and strong, and I think has been more potential in our literature than appears on the surface. I do not think it would be hard to show that others of whom more is heard drew light from him, as well early as more recent, from Burns to Thomas Hood."
Biography is, after all, the best history; and the life of Robert Southwell reveals one phase of Elizabethan England better than a dozen commentaries. It is not, indeed, the phase oftenest remembered. In the stirring political drama of the day, in the clash of arms and clash of wits through which England was led to unprecedented material splendour, he played but little part. Still further was he from the wild Bohemianism of Greene and Marlowe, or the mature artistic glory of those who congregated at the old Mermaid Tavern. But there was a darker, sadder undercurrent to this rushing tide of Elizabethan life. There was the ardent Catholic minority, nowise deaf to the call of the young intellectual life, nor blind to the signs of England's growing strength—sensitive, indeed, to every vital influence—yet compelled into hostile inactivity. Adherents of the Old Faith were shut out from both the great Universities; they had no part in the administration of justice; they were ineligible for any public office in the kingdom. Thus a great body of men with the culture of the New Learning and the passion of the Renaissance were found marching not with but against the trend of their age. Some of them sought adventure overseas, or plunged into purely secular activity; others, already forced into disloyalty, spent their time plotting a change in government, and were the easy prey of each new conspiracy. Still others, purified by persecution, rose above the heat and
