of George, who sanctified the name and pedigree, he says, "The place of his birth was near the town of Montgomery, and in that castle that did then bear the name of that town and county. That castle was then a place of strength and state, and had been volume had he discovered the existence of Shakspeare; and in his fifth he speaks of "Il celebre Benjanson," and his comedies of "Bartolomeo Foicere" and " Ipsum Veetz," which latter Mr. Douce conjectured to be Shadwell's Epsom Wells." Upon Milton he is a little better informed, for he says that he spoke of Christ like an Arian. To make amends, however, for his slight notices of our literature, evidently derived partly from Voltaire and partly from the mouth of some illiterate English tourist, he compliments us on a great improvement in the mechanism of puppet-shows!!! Mr. D'Israeli ascribes this continental neglect of our writers to our own neglect of bibliography, which left foreigners without a guide in their researches. Bibliographers are very useful to those who like to talk of books they never saw; but I rather suspect that the long-continued insulation of our literature is to be ascribed mainly to the unnatural coxcombry of our polite travellers, who affected to depreciate their mother tongue, and babble in vile French and worse Italian about the superior beauties of southern idioms. Something must also be attributed to the real difficulty of our language, and its harshness to unaccustomed ears; something also to national and religious prejudice. Many of our books could not safely be read in Spain or Italy: the best of them were in open rebellion against the French Academy; and Germany was not yet a literary region. At all events the case is far different at present. Shakspeare is even a greater name in Germany than in our own land. I have seen Retsch's illustrations of "Hamlet," 66 Macbeth," &c. with explanatory quotations in German, French, and Italian. Our popular novels are even translated into Spanish. "Tom Jones" indeed has long been a favourite in Spain. It may be remarked, that the most intensely national works acquire the widest reputation. Hogarth is as well known and as much admired in Germany as in England, and yet he is John Bull all over. The Scotch novels were published in French and German as soon as they appeared in Edinburgh. The fancy and imagination of Britain are leavening the whole mind of Europe; and, in the commerce of letters, we are no longer, as heretofore, an exclusively importing nation. Revenons à nos moutons. The Countess of Pembroke was herself a poetess and a dramatist, but I cannot pretend to have seen any of her productions, therefore cannot decide how far they justify the commendations of Daniel, who is more complimentary than usual in their behalf. It appears that she versified some portions of the Psalms, for thus sings her eulogist :— "Those hymns which thou dost consecrate to heaven, Which Israel's singer to his God did frame, Unto thy voyage eternity hath given, And makes thee dear to him from whence they came." If so, it is a pity they are not authorised to be sung in churches, for the present versions are a disgrace and a mischief to the establishment. By nothing have the Dissenters made more way than by their evangelical hymns and congregational psalmody. The countess's tragedy is called “ Antony," and is a translation from Robert Garnier, an early French dramatist, whose plays have been skilfully analysed, with admirably translated specimens, by the best of translators, the Rev. H. Cary. Mr. Collier, in his "History of Dramatic Poetry,” has given a short sample of her ladyship's blank verse, which is as heavy and mononotous as blank verse translation of rhyme generally is, from preserving the pattern and cadence of the original-a fault which even Cary, in his excellent "Dante," has not always avoided. Now and then you may detect the outline of the terza rima. French plays should assuredly be translated into couplet measure. The countess survived her husband twenty years happy as the praises of grateful poets could make her-happy in the fair reputation and it is to be hoped in the duteous attendance, of her elder son-and happy in dying too soon to see her younger offspring Hold a wing Quite from the flight of all his ancestors. Though so well renowned for cherishing the muses, it does not appear that she bestowed either bounty or countenance on the son of her husband's old and faithful servant; a fact which, combined with the apparent neglect of so distinguished a Mæcenas as her son, makes it too probable that Massinger had offended the family by quitting his studies; possibly slighting the preferment to which their favour would have conducted him. Henry, the second earl of the second creation, died in 1601, and was