ments, and were borne onwards in headlong career. A few, like poor Marlowe and Greene, sunk early in undeplored misery, and nearly all were unhappy. This very recklessness and daring, however, gave a mighty impulse and freedom to their genius. They were emancipated from ordinary restraints; they were strong in their sceptic pride and self-will; they surveyed the whole of life, and gave expression to those wild half-shaped thoughts and unnatural promptings, which wiser conduct and reflection would have instantly repressed and condemned. With them, the passion of love was an all-pervading fire, that consumed the decencies of life; sometimes it was gross and sensual, but in other moments imbued with a wild preternatural sweetness and fervour. Anger, pity, jealousy, revenge, remorse, and the other primary feelings and elements of our nature, were crowded into their short existence as into their scenes. Nor was the light of religion quenched: there were glimpses of heaven in the midst of the darkest vice and debauchery. The better genius of Shakspeare lifted him above this agitated region; yet his ' Venus and Adonis,' and the Sonnets,' shew that he had been at one time soiled by some of its impurities. Ford was apparently of regular deportment, but of morbid diseased imagination.* His latest biographer (Mr. Hartley Coleridge) suggests, that the choice of horrible stories for his two best plays may have been merely an exercise of intellectual power. His moral sense was gratified by indignation at the dark possibilities of sin, and by compassion for rare extremes of suffering.' Ford was destitute of the fire and grandeur of the heroic drama. Charles Lamb ranks him with the first order of poets; but this praise is excessive. Admitting his sway over the tender passions, and the occasional beauty of his language and conceptions, he wants the elevation of great genius He has, as Hallam remarks, the power over tears; for he makes his readers sympathise even with his vicious characters.

A Dying Bequest.-From the Broken Heart.'

CALANTHA. PENTHEA.

CALANTHA. Being alone, Penthea, you have granted
The opportunity you sought, and might

At all times have commanded.

PENTHEA. 'Tis a benefit.

Which I shall owe your goodness even in death for.
My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes
Remaining to run down; the sands are spent:
For, by an inward messenger, I feel
The summons of departure short and certain.
CAL. You feed too much your melancholy.
PEN. Glories

Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams,
And shadows soon decaying: on the stage

·

Some unknown contemporary has preserved a graphic trait of Ford's appearance

and reserved deportment:

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

Must be a winding-sheet, a fold of lead,
And some untrod-on corner in the earth.
Not to detain your expectation, princess,
I have an humble suit.

CAL. Speak, and enjoy it.

PEN. Vouchsafe, then, to be my executrix;
And take that trouble on ye, to dispose
Such legacies as I bequeath impartially :
I have not much to give, the pains are easy;
Heaven will reward your piety and thank it,
When I am dead: for sure I must not live;
I hope I cannot.

CAL. Now beshrew thy sadness;

Thou turn'st me too much woman.

PEN. Her fair eyes

Melt into passion: then I have assurance
Encouraging my boldness. In this paper

My will was charactered; which you, with pardon,
Shall now know from mine own mouth.

PEN. To virgin wives; such as abuse not wedlock By freedom of desires, but covet chiefly

The pledges of chaste beds, for ties of love

Rather than ranging of their blood; and next,

To married maids; such as prefer the number

Of honourable issue in their virtues,

Before the flattery of delights by marriage;
May those be ever young.

CAL. A second jewel

You mean to part with?

PEN. 'Tis my fame; I trust

By scandal yet untouched; this I bequeath

To Memory and Time's old daughter, Truth.

If ever my unhappy name find mention,

When I am fallen to dust, may it deserve

Beseeming charity without dishonour.

CAL. How handsomely thou play'st with harmless sport Of mere imagination! Speak the last.

I strangely like thy will.

PEN. This jewel, madam,

Is dearly precious to me; you must use

The best of your discretion, to employ

This gift as I intend it.

CAL. Do not doubt me.

PEN. 'Tis long ago, since first I lost my heart;

Long I have lived without it: but instead

Of it, to great Calantha, Sparta's heir,

By service bound, and by affection vowed,

I do bequeath in holiest rites of love
Mine only brother Ithocles.

CAL. What saidst thou?

PEN. Impute not, heaven-blest lady, to ambition,
A faith as humbly perfect as the prayers

Of a devoted suppliant can endow it:

Look on him, princess, with an eye of pity;

How like the ghost of what he late appeared
He moves before you!

CAL. Shall I answer here,

Or lend my ear too grossly?

PEN. First his heart

Shall fall in cinders, scorched by your disdain,
Ere he will dare, poor man, to ope an eye

On these divine looks, but with low-bent thoughts
Accusing such presumption: as for words,

He dares not utter any but of service;

Yet this lost creature loves you. Be a princess
In sweetness as in blood; give him his doom,
Or raise him up to comfort.

CAL What new change

Appears in my behavior that thou darest
Tempt my displeasure?

PEN. I must leave the world,

To revel in Elysium; and 'tis just

To w sh my brother some advantage here.

Yet Ly my best hopes, Ithocles is ignorant

Of this pursuit. But if you please to kill him,

Lend him one angry look, or one harsh word,

And you shall soon conclude how strong a power
Your absolute authority holds over

His life and end.

CAL. You have forgot, Penthea,
How still I have a father.

