be more offensive to a selfrespecting Congress of Trade Unionists? It need not be said that he was put in his place very speedily. "Shame" and "rot" greeted the description of Mr Crooks' effort to benefit mankind. That a man should think or act for himself was plainly not to be borne. "A member," said one orator, "must not be allowed to introduce a measure in the House of Commons on his own responsibility." No, they must all go to heel, when they are told, like patient hinds, and make up for the subservience as best they may by prating loudly of freedom and by celebrating the virtues of an untrammelled democracy.

And now that the Congress is over and done with, it is impossible not to feel a profound contempt for it all. The purpose for which the Unions were established was long ago forgotten. Conciliation and arbitration are now deemed beneath the notice of the delegates. No longer content to guard their own interests, they would presume to govern the whole world. They have stamped under foot the discipline upon which their organisation was based.

The leaders flout the country, the rank and file flout the leaders. The complete ignorance of life which the Trade Unionists display, together with a vain assurance of their own wisdom, is nothing less than pitiful. Before they govern the

world they must govern themselves. They must curb their unbridled tongues, their foolish jealousies of one another. If a mere scholar or statesman or soldier presumed, without an hour's experience, to blow glass or to drive an engine, the Trade Unionists would be the first to protest against their insolence. In a similar spirit, let the Trade Unionists remember that it needs something more than an overweening pride to direct the scholarship, the statecraft, and the army of a great country. At the time of a General Election it is a useful practice, no doubt, to count heads. There is virtue in counted heads at no other time and for no other purpose. That the Trade Unions will ever be a permanent danger to the country we do not believe. Their ill-will is inspired by ignorance and the folly of cynical agitators. Some day they will conquer their ignorance and dismiss their cynical agitators. Then, if they are fortunate, they may learn humility, and with humility the other useful lessons of life. If they do, they may at last succeed in minding their own business, and so refrain from insulting the the honest, honourable men who are serving their country in professions for which Messrs Thorne and his friends will always be unfit, and to which the magic and meaningless words "popular control" can never be applied.

of his pamphlet of verse, assembled under the title standing at the head of this paper. If we except his entertaining 'Iournall,' from which autobiographical common-book we draw our main knowledge of him (it was not, however, published until the Restoration; by some grand- or great-grandchild, one supposes, and copies are very hard to come by), The Shepheards Gyrlond' is his only preserved work. It was printed during his lifetime ("By E. F. for Andrew Wise, and are to be solde at the signe of the Angell in Paules Churchyard, 1594"); and if it was quicklier forgotten than the lyrics of his contemporaries, this may well be due to the fact that he was not a dramatist as well as poet. Some slight and beautiful songs still live for us which might have been eternally lost but that their authors' names are shored up by monuments of stage-stuff not now actable, and read only by the student whose business it is to know the constituent values of the dramatic renaissance at the close of the sixteenth century. Had good Tom Heywood, for instance, never produced a certain bulk of not-too-inspirational plays, would not his one golden lyric have slipped for ever through the crannies of men's memories? But there it is, a charming cameo preserved to the world by a dull and massive frame, simply because Tom dwelt-as Nat did not-a humble muse on that Parnassus of Drama whose Phoebus - Apollo

was

And while the admitted purpose of the present chronicler is to reintroduce the best of this pretty collection to a forgetful public, it may be found that Nat's own life-story, so artlessly set down in his 'Iournall,' has an engaging aspect of its own. Incurably whimsical, even at his most wistful he cannot conceal the dimple round the corner, nor do his pair of teardrops succeed in dimming a twinkling optic.

Let us get to facts.

Nathaniel Downes, on his specific statement, was Kentish born, although the Sussex he died in has claimed him. He is negligent of his dates, but we may fix his birth between 1569-73. In his early childhood his family removed over the borderland of its native shire into Sussex. The events of his life call for small comment till he runs away to London, the Mecca of the Elizabethan poet; a pilgrimage Nat was bound to make at some period in his existence, for the poet sang in his veins, and was, it may be added, very little appreciated by his kin. He seems to have been apprenticed to a blacksmith, one Jno. Wynne, who reap

pears later to in Nat's history.

us

He is asked, "What wilt

He sang his way, and as frequently starved his way, to the city; and now we see him arriving sorefoot at the Three Pigeons in Brentford, on a morning when merry George Peele was playing host there to a party of friends.

