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precept and example the baleful sort, only the collapse of deeffects of romanticism. If these mocracy itself. two political philosophersMM. Daudet and Maurras-had their way, the ancient provinces of France would once more direct their own affairs, and would at last escape the paralysing influence of Hebrew prefets and centralisation. But

M. Daudet is rejected of Paris, and will find, perforce, in his journal the chance of persuading his countrymen which is denied him in the Chamber.

The worst crime of the democracy, clearly demonstrated in the French elections, is that it willingly chooses the traitor in preference to the hero. By what impulse of the crowd this crime is forced upon a stupid electorate-and all electorates are stupid-we do not know. We do know that France, having rejected the great soldier, General de Castelnau, has sent M. Malvy to the Palais Bourbon. Now M. Malvy has but recently returned to France after five years of banishment, a sentence inflicted upon him for treason. While his brave fellow countrymen were dying on the field of battle for the honour and safety of France, he was doing his best to aid the enemy. And he is now not only free to go and come as he chooses; he is a highly paid member of a popular Chamber, and is once more in a position to do his country an injury. It is difficult to explain this gross example of cynicism or short memory. We can see in it, and other examples of the same

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And if one department of France has for its representative the ineffable M. Malvy, another has permitted its free choice to fall upon M. Marty, the Black Sea mutineer, who described himself on his poster as "Ex-convict, liberated by the will of the People." We can, in truth, almost believe that, were women permitted to sit in the Chamber, Berton, the murderess of Marius Plateau, a gallant soldier, would by this time be a legislator. M. Caillaux alone is excluded. Though he escaped from prosecution with his life, he is not yet permitted to visit Paris, or to take part in the government of the country which he has dishonoured. He has not been prevented from using his influence in his own department to return his chosen candidates to Parliament. M. Caillaux is, indeed, a far greater enemy to France than any other Frenchman. Whatever he does seems to be forgiven or forgotten by those of his countrymen who think with him. His spokesmen are in the Chamber which as yet he cannot enter. But some day the privilege will be given him, and then the fortune of Germany will be made. Meanwhile it seems clear that, though hostile leaders may express their just indignation, the electors of France cling, as by habit, to the malefactors who have won their respect. There was once a deputy, M. Wilson by name, the son-in

law of President Grèvy, who, being involved in the scandal of his father-in-law, was still returned to the Chamber with the acclamations of his constituents. Nothing availed to dislodge him. The Chamber sent him to coventry. On the occasions when the deputies met at Versailles and breakfasted at the celebrated Reservoirs, M. Wilson was forced to sit apart, a solitary man; nobody had a word to throw at him, and at election after election the town of Loches set him at the head of the poll. Now that M. Malvy, a far worse miscreant than M. Wilson, is returned to Parliament, will he too be outlawed by his fellows ? We fear not. The judgments of men are easier now than they were twenty years ago, and it is the habit of democracies to forgive all but the honest patriot.

However, there is one ray of hope for France in her sad election. The Left Bloc, the Radical Socialists and Radicals, who, having a majority, may be in office, will not be in power. The situation, briefly, differs not very much from our own. Mr Ramsay MacDonald is not in power, though he holds office, and, fortunately for us, cannot give full expression to his opinions. MM. Briand and Herriot, should they be asked to form a government, will be compelled for lack of strength to accommodate their critics. If a Socialist ministry be a necessity in a wise and old country like France (or like England),

then the only security possible against revolution and confiscation is that the weakness of the ministry should keep it out of mischief. In Sweden, we believe, the problem was for many years solved by a simpler method. The Socialists were in a majority, and, conscious of their own incapacity to govern or to administrate, left the responsibilities of office to the Conservatives. Not much harm was done. The king's Government was decently carried on, and the Conservatives, knowing themselves tenants and not freeholders, abstained cheerfully, according to their wont, from the superfluous business of legislation. In France, we fear, this good example will not be followed; but, though she may go through a period of unsettled government, her Radical Socialists will not be strong enough to do much harm; and there can be little sting in the tail of twenty-nine Communists.

It is pleasant to turn from the confusion of politics to a book that is so remote from the present as the late Mr A. H. Bullen's 'Elizabethans' (London: Chapman and Hall). The book is remote from the present of most of us; it was not remote from the present of A. H. Bullen. Bullen, indeed, was an Elizabethan born out of due date. He moved most easily among the men of the sixteenth century. They were his intimates and friends. He understood their speech as familiarly as he knew their minds.

