may come home to the business and bosoms of some of our readers.

"Hark! reader, if thou never yet hadst one,
I'll shew the torments of a Cambridge Dun.
He rails where'er he comes, and yet can say
But this, that Randolph did not keep his day.
What? can I keep the day, or stop the sun
From setting, or the night from coming on?
Could I have kept days, I had chang'd the doom
Of times and seasons, that had never come.
These evil spirits haunt me every day,
And will not let me eat, study, or pray.

I am so much in their books, that 'tis known
I am too seldom frequent in my own.
What damage given to my doors might be
If doors might actions have of battery?
And when they find their coming to no end,
They dun by proxy, and their letters send,
In such a style as I could never find
In Tully's long, or Seneca's short wind.

Good Master Randolph, pardon me, I pray,
If I remember, you forget your day.
I kindly dealt with you, and it would be
Unkind in you, not to be kind to me.
You know, Sir, I must pay for what I have,
My creditors will be paid; therefore I crave
Pay me as I pay them, Sir, for one brother
Is bound in conscience to pay another.
Besides, my landlord would not be content
If I should dodge with him for's quarter's rent,
My wife lies in, too, and I needs must pay
The midwife, least the fool be cast away.
And 'tis a second charge to me, poor man,
To make the new-born babe a Christian.
Besides, the churching, a third charge will be,
In butter'd haberdine and frummety.
Thus hoping you will make a courteous end,

I rest (I would thou wouldst) your loving friend."

The "Parley with his Purse," has a similar burden, and is written in a similar strain.

"Purse, who'll not know you have a poet's been,

When he shall look and find no gold herein?

What respect (think you) will there now be shown
To this foul nest, when all the birds are flown?
Unnatural vacuum, can your emptiness

Answer to some slight questions, such as these?
How shall my debts be paid? or can my scores
Be clear'd with verses to my creditors?
Hexameter's no sterling, and I fear

What the brain coins, goes scarce for current there.

Can metre cancel bonds? is here a time

Ever to hope to wipe out chalk with rhyme?

Or if I now were hurrying to the jail,

Are the nine Muses held sufficient bail?
Would they to any composition come,
If we should mortgage our Elysium,
Tempe, Parnassus, and the golden streams
Of Tagus and Pactolus, those rich dreams
Of active fancy? Can our Orpheus move
Those rocks and stones, with his best strains of love?
Should I (like Homer) sing in lofty tones
To them Achilles, and his Myrmidons;
Hector, and Ajax, are but sergeant's names,
They relish bay-salt 'bove the epigrams
Of the most season'd brain, nor will they be
Content with ode, or paid with elegy."

We now turn to the dramas, a very cursory perusal of which will satisfy any one, that that department of poetry is not, whatever it might have been, much indebted to Randolph. They are entirely of a comic description, and much too servilely imitated from the ancients, and, on the whole, partake much more of the nature of satire than the drama. The characters are strongly contrasted, but they are rather abstract personifications, than the eidola of substantial flesh and blood. There is a pastoral drama, called Amyntas, which possesses as few of the charms of truth and reality as that of Tasso, and is much its inferior in graceful beauty. The piece of highest merit is the " Muses' Looking-Glass," which hardly can be called a drama, though written for the stage. It contains a great number of contrasted portraits of the extremes of the virtues and vices of morality, which are worked into a slender frame-work, like that of the Rehearsal, and such pieces. It is from this that all our extracts will be taken, but they are such rich and striking pieces of portraiture, that they well deserve the space allotted to them. We shall first quote the preliminary scenes,

which display the absurdities of the Puritans of those times with much humour and wit.

"Flowerdew. See, brother, how the wicked throng and crowd

To works of vanity! not a nook or corner

In all this house of sin, this cave of filthiness,
This den of spiritual thieves, but it is stuff'd,
Stuff'd, and stuff'd full as a cushion

With the lewd reprobate.

Bird. Sister, were there not before inns,
Yes, will I say inns, for my zeal bids me
Say filthy inns, enough to harbour such

As travell❜d to destruction the broad way;

But they build more and more, more shops of Satan.
Flow. Iniquity aboundeth, though pure zeal
Teach, preach, huff, puff, and snuff at it, yet still,
Still it aboundeth. Had we seen a church,

A new built church, erected north and south,
It had been something worth the wondering at.
Bird. Good works are done.

