From out so fair an inn: look! look! they seem to stir, And breathe defiance to black obloquy."

The break of day.

*** “See, the dapple grey coursers of the morn Beat up the light with their bright silver hoops, And chase it through the sky."

Blow east, blow west, he steers his course alike.
I never saw a fool lean: the chub-fac'd fop
Shines sleek with full cramm'd fat of happiness,
Whilst studious contemplation sucks the juice
From wizards' cheeks: who making curious search
For Nature's secrets, the first innating cause
Laughs them to scorn, as man doth busy apes
When they will zany men.

Had heaven been kind,

Creating me an honest senseless dolt,

A good poor fool, I should want sense to feel
The stings of anguish shoot through every vein;

I should not know what 'twere to lose a father:

I should be dead of sense, to view defame
Blur my bright love; I could not thus run mad,
As one confounded in a maze of mischief,

Stagger'd, stark fell'd with bruising stroke of chance."

The fancy is described to be

"A function,

Even of the bright immortal part of man.

It is the common pass, the sacred door

Unto the privy chamber of the soul,

That barr'd, nought passeth past the baser court

Of outward sense; by it, th' inamorate

Most lively thinks he sees the absent beauties

Of his lov'd mistress.

By it we shape a new creation,

Of things as yet unborn, by it we feed

Our ravenous memory, our intention feast."

The genius of Marston was more suited to tragedy, with which he commenced his dramatic career, than to comedy, to which he afterwards applied himself. There is a declamatory boldness of tone-a rugged strait forward vehemence of manner-a clearness and precision of thought, which, combined with some (though not a very considerable) degree of imagination, enabled him to depict the more masculine passions with no little success. In the portraiture of love, that passion which manifests itself in such an infinite variety of forms, his mind led him to select the coarsest kind, which he described with a corresponding coarseness of expression. In the delineation of its lighter graces, its more delicate indications, and its more retired sufferings, he is much less successful. The scene, for instance, between Antonio and Mellida, in the prison of the latter, appears to us to be a failure, although, at the same time, it contains two or three touches of true feeling. The character of Sophonisba is somewhat attractive-there is an innocent fearlessness and boldness in the avowal of her feelings towards Massinissa, though a want of delicacy in the expression; and a devoted grandeur of soul in the sacrifice of her life to preserve the honour of her husband; which must find favour with the reader. The execution of the portrait is, however, vastly inferior to the conception of it. The tender and confiding passion of Belinda for Freewill, in the Dutch Courtezan, in spite of appearances being against him, is a beautiful moral picture amidst grossness and deformity. The expedient of Dulcimel, in the Parasitaster, not only to deceive the doting old coxcomb her father, but to make him the unwitting messenger of her wishes, and the contriver of their gratification, is pleasantly managed. The same sort of contrivance is resorted to in Moliere's L'Ecole des Femmes.

The greater part of Marston's male characters, in his comedies, are of the description to which we have before alluded. There is a want of invention in his situations, and of variety in his humour. His mind was too stubborn and unbending to accommodate itself to the various follies of his time, and to assume their shape and bearing. With strong notions of moral rectitude, he had not the slightest toleration for deviations from them, and no other resource for correcting or reforming them than to apply his satirical lash, and then he was happy-for in this his power laid, and he felt that it did.

ART. VIII.-The Sacred Theory of the Earth: containing an Account of the Original of the Earth, and of all the General Changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the Consummation of all Things. The two first Books concerning the Deluge, and concerning Paradise. The two Last Books concerning the Burning of the World, and concerning the New Heavens and New Earth. Folio, 1691.

WHERE WAST THOU WHEN I LAID THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EARTH? DECLARE, IF THOU HAST UNDERSTANDING, WHO LAID THE MEASURES THEREOF, IF THOU KNOWEST; OR WHO HATH STRETCHED THE LINE UPON IT? WHEREUPON ARE THE FOUNDATIONS THEREOF FASTENED, OR WHO LAID THE CORNER-STONE THEREOF? WHEN THE MORNING STARS SANG TOGETHER, AND ALL THE SONS OF GOD SHOUTED FOR JOY.

It is something like these magnificent questions which this book undertakes to answer and explain; and though the investigations of succeeding philosophers may have proved the system, in which these answers are conveyed, incorrect in particulars and untenable as a whole, yet the undying and embalming charms which imagination, liveliness of fancy, and eloquence of diction can bestow, will ever preserve it for the entertainment and instruction of posterity. They, who are indifferent to science, will find, in this Theory of the Earth, a philosophical romance which delights by its admirable contrivances, its vigorous language, its noble descriptions of the stupendous objects of nature, its new views of ages and of scenes, which, though they never rolled over this habitable globe, easily might, and which if they did not, one cannot help wishing they had. All that is grand and awful in mundane commotions, in a deluge, or in a conflagration, of a world, is here described, by a pencil that puts the picture before the eyes. Those blissful ages, when storms and winds, and changes of seasons, were unknown in a globe of perpetual spring, when centuries were as years, and the human frame rejoiced in the purity and pellucidness of the atmosphere, which fed instead of corroding it, are here not only presented to the imagination, but almost proved to the understanding. And with a pen of equal power, are sketched the close of the world, the moment when the foundations of the earth sink, its joints and ligatures burst asunder, the mountains melt, and the sea is evaporated.

