indefinite conjecture. This, I fear, is rather shaky ground, for the littérateur of the sevententh century, I fancy, often responded to the request for prefatory verses in much the same manner as one might subscribe to worthy charities which bore one. Many of the hundred odd gentlemen who acceded to Tom Coryat's request for verses to print before his Crudities were the merest acquaintances, who did not scruple to take any opportunity to make fun of Coryat and his curious work for twentyfive years after. Such verses, therefore, seem to me rather slight evidence of friendship. However, some of the contributions to the publications of Brome during his lifetime, and immediately after, may, taken with other facts, lead us to a few conclusions.

Besides Jonson, the most important of the older generation of literary men with whom Brome had relations was Dekker. His verses before the Northern Lass (1632), sufficiently uninteresting in themselves, are addressed 'to my Sonne Broom and his Lasse,' and begin :

Which, then of Both shall I commend?

Or thee (that art my Son and Friend)
Or Her, by thee begot?

Langbaine's remark1 that Brome was a friend of Dekker, and always stil'd him by the title of Father,' was probably based on these very verses. But we have a much stronger evidence of some connection between the two men in the fact that Brome shows the influence of Dekker's work to a certain degree. This will be taken up under the consideration of Brome as a dramatist. The friendship of Brome with two mutual enemies like Jonson and Dekker need not be wondered at, for the War of the Theatres, which happened in 1601,

1 Account of the Eng. Dram. Poets (1691), p. 121.

was so far forgotten in 1604 that Jonson was then collaborating with Marston,1 with whom he had been quite as much at odds as with Dekker.

That Brome was well acquainted with Fletcher is evident from his lines to Fletcher's memory in the folio of 1647. After a long and humorously humble introduction on the subject of how he dares appear in the company of the great, he says of Fletcher2:

You that have known him, know

The common talk that from his lips did flow,
And ran at waste, did savour more of wit
Than any of his time, or since, have writ,
But few excepted, in the stage's way:

His scenes were acts, and every act a play.

I knew him in his strength; even then when he,
That was the master of his art and me,
Most knowing Jonson, proud to call him son,
In friendly envy swore he had out-done

His very self: I knew him till he died.

Besides these verses, the editorship of Monsieur Thomas, already mentioned, substantiates the existence of a friendship between the two men.

John Ford, in his verses before the Northern Lass, calls himself The Author's very Friend,' and there is a possibility that Brome found a few suggestions in Ford's work. The author of these verses, however, may have been the John Ford of Gray's Inn, a cousin of the dramatist, to whom Tatham, Brome's friend, dedicated a book. But the fact that the dramatist contributed to Jonsonus Virbius shows that he was a friend of Jonson, and thus makes the chances about even either way.

With Heywood I find no indication of any relation, for the plays registered as by Brome and Heywood are doubt

1 In Eastward Hoe.

2 Beaumont and Fletcher, Works 1. lxv.

less the result of rewriting old plays, rather than of collaboration. Shirley addresses him as his worthy Friend,' and generously praises his work for the knowledge of men shown in it, far more than that of University wits like Cartwright, against whom he directs a sly shaft.1 Sir Aston Cokayne, a wealthy University man, the friend of Massinger, and a dramatist himself, wrote verses for Five New Plays the year after Brome's death. This, if we may judge from the verses themselves, he did probably more for the editor's sake than because of any friendship for the departed playwright.

There seems, moreover, to have been a circle of the smaller literary men of the time who frequently exchanged with one another the courtesy of writing complimentary lines. Brome contributed some to Shakerley Marmion's Cupid and Psyche (1637), Thomas Jordan's Poetical Varieties (1637), and John Tatham's Fancies Theatre (1640). Tatham, in return, contributed to the Jovial Crew, and Tatham's volume is dedicated to John Ford of Gray's Inn, who is mentioned above as possibly the author of the verses before the Northern Lass. Robert Chamberlain contributed both to Tatham's book and to the Antipodes. The C. G. in the Antipodes, the Sparagus Garden, and Tatham's Fancies Theatre, is in all probability Charles Gerbier.2 F. T., Mag. Art. Oxon., who did

1 Jovial Crew (1652). Cartwright's volume, with its many prefatory verses, appeared the year before.

2 A C. G. wrote prefatory verses to Nabbes's Unfortunate Mother (also printed 1640). Bullen (ed. Nabbes 2. 88), following Hazlitt, conjectures Charles Gerbier, author of Eulogium Heroinum (1651) and other works. Allibone credits him with Astrologo-Mastix (1646) and the Praise of Worthy Women (1651). C. G. is also found attached to verses in Rawlin's Rebellion (1640), and C. Gerbier to others in John Tatham's Fancies Theatre, along with some by Nabbes, Brome, and Chamberlain. The lines before the Unfortunate Mother refer to the New Inn, and show Gerbier to be an admirer

two sets of verses for the Jovial Crew, is likely to be the same author who appears in the first edition of Cupid and Psyche, as Francis Tuckyr, but in later editions as F. T.1 The J. B. in the Jovial Crew I cannot identify, but the same initials appear in the Poetical Varieties. The R. W. of the Sparagus Garden (1640) may (as a wild guess) be the Richard West who appears in Jonsonus Virbius (1638). John Hall, another contributor to the Jovial Crew, was a clever University man, a poet and pamphleteer, a friend of Shirley and of Thomas Stanley. Thomas Nabbes, who next to Shirley was Brome's strongest rival in the comedy of manners or humors, seems to have written no verses for Brome, though he contributed to the volumes of most of the others of this group. Brome prefixed verses to Nabbes' Microcosmus in 1637. This interchange of literary compliments suggests that Brome may have made one of a circle of eight or ten very obscure authors that existed just before the outbreak of the war.

In the case of none of these men can we find any indication of a real friendship for Brome. The one exception to this is Alexander Brome,3 an attorney and popular royalist poet, a man of no mean ability. His name is found attached, among those of the friends of Jonson, to a great deal of eulogistic verse. His poem, The Club, and his translation of the Leges Conviviales, show that he was often to be found among the witty revelers at the Devil Tavern. His encomiastic verses prefixed to the Jovial Crew seem to me to be the only ones that indicate any personal affection for the old author.

of Jonson. Fleay (Biog. Chron. 2. 169) says that the C. G. who prefixed verses to Rawlin's Rebellion was unquestionably Christopher Goad, not Charles Gerbier,' but his chief reason, I fancy. is that Bullen thinks otherwise.

1 Minor Caroline Poets, ed. Saintsbury, 2. 7.

But though I may not praise; I hope, I may
Be bold to love thee. And the World shall say
I've reason for't. I love thee for thy Name;

I love thee for thy Merit, and thy Fame:

I love thee for thy neat and harmlesse wit,

Thy Mirth that does so cleane and closely hit.
Thy luck to please so well who could go faster?
At first to be the Envy of thy Master.

I love thee for thy self; for who can choose

But like the Fountain of so brisk a Muse?

I love this Comedie, and every line,

Because tis good, as well 's because tis thine.

But the evidence of Alexander Brome's devotion to his friend does not rest on these lines alone. It is to him as editor that we owe the preservation of ten plays. In 1653 he put out five, with a preface and two sets of verses to introduce them, and in 1659 five more. This second volume has as preface an appreciation of Brome's work, defending him from detractors, and incidentally praising Jonson, the master of both writers. In his verses that follow after those of T. S. (Thomas Stanley), he states that he is not related to Richard in parts or person,' and shows some feeling in his concluding lines on the poverty in which his friend died.1

The Stephen Brome who calls himself a brother to Richard has already been spoken of. Besides him, there was a Henry Brome, a bookseller' at the Inn in St. Pauls Churchyard, near the west end,' who published the Queen's Exchange in 1657, with a brief preface. He also had a hand in the volume of 1659, published Alexander Brome's Songs and Other Poems in 1661, and as late as 1674 put out the Westminster Drollery. There is no indication of relationship.

Both the volumes published by Alexander appeared

1 Quoted above, p. 3.