dated the 27th March 1619-20. He performed as one of the "Children of the Queen's Chapel" in Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels," 1600-in his "Poetaster," 1601and as a child of "the Queen's Revels" in " Epicone," 1609-in which latter year he is mentioned with Shakspeare, Daborne, and Kirkham in a curious document brought to light by the indefatigable Collier, and given in his "New Facts." It anthorises "the said Robert Daborne, William Shakspeare, Nath. Field, and Edward Kirkham, from time to time, to provide and bring upp a convenient nomber of children, and them to instruct and exercise in the quality of playing tragedies, comedies, &c., by the name of Children of the Revells to the Queene, within the Black fryers in our citie of London, or elsewhere within our realme of England." It would em that Shakspeare soon drew out of the concern. He had formerly spoken with something like ridicule of these juvenile actors, who were thus enlisted, or rather impressed, into the service of Melpomene and Thalia, though with his usual discretion he muzzles the point of his censure, by intrusting it to that very civil, simple, good+ sort of a gentleman, Rosencrantz :-"But there is, sir, an aviary of children, little erases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapp'd for't. These are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages (so they call them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose quills, and scarce dare come thither.” But Hamlet's question in reply, is hardly fair. "What! are they children? Who maintains them? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?" Now, as to their maintenance, the children of the Queen's Chapel and the children of Paul's were probably better secured in that respect than their elders of the quality; and good provision was made for them when they could no longer sing. As early as the reign of Edward IY. it was appointed " Also when they" (the children of the Chapel) "be grown to the age of eighteen yeres, and then theire voyces be chaunged, and they cannot be preferred in this chappell, nor within this court, the number being full, then y they will absent, the king signeth onely such child to a colledge of Oxford or Cambridge of the king's foundation, there to be in findeing and study sufficiently till the king otherwise list to advance him." And James I., in the first year of his reign, ordained that "after serving three years, if they lose their voices they shall be sent to college to be taught at the king's charge." Yet many good people, who are scandalized at tlie Latin plays of Westminster, will be surprised that in the pious days of England; in the glorious morning of the Reformation; in "great Eliza's golden time;" ander Kings and Queens, that were the nursing-fathers and nursing-mothers of the Church-the public acting of plays should be, not the permitted recreation, but the compulsory employment of children devoted to sing the praises of God,—of plays,

the best of which children may now only read in a "family" edition,—of some, whose very titles a modern father would scruple to pronounce before a woman or a ¿ill*.

* Among the plays claimed by William Beeston, as "Master of the King and Queen's young company of sers, at the Cockpit in Drury-lane," were Ford's ""Tis Pity She's a Whore;" his only less offensive * Law's Sacrifier," and "A Fool and her Maidenhead soon parted;" a play of which I never heard This was in 1639. Three years afterwards the theatres were closed by authority of Parliament.

d

لاذا

Richard III., who appointed the first public bearwarden, was also the first who exercised the prerogative of impressing singing men and children, "even from cathedrals, colleges, chapels, and houses of religion," for the royal service. But a usurper may afford a precedent to the most legitimate sovereign; and accordingly we find that, in 1586, Queen Elizabeth" issued a warrant under her sign manual, authorising Thomas Gyles, master of the children of Paul's, to take up any boys in cathedrals or collegiate churches, in order to be instructed for the entertainment of the court." James I. passed a similar order. I do not allude to these facts to throw odium on the memory of a great queen, or of a good-hearted and calumniated monarch, but that parents and children may be duly thankful that they do not live in the good old times. Shakspeare seems to have foreseen, or more likely observed, one necessary consequence of this premature exhibition. "If they should grow themselves to common players (as is most like, if their means are no better)." The royal bounty would not, and could not, provide for all; and many, who had the offer of liberal education and a sober livelihood, would never be weaned from the stimulating pursuit of their boyhood. The Children of the Revels were not always children; and the argument of Reed, that Field, the juvenile actor, who played in "Epicone,” in 1609, could not be old enough to produce a comedy in 1611, and therefore could not be Massinger's coadjutor in the "Fatal Dowry," falls to the ground, when we see that in the same year, 1609, he was old enough to undertake a share in management with Shakspeare. I have little doubt that a considerable portion of those lads became confirmed players. Field must have been an actor of some eminence,- for we find that Henslowe stipulated to allow him six shillings a week (a fair salary at that time), in addition to the profits of his share (a theatre was then a sort of joint-stock company), as a retaining fee.

Robert Daborne, though he appears in such poor plight in the mendicant letter, was a man of good family, and academic education. In the preface to his "Christian turned Turk," 1612, he says, "my own descent is not obscure but generous." He wrote besides the "Christian turned Turk" and the "Poor Man's Comfort," printed, probably long after his death, in 1655; "The Devil and Machiavel," and the "Arraignment of London," which, if extant, ought to be published,-for the first has a taking title, and the second might throw some light on the manners and politics of I really think that it was almost time. Can it be wondered that old Prynne thought an attack upon plays a convenient vehicle for censure of a Court, which licensed such juvenile prostitution?

