground is occupied by Dover himself, on his palfrey, in all his borrowed glory, with some men throwing the bar on the left, and the sledge-hammer on the right.

66

When the virgins had finished their elegant pastime, the character of the sports became more general. In one part of the course the indispensable quintain was put up, in one of its many forms. It is curious that what was at one time the most characteristic and universal English game should now require explanation; but quintain died in the time of the Commonwealth, never to revive. The essence of the game was to run a tilt against an object so balanced that if you failed to hit it at the exact point some punishment or other fell upon you. The simple childish form of the sport was a tub of water poised in such a way that if the cowering naked schoolboy who attacked it did not manage to strike it in the centre, it gave him a sudden douche of the most depressing kind. The most elaborate form was an armed figure, turning on a pivot, against which a man rode with a lance, and which, in case he failed to hit a certain mark on the forehead of the figure, swung round and banged him behind with a swinging bag of sand. Between these extremes, there existed many varieties of quintain, all of them rather violent specimens of good old English horse-play; Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes may be referred to for further particulars. Another game in favor at The letterpress of the volume has a Cotswold was bailoon, a kind of hand-ball, mournful, half-posthumous air. It was played with a large leather ball like the published a little too late, and when the modern foot-ball, driven through the air poets sing the glories of the games, we are from person to person, struck by a bracer inclined to murmur, "Ichabod." For the of wood, fastened round the hand and merry days of royalism were over, and in wrist for protection. In another part of the neighboring county of Buckinghamthe ground cudgel-players strove to break shire, a sturdy gentleman, Mr. Hampden, in one another's heads. Men ran races, was refusing that ship-money upon which variously bound or handicapped; others rested so vast a fabric in the future. King were wrestling, leaping, casting the sledge- Charles had played his game of quintain; hammer, throwing the bar. Everywhere he had tilted recklessly and missed, and athletic exercises of all sorts were en- now the creaking engine of the State was couraged and developed, and all under the swinging round to smite him ignominiouspersonal guidance of Captain Robert ly. The days of hock-feasts and barleyDover. Prizes were abundantly given, to breaks were over, and in the very heart of the number it would seem of five hundred, the growing uneasiness and discontent,

there appeared this cheerful little book of eulogies, manifestly born out of due time. But in another sense it was late in appearing. It was the work, as far as we can judge by those writers whose names are familiar to us, of poets of the olden school, now all dead or aged. But, to describe its contents more exactly, the "Annalia Dubrensia" is an anthology of original verses by thirty-three hands, all to the honor and glory of Captain Robert Dover. In the list of authors we find some names of the highest eminence - Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Thomas Randolph, and Thomas Heywood; names of accomplished writers such as Owen Feltham, William Basse, Sir John Mennis, and Shackerley Marmion. One poem is anonymous, and another signed by initials; the others bear the names of unknown persons, manifestly amateurs. The whole is edited by a Mr. Mat. Walbancke.

Drayton leads off with some thirty lines of good sound verse, "to his noble friend Mr. Robert Dover on his brave annual assemblies upon Cotswold." He congratulates England on having succeeded to the glories of Greece, compares the Cotswold with the Olympic games, and foretells that coming generations will count their years from the former, just as Greece,

ten years before, will be very apparent. He had ceased in 1636 to care about Captain Dover or his Olympic games, and indeed a hard life was fast drawing to its painful close. Stricken with palsy, he had still struggled against poverty by the painful composition of entertainments and pageants, but now even his last labor of love, "The Sad Shepherd," dropped unfinished from his hands. In a few months England was to pause in the midst of her civic troubles to discuss the news of the great poet's death. Jonson's lines are brief, and have an air of compulsion. Perhaps Captain Dover teased the old man for a contribution to his "garland; " at all events the verses, the last production of the author's printed in his lifetime, have more growling than singing in them. He declines in the outset to follow Drayton in his airy parallels between Chipping Campden and Pisa in Elis.

I cannot bring my Musë to drop vies* 'Twixt Cotswold and the Olympic exercise, but he hopes that Church and State may flourish and be advanced, in spite of hypocrites, and that Dover may have a share in this good work.

