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steward. Her enraged brother determines to destroy her husband and children, resolves to kill her, but will first torture her. He comes to her in the dark, pretends to be reconciled, speaks affectionately, offers her his hand, but gives her a dead man's, then suddenly exhibits a group of waxen figures, covered with wounds to represent her slaughtered family. Then appears a company of madmen, who leap and howl; at last, with executioners and a coffin, a grave-digger, whose taunting talk is of the charnel-house. Sensibility dies. Asked of what she is thinking, she replies, with fixed gaze:

Of nothing:

When I muse thus, I sleep. . .

Dost thon think we shall know one another

In the other world? . .

Oh, that it were possible we might

But hold some two days' conference with the dead!

From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,

I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle;

I am not mad yet.

The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,

The carth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.'

Told that she is to be strangled, she replies, with brave, quiet dignity:

I pray thee look thou giv'st my little boy
Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl

Say her prayers ere she sleep.

...

Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength

Must pull down heaven upon me.

Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arched

As princes' palaces; they that enter there

Must go upon their knees. . . .

Go, tell my brothers when I am laid out;
They then may feed in quiet.'

After this, her servant, the duke and his confidant, the cardinal and his mistress, are poisoned or assassinated. To the dying, in the midst of this butchery, what is the state of humanity? A troubled dream, a nightmare, a clashing destiny, and, at the end of all, a void:

'We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves,
That, ruin'd, yield no echo. Fare you well.
O, this gloomy world!'

In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! ..

In all our quest of greatness,

Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care,
We follow after bubbles blown in the air.
Pleasure of life, what is't? only the good hours

Of an ague; merely a preparative to rest,

To endure vexation. . . .

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,

Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.'

To little of the dramatic talent, as we pass on to its lower grades, are we able to accord a distinct notice. The writers have merit, might have left a rich legacy to all generations, but wrote too much, which is perhaps the fault of all ages and of every author. They have the diversity of human life, but no central principle of order. Their scenes are more effective as detached All degrade their fine metal by the interAll afford veins or lumps of the precious ore in the duller substance of their work. Here are specimens:

than as connected. mixture of baser.

Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream

But of a shadow.'1

Now, all ye peaceful regents of the night,

Silently gliding exhalations,

Languishing winds, and murmuring falls of waters,

Sadness of heart, and ominous secureness,

Enchantments, dead sleeps, all the friends of rest

That ever wrought upon the life of man,

Extend your utmost strengths; and this charmed hour
Fix like the centre.'2

'From his bright helm and shield did burn a most unwearied fire,
Like rich Autumnus' golden lamp, whose brightness men admire,
Past all the other host of stars, when with his cheerful face,
Fresh washed in lofty ocean waves, he doth the sky enchase.'

Patience, my lord! why, 't is the soul of peace;
Of all the virtues, 't is nearest kin to heaven;
It makes men look like gods. The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed."4
'He that in the sun is neither beam nor moat,
He that's not mad after a petticoat,
He for whom poor men's curses dig no grave,
He that is neither lord's nor lawyer's slave,

He that makes This his sea and That his shore,

He that in's coffin is richer than before,

He that counts Youth his sword and Age his staff,
He whose right hand carves his own epitaph,

He that upon his death-bed is a swan,

And dead no crow,- he is a Happy Man.'5

Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks,

Of all the graces dancing in her eyes,
Of all the music set upon her tongue,

'Chapman: a wise, manly, but irregular genius, greater as a translator of Homer than as a dramatist.

? Ibid.

5 Ibid.

Ibid: Homer.

Decker: a hopeful, cheerful, humane spirit, who turned vexations and miseries into commodities.

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'Now I go, now I fly

Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.

Oh, what dainty pleasure 'tis

To ride in the air,

When the moon shines fair,

And sing and dance, and toy and kiss!
Over woods, high rocks, and mountains,

Over seas, our mistress' fountains,

Over steep towers and turrets,

We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits.

No ring of bells to our ears sounds;

No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds;

No not the noise of waters' breach,

Or cannon's roar our height can reach.'s

'Simple and low is our condition,
For here with ns is no ambition:

We with the sun our flocks unfold,

Whose rising makes their fleeces gold;

Our music from the birds we borrow,

They bidding us, we them, good-morrow.

1 Decker.

2 Marston; properly a satirist, bitter, misanthropic, cankered. Middleton; a sagacious cynic, best known by his play of The Witch.

Ibid.

• Ibid.

Our habits are but coarse and plain,
Yet they defend from wind and rain:
As warm too, in an equal eye,

As those bestained in scarlet dye.

The shepherd, with his homespun lass,

As many merry hours doth pass,

As courtiers with their costly girls,

Though richly dressed in gold and pearls.'!

In Shirley, last of the great race, the fire and passion of the grand old era passes away. Imagination is driven from its last asylum. The sword is drawn, and the theatres are closed. Dramatists are stigmatized, actors are arrested; and when, after the lapse of a few years, they return to their old haunts, it is as roisterers under a foreign yoke.

