To conjure, for I am, look to't, For a strange sight; puss should be sung Thus, puss, thou see'st what might betide thee; So I've but scratch'd these notes of mine. JASPER MAYNE. [Born, 1604 Died, 1673.] THIS writer has a cast of broad humour that is amusing, though prone to extravagance. The idea in The City Match of Captain Quartfield and his boon companions exposing simple Timothy dead drunk, and dressed up as a sea-monster for a show, is not indeed within the boundaries of either taste or credibility; but amends is made for it in the next scene, of old Warehouse and Seathrift witnessing in disguise the joy of their heirs at their supposed deaths. Among the many interviews of this nature by which comedy has sought to produce merriment and surprise, this is not one of the worst managed. Plotwell's cool impudence is well supported, when he gives money to the waterman (who tells that he had escaped by swimming at the time the old citizens were drowned,) There, friend, there is A fare for you: I'm glad you 'scaped; I had Dr. Mayne was a clergyman in Oxfordshire. He lost his livings at the death of Charles I. and became chaplain to the Earl of Devonshire, who made him acquainted with Hobbes; but the philosopher and poet are said to have been on no very agreeable terms. At the Restoration he was reinstated in his livings, made a canon of Christ-church, archdeacon of Chichester, and chaplain in ordinary to the king. Besides the comedy of the City Match, he published a tragicomedy called The Amorous War; several sermons; dialogues from Lucian; and a pamphlet on the Civil Wars. Sea. We heard it too In Paul's now as we came. Plot. There, friend, there is A fare for you; I'm glad you 'scaped; I had Not known the news so soon else. [Gives him money. New. 'Slight, sir, here be Two fishmongers to buy you, beat the price; Tim. How's this! my hands Transmuted into claws? my feet made flounders! Plot. Sir, it is conscience; I do believe you might Ashamed to make me such a monster? Pray Sue me in chancery. Cyph. Sir, you show the virtues of an heir. And some twelve hundred pound a year in earth, Quart. I shall be glad To give thanks for you, sir, in pottle draughts, Plot. Then my poet No longer shall write catches, or thin sonnets, His god of wine t'inspire him. He shall no more Can turn beer with his voice, and roar it sour: Plot. Gentlemen, And now i' faith what think you of the fish? New. 'Tis a man. [poem Help to undress me. Plot. We have rare news for you. Tim. No letter from the lady, I hope! And my grave uncle, sir, are cast away. Plot. They by this have made a meal And worship sea-coals, for a ship of them Plot. This fellow here Brings the auspicious news: and these two friends Cyph. 'Tis too true, sir. Tim. Well, We are all mortal; but in what wet case Sea. No? Tim. No, but to think, And that a shrewd mischance. Ha' gone to th' counting-house, and set at liberty Plot. You'd not do Like your penurious father, who was wont New. Indeed they say he was a monument of Tim. Yes, he was there As constant as Duke Humphrey. I can show More pavement out with walking than would make | Bright. I've heard He'd make his jack go empty, to cozen neighbours. In great extremity of tooth-ache. This is True, Mr. Timothy, is't not! Tim. Yes: then linen To us was stranger than to Capuchins. Sea. I'll not endure it ; Let's show ourselves. Ware. Stay, hear all first. New. Thy uncle was such another. He still last left th' Exchange; and would commend Broke in estate, and then broke from the Counter, And trades like him blown up, take thee from dust, My own fair way of traffic; nay, decree I swoon at sight of meat; I rise a glutton And men bequeath in wills with stools, and brasspots; One who shall first be household-stuff, then my heir. Sea. I follow you. [Ex. WARE. CYPHER. And as for you, Tim, mermaid, triton, haddock, To leave a fish on land. 'Las! sir, one of your Go let the captain make you drunk, and let (Ex. SRA. Plot. Now Am I fit only to be caught, and put A MAN there was who had lived a merry life But a strange ghost appear'd and forced him stay, The spirit, well approving what he said, [* There is, perhaps, no work in English which illus trates more fully and amusingly the manners, occupations, and opinions of the time when it was written than Brathwaite's Strappado; but it is a strange, undigested and ill-arranged collection of poems, of various kinds and of different degrees of merit, some of them composed considerably before the rest, but few without claims to notice. The principal part consists of satires and epigrams, although the author purposely confounds the distinction between the two: I call't an Epigram which is a Satire. He never scruples to use the plainest terms, and though he seldom inserts names, he spares neither rank nor condition.-COLLIER, Bridge. Cat. p. 32.] JOHN MILTON. [Born, 1008. Died, 1674.) If the memory of Milton has been outraged by Dr. Johnson's hostility, the writings of Blackburne, Hayley, and, above all, of Symmons, may be deemed sufficient to have satisfied the poet's injured shade. The apologies for Milton have indeed been rather full to superfluity than defective. Dr. Johnson's triumphant regret at the supposed whipping of our great poet at the university, is not more amusing than the alarm of his favourable biographers at the idea of admitting it to be true. From all that has been written on the subject, it is perfectly clear that Milton committed no offence at college which could deserve an ignominious punishment. Admitting Aubrey's authority for the anecdote, and his authority is not very high, it points out the punishment not as a public infliction, but as the personal act of his tutor, who resented or imagined some unkindnesses. The youthful history of Milton, in despite of this anecdote, presents him in an exalted and amiable light. His father, a man of no ordinary attainments, and so accomplished a musician* as to rank honourably among the composers of his age, intended him for the ministry of the church, and furnished him with a private tutor, who probably seconded his views; but the piety that was early instilled into the poet's mind grew up, with the size of his intellect, into views of religious independence that would not have suited any definite ecclesiastical pale; and if Milton had become a preacher, he must have founded a church of his own. Whilst a boy, the intensity of his studies laid the seeds of his future blindness; and at that period the Latin verses addressed to his father attest not only the prematurity of his attainments, but the endearing strength of his affections. The few years which he spent at his father's house, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, after leaving the university, and before setting out on his travels, were perhaps the happiest in his life. In the beautiful scenery of that spot, disinclined to any profession by his universal capacity, and thirst for literature, he devoted himself to study, and wrote the most exquisite of his minor poems. Such a mind, in the opening prime of its genius, enjoying rural leisure and romantic walks, and luxuriating in the production of Comus and the * Milton was early instructed in music. As a poet he speaks like one habituated to inspiration under its influence, and seems to have attached considerable importance to the science in his system of education. Arcades, presents an inspiring idea of human beatitude. When turned of thirty he went to Italy, the most accomplished Englishman that ever visited her classical shores. The attentions that were there shown to him are well known. We find him at the same time, though a stranger and a heretic, boldly expressing his opinions within the verge of the Vatican. There, also, if poetry ever deigns to receive assistance from the younger art, his imagination may have derived at least congenial impressions from the frescoes of Michael Angelo, and the pictures of Raphael; and those impressions he may have possibly recalled in the formation of his great poem, when his eyes were shut upon the world, and when he looked inwardly for "godlike shapes and forms." In the eventful year after his return from the Continent, the fate of Episcopacy, which was yet undecided, seemed to depend chiefly on the influence which the respective parties could exercise upon the public mind, through the medium of the press, which was now set at liberty by the ordinance of the Long Parliament. Milton's strength led him foremost on his own side of the controversy; he defended the five ministers, whose book was entitled Smectymnuust, against the learning and eloquence of Bishop Hall and Archbishop Usher, and became, in literary warfare, the bulwark of his party. It is performing this and similar services, which Dr. Johnson calls Milton's vapouring away his patriotism in keeping a private boarding-house; and such are the slender performances at which that critic proposes that we should indulge in some degree of merriment. Assuredly, if Milton wielded the pen instead of the sword, in public dispute, his enemies had no reason to regard the former weapon as either idle or impotent in his hand. An invitation to laugh on such an occasion, may remind us of what Sternhold and Hopkins denominate "awful mirth;" for of all topics which an enemy to Milton's principles could select, his impotence in maintaining them is the most unpropitious to merriment. The most difficult passage of his life for his biographers to comment upon with entire satisfaction, is his continued acceptance of Cromwell's wages after Cromwell had become a tyrant. It would be uncandid to deny, that his fear of the return of the Stuarts, the symptoms of his having From the initial letters of their names. S |