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177. Rough and smooth poets, the scab- | wished to compose, and in which the impe

rous and silky style.

180. Of his own style.

183. Lord Bacon. 184-5.

184. Prose writers, Bishop Gardiner called admirable as such--"now things daily fall, wits grown downward, and eloquence grows backward; so that he (Bacon) may be named and stand as the mark and akun of our language."

"If there was any fault in his language," says Dryden," it was that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially."-Essay on Dramatic Poesy, p. lxxv. See there for Dryden's opinion of

Ben Jonson.

See Censura Literaria, vol. 1, p. 94. Monthly Review, vol. 15, p. 198, Month. Cat. for Aug. 1756, Whalley's Ben Jonson, "To say that we look upon this as the best edition of Ben Jonson's works, will be say ing enough for an article of this kind."

rial commands frequently interrupted him. He had plainly no sinecure as Poeta Cesareo!

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LORD STERLINE.

DRUMMOND says, "This much I will say, and perchance not without reason dare say, if the heavens prolong his days to end his day, he hath done more in one day than Tasso did all his life, and Bartas in his two weeks, though both the one and other be most praiseworthy."- Extracts from the Hawthorden MSS. p. 28.

Ibid. p. 31. Drummond's notes for an elegy upon him. Here it appears that the supplement to the Arcadia is by him.

"Factions breaking loose Their bounds once pass'd, which do all Like waters, for a time by art restrain'd,

bounds disdain."

Alexandræan Tragedy, p. 128.

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DRYDEN.

CONGREVE (Dedication to his Plays) says, pleasure, that if he had any talent for Eng“I have frequently heard him own with lish prose, it was owing to his having often read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson."

An atrocious assertion in some Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton, extracted from the Memoir of T. Hollis, that Dryden "was reprehensible even to infamy for his own vices, and the licentious encouragement he gave in his writings to those of others."— Monthly Review, vol. 62, p. 483.

Essay of Dramatic Poesy.

Crites says in this Essay, "it concerned the peace and quiet of all honest people, that ill poets should be as well silenced as seditious preachers. xxxi.

P. xxxii-i. Contemporaries whom he cen

sures.

xlix. Cleveland. He seems greatly to have disliked him.

liii. "If the question had been stated who had writ best, the French or English, forty years ago, I should have adjudged the honour to our own nation; but since that time we have been so long together bad Englishmen, that we had no leisure to be good poets."

This is said with relation to the drama. lix. "A poet in the description of a beautiful garden, or a meadow, will please our imagination more than the place itself can please our sight."

lxvi. "As we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they (the French), who are of an airy and gay temper, come hither to make themselves more serious. And this I conceive to be one reason why comedies are more pleasing to us and tragedies to them."

lxxi. Attempt to show that rhymed plays are an English fashion.

lxxvi-vii. His definition of humour. lxxx. Effect of the Rebellion on poetry, and of the Restoration.

lxxxix. Well said and shown that Shakespeare, &c. if born now would not equal themselves.

xci. Blank verse is acknowledged to be too low for a poem, nay more, for a paper of verses; but if too low for an ordinary sonnet, how much more for tragedy!

26. "The woots? his customers." 32. "A raw miching boy."

43. "As invincibly ignorant as a townsop judging a new play."

44. "He stands in ambush, like a Jesuit behind a Quaker, to see how his design will take."

48. "With a wannion3 to you."

This, I suspect, is a slang term, i. e. his will you's, his known customers; to wit, zu wissen. J. W. W.

2 TODD in Johnson says that micher is used in the Western Counties for a truant boy. The words of Hamlet naturally occur, "Marry this is miching malicho; it means mischief." Act iii. sc. 2.-J. W. W.

3 To this day this word used by Latimer, Fox, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, &c. &c. remains unexplained. See RICHARDSON and NARES in

60. "How my heart quops1 now, as they say."

83. Epilogue. "To make regalios out of common meat."

Dedication to the Rival Ladies.
His own stile.