Prose. The drooping flower of poesy was succeeded by a blossom of prose, produced by the same inner growth, and, at its highest point, tinged with the like ideal colors. A half dozen writers will exhibit the expansion. We omit, at present, those who offer only the material of knowledge, the substance of wisdom merely,—annalists, antiquaries, scientists, pamphleteers, whether poets, dramatists, divines, or politicians; and pass to those who bring us merit of execution, as well as the residuary element of thought-value. Of Bacon we shall elsewhere treat. Fulness of thought and splendor of workmanship raise him into the realm of pure literature. Less originative and luminous, though of the same band of scholars and dreamers, is Robert Burton, an ecclesiastic, a recluse, an eccentric, spasmodically gay, as a rule sad. To amuse and relieve himself, after thirty years' reading, he wrote the Anatomy of Melancholy, an enormous medley of ideas, musical, medical, poetical, mathematical, philosophical; every page garnished with Latin, Greek, or French, from rare and unknown authors. It is the only book that ever took Dr. Johnson out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. Here is a faint suggestion of his style-a glimpse into its jumble of observation, erudition, anecdote, instruction, and

amusement:

'Boccace hath a pleasant tale to this purpose, which he borrowed from the Greeks, and which Beroaldus hath turned into Latin, Bebelius into verse, of Cymon and Iphigenia. This Cymon was a fool, a proper man of person, and the governor of Cyprus' son, but a very ass; insomuch that his father being ashamed of him, sent him to a farm

Thomas Heywood; graceful and gentle, one of the most prolific writers the world has ever seen.

house he had in the country, to be brought up; where by chance, as his manner was, walking alone, he espied a gallant young gentlewoman named Iphigenia, a burgomaster's daughter of Cyprus, with her maid, by a brook side, in a little thicket, fast asleep in her smock, where she had newly bathed herself. When Cymon saw her he stood leaning on his staff, gaping on her immovable, and in a maze: at last he fell so far in love with the glorious object, that he began to rouse himself up; to bethink what he was; would needs follow her to the city, and for her sake began to be civil, to learn to sing and dance, to play on instruments, and got all those gentleman-like qualities and compliments, in a short space, which his friends were most glad of. In brief, he became from an idiot and a clown, to be one of the most complete gentlemen in Cyprus; did many valorous exploits, and all for the love of Mistress Iphigenia. In a word, I may say thus much of them all, let them be never so clownish, rude and horrid, Grobians and sluts, if once they be in love, they will be most neat and spruce; for, Omnibus rebus, et nitidis nitoribus antevenit amor; they will follow the fashion, begin to trick up, and to have a good opinion of themselves; venustatum enim mater Venus; a ship is not so long a-rigging, as a young gentlewoman a-trimming up herself against her sweetheart comes. A painter's shop, a flowery meadow, is not so gracious an aspect in Nature's store-house as a young maid, nubilis puella, a Novitsa or Venetian bride, that looks for an husband; or a young man that is her suitor; composed looks, composed gait, clothes, gestures, actions, all composed; all the graces, elegancies, in the world, are in her face. Their best robes, ribbons, chains, jewels, lawns, linens, laces, spangles, must come on; praeter quam res patitur student elegantiae, they are beyond all measure coy, nice, and too curious on a sudden. 'Tis all their study, all their business, how to wear their clothes neat, to be polite and terse, and to set out themselves. No sooner doth a young man see his sweetheart coming, but he smugs up himself, pulls up his cloak, now fallen about his shoulders, ties his garters, points, sets his band, cuffs, slicks his hair, twires his beard, etc.'

The Meditations of Bishop Hall, the English Seneca,' are alike rich in imagery and sententious in expression. Passages like the following reveal the poetic temperament:

Here is a tree overlaid with blossoms: it is not possible that all these should prosper; one of them must needs rob the other of moisture and growth. I do not love to see an infancy over-hopeful; in these pregnant beginnings one faculty starves another, and at last leaves the mind sapless and barren; as, therefore, we are wont to pull off some of the too frequent blossoms, that the rest may thrive, so it is good wisdom to moderate the early excess of the parts, or progress of over-forward childhood. Neither is it otherwise in our Christian profession; a sudden and lavish ostentation of grace may fill the eye with wonder, and the mouth with talk, but will not at the last fill the lap with fruit.' Again:

'What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead; to hide her head all the day long in an ivy bush, and at night, when all other birds are at rest, to fly abroad, and vent her harsh notes. I know not why the ancients made sacred this bird to wisdom, except it be for her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestical and airy creatures are blind, she only hath inward light to discern the least objects for her own advantage. Surely thus much wit they have taught us in her: that he is the wisest man that would have least to do with the multitude; that no life is so safe as the obscure; that retiredness, if it have less comfort, yet has less danger and vexation; lastly, that he is truly wise who sees by a light of his own, when the rest of the world sit in an ignorant and confused darkness, unable to apprehend any truth save by the helps of an outward illumination.'

A like irradiating power of fancy, with a less sustained dignity, may be seen in Dr. Fuller, facetious without irreverence, and witty without bitterness. A few of his aphorisms may

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