\i 



440 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



to take shape, not in a kind of measured prose such as he had 

 thought to use, but as heroic verse, "which at once proved to be 

 an easier and more sustaining mode of expression than prose 

 far easier to frame and more helpful to the mind than the 

 prose I am now writing." 



The impression that developed into the impulse that pro- 

 duced Mr. Shaler's cycle of Elizabethan dramas is to be found 

 noted in his Journal as far back as 1858. 



. . . The works of Charles Kingsley will often bear even the investigation 

 of the most hypercritical without danger; so clear, so healthy is the mind 

 of this author. It had been nearly a year since I had read a novel and it was 

 half my resolution not to read another when accident threw in my way 

 a single line from his "Andromeda"; it was a verse worthy of Homer. 



"Boomed in their wave-worn hills as they champed at the roots of the 

 mountain." 



Curiosity impelled me to read the poem whence comes this remarkable de- 

 scription; then to seek some other work, " Westward Ho," from so admirable 

 a pen. The author has been fortunate in selecting for his plot an age more 

 than any eventful to the world. The reign of Queen Bess, the decline of the 

 Spanish power, the Armada, the last struggle of an effete yet mighty nation 

 to retain the headship of the world. And then the impulse of "Westward 

 Ho" gives a wide scope to the imagination. 



Forty years later, in "The Armada," his own imagination 

 reconstructed that age "more than any eventful to the world." 



The success of the endeavor naturally produced a feeling of 

 elation, for Mr. Shaler was not one to be twitted with impunity; 

 as his associates must have known, he was ever ready in any 

 debate to give a Roland for an Oliver. But aside from the mo- 

 mentary triumph in the success of this essay he had found a 

 mode of literary expression that was to be a source of great and 

 unexpected pleasure, serving as an outlet for his own varied 

 emotions enough at any time to vivify a five-act drama. The 

 characters he chose in which to embody his ideals became in- 

 tensely real and the hours he spent in their company a veritable 

 delight. The moment he dropped his serious labors he could at 