Desires an academy to fix the language. Blank verse, leading to foolish inversions.

Waller, Denham, Davenant praised for rhyme.

Prologue on Prologues.

115. "Cowards have courage when they see not death,

And feeble hares that sculk in forms all day, Yet fight their feeble quarrels by the moonlight."

This is a false application: those quarrels are not feeble to them.

151. "I'm too unlucky to converse with

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wholly derived to them from the countenance and approbation they have received at court."

See what he says of beauty here! and his vile adulation!

276. Enter Cortes alone, in a night gown. "All things are hush'd, as Nature's self lay dead,

The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head,

See too his Defence of his Essay on Dra- The little birds in dreams their songs rematic Poesy, prefixed to this play.

peat,

sweat;

249. "As if our old world modestly with- And sleeping flowers beneath the night dew drew, And here in private had brought forth a new!"

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You might perhaps my actions justly blame:
Now I am sent, and am not to dispute
My Prince's orders, but to execute."

266. "Cydippe. What is this honour which
does love controul?

"Cortes. A raging fit of virtue in the soul,

A painful burden which great minds must bear,

Obtain'd with danger, and possest with fear."

269. Montezuma to his gods:

"Ill fate for me unjustly you provide; Great souls are sparks of your own heavenly pride,

Even Lust and Envy sleep; yet Love denies Rest to my soul, and slumber to my eyes.” All is in keeping here, the costume, the description, and the character!

287." As callow birds,

Whose mothers killed in seeking of the prey, Cry in their nest, and think her long away, And at each leaf that stirs, each breath of wind,

Gape for the food which they must never

find."

302. Montezuma.

"whensoever I die, The Sun, my father, bears my soul on high; He lets me down a beam, and mounted there,

He draws it back, and pulls me through the air."

The absurdity of making the Peruvians and Mexicans at war scarcely seems absurd in this most preposterous plan; so utterly has all truth and character, feeling, time, and place been disregarded.

Vol. 2.

SECRET Love, or the Maiden Queen. “Owned in so particular a manner by his Majesty, that he has graced it with the title of his play; and thereby rescued it from the severity (not to say malice) of its enemies.”

In this play there are eight female characters and only three male.

P. 19. "I am more and more in love with you! A full nether lip, an out-mouth, that

That lust of power we from your godhead's makes mine water at it. The bottom of

have,

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your checks a little blub, and two dimples when you smile."

Dryden had no reverence for his great

predecessors; if he had, he would not have taken the name of Florimel for one of the women in this play.

Epilogue by a Person of Quality. "The men of business must in policy Cherish a little harmless poetry, All wit would else grow up to knavery. Wit is a bird of music, or of prey; Mounting, she strikes at all things in her way; But if this birdlime once but touch her wings, On the next bush she sits her down and sings."

"CRITICAL Reflections on the Old English Dramatic Writers, intended as a Preface to the Works of Massinger, addressed to Garrick. 6d. Davies."

"WE doubt, however, that Massinger, together with many others of the once famed English poets, have already proceeded too far on the road to oblivion ever to be brought back, whatever may be the endeavours of their few remaining friends for that purpose. Spenser, Jonson, Beau

Sir Martin Mar-all. 115-6. Phrases of re-mont, Fletcher, Massinger, Randolph, and cent introduction, vertuoso, you have reason, in fine.

Tempest. 209.

"Two winds rise; ten more enter and dance. At the end of the dance, three winds sink; the rest drive Alon. Anto. Gonz. off." 251-3. The weapon salve used. 260. Tritons-sound a calm!

MASSINGER.

LLOYD in a note in the St. James's Magazine, vol. 2, p. 38, says of Massinger, (then recently published by T. Davies), that "he is a poet who wants only to be read that he may be admired!" Contrast this with Goldsmith's contemptuous review of the same edition!

"THAT many of our readers are ignorant who, or what, this Massinger was, is a circumstance which we may safely take for granted; and which, too, supersedes the necessity of our saying much more concerning either the poet or his works. Had he possessed more merit he had been better known.

