man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of Poets,

Quantùm lenta solent inter virburna cupressi.

The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better treated in Shakspeare; and, however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem. And in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at the highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greatest part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him.

Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with the advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their prece dent, great natural gifts, improved by study; Beaumont especially being so accurate a judge of players, that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. What value he had for him, appears by the verses he writ to him, and therefore I need speak no farther of it. The first play which brought Fletcher and him in esteem was their Philaster; for before that, they had written two or three very unsuccessfully; and the like is reported of Ben Jonson, before he writ Every Man in his Humour. Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's, especially those which were made before Beaumont's death; and they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better, whose wild debaucheries, and quickness of repartees, no poet can ever paint as they have done. That humour which Ben Jonson derived from particular persons, they made it not their business to describe: they represented all the passions very lively, but above all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to its highest perfection: what words have been taken in since are rather superfluous than necessary. Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage; two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's: the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in their more serious

plays, which suits generally with all men's humour. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs.

As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, bút rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour also, in some measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such an height. Humour was his proper sphere, and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them: there is not a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times, whom he has not translated in Sejanus and Cataline. But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch, and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of those writers. he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously in his serious plays; perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed the idiom of their language, he did not enough comply with ours. I would compare with him Shakspeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing: I admire him, but I love Shakspeare. To

If

Thus debauched from nature, how can we relish her genuine productions? As well might a man distinguish objects through the medium of a prism, that presents nothing but a variety of colours to the eye or a maid pining in the greensickness prefer a biscuit to a cinder.

It has often been alleged, that the passions can never be wholly deposed, and that by appealing to these, a good writer will always be able to force himself into the hearts of his readers; but even the strongest passions are weakened, nay, sometimes totally extinguished and destroyed, by mutual opposition, dissipation, and acquired insensibility. How often at our theatre, has the tear of sympathy and burst of laughter been repressed by a malignant species of pride, refusing approbation to the author and actor, and renouncing society with the audience? I have seen a young creature, possessed of the most delicate complexion, and exhibiting features that indicate sensibility, sit without the least emotion, and behold the most tender and pathetic scenes of Otway, represented with all the energy of action; so happy had she been in her efforts to conquer the prejudices of nature. She had been trained up to the belief that nothing was more awkward, than to betray a sense of shame or sympathy; she seemed to think that a consent of passion with the vulgar, would impair the dignity of her character; and that she herself ought to be the only object of approbation. But she did not consider that such approbation is seldom acquired by disdain; and that want of feeling is a very bad recommendation to the human heart. For my own share, I never fail to take a survey of the female part of an audience, at every interesting incident of the drama. When I perceive the tear stealing down a lady's cheek, and the sudden sigh escape from her breast, I am attracted towards her by an irresistible emo

tion of tenderness and esteem; her eyes shine with enchanting lustre, through the pearly moisture that surrounds them; my heart warms at the glow which humanity kindles on her cheek, and keeps time with the accelerated heavings of her snowy bosom; I at once love her benevolence, and revere her discernment. On the contrary, when I see a fine woman's face unaltered by the distress of the scene, with which I myself am affected, I resent her indifference as an insult on my own understanding; I suppose her heart to be savage, her disposition unsocial, her organs indelicate, and exclaim, with the fox in the fable, O pulchrum caput, sed cerebrum non habet!

Yet this insensibility is not perhaps owing to any original defect. Nature may have stretched the string, though it has long ceased to vibrate. It may have been displaced and distracted by the first violence offered to the native machine; it may have lost its tone through long disuse; or be so twisted and overstrained as to produce an effect very different from that which was primarily intended. If so little regard is paid to nature when she knocks so powerfully at the breast, she must be altogether neglected and despised in her calmer mood of serene tranquillity, when nothing appears to recommend her but simplicity, propriety, and innocence. A clear, blue sky, spangled with stars, will prove a homely and insipid object to eyes accustomed to the glare of torches, tapers, gilding, and glitter: they will be turned with loathing and disgust from the green mantle of the spring, so gorgeously adorned with buds and foliage, flowers and blossoms, to contemplate a gaudy negli gée, striped and intersected with abrupt unfriendly tints, that fetter the masses of light, and distract the vision; and cut and pinked into the most fantastic forms; and flounced and furbelowed, patched and fringed, with all the littleness of art, unknown to elegance. Those ears that are offended by the sweetly wild notes of the thrush, the black-bird, and the nightingale, the distant cawing of the rook, the tender cooing of the turtle, the soft sighing of reeds and osiers, the magic murmur of lapsing streams; will be regaled and ravished by the extravagant and alarming notes of a squeaking fiddle, extracted by a musician who has no other genius than that which lies in his fingers; they will even be entertained with the rattling

of coaches, the rumbling of carts, and the delicate cry of cod and mackarel.

