The anonymous comedy of the _Maydes Metamorphosis_ (1600), usually
attributed to Lilly, shews few traces of the mannerisms of the graceful
but insipid Euphuist. It is just such a play as George Wither or William
Browne might have written in very early youth. The writer was evidently
an admirer of Spenser, and has succeeded in reproducing on his Pan-pipe
some thin, but not unpleasing, echoes of his master's music. Mr. Edmund
W. Gosse has suggested that the _Maydes Metamorphosis_ may be an early
work of John Day; and no one is better able to pronounce on such a point
than Mr. Gosse. The scene at the beginning of Act ii., and the gossip of
the pages in Acts ii. and iii., are certainly very much in Day's manner.
The merciless harrying of the word "kind" at the beginning of Act v.
reminds one of similar elaborate trifling in _Humour out of Breath_;
and the amoebaean rhymes in the contention between Gemulo and Silvio
(Act i.) are, in their sportive quaintness, as like Day's handiwork as
they are unlike Lilly's. In reading the pretty echo-scene, in Act iv.,
the reader will recall a similar scene in _Law Trickes_ (Act v., Sc. I).
On the other hand, the delightful songs of the fairies[97] (in Act iii.),
if not written by Lilly, were at least suggested by the fairies' song in
_Endymion_. It would be hard to say what Lilly might not have achieved
if he had not stultified himself by his detestable pedantry: his songs
(_O si sic omnia_) are hardly to be matched for silvery sweetness.
Mr. Gosse thinks that the rhymed heroics, in which the _Maydes
Metamorphosis_ is mainly written, bear strong traces of Day's style; and
as Mr. Gosse, who is at once a poet and a critic, judges by his ear and
not by his thumb, his opinion carries weight. Day's capital work, the
_Parliament of Bees_, is incomparably more workmanlike than the _Maydes
Metamorphosis_; but the latter, it should be remembered, is beyond all
doubt a very juvenile performance. Turning over some old numbers of a
magazine, I found a reviewer of Mr. Tennyson's _Princess_ complaining
"that we could have borne rather more polish!" How the fledgling poet
of the _Maydes Metamorphosis_ would have fared at the reviewer's hands
I tremble to think. But though his rhymes are occasionally slipshod,
and the general texture is undeniably thin, still there is something
attractive in the young writer's shy tentativeness. The reader who
comes to a perusal with the expectation of getting some substantial
diet, will be grievously mistaken; but those who are content if they
can catch and hold fast a fleeting flavour will not regret the
half-hour spent in listening to the songs of the elves and the prattle
of the pages in this quaint old pastoral.