"Her supple breast thrills out

Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song :

Then starts she suddenly into a throng

Of short, thick sobs,

That roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs 'stilled out of her breast,
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest
Of her delicious soul, that there doth lie,
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot, when in ripened airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears

Its honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath.”

JOHN.

May we neither of us ever hear a nightingale !

– No, I recall so rash a prayer; but, after this, we should surely think his music harsh. Even the extravagant metaphor with which your extract ended is forced upon us as natural and easy by the foregoing enthusiasm.

PHILIP.

Now that the nightingale has enticed us out of doors, you will like to hear Ford's praise of Spring. Raybright asks Spring

"What dowry can you bring me?

"Spring. Dowry?

Is 't come to this! am I held poor and base?

A girdle make whose buckles, stretched their length,
Shall reach from the Arctic to the Antarctic pole;

What ground soe'er thou canst with that inclose
I'll give thee freely: Not a lark that calls

The morning up shall build on any turf

But she shall be thy tenant, call thee lord,

And for his rent pay thee in change of songs."
The Sun's Darling.

And again;

"O my dear love, the spring, I'm cheated of thee!
Thou hadst a body, the four elements

Dwelt never in a fairer; a mind princely;
Thy language, like thy singers, musical.
How cool wast thou in anger! In thy diet

How temperate and yet sumptuous! thou 'dst not waste
The weight of a sad violet in excess,

Yet still thy board had dishes numberless;

Dumb beasts, even, loved thee; once a young lark
Sat on thy hand and, gazing on thine eyes,
Mounted and sang, thinking them moving skies."

Ibid.

Now I will gather you a handful of flowers from the rest of the plays and close the volume. Here is a pretty illustration of the doctrine of sympathies;

"The constant loadstone and the steel are found

In several mines; yet there is such a league

Between these minerals, as if one vein

Of earth had nourished both. The gentle myrtle

Is not engraft upon the olive's stock;

Yet nature hath between them locked a secret

Of sympathy that, being planted near,

They will, both in their branches and their roots,
Embrace each other; twines of ivy round

The well-grown oak; the vine doth court the elm;
Yet these are different plants."

The Lover's Melancholy.

The end of a wasted life is thus touchingly set

forth :

"Minutes are numbered by the fall of sands,

As by an hour-glass; the span of time

Doth waste us to our graves, and we look on it:
An age of pleasures revelled out, comes home

At last and ends in sorrow; but the life,
Weary of riot, numbers every sand,

Wailing in sighs until the last drop down

So to conclude calamity in rest.”

Ibid.

JOHN.

The rhythm of these lines is finely managed; there is a sadness and weariness in the flow of the verse which sinks gradually into the quiet of the exquisitely-modulated last line.

PHILIP.

I will read a few more fragments without remark.

"Busy opinion is an idle fool,

That, as a school-rod keeps a child in awe,
Frights the inexperienced temper of the mind."

"Let upstarts exercise unmanly roughness;

Ibid.

Clear spirits to the humble will be humble.”

Lady's Trial.

"The sweetest freedom is an honest heart."

Ibid.

You will relish this itemed account of a poor

man's revenues:

"What lands soe'er the world's surveyor, the sun,

Can measure in a day, I dare call mine;
All kingdoms I have right to; I am free
Of every country; in the four elements
I have as deep share as an emperor;

All beasts which the earth bears are to serve me,
All birds to sing to me; and can you catch me
With a tempting golden apple?"

This thought is noble :

"He cannot fear

The Sun's Darling.

Who builds on noble grounds; sickness or pain
Is the deserver's exercise."

The Broken Heart.

And, with this good speech on his lips, John Ford makes his exit from the stage of our little private theatre.

JOHN.

I have spent a pleasant evening; and, if I do not yet admire your old favorites as much as you do, it is because I do not know them so well. It has been my happy experience in life to find some lovable quality in every human being I have known, and to find more with more knowledge; may it be so with the Old Dramatists!

THE END.