Our readers will probably remember, that this book called. forth the admiration of Addison, and that he dedicated one of the Spectators to it, and wrote a Latin ode in its praise. The Theory itself was originally published in Latin, and the

present work is a translation, or rather a recomposition, written with great spirit, though in the opinion of some, the author felt more at home, and expressed his ideas with greater freedom and richness, in the dead language, than in his vernacular tongue. Such as it is, however, we are confident our readers will receive pleasure from the account of it, which we shall proceed to give, after having said a few words concerning the writer himself.

Dr. Burnet was the Master of the Charter House, and must be distinguished from the celebrated Bishop of that name, whose contemporary he was. He was educated at Cambridge, and became a fellow of Christ College in that University. In standing, he was a good deal junior to Dr. Cudworth, the master of that college, but soon became signally attached to him, and formed one of a very high, but singular band of philosophers, who illuminated Cambridge at that time, with More and Cudworth at their head. After travelling with, successively, the sons of two of the most considerable noblemen of the time, and being universally admired for the depth of his learning, and the ingenuity and polish of his conversation, he became settled as the Master of the Charter-House. In this retreat, he gave birth to some publications, which met with a bigoted interpretation from some quarters, and raised a most unjust clamour of infidelity against as pious and sincere a believer, as ever adorned the ranks of Christianity. This cry is said, however, to have lost him the See of Canterbury.-The act of his life, however, for which we, as Englishmen and freemen, owe him most gratitude, is the resistance, which, in his station of Master of the Charter-House, he made to James II., who was attempting to force an individual on that establishment, without taking the oaths of abjuration. In spite of considerable opposition, he effectually succeeded in excluding him, under circumstances which would have appalled or corrupted almost any other man of his rank and station. He thus gave the first example of resistance to the wild and arbitrary schemes of that infatuated monarch, and prepared the way for the happy deliverance from his tyrannical attempts which soon after took place. Dr. Burnet had the more merit in this adherence to the constitution, for he had been distinguished with considerable marks of favour by Charles II., and might have been supposed in his gratitude to have lost sight of the cause of freedom. But Dr. Burnet knew precisely where loyalty ended and servility began, and thus set an example to all men, who spend their time in the retreats of learning and science, not to forget the duties of the man and the citizen in the pursuits of the scholar. But to return to the Theory of the Earth, which is his chief and most remarkable work, and highly deserving of our attention, though the manner in which it has been handled by the scientific reader, who only looked for truth

and philosophy, and found what modern discoveries enabled him to refute, treated the theory with some mixture of contempt, has of late thrown it into unmerited neglect.

It would be impossible, in an article of this compass, to touch upon all the subjects which this book embraces, or even to trace the author through the general arguments which he has used in defence of his hypothesis; nor is it indeed necessary; for while we confess the ingenuity and plausibility of his reasoning, we are very far indeed from being believers in its truth, and will not spend any time and space in refuting exploded errors. We shall, however, give some account of the theory, which is not only curious in itself, but will enable the reader to relish the beauties of the extracts in a more complete and satisfactory manner. We do not in this case, as in many others, aim at superseding the necessity of perusing the original work; but, on the contrary, are most desirous that it should again become, as it was once, an object of general attraction to all those who love lively and ingenious reasoning. It is at present only to be found in an unwieldy form; but were it published in a cheaper and more commodious volume, we cannot but feel confident that its piety, its eloquence, and its imagination would place it as a classical book by the side of Paley's Natural Theology.

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In this theory, Burnet begins by laying it down, that Chaos was a dark fluid mass, composed of a mixture of every substance in the earth, without form or order. This contained the materials and ingredients of all bodies, and was in fact the elements of Air, Water, and Earth mingled together, without any order of higher or lower, heavier or lighter. When gravity began to act, the first change that would happen would be, that the heaviest parts would sink towards the centre, and the rest would float above. These heavier parts would by degrees harden and consolidate, and thus make the central nut of the Earth. The rest of the mass would also be divided by the action of gravity, into two orders of bodies, the one consisting of all kinds of liquids, the other volatile, like air. Thus the liquid mass would form a broad ring, encircling the central nut of solid matter, and over that would be another more expansive ring of air. The liquid ring would form for itself, by the separation of the watery and the oily parts, a cream which would swim on its surface. And in the vast tracts of air, an immense number of the more light and active particles of matter would be floating about, but would at length sink and form a sediment. This sediment falling upon the oily and creamy surface of the watery ring, would soon incorporate with it, harden, and form a solid crust. For these particles, at first scattered over regions of air, which of course filled the space that the Chaos had occupied, and would consequently be of great extent when they fell