are almost invariably well made, or at least are clearly marked.  Phrases such as, “But leaving him so desirous of the journey, to Torismond"[1]; “Leaving her to her new entertained fancies, again to Rosader"[2]; “where we leave them, and return again to Torismond"[3]; show clearly a growing regard for the value of clear arrangement, to which the earlier romancers had been indifferent.  In the avoidance of digressions, too, Lodge’s style is an improvement upon that of his predecessors, and even upon that of most of his contemporaries.[4] The story moves along, if not rapidly, at least continuously from start to finish.  There is a gratifying lack of such preposterous complications and tortuous windings as we meet with in the plot of Greene’s “Menaphon,” for example, where it sometimes seems doubtful whether the characters ever will emerge from so mazy a labyrinth of plot, and where the reader is bewildered by the almost complete lack of unity in the story.

[Footnote 1:  P. 12.]

[Footnote 2:  P. 17.]

[Footnote 3:  P. 50.  See, also, pp. 19, 41, 51, 59, 73, 97, 104.]

[Footnote 4:  On page 72 Lodge accuses himself of digressing; but the four lines in which he here anticipates the conclusion of the story seem not to warrant the charge.]

The Lyrical Interludes. Lodge’s spirit is essentially poetical.  One feels that his way of looking at things is that of a true poet; of one, that is, who sees beneath the shows of things.  Lodge saw as clearly as Shakespeare did that only love can untie the knot that selfishness has tied.  And not only is Lodge a poet in his outlook on life, but also in the narrower sense of the word, for he is one of the sweetest singers of all that band of choristers that filled the spacious times of great Elizabeth with sounds that echo still.  The voices of some were more resonant or more impassioned; few, if any, were sweeter.  Such a song as Rosalynde’s Madrigal, beginning,

    Love in my bosom, like a bee
      Doth suck his sweet: 

is as fluent, as graceful, and as mellifluous as anything that appeared in that marvelously productive time.  Lodge’s poetic interludes impress one not only by their easy grace and sweetness, but by their melody as well.  They possess that truly lyric quality that Burns’s songs exhibit to such a marked degree.  They seem to sing themselves.  It is almost impossible to read aloud the best of them, such as,

    Like to the clear in highest sphere
    Where all imperial glory shines,
    Of selfsame color is her hair,
    Whether unfolded or in twines: 
      Heigh ho, fair Rosalynde!