however, between Davies and the commonly styled metaphysical poets, that he argues like a hard thinker, and they, for the most part, like madmen. If we conquer the drier parts of Davies's poem, and bestow a little attention on thoughts which were meant, not to gratify the indolence, but to challenge the activity of the mind, we shall find in the entire essay fresh beauties at every perusal for in the happier parts we come to logical truths so well illustrated by ingenious similes, that we know not whether to call the thoughts more poetically or philosophically just. The judg ment and fancy are reconciled, and the imagery of the poem seems to start more vividly from the surrounding shades of abstraction.

Such were some of the first and inferior luminaries of that brilliant era of our poetry, which, perhaps, in general terms, may be said to cover about the last quarter of the sixteenth, and the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and which, though commonly called the age of Elizabeth, comprehends many writers belonging to the reign of her successor. The romantic spirit, the generally unshackled

physical poetry would apply with much more justice to the quatrains of Sir John Davies, and those of Sir Fulke Greville, writers who, at a later period, found imitators in Sir Thomas Overbury and Sir William Davenant*. Davies's poem on the Immortality of the Soul, entitled "Nosce teipsum," will convey a much more favourable idea of metaphysical poetry than the wittiest effusions of Donne and his followers. Davies carried abstract reasoning into verse with an acuteness and felicity which have seldom been equalled. He reasons, undoubtedly, with too much labour, formality, and subtlety, to afford uniform poetical pleasure. The generality of his stanzas exhibit hard arguments interwoven with the pliant materials of fancy so closely, that we may compare them to a texture of cloth and metallic threads, which is cold and stiff, while it is splendidly curious. There is this difference,

[*This has been re-echoed by Mr. Hallam in his History. Johnson has been unjustly blamed for the name applied to Donne and his followers of metaphysical poets, but it

was given to this school before Johnson wrote, by Dryden and by Pope. However, as Mr. Southey has said, "If it were easy to find a better name, so much deference is due to Johnson, that his should be still adhered to."]

period, are not to be called in question. On the other hand, there are defects in the poetical character of the age, which, though they may disappear or be of little account amidst the excellencies of its greatest writers, are glaringly conspicuous in the works of their minor contemporaries. In prolonged narrative and description the writers of that age are peculiarly deficient in that charm, which is analogous to " keeping" in pictures. Their warm and cold colours are generally without the gradations which should make them harmonize. They fall precipitately from good to bad thoughts, from strength to imbecility. Certainly they are profuse in the detail of natural circumstances, and in the utterance of natural feelings. For this we love them, and we should love them still more if they knew where to stop in description and sentiment. But they give out the dregs of their mind without reserve, till their fairest conceptions are overwhelmed by a rabble of mean associations. At no period is the mass of vulgar mediocrity in poetry marked by more formal gallantry, by grosser adulation, or by coarser satire. Our amatory strains in the

time of Charles the Second may be more dissolute, but those of Elizabeth's age often abound in studious and prolix licentiousness. Nor are examples of this solemn and sedate impurity to be found only in the minor poets: our reverence for Shakspeare himself need not make it necessary to disguise that he willingly adopted that style in his youth, when he wrote his Venus and Adonis*.

The fashion of the present day is to solicit public esteem not only for the best and better, but for the humblest and meanest writers of the age of Elizabeth. It is a bad book which has not something good in it; and even some of the worst writers of that period have their twinkling beauties. In one point of view, the research among such obscure authors is undoubtedly useful. It tends to throw incidental lights on the great old poets, and on the manners, biography, and language of the country. So far all is well-but as a matter of taste, it is apt to produce illusion and disappointment. Men like to make the most of the slightest beauty which they can discover in an obsolete versifier; and they quote perhaps the solitary good thought which is to be found in such a writer, omitting any mention of the dreary passages which surround it. Of

[* Shakspeare's sonnets are addressed to a youth of both sexes, to some hermaphrodite or Stella of his own fancy, and Barnfeild is guilty of eulogising a youth in the language of

love in its most womanly signification. Had Shakspeare

published these now over-rated productions of his muse (of which no one throughout is positively excellent), this unnatural association had never existed, but several of his sugared sonnets among his private friends, when copyrights were not acknowledged or made the subject of law, falling into the hands of T. T. a bookseller, the said T. T., whose name was Thomas Thorpe, printed them with a hieroglyphical inscription, that is the puzzle of commentator, critic and reader. It deserves transcription:

course it becomes a lamentable reflection, that so valuable an old poet should have been forgotten. When the reader however repairs to him, he finds that there are only one or two grains of gold in all the sands of this imaginary Pactolus. But the display of neglected authors has not been even confined to glimmering beauties; it has been extended to the reprinting of large and heavy masses of dulness. Most wretched works have been praised in this enthusiasm for the obsolete; even the dullest works of the meanest contributors to the "Mirror for Magistrates+." It seems to be taken for granted, that the inspiration of the good old times descended to the very lowest dregs of its versifiers; whereas the bad writers of Elizabeth's age are only more stiff and artificial than those of the preceding, and more prolix than those of the succeeding period.

Yet there are men, who, to all appearance, Iwould wish to revive such authors-not for the mere use of the antiquary, to whom every volume may be useful, but as standards of manner, and objects of general admiration. Books, it is said, take up little room. In the library this may be the case; but it is not so in the minds and time of those who peruse them. Happily indeed, the task of pressing indifferent authors on the public attention is a fruitless one. They may be dug up from oblivion, but life cannot be put into their reNature putations." Can these bones live?" will have her course, and dull books will be forgotten, in spite of bibliographers.

or That by mere initials. Mr. W. H. was well enough known in his own day; what is enigmatical to us was no obscurity then. T. T. had not dared to address the Earl of Pembroke as Mr. W. H.

The same Mr. W. H. is said to have been "the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets;" but in what signification is the word used? An instance is given from Dekker, where its purport is to procure. Was Mr. W. H. the procurer-the person by whose means T. T. had been able to print them?-a character akin to the mysterious man who brought the letter of Pope to the piratical Curll; or is he the individual to whom they are addressed? But all is conjecture; one thing however is evident, that if T. T. meant that Mr. W. H. was addressed throughout by the poet, he had never read the Sonnets, for the last twentyeight are to a woman.]

[The Mirror for Magistrates was one of Haslewood's reprints a heavy man, with no kind or degree of good taste.]

THE pedantic character of James I. has been frequently represented as the cause of degeneracy in English taste and genius. It must be allowed that James was an indifferent author; and that neither the manners of his court nor the measures of his reign were calculated to excite romantic virtues in his subjects. But the opinion of his character having influenced the poetical spirit of the age unfavourably is not borne out by facts. He was friendly to the stage and to its best writers: he patronized Ben Jonson, and is said to have written a complimentary letter to Shakspeare with his own hand. We may smile at the idea of James's praise being bestowed as an honour upon Shakspeare; the importance of the compliment, however, is not to be estimated by our present opinion of the monarch, but by the excessive reverence with which royalty was at that time invested in men's opinions. James's reign was rich in poetical names, some of which have been already enumerated. We may be reminded, indeed, that those poets had been educated under Elizabeth, and that their genius bore the high impress of her heroic times; but the same observation will also oblige us to recollect that Elizabeth's age had its traits of depraved fashion (witness its Euphuism +), and that the first examples of the worst taste which ever infected our poetry were given in her days, and not in those of her successor. Donne (for instance), the patriarch of the metaphysical generation, was thirty years of age at the date of James's accession; a time at which his taste and style were sufficiently formed to acquit his *This anecdote is given by Oldys on the authority of the Duke of Buckingham, who [is said to have] had it from Sir William Davenant. [The cause assigned, an obscure allusion in Macbeth, is a very lame and unlikely one. Shakspeare's plays were in the greatest esteem with King James: of the fourteen plays acted at Court between the 1st of November 1604 and the 31st of October 1605, eight were Shakspeare's, the remaining six were divided among Ben Jonson, Heywood, and Chapman.]

An affected jargon of style, which was fashionable for some time at the court of Elizabeth, and so called from the work of Lyly entitled Euphues.

learned sovereign of all blame in having corrupted them. Indeed, if we were to make the memories of our kings accountable for the poetical faults of their respective reigns, we might reproach Charles I., among whose faults bad taste is certainly not to be reckoned, with the chief disgrace of our metaphysical poetry; since that school never attained its unnatural perfection so completely as in the luxuriant ingenuity of Cowley's fancy, and the knotted deformity of Cleveland's. For a short time after the suppression of the theatres, till the time of Milton, the metaphysical poets are forced upon our attention for want of better objects. But during James's reign there is no such scarcity of good writers as to oblige us to dwell on the school of elaborate conceit. Phineas Fletcher has been sometimes named as an instance of the vitiated taste which prevailed at this period. He, however, though musical and fanciful, is not to be admitted as a representative of the poetical character of those times, which included Jonson, Beaumont and John Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, and Shirley. Shakspeare was no more; but there were dramatic authors of great and diversified ability. The romantic school of the drama continued to be more popular than the classical, though in the latter Ben Jonson lived to see imitators of his own manner, whom he was not ashamed to adopt as his poetical heirs. Of these Cartwright and Randolph were the most eminent. The originality of Cartwright's plots is always acknowledged; and Jonson used to say of him, "My son Cartwright writes all like a man."

Massinger is distinguished for the harmony and dignity of his dramatic eloquence. Many of his plots, it is true, are liable to heavy exceptions. The fiends and angels of his Virgin Martyr are unmanageable tragic machinery; and the incestuous passion of his Ancient Admiral excites our horror. The poet of love is driven to a frightful expedient, when he gives it the terrors of a maniac passion breaking down

the most sacred pale of instinct and consanguinity. The ancient admiral is in love with his own daughter. Such a being, if we fancy him to exist, strikes us as no object of moral warning, but as a man under the influence of insanity. In a general view, nevertheless, Massinger has more art and judgment in the serious drama than any of the other successors of Shakspeare. His incidents are less entangled than those of Fletcher, and the scene of his action is more clearly thrown open for the free evolution of character. Fletcher strikes the imagination with more vivacity, but more irregularly, and amidst embarrassing positions of his own choosing. Massinger puts forth his strength more collectively. Fletcher has more action and character in his drama, and leaves a greater variety of impressions upon the mind. His fancy is more volatile and surprising, but then he often blends disappointment with our surprise, and parts with the consistency of his characters even to the occasionally apparent loss of their identity. This is not the case with Massinger. It is true that Massinger excels more in description and declamation than in the forcible utterance of the heart, and in giving character the warm colouring of passion. Still, not to speak of his one distinguished hero in comedy, he has delineated several tragic characters with strong and interesting traits. They are chiefly proud spirits. Poor himself, and struggling under the rich man's contumely, we may conceive it to have been the solace of his neglected existence to picture worth and magnanimity breaking through external disadvantages, and making their way to love and admiration. Hence his fine conceptions of Paris, the actor, exciting by the splendid endowments of his nature the jealousy of the tyrant of the world; and Don John and Pisander, habited as slaves, wooing and winning their princely mistresses. He delighted to show heroic virtue stripped of all adventitious circumstances, and tried, like a gem, by its shining through darkness. His Duke of Milan is particularly admirable for the blended interest which the poet excites by the opposite weaknesses and magnanimity of the same character. Sforza, Duke of Milan, newly married and uxoriously attached to the haughty Marcelia, a woman of exquisite at

* Sir Giles Overreach.

tractions, makes her an object of secret but deadly enmity at his court, by the extravagant homage which he requires to be paid to her, and the precedence which he enjoins even his own mother and sisters to yield her. As Chief of Milan, he is attached to the fortunes of Francis I. The sudden tidings of the approach of Charles V., in the campaign which terminated with the battle of Pavia, soon afterwards spread dismay through his court and capital. Sforza, though valiant and self-collected in all that regards the warrior or politician, is hurried away by his immoderate passion for Marcelia; and being obliged to leave her behind, but unable to bear the thoughts of her surviving him, obtains the promise of a confidant to destroy her, should his own death appear inevitable. He returns to his capital in safety. Marcelia, having discovered the secret order, receives him with coldness. His jealousy is inflamed; and her perception of that jealousy alienates the haughty object of his affection, when she is on the point of reconcilement. The fever of Sforza's diseased heart is powerfully described, passing from the extreme of dotage to revenge, and returning again from thence to the bitterest repentance and prostration, when he has struck at the life which he most loved, and has made, when it is too late, the discovery of her innocence. Massinger always enforces this moral in love;-he punishes distrust, and attaches our esteem to the unbounded confidence of the passion. But while Sforza thus exhibits a warning against morbidly-selfish sensibility, he is made to appear, without violating probability, in all other respects a firm, frank, and prepossessing character. When his misfortunes are rendered desperate by the battle of Pavia, and when he is brought into the presence of Charles V., the intrepidity with which he pleads his cause disarms the resentment of his conqueror; and the eloquence of the poet makes us expect that it should do so. Instead of palliating his zeal for the lost cause of Francis, he thus pleads

I come not, Emperor, to invade thy mercy
By fawning on thy fortune, nor bring with me
Excuses or denials; I profess,

And with a good man's confidence, even this instant
That I am in thy power, I was thine enemy,
Thy deadly and vow'd enemy; one that wish'd
Confusion to thy person and estates,

And with my utmost power, and deepest counsels,

Had they been truly follow'd, further'd it.
Nor will I now, although my neck were under
The hangman's axe, with one poor syllable
Confess but that I honour'd the French king
More than thyself and all men.

much sweetness and beauty interspersed with views of nature either falsely romantic, or vulgar beyond reality; there is so much to animate and amuse us, and yet so much that

he says―

He was indeed to me as my good angel,

To guard me from all danger. I dare speak, Nay must and will, his praise now in as high And loud a key as when he was thy equal. The benefits he sow'd in me met not Unthankful ground.

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

If then to be grateful
For benefits received, or not to leave

A friend in his necessities, be a crime
Amongst you Spaniards, Sforza brings his head
To pay the forfeit. Nor come I as a slave,
Pinion'd and fetter'd, in a squalid weed,
Falling before thy feet, kneeling and howling
For a forestall'd remission-that were poor,
And would but shame thy victory, for conquest
Over base foes is a captivity,

And not a triumph. I ne'er fear'd to die
More than I wish'd to live. When I had reach'd
My ends in being a Duke, I wore these robes,
This crown upon my head, and to my side
This sword was girt; and, witness truth, that now
'Tis in another's power, when I shall part
With life and them together, I'm the same-
My veins then did not swell with pride, nor now
Shrink they for fear.

If the vehement passions were not Massinger's happiest element, he expresses fixed principle with an air of authority. To make us feel the elevation of genuine pride was the master-key which he knew how to touch in human sympathy; and his skill in it must have been derived from deep experience in his own bosom.

The theatre of Beaumont and Fletcher contains all manner of good and evil. The respective shares of those dramatic partners, in the works collectively published with their names, have been stated in a different part of this volume. Fletcher's share in them is by far the largest; and he is chargeable with the greatest number of faults, although at the same time his genius was more airy, prolific, and fanciful. There are such extremes of grossness and magnificence in their drama, so

[* Although incalculably superior to his contemporaries, Shakspeare had successful imitators; and the art of Jonson was not unrivalled. Massinger appears to have studied the works of both, with the intention of uniting their excellences. He knew the strength of plot; and although his plays are altogether irregular, yet he well understood the advantage of a strong and defined interest; and in unravelling the intricacy of his intrigues, he often displays the management of a master.-Sir WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Prose Works, vol. vi. p. 342.]

help comparing the contrasted impressions which they make, to those which we receive from visiting some great and ancient city, picturesquely but irregularly built, glittering with spires and surrounded with gardens, but exhibiting in many quarters the lanes and hovels of wretchedness. They have scenes of wealthy and high life which remind us of courts and palaces frequented by elegant females and high-spirited gallants, whilst their noble old martial characters, with Caractacus in the midst of them, may inspire us with the same sort of regard which we pay to the rough-hewn magnificence of an ancient fort

ress.

Unhappily, the same simile, without being hunted down, will apply but too faithfully to the nuisances of their drama. Their language is often basely profligate. Shakspeare's and Jonson's indelicacies are but casual blots; whilst theirs are sometimes essential colours of their painting, and extend, in one or two instances, to entire and offensive scenes. This fault has deservedly injured their reputation; and, saving a very slight allowance for the fashion and taste of their age, admits of no sort of apology+. Their drama, nevertheless, is a very wide one, and "has ample room and

[ Ravenscroft, the filthiest writer for the stage in the reign of the second Charles, is not more obscene than Beaumont and Fletcher. Yet Earle, who was in the church and a bishop withal, praises their plays for their purity; and Lovelace likens the nakedness of their language to Cupid dressed in Diana's linen. The outspoken nature of their writings is in the very character of their age, for Charles I. would address the ladies of his court in a style that would meet with no toleration now. Propriety of speech and conduct one does not look for at the Restoration. All was license then :

Love was liberty, and nature law. Plays were beheld by ladies in masks, who blushed unseen at situations, language, and allusions of the most obscene description. Something of this continued to a later time. Ramsay dedicates his Tea Table Miscellany to the ladies and lassies of Britain, and boasts that his book is without a word or an allusion to redden the brow of offended beauty. Yet the book abounds in naked vulgarities and songs of studied obscenity. The novels of the once immaculate Richardson, that ladies talked and quoted into deserved celebrity, few ladies would now own to their perusal, and no clergymen be found to recommend, as of old, to their flock from the pulpit. While the letters of the