embrace a review of

many

of the most rare pro

ductions for and against theatrical performances from the earliest times to the Restoration: it of course includes not a few interesting particulars illustrative of the history of the stage, and some tracts that have hitherto escaped notice.

In executing this task, the author has been chiefly indebted to his own industry aided by good fortune, which, as a reward for his early and zealous attachment to the pursuit, seemed to throw in his way valuable relics and sources of information that others, who might have been more competent to apply them to advantage, had not enjoyed. He was unknown to the literary world; and though, had he stated any important object, the libraries of many collectors would no doubt have been freely thrown open to him, yet where he had no claim, he was unwilling to ask a favour. With one gentleman, indeed, equally distinguished for his enterprise in purchasing and his liberality in lending his rarities, he was personally acquainted; and two of the most valuable tracts reviewed in the course of the work, were derived

from his beautiful assemblage of curiosities. The name of this gentleman is only not inserted, because he would think a public acknowledgment one of the worst returns for an act of private friendship.

It may be right to forewarn the reader, unaccustomed to the examination of old books, that he must be prepared to meet with, and allow for certain uncouthnesses in the orthography of most of the extracts in these volumes. For the phraseology of our ancestors no excuse is made, because it is generally better than our own, and the many existing glossaries of obsolete words have rendered such an appendage here unnecessary.

THE

POETICAL DECAMERON.

INDUCTION.

THE manner in which these conversations originated was the following:

Bourne, Elliot, and Morton were very intimate friends; they had been "fellow collegers," and since the marriage of Bourne they had been in the habit of meeting frequently: within the last year or two, however, Elliot had been much abroad, and Morton chiefly with his relations in the neighbourhood of Dorchester; yet when in London, the latter had not failed often to participate in Bourne's pursuits, directed to obtain a knowledge of the lives and productions of the earlier writers of our country. Of course, regarding such men as Spenser, Shakespeare, and Jonson, every body knows a little, and any body may know a great deal; but Bourne thought that there must be something about their friends, acquaintances, and literary contemporaries,

worth learning, and he thought rightly. Morton could only enter into the subject at intervals, but such lights as he could procure from our bibliographical miscellanies and other ordinary sources, he did not omit to avail himself of in the country; giving them their chief use and application when in company with his friend, who only went before him in knowledge, not in ardour.

From these inquiries the absence of Elliot from England had excluded him, but before he went abroad he was tolerably well versed in the more popular writers of the period to which we have referred: of course all gentlemen now-a-days would justly consider it a scandal not to have Shakespeare at their fingers' ends, but Elliot, though a man of the world, had read Spenser through, and of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and our re-published dramatists, he knew more than many. The difference, therefore, between him and Bourne was exactly this: he was acquainted with what every other person may acquire without difficulty,' and Bourne by his perseverance had gained a knowledge of not a few facts of importance and books of value, that had escaped the researches of some of the most indefatigable antiquaries. Yet it could not be said that the latter was more than very slightly infected with what has been termed the black-letter mania, for he always endeavoured to form an estimate of a literary curiosity, independent of the extrinsic circumstances

of its price and rarity: indeed, of the two, who had devoted time to these inquiries, Morton was much the most likely, from his sanguine disposition, to be afflicted with this harmless species of insanity.

Our modern poets found an admirer in Elliot, and undoubtedly since the era the writers of which Bourne had particularly studied, there never has been a time when the laurel has flourished in this kingdom with greater beauty or vigour. Of late years it has made many new and hardy shoots, and every day fresh burgeons are forcing themselves through the rind, giving fair promise of successful progress.

About a fortnight after the return of Elliot from Germany, and during one of Morton's longest visits to London, the three friends had appointed a place of rendezvous, for it was agreed that they should spend ten days or a fortnight together at Bourne's house at Mortlake: they took a boat at Westminsterbridge and embarked for their destination, on one of the serenest evenings of August. The sky was perfectly clear, and the majestic river, swollen to the edge of its banks by what is termed a spring tide, was almost its exact counterpart: both were equally bright and transparent, and as the wherry, by the assistance of a light breath that seemed to evaporate from the water without ruffling its surface, delicately cut its way, the voyagers might almost have fancied themselves in mid air in that ship of heaven so lately and so delightfully described. As this was not, by