heroes attach our hearts. We follow Caractacus to battle and captivity with a proud satisfaction in his virtue. The stubbornness of the old soldier is finely tempered by his wise, just, and candid respect for his enemies the Romans, and by his tender affection for his princely ward. He never gives way to sorrow till he looks on the dead body of his nephew, Hengo, when he thus exclaims * Farewell the hopes of Britain! Farewell thou royal graft for ever! Time and Death, How lovely yet thy ruins show-how sweetly The character must be well supported which yields a sensation of triumph in the act of surrendering to victorious enemies. Caractacus does not need to tell us, that when a brave man has done his duty, he cannot be humbled by fortune-but he makes us feel it in his behaviour. The few brief and simple sentences which he utters in submitting to the Romans, together with their respectful behaviour to him, give a sublime composure to his appearance in the closing scene. Dryden praises the gentlemen of Beaumont and Fletcher in comedy as the true men of fashion of "the times." It was necessary that Dryden should call them the men of fashion of the times, for they are not in the highest sense of the word gentlemen. Shirley's comic characters have much more of the conversation and polite manners, which we should suppose to belong to superior life in all ages and countries. The genteel characters of Fletcher form a narrower class, and exhibit a more particular image of their times and country. But their comic personages, after all, are a spirited race. In one province of the facetious drama they set the earliest example; witness their humorous mock-heroic comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle®. * Beaumont and Fletcher seemed to have followed Shakspeare's mode of composition, rather than Jonson's. They may, indeed, be rather said to have taken for their model the boundless licence of the Spanish stage, from which many of their pieces are expressly and avowedly derived. The acts of their plays are so detached from mch other, in substance and consistency, that the plot can scarce be said to hang together at all, or to have, in any se of the word, a beginning, progress, and conclusion. It seems as if the play began because the curtain rose, and The memory of Ford has been deservedly revived as one of the ornaments of our ancient drama; though he has no great body of poetry, and has interested us in no other passion except that of love; but in that he displays a peculiar depth and delicacy of romantic feelingt. Webster has a gloomy force of imagination, not unmixed with the beautiful `and pathetic. But it is "beauty in the lap of horror" he caricatures the shapes of terror, and his Pegasus is like a nightmare. Middleton‡, Marston, Thomas Heywood, Decker, and Chapman, also present subordinate claims to remembrance in that fertile period of the drama. Shirley was the last of our good old dramatists. When his works shall be given to the public, they will undoubtedly enrich our popular literature§. His language sparkles with the most exquisite images. Keeping some occasional pruriencies apart, the fault of his age rather than of himself, he speaks the most ended because it fell.-SIR WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Prose Works, vol. vi. p. 343. Beaumont and Fletcher's plots are wholly inartificial; they only care to pitch a character into a position to make him or her talk; you must swallow all their gross improbabilities, and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the dialogue.-COLERIDGE, Table-Talk, p. 200. Shakspeare borrowed his plots, Jonson invented his; while Beaumont and Fletcher disregarded a story, and relied on dialogue and situation. What they sought, they achieved. You could not publish tales from their plays, but scenes and incidents of truth and beauty without number. Where had they stood, with plots like Shakspeare? Not above Shakspeare, certainly, but above Ben Jonson, not as now assuredly below, though the next. What Tom Jones is among our novels, The Fox and The Alchemist are among our dramas.] [t Mr. Campbell observes, that Ford interests us in no other passion than that of love; " in which he displays a peculiar depth and delicacy of romantic feeling." Comparatively speaking, this may be admitted; but in justice to the poet, it should be added that he was not insensible to the power of friendship, and in more than one of his dramas has delineated it with a master hand. Had the critic forgotten the noble Dalyell? the generous and devoted Malfato? Mr. Campbell, however, terms him "one of the ornaments of our ancient drama."-GIFFORD, Ford, p. xl.] Middleton's hags, in the tragi-comedy of The Witch, were conjectured by Mr. Steevens to have given the hint to Shakspeare of his witches in Macbeth. It has been repeatedly remarked, however, that the resemblance scarcely extends beyond a few forms of incantation. The hags of Middleton are merely mischievous old women, those of Shakspeare influence the elements of nature and the destinies of man. [§ They have been since published in six volumes octavo, the plays with notes by Gifford, the poems and memoirs by Mr. Dyce.] polished and refined dialect of the stage; and even some of his over-heightened scenes of voluptuousness are meant, though with a very mistaken judgment, to inculcate morality*. I consider his genius, indeed, as rather brilliant and elegant than strong or lofty. His tragedies are defective in fire, grandeur, and passion; and we must select his comedies, to have any favourable idea of his humour. His finest poetry comes forth in situations rather more familiar than tragedy and more grave than comedy, which I should call sentimental comedy, if the name were not associated with ideas of modern insipidity. That he was capable, however, of pure and excellent comedy will be felt by those who have yet in reserve the amusement of reading his Gamester, Hydepark, and Lady of Pleasure. In the first and last of these there is a subtle ingenuity in producing comic effect and surprise, which might be termed Attic, if it did not surpass anything that is left us in Athenian comedy. I shall leave to others the more special enumeration of his faults, only observing, that the airy touches of his expression, the delicacy of his sentiments, and the beauty of his similes, are often found where the poet survives the dramatist, and where he has not power to transfuse life and strong individuality through the numerous characters of his voluminous drama. His style, to use a line of his own, is "studded like a frosty night with stars ;" and a severe critic might say, that the stars often shine when the atmosphere is rather too frosty. In other words, there is more beauty of fancy than strength of feeling in his works. From this remark, however, a defender of his fame might justly appeal to exceptions in many of his pieces. From a general impression of his works I should not paint his Muse with the haughty form and features of inspiration, but with a countenance, in its happy moments, arch, lovely, and interesting both in smiles and in tears; crowned with flowers, and not unindebted to ornament, but wearing the drapery and chaplet with a claim to them from natural beauty. Of his style I subjoin one or two more examples, lest I may not have done *The scene in Shirley's Love's Cruelty, for example, between Hippolito and the object of his admiration, Act 4, scene i., and another in The Grateful Servant, between Belinda and Lodwick. Several more might be mentioned. justice to him in that respect in the body of the work+. FROM "THE GRATEFUL SERVANT." To life and me. Speak, and increase my comforts. Cleon. Yet stay, Thou goest away too soon; where is he? speak. Cle. The sun's loved flower, that shuts his yellow curtain When he declineth, opens it again At his fair rising: with my parting lord FROM THE SAME. FOSCARI, IN HIS MELANCHOLY, ANNOUNCING TO FATHER Foscari. There is a sun, ten times more glorious To rise from earth, and no more to turn back Valentio. My lord, the truth is, like your coat of arms, [t Mr. Campbell has been too kind to Shirley, whose merits are exaggerated by the length and frequency of his quotations from him. The reader who will turn to Shirley's six volumes, and seek there for a succession of such passages as Mr. Campbell has here given, for happiness of plot, dialogue, and language, is certain only of disappointment. In endeavouring to atone for the injustice of one age, another is apt to overleap the mark, and to err as far in the other way. Shirley shines in extract-in passages,-not in plays, or even in scenes.] FROM "THE TRAITOR." THE DUKE OF FLORENCE TO HIS MURDERER, LORENZO. * For thee, inhuman murderer, expect My blood shall fly to heaven, and there enflamed, Hang a prodigious meteor all thy life: And when, by some as bloody hand as thine, Thy soul is ebbing forth, it shall descend, FROM THE SAME. When our souls shall leave this dwelling, The glory of one fair and virtuous action FROM THE COMEDY OF "THE BROTHERS." FERNANDO DESCRIBING HIS MISTRESS TO FRANCISCO. Fern. You have, then, a mistress, And thrive upon her favours but thou art I was at St. Sebastian's, last Sunday, Fran. Is it a secret that you went to church? So sweet a face, so harmless, so intent To gaze upon her, till by degrees I took Her eye did seem to labour with a tear, A smile shoot graceful upward from her eyes, The contempt which Dryden expresses for Shirley + might surprise us, if it were not recollected that he lived in a degenerate age of dramatic taste, and that his critical sentences were neither infallible nor immutable. [* The citation of this beautiful passage by Dr. Farmer, in his Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare, 1766, may be regarded as one of the earliest attempts to rescue the works of Shirley from the long oblivion to which they had been consigned.-DYCE's Shirley, vol. i. p. xi.] [In Mac Flecknoe. "The critical decisions of Dryden," imys Dyce, "however unjust, had no slight influence on the public mind."} He at one time undervalued Otway, though he lived to alter his opinion. The civil wars put an end to this dynasty of our dramatic poets. Their immediate successors or contemporaries, belonging to the reign of Charles I., many of whom resumed their lyres after the interregnum, may, in a general view, be divided into the classical and metaphysical schools. The former class, containing Denham, Waller, and Carew, upon the whole cultivated smooth and distinct melody of numbers, correctness of imagery, and polished elegance of expression. The latter, in which Herrick and Cowley stood at the head of Donne's metaphysical followers, were generally loose or rugged in their versification, and preposterous in their metaphors. But this distinction can only be drawn in very general terms; for Cowley, the prince of the metaphysicians, has bursts of natural feeling and