headlong into clouds "-is tremendous, to the curdling of the blood. I know nothing in Poetry like it.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT.--JOHN FLETCHER.

Maid's Tragedy.-One characteristic of the excellent old poets is, their being able to bestow grace upon subjects which naturally do not seem susceptible of any. I will mention two instances. Zelmane in the Arcadia of Sidney, and Helena in the All's Well that End's Well of Shakspere. What can be more unpromising at first sight, than the idea of a young man disguising himself in woman's attire, and passing himself off for a woman among women; and that for a long space of time? Yet Sir Philip has preserved so matchless a decorum, that neither does Pyrocles' manhood suffer any stain for the effeminacy of Zelmane, nor is the respect due to the princesses at all diminished when the deception comes to be known. In the sweetly constituted mind of Sir Philip Sidney, it seems as if no ugly thought or unhandsome meditation could find a harbour. He turned a that he touched into images of honour and virtue. Helena in Shakspere is a young woman seeking a man in marriage. The ordinary rules of courtship are reversed, the habitual feelings are crossed. Yet with such exquisite address this dangerous subject is handled, that Helena's forwardness loses her no honour; delicacy dispenses with its laws in her favour, and nature, in her single case, seems content to suffer a sweet violation. Aspatia, in the Maid's Tragedy, is a character equally difficult, with Helena, of being managed with grace. She too is a slighted woman, refused by the man who had once engaged to marry her. Yet it is artfully contrived, that while we pity we respect her, and she descends without degradation. Such wonders true poetry and passion can do, to confer dignity upon subjects which do not seem capable of it. But Aspatia must not be compared at all points with Helena; she does not so absolutely predominate over her situation but she suffers some diminution, some abatement of the full lustre of her female character, which Helena never does. Her character has many degrees of sweetness, sonie of delicacy; but it has weakness which, if we do not despise, we are sorry for. After all, Beaumont and Fletcher were but an inferior sort of Shaksperes and Sidneys.

Philaster. The character of Bellario must have been extremely popular in its day. For many years after the date of Philaster's first exhibition on the stage, scarce a play can be found without one of these women pages in it, following in the train of some pre-engaged lover, calling on the gods to bless her happy rival (his mistress), whom no doubt she secretly curses in her heart, giving rise to many pretty equivoques by the way on the confusion of sex, and either made happy at last by some surprising turn of fate, or dismissed with the joint pity of the lovers and the audience. Donne has a copy of verses to his mistress, dissuading her from a resolution which she seems to have taken up from some of these scenical representations, of following him abroad as a page. It is so earnest, so weighty, so rich in poetry, in sense, in wit, and pathos, that it deserves to be read as a solemn close in future to all such sickly fancies as he there deprecates.

JOHN FLETCHER.

Thierry and Theodorel.-The scene where Ordella offers her life a sacrifice, that the King of France may not be childless, I have always considered as the finest in all Fletcher, and Ordella to be the most perfect notion of the female heroic character, next to Calantha in the Broken Heart. She is a piece of sainted nature. Yet noble as the whole passage is, it must be confessed that the manner of it, compared with Shakspere's finest scenes, is faint and anguid. Its motion is circular, not progressive. Each line revolves on itself in a sort of

separate orbit. They do not join into one another like a running-hand. Fletcher's ideas moved slow; his versification, though sweet, is tedious, it stops at every turn; he lays line upon line, making up one after the other, adding image to image so deliberately, that we see their junctures. Shakspere mingles everything, runs line into line, embarrasses sentences and metaphors; before one idea has burst its shell, another is hatched and clamours for disclosure. Another striking difference between Fletcher and Shakspere, is the fondness of the former for unnatural and violent situations. He seems to have thought that nothing great could be produced in an ordinary way. The chief incidents in some of his most admired tragedies show this." Shakspere had nothing of this contortion in his mind, none of that craving after violent situations, and flights of strained and improbable virtue, which I think always betrays an imperfect moral sensibility. The wit of Fletcher is excellent† like his serious scenes, but there is something strained and far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of Nature, he always goes a little on one side of her. Shakspere chose her without a reserve: and had riches, power, understanding, and length of days, with her, for a dowry.

Love's Pilgrimage.-T -The dialogue between Philippo and Leocadia is one of the most pleasing if not the most shining scenes in Fletcher. All is sweet,

natural, and unforced. It is a copy which we may suppose Massinger to have profited by the studying.