What made the abomination still worse was, that these poor children were purposely selected to utter the grossest licentiousness and personality-as Heywood was constrained to confess in his Apology for Actors: "Now to speak of some abuse lately crept into the quality, as an inveighing against the state, the court, the law, the city, and their governments, with the particularizing of private men's humours, yet alive, noblemen and others, I know that it distastes many; neither do I by any means approve it, nor dare by any means excuse the liberty which some arrogate to themselves, committing their bitterness and liberal invectives against all estates to the mouths of children, supposing their juniority to be a privilege for any railing, be it never so violent. I could advise all such to curb and limit this presumed liberty within the bounds of discretion and good government."

It should be mentioned that the acting of plays by the children of the Chapel Royal was forbidden, when a new warrant of impressment was issued to Nathaniel Giles, Mus. Doc., August 1626. Beeston's boys, therefore, needed not lose their voices with "hallooing and singing of anthems." But the part of a choir-boy is too histrionic to be wholesome in itself. Dicky Suet, "Cherub Dicky," was a chorister of Paul's.

a stirring period. He was in orders: his sermon, preached at Waterford, 1618, still survives. Perhaps he obtained some Irish preferment, and abandoned the "loathed stare. He was, however, by no means the only clerical dramatist of his time. Jaspar Maine, and Cartwright, were both Divines,-the latter "a florid and seraphical preacher," as old Fuller hath it.

It does not appear to me certain, from Daborne's mention of "Mr. Fletcher's play and ours," that Massinger ever assisted Fletcher. But an epigram of Sir Aston Cockayne, who knew them both well, and was Massinger's friend and patron, is much stronger evidence on this point. It is addressed to Humphrey Moseley, on his publishing the folio Beaumont and Fletcher :

agree

In the large book of plays you late did print
In Beaumont and in Fletcher's name, why in't
Did you not justice? Give to both their due ?
Since Beaumont of those many writ but few,
And Massinger in other few; the main
Being sweet issues of sweet Fletcher's brain.
But how came I, you ask, so much to know?
Fletcher's chief bosom friend inform'd me so.

I cannot with Mr. Gifford that the chief bosom friend was necessarily Massinger himself, nor do I know that his hand has been detected in any of Fletcher's surviving works: but I think the lines almost conclusive of the fact, which may furnish a field of curious investigation to Fletcher's next editor.

Mr. Gifford asks, could the play for which the small advance was solicited be the "Fatal Dowry?" There is no knowing. The "Fatal Dowry" was not printed till 12; but this proves nothing. The "Unnatural Combat" was not printed till 1639, yet there is every reason to suppose that it was written prior to the "Bondman," as it is not mentioned in the office-book of Sir Henry Herbert; and Massinger, in his dedication, calls it an "old tragedy." There is strong internal evidence, in the earlier senes of the "Fatal Dowry," that it was written by a man in debt,--for their direct tendency is to make creditors odious, and to hold up the laws of debtor and creditor to detestation. But it is not the only play in which Massinger has betrayed how keenly he felt

"The world was not his friend, nor the world's law."

Ile seldom slips an opportunity of glancing at the abuses of the courts, and the correption of justice. The topic was, indeed, popular, but he handles it with the sore arity of a sufferer. The " 'City Madam" sets forth with fearful vividness the miseries to which the mere turn of trade might reduce an honest man, and the worse than despotic power which the law put into the hands of the obdurate,—allowing the same individual to be at once plaintiff, judge, and executioner. I cannot but think, that in penning the pathetic pleadings of Luke in behalf of the unfortunate merchants, be forgot that he was putting his own afflicted heart into the mouth of a villain. The "New Way to Pay Old Debts," by its very title, indicates an embarrassed author; and the whole piece is a keen and powerful satire on the mis-government which furriches arms to the wicked.

My revered father, in a lecture which I shall never forget, with an eloquence of which the Notes published in his Remains convey as imperfect an impression as the score of Handel's Messiah upon paper compared to the Messiah sounding in multitudinous unison of voices and instruments beneath the high embowered roof of some hallowed Minster, contrasted the calm, patriotic, constitutional loyalty of Shakspeare, with the ultra-royalism of Fletcher on the one hand, and the captious whiggism of Massinger on the other. He should have remembered that Shakspeare ! was a prosperous man, of a joyous poetic temperament, while Massinger's native melancholy was exacerbated by sorrow and disappointment.

The sequel of his story contains little but the dates of his works. His dedications inform us that he had patrons; but we know not who were his bosom friends. In all probability he never married; and if he loved, he has left not a stanza nor a hint of his success or rejection. Sometimes I have imagined that, like Tasso, he fixed his affections too high for hope, as his fortunes were certainly too low for marriage. I ground this fancy,-for it is but a fancy,-on the "Bondman," the "Very Woman," and the "Bashful Lover," in all of which high-born ladies become enamoured, as they suppose, of men of low degree. To be sure, they all turn out to be gentlemen in disguise. This discovery is necessary to make the marriage prudent, like the reformation of the agreeable rake in the last scene of more recent comedy. But after all, the lady's love was for the slave, the incognito. Methinks, he soothed his despondency with a visionary unsphering of those stellar beauties, whose effluence was predominant over his affections, though they hardly consoled him with so much 66 as collateral light." He dreamed and shut his eyes, and tried to dream again—a dream he willed not to see realized,* for whatever might be his political bias, he was sufficiently aristocratic in all that comes home, (and concerns

*Massinger, liberal as he was, had a superstitious horror of mésalliance.