just thoughts in the midst of his absurdities. And Herrick, who is equally whimsical, has left some little gems of highlyfinished composition. On the other hand, the correct Waller is sometimes metaphysical; and ridiculous hyperboles are to be found in the elegant style of Carew. The characters of Denham, Waller, and Cowley, have been often described. Had Cowley written nothing but his prose, it would have stamped him a man of genius, and an improver of our language. Of his poetry Rochester indecorously said, that "not being of God, it could not stand §." Had the word nature been substituted, it would have equally conveyed the intended meaning, but still that meaning would not have been strictly just . There is much in Cowley that will stand. He teems, in many places, with the imagery, the [That Dryden at any time undervalued Otway, we have no very positive proof-a coffee house criticism retailed, though the retailer was Otway himself, at secondhand. The play that Dryden is said to have spoken petulantly and disparagingly about, was Don Carlos. The Orphan and Venice Preserved were of a later date, and justified Dryden's firm conviction, that Otway possessed the art of expressing the passions and emotions of the mind as thoroughly as any of the ancients or moderns, Don Carlos gives no promise of The Orphan, or of Venice Preserved.] [§ Told on the authority of Dryden. (Malone, vol. iv. p. 612.) Yet Burnet, Joseph Warton, and Johnson speak of Cowley as Rochester's favourite author.] [Nature is but a name for an effect Whose cause is God.-COWPER, The Task, B. vi.] feeling, the grace, and gaiety of a poet. Nothing but a severer judgment was wanting to collect the scattered lights of his fancy. His unnatural flights arose less from affectation than self-deception. He cherished false thoughts as men often associate with false friends, not from insensibility to the difference between truth and falsehood, but from being too indolent to examine the difference. Herrick, if we were to fix our eyes on a small portion of his works, might be pronounced a writer of delightful Anacreontic spirit. He has passages where the thoughts seem to dance into numbers from his very heart, and where he frolics like a being made up of melody and pleasure; as when he sings Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a flying; And this same flower that blooms to-day, In the same spirit are his verses to Anthea, concluding Thou art my life, my love, my heart, The very eyes of me; And hast command of every part, To live and die for thee. But his beauties are so deeply involved in surrounding coarseness and extravagance, as to constitute not a tenth part of his poetry; or rather it may be safely affirmed, that of 1400 pages of verse which he has left, not a hundred are worth reading. In Milton there may be traced obligations to several minor English poets; but his genius had too great a supremacy to belong to any school. Though he acknowledged a filial reverence for Spenser as a poet, he left no Gothic irregular tracery in the design of his own great work, but gave a classical harmony of parts to its stupendous pile. It thus resembles a dome, the vastness of which is at first sight concealed by its symmetry, but which expands more and more to the eye while it is contemplated. His early poetry seems to have neither disturbed nor corrected the bad taste of his age. Comus came into the world unacknowledged by its author, and Lycidas appeared at first only with his initials. These, and other exquisite pieces, composed in the happiest years of his life, at his father's country-house at Horton, were collectively published, with his name affixed to them, in 1645; but that precious volume, which [* Comus, 1637-Lycidas, 1638.] & included L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, did not come to a second edition, till it was republished by himself at the distance of eight-and-twenty years +. Almost a century elapsed before his minor works obtained their proper fame. Handel's music is said, by Dr. Warton, to have drawn the first attention to them; but they must have been admired before Handel set them to music; for he was assuredly not the first to discover their beauty. But of Milton's poetry being above the comprehension of his age, we should have a sufficient proof, if we had no other, in the grave remark of Lord Clarendon, that Cowley had, in his time, “taken a flight abore all men in poetry." Even when "Paradise Lost" appeared, though it was not neglected, it attracted no crowd of imitators, and made no visible change in the poetical practice of the age‡. He stood alone, and aloof above his times, the bard of immortal subjects, and, as far as there is perpetuity in language, of immortal fame. The very choice of those subjects bespoke a contempt for any species of excellence that was attainable by other men. There is something that overawes the mind in conceiving his long deliberated selection of that theme-his attempting it when his eyes were shut upon the face of nature-his dependence, we might almost say, on supernatural inspiration, and in the calm air of strength with which he opens "Paradise Lost," beginning a mighty performance without the appearance of an effort §. Taking the subject all in all, his powers could nowhere else have enjoyed the same scope. It was only from the height of this great argument that he could look back upon eternity past, and forward upon eternity to come; that he could survey the abyss of infernal darkness, open visions of Paradise, or ascend to heaven and breathe empyreal air. [† 1673.] [ See note B, at the end of the Volume.] [§ There is a solemnity of sentiment, as well as majesty of numbers, in the exordium of this noble Poem, which in the works of the ancients has no example. . . . . We cannot read this exordium without perceiving that the author possesses more fire than he shows. There is a suppressed force in it, the effect of judgment. His judgment controls his genius, and his genius reminds us (to use his own beautiful similitude) of A proud steed rein'd, He addresses himself to the performance of great things, but makes no great exertion in doing it; a sure symptom of uncommon vigour.