PEN. But remember

I am sister: thongh to me this brother

Hath been, you know, unkind, O most unkind.

CAL. Christalla, Philema, where are ye ?-Lady,

Your check lies in my silence.

Contention of a Bird and a Musician.*—From the 'Lover's Melancholy.'

MENAPHON and AMETHUS.

MENAPHON. Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales

Which poets of an elder time have feigned

To glorify their Tempe, bred in me

Desire of visiting that paradise.

To Thessaly I came; and living private,

Without acquaintance of more sweet companions

Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts,

I day by day frequented silent groves,

And solitary walks. One morning early

This accident encountered me: I heard

*For an amplification of the subject of this extract, see notice of RICHARD CRASHAW.

The sweetest and most ravishing contention,
That art [and] nature ever were at strife in.
AMETHUS. I cannot yet conceive what you infer
By art and nature.

MEN. I shall soon resolve you.

A sound of music touched mine ears, or rather,
Indeed, entranced my soul: As I stole nearer,
Invited by the melody, I saw

This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute,
With strains of strange variety and harmony,
Proclaiming, as it seemed, so bold a challenge
To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds,
That, as they flocked about him, all stood silent,
Wondering at what they heard. I wondered too
AMET. And so do I; good! on.

MEN. A nightingale,

Nature's best skilled musician, undertakes
The challange, and for every several strain

The well-shaped youth could touch, she sung her own;
He could not run division with more art

Upon his quaking instrument, than she,

The nightingale, did with her various notes
Reply to: for a voice, and for a sound,
Amethus, 'tis much easier to believe

That such they were, than hope to hear again.
AMET. How did the rivals part?

MEN. You term them rightly;

For they were rivals, and their mistress, Harmony."
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird

Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes,
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study

Had busied many hours to perfect practice:

To end the controversy, in a rapture

Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,

So many voluntaries, and so quick,

That there was curiosity and cunning,

Concord in discord, lines of differing method

Meeting in one full centre of delight.

AMET. NOW for the bird.

MEN. The bird, ordained to be

Music's first martyr, strove to imitate

These several sounds: which, when, her warbling throat

Failed in, for grief, down dropped she on his lute.

And brake her heart! It was the quaintest sadness,

To see the conqueror upon her hearse,

To weep a funeral elegy of tears;

That, trust me, my Amethus, I could chide

My own unmanly weakness, that made me
A fellow-mourner with him.

AMET. I believe thee.

MEN. He looked upon the trophies of his art,

Then sighed, then wiped his eyes, then sighed and cried:

'Alas. poor creature! I will soon revenge

This cruelty upon the author of it:

Henceforth, this lute, guilty of innocent blood,

Shall never more betray a harmless peace

To an untimely end:' and in that sorrow,

As he was pashing it against a tree,

I suddenly stepped in.

AMET. Thou hast discoursed

A truth of mirth and pity.

THOMAS HEYWOOD.

THOMAS HEYWOOD was one of the most indefatigable of dramatic writers. He had, as he informs his readers, an entire hand, or at least a main finger,' in two hundred and twenty plays. He wrote also several prose works besides attending to his business as an actor. Of his huge dramatic library, only twenty-three plays have come down to us, the best of which are: A Woman Killed with Kindness,' the English Traveller,' A Challenge for Beauty,' the 'Royal King and Loyal Subject,' the‘Lancashire Witches,' the 'Rape of Lucrece,' 'Love's Mistress,' &c. The few particulars respecting Heywood's life and history have been gleaned from his own writings and the dates of his plays. The time of his birth is not known; but he was a native of Lincolnshire, and was a fellow of Peter-House, Cambridge: he is found writing for the stage in 1596, and he continued to exercise his ready pen down to the year 1640. In one of his prologues, he thus adverts to the various sources of his multifarious labours:

To give content to this most curious age,

The gods themselves we 've brought down to the stage,
And figured them in planets; made even hell
Deliver up the Furies, by no spell

Saving the Muse's rapture-further we

Have trafficked by their help; no history

We have left unrifled; our pens have been dipped

As well in opening each hid manuscript

As tracks more vulgar, whether read or sung

In our domestic or inore foreign tongue:

Of fairies, elves, nymphs of the sea and land,

The lawns, the groves, no number can be scanned
Which we have not given feet to.

This was written in 1637, and it shews how eager the playgoing public were then for novelties, though they possessed the theatre of Shakspeare and his contemporaries. The death of Heywood is equally unknown with the date of his birth. As a dramatist, he had a poetical fancy and abundance of classical imagery; but his taste was defective; and scenes of low buffoonery, merry accidents, intermixed with apt and witty jests,' deform his pieces. His humour, however, is more pure and moral than that of most of his contemporaries. There is a natural repose in his scenes,' says a dramatic critic, 'which contrasts pleasingly with the excitement that reigns in most of his contemporaries. Middleton looks upon his characters with the feverish anxiety with which we listen to the trial of great criminals, or watch their behaviour upon the scaffold. Webster lays out their corpses in the prison, and sings the dirge over them when they are buried at midnight in unhallowed ground. Heywood leaves his characters before they come into these situations. He walks quietly to and fro among them while they are yet at large as members of society; contenting himself with a sad smile at their follies, or with a