The foremost of them was a personage of so composed a presence, that Nature and Fortune had done him wrong, if they had not made him a soldier. _In his countenance there was a kind of indignation, fighting with a kind of exalted joy_, which by his very gesture were apparently decipherable; for he was jocund, that his soul went out of him in so glorious a triumph; but disdainfully angry, that she wrought her enlargement through no more dangers: yet were there bleeding witnesses enow on his breast, which testified, he did not yield till he was conquered, and was not conquered, till there was left nothing of a man in him to be overcome. That the poet's loyalty and devotion were at least as ardent when offered by his gratitude to sailors as to soldiers we may see by this description of "The Seaman" in his next work: A progress doth he take from realm to realm, With goodly water-pageants borne before him; The safety of the land sits at his helm, No danger here can touch, but what runs o'er him: But being in heaven's eye still, it doth restore him To livelier spirts; to meet death with ease, _If thou wouldst know thy maker, search the seas_.[1] [Footnote 1: The italics are here the author's.] These homely but hearty lines occur in a small and mainly metrical tract bearing a title so quaint that I am tempted to transcribe it at length: "The Double PP. A Papist in Arms. Bearing Ten several Shields. Encountered by the Protestant. At Ten several Weapons. A Jesuit Marching before them. Cominùs and Eminùs." There are a few other vigorous and pointed verses in this little patriotic impromptu, but the greater part of it is merely curious and eccentric doggrel. The next of Dekker's tracts or pamphlets was the comparatively well-known "Gull's Hornbook." This brilliant and vivid little satire is so rich in simple humor, and in life-like photography taken by the sunlight of an honest and kindly nature, that it stands second only to the author's masterpiece in prose, "The Bachelor's Banquet," which has waited so much longer for even the limited recognition implied by a private reprint. There are so many witty or sensible or humorous or grotesque excerpts to be selected from this pamphlet--and not from the parts borrowed or copied from a foreign satire on the habits of slovenly Hollanders--that I take the first which comes under my notice on reopening the book; a study which sets before us in fascinating relief the professional poeticule of a period in which as yet clubs, coteries, and newspapers were not--or at the worst were nothing to speak of: