on classical subjects; and all are replete with that laboured affectation of fine writing which was distinguished at the time as Euphuism. One of his main peculiarities stands in using, for images and illustrations, certain imaginary products of a sort of artificial nature, which he got up especially for that purpose; as if he could invent better material for poetic imagery than ancient Nature had furnished! Still it is not unlikely that we owe to him somewhat of the polish and flexibility of the Shakespearian dramatic diction: that he could have helped the Poet in any thing beyond mere diction, it were absurd to suppose.

Thomas Lodge has before been spoken of as joint author with Greene of A Looking-Glass for London and England. We have but one other play by him, entitled The Wounds of Civil War, and having for its subject "the true tragedies of Marius and Sylla;" written, probably, between 1587 and 1590, but not printed till 1594. It is in blank-verse; which, however, in this case differs from the most regular rhyming ten-syllable verse in nothing but the lack of consonant end ings. The following judicious account of it is given by Mr. Collier: "The characters of old Marius and of his younger rival are drawn with great force, spirit, and distinctness, a task the more difficult, because they so strongly resembled each other in the great leading features of ambition and cruelty. Marius possesses, however, far more generosity and sterner courage than Sylla, who is impetuously tyrannical and wantonly severe; and the old Roman until his death, after his seventh consulship, absorbs the interest of the reader. Young Marius is also introduced, and is distinguished by his fortitude, his constancy, and his affection for his father. Antony is another prominent personage, and is represented gifted with irresistible eloquence, of which many nct unfavourable specimens are inserted. There are wo females, Cornelia and Fulvia, the wife and daughter of Sylla; the one remarkable for her matronly firmness, and the other for her youthful delicacy and tenderness, which,

however, do not prevent her conducting herself with the resolution becoming a Roman maid. A Clown and various

coarsely-comic characters are employed in two scenes, in order to enliven and vary the performance. The plot of the piece is founded chiefly upon the Lives of Marius and Sylla, in Plutarch, and the scene is changed, just as the necessities of the poet required, from Rome to Pontus, Minturnum, and Numidia."

Lodge is chiefly memorable, in that one of his prose pieces was drawn upon for Shakespeare's As You Like It; a sufficient account of which is given in our Introduction to that play.

Some mention has already heen made of The Misfortunes of Arthur, an historical drama written by Thomas Hughes, of Gray's Inn, and acted before the Court at Greenwich in 1587. The piece is on several accounts deserving of notice. It was evidently framed in part on the plan of Gorboduc; but the classic form, with the unities of time and place, is carefully followed; and as the scope of a history must needs be too wide for these conditions, narrative is in a large measure substituted for representation, dialogue and description, for action. The plot is as follows: King Arthur having gone into Gaul with an army to resist the claim of tribute by Rome, Mordred, his son, usurps the throne, makes love to Queen Guenevora, his stepmother, and commits incest with her. To maintain his usurpation, he engages the Irish, Picts, Saxons, and Normans on his side; on the landing of his father at Dover, fights with him, is defeated and driven into Cornwall, where another battle takes place, which ends in the father killing the son and the son the father. It is therefore a piece of high-pressure tragedy, redundant of incest, slaughter, and blood, so that nothing could well be more horrible and revolting. Nevertheless, it is written with great boldness and vigour; the character of Mordred is powerfully drawn, while his ambition, youthful confidence, and fiery recklessness are well contrasted

with the milder, more cautious, but not less courageous spirit of Arthur. The blank-verse, too, in which nearly all the piece is written, is superior in force and variety to that of any other dramatic writer before Marlowe.

In respect of versification, the next place after Marlowe among Shakespeare's senior contemporaries probably belongs to Thomas Kyd. Nor is he without very considerable merit in other respects. Mr. Collier has the following judgment of him: "His thoughts are often both new and natural; and if in his plays he dealt largely in blood and death, he only partook of the habit of the time, in which good sense and discretion were often outraged for the purpose of gratifying the crowd. In taste he is inferior to Peele, but in force and character he is his superior; and if Kyd's blankverse be not quite so smooth it has decidedly more spirit, vigour, and variety."

