ur youth."

It should be observed that both in this play and elsewhere passages occur
in Day which seem to have been borrowed or stolen from or by other writers,
such as Dekker and Samuel Rowley; but a charitable and not improbable
explanation of this has been found in the known fact of his extensive and
intricate collaboration. _The Isle of Gulls_, suggested in a way by the
_Arcadia_, though in general plan also fantastic and, to use a much abused
but decidedly convenient word, pastoral, has a certain flavour of the
comedy of manners and of contemporary satire. Then we have the quaint piece
of _Humour out of Breath_, a kind of study in the for once conjoined
schools of Shakespere and Jonson--an attempt at a combination of humorous
and romantic comedy with some pathetic writing, as here:--

"[O] Early sorrow art got up so soon?
What, ere the sun ascendeth in the east?
O what an early waker art thou grown!
But cease discourse and close unto thy work.
Under this drooping myrtle will I sit,
And work awhile upon my corded net;
And as I work, record my sorrows past,
Asking old Time how long my woes shall last.
And first--but stay! alas! what do I see?
Moist gum-like tears drop from this mournful tree;
And see, it sticks like birdlime; 'twill not part,
Sorrow is even such birdlime at my heart.
Alas! poor tree, dost thou want company?
Thou dost, I see't, and I will weep with thee;
Thy sorrows make me dumb, and so shall mine,
It shall be tongueless, and so seem like thine.
Thus will I rest my head unto thy bark,
Whilst my sighs ease my sorrows."

Something the same may be said of _Law Tricks_, or _Who would have Thought
it?_ which has, however, in the character of the Count Horatio, a touch of
tragedy. Another piece of Day's is in quite a different vein, being an
account in dramatised form of the adventures of the three brothers
Shirley--a kind of play which, from _Sir Thomas Stukeley_ downwards,
appears to have been a very favourite one with Elizabethan audiences,
though (as might indeed be expected) it was seldom executed in a very
successful manner. Lastly, or first, if chronological order is taken, comes
_The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_, written by Day in conjunction with
Chettle, and ranging itself with the half historical, half romantic plays
which were, as has been pointed out above, favourites with the first school
of dramatists. It seems