Mug. We must have you dubb'd o' th' order; there's no remedy: you that have, unmarried, done such honourable service in the commonwealth, must needs receive the honour due to 't in marriage.

Rhod. That he may do, and never marry.

D'Ol. As how, wits? I'faith as how?

Rhod. For if he can prove his father was free o' th' order, and that he was his father's son, then, by the laudable custom of the city, he may be a cuckold by his father's copy, and never serve for 't.

D'Ol. Ever good, i'faith!

Mug. Nay, how can he plead that, when 'tis as well known his father died a bachelor?

D'Ol. Bitter, in verity, bitter! But good still in its kind.

Rhod.

Go to, we must have you follow the lantern of your forefathers. Mug. His forefathers? 'Sbody, had he more fathers than one? D'Ol. Why, this is right: here's wit canvast out on 's coat, into 's jacket: the string sounds ever well, that rubs not too much o' th' frets: I must love you, wits, I must take pleasure in you. Farewell, good wits: you know my lodging, make an errand thither now and then, and save your ordinary; do, wits, do.

Mug. We shall be troublesome t' ye.

D'Ol. O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be troubled with wit: I love a good wit as I love myself: if you need a brace or two of crowns at any time, address but your sonnet, it shall be as sufficient as your bond at all times: I carry half a score birds in a cage, shall ever remain at your call. Farewell, wits; farewell, good wits.

[Exit.

Rhod. Farewell, the true map of a gull: by heaven he shall to th' court! 'tis the perfect model of an impudent upstart; the compound of a poet and a lawyer; he shall sure to th' court.

Mug. Nay, for God's sake, let's have no fools at court. Rhod. He shall to 't, that 's certain. The duke had a purpose to dispatch some one or other to the French king, to entreat him to send for the body of his niece, which the melancholy Earl of St. Anne, her husband, hath kept so long unburied, as meaning one grave should entomb himself and her together. Mug. A very worthy subject for an embassage, as D'Olive is for an ambassador agent; and 'tis as suitable to his brain, as his parcel-gilt beaver to his fool's head.

Rhod. Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed. Oh, 'tis a most accomplished ass; the mongrel of a gull, and a villain: the very essence of his soul is pure villany; the substance of his brain, foolery; one that believes nothing from the stars upward; a pagan in belief, an epicure beyond belief; prodigious in lust; prodigal in wasteful expense; in necessary, most penurious His wit is to admire and imitate; his grace is to censure and detract; he shall to th' court, i faith he shall thither: I will shape such employment for him, as that he himself shall have no less contentment, in making mirth to the whole court, than the Duke and the whole court shall have pleasure in enjoying his presence. A knave, if he be rich, is fit to make an officer, as a fool, if he be a knave, is fit to make an intelligencer. [Exeunt."

His May-day' is not so good. All Fools,' the Widow's Tears,' and Eastward Hoe,' are comedies of great merit, particularly the last. The first is borrowed a good deal from Terence, and the character of Valerio, an accomplished rake, who passes with his father for the person of the greatest economy and rusticity of manners, is an excellent idea, executed with spirit. 'Eastward Hoe' was written in conjunction with Ben Jonson and Marston; and for his share in it, on account of some allusions to the Scotch, just after the accession of James I., our author, with his friends, had nearly lost his ears. Such were the notions of poetical justice in those days! The behaviour of Ben Jonson's mother on this occasion is remarkable. "On his release from prison, he gave an entertainment to his friends, among whom were Camden and Selden. In the midst of the entertainment, his mother, more an antique Roman than a Briton, drank to him, and showed him a paper of poison, which she intended to have given him in his liquor, having first taken a portion of it herself, if the sentence for his punishment had been executed." This play contains the first idea of Hogarth's 'Idle and Industrious Apprentices

It remains for me to say something of Webster and Decker. For these two writers I do not know how to show my regard and admiration sufficiently. Noble-minded Webster, gentle-hearted Decker, how may I hope to express ye unblam'd," and repay to your neglected manes some part of the debt of gratitude I owe for proud and soothing recollections? I pass by the Appius and Virginia' of the former, which is however a good, sensible, solid tragedy, cast in a frame-work of the most approved models, with little to blame or praise in it, except the affecting speech of Appius to Virginia just before he kills her; as well as Decker's 'Wonder of a Kingdom,' his 'Jacomo Gentili,' that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron, and Old Fortunatus and his Wishing-cap,' which last has the idle garrulity of age, with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon its cheek and in its heart. These go into the common catalogue, and are lost in the crowd; but Webster's 'Vittoria Corombona' I cannot so soon part with; and old honest Decker's Signior Orlando Friscobaldo I shall never forget! I became only of late acquainted with

this last-mentioned worthy character; but the bargain between us is, I trust, for life. We sometimes regret that we had not sooner met with characters like these, that seem to raise, revive, and give a new zest to our being. Vain the complaint! We should never have known their value, if we had not known them always: they are old, very old acquaintance, or we should not recognize them at first sight. We only find in books what is already written within "the red-leaved tables of our hearts.” The pregnant materials are there; "the pangs, the internal pangs are ready; and poor humanity's afflicted will struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." But the reading of fine poetry may indeed open the bleeding wounds, or pour balm and consolation into them, or sometimes even close them up for ever! Let any one who has never known cruel disappointment, nor comfortable hopes, read the first scene between Orlando and Hippolito, in Decker's play of the 'Honest Whore,' and he will see nothing in it. But I think few persons will be entirely proof against such passages as some of the following:

"Enter ORLANDO FRISCOBALDO.

Omnes. Signior Friscobaldo.

