esting note from Norris's _Ancient Cornish Drama_, on the mode
in which the Cornish mysteries were played; and a brief account by Mr.
Jenner of the trilogy contained in that work.

There remains John Bayle's play of _God's Promises_. Its author was born
at the sea-doomed city of Dunwich in Suffolk, in 1495. Destined for the
church, he showed his obstinacy early by marrying in defiance of his
cloth. He was lucky and unlucky in being a _protege_ of Thomas
Cromwell, and had to fly the country on that dangerous agent's death.
He returned when the new order was established, and became Bishop of
Ossory, had to suffer and turn exile for his tenets again in Mary's
reign; but found safe harbourage for his latter years at Canterbury,
where he died. He wrote, on his own evidence, more than twenty plays, of
which _God's Promises_, the _Life of John the Baptist_, and _King John_,
a history play of interest as a pioneer, are best known. He himself
called _God's Promises_ a tragedy, but unless the sense of Sodom hanging
in the balance, while Abraham works down to its lowest point the
diminishing ratio of the just to be found there, or of David's appearing
before the Pater Coelestis as the great judge, of dramatic or tragic
emotion there is little indeed. But Bayle's rhetoric easily ran to the
edge of suspense, as in the opening of his seventh act, where he puts
the dramatic question in the last line:--

I have with fearcenesse mankynde oft tymes corrected,
And agayne I have allured hym by swete promes.
I have sent sore plages, when he hath me neglected,
And then by and by, most confortable swetnes.
To wynne hym to grace, bothe mercye and ryghteousnes
I have exercysed, yet wyll he not amende.
Shall I now lose hym, or shall I hym defende?

And what could be finer than the setting he gives to the antiphon, _O
Oriens Splendor_, at the end of the second act?

To turn from Bayle's play to the heart-breaking realities of _Everyman_
is like turning from a volume of all too edifying sermons to the last
chapters of one of the gospels. Into the full history of this play,
opening a difficult question about the early relations between Dutch and
English writers and printers, there is no room here to go. The Dutch
_Everyman_--_Elckerlijk_--was in all probability the original of the
English, and it was certainly printed a few years earlier. Richard
Pynson, who first imprinted the English play at the Sign of the Georg