imagine the modern magician of the north to have shadowed forth, but which under his hands would have expanded into a breadth and depth of effect, which it is no derogation to say that the genius of Ford, powerful and mighty as it is, was incapable of giving. The very first speech of Huntley-his fluctuation between a sense of real and artificial greatness, and the honest heart which finally throws the casting weight into the right scale, wins for him a regard which his strong parental feelings, his blunt bluff language, and that strong sense of right which, even in scenes most trying to a father's heart, is sure to gain a final victory over his feelings and prejudices, maintain undiminished, or rather continue to increase, till the very close of the drama. The personal charms of his daughter, the Lady Katherine Gordon, have been consecrated even in the page of history: "the name of the White Rose," as Bacon prettily observes, "which had been given to her husband's false title, having been continued to her true beauty." But outward beauty was the least recommendation of Huntley's daughter. With such filial feelings as the Lady Katherine possessed, the honied accents of Warbeck's tongue, and the princely fascinations of his language may be supposed to have gained a readier conquest than strict consistency admitted; but if she sinks at all in her character as a daughter, it is only to rise in her character as a wife; a more perfect specimen of conjugal tenderness and constancy than the Lady Katherine exhibits will not easily be found, and that Ford should have disfigured this fine picture by a debasing trait for which there was no oc casion, and which he must have known to be at variance with historical facts,* is one of those pieces of gratuitous folly for which the mind is at a loss to account. His judgment did not thus betray him in delineating her wedded lord. The character of Warbeck is maintained with admirable consistency throughout. He utters on all occasions the language of a prince and a Plantagenet. "No colloquies, no side-speeches," as Mr. G. justly observes, are allowed to compromise his public assertions." When the Scottish king grows "frosty and wayward," when the treacherous Frion's tongue is leaning to the weak part of his story-in the utmost wreck of his fortunes and his hopes -in imprisonment, and at the axe's edge, his identity with the Duke of York is never suffered to betray itself in a single thought or expression. 66 "If? If I will appear? Appear a prince? Death throttle such deceits Be mine own counterfeit, belie the truth Mr. Gifford's testimony to the humbler characters in this drama, though sufficiently encomiastic, is much too valuable to be omitted. "In most of Ford's tragedies the trivial and comic personages are poorly drawn: if * See notes in pp. 325, 341. they attempt to be witty, they usually fall into low buffoonery; and if they aim at a scene of mirth, are sure to create sadness or disgust. The low characters of this play do neither. They are uniformly sustained: their language, though technical, is not repulsive, and the style of that wise piece of formality, the Mayor of Cork, who does not venture on one positive expression from first to last, is not only supported with undeviating skill, but rendered really amusing." ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM CAVENDISH, EARL OF NEWCASTLE, VISCOUNT MANSfield, lord BOLSOVER AND OGLE.* MY LORD, Out of the darkness of a former age, (enlightened by a late both learned and an honourable pen,)† I have endeavoured to personate a great attempt, "William Cavendish, (nephew to the first Earl of Devonshire) Lord Ogle," Collins says, “jure materno, was born in the year 1592, and was early in favour with James I., by whom he was made a knight of the Bath, in 1610, and created a peer by the title of Viscount Mansfield, in 1623. He continued in favour with Charles I., who created him Earl of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1628, and Marquis six years afterwards. In 1638 the king assigned him the office of governor to the Prince of Wales,' For more than half a century the house of this distinguished nobleman was open to every man of genius and learning. He was more particularly the friend and munificent patron of Ben Jonson, whose connexion with the family appears to have been of long and close continuance, and whose assistance was called for by them on all occasions of mirth or melancholy, whether in the supply of monumental inscriptions, or in furnishing interludes for those splendid entertainments which his patron was accustomed to give, and which appear to have been the astonishment of the times. "God be thanked," says the Earl of Clarendon em + learned and honourable pen,] that of the great Lord Bacon. He alludes to his "History of King Henry VII.”— GIFFORD. and in it, a greater danger. In other labours you may read actions of antiquity discoursed; in this abridgment, find the actors themselves discoursing; in some kind practised as well what to speak, as phatically, when mentioning that which the Earl gave to Charles I. on his journey into Scotland, "God be thanked, that though this stupendous entertainment might too much whet the appetite of others to excess, no man ever after in those days imitated it." For an account of the public services of the Earl of Newcastle, for proofs of his devotion and unshaken fidelity to his royal and unfortunate master, the reader is referred to the pages of the same excellent historian. A long and elaborate character of the Earl will be found in the second volume, from which we extract such passages as serve to show his attachment to literature and the fine arts. "He was a very fine gentleman, active, and full of courage, and most accomplished in those qualities of horsemanship, dancing, and fencing, which accompany a good breeding, in which his delight was. Besides that, he was amorous in poetry and music, to which he indulged the greatest part of his time; and nothing could have tempted him out of those paths of pleasure, which he enjoyed in a full and ample fortune, but honour, and ambition to serve the king when he saw him in distress, and abandoned by most of those who were in the highest degree obliged to him and by him." "In all actions of the field he was still present, and never absent in any battle; in all which he gave instances of an invincible courage and fearlessness in danger, in which the exposing himself notoriously did sometimes change the fortune of the day, when his troops began to give ground. Such articles of action were no sooner over, than he retired to his delightful company, music, or his softer pleasures, to all which he was so indulgent, and to his ease, that he would not be interrupted upon what occasion soever, insomuch as he sometimes denied admission to the chiefest officers of the army, even to General King himself, for two days together, from whence many inconveniences fell out."-History of the Rebellion, vol. ii b. 8. |
