a servant of the public. That man was slightly honoured for being applauded, who, for applause and subsistence, gave to others the privilege of hissing him. The dramatist, the genius, was admired, but his quality was not respected. Success, whether as poet or actor, made a man interesting, and therefore acceptable in all societies where wit, talent, or the reputation of either, was in request; but his occupation conferred no settled rank. A merchant tailor knew his place; a poet must sit where his patron bade him. Literature of any sort, pursued for bread, does not, and perhaps should not, bestow the decided caste of a regular profession; and has never, in England, obtained the splendid honours which even players, musicians, and buffoons have received in Italy and some continental courts. Moreover, the character of some of the dramatists, and those the earliest distinguished, was not such as to propitiate the favour of the serious towards their calling. Shakspeare seems to have felt this. Massinger and Heywood frequently complain of it: and Ford, like Congreve, is ever eager to disclaim the trade of a play-wright. But whatever of disrepute or suspicion might adhere to the dramatic art, it certainly will not account for the obscurity, not to say mystery, which hangs over the private transactions of its professors. They were not excluded from the meetings of the great or of the learned. They were not recluse students, buried in their libraries or estranged from the busy world. By far the greater number of them were gentlemen of liberal education, living in the full career of society. Nor, had it been otherwise, would they have escaped notice, had their destinies been anywise remarkable, or their characters impressed with eccentricity. Your "way of life" cannot creep along in such forlorn or shady sequestration, but you will be found, if any one think you worth seeking Since the fix'd colour of their curled hair, Which is the highest grace of dames most fair, The fearful mixture of abhorred grey, Since Death herself-herself being pale and blue, Can never alter their most faithful buc." A proof that negroes were not common in England when Jonson wrote; for many of my readers will remember the old street-sweeper, at the Obelisk, whose hair was "white as wool," quaintly resembling the white ashes, sprinkled over the charred faggots of an extinguished wood fire. I know not whether Ben, or rather, Pliny, is correct in stating that Æthiops never dream. When "Othello" is adapted to the negro stage, Othello should be a white man, and Desdemona like the "starred Æthiop queen." The Masque of Blackness was represented at the marriage of Lady Susan Vere, daughter of the whimsical Earl of Oxford, and grand-daughter of Lord Burleigh, with Philip Herbert, afterwards of Pembroke and Montgomery, the patron of Massinger; in the household of whose ancestors the poet was probably brought up, which must apologise for the length and apparent irrelevance of this note. The actors and inventors of the Italian pantomime (which is not like ours, a speechless motion of living puppets, but a burlesque of provincial dialects and humours, closely resembling an entertainment to which Augustus was partial) rivalled the Paris and Bathyllus of antiquity, in the honours they obtained. Constantini, inventor of the Mezetin, the Narcissus of pantomime, was ennobled by a king of Poland. "He acted without a mask, to charm by the beautiful play of his countenance, and display the graces of his figure." The Wit and harlequin Domenic sometimes dined at the table of Louis XIV. Tiberio Fiurilli, who invented the for. Neither in the city's indistinguishable multitude nor the country's too conspicuous singleness, can the man be secure from publication whose humours will enliven a farce, whose physiognomy will suggest a caricature, or whose adventures may form the ground-work of a novel. If we except Shakspeare, of whom little is really known but the comfortable fact that, after writing the finest plays in the world, he retired on a moderate independence, and died, alas ! prematurely, near his native town; and Ben Jonson, who has told us something about himself, and whose scholarship achieved a place among the weightier intellects to which the genius of Shakspeare never aspired, of which among the dramatists are most anecdotes extant? Kit Marlow, George Peele, and Robert Green. Had Ford and Massinger been like them,-infidels, revellers, or sharpers,-their jests, their follies, their sad catastrophes, would not have perished for want of historians. There is no human creature so insignificant but may become famous for vice, sedition, lawlessness, or buffoonery. The police reports and the Newgate Calendar are rolls of fame from which no degree is excluded. The rogues and harlots of less inquisitive ages have not sinned or suffered without a memorial. We know almost as much of Rowland Yorke* and Captain Stukely as of Spenser or Drayton. Sir Jeffrey Dunstan character of Scaramouch, had been the amusing companion of the boyhood of Louis XIV., and from him Molière learned much, as appears by the lines under his portrait. "Cet illustre commédien De son art traça la carrière, Et la Nature fut le sien." "This rare comedian drew the chart, He taught Moliere, that humorous elf, The last lines of an epitaph, on one of these pantomimic actors, may be applied to many of them during their flourishing period. "Toute sa vie il fait à rire, Il a fait pleurer à sa mort." "All his life he kept us crowing, Several of these admirable actors were literary men, who have written on their art, and shown that it was one. The Harlequin Cecchini composed the most ancient treatise on this subject, and was ennobled by the Emperor Matthias; and Nicholas Barbieri, for his excellent acting, called the "Beltrame," or " Milanese Simpleton," tells us, in his treatise on comedy, that he was honoured by the conversation of Louis XIII., and rewarded with fortune.