Other of the characters, again, if more than general ideas, are less than definite individuals. There is a sub-plot not at all interwoven with the main plot, in which the class types, Mansipulus, Mansipula, and their crony, Subservus, play their parts. With their help some attempt is made at presenting the humours of vulgar life. They quarrel with each other, but are presently reconciled in order to divert themselves together, and put off the business of their master and mistress, hoping to escape the punishment for their negligence by trickery and good luck. But we do not even know who their master and mistress are, and they come into no contact with either the historical or the allegorical figures.

The only personage who finds his way into both compartments of the "Tragicall Comedie" is Haphazard the Vice, who gives the story such unity as it possesses. His name happily describes the double aspect of his nature. On the one hand he stands. for chance itself; on the other for dependence on chance, the recklessness that relies on accident, and trusts that all will end well though guilt has been incurred. In this way he is both the chief seducer and the chief agent, alike of the petty rogues and of the grand criminal. To the former he sings:

Then wend ye on and folow me, Mansipulus,' Mansipula,
Let croping cares be cast away; come folow me, come folow

me:

Subseruus is a joly loute

Brace Haphazard, bould blinde bayarde! 3

A figge for his uncourtesie that seekes to shun good company!

To Appius' request for advice he replies:

Well, then, this is my counsell, thus standeth the case,
Perhaps such a fetche as may please your grace:

Text, Mansipula.

* Altered by Hazlitt to "brave." It probably means embrace." 3 A horse that does not see where it is going.

There is no more wayes but hap or hap not,
Either hap or els hapless, to knit up the knot:
And if you will hazard to venter what falles,
Perhaps that Haphazard will end all your thralles.

His distinctive note is this, that he tempts men by suggesting that they may offend and escape the consequences. In the end he falls into the pit that he has digged for others, and when his hap is to be hanged, like a true Vice he accepts the contretemps with jest and jape.

Yet despite the stock-in-trade that it takes over from Morality or Interlude, Appius and Virginia has specialties of its own that were better calculated to secure it custom in the period of the Renaissance. The author bestows most care on the main story, and makes a genuine attempt to bring out the human interest of the subject and the persons. In the opening scene he tries, in his well-meaning way, to give the impression of a home in which affection is the pervading principle, but in which affection itself is not allowed to run riot, but is restrained by prudence and obligation. Father, mother, and daughter sing a ditty in illustration of this sober love or its reverse, and always return to the refrain:

The trustiest treasure in earth, as we see,

Is man, wife, and children in one to agree;

Then friendly, and kindly, let measure be mixed
With reason in season, where friendship is fixed.

There is some inarticulate feeling for effect in the contrast between the wholesomeness of this orderly family life and the incontinence of the tyrant who presently seeks to violate it. And the dramatic bent of the author-for it is no more than a bent-appears too in the portraiture of the parties concerned. mingled perplexity and dread of Virginius, when in his consciousness of right he is summoned to the court, are justly conceived; and there is magnanimity

The

in his answer to Appius' announcement that he must give judgment "as justice doth require":

My lord, and reason good it is: your seruaunt doth request
No parciall hand to aide his cause, no parciall minde or brest.
If ought I haue offended you, your Courte or eke your Crowne,
From lofty top of Turret hie persupetat me downe:

If treason none by me be done, or any fault committed,
Let my accusers beare the blame, and let me be remitted.

Similarly, the subsequent conflict in his heart between fondness for his daughter and respect for her and himself is clearly expressed. And her high-spirited demand for death is tempered and humanised by her instinctive recoil when he "proffers a blow":

The gods forgeue thee, father deare! farewell: thy blow do bend

Yet stay a whyle, O father deare, for fleash to death is fraile. Let first my wimple bind my eyes, and then thy blow assaile, Nowe, father, worke thy will on me, that life I may injoy. But the most ambitious and perhaps the most successful delineation is that of Appius. At the outset he is represented as overwhelmed by his sudden. yearning. Apelles, he thinks, was a "prattling fool" to boast of his statue; Pygmalion was fond "with raving fits" to run mad for the beauty of his work, for he could make none like Virginia. Will not the Gods treat him as they treated Salmacis, when Hermophroditus, bathing in the Carian fountain near the Lycian Marches, denied her suit?

