a considerable amount, and soon afterwards created him a baron and an earl.

8

7 Lady Susan Vere,] To this lady Jonson addressed the poem beginning,

"Were they that named you prophets? did they see, "Even in the dew of grace, what you would be? "Or did our times require it, to behold

"A new Susanna equal to that old?" &c. Epig. civ. The dew of grace is an elegant and beautiful periphrasis for the baptismal sprinkling.

3 Davies, after noticing the favours heaped on him, as recorded by lord Clarendon, petulantly adds, " But Clarendon, perhaps, did not know the real cause of lord Herbert's advancement. The behaviour of the Scots on James's accession to the throne of England was generally obnoxious and much resented. At a meeting of English and Scotch at a horse-race near Croydon, a sudden quarrel arose between them, occasioned by a Mr. Ramsey's striking Fhilip lord Herbert in the face with a switch. The English would have made it a national quarrel, and Mr. John Pinchbeck rode about the field with a dagger in his hand, crying, Let us break our fast with them here, and dine with them in London. But Herbert not resenting it, the king was so charmed with his peaceable disposition, that he made him a knight, a baron, a viscount, and an earl, in one day." Life of Massinger, p. liii. This is taken from Osborne, one of those gossipping talemongers in which the times of Janres so greatly abounded, and who, with Weldon, Wilson, Peyton, Sanderson, and others, con-. tributed to propagate an infinite number of scandalous stories, which should have been left sub lodice, where

This dedication, which is sensible, modest, and affecting, serves to prove that whatever might be the unfortunate circumstance which

most of them perhaps had birth. What reliance may be placed on them, in general, is sufficiently apparent from the assertion of Osborne. The fact is, that Herbert had long been a knight, and was never a viscount. He was married in the beginning of 1605, (he was then sir Philip,) and created baron Herbert of Shurland in the Isle of Sheppy, and earl of Montgomery, June 4th, in the same year: and so far were these titles from being the reward of what Osborne calls his cowardice at Croydon, that they were all conferred on him two years before that event took place. Osborne himself allows that if Montgomery had not, by his forbearance, " stanched the blood then ready to be spilt, not only that day, but all after, must have proved fatal to the Scots, so long as any had staid in England, the royal family excepted, which, in respect to majesty, or their own safety, they must have spared, or the kingdom been left to the misery of seeing so much blood laid out as the trial of so many crabbed titles would have required." The prevention of these horrours might, in some minds, have raised feelings favourable to the temperance of the young earl; but Osborne, whose object, and whose office, was calumny, contrives to convert it into a new accusation: "they could not be these considerations," he says, " that restrained Herbert, who wanted leisure, no less than capacity, to use them, though laid in his way by others"!

Memoirs of King James.

1

deprived the Author of the patronage and protection of the elder branch of the Herberts, he did not imagine it to be of a disgraceful nature; or he would not, in the face of the publick, have appealed to his connexions with the family: at the same time, it is manifest that some cause of alienation existed, otherwise he would scarcely have overlooked so fair an opportunity of alluding to the characteristick generosity of the earl of Pembroke, whom, on this as on every other occasion, he scrupulously forbears to name, or even to hint at.

This dedication, which was kindly received, led the way to a closer connexion, and a certain degree of familiarity, for which, perhaps, the approbation, so openly expressed, of the Bondman, might be designed by Montgomery as an overture: at a subsequent period,' Massinger styles the earl his "most singular good lord and patron," and speaks of the greatness of his obligations:

"Than they could owe, who since, or heretofore,

? On the loss of his eldest son, who died of the smallpox at Florence, Jan. 1635.

"Have labour'd with exalted lines to raise "Brave piles or rather pyramids of praise "To Pembroke,' and his family."

What pecuniary advantages he derived from the present address, cannot be known; whatever they were, they did not preclude the necessity of writing for the stage, which he continued to do with great industry, seldom producing less than two new pieces annually. In 1629, his occasions, perhaps, again pressing upon him, he gave to the press the Renegado and the Roman Actor, both of which had now been several years before the publick. The first of these he inscribed to lord Berkeley in a short address, composed with taste and elegance. He speaks with some complacency of the merits of the piece, but trusts that he shall live" to tender his humble thankfulness in some higher strain:" this confidence in his abilities, the pleasing concomitant of true genius, Massinger often felt and expressed. The latter play he presented to sir Philip Knyvet and sir Thomas Jeay, with a desire,

Montgomery had now succeeded to the title and estates of his elder brother, who deceased April 10, 1630. 2 Sir Thomas Jeay was himself a poet: several commendatory copies of verses by him are prefixed to Mas

as he says, that the world might take notice of his being indebted to their support for power to compose the piece: he expatiates on their kindness in warm and energetick language, and accounts for addressing "the most perfect birth of his Minerva" to them, from their superiour demands on his gratitude.

Little more than four years had elapsed since the Bondman was printed; in that period Massinger had written seven plays, all of which, it is probable, were favourably received: it therefore becomes a question, what were the emoluments derived from the stage, which could thus leave a popular and successful writer to struggle with adversity?

There seem to have been two methods of disposing of a new piece; the first, and perhaps the most general, was to sell the copy to one of the theatres; the price cannot be exactly ascertained, but appears to have fluctuated between ten and twenty pounds, seldom falling short of the former, and still more seldom, I believe, exceeding the latter. In

singer's Plays. He calls the Author his worthy friend, and gives many proofs that his esteem was founded on judgment, and his kindness candid and sincere,