-D'Israeli's Curiosities, 218. The English nobility would ill endure to have a harlequin made partaker of their honours; and I doubt whether a limited monarch could with propriety admit even a Grimaldi to his table. I must confess that all my knowledge of these worthies is derived from a note in the "Monastery." They were probably fair enough samples of men about town, as they were before profligacy put on the garb of sentiment. Of such characters we find many specimens in the old plays, such as "The Yorkshire Tragedy," "London Prodigal," "How to know a good Wife from a bad one," &c. Is it in compliment to Rowland that the veiled editor of a certain periodical assumed the title of "Oliver Yorke?" Stukely is the hero of "The Battle of Alcazar," written, as is supposed, by George Peele. the mayor of Garrat*, and Sir Jeffrey Hudson the dwarf, live still in the pages of eccentric biography; and Morland, as a man, is better known than Hogarth. On the other hand, high intellectual celebrity does not always confer personal notoriety, or In Hone's "Table Book,” second series, will be found a portrait and memoir of the once well-known Sir Jeffrey, who served the mob in the double capacity of fool and dwarf. He was a foundling; picked up in the parish to which he owed his name; but no fairies took charge of him, as Charles Lamb assures us they did of Sir Thomas Gresham. He was abandoned to the muddy patronage of Trivia and Cloacina; yet he was, awhile, a great man in his way, especially at Westminster elections. Lamb, who well remembered him when "in his sear and yellow leaf" he took refuge in a hovel near Bethnal Green, has described his forlorn grimness in a paper of pathetic humour, such as Elia alone could write. †“Jeffrey Hudson, when he was about seven or eight years old, was served up in a cold pie, on the Burleigh Hill, the seat of the Duke of Buckingham, and as soon as he made his appearance, presented by the duchess to the queen, who retained him in her service. He was then but eighteen inches in height. In a masque at court, the gigantic porter, (Will Evans) drew him out of his pocket, to the surprise of all present. He is said to have grown no taller till he was thirty, when he shot up to three feet nine. Soon after the breaking out of the civil war, he was made captain in the king's army. In 1644, he attended the queen into France, where he had a quarrel with a gentleman named Crofts, whom he challenged. Mr. Crofts came to the place of appointment, armed only with a squirt. A real duel ensued, in which the antagonists came to the field on horseback, and fought with pistols; Crofts was killed at the first shot."-Dr. Hudson's History of London. If ever duellist deserved an honourable acquittal, little Jeffrey was the man. He was born at Oakham in Rutlandshire: very proper that the least man should be born in the least county; and no less proper that his birth should be preceded by a comet, which was actually the case, for there was a comet in 1618, and Jeffrey was born in 1619. Like Priam, Pompey, Belisarius, Napoleon, and other sports of fortune, he exhibited in his latter years a sad contrast to the felicities of his outset. He experienced the same neglect as other faithful cavaliers of larger dimensions, was committed to the Gate-house, under suspicion of the popish plot! and died a prisoner, aged sixty-three. I believe his conveyance in the body of a bass viol, and other particulars recorded by Sir Walter Scott in his "Peveril of the Peak," to be altogether apocryphal; but there may be some ground for his addiction to alchemy and the mysteries of the Rosy Cross. The Royal Martyr had a passion for those irregularities of nature, which were once common appendages to every regal and baronial establishment. Most readers will remember Waller's pretty verses on the marriage of the dwarfs, which was negotiated by King Charles, who gave away the bride :— "Design or chance makes others wive, But nature did this match contrive. Eve might as well from Adam fled, As she deny'd her little bed To him, for whom Heav'n seem'd to frame And measure out this only dame." The marriage was productive: but if the king's intent was to perpetuate a miniature race, it was disappointed; for the children grew to the ordinary size. We cannot call this princely partiality for human lusus naturæ, a remnant of Gothic barbarism; the taste is classical, nay Augustan. "Habent hoc quoque deliciæ divitum; malunt quærere omnia contra naturam. Gratus est ille debilitate; ille ipsa infelicitate distorti corporis placet, alter emitur quod alieni coloris est," says Quintilian. Clemens Alexandrinus severely censures the passion of great ladies for deformed pets, upon whom they bestowed caresses for which their lovers sighed in vain, and which their husbands could not always command. Ammianus Marcellinus describes the wealthy madams of his days, attended semiviro comitatu, young and old, but generally dusky, mishapen, and ill-favoured. Augustus is said by Suetonius to have disliked these waifs of nature, and shrunk from them as of ill omen. Pumilos, atque distortos, et omnes generis ejusdem ut ludibria naturæ et mali ominis abhorrebat; yet the same historian relates that he compelled a youth of good family, named Lucius, to appear on the public stage, because he was under two feet in height, and weighed but seventeen pounds, and had a prodigious voice.