house, reminding one of Stubbes's complaint against the citizens' wives and daughters, that they use their husbands' gardens outside the walls for purposes of intrigue. All round the north and east of the city the people could step out of the gates into the country. Except the houses of Bishopsgate Without and the Whitechapel Road, there was nothing but fields and open ground. Around St. Giles, Cripplegate, however, we find a suburb already populous. About Smithfield the houses gather thickly. We observe the familiar names of Little Britain, Pye Corner, Cock Lane, and Hoosier Lane. Holborn, with gardens on the north, has a double line of houses as far as Chancery Lane. Where is now Blackfriars Bridge Road stood the palace of Bridewell, with its two square courts and its gabled front facing the river. Whitefriars is partly built upon, but some of the courts and gardens remain. The lawns of the Temple, planted with elms, slope down to the river, and these were followed westward by the palaces along the Strand--Exeter House, Arundel House, the Bishop of Llandaff's house, Somerset House, the Savoy, Bedford House, Cecil House, Northumberland House, and the rest, of which Somerset House alone remains, and that in altered guise. There are no docks as yet. The lading and the unlading of the ships continued almost until this century to be done in the Pool below London Bridge by barges and lighters. In considering the people of London in the time of good Queen Bess one is forced to put the poets and dramatists first, because they are the chief glory of this wonderful reign. Yet such a harvest could only spring from a fruitful soil. Of such temper as were the poets, so also--so courageous, so hopeful, so confident--were the inarticulate mass for whom they sang and spoke. Behind Kit Marlowe, Greene, and Peele were the turbulent youth, prodigal of life, eager for joy, delighting in feast and song, always ready for a fight, extravagant in speech and thought, jubilant in their freedom from the tyranny of the Church. Behind Spenser and Sydney were the cultivated class, whose culture has never been surpassed. Behind Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Massenger, and Beaumont, and the rest were the people of all conditions, from Gloriana herself down to Bardolph and Doll. We can only get at the people through those who write about them. Therefore we must needs say something about the Elizabethan poets.