succeeded by his son William, successively happy in the family of the Herberts, who had long possessed it, and with it a plentiful estate, and hearts as liberal to their poor neighbours; a family that hath been blessed with remarkable wisdom, and a willingness to serve their country, and, indeed, to do good to all mankind, for which they were eminent. But, alas! this family did in the late Rebellion suffer extremely in their estates, and the heirs of that castle saw it laid level with that earth which was too good to cover those wretches that were the cause of it." What a gentleman was Izaak, though he commenced business in a shop wherein. two men had not room to turn themselves! He chooses to forget entirely that the meanest, if not the worst, of those "wretches whom the earth was too good to cover," the very man who was appointed to convey to his royal benefactor that insolent demand which went to strip him of all his prerogative, and so far provoked King Charles out of his usually guarded speech, that he answered him with, "No, Phil,BY GOD,—not for an hour,” and who actually renounced his rank to sit in a kingless Parliament, was the head of the family of Pembroke. This is true gentility. Of the childhood and boyhood of Massinger no record remains. It has been said, indeed, that he was brought up in the family of his father's patron; but if so, how ames it that in 1624, when his "Bondman' was first printed, he "had never arrived at the happiness to be made known" to Philip of Montgomery? He must Deeds have known him as a boy, and was not likely to have forgotten the circumstance in his dedication. I do not, however, recollect where Philip spent his tender years. He certainly was a courtier in his teens. Could it indeed be proved that the child Massinger wandered in the marble halls and pictured galleries of Wilton, that princely who was governor of Portsmouth and chancellor of Oxford; an honour he seems to have well deserved, e honest Antony Wood says of him, "that he was not only a great patronizer of learned and ingenious men, but was himself learned, and endowed to admiration with a poetical geny, as by those amorous and poetical ans and poems of his composition doth evidently appear, some of which had musical notes set to them by Henry Lawes and Nich. Laneare." It is not often that Antony smiles upon anything "amorous and poetical;" he to have had as indifferent an opinion of poetry as Locke or Jeremy Bentham: but perhaps he thought 4, like bunting or hawking, a gentlemanly recreation, in which a nobleman might be allowed to indulge. At the period when Antony's opinions were fashioned, not only poetry, but philology in general, was considered hule better than a showy accomplishment, a fringe of learning, that might adorn, but could not clothe or arm Le user man-such at least was the judgment of the universities; at present the tendency is too much the other way. But Pembroke had other panegyrists than the old Jacobite antiquarian of Merton; half Lincoln ins were employed in his praise, and Mr. Campbell supposes that he was the mysterious subject of Shakspeare's seta, an hypothesis to which I can by no means accede. No doubt, however, he was a patron of the drama, and prolmbly of its greatest author, for he was joined with his brother Philip in the dedication to the folio of As he is nowise connected with the known history of Massinger, we need say no more of him than tind he died in 1630, leaving no issue, although, upon Mr. Campbell's supposition, he had been passionately xhorted not to 123 -bear his beauties to the grave And leave the world no copy." ile va sarceeded by his brother Philip, already created Earl of Montgomery, from whom the titles have ested together to the present time. I cannot conclude this overgrown note without suggesting the possi by that among the family papers of the Herberts something might be discovered to throw light on the early batery of Maminger, and to account for his apparent alienation from a house of which he was in some sort, a ber. But perhaps the search has already been made in vain. seat of old magnificence, where Sir Philip Sidney composed his Arcadia; that his young eyes gazed upon those panels whereon the story of Mopsa and Dorcas, and Musidorus and Philoclea, were limned in antique tracery; that he was dandled in his babyhood by the fair Countess of the Arcadia, and shared the parting kiss of Sir Philip when he set forth for those wars from which he was never to return,-with what accumulated interest should we read his dramas, several of which display an intimacy with the details of noble housekeeping, not likely to have been acquired in the latter periods of the poet's existence! Is it not possible that Sir Philip may have been his godfather, and given him his name? The