Flow. I say no works are good,

Good works are merely popish and apocryphal.

Bird. But th' bad abound, surround, yea, and confound us.

No marvel now if play-houses increase,

For they are all grown so obscene of late,

That one begets another.

Flow. Flat fornication !

I wonder any body takes delight
To hear them prattle.

Bird. Nay, and I have heard,

That in a- tragedy I think they call it,

They make no more of killing one another,

Than you sell pins.

Flow. Or you sell feathers, brother;

But are they not hang'd for it?

Bird. Law grows partial,

And finds it but chance-medley: and their comedies

Will abuse you or me, or any body;
We cannot put our monies to increase
By lawful usury, nor break in quiet,

Nor put off our false wares, nor keep our wives
Finer than others, but our ghosts must walk
Upon their stages.

Flow. Is not this flat conjuration,

To make our ghosts to walk ere we be dead?

Bird. That's nothing, Mistress Flowerdew; they will play The knave, the fool, the devil, and all for money.

Flow. Impiety! O that men endued with reason Should have no more grace in them?

Bird. Be there not other

Vocations as thriving, and more honest ?
Bayliffs, promoters, taylors, and apparitors,

Beadles, and marshals' men, the needful instruments
Of the republic, but to make themselves

Such monsters, for they are monsters, th' are monsters,
Base, sinful, shameless, ugly, vile, deform'd,
Pernicious monsters!

Flow. I have heard our vicar

Call play-houses the colleges of transgression,
Wherein the seven deadly sins are studied.

Bird. Why then the city will in time be made
An university of iniquity.

We dwell by Black-fryars college, where I wonder
How that profane nest of pernicious birds
Dare roost themselves there in the midst of us,
So many good and well disposed persons.
O impudence!

Flow. It was a zealous prayer

I heard a brother make, concerning play-houses.
Bird. For charity, what is it?

Flow. That the Globe,

Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice,
Had been consum'd; the Phoenix burnt to ashes;
The Fortune whipt for a blind ***; Black-fryers
He wonders how it scap'd demolishing

I' th' time of Reformation; lastly, he wish'd
The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear-garden,
And there be soundly baited.

Bird. A good prayer.

Flow. Indeed it something pricks my conscience,

I come to sell 'em pins and looking-glasses.

Bird. I have their custom too for all their feathers: "Tis fit that we, which are such sincere professors, Should gain by infidels.

Enter Roscius, a Player.

Mr. Roscius, we have brought the things you spake for.
Rosc. Why, 'tis well.

Flow. Pray, sir, what serve they for?

Rosc. We use them in our play.
Bird. Are you a player?

Rosc. I am, sir; what of that?

Bird. And is it lawful?

Good sister, let's convert him. Will you use

So fond a calling?

Flow. And so impious?

Bird. So irreligious?
Flow. So unwarrantable?

Bird. Only to gain by vice?

Flow. To live by sin?

Rosc. My spleen is up: and live not you by sin?
Take away vanity, and you both may break.
What serves your lawful trade of selling pins,
But to join gew-gaws, and to knit together
Gorgets, strips, neck-cloths, laces, ribbands, ruffs,
And many other such like toys as these,
To make the baby pride a pretty puppet?

And you, sweet feather-man, whose ware, though light,
O'erweighs your conscience; what serves your trade
But to plume folly, to give pride her wings,
To deck vain glory? spoiling the peacock's tail
T' adorn an idiot's coxcomb; O dull ignorance!
How ill 'tis understood what we do mean
For good and honest! they abuse our scene,
And say we live by vice, indeed 'tis true,
As the physicians by diseases do,

Only to cure them. They do live we see,
Like cooks, by pamp'ring prodigality,
Which are our fond accusers. On the stage
We set an usurer to tell this age
How ugly looks his soul: a prodigal
Is taught by us how far from liberal
His folly bears him: boldly I dare say
There has been more by us in some one play
Laugh'd into wit and virtue, than hath been
By twenty tedious lectures drawn from sin,
And foppish humours; hence the cause doth rise,
Men are not won by th' ears so well as eyes.
First, see what we present.

Flow. The sight is able

To unsanctify our eyes, and make 'm carnal.

Rosc. Will you condemn without examination? Bird. No, sister, let us call up all our zeal, And try the strength of this temptation: