nearest to Shakespeare in the descriptive and didactic in passages which are less purely dramatic. Dramatic imitation was not his talent. He could not go out of himself, as Shakespeare could shift at pleasure, to inform and animate other existences, but in himself he had an eye to perceive and a soul to embrace all forms and modes of being. He would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he has not abundantly shown himself to be one; for his Homer is not so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses rewritten. The earnestness and passion which he has put into every part of these poems would be incredible to a reader of mere modern translations. His almost Greek zeal for the glory of his heroes can only be paralleled by that fierce spirit of Hebrew bigotry with which Milton, as if personating one of the zealots of the old law, clothed himself when he sat down to paint the acts of Samson against the uncircumcised. The great obstacle to Chapman's translations being read is their unconquerable quaintness. He pours out in the same breath the most just and natural and the most violent and crude expressions. He seems to grasp at whatever words come first to hand while the enthusiasm is upon him, as if all others must be inadequate to the divine meaning. But passion (the all-in-all in poetry) is everywhere present, raising the low, dignifying the mean, and putting sense into the absurd. makes his readers glow, weep, tremble, take any affection which he pleases, be moved by words, or, in spite of them, be disgusted and overcome their disgust.

Не

I have often thought that the vulgar misconception of Shakespeare as of a wild irregular genius," in whom great faults are compensated by great beauties," would be really true applied to Chapman. But there is no scale by which to balance such disproportionate subjects as the faults and beauties of a great genius. To set off the former with any fairness against the latter, the pain which they give us should be in some proportion to the pleasure which we receive from the other. As these transport us to the highest heaven, those should steep us in agonies infernal.

"Bussy D'Ambois."-This calling upon light and darkness for information, but, above all, the description of the spirit-" Threw his changed countenance headlong into clouds"-is tremendous, to the curdling of the blood. I know nothing in poetry like it.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT-JOHN FLETCHER.

"Maid's Tragedy."-One characteristic of the excellent old poets is their being able to bestow grace upon subjects which naturally do not seem susceptible of any. I will mention two instances. Zelmane in the "Arcadia" of Sidney, and Helena in the "All's Well that Ends Well" of Shakespeare. What can be more unpromising at first sight than the idea of a young man disguising himself in woman's attire and passing himself off for a woman among women, and that for a long space of time? Yet Sir Philip has preserved so matchless a decorum, that neither does Pyrocles' manhood suffer any stain for the effeminacy of Zelmane, nor is the respect due to the princesses at all

diminished when the deception comes to be known. In the sweetly constituted mind of Sir Philip Sidney, it seems as if no ugly thought or unhandsome meditation could find a harbour. He turned all that he touched into images of honour and virtue. Helena in Shakespeare is a young woman seeking a man in marriage. The ordinary rules of courtship are reversed, the habitual feelings are crossed. Yet with such exquisite address this dangerous subject is handled, that Helena's forwardness loses her no honour; delicacy dispenses with its laws in her favour, and Nature, in her single case, seems content to suffer a sweet violation. Aspatia, in the "Maid's Tragedy," is a character equally difficult with Helena of being managed with grace. She too is a slighted woman, refused by the man who had once engaged to marry her. Yet it is artfully contrived that while we pity we respect her, and she descends without degradation. Such wonders true poetry and passion can do to confer dignity upon subjects which do not seem capable of it. But Aspatia must not be compared at all points with Helena; she does not so absolutely predominate over her situation but she suffers some diminution, some abatement of the full lustre of her female character, which Helena never does. Her character has many degrees of sweetness, some of delicacy; but it has weakness which, if we do not despise, we are sorry for. After all, Beaumont and Fletcher were but an inferior sort of Shakespeares and Sidneys.