The Two Noble Kinsmen.-The scene in which Palamon and Arcite repining at their hard condition, in being made captives for life in Athens, derive consolation from the enjoyment of each other's company in prison, bears indubitable marks of Fletcher: the two which precede it give strong countenance to the tradition that Shakspere had a hand in this play. The same judgment may be formed of the death of Arcite and some other passages, not here given. They have a luxuriance in them which strongly resembles Shakspere's manner in those parts of his plays where, the progress of the interest being subordinate, the poet was at leisure for description. I might fetch instances from Troilus and Timon. That Fletcher should have copied Shakspere's manner through so many entire scenes (which is the theory of Mr. Steevens) is not very probable; that he could have done it with such facility is to me not certain. If Fletcher wrote some scenes in imitation, why did he stop? or shall we say that Shakspere wrote the other scenes in imitation of Fletcher? that he gave Shakspere a curb and a bridle, and that Shakspere gave him a pair of spurs as Blackmoor and Lucan are brought in exchanging gifts in the Battle of the Books?

Faithful Shepherdess.-If all the parts of this delightful pastoral had been in unison with its many innocent scenes and sweet lyric intermixtures, it had been a poem fit to vie with Comus or the Arcadia, to have been put into the hands of boys and virgins, to have made matter for young dreams, like the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a spot is on the face of this Diana. Nothing short of infatuation could have driven Fletcher upon mixing with this blessedness" such an ugly deformity as Cloe, the wanton shepherdess! Coarse words do but wound the ears: but a character of lewdness affronts the mind. Female lewdness at once shocks nature and morality. If Cloe was meant to set off Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have known that such weeds by juxtaposition do not set off but kill sweet flowers.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The Triumph of Love: Being the second of four plays, or moral representations, in one.-Violanta, Daughter to a Nobleman of Milan, is with child by Wife for a Month, Cupid's Revenge, Double Marriage, &c. Wit without Money, and his comedies generally.

Gerrard, supposed to be of mean descent: an offence which by the laws of Milan is made capital to both parties.

Violanta's prattle is so very pretty and so natural in her situation, that I could not resist giving it a place. Juno Lucina was never invoked with more elegance. Pope has been praised for giving dignity to a game of cards. required at least as much address to ennoble a lying-in.

It

PHILIP MASSINGER.-THOMAS DEKKER.

The Virgin Martyr.--This play has some beauties of so very high an order, that with all my respect for Massinger, I do not think he had poetical enthusiasm capable of rising up to them. His associate Dekker, who wrote Old Fortunatus, had poetry enough for anything. The very impurities which obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties of this play, like Satan among the Sons of Heaven, have a strength of contrast, a raciness, and a glow in them, which are beyond Massinger. They are to the religion of the rest what Caliban is to Miranda.

PHILIP MASSINGER.

The City Madam.-This bitter satire against the city women for aping the fashions of the court ladies must have been peculiarly gratifying to the females of the Herbert family and the rest of Massinger's noble patrons and patronesses.

The Picture.-The good sense, rational fondness, and chastised feeling, of the dialogue in which Matthias, a knight of Bohemia, going to the wars, in parting with his wife, shows her substantial reasons why he should go-make it more valuable than many of those scenes in which this writer has attempted a deeper passion and more tragical interest. Massinger had not the higher requisites of his art in anything like the degree in which they were possessed by Ford, Webster, Tourneur, Heywood, and others. He never shakes or disturbs the mind with grief. He is read with composure and placid delight. He wrote with that equability of all the passions, which made his English style the purest and most free from violent metaphors and harsh constructions, of any of the dramatists who were his contemporaries.

PHILIP MASSINGER.THOMAS MIDDLETON.--WILLIAM ROWLEY.

Old Law.-There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one's eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in the circumstances of this sweet tragi-comedy, which are unlike anything in the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge. Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of them finer geniuses than their associate.

JAMES SHIRLEY

Claims a place amongst the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent talent in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common. A new language, and quite a new turn of tragic and comic interest, came in with the Restoration.

The Lady of Pleasure.--The dialogue between Sir Thomas Bornewell and his lady Aretina is in the very spirit of the recriminating scenes between Lord and Lady Townley in the Provoked Husband. It is difficult to believe but it must have been Vanburgh's prototype.

On the Garrick plays.

(Hone's Table Book, 1827-28.)

[The following papers were designed by Charles Lamb as a second series o1, or sequel to, the Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets published by the Messrs. Longman and Company. They were contributed to Hone's Table Book in twenty-three instalments as Part I., Part II., &c., under the title of Notes to the Garrick Plays, and may be found ranging over that curious repertory of miscellaneous literature beginning on column 3 and ending on column 1,827. Among the additional MSS. at the British Museum (Nos. 9,955 and 9,956) are preserved extracts from the Garrick Collection of Old Plays in Charles Lamb's handwriting, How thoroughly he enjoyed the luxury of examining that collection in the old reading-room at Montagu House he has made plain to us all in his explanatory letter to the editor of the Table Book with which these critical Notes are introduced.]

