with certainty.

There is sufficient, however, to show that he lived, if not familiarly, yet friendlily, with the dramatic writers of his day, and neither provoked nor felt personal enmities. He speaks, indeed, of opposition: but this is merely the language of the stage--opposition is experienced by every dramatic writer worth criticism, and has nothing in common with ordinary hostility. In truth, with the exception of an allusion to the " voluminous" and rancorous Prynne, nothing can be more general than his complaints. Yet Ford looked not much to the brighter side of life: he could, like Jaques, "suck melancholy out of a song as a weazle sucks eggs;" but he was unable, like this wonderful creation of our great poet, to extract mirth from it. When he touched a lighter string, the tones, though pleasingly modulated, were still sedate; and it must, I think, be admitted that his poetry is rather that of a placid and serene than of a happy mind: he was, in truth, an amiable ascetic amidst a busy world.

Something of this may be attributed to his parents. To take a moody youth from his classical studies, or from his first terms at College, and plunge him at once into the moping drudgery of the law, is not, perhaps, the most approved recipe for enlivening him, especially if he happens also to have fallen in love; and thus our poet's retired and gloomy turn may in some measure be ac

counted for; but, exclusively of this, it seems

clear that

"Nature, in his soul

Put something of the raven."

In the Time's Poets, the first and almost the only place in which he is noticed by his contemporaries, it is said

"Deep in a dump John Forde was alone got,

With folded arms and melancholy hat."

These " signs of the judicious," as Shirley calls them, were undoubtedly assumed by many who, like Master Stephen, aspired to look fashionable as well as wise; but Ford had apparently no affectation of this kind, and they must therefore be taken

* In a doggerel list, by Heywood, of the familiar appellations by which the writers for the stage were known among their acquaintance, he says of our poet :

"And he's but now Jacke Ford, who once was John."

One word, with respect to this disputed name. I inquired of my old friend, Mr. Palk, if that which he copied for Mr. Malone was without an e final? the answer was in the affirmative. Little, undoubtedly, can be concluded from this, when the lax mode of spelling in that age is considered; but the anagram which is seen on several of the title-pages of Ford's plays-FIDE HONOR-appears to me more like the impress on the armorial bearing of the family than a proud claim set forward by the poet. I am not skilled enough in the mysteries of this profound science to know whether its hierophants admitted of an extra symbol: but, in common parlance, a letter more or less weighs little with our old writers, few of whom could spell their own names correctly, and still fewer followed any standard.

as genuine indications of his humour. His love of seclusion is here noticed he was alone.

No village anecdotes are told of him, as of his countryman Herrick, nor do any memorials of his private life remain. The troubles which followed, and the confusion which frequently took place in the parish registers in consequence of the intrusion of ministers little interested in local topics, have flung a veil of obscurity over much of the domestic history of that turbulent and disastrous period. In these troubles the retreat of the Fords is known to have largely shared; and it is more than probable that the family suffered under the Usurpation. The neighbourhood was distinguished for its loyalty; and many of the fugitives who escaped from the field after the overthrow of Lord Wentworth at Bovey-Tracy, by Cromwell, unfortunately for the village, took refuge in Ilsington Church, whither they were pursued and again driven to flight by the victorious army.

There is no appearance of Ford's being married at the period of his retirement from the Temple, as none of his Dedications or Addresses make the slightest allusion to any circumstance of a domestic nature; it is probable therefore that he accommodated himself with a wife at Ilsington. If he withdrew, as I have supposed, about 1639, he was then in his fifty-third year,-no very auspicious period, it must be allowed, for venturing on a

matrimonial connection, and yet no uncommon one for those who, like himself, have devoted their time to the arduous and absorbing profession of the law. Be this as it may, there is—or rather was an indistinct tradition among his neighbours that he married and had children. The cruelty of the flinty Lycia could now affect him but little, as she was probably herself a grandmother; but a person of our poet's character and fortune had not far to seek for a worthy partner, and with such a one it is pleasing to hope that he spent the residue of his blameless and honourable life.

None of his descendants, however, are specified, but Sir Henry Ford, (Secretary for Ireland in the reign of Charles II.) who is traditionally reported to be the poet's grandson, or rather son, and in whom, be he who he will, (for I suspect that he was of a more remote branch,) the property of the family eventually centered. Sir Henry left no family, and with him, who died in 1684, terminated the line of the Fords; and the property was dispersed. Much of it fell by purchase to Egerton Falconer, Esq., whose descendants held it till within a few years of the present period, when it passed altogether into the hands of strangers.

All that now remain of this once opulent and respectable name are a little charity-school founded at Ashburton by a Mr. John Ford, who endowed it with a few pounds a year, for a master" to teach reading and writing;" and a small parcel of

land of the annual value of twenty pounds bequeathed to the parish of Ilsington by a Mrs. Jane Ford, for " instructing the children of the poor, and for the purchase of bibles." What's property, dear Swift?

It is said by Winstanley that Ford's plays were profitable to the managers. It might be so; though Winstanley, as Langbaine justly observes, is not the best authority for this or any other fact relative to the stage. They seem, however, not to have found many readers, since few, if any, of them ever reached a second edition. True it is, that the civil commotions supplied other employment for men's minds about the close of Ford's dramatic career; but he could at no period of his life have been a popular writer. Not the slightest mention of his name occurs in Wright's excellent Dialogue on the old stage; nor does it once appear in the long lists of Downes, the prompter, when, upon the Restoration, the repositories of the play-houses were ransacked for dramas to gratify the rising passion for theatrical performances. Once, and but once, he is mentioned by Pepys, (an unwearied frequenter of the stage,) who witnessed the representation of the " Lady's Trial." I have not Pepys before me at this instant, and may therefore have mistaken the piece: whatever it was, however, he passes it over with perfect indifference. From this period (1664) nothing farther is heard