"Philaster."-The character of Bellario must have been extremely popular in its day. For many years after the date of "Philaster's" first exhibition on the stage, scarce a play can be found without one of these women pages in it, following in the train of some pre-engaged lover, calling on the gods to bless her happy rival (his mistress), whom no doubt she secretly curses in her heart, giving rise to many pretty equivoques by the way on the confusion of sex, and either made happy at last by some surprising turn of fate, or dismissed with the joint pity of the lovers and the audience. Donne has a copy of verses to his mistress, dissuading her from a resolution, which she seems to have taken up from some of these scenical representations, of following him abroad as a page. It is so earnest, so weighty, so rich in poetry, in sense, in wit, and pathos, that it deserves to be read as a solemn close in future to all such sickly fancies as he there deprecates.

JOHN FLETCHER.

"Thierry and Theodoret."-The scene where Ordella offers her life a sacrifice that the King of France may not be childless, I have always considered as the finest in all Fletcher, and Ordella to be the most perfect notion of the female heroic character next to Calantha in the "Broken Heart." She is a piece of sainted nature. Yet noble as the whole passage is, it must be confessed that the manner of it, compared with Shakespeare's finest scenes, is faint and languid. Its motion is circular, not progressive. Each line revolves on itself in a sort of separate orbit. They do not join into one another like a running-hand. Fletcher's ideas moved slow; his versification, though sweet, is tedious; it stops at every turn. He lays line upon line, making

up one after the other, adding image to image so deliberately, that we see their junctures. Shakespeare mingles everything, runs line into line, embarrasses sentences and metaphors; before one idea has burst its shell, another is hatched and clamours for disclosure. Another striking difference between Fletcher and Shakespeare is the fondness of the former for unnatural and violent situations. He seems to have thought that nothing great could be produced in an ordinary way. The chief incidents in some of his most admired tragedies show this.1 Shakespeare had nothing of this contortion in his mind, none of that craving after violent situations and flights of strained and improbable virtue, which I think always betrays an imperfect moral sensibility. The wit of Fletcher, is excellent, like his serious scenes, but there is something strained and far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of Nature; he always goes a little on one side of her. Shakespeare chose her without a reserve, and had riches, power, understanding, and length of days with her for a dowry.

Love's Pilgrimage."-The dialogue between Philippo and Leocadia is one of the most pleasing if not the most shining scenes in Fletcher. All is sweet, natural, and unforced. It is a copy which we may suppose Massinger to have profited by the studying.

"The Two Noble Kinsmen."-The scene in which Palamon and Arcite, repining at their hard condition in being made captives for life in Athens, derive consolation from the enjoyment of each other's company in prison, bears indubitable marks of Fletcher: the two which precede it give strong countenance to the tradition that Shakespeare had a hand in this play. The same judgment may be formed of the death of Arcite and some other passages not here given. They have a luxuriance in them which strongly resembles Shakespeare's manner in those parts of his plays where, the progress of the interest being subordinate, the poet was at leisure for description. I might fetch instances from "Troilus" and "Timon." That Fletcher should have copied Shakespeare's manner through so many entire scenes (which is the theory of Mr. Steevens) is not very probable; that he could have done it with such facility is to me not certain. If Fletcher wrote some scenes in imitation, why did he stop? Or shall we say that Shakespeare wrote the other scenes in imitation of Fletcher? that he gave Shakespeare a curb and a bridle, and that Shakespeare gave him a pair of spurs : as Blackmoor and Lucan are brought in exchanging gifts in the "Battle of the Books"?

Faithful Shepherdess."-If all the parts of this delightful pastoral had been in unison with its many innocent scenes and sweet lyric intermixtures, it had been a poem fit to vie with "Comus" or the "Arcadia,” to have been put into the hands of boys and virgins, to have made matter for young dreams, like the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a spot is on the face of this Diana. Nothing short of infatuation could have driven Fletcher upon mixing with this "blessedness" such an ugly deformity as Cloe, the wanton shepherdess. Coarse words do but wound the ears; but a character of lewdness affronts the mind.

1 "Wife for a Month," "Cupid's Revenge," "Double Marriage," &c.

Female lewdness at once shocks nature and morality. If Cloe was meant to set off Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have known that such weeds by juxtaposition do not set off but kill sweet flowers.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

"The Triumph of Love; Being the Second of Four Plays or Moral Representations in one."-Violanta, daughter to a nobleman of Milan, is with child by Gerrard, supposed to be of mean descent: an offence which by the laws of Milan is made capital to both parties.