According to Ben Jonson, Kyd's Hieronimo was first acted in 1588; and his Spanish Tragedy, which is really out a second part of the former, was most probably brought out not long after. The first is about equally divided between rhyme and blank-verse. The main features of the story are the love of Andrea and Belimperia, and the death of the former. The characters of Andrea and his rival Balthezar are forcibly drawn; while the frank and unsuspecting generosity of the former makes an effective contrast with the subtle intricacies of Lorenzo, the nephew and heir-apparent of the Spanish King. The Spanish Tragedy is a far higher performance. After the death of Andrea, his young and faithful friend Horatio, son to the hero of the play, succeeds to his place in the affections of Belimperia. It is upon this that the action turns. Early in the second Act, Horatio is hanged in his father's garden by his rival the Prince of Por tugal, and Lorenzo, the lady's brother. During the rest of the play, Hieronimo is in distraction, always meditating revenge, and always postponing the act, till at last his longing is sated at the representation of a play before the King and

Court of Spain: so that the piece has some points of resemblance to Hamlet. After the murder of Horatio, Lorenzo confines his sister in a tower. In Act iv., Hieronimo comes before the King and Court to demand justice upon the murderers of his son, but is put aside, almost without a struggle, by Lorenzo: soon after, at the casual mention of Horatio's name, the old man starts from his melancholy abзtraction, and his mind wanders off in some very pathetic exclamations of anguish for his bereavement, and of impatience for justice on the authors of it. "He sees nothing,” says Collier, "but Horatio in every face he looks upon, and all objects take their colour and appearance from his sorrows. His grief is not as sublime, but it is as intense as that of Lear; an he dwells upon the image of his lost Horatio with not ess doting agony than Constance."

We have now finished our account of the English Drama, omitting nothing, we believe, that materially contributed to its growth and formation, down to the time when Shakespeare's hand had learnt its cunning, so far, at least, as any previous examples were capable of teaching it. Perhaps we ought to add, as illustrating the prodigious rush of life and thought towards the drama in that age, that, besides the authors already mentioned, Henslowe's Diary shows the names of thirty other dramatists, most of whom have propagated some part of their workmanship down to our time. In the same document, during the twelve years beginning in February, 1591, we have the titles recorded of no less than two hundred and seventy pieces, either as original compositions, or as revivals of older plays. As all these entries have reference only to Henslowe's management; and as, during that period, save for some short intervals, he was concerned with the affairs of but a single company, the Lord Admiral's; we may from thence form some tolerable judg ment of the vast fertility of the age in dramatic production.

CHAPTER VI.

GENERAL CRITICISM.

It is evident enough, we trust, from the foregoing chapters, that the Historical Drama grew up simultaneously with Comedy and Tragedy, and established itself as a co-ordinate species of the Gothic Drama in England. This course was dictated and demanded by public taste, and by the intense nationality of the English people, which was, as indeed it always must be, inextricably bound up with traditions of the past, and with the ancient currents of the national life. Perhaps, however, its origin lay, primarily, in the fact of an Historical Religion, impressing its genius and efficacy on the mind and character of the nation. For we may be assured that such as is the religion of a people, such will be their drama: if the one rest upon fable, the other will needs be fabulous; if the former stand on an historical basis, the latter will needs draw more or less into history. And, where an historical religion prevails, the Drama, even when it does not work specifically with the persons and events of history; when it fetches its incidents and characters from the realms of imagination; will still be historical in its spirit and method: the work will proceed according to the laws, even while departing from the matter, of history; so that pure creations will be formed upon the principles, and in the order and manner of histories. And if, O, if there arise a workman having the creative powers of a Shakespeare, what he creates will be, in effect, historical, and what he borrows will come from him with all the life and freshness of original creation; because he will assimilate and reproduce the dead matter of fact in the forms of living art.

So that the early and continued use of historical materials on the stage had, unquestionably, great influence in moulding