Suffice it therefore, if we only add, that he was contemporary with, or rather somewhat later than Shakespear; that he wrote many plays, long since forgotten; and that this edition of his works is even unworthy the little repute in which Massinger may be still held by some readers." (!!)-Monthly Review, vol. xxi. p. 176.-Coxeter's edition.

others who figured in the days of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. are now almost as little known or read as Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, and that pithie Poete Maister Thomas Skeltone. Notwithstanding which it must be acknowledged, there are great beauties and excellencies in the ingenious cotemporaries above mentioned; particularly in Spenser, whom we are truly sorry to put into the list. His genius was perhaps equal to any that ever appeared in this or any other country; but that kind of allegory and stanza in which he unhappily wrote, are now totally out of fashion, and probably will never be revived." (!!!)— Ibid. vol. xxiv., p. 200.-See Ibid. vol. lx., p. 480.

"SKILFUL Massinger,

Thou known, all the Castilians must confess
Vego de Carpio thy foil, and bless
His language can translate thee, and the fine
Italian wits yield to this work of thine."
SIR ASTON COCKAINE.

"COMMENDATORY Verses to the Emperor of the East."-MASSINGER, 1, clxi.

Vol. 1.

P. 7. GIFFORD shews a want of ear here. The word may just as well be pronounced persevere as persever.

15. Mason an imitator often of Massin

ger. Gifford says, "he may be right, but in this instance Mason remembered Tacitus, not Massinger."

66. "This tottered world." Is this the | do not enable them to outgo that of its same word as tattered, or may it not mean shaken, crazed?

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To his "much honoured friend, Anthony Sutleges, of Oakham, in Kent, Esq." "Your noble father, Sir Warham S. (whose remarkable virtues must be ever remembered) being, while he lived, a master, for his pleasure, in poetry, feared not to hold converse with divers whose necessitous fortunes made it their profession, among which, by the clemency of his judgement, I was not in the last place admitted.

66 I present you with this old tragedy, without prologue or epilogue; it being composed in a time (and that, too, peradventure, as knowing as this,) when such by

ornaments were not advanced above the fabric of the whole work."

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"To thy perfections, but that they are," &c. "Duke of Milan." Dedication to the Lady Katharine Stanhope.

66 there is no other means left me (my misfortunes having cast me on this course) to publish to the world, (if it hold the least good opinion of me), that I am your Ladyship's creature."

259. "In the management of preparatory hints, Massinger surpasses all his contemporaries. He seems to have minutely arranged all the component parts [of his plots] before a line of the dialogue was written."

266. Gifford well observes, "that those vigorous powers of genius which carry men far beyond the literary state of their age,

manners."

276.

"If thou wouldst work Upon my weak credulity, tell me rather That the earth moves, the sun and stars stand still."

274. Aviary for aerie, which Gifford | charges upon poor M. Mason was, I dare say, a printer's blunder.

Vol. 2.

P.7. INDICATION of ill-will towards Buckingham. 119.

8. A captious note of Gifford, as if he did not know what is meant by distant manners.

6. Specimens of the old editions.

11. "Oshame! that we that are a populous nation,

Engaged to liberal nature for all blessings An island can bring forth; we that have

limbs

And able bodies; shipping arms and trea

sure,

The sinews of the war, now we are call'd To stand upon our guard, cannot produce

One fit to be our General."

Was Buckingham meant here also?

86, n. Remember is colloquially used in this sense.

123. Dedication. Renegado to Lord Berkeley, the great patron it here appears, of dramatic literature. See the passage.

429. Dedication to the Great Duke of Florence. See.

Vol. 3.

DEDICATION to Maid of Honour.

To Sir Fr. Foljambe, and Sir Th. Bland, "I had not to this time subsisted, but that I was supported by your frequent courtesies and favours."

11. Not clear that M. Mason is not right. 130. "You are a king, and that Concludes you wise; your will, a powerful

reason

Which we, that are foolish subjects, must not argue.

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