LETTER TO THE EDITOR.

[William Hone.]

DEAR SIR,-It is not unknown to you, that about nineteen years since I published Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, who lived about the time of Shakspere." For the scarcer Plays I had recourse to the Collection bequeathed to the British Museum by Mr. Garrick. But my time was but short, and my subsequent leisure has discovered in it a treasure rich and exhaustless beyond what I then imagined. In it is to be found almost every production in the shape of a Play that has appeared in print, from the time of the old Mysteries and Moralities to the days of Crowne and D'Urfey. Imagine the luxury to one like me, who, above every other form of Poetry, have ever preferred the Dramatic, of sitting in the princely apartments, for such they are, of poor condemned Montagu House, which I predict will not speedily be followed by a handsomer, and culling at will the flower of some thousand Dramas. It is like having the range of a Nobleman's Library, with the Librarian to your friend. Nothing can exceed the courteousness and attentions of the gentleman who has the chief direction of the Reading-rooms here; and you have scarce to ask for a volume, before it is laid before you. If the occasional extracts which I have been tempted to bring away, may find an appropriate place in your Table Book, some of them are weekly at your service. By those who remember the "Specimens," these must be considered as mere after gleanings, supplementary to that work, only comprising a longer period. You must be content with sometimes a scene, sometimes a song; a speech or passage, or a poetical image, as they happen to strike me. I read without order of time; I am a poor hand at dates; and for any biography of the dramatists, I must refer to writers who are more skilful in such matters. My business is with their poetry only.

January 27, 1827.

ROBERT DAVENPORT.

Your well-wisher,

C. LAMB.

King John and Matilda: a Tragedy. Acted in 1651.—[John not being

able to bring Matilda, the chaste daughter of the old Baron Fitzwater, to compliance with his wishes, causes her to be poisoned in a nunnery.

And thou, Fitzwater, reflect upon thy name,*

And turn the Son of Tears.]

This scene has much passion and poetry in it, if I mistake not. The last words of Fitzwater are an instance of noble temperament; but to understand him, the character throughout of this mad, merry, feeling, insensible seeming lord, should be read. That the venomous John could have even counterfeited repentance so well, is out of nature; but, supposing the possibility, nothing is truer than the way in which it is managed. These old play-wrights invested their bad characters with notions of good, which could by no possibility have co-existed with their actions. Without a soul of goodness in himself, how could Shakspere's Richard the Third have lit upon those sweet phrases and inducements by which he attempts to win over the dowager queen to let him wed her daughter. It is not nature's nature, but imagination's substituted nature, which does almost as well in a fiction.

JOHN DAY.

The Parliament of Bees: a Masque. Printed 1607.-Whether this singular production, in which the characters are all Bees, was ever acted, I have no information to determine. It is at least as capable of representation as we can conceive the "Birds" of Aristophanes to have been.

of these pretty little winged creatures are with continued liveliness portrayed throughout the whole of this curious old drama, in words which bees would talk with, could they talk; the very air seems replete with humming and buzzing melodies, while we read them. Surely bees were never so be-rhymed before.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

The Guardian: a Comedy, 1650.-This was the first draught of that which he published afterwards under the title of the Cutter of Coleman Street; and contains the character of a foolish poet, omitted in the latter. The Cutter has always appeared to me the link between the comedy of Fletcher and of Congreve. In the elegant passion of the love scenes it approaches the former; and Puny (the character substituted for the omitted poet) is the prototype of the half-witted wits, the Brisks and Dapperwits, of the latter.

ROBERT YARRINGTON,

Who wrote in the reign of Elizabeth.

Two Tragedies in One.—It is curious that this old play comprises the distinct action of two atrocities; the one a vulgar murder, committed in our own Thames Street, with the names and incidents truly and historically set down;

[* Fitzwater: son of water. A striking instance of the compatibility of the serious pun with the expression of the profoundest sorrows. Grief, as well as joy, finds ease in thus playing with a word. Old John of Gaunt in Shakspere thus descants on his name: "Gaunt and gaunt indeed;" to a long string of conceits, which no one has ever yet felt as ridiculous. The poet Wither thus, in a mournful review of the declining estate of his family, says with deepest nature :—

The very name of Wither shows decay.]