Hobbinol, Diggon and Thenot are the dullest of shepherds. Unapt for witty or clownish dialogue, Peele rarely attempts, as Lyly and Greene did, to give fresh piquancy to an old story by the addition of subordinate humorous episodes; when he does, as in _Edward the First_, the result can hardly be termed a success. Peele's eminence as a dramatist, then, must be sought for in the two features of his work mentioned in our opening sentence, namely, sweetness of versification and graceful pastoralism. Of these the latter is found only in a single play, _The Arraignment of Paris_, and is one of the few products of the author's originality. Lyly was possibly indebted to it for the background and minor figures of certain scenes in _Gallathea_, and Greene may have owed something to its influence. Certainly neither dramatist ever equalled its delicate descriptions of passive Nature.[56] The preponderance of mythology, however, the dearth of real human beings, the unnaturalness permitted to invade nature--so that even the flowers are grouped, as in an absurd parterre, to represent the forms of goddesses--make Peele's pastoralism, despite the undeniable charm of many passages, inferior to Greene's representation of English country life. Turning next to his verse, we recognize that it is here above all that his excellence is to be found. Nevertheless a word of caution is needed. So many of his readers have been charmed by his verse that it seems almost a pity to remind them that he wrote more than two plays, and that the same brain that composed the favourite passages in _David and Bethsabe_ also produced quantities of very indifferent poetry in other dramas. _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_ is written in tedious alliterative heptameters. From _Edward the First_ the most ardent admirer of Peele would be puzzled to find half a dozen speeches meriting quotation. The verse of _The Battle of Alcazar_ is in all points similar to that of Greene's Marlowesque plays, imitating and falling short of the same model. In fact Peele's reputation as a versifier rests almost entirely on the contents of those two plays which most students of his work read, _The Arraignment of Paris_ and _David and Bethsabe_. Of the first it may be said boldly, without fear of contradiction, that, considered metrically, the verse is unsuited to ordinary drama. The arbitrary and constantly changing use of heroic couplet, blank verse (pentameters), rhyming heptameters, alternate heptameters and hexameters rhyming together, and the swift transition from one form to another in the same speech, possibly help towards the lyrical effect aimed at; the nature of the plot licenses a deviation from the ordinary dramatic rules; but such metric irresponsibility would be out of place in any ordinary play. There is a rare daintiness in some of the lines; they are truly poetic; but we must remember that goddesses and the legendary dwellers about Mount Ida may be permitted to speak in a language which