his Faëry Queen, and vindicates his poetic fiction on this

very ground of analogy:

"Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign,
That all this famous antique history

Of some the abundance of an idle brain
Will judged be, and painted forgery,
Rather than matter of just memory:

Since none that breatheth living air, doth know
Where is that happy land of faëry

Which I so much do vaunt, but nowhere show,
But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know.

But let that man with better sense avise,
That of the world least part to us is read:
And daily how through hardy enterprize
Many great regions are discovered,
Which to late age were never mentioned.
Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru?

Or who in venturous vessel measured
The Amazons' huge river, now found true?
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view?

Yet all these were when no man did them know,
Yea, have from wisest ages hidden been:
And later times things more unknown shall show.
Why then should witless man so much misween
That nothing is but that which he hath seen?
What if within the moon's fair shining sphere,
What if in every other star unseen,

Of other worlds he happily should hear,

He wonder would much more; yet such to some appear."

Fancy's air-drawn pictures after history's waking dream showed like clouds over mountains; and from the romance of real life to the idlest fiction, the transition seemed easy. Shakspeare, as well as others of his time, availed himself of the old chronicles, and of the traditions of fabulous inventions contained in them in such ample measure, and which had not yet been appropriated to the purposes of poetry or the drama. The stage was a new thing; and those who had to supply its demands

laid their hands upon whatever came within their reach: they were not particular as to the means, so that they gained the end. Lear is founded on an old ballad; Othello on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch tradition: one of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last in Hollinshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each are authenticated in the old Gothic history. There was also this connecting link between the poetry of this age and the supernatural traditions of a former one, that the belief in them was still extant, and in full force and visible operation among the vulgar (to say no more) in the time of our authors. The appalling and wild chimeras of superstition and ignorance, "this bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in,"* were inwoven with existing manners and opinions, and all their effects on the passions and terror or pity might be gathered from common and actual observation-might be discerned in the workings of the face, the expressions of the tongue, the writhings of a troubled conscience. "Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men may read strange matters."+ Midnight and secret murders, too, from the imperfect state of the police, were more common; and the ferocious and brutal manners that would stamp the brow of the hardened ruffian or hired assassin, more incorrigible and undisguised. The portraits of Tyrrel and Forrest were, no doubt, done from the life. We find that the ravages of the plague, the destructive rage of fire, the poisoned chalice, lean famine, the serpent's mortal sting, and the fury of wild beasts, were the common topics of their poetry, as they were common occurrences in more remote periods of history. They were the strong ingredients thrown into the cauldron of tragedy, to make it "thick and slab." Man's life was (as it appears to me

* Hamlet, iii. 4.

+ Macbeth, i. 5.

66

more full of traps and pitfalls; of hair-breadth accidents by flood and field; more waylaid by sudden and startling evils; it trod on the brink of hope and fear; stumbled upon fate unawares; while the imagination, close behind it, caught at and clung to the shape of danger, or snatched a wild and fearful joy" from its escape. The accidents of nature were less provided against; the excesses of the passions and of lawless power were less regulated, and produced more strange and desperate catastrophes. The tales of Boccaccio are founded on the great pestilence of Florence,* Fletcher the poet died of the plague,† and Marlowe was stabbed in a tavern quarrel. The strict authority of parents, the inequality of ranks, or the hereditary feuds between different families, made more unhappy loves or matches.

"The course of true love never did run smooth." §

Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our elder writers, was yet in considerable activity in the reign of Elizabeth. The age of chivalry was not then quite gone, nor the glory of Europe extinguished for ever." Jousts and tournaments were still common with the nobility in England and in foreign countries: Sir Philip Sidney was particularly distinguished for his proficiency in these exercises (and indeed fell a martyr to his ambition as a soldier), and the gentle Surrey was

*The black death of 1348.-ED.

†The plague of 1625. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Saviour's, Southwark, which afterwards received the mortal remains of Massinger.-ED.

According to Beard's Theater of God's Judgments, 1597; and indeed the same story, which is doubtless founded on fact, is to be found elsewhere. It occurs in the common-place book of Henry Oxenden, of Canterbury, 1647, related as it is to be found (copied from an early MS. memorandum) in Mr. Dyce's edition of Marlowe, 1850. But, in the Oxenden MS., the name of the narrator is given in full.-ED.

§ Midsummer Night's Dream, i. 1.

still more famous, on the same account, just before him. It is true, the general use of fire-arms gradually superseded the necessity of skill in the sword, or bravery in the person: and as a symptom of the rapid degeneracy in this respect, we find Sir John Suckling soon after boasting of himself as one—

"Who prized black eyes, and a lucky hit

At bowls, above all the trophies of wit."

It was comparatively an age of peace,

"Like strength reposing on his own right arm ;”

but the sound of civil combat might still be heard in the distance, the spear glittered to the eye of memory, or the clashing of armour struck on the imagination of the ardent and the young. They were borderers on the savage state, on the times of war and bigotry, though in the lap of arts, of luxury, and knowledge. They stood on the shore and saw the billows rolling after the storm: "they heard the tumult, and were still." The manners and out-of-door amusements were more tinctured with a spirit of adventure and romance. The war with wild beasts, &c., was more strenuously kept up in country sports. I do not think we could get from sedentary poets, who had never mingled in the vicissitudes, the dangers, or excitements of the chase, such descriptions of hunting and other athletic games, as are to be found in Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, or Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen. 7

With respect to the good cheer and hospitable living of those times, I cannot agree with an ingenious and agreeable writer of the present day, that it was general or frequent. The very stress laid upon certain holidays and festivals, shows that they did not keep up the same Saturnalian licence and open house all the year round. They reserved themselves for great occasions, and made

the best amends they could for a year of abstinence and toil by a week of merriment and convivial indulgence. Persons in middle life at this day, who can afford a good dinner every day, do not look forward to it as any particular subject of exultation: the poor peasant, who can only contrive to treat himself to a joint of meat on a Sunday, considers it as an event in the week. So, in the old Cambridge comedy of the Return from Parnassus, we find this indignant description of the progress of luxury in those days, put into the mouth of one of the speakers:

"Why is't not strange to see a ragged clerk,

Some stammell weaver, or some butcher's son,
That scrubb'd alate within a sleeveless gown,
When the commencement, like a morrice dance,
Hath put a bell or two about his legs,
Created him a sweet clean gentleman:
How then he 'gins to follow fashions.
He whose thin sire dwells in a smoky roof,
Must take tobacco, and must wear a lock.
His thirsty dad drinks in a wooden bowl,
But his sweet self is served in silver plate.
His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legs
For one good Christmas meal on New-year's Day,
But his maw must be capon-cramm'd each day." †

This does not look as if in those days "it snowed of meat and drink," as a matter of course, throughout the year! The distinctions of dress, the badges of different professions, the very signs of the shops, which we have set aside for written inscriptions over the doors, were, as Mr. Lamb observes, a sort of visible language to the imagination, and hints for thought. Like the costume

* Printed in 1606, 4to, but written during the reign of Elizabeth. It is a shrewd and lively dramatic satire on many of the poets and playwrights of the period, like the Great Assizes holden in Parnassus, 1645, and Suckling's Session of the Poets.-ED.

† [Act iii. sc. 2. Hawkins' Origin of the English Drama, 1773, iii. 248 9.]