Hippolito. Friscobaldo, oh! pray call him, and leave me; we two have business.

Carolo. Ho, Signior! Signior Friscobaldo, the Lord Hippolito.

[Exeunt.

Orlando. My noble Lord! the Lord Hippolito! The Duke's son! his brave daughter's brave husband! How does your honour'd Lordship? Does your nobility remember so poor a gentleman as Signior Orlando Friscobaldo? old mad Orlando ?

Hip. Oh, sir, our friends, they ought to be unto us as our jewels; as dearly valued, being locked up and unseen, as when we wear them in our hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age hath not command of your blood; for all Time's sickle hath gone over you, you are Orlando still.

Orl. Why, my Lord, are not the fields own and cut down, and stript bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again? Though my head be like a leek, white, may not my heart be like the blade, green?

Hip. Scarce can I read the stories on your brow,

Which age hath writ there: you look youthful still.

Orl. I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall never have a wrinkle in it so long as I can cry Hem! with a clear voice.

Hip. You are the happier man, sir.

Orl. May not old Friscobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, ha? I have a

little, have all things, have nothing. I have no wife, I have no child, have no chick, and why should I not be in my jocundare?

Hip. Is your wife then departed?

Orl. She's an old dweller in those high countries, yet not from me: here, she's here; a good couple are seldom parted.

Hip. You had a daughter, too, sir, had you not?

Orl. Oh, my Lord! this old tree had one branch, and but one branch, growing out of it: it was young, it was fair, it was straight: I pruned it daily, drest it carefully, kept it from the wind, helped it to the sun; yet for all my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore crabs: I hew'd it down. What's become of it I neither know nor care.

Hip. Then can I tell you what's become of it: that branch is withered. Orl. So 'twas long ago.

Hip. Her name, I think, was Bellafront; she's dead.

Orl. Ha! dead?

Hip. Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping. Even in my sight, was thrown into a grave.

Orl. Dead! my last and best peace go with her! I see death's a good trencherman; he can eat coarse homely meat as well as the daintiest-Is she dead?

Hip. She's turn'd to earth.

Orl. Would she were turned to heaven. Umh! Is she dead? I am glad the world has lost one of his idols: no whoremonger will at midnight beat at the doors in her grave sleep all my shame and her own; and all my sorrows, and all her sins.

Hip. I'm glad you are wax, not marble; you are made

Of man's best temper; there are now good hopes

That all these heaps of ice about your heart,

By which a father's love was frozen up,

Are thaw'd in those sweet show'rs fetch'd from your eye:

We are ne'er like angels till our passions die.

She is not dead, but lives under worse fate;

I think she's poor; and more to clip her wings

Her husband at this hour lies in the jail,

For killing of a man: to save his blood,

Join all your force with mine; mine shall be shown,

The getting of his life preserves your own.

Orl. In my daughter you will say! Does she live, then? I am sorry I wasted tears upon a harlot! but the best is, I have a handkerchief to drink them up, soap can wash them all out again. Is she poor?

Hip. Trust me, I think she is.

Orl. Then she's a right strumpet. I never knew one of their trade rich two years together; sieves can hold no water, nor harlots hoard up money; taverns, tailors, bawds, panders, fiddlers, swaggerers, fools, and knaves, do all wait upon a common harlot's trencher; she is the gallypot to which these drones fly: not for love to the pot, but for the sweet sucket in it, her money, her money.

Hip. I almost dare pawn my word her bosom gives warmth to no such snakes; when did you see her?

Orl. Not seventeen summers.
Hip. Is your hate so old?

Orl. Older; it has a white head, and shall never die till she be buried; her wrongs shall be my bedfellow.

Hip. Work yet his life, since in it lives her fame.

Orl. No, let him hang, and half her infamy departs out of the world; I hate him for her: he taught her first to taste poison; I hate her for herself, because she refused my physic.

Hip. Nay, but Friscobaldo.

Orl. I detest her, I defy both, she's not mine, she's

Hip. Hear her, but speak.

Orl. I love no mermaids, I'll not be caught with a quail-pipe.

Hip. You're now beyond all reason. Is't dotage to relieve your child, being poor?

Orl. 'Tis foolery; relieve her! Were her cold limbs stretcht out upon a bier, I would not sell this dirt under my nails to buy her an hour's breath, nor give this hair unless it were to choke her.

Hip. Fare you well, for I'll trouble you no more.

[Exit.

Orl. And fare you well, sir, go thy ways; we have few lords of thy making, that love wenches for their honesty.-'Las, my girl, art thou poor? Poverty dwells next door to despair, there's but a wall between them: despair is one of hell's catchpoles, and lest that devil arrest her, I'll to her; yet she shali not know me: she shall drink of my wealth as beggars do of running water, freely; yet never know from what fountain's head it flows. Shall a silly bird pick her own breast to nourish her young ones: and can a father see his child starve? That were hard: the pelican does it, and shall not I ?"

The rest of the character is answerable to the beginning. The execution is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new and masterly. There is the least colour possible used; the pencil drags; the canvas is almost seen through: but then, what precision of outline, what truth and purity of tone, what firmness of hand, what marking of character! The words and answers all along are so true and pertinent, that we seem to see the gestures, and to hear the tone with which they are accompanied. So wher Orlando, disguised, says to his daughter, "You'll forgive me," and she replies, "I am not marble, I forgive you;" or again, when she introduces him to her husband, saying simply, "It is my father," there needs no stage-direction to supply the relenting tones of voice or cordial frankness of manner with which these words are spoken. It is as if there were some fine art to chisel