-L. ii. 43. We need not wonder that Domitian, at the gladiatorial games, was constantly attended by preserve the events of a life from oblivion. In truth, the best and happiest lives are generally the least entertaining to read. It may be regretted that quiet, useful, unostentatious virtue so seldom survives in the world's memory: but the regret is foolish and presumptuous; and I am by no means assured that the modern custom of courting fame, for qualities sufficiently rewarded by peace of mind, an approving conscience, and the affectionate esteem of a worthy few, is not one of the worst symptoms of the times. Good people in a private station should be thankful if their lives are not worth writing. Public virtues exerted for public ends, the worthy issues of mighty minds, fitly aspire to publicity, and are justly rewarded with fame. “A city set on a hill cannot be hid." But the virtues of home; the hourly self-denials, so habitual as hardly to rise above the horizon of consciousness, "That best portion of a good man's life,— His little daily unrecorded acts Of kindness and of love," the virtues, which, in either sex, are inherited from the mother, and consist in being rather than in doing, permit no stronger light than gleams from the fireside. They flourish best when unobserved, even by those who inhale joy and goodness from their fragrance. Of them it may truly be said, "The principle of action once explore, They can be understood by none, and known only to those who love the good beings whom they actuate, and by loving know them. For in the spiritual world there is no knowledge but by love. In our essential selves we neither can nor ought to be known to any but to those whom we love, and who love us. There is a worse than indelicacy in soliciting the gaze of the world by laying bare the sanctities of affection; the frailties by which we may be endeared to our kindred in blood and soul, but should neither be admired nor judged by the ignorant unsympathising multitude. It is enough if our works have no need to shun the public eye, which they ought sometimes to seek, and never to fear. Render unto Cæsar the things that be Cæsar's. But in ourselves; the very things we are, we are only God's: we belong not to the world,—no, not to our own will. A good heart is a Holy of Holies, not to be profaned by unconsecrated gazers. There is no vanity so pernicious, so heart-emasculating and heart-hardening, as that of which the heart itself is the object. Better be vain of your brains, your figure, your dress, your face, your muscles, your purse, or your pedigree, than of your heart. People enamoured of their own goodness generally entertain a sneaking partiality for a scarlet-robed little urchin, with a preternatural small head,-puerulus coccinatus parvo portentosoque capite for the palled appetites of despotism seek for stimulation in everything monstrous and abortive. But better taste might have been expected of Charles, who was capable of appreciating the beautiful in art, and doubtless in nature also. Be it recollected that this odd sort of virtú was not without its uses in ruder ages: it procured an asylum in the houses of the affluent, for many helpless beings, who, even now, to the disgrace of our police, are incarcerated in caravans, and dragged about the country by brutal show-men. "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." their bosom sins. "The pride that apes humility" produces far worse consequences than " cottages with double coach-houses;" but none more dangerous than the selfgratifying disclosure of weaknesses to which certain confessors are so prone. Now this vanity and this pride are greatly nourished by a fashionable sort of biography, which stages the minutest passages of every-day existence,-exhibits the child or the female at their prayers, in their little round of charity, in their diet and attire; and makes the death-bed itself a scene of display. The age of the great drama was neither a happy nor an innocent age. It was a time of much vice, much folly, and much trouble; but it was also an age of prodigious energy. Everything, good or evil, was on a colossal scale. The strength of will kept equipoise with the vigour of intellect. There were too many to admire themselves and others for potency in ill, not a few who sought and obtained éclat by the inventive extravagance of their absurdities,—but no one valued himself or others for petty amiabilities or amiable weaknesses. It was an age of high principle and of vehement passions, not of complacent sentimentality. Hence the minor and negative virtues, which are all that a poor man in general can display, and the trivial accidents which make up the sum of private existence, were suffered to join the vast silence of forgotten moments, without note or comment: and hence, I conclude, that of our greatest dramatic artists little has been told, because there was little to tell; little to gratify the malicious curiosity which fed on corruption; and little which the better sort considered worthy a lasting record,-though doubtless much that exercised the patience and evoked the noblest faculties of the dramatists themselves. Great part of this induction may resemble the inductions to some of our old plays, which might suit any play, being appropriate to none; but for lack of better it may serve as an apology for the very brief biographical notices which I can prefix to the present edition of the surviving works of Massinger and of Ford. For these few particulars I am indebted to Mr. Gifford. I am not aware that subsequent inquiry has added anything material to the facts which he has gathered with such commendable industry and illustrated with so much critical acumen, nor that he has been convicted of any important error. I have not access to those sources from which alone fresh intelligence can be expected, but I believe it has been sought diligently and in vain by more competent persons. Indeed, few authors of equal merit and reputation have been so little noticed by contemporaries, and none so nearly forgotten in succeeding times. Shakspeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, were always great names; and Fletcher, long after the Restoration, retained a large share of theatrical popularity. But Massinger and Ford were hardly ever acted, and hardly ever read. Even Dr. Johnson does not seem to have been aware that Rowe was beholden to Massinger for the plot of his "Fair Penitent,"-and the Doctor had no such partiality to the Whig Laureate as would induce him to dissemble a fact not very creditable either to the originality or the honesty of Rowe,-who must have strongly assured himself that Massinger was an unknown writer, or he would not have ventured to publish his borrowed play without a hint of acknowledgment. The long disappearance of these excellent works may be partly attributed to the want of collected editions. It does not appear that |