One aery with advantage, ne'er discloses

The eagle and the wren.
On the same garment!

Tissue and frieze
Monstrous.

MAID OF HONOUR.

Where, by the way, Massinger seems to have tumbled into an anti-climax. For the eagle's aery and an old cloak are as ill matched as the frieze and tissue. But the allusion is to the livery of Mary of France and Charles Brandon. Things may be good or beautiful in themselves, but their dignity or meanness is merely circumstantial. The fool's coxcomb was the Kupßaría of the Persian king. Vide Aristophanes in Avibus, aut vocem Kupßaría apud Scapulam.

The same comparison a little varied occurs in the "New Way to Pay Old Debts," where Margaret says to Lord Lovel—

You are noble,

I of a low descent, however rich,

And tissue matched with scarlet suits but ill.

Where scarlet, which, in point of taste, might match with tissue very well, is evidently chosen as the city colour. But the sentiment is much more characteristic of Margaret, who could not be ignorant of her father's ill name, and who was in love with a page, that of the high and haughty Maid of Honour," whose descent could not be mean, and who loved the man to whom she depreciated herself. Besides, her scruple is frivolous aud vexatious, for her lover is but a left-handed offspring of royalty. She had better reason to objecz to his birth than he to hers. In these cases, the old dramatists and romantical writers had an infallible mode of reconciling nature and aristocratic prejudice. The lovely Shepherdess or Squire of low degree always proves

our "business and bosoms.") His social morals were derived from chivalry and feudal days. In truth, both chivalry and feudalism tended to set the “few” on a level with the king at an incommunicable distance from the many. The reverence for descent and degree, always stronger and longer strong, in the retainers of great houses than in the great themselves, was transfused from Arthur to Philip, and betrays itself in an aversion to parvenu wealth and civic ostentation, worthy a forfeited Highland chief of 45, or a French marquis of the old régime. Charles Lamb remarks how arceptable his showing-up of the City must have been to the haughty females of the Pembroke family. But it is only poor gentility that really enjoy such exhibitions, even as the rich vulgar gloat upon caricature representations of that esoteric school of fashion, in whose secrets they are uninitiate.

Massinger, who fell short of Shakspeare in his veneration for constituted authority, had a far more exclusive devotion to rank and blood. His menial and plebeian characters are, with hardly an exception, worthless, disagreeable, and stupid-stupider than he meant them to be; as he had no turn for low comedy, nor indeed for comedy of any sort, if comedy be that which "tendeth to laughter;" for of all dull jokers he would have been the dullest, if Ford had not contrived to be still duller. His fools are "fools indeed," and bores and blockheads into the bargain. His attempts at drollery painfully remind you of

Sober Lanesborough dancing in the gout.

What is much more grievous, he puts his worst ribaldry into the mouths of females. His chastest ladies are very liberal of speech, even according to the standard of his age, but some of his "humble companions" and waiting-gentlewomen would disgrace a penitentiary. I speak not of such as Calipso in the "Guardian," who only talk profirionally, but of those in whom some regard to modesty and their mistresses' ears would not have been dramatically improper. It is a comfort that they resemble no real women of any sort, and that no women had to act them.

Now Shakspeare reserves all his contempt for the mob as a body corporate. For the rereignty of the people he did entertain a most disloyal disrespect; but individually, his subordinates are good folks in their way: and when not merely fantastic, like Trinculo, Nick Bottom, and Pistol, have generally a heart under their garb of motley. Lear's Fool, half-crazy, half-idiot, is heart "every inch of him.” How skilfully is he commended to our good-will before he enters on the scene! "Since my young lady's going into France, the Fool has much pined away." Touchstone is capable of love and fidelity, and Costard is stoical under his misfortunes. Then for the softer sex,-Who

In be a lost or disowned shoot of royalty or nobility. "The Winter's Tale" furnishes a beautiful instance of τἰε ἱπὶτ ἀναγνώρισις.

Cervantes happily ridicules this sort of equivocal generation. "The knight having set out for the army, emors to battle, overcomes the king's adversary, takes many towns, makes divers conquests, returns to court,

has mistress in the ordinary manner, and the affair being concerted between them, demands her in arge as the reward of his service; the father refuses to grant the boon on pretence of not knowing who this bra, but, nevertheless, either by stealth or some other way, the infanta becomes his wife; and at last the kong overjoyed at his good fortune, when the knight proves to be the son of a valiant monarch of some Lake zotry, for I suppose it could not be found on the map."-Don Quixote, part 1, book 9, chap. 7. Limit be too sure that he's a Beefeater.