DRYDEN AND CHARLES II.

"Odds fish!" exclaimed Charles, "steal me another such a comedy, and I'll go and see it as often as I do "The Spanish Friar." "All for Love" is Dryden's most carefully written play, and the author repeatedly declared that the scene in Act 1, between Antony and Ventidius, was superior to anything he had ever composed. Dryden was not a poet for mere love of song. "As I am no successor to Homer in his wit, so neither do I desire to be in his poverty." So he writes to Lord Mulgrave in the dedication to "Aurungzebe," ""Tis for your Lordship," he adds, "to stir up that remembrance in his Majesty, which his many avocations of business have caused him, I fear, to lay aside." Charles said it was the best of his tragedies, but added no pudding to the praise. All Dryden's criticism of other poets is affected by that which he wrote on Sackville's "Gorboduc." It is truly a scandal," says Pope, "that men" (Oldham was one) "should write with contempt of a piece which they never once saw, as those two poets did, who were ignorant even of the sex as well as of the sense of Gorboduc.'"

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Had Shadwell not been a Whig, we should have heard less of him in parallels or contrasts with Dryden. Of his dramatic pieces, amounting to about a dozen and a half, there is scarcely one that does not please more in perusal than any by the poet of the greater name,-always excepting Dryden's "Love for Love." Shadwell's "Squire of Alsatia," Bury Fair," "Epsom Wells," and some others, are good character comedies. For attacking Dryden's "Duke of Guise," Dryden pilloried the assailant, as "Mac Flecnoe;" but when he says that "Shadwell never deviates into sense," he has as little foundation for his assertion as he has for his contempt of Wilmot, when he writes in the Essay upon Satire, "Rochester I despise for want of wit." Rochester may have praised Shadwell because he hated Dryden; but Dryden's aspersions on the other two spring more from his passion than his judgment. Whether Shadwell died of opium or apoplexy is not well ascertained. At his decease, in 1692, he was in his fifty-third year. Brady preached his funeral sermon, and Tom Brown intimated, in an epigram, that for so fat a carcase, the Devil would need a cart. But Shadwell is no more to be judged by the testimony of his enemies, than Flecnoe, the ex-jesuit is, by the ridicule of Dryden, who stooped to steal, from the admirable sketch of the English stage, prefixed to Flecnoe's "Love's Kingdom," the idea which Dryden more fully carried out in his "Essay on Dramatic Poesy."

We come now to Sir John Vanbrugh, who was a successful play-wright. Of Vanbrugh's ten or eleven plays, that which has longest kept the stage is the "Relapse," still acted, in its altered form, by Sheridan, as the "Trip to Scarborough." This piece was produced at the Theatre de l'Odeon, in Paris, in the spring of 1862, as a posthumous comedy of Voltaire's! It was called the "Comte de Boursoufle," and had a “run.” The story ran with it that Voltaire had composed it in his younger days for private representation! Critics examined the plot, enjoyed its wit, and asked “if Voltaire did not write this piece, who could have written it ?" The reply was given at once from this country; but the French critics gave no sign of awarding honour where honour was due, and probably this translation of the "Relapse" may figure in future French editions as an undoubted work by Voltaire!

On looking back upon the names of these authors by profession, the brightest still is Otway's, of whom his critical biographers have said that, in tragedy, few English poets ever equalled him. His comedies are certainly detestable; but of his tragedies, "Venice Preserved" alone is ever now played. The “ Orphan' is read; "Alcibiades," Don Carlos," "Titus and Berenice," are forgotten. Successful as he is in touching the passions, and eminently so in dealing with ardent love, Otway is inferior to Lee, in the latter respect. Leigh Hunt called him the poet of sensual pathos, for, affecting as he sometimes is, he knows no way to “the heart but through the senses." Hunt adds,—“that when he leaves the sublime for the pathetic, no writer' can produce more powerful effects than his!" Dryden saw no fault in him. Of Lee, Mrs. Siddons entertained the greatest admiration. She read his " Theodosius," with such feeling, as to wring sighs from the heart and tears from the eyes. She saw in Lee's poetry, says Campbell, "a much more frequent capability for stage effect than a mere reader would be apt to infer from the superabundance of the poet's extravagance." Addison accuses Lee and Shakspeare of a spurious sublimity; and, he adds, that “in these authors, the affectation of greatness often hurts the perspicuity of style!"