conjecture is in strict accordance with the manners of that age, and almost derives a plausibility from the sequel of Massinger's fortunes. It is a common trick of Fate to flatter the infancy of those whose manhood is written in her black book. At thy birth, dear boy! Nature and Fortune joined to make thee great; KING JOHN, Act iii. Scene 1. Many a dawn of golden beauty harbingers a day of troubled dimness: many a one has smiled in the cradle on the fair, the great, the good, and the wise, whose death-bed was without a comfort or a comforter. But enough of these speculations. Juvenile biography was little in vogue in the days of Elizabeth and James, (though the sayings and doings of some few distinguished children, as Sir Philip Sidney, and Henry Prince of Wales, have been fondly recorded.) It is not, therefore, to be wondered, that the boyish days of Massinger present a blank, upon which it were easy to write a multitude of possibilities. For instance, we know that there was a company of actors, calling themselves the Earl of Pembroke's players. We know that theatrical companies were often itinerant, and used to be entertained and employed at the country mansions of the nobility; that the female parts always, and sometimes the whole plays, were performed by boys. It is possible enough that Massinger may have seen the earl's players in his boyhood; it is possible that he may have worn petticoats among them, as Achilles did at Scyros, and so may have acquired an early hankering after the stage. Both biographies and histories of formidable length have been constructed out of such possibilities, and put forth with all the confidence of eye-witness, sometimes to the subversion of all recorded testimony. But I dare not be thus dogmatically hypothetical. Facts are not to be deduced from premises, like conclusions in mood and figure. Somewhere or other Massinger obtained a classical education. That his works evince. He was probably acquainted with the French and Italian, perhaps with the Spanish language, then a point of fashion: but these might be the acquisitions of his riper years. He seems to have read some of the Fathers, and to have dipped into theology and moral philosophy. But his learning is no way scholastic or profound: it is that of a reader, rather than of a student. His classical allusions are frequent, but not like those of Ben Jonson, recondite, nor like those of Shakspeare and of Milton, amalgamated and consubstantiated with his native thought. They float, like drops of oil on water, on the surface of his style, and have too much the air of quotations. What erudition he possessed he was not shy of displaying; no more was Shakspeare : Jonson was not a whit more of a pedant than his contemporaries; he showed more reading, because he had more to show. Massinger, whoever was his schoolmaster, entered a commoner of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, May 14th, 1602. I give this date on the authority of Mr. Gifford, who says that he had the memorandum of his matriculation before him, wherein he is styled the son of a gentleman: " Philip Massinger Sarisburiensis, Generosi filius." Yet Antony | Wood places his entrance in 1601. Davies fails in his attempt to account for the discrepancy, by the change of Style. But Antony was not writing on oath, and was not likely to take the pains of accurate reference about a man who was only a poet,a race for whom he had as little respect as for womankind. He differs from Langbaine on a point of rather more importance. Langbaine believes that he was supported by his father, and that he stuck closely to his studies. Wood asserts that his exhibition was from the Earl of Pembroke, and "that he gave his mind more to poetry and romance for about four years or more, than to logic and philosophy, which he ought to have done, she was patronised to that end." Undoubtedly he ought, if he could. It would have been better for him if he had. He might have obtained a fellowship, and become, like Antony, a great antiquarian, though I think it more likely that he would have turned out a passionate puritan divine. But whatever were the cause, he quitted the university abruptly, and without a degree; whether in consequence of his father's death, (the date of which is uncertain,) or of the failure of remittances from other quarters, or, which is most probable, from impatience of academic restraint, (the more irksome, as at the time of his entrance, he considerably exceeded the average years of an undergraduate of that time, when undergraduates were subject to a discipline only calculated for the lowest form,) or an eagerness to follow the bent of his genius, and the steps of Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson, no doubt, in his esteem, the greatest and happiest