the Maydes Metamorphosis may be an early work of John Day; and no one is better able to pronounce on such a point than Mr. Gosse.  The scene at the beginning of Act ii., and the gossip of the pages in Acts ii. and iii., are certainly very much in Day’s manner.  The merciless harrying of the word “kind” at the beginning of Act v. reminds one of similar elaborate trifling in Humour out of Breath; and the amoebaean rhymes in the contention between Gemulo and Silvio (Act i.) are, in their sportive quaintness, as like Day’s handiwork as they are unlike Lilly’s.  In reading the pretty echo-scene, in Act iv., the reader will recall a similar scene in Law Trickes (Act v., Sc.  I).  On the other hand, the delightful songs of the fairies[97] (in Act iii.), if not written by Lilly, were at least suggested by the fairies’ song in Endymion.  It would be hard to say what Lilly might not have achieved if he had not stultified himself by his detestable pedantry:  his songs (O si sic omnia) are hardly to be matched for silvery sweetness.

Mr. Gosse thinks that the rhymed heroics, in which the Maydes Metamorphosis is mainly written, bear strong traces of Day’s style; and as Mr. Gosse, who is at once a poet and a critic, judges by his ear and not by his thumb, his opinion carries weight.  Day’s capital work, the Parliament of Bees, is incomparably more workmanlike than the Maydes Metamorphosis; but the latter, it should be remembered, is beyond all doubt a very juvenile performance.  Turning over some old numbers of a magazine, I found a reviewer of Mr. Tennyson’s Princess complaining “that we could have borne rather more polish!” How the fledgling poet of the Maydes Metamorphosis would have fared at the reviewer’s hands I tremble to think.  But though his rhymes are occasionally slipshod, and the general texture is undeniably thin, still there is something attractive in the young writer’s shy tentativeness.  The reader who comes to a perusal with the expectation of getting some substantial diet, will be grievously mistaken; but those who are content if they can catch and hold fast a fleeting flavour will not regret the half-hour spent in listening to the songs of the elves and the prattle of the pages in this quaint old pastoral.

THE MAYDES METAMORPHOSIS.

As it hath bene sundrie times Acted by the Children of Powles.

LONDON:  Printed by Thomas Creede, for Richard Oliue, dwelling in long Lane. 1600.

THE PROLOGUE.

The manifold, great favours we have found,
  By you to us poore weaklings still extended;
Whereof your vertues have been only ground,
  And no desert in us to be so friended;
Bindes us some way or other to expresse,
  Though all our all be else defeated quite
Of any meanes save duteous thankefulnes,
  Which is the utmost measure of our might: 
Then, to the boundlesse ocean of your woorth
  This little drop of water we present;
Where though it never can be singled foorth,
  Let zeale be pleader for our good intent. 
      Drops not diminish but encrease great floods,
      And mites impaire not but augment our goods_.