"I heard loud talk and laughter within," Nat tells us, "and looking through the window spied a jolly company at dinner. Whereat my empty belly ached twofold and my parched tongue took a double flame."

Someone flung a scrap to a hound, and the sight seems to have driven the boy to desperation. For he pokes his head through the casement and

cries

"I would I also went on four feet, my master! I am leaner than thy dog."

We can imagine the astonishment of the roysterers. It was Peele, of course, who waved the hand of welcome, saying

"Art lean enough to creep through the casement and beg, dog?"

Nat worms his way in (no easy task with certain windows of the period, so his entrance is, in some sort, his argument),

thou?"

"A full flagon," says Nat. "Hast aught to barter therefor?

"Ay," says Nat, "a dusty throat."

"A short bargain, boy." "No," says Nat, "'tis the length of this road to Sussex coast."

"Why, why, why!" cries George, "then Brent's self will scarce fill it."

"Yet this puddle had served," says Nat, and looks at the floor, running spilled liquor.

"I think thou'st some wit," observes George.

"I do know I've much thirst," responds Nat, and by this he is growing really faint; but don't expect heart in such company. They are not yet done with him. Let the lout stand up to them till he drop; then, doubtless, they will look to him.

Some one says, "I see thou hast a very pretty gittern. Your true, raging, not-to-bedenied thirst had sold it long before ye were over Sussex

border."

Poor Natty!

"Gentles,' I saies, 'I mought as soone roaste and dine off the hart in my bodie to preserue myselfe from staruing. If I part with my gitterne I part with my trade.'

George asks, "What is thy trade?"

"I sing for a living," says

Nat.

"What songs dost thou sing?" asks George.

George looks Nat up and down at this, peers in his pinched and smiling face, observes his rags and his grime and his country slouch, and then says very gravely, but winking one eye at his friends"Praise the fair day on which I discover mine own brother! Brother, sing us a song."

And Nat, for all his parched throat, very readily sings.

The Iournall does not quote his song. It may have been a fugitive verse, made one day and forgotten the next, when it had won him a bed or a supper. But if it appears among those preserved in the Gyrlond,' we can well imagine it to be the pretty twelve-line lyric that runsO haue ye euer seene a woode

Wher in the yeares greene infancie Yong violets are thicklie strewd,

A coole contentment to the eie?

Or haue ye euer hird a nest

Of hidden byrdès thatte when daie Sleepes on the golden-pillow'd West

Doe sing the laste of lyghte awaie ?

Soe tender and so yong to see

Is she my bosome onely loues, And in such singing puritie Among my thoghts and praiers sche

moues.

Whether it was this song or another, we gather that the audience was both surprised and delighted; and, indeed, smooth rhythm and sound rhyming, eked out with less imagination than we know Nat capable of, would alone have been bound to achieve their effect in a company that was looking for something very

different. Generosity succeeded to banter; the singer had obliterated the rustic. George loudly proclaims the young man's gittern to be the third and least part of his stock-intrade: his voice is its master, and his fancy betters his voice. What is the rhymester's name? Nat supplies it.

"Thy lady's name, too," is next demanded, "for so sweet an one is worthy a toast."

And now-alack and alack, and yet again alack!- our Nat commits himself to the fatal words. He says,

"Elizabeth Wynne,"

and unconsciously sets the seal upon his destiny.

The impulse that made him utter the lie is one of the things for which we find him likeable.

For we have his word that up to this time Natty's affections had never been seriously engaged. He had no lady. His songs of love were composed to that idealised figment we all cherish in the abstract, and pop straightway into the first concrete body that attracts us, irrespective of the fitness of the idol to its shrine. Hence too many tragedies. But, Nat not yet having encountered the shrine to contain his idol, Peele's demand embarrassed him. The truth was the last thing to be uttered in the circumstances.

"I saw," he frankly confesses,

my gentlemen expectant of a name, and I was loth to disoblige them. Moreover, I had to make capital of their interest in me, and durst not let it wane for lack of a lady. So casting about in my mind I named the