Violanta's prattle is so very pretty and so natural in her situation, that I could not resist giving it a place. Juno Lucina was never invoked with more elegance. Pope has been praised for giving dignity to a game of cards. It required at least as much address to ennoble a lying-in.

PHILIP MASSINGER-THOMAS DEKKER.

"The Virgin Martyr."-This play has some beauties of so very high an order, that, with all my respect for Massinger, I do not think he had poetical enthusiasm capable of rising up to them. His associate Dekker, who wrote "Old Fortunatus," had poetry enough for anything. The very impurities which obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties of this play, like Satan among the Sons of Heaven, have a strength of contrast, a raciness, and a glow in them, which are beyond Massinger. They are to the religion of the rest what Caliban is to Miranda.

PHILIP MASSINGER.

"The City Madam."-This bitter satire against the city women for aping the fashions of the court ladies must have been peculiarly gratifying to the females of the Herbert family and the rest of Massinger's noble patrons and patronesses.

"The Picture." The good sense, rational fondness, and chastised feeling of the dialogue in which Matthias, a knight of Bohemia, going to the wars, in parting with his wife shows her substantial reasons why he should go, make it more valuable than many of those scenes in which this writer has attempted a deeper passion and more tragical interest. Massinger had not the higher requisites of his art in anything like the degree in which they were possessed by Ford, Webster, Tourneur, Heywood, and others. He never shakes or disturbs the mind with grief. He is read with composure and placid delight. He wrote with that equability of all the passions which made his English style the purest and most free from violent metaphors and harsh constructions of any of the dramatists who were his contemporaries.

PHILIP MASSINGER-THOMAS MIDDLETON-WILLIAM ROWLEY.

"Old Law."-There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one's eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in the circumstances of this sweet tragi-comedy, which are unlike anything in the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge. Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of them finer geniuses than their associate.

JAMES SHIRLEY

Claims a place amongst the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent talent in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common. A new language, and quite a new turn of tragic and comic interest, came in with the Restoration.

"The Lady of Pleasure."-The dialogue between Sir Thomas Bornewell and his lady Aretina is in the very spirit of the recriminating scenes between Lord and Lady Townley in the "Provoked Husband." It is difficult to believe but it must have been Vanburgh's prototype.

NOTES ON THE GARRICK PLAYS.

"Hone's Table Book," 1827-28.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR.

DEAR SIR,-It is not unknown to you, that about nineteen years since I published "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, who lived about the time of Shakespeare." For the scarcer plays I had recourse to the collection bequeathed to the British Museum by Mr. Garrick. But my time was but short, and my subsequent leisure has discovered in it a treasure rich and exhaustless beyond what I then imagined. In it is to be found almost every production in the shape of a play that has appeared in print, from the time of the old mysteries and moralities to the days of Crowne and D'Urfey. Imagine the luxury to one like me, who, above every other form of poetry, have ever preferred the dramatic, of sitting in the princely apartments, for such they are, of poor condemned Montagu House, which I predict will not speedily be followed by a handsomer, and culling at will the flower of some thousand dramas. It is like having the range of a nobleman's library, with the librarian to your friend. Nothing can exceed the courteousness and attentions of the gentleman who has the chief direction of the reading-rooms here; and you have scarce to ask for a volume before it is laid before you. If the occasional extracts which I have been tempted to bring away may find an appropriate place in your "Table Book," some of them are weekly at your service. By those who remember the "Specimens," these must be considered as mere after gleanings, supplementary to that work, only comprising a longer period. You must be content with sometimes a scene, sometimes a song, a speech or passage, or a poetical image, as they happen to strike me. I read without order of time; I am a poor hand at dates ; and for any biography of the dramatists, I must refer to writers who are more skilful in such matters. My business is with their poetry only.-Your C. LAMB.

well-wisher,

January 27, 1827.

ROBERT DAVENPORT.

"King John and Matilda: A Tragedy." Acted in 1651.-[John not being able to bring Matilda, the chaste daughter of the old Baron