DO not know where to find in any play a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as this [of The Broken Heart]. This is indeed, according to Milton, to "describe high passions and high actions." The fortitude of the Spartan boy who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died without expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this dilaceration of the spirit and exenteration of the inmost mind, which Calantha with a holy violence against her nature keeps closely covered, till the last duties of a wife and a queen are fulfilled. Stories of martyrdom are but of chains and the stake; a little bodily suffering; these torments

On the purest spirits prey

As on entrails, joints, and limbs,

With answerable pains, but more intense.

What a noble thing is the soul in its strength and in its weaknesses! Who would be less weak than Calantha? Who can be so strong? The expression of this transcendent scene almost bears me in imagination to Calvary and the Cross; and I seem to perceive some analogy between the scenical sufferings which I am here contemplating, and the real agonies of that final completion to which I dare no more than hint a reference.

Ford was of the first order of poets. He sought for sublimity, not by parcels in metaphors or visible images, but directly where she has her full residence in the heart of man; in the actions and sufferings of the greatest minds. There is a grandeur of the soul above mountains, seas, and the elements. Even in the poor perverted reason of Giovanni and Annabella we discover traces of that fiery particle, which in the irregular starting from out of the road of beaten action, discovers something of a right line even in obliquity, and shows hints of an improvable greatness in the lowest descents and degradations of our nature. CHARLES LAMB.

JOHN FORD.

1586. John Ford was baptised at Ilsington, in Devonshire, on April 17th.

1602. He was admitted to the Middle Temple.

1606. He published Fame's Memorial, an elegiac poem on the death of the Earl of Devonshire, and dedicated it to the Countess. Also, a pamphlet called Honor Triumphant, "in honour of all faire ladies and in defence of these foure positions following—1, Knights in Ladies service have no free-will. 2, Beauty is the mainteiner of valour. 3, Faire Lady was never false. 4, Perfect lovers are onely wise." 1612. The Prince of Wales died.

1613. Ford's comedy, An ill Beginning has a good End, was acted at the Cockpit. This was one of the plays destroyed by Warburton's cook.

1615. Ford's Sir Thomas Overbury's Life and untimely Death (an event which had taken place two years previously), probably an elegy or a pamphlet, was entered in the Stationers' books.

1618. Sir Walter Raleigh executed.

1620. Ford published The Line of Life, a prose pamphlet.
1622.

The Witch of Edmonton, a tragedy by Rowley, Dekker,
Ford, &c., was probably acted about this time.

1624. The Sun's Darling, a masque by Ford and Dekker, was acted at the Cockpit.

1625. Fletcher died.

1628. The Lover's Melancholy was acted at the Blackfriars and Globe theatres.

1631. Dryden born.

1632. Prynne published his Histrio-Mastix.

1633. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Broken Heart, and Love's Sacrifice were all printed in this year.

1634. Perkin Warbeck printed.

1635. Ben Jonson died.

1637. Hampden refused to pay ship-money.

1638. Ford's comedy, The Fancies Chaste and Noble, was printed; and his tragi-comedy, The Lady's Trial, acted at the Cockpit.1

1639. Massinger died. It is probable that at about this period Ford left London to live at his native place, Ilsington.

1640. Election of the Long Parliament.

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1641. Actors lament their "sad and solitary conditions." Projectors are downe, the High Commission Court is downe, the Starre-Chambre is down, and (some think) Bishops will down, and why should we then that are farre inferior to any of these justly feare, least we should be downe too." (The Stage-Players-Complaint.)

1642. The Civil War began, the Register of the Master of the Revels was closed, and cn the 2nd of September was published the Ordinance of the Lords and Commons commanding "that while these sad causes and set-times of humiliation do continue, public stage plays shall cease and be forborne."

"Deep in a dump John Forde was alone got,
With folded arms and melancholy hat."

HAT vivid touch of portraiture is the one record that has come down to us concerning Ford. His shy and reserved temperament corresponds to his artistic position he stands alone. himself he has nothing to tell us beyond one early and perhaps not over-serious allusion, in

:

Of

1 Other plays of Ford's, of which now only the names are known, were two comedies, The London Merchant and The Royal Combat, a tragedy called Beauty in a Trance, The Bristowe Merchant and The Fairy Knight, both written in conjunction with Dekker, and A late Murther of the Sonne upon the Mother in conjunction with Webster. The three first-named plays were immolated by Warburton's cook.

1

the youthful Fame's Memoriai, to an unkind

mistress

"The goddess whom in heart I serve Though never mine, bright Lycia the cruel,

The cruel-subtle."

Little, also, is recorded of him; of that little nothing that is not to his honour; while the tone of his dedications is manly, independent, and, towards his personal friends, affectionate. That he was not afraid to take a losing side is shown by his Fame's Memorial, an elegy which, called forth as it evidently was by the strange story of the lady, Penelope, Countess of Devonshire, to whom it was dedicated, is the earliest witness to Ford's interest in the problems of romantic passion.

Born in the north-west of Devonshire, and issuing from an old-established nest of Fords, while on the mother's side he was the grandson of the Lord Chief Justice Popham, John Ford came up to London at an early age to be trained to the law, becoming eventually, it is probable, a trusted agent for several noblemen, and he refers to his business with that ostentation not uncommon in people who know that their true calling is elsewhere. During the years of his London life he wrote many plays, some of which have perished; they were received with a remarkable share of applause, and gained for their author a general esteem among the decreasing minority who