Oh Gods aboue, bend downe to heare my crie As once ye1 did to Salmasis, in Pond hard Lyzia by: Oh that Virginia were in case as somtime Salmasis, And in Hermofroditus stede my selfe might seeke my blisse! Ah Gods! would I unfold her armes complecting of my necke? Or would I hurt her nimble hand, or yeelde her such a checke? Would I gainsay hir tender skinne to baath where I do washe? Or els refuse her soft sweete lippes to touch my naked fleshe? Nay! Oh the Gods do know my minde, I rather would requier To sue, to serue, to crouch, to kneele, to craue for my desier.

In original, he.

But out, ye Gods, ye bend your browes, and frowne to see me fare; Ye do not force1 my fickle fate, ye do not way my care. Unrighteous and unequall Gods, unjust and eke unsure, Woe worth the time ye made me liue, to see this haplesse houre. This, we may suppose, is intended for a mad outbreak of voluptuous passion, "the nympholepsy of some fond despair"; and, as such, it is not very much worse than some that have won the applause of more critical ages. It may suggest the style of the Interlude in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, or more forcibly, the "King Cambyses' vein" that was then in vogue (for Preston's play of that name, published about a couple of years later than the probable date when this was performed, is in every way the nearest analogue to Appius and Virginia that the history of our stage has to offer). But in comparison with the normal flow of the Moralities, the lines have undoubtedly a certain urgency and glow. And there are other touches that betray the incipient playwright. Appius is not exhibited as a mere monster; through all his life his walk has been blameless, and he is well aware of his "grounded years," his reputation as judge, and the value of good report. He is not at ease in the course he now adopts; there is a division in his nature, and he does not yield to his temptation without forebodings and remorse.

Consience he pricketh me contempnèd,

And Justice saith, Judgement wold haue me condemned:
Consience saith, crueltye sure will detest me; 2
And Justice saith, death in thend will molest me:

And both in one sodden, me thinkes they do crie
That fier eternall my soule shall destroy.

But he always comes back to the supreme fact of his longing for Virginia:

By hir I liue, by hir I die, for hir I joy or woe,

For hir my soule doth sinke or swimme, for her, I swere, I goe.

And there are the potentialities of a really powerful effect in the transition from his jubilant outburst when he thinks his waiting is at an end:

O lucky light! lo, present heere hir father doth appeare,

to his misgivings when he sees the old man is unaccompanied :

O, how I joy! Yet bragge thou not. Dame Beuty bides behinde.

And immediately thereafter the severed head is displayed to his view.

Nor was R. B., whether or not he was Richard. Bower, Master of the Chapel children, quite without equipment for the treatment of a classical theme, though in this respect as in others his procedure is uncertain and fumbling in the highest degree. The typical personages of the under-plot have no relish. of Latinity save in the termination of the labels that serve them as names, and they swear by God's Mother, and talk glibly of church and pews and prayer books, and a "pair of new cards." Even in the better accredited Romans of Livy's story there are anachronisms and incongruities. Appius, though. ordinarily a judge, speaks of himself as prince, king or kaiser; and references are made to his crown and realm. Nevertheless the author is not without the velleities of Humanism. He ushers in his prologue with some atrocious Latin Elegiacs, which the opening lines of the English are obliging enough to paraphrase:

Qui cupis aethereas et summas scandere sedes,
Vim simul ac fraudem discute, care, tibi.
Fraus hic nulla juvat, non fortia facta juvabunt:
Sola Dei tua te trahet tersa fides.

Cui placet in terris, intactae paludis 1 instar,

Vivere Virginiam nitere, Virgo, sequi:

1 Professor Butler, to whom I am indebted for other emendations of the passage, which is very corrupt in the printed text, suggests Palladis, which gives a meaning, the Virgin goddess, and saves the metre. But I am not sure that R. B. had any bigoted objection to false quantities.