By far the most admirable poem in the collection, from a literary point of view, is Nurse of all arts and of all famous men, Randolph's contribution. This also had the melancholy fortune to be posthumous, counted hers by Olympiads. It is plain for the poet, cut off by we know not what that these lines had long circulated in MS.; accident in the flower of his youth, had several of the other writers refer to them, died at the house of a friend a few months and besides, when the "Annalia Dubren- before. It was a deplorable loss to Ensia" was published, Drayton had been at glish literature. The stars must have rest in Poet's Corner for nearly five years. erred in casting his horoscope, for RanIt was natural that Dover should be spe- dolph had none of that precocious ripeness cially delighted at a tribute from the heroic which seems so often to be the presage of, muse of Drayton. The latter had not and the consolation for, an early death. been a popular or successful poet, in a His genius, which had something resolute worldly sense, but the force and dignity of and sturdy about it, was one that would his writing, and his position a little aloof certainly have raised him, at least, to an from and above the warring of the wits, honorable place in the second rank of gave him a sort of pre-eminence. The poets. His six plays and his thin collecSweet and courtly Daniel had held the tion of lyrics were but the infant motions same kind of poetical kingship, but he had of a wing that meant to strike hard and died soon, and Drayton seems to have suc-wide into the empyrean of poetry. ceeded him in a sort of non-official laure- There is nothing hectic or hysterical in ateship. From the character of the verse in this little eulogy, I hazard the conjecture that it was written in the last period of his life, when he was the honored guest of the Earl of Dorset.

what remains to us of Randolph; no attractive weakness or dolphin-color of approaching death. Had he lived he might have bridged over, with a strong popular poetry, the abyss between the old roman

A still greater man than Drayton contributes a brief poem to this charming little "amulet," or "keepsake." If we recollect the circumstances of Ben Jonson in the year 1636, the melancholy significance of these bluff lines, evidently writ-parison."

* Great difficulty has been found in the measure and meaning of this line. To me there seems to be none if 64 statue" was we take "Muse" to be a dissyllable, as a trisyllable (in Habington and elsewhere), and if we understand "vie" to be a noun equivalent to com

tic and the new didactic schools, for he had | He is told that Collen has just met a handa little of the spirit of each. As it is, he some fellow spurring a spirited steed over holds a better place in English literature the plain towards Cotswold, and begging than Dryden, or Gray, or Massinger would him to explain whither he went so blythe have held had they died before they were and so gaily decked, he told him to the thirty. His "Eclogue on the Palilia and hill, where horses, fleet as sons of the noble Assemblies revived on Cotswold wind, competed for prizes, and where the Hills" is charming. Two shepherds, Col- hounds went coursing with such musical, len and Thenot, converse about the degen- full cries, that Orion leaned out of heaven eracy of the English swains. Collen is and wished his dog might be there to join exceedingly afflicted to find his compeers in the races. Thenot rejoices again, and so boorish, and Thenot replies that it can- desires to know at whose bidding these not be for want of ability, since nowhere noble games have recommenced. He is in the world can you find men so vast in told that it is jovial Dover's deed, and stature, so sinewy and so supple, as the Collen closes by calling the nymphs swains of England. Collen explains that around, and bidding them do honor to that the Puritans are to blame for this. In great man. early times there were joyous games, in which the English athletics contended and grew skilful and graceful. In those days, he continues, in a charming vein of pas

toral:

Early in May up got the jolly rout,
Called by the lark, and spread the fields about;

One, for to breathe himself, would coursing be
From this same beech to yonder mulberry;
A second leaped, his supple nerves to try;
A third was practising his melody;
This a new foot was jigging; others were
Busy at wrestling or to throw the bar,
Ambitious which should bear the bell away,
And kiss the nut-brown Lady of the May.
This stirred them up! A jolly swain was he
Whom Peg and Susan, after victory,
Crowned with a garland they had made, beset
With daisies, pinks, and many a violet,
Cowslip, and gilliflower. Rewards, though

small,

Encourage virtue; but if none at all

Meet her, she languisheth and dies, as now,
Where worth's denied the honor of a bough.
Thenot deplores the decline of these
merry sports, and Collen informs him that
it is the work of certain splenetic persons,
given up to extreme piety.

These teach that dancing is a Jezebel,
And barley-break the ready way to hell;
The morrice, idols; Whitsun ales can be
But profane relics of a jubilee ;

These, in a zeal to express how much they do
The organs hate, have silenced bagpipes too;
And harmless may-poles all are railed upon,
As if they were the towers of Babylon.
Thenot, crying out against these deluded
bigots, longs for the time to come when
such innocent pleasures may thrive again.
Collen, at this, can no longer refrain from
telling him that his prayer is heard, and
that Pan hath approved dancing shall
be this year holy as is the motion of a
sphere." Thenot cannot believe this
good news, and begs for an explanation.
VOL. XXIII. 1159

66

LIVING AGE.

Go, maids, and lilies get,
To make him up a glorious coronet;
Swains, keep his holiday, and each man swear
To saint him in the Shepherd's Calendar.

It is a most ingenious, pretty poem, one of
the best eclogues we possess in English.

