ents, let me breathe awhile;
Ugly hell gape not; come not, Lucifer;
I'll burn my books; oh! Mephistopheles!"_

And then mellowing his sonorous voice, gives thus his classical apostrophe
to Helen of Greece:

_"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Illium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips suck forth my soul--see where it flies;
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again;
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!"_

A loud round of applause greeted the rendition of the classical poem, not
only at our own table, but through the entire hall and adjacent rooms.

At a table not far away sat a number of illustrious gentlemen, favorites of
Queen Elizabeth and greatly admired by the people.

There sat Sir Walter Raleigh, lately returned from discoveries in America;
Francis Bacon, Attorney-General to the Crown; Earl Essex, the court
favorite; Lord Southampton, the gayest in the realm; with young Burleigh,
Cecil and Leicester, making night melodious with their songs, speeches and
tinkling silver wine cups.

The young lords insisted that we give another recitation, pictorial of love
and passion. Marlowe declined to say more, but knowing that William had
hatched out his crude verses of Venus and Adonis, I insisted that he
deliver a few stanzas for the enthusiastic audience, particularly
describing the passionate pleadings of Venus to the stallion Adonis.

Without hesitation, trepidation or excuse, William arose in manly attitude
and drew a picture of beautiful Venus:

_"Sometimes she shakes her head and then his hand,
Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;
Sometimes her arms infold him like a band;
She would, he will not in her arms be bound;
And when from thence he struggles to be gone
She locks her lily fingers one in one!_

_"'Fondling,' she saith, 'since I have hemmed thee here,
Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt on mountain or in dale;
Graze on my lips; and if those hil