The sense of smelling that delights in the scent of excrementitious animal juices, such as musk, civet, and urinous salts, will loath the fragrancy of new mown hay, the hawthorn's bloom, the sweet briar, the honey-suckle, and the rose; and the organs that are gratified with the taste of sickly veal which has been bled into the palsy, rotten pullets crammed into fevers, brawn made up of dropsical pig, the abortion of pigeons and of poultry, 'sparagus gorged with the crude unwholesome juice of dung, pease without substance, peaches without taste, and pine-apples without flavour, will certainly nauseate the native, genuine, and salutary taste of Weish beef, Banstead mutton, Hampshire pork, and barn-door fowls; whose juices are concocted by a natural digestion, and whose flesh is consolidated by free air and exercise.

In such a total perversion of the senses the ideas must be misrepresented, the powers of the imagination disordered, and the judgment of consequence unsound. The disease is attended with a false appetite, which the natural food of the mind will not satisfy. It must have sauces compounded of the most heterogeneous trash. The soul seems to sink into a kind of sleepy idiotism, or childish vacancy of thought. It is diverted by toys and baubles, which can only be pleasing to the most superficial curiosity. It is enlivened by a quick succession of trivial objects, that glisten, and glance, and dance before the eye; and, like an infant kept awake and inspirited by the sound of a rattle, it must not only be dazzled and aroused, but also cheated, hurried and perplexed by the artifice of deception, business, intricacy, and intrigue, which is a kind of low juggle that may be termed the legerdemain of genius. This being the case, it cannot enjoy, nor indeed distinguish, the charms of natural and moral beauty or decorum. The ingenuous blush of native innocence, the plain language of ancient faith and sincerity, the cheerful resignation to the will of heaven, the mutual affection of the charities, the voluntary respect paid to superior dignity or station, the virtue of beneficence extended even to the brute creation, nay, the very crimson glow of health and swelling lines of beauty, are despised, detested, scorned, and ridiculed, as ignorance, rudeness, rusticity, and superstition. Smollett.

§72. An Essay on Suicide.

The last sessions deprived us of the only surviving member of a society, which (during its short existence) was equal both in principles and practice to the Mohocks and Hell-fire club of tremendous memory. This society was composed of a few broken gamesters and desperate young rakes, who threw the small remains of their bankrupt fortunes into one common stock, and thence assumed the name of the Last Guinea Club. A short life and a merry one, was their favourite maxim; and they determined, when their finances should be exhausted, to die as they had lived, like gentlemen. Some of their members had the luck to get a reprieve by a good run at cards, and others by snapping up a rich heiress or a dowager: while the rest, who were not cut off in the natural way by duels or the gallows, very resolutely made their quietus with laudanum or the pistol. The last that remained of this society had very calmly prepared for his own execution: he had cocked his pistol, deliberately placed the muzzle of it to his temple, and was just going to pull the trigger, when he bethought himself that he could employ it to better purpose upon Hounslow-heath. This brave man, however, had but a very short respite, and was obliged to suffer the ignominy of going out of the world in a vulgar way, by an halter.

The enemies of play will perhaps consider those gentlemen, who boldly stake their whole fortunes at the gaming-table, in the same view with these desperadoes; and they may even go so far as to regard the polite and honourable assembly at White's as a kind of Last Guinea Club. Nothing, they will say, is so fluctuating as the property of a gamester, who (when luck runs against him) throws away whole acres at every cast of the dice, and whose houses are as unsure a possession, as if they were built with cards. Many, indeed, have been reduced to their last guinea at this genteel gaming-house; but the most inveterate enemies to White's must allow, that it is but now and then that a gamester of quality, who looks upon it as an even bet whether there is another world, takes his chance, and dispatches himself, when the odds are against him in this.

But however free the gentlemen of White's may be from any imputation of