Thomas Heywood comes in at the end of the book with a kind of appendix. After having read all the eulogies by the thirty-three poets he professes himself at a loss to know what new thing to say. But the veteran who had already had a main finger in more than two hundred plays, and who was ready, as a satire falsely attributed to Cowley assures us, to write on any subject for the smallest pay, was not likely to be really at a loss for words. At the most reasonable computation, Heywood must at this time have been nearly seventy years of age, and the chirruping cheerfulness of his lines is very consoling. The author of the "Panegerick" may have been old and poor, but he cannot have been very unhappy. His poem possesses Ben Jonson had declined to "drop vies" no other significance than its joviality. between Olympus and Cotswold, but Heywood does not object to do, not this only, but to compare Dover with Hercules. The old poet being hard of hearing, we may whisper, in confidence, that his poem is, in truth, very dull and silly.

The second-rate poets need not detain us long. Owen Feltham, so honorably known as the author of the "Resolves," was an exception to the general rule of the book, for he was still young, and to live for forty years more. His poem is in good supple verse, but obscure and affected to the last degree, like his prose in all but its best passages. Shackerley Marmion, author of the graceful epic poem of "Cupid and Psyche" and of several creditable plays, contributes one of the most readable and

sensible pieces in the volume, congratulat- | mother and his brother had murdered Mr. ing Dover on his good work without ridiculous extravagance. Marmion was soon after to die miserably of a sickness brought on by marching as a soldier in Sir John Suckling's troop on the ill-starred expedition to Scotland. "A goodly, proper gentleman," as Anthony à Wood calls him, to whose merits posterity has scarcely been just. Finally, in return for all the kind wishes expressed, Robert Dover himself essays "A Congratulatory Poem to my Poetical and Learned Friends, Compilers of this Book," in which, with considerable humor, he defends his love of athletic sports against the Puritans, who are so ready to see "wicked, horrid sin" in every kind of innocent pastime. Such are the contents of a volume of unusual interest, adorned with many illustrious names, and destined to preserve the memory of an interesting public movement which, but for the exist ence of these verses, we should scarcely have heard of; for it was the accident of Anthony à Wood's possession of the book in his library that led him to turn aside into pleasant gossip about the person celebrated in it.

Captain Robert Dover did not long survive the apotheosis and the destruction of his games. The one occurred in 1636, the other probably in 1638, and in 1641 he died at Stanway. He had a nephew or a grandson, who became a small dramatist during the Restoration. The scenes of the Cotswold games were left intact, and, according to a MS. in the possession of the late Sir Thomas Winnington, the sports themselves were revived in the reign of Charles II. It was probably very soon after this second revival that their neighborhood was the scene of a most lurid and mysterious event, which I may be permitted to recount as a foil to the joviality of the games themselves. Mr. William Harrison, the steward of a wealthy lady of Chipping Campden, riding out from home one day in 1676 to collect the rents of his mistress at Charringworth, did not return at night. A servant of the house, John Perry, was sent to search for him in the morning, and when he returned without any news, a general examination of the neighborhood began. In a lonely spot there were found a hat, a band, and a comb, which were recognized as having belonged to Mr. Harrison, and which were covered with blood. The body itself was not discovered, but the trial for murder began, and suspicion fell upon John Perry. This was increased by his confusion, and at last, cross-examined before the magistrates, he confessed that his

Harrison, after robbing him of his effects. Circumstantial evidence was so strong against the prisoners that, although the dead body had not been discovered, the Perrys were found guilty of the murder, and all three were hanged, John Perry protesting with his last breath that he had made a mistake, or been deluded by his fancy. Every one in the district, however, was satisfied with the justice of the sentence, when, after two years were passed, one day Mr. Harrison came quietly riding into Chipping Campden, with the story that he had been met on the wold by a party of men, who, after a violent struggle, had secured him, had ridden hard with him to the sea, had sailed to Turkey with him, and had sold him as slave to a Moslem physician. He declared that in the course of time he had escaped and fled on board a vessel bound for Portugal, whence he had found his way home again. What part of this romantic tale was true we know not; the horrible circumstance is the execution of the family of the Perrys on the strength of an hallucination.

The Cotswold games, in a hueless and debased form, continued to be celebrated during Whitsunweek almost all through the last century; but they were vulgarized, and all the charming air of distinction that Captain Dover had given them vanished with his death. But in their original form they were well worthy to be remembered. These humane and innocent sports, with their graceful mingling of antique revival with plain, homely English merriment, are characteristic of the very best side of the royalist party in the seventeenth century, and they are not unimportant in helping us to realize the every-day life of gentry and peasantry in distant country places.

E. W. G.

made several acquaintances, but the cou- | American lady who had spent several winrier continues to be the most intime. The ters at Geneva, where she had placed her young lady, however, is also very intimate with some third-rate Italians, with whom she rackets about in a way that makes much talk. Bring me that pretty novel of Cherbuliez's 'Pau. Méré'—and don't come later than the 23rd."