-CowPER, Commentary.] Still the subject had precipitous difficulties. It obliged him to relinquish the warm, multifarious interests of human life. For these indeed he could substitute holier things; but a more insuperable objection to the theme was, that it involved the representation of a war between the Almighty and his created beings. To the vicissitudes of such a warfare it was impossible to make us attach the same fluctuations of hope and fear, the same curiosity, suspense, and sympathy, which we feel amidst the battles of the Iliad, and which make every brave young spirit long to be in the midst of them. Milton has certainly triumphed over one difficulty of his subject, the paucity and the loneliness of its human agents; for no one in contemplating the garden of Eden would wish to exchange it for a more populous world. His earthly pair could only be represented, during their innocence, as beings of simple enjoyment and negative virtue, with no other passions than the fear of heaven, and the love of each other. Yet from these materials what a picture has he drawn of their homage to the Deity, their mutual affection, and the horrors of their alienation! By concentrating all exquisite ideas of external nature in the representation of their abode-by conveying an inspired impression of their spirits and forms, whilst they first shone under the fresh light of creative heaven-by these powers of description, he links our first parents, in harmonious subordination, to the angelic natures-he supports them in the balance of poetical importance with their divine coadjutors and enemies, and makes them appear at once worthy of the friendship and envy of gods. In the angelic warfare of the poem, Milton has done whatever human genius could accomplish. But, although Satan speaks of having "put to proof his (Maker's) high supremacy, in dubious battle, on the plains of heaven," the expression, though finely characteristic of his blasphemous pride, does not prevent us from feeling that the battle cannot for a moment be dubious. Whilst the powers of description and language are taxed and exbausted to portray the combat, it is impossible not to feel, with regard to the blessed spirits, a profound and reposing security that they have neither great dangers to fear, nor reverses to suffer. At the same time it must be said that, although in the actual contact of the armies the inequality of the strife becomes strongly visible to the imagination, and makes it a contest more of noise than terror; yet, while positive action is suspended, there is a warlike grandeur in the poem, which is nowhere to be paralleled. When Milton's genius dares to invest the Almighty himself with arms, "his bow and thunder," the astonished mind admits the image with a momentary credence*. It is otherwise when we are involved in the circumstantial details of the campaign. We have then leisure to anticipate its only possible issue, and can feel no alarm for any temporary check that may be given to those who fight under the banners of Omnipotence. The warlike part of Paradise Lost was inseparable from its subject. Whether it could have been differently managed, is a problem which our reverence for Milton will scarcely permit us to state. I feel that reverence too strongly to suggest even the possibility that Milton could have improved his poem, by having thrown his angelic warfare into more remote perspective; but it seems to me to be most sublime when it is least distinctly brought home to the imagination. What an awful effect has the dim and undefined conception of the conflict, which we gather from the opening of the first book! There the veil of mystery is left undrawn between us and a subject which the powers of description were inadequate to exhibit. The ministers of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled-the thunders had ceased "To bellow through the vast and boundless deep," Par. Lost, Book i. v. 177. (in that line what an image of sound and space is conveyed+!)-and our terrific conception of the past is deepened by its indistinctness. In [* Book vi. 1. 712. The bow and sword of the Almighty are copied from the Psalms vii. and xlv.] [ In this line we seem to hear a thunder suited both to the scene and the occasion, incomparably more awful than any ever heard on earth. The thunder of Milton is not hurled from the hand like Homer's, but discharged like an arrow: as if jealous for the honour of a true God, the poet disdained to arm him like the God of the heathen.-COWPER.] [Of all the articles of which the dreadful scenery of Milton's hell consists, Scripture furnished him only with a lake of fire and brimstone. Yet thus slenderly assisted, what a world of woe has he constructed, proved in this |