upon the stage the Queen of France and Mlle, de Verneuil. The former having first accosted the latter with very hard words, gave her a box on the ear. At my suit three of them were arrested; but the principal person, the author, escaped.” This was Chapman’s tragedy, and in neither of the editions printed two years later does the objectionable passage appear. It is curious that this interesting illustration of the history of the English stage should have been unearthed from the French archives by Von Raumer in his “History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Chapman was a man of grave character and regular life. We may, perhaps, infer from some passages in his plays that he heartily hated Puritans. There are other passages that might lead one to suspect him of a leaning towards Catholicism, or at least of regretting the schism of the Reformation. The scene of “Byron’s Conspiracy” and “Byron’s Tragedy” is laid in France, to be sure, in the time of Henry IV., but not to mention that Chapman’s characters are almost always the mere mouth-pieces of his own thought, there is a fervor in the speeches to which I have alluded which gives to them an air of personal conviction. In “Byron’s Tragedy” there is a eulogy of Philip II. and his policy very well worth reading by those who like to keep their minds judicially steady, for it displays no little historical insight. It certainly shows courage and independence to have written such a vindication only eighteen years after the Armada, and when national prejudice against Spain was so strong. Chapman’s friendships are the strongest testimonials we have of his character. Prince Henry, whose untimely death may have changed the course of English history, and with it that of our own, was his patron. So was Carr, Earl of Somerset, whom he did not desert in ill fortune. Inigo Jones was certainly his intimate friend; and he is said to have been, though it seems doubtful, on terms of friendly intercourse with Bacon. In dedicating his “Byron’s Conspiracy” to Sir Thomas Walsingham, he speaks as to an old friend. With his fellow-poets he appears to have been generally on good terms. His long life covered the whole of the Elizabethan age of literature, and before he died he might have read the earlier poems of Milton.