I think, that of the whole brotherhood, Southerne, after he left, the army and had sown his wild oats, was the most prudent, and not the least successful. He was a perfect gentleman; he did not lounge away his days or nights in coffee houses or taverns, but after labour, cultivated friendship in home circles, where virtue and moderate mirth sat at the hearth. In his bag-wig, his black velvet dress, his sword, powder, brilliant buckles, and self

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possession, Southerne charmed his company, wherever he visited, even at fourscore. He kept the even tenor of his way, owing no man anything; never allowing his nights to be the marrer of his. mornings; and at six and eighty carried a bright eye, a steady hand, a clear head and a warm heart. As Southerne originally wrote "Oronooko," that tragedy could not now be represented. The mixture of comic scenes with tragic is not its worst fault. His comedies are of no worth whatever, except as they illustrate the manners and habits of his times. They more resemble those of Ravenscroft than of Congreve or Wycherley. Dryden did not fairly describe them when he wrote, comparing him with Terence,

Like him thy thoughts are true, thy language clean,
E'en lewdness is made moral in thy scene!

But we have tarried long enough with the chief gentlemen dramatists. Let us now attend to the ladies.

CHAPTER X.

THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES.

DURING this half century, there were seven ladies who were writers for the stage. These were the virtuous Mrs. Philips, the audacious Aphra Behn, the notorious Mrs. Manley, the gentle Mrs. Cockburn, the aristocratic Mrs. Boothby (of whom nothing is known, but that she wrote one play, called " Marcatia," in 1669), fat Mrs. Pix, and that thorough Whig, Mrs. Centlivre. The last four belong also to the beginning of the eighteenth century. The "virtuous Mrs. Philips," of Evelyn, the "matchless Orinda," of Cowley, took her "Pompey" and "Horace" from Corneille. In those pieces, represented at court, the poetess endeavoured to direct the popular taste, and to correct it also. By her death her good intentions were frustrated, and her place was occupied by the most shameless woman who ever took pen in hand, to corrupt the public.

Aphra Behn was a Kentish woman, whose early years were passed at Surinam, where her father, Johnson, resided, as lieutenant-general. After a wild training in that fervid school, she repaired to London, married a Dutchman, named Behn, (who straightway disappeared,) penetrated, by means of her beauty, to the court of Charles II., and obtained, by means of her wit, an irregular employment at Antwerp,-that of a spy. The letters of her Dutch lovers belong to romance; but there is warrant for the easy freedom of this woman's life. On her return to England, her political reports and prophecies were no more credited than the monitions of old, by Cassandra; so she abandoned England to its fate, and herself "to pleasure and the muses." Her opportunities for good were great, but she abused them all. She might have been an honour to womanhood;-she was its disgrace. She might have gained glory by her labours;-but she chose to reap

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infamy. Her pleasures were not those which become an honest woman; and as for her "Muses," she sat not with them on the slopes of Helicon, but dragged them down to her level, where the Nine and their unclean votary wallowed together in the mire. There is no one that equals this woman in downright nastiness, save Ravenscroft and Wycherley; but the latter of these had more originality of invention and grace of expression. To these writers, and to those of their detestable school, she set a revolting example. Dryden preceded her, by a little, on the stage; but Mrs. Behn's trolloping muse appeared there before the other two writers I have mentioned, and was making unseemly exhibition there after the coming of Congreve. With Dryden she vied in indecency, and was not overcome. To all other male writers of her day she served as a provocation and an apology. Intellectually, she was qualified to lead them through pure and bright ways; but she was a mere harlot, who danced through uncleanness, and dared them to follow. Remonstrance was useless with this wanton hussey. Her private life has found a champion in a female friend, whose precious balsam breaks the head it would anoint. According to this friend, Mrs. Behn had numerous good qualities; but "she was a woman of sense, and consequently loved pleasure ;" and she was 66 more gay and free than the modesty of the precise

will allow."

Of Aphra Behn's eighteen plays, few are original, but she adapted skilfully; and she was never dull. Her lying epitaph in the cloisters at Westminster, runs thus:

Here lies a proof that wit can never be

Defence enough against mortality.

Great poetess, oh thy stupendous lays

The world admires, and the Muses praise!

Mrs. Manley, the poor daughter of an old royalist had some reason to depict human nature as bad, in man and in woman. The young orphan trusted herself to the guardianship of a seductive kinsman, who married her when he had a wife still living. This first wrong destroyed her, but not her villainous cousin ; and unfortunately, the woman upon whom the world looked cool, incurred the capricious compassion of the Duchess of Cleveland. When the caprice was over, and Mrs. Manley had only her own resources to look upon, she scorned the aid offered her by General Tidcombe, and made her first venture for the stage in the tragedy of "Royal Mischief," produced in 1696. It is all desperate love,