As Mr Masefield once said, you have added a name to the "He talked of Elizabethan roll of English poets, and one books and people much as that can never be overlooked. though they were alive in the Certainly his long-neglected streets outside, like the time ghost ought now to be rejoiccome back." For him the time ing in Elysium." If Campion's had not come back: it was ghost rejoiced, Bullen characalways there; and by a natural teristically uttered a note of sympathy he lived where the warning. He presently foresaw Elizabethans themselves would that Campion, lately recovered, have (and had) been at home. "now ran the risk of uncritical It was Stratford which shel- adulation," and he thought it tered him, in the heart of right that he, his only begetter, Shakespeare's own country; should thus moderate the enand Bullen had not far to go thusiasm of his readers. Moderif he would encounter the ation is, indeed, the mark of shades of Shakespeare and all Bullen's criticism. He was Drayton and other unforgotten too sound a scholar, he knew worthies of Warwickshire. And too well the drudgery of makwhen he visited London, in- ing a fair text, to lose himself frequently, it was natural that in a mist of vague admiration. he should take up his abode He gathers together the few in Southwark, which might facts that can be found of remind him at once of Chau- Campion's life and character, cer's pilgrims and of Shake- and then lets him speak for speare's theatre. Nor was there himself. He was a physician; the slightest suspicion of pose he wrote a volume of Latin in this choice of abode. Bullen verse, a treatise on versificawas incapable of pose or affec- tion, in which he condemns tation, and he visited South- the practise of rhyming, which wark not as a curious tourist, he had always followed, and indulging a whim, but as a an essay on counterpoint. For true Elizabethan, who could the rest, says Bullen, he "tells not be asked to care for a in one of his epigrams that he London which had grown up was lean, and that he envied after his time. fat men; he tells us, too, the names of a few of his friends." Though his fame stood high in his own time, "his poetry was quickly forgotten, being hidden away in music-books that nobody opened." Thus writes Bullen, and he praises especially Campion's sureness of touch and variety. "Whatever he essayed," so he brings his chapter to an end, "he did well:

He writes of the Elizabethans out of the fulness of knowledge and sympathy. Thomas Campion, one of the poets celebrated in this admirable book, he brought back from oblivion. "I must congratulate you as cordially as I thank you," wrote Swinburne to Bullen when he had completed his discovery. "In issuing this first edition of Campion's works,

he always found the

true inevitable words, whether for a love-song or a hymn. He was at once a born singer and a consummate artist."

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Another of Bullen's discoveries is William Bullein, of whose kin he was, and whom, as in duty bound, he brought back to the knowledge of men. Like Campion, Bullein was a doctor, and, unlike Campion, he practised his craft, and wrote treatises about it. The Government of Health' is among his works, and far less commonplace, in title at any rate, is 'Bulleyn's Bulwarke of Defence against all Sickness, Soreness, and Woundes that doe daily assault Mankinde.' But his masterpiece, set forth by Bullen with many quotations, is entitled 'A Dialogue both pleasaunte and pitiefull, wherein is a goodly regimente against the fever Pestilence with a consolacion and comfort against death. Newly corrected by William Bullein, the autour thereof' (1564). The book is a dialogue, or rather a series of dialogues, and it opens in a London citizen's house. Its prose is as clear and sonorous as its sense of drama is vivid. The north-country beggar, the citizen and his wife, the doctor, speak, one and all, their own authentic language. And Bullen cites just enough of it to make us wish that the whole work were easily accessible in a fair reprint. Campion and Bullein were for Bullen brilliant recoveries. He brought them back from the dead to a world which had VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCCIV.

forgotten them. The rest of his portraits are of Elizabethans whose names are familiar to us all-Drayton and Daniel, Chapman and Dekker. For Drayton, Bullen has, of course, a kindly feeling. He was not merely an Elizabethan ; he was also a poet, and a Warwickshire man. He knew the country round about Stratford as well as Bullen knew it, and he was filled with the patriotism which became his time and place. None has celebrated more eloquently than he the glory of England. For him St Crispin's Day is as gallant an occasion as it is for Shakespeare. And Bullen, with his sure judgment, picks out for his approval the familiar epistles which Drayton wrote to his friends, which recall the ease of Horace and foreshadow the elegance of Pope. How shall we ever forget the tribute he pays, in his epistle to Henry Reynolds, to Christopher Marlowe :

"Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,

Had in him those brave translunary things

That the first Poets had; his raptures

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ton for five guineas, said that Learning's praise will live as he did not think "all Drayton long as Learning is respected." ever wrote worth five guineas." But much as Bullen likes Daniel, Nor, as Bullen admits, is he to it is Dekker who is nearest to the taste of to-day. If he is his mind and heart. And this known at all, it is by his ballad preference is easily intelligible. of Agincourt and by his famous Dekker was a true Elizabethan, sonnet: "Since ther's no helpe, who could turn his hand to come let us kiss and part.' anything. Prose or poetry, "The reason may be," says dramas or satires, were all Bullen, "that the world grows within his compass, and he older and life more sombre; fought for a living with his the gospel of Science is spread- pen as a soldier of fortune ing, the revels of Oberon have fights with his sword. If he long been broken up, and not were unfortunate, he could bear the Sicily of Theocritus is his sufferings like a man, and, more remote from us than the as Bullen says, "by no poet London of Shakespeare." Yet and no divine has the worth Bullen was Drayton's faithful of patience been so touchingly follower to the end; he at least described as in this thriceheld his memory dear, and has noble utterance of Dekker :— amply repaid the debt he owes him by a delicate appreciation.

Bullen, indeed, had a deft hand at the lapidary style. He knew how to explain, in a few lines, the virtues of the poets whom he chose for his own and criticised. Admirable is his summing up of the qualities which make Samuel Daniel memorable. "Few men," said Bullen, "ever cultivated literature with the frank wholehearted devotion of Samuel Daniel-literature for its own sake, and not for what it may bring of advantage or reward. He was impressed by the dignity of his high calling; he knew that a perfect poem outlives the downfall of dynasties, and he longed to be numbered with those who have spoken things worthy of Apollo. His 'Civil Wars' and his Senecan tragedies may be forgotten, but his eloquent poems in

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Patience, my lord: why, 'tis the soul Of all the virtues 'tis nearest kin to

of peace:

heaven,

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