tunately much more frequent, and his pre-eminence above all competitors in this line is so indisputable, that it is no wonder if he is remembered by his gigantic faults rather than by his comparatively tame and temperate merits. The following speech of Roxana in The Rival Queens, for instance, is quite an average specimen of her conversation: ' And shall the daughter of Darius hold him? And with the wrack of all the heavens expire.' Even when the thought is dignified and noble, it frequently loses dramatic propriety from want of keeping with the speaker or the situation: 'Therefore, my friend, Let us despise the torrent of the world, Fortune, I mean, and dam her up with fences, Banks, bulwarks, all the fortresses which virtue, Resolved and manned like ours, can raise against her : That, if she does o'erflow, she may at least Bring but half ruin to our great designs; That being at last ashamed of her own weakness, Like a low-baséd flood, she may retire To her own bounds, and we with pride o'erlook her.' Into what Cato's mouth has Lee put this deliverance of Stoic dignity? Truly, into Cæsar Borgia's. Machiavelli having been privy to all Borgia's villainies, is selected to pronounce the moral of the play: 'No power is safe, nor no religion good, Whose principles of growth are laid in blood.' A proposition supposed to have been irrefragably established by five acts full of poniards and poisons. This childish want of nature Lee shares with most of the tragic dramatists of the Restoration period. He is mainly glare and gewgaw, and seldom succeeds but in those scenes of passion and frenzy where extravagant declamation seems a natural language. There is little to remark on his dramatic economy, which is that of the French classical drama. His characters are boldly outlined and strongly coloured, but transferred direct from history to the stage, or wholly conventional. His merit is to have been really a poet. 'There is an infinite fire in his works,' says Addison, ‘but so involved in smoke that it does not appear in half its lustre.' The following scene from Mithridates is a fair example of the mingled beauties and blemishes of his tragic style: Ziph. Farewell, Semandra; O, if my father should And threaten'd too by death, forget your vows? Who midst of wounds and death would think on you; Would keep his love sacred to his Semandra, I swear upon it, oh, Make bare your sword, my noble father, draw. Ziph. O hear mine too. If e'er I fail in aught [Trumpets. Arch. Come, no more wishing; hark, the trumpets call. Farewell; I'm lost in tears. Where are you, Sir? Arch. He's gone. Away, my lord, you'll never part. Semandra makes the fight, draws every sword; The remaining dramatists of the Restoration, with the exception of the brilliant group of comic authors near the end of the century, who demand a separate notice, un I doubtedly belong to the class of playwrights. The most characteristic playwright of all, taking the term in the sense of a steady competent workman destitute of originality, was perhaps John Crowne. Crowne was the man to supply the playhouses with a regular output of respectJohn Crowne able work, and, as he had no other object than (1640-1703?). to suit his market, we perhaps learn better from him and his like than from writers of genius what the public of the day required. It seems rather extraordinary that such heavy tragedies as Crowne's should have been marketable in any age; but it must be considered that the tragic stage had to be kept going for the sake of the actors, and that if people would not have Shakespeare they must take what they could get. Indifferent plays, moreover, may make fine spectacles; and Crowne's Julianas, Reguluses, and Caligulas served the purpose of habitual playgoers, that is, of playgoers from the force of habit, as well as better pieces.' The success of Crowne's comedies is less difficult to understand. Here he really gave the public a fair reflection of itself, and exhibited contemporary manners with truth, if with no great brilliancy. On one occasion he soared higher, and (1685) created a real type in the exquisite coxcomb, Sir Courtly Nice. The rest of the play is partly imitated from the Spanish, but the character of Nice is Crowne's own. The humour is considerably overdone, but is still a genuine piece of comedy, which culminates at the end, when the 1 Crowne himself assigns another reason, which may have had weight in some quarters: "I presume your ladyship nauseates comedies. They are so ill-bred, and saucy with quality, and always crammed with our odious sex. At tragedies the house is all lined with beauty, and then a gentleman may endure it,'—a confirmation of the statement that modest women avoided the comic theatre, or went masked. infuriated fop rushes from the stage, vowing to be avenged, as far as my sword and my wit can go.' The English Friar (1689), a satire on the Tartufes of the Roman Catholic persuasion, is also a remarkable piece, the parent of a long line of imitations. In City Politics (1673), Crowne's first comedy, the Whig party in the City is held up to obloquy in the transparent disguise of a Neapolitan rabble, and the satire is keen and vivid. The Married Beau (1694) is remarkable as a reversion towards the style of Fletcher and Shirley. Calisto is an interesting attempt to revive the ancient masque. The only one of Crowne's serious dramas entitled to much attention is Darius, where the poetry is frequently fine, but the characters are tame. Not much is known of his life. He appears to have been taken in youth to America, and to have returned by 1665, when he published a romance entitled Pandion and Amphigenia. His connection with the stage commenced in 1671 with Juliana, and terminated with Caligula in 1698. He would seem to have been a precise and matter-of-fact man, and is ridiculed by Rochester as 'Little starch Johnny Crowne with his ironed cravat.' He was fond of accompanying his plays with long prefaces and dedications, which throw some light on his opinions and private history, and, so far as they go, exhibit his disposition in an advantageous light. From one of them it appears that he suffered in his latter days from 'a distemper seated in my head.' His tantalizing gleams of talent as a lyrist have been already mentioned. (1660-1746). Thomas Southern undoubtedly belonged to the genus playwright, and has none of the flashes Thomas Southern of poetry which occasionally seem to exalt Crowne to a higher rank. His distinction rather arises from the financial success of his pieces, which was such that he died 'the richest of all our |