merica";
another "Rosalynde." The latter fell into Shakespeare's hands and
pleased him; he drew from it the plot of "As you like it."[155] Coming
before the literary public, Lodge does not altogether forget his
profession of corsair, and in order to deprive the critics of the
temptation to sneer, he is careful to brandish his rapier from time to
time, and to write prefaces that make one's hair stand on end. "Roome
for a souldier and a sailer, that gives you the fruits of his labors
that he wrote in the Ocean!" he cries to the reader at the beginning of
his "Rosalynde," and let fault-finders keep silence; otherwise he will
throw them overboard "to feed cods."

After such a warning there would be nothing it seems but to hold our
tongue; but perhaps, taking the practical side of the question, we may
consider that by this time Lodge's rapier must have grown very rusty,
and would not offer more danger than any critic is bound to incur in
the performance of his duty. Besides that admiration may in all
sincerity be blended with criticism when it is a question of Lodge's
masterpiece, "Rosalynde."

The tale itself bears a somewhat curious history. Twice at two hundred
years' distance it took the fancy of the greatest genius of the period.
In the Middle Ages it was called the "Tale of Gamelyn,"[156] and Chaucer
apparently intended to work it into his "Canterbury Tales," but he died
before he had completed his wish, and some copy of the rough old poem
having, as it seems, been found among his papers, it was in after time
inserted in the manuscripts of his works as the "Cooke's Tale." As it
stood in the fourteenth century this story recited mere deeds of valour,
of strong, sinewy fighters; love and women played no part in it; and it
is a great loss for us not to know whether old Chaucer would have made
this very necessary addition, and what sort of mediaeval Rosalind he
would have depicted.

As things went, we are indebted to our gentleman adventurer for the
invention of Rosalind. Lodge took up the tale and remodelled it
entirely; he gave place in it to the fair she-page and to her friend
Alinda and to Phoebe, the hard-hearted shepherdess, in such a way that
when Shakespeare in his turn bethought himself of this story, he had
nothing to add to fit it for his own stage, nothing except genius.

[Illustration: PREPARING FOR THE HUNT, 1575.]

But if Lodge cannot be considered a man of genius, he is certainly a
writer of very rema