of men. We cannot conceive, with Davies, that his lack of logic made the terrors of an examination too awful for his nerves. He has never been accused of any criminal irregularity. He, at least, was not a deer-stealer, nor a libeller of the landed aristotracy. Wood only charges him with his addiction to poetry and romance. But it is Try probable his father's death bereft him of the heart and hope of his academical staties; for it does not appear that he had brother or sister to rejoice in his success, or reprove his indiscretion. If any conception of his character may be formed from his plays, he had a strong and independent spirit, ill calculated to brook or retain the fatur or surveillance of patronizing superiors. There is too much likelihood that he pave some offence to the Herberts, or he would hardly have been overlooked by so tons a friend of genius as earl William. Young men, smit with the passion of liberty, too often seek it where it is never to be found, in a life without regular profesnor definite controul. Gafford conjectures that Massinger had, "during his residence in the university, excaged the religion of his father for one at that time the object of terror, persecution, and hatred;" and concludes, from the "Virgin Martyr, the Renegado, the Maid of Honour, and from casual intimations scattered over his remaining dramas," that he had attached himself to the church of Rome. This is very possible, but there is not even circumstantial evidence of the fact. His dramas, like those of his contemporaries in general, were mostly founded on French or Italian novels, or old legends, which it would have been no easy matter to convert to Protestantism, without converting them to irony and satire. His characters are Catholics of the old church, and he makes them speak as such; they are Catholics, superstitious Catholics it may be, but neither Protestants nor Papists. He never brings the old and reformed churches into opposition, as had frequently been done upon the stage, in spite of repeated orders to the contrary. A writer, who lays his scene in a Mahometan country, and makes his characters Mahometans, must be, pro tempore and dramatically, a Mahometan himself. He must speak of Mahomet as a true prophet, acknowledge the divine authenticity of the Koran, and use no ill language of the Houris; yet he may do all this without bringing any just suspicion upon his Christianity, so long as he does not bring Christian and Moslem together, for the purpose of throwing discredit on the former, or setting off the latter to advantage, as Voltaire has done in his "Zaïre." Now Massinger has given no such proof of his preferring the proscribed to the established church. He never, that I can discover, alludes specifically to the Church of England at all. At any rate, his religious tendencies, whatever they might be, could have little to do with his quitting Oxford, a university always more Catholic than Protestant, attached to every relic of antique formality, as a faithful widow to the effigies of the husband of her youth, or a too confiding damsel to the tokens of a lover whom she would never have forsaken, if he had not forsaken her. Nothing but an overt act of Popery (not likely to have been unknown or unmentioned by Antony Wood) would have endangered Massinger on the banks of Isis. There is nothing in his known works from which we can even conjecture the creed of his conviction, what he did or did not believe. If there ever were any such data, the "Master of the Revels" has intercepted them on their way to posterity. It is impossible to say in what measure he partook of the errors and superstitions which had encrusted Christianity in the lazy lapse of ages, and which were rejected by the Divines who undertook to restore the Primitive Church. But if it be duly considered, that in his days, the visible Church of England was an untrimmed vessel, lurching now towards Rome, and now towards Geneva, it is no wonder if many of the young, the impassioned, the imaginative, inclined towards that form of faith and of worship, which wore at least the semblance of venerable seniority, gave ample room for the fancy and the affections, was inextricably intertwined with the whole tissue of chivalry and romance, hallowed alike the gorgeous ceremony, the austere fast, and the periodic day of rustic merriment-and "was all things to all men," holding out the honours of apotheosis to the ascetic, and offering an easy absolution to the voluptuous. Contrast with this the saturnine rigour of ́Ultra-protestantism, its utter antipathy, not only to the acted drama, but to all the poetry of life, manners, and nature; consider the indefatigable and undaunted industry of the propagandists of Romanism, then recommended by the prestige of peril, who so |