can not squander: why depreciate them? To Antiquity again; but afar from Aristophanes.

Marvel. Our admiration of Antiquity is in part extraneous from her merits: yet even this part, strange as the assertion may appear, is well founded. We learn many things from the ancients which it cost them no trouble to teach, and upon which they employed no imagination, no learning, no time. Those among us who have copied them, have not succeeded. To produce any effect on morals or on manners, or indeed to attract any attention, which, whatever be the pretext, is the principal if not the only aim of most writers, and certainly of all the comic, we must employ the language and consult the habits of our age. We may introduce a song without retrospect to the old comedy; a moral sentence, without authority from the new. The characters, even on their improved and purified stage, were, we know, of so vulgar and uncleanly a cast, that, with all their fine reflections, there was something like the shirt of Lazarus patched with the purple of Dives. Do not imagine I am a detractor from the glory of our teachers, from their grace, their elegance, and their careful weeding away of tiny starvling thoughts, that higher and more succulent may have room.

Milton. No, Marvel, no. Between their poetry and ours you perceive as great a difference as between a rose and a dandelion. There is, if I may express myself so, without pursuing a metaphor till it falls exhausted at my feet, a sort of refreshing odour flying off it perpetually; not enough to oppress or to satiate; nothing is beaten or bruised; nothing smells of the stalk; the flower itself is half concealed by the Genius of it hovering round. Write on the same principles as guided them.

Marvel. Yes; but I would not imitate them further. I will not be pegged down to any plot, nor follow any walk, however well rolled, where the persons of the drama can not consistently lead the way.•

Milton. Reasonable enough: but why should not both comedy and tragedy be sometimes so disciplined as may better fit them for our closets? I allow that their general intention is for action: it is also the nature of odes to be accompanied by voices and instruments. I only would suggest to you that a man of learning, with a genius suited to comedy, may as easily found it upon antiquity as the tragedian of equal abilitics his tragedy, and that the one might be made as acceptable to the study as the other to the stage. I would

not hamper you with rules and precedents. Comply with no other laws or limits than such as are necessary to the action. There may

be occasion for songs, and there may not; beside, a poet may be capable of producing a good comedy who is incapable of composing a tolerable stanza; and, on the other hand, Pindar himself might have been lost in a single scene.

Marvel. True: but tell me, friend John, are you really serious in your proposal of interspersing a few antiquated words, that my comedy may be acceptable to the readers of Plautus and Terence? This I hear.

Milton. I have, on several occasions, been a sufferer by the delivery of my sentiments to a friend. Antiquated words, used sparingly and characteristically, give often a force, and always a gravity, to composition. It is not every composition that admits them: a comedy may in one character, but charily and choicely.

There is in Plautus a great fund of language and of wit: he is far removed from our Shakespeare, but resembles him more than any other of the ancients. In reading him and Terence, my delight arises not so materially from the aptitude of character and expression, as from a clear and unobstructed insight into the feelings and manners of those ancient times, and an admission into the conversations to which Scipio and Lælius attended.

You will carefully observe the proper and requisite unities, not according to the wry rigour of our neighbours, who never take up an old idea without some extravagance in its application. We would not draw out a conspiracy in the presence of those who are conspired against; nor hold it needful to call a council of postilions, before we decide on the distance we may allow to our heroes between the acts. Let others treat them as monkeys and parrots, loving to hear them chatter, tied by the leg. The music renders a removal of twenty or thirty miles, during the action, probable enough, unless you take out your watch, and look upon it while you are listening. In that case, although you oblige the poet to prove the pedigree of the horses, and to bring witnesses that such horses might go thus far without drawing bit, your reasons are insufficient by fifty minutes or an hour.

The historical dramas of Shakespeare should be designated by that name only, and not be called tragedies, lest persons who reflect little (and how few reflect much?) should try them by the rules of

Aristoteles; which would be as absurd as to try a gem upon a touchstone. Shakespeare, in these particularly, but also in the rest, can only be relished by a people which retains its feelings and character in perfection. The French, more than any other, are transmuted by the stream that runs over them, like the baser metals. Beautiful poems, in dialogue too, may be composed on the greater part of a life, if that life be eventful, and if there be a proper choice of topics. Votivá veluti depicta tabella.

No other than Shakespeare hath ever yet been able to give unceasing interest to similar pieces: but he has given it amply to such as understand him. Sometimes his levity (we hear) is misplaced. Human life is exhibited not only in its calamities and its cares, but in the gay unguarded hours of ebullient and confident prosperity; and we are the more deeply interested in the reverses of those whose familiarity we have long enjoyed, and whose festivity we have recently partaken.

Marvel. Now, what think you about the number of acts?

Milton. There is no reason, in nature or in art, why a drama should occupy five. Be assured, my friend Andrew, the fifth-act-men will hereafter be thought as absurd as the fifth-monarchy-men. The number of acts should be optional, like the number of scenes, and the division of them should equally be subordinate to the convenience of the poet in the procession of his events. In respect to duration, nothing is requisite or reasonable but that it should not loiter nor digress, and that it should not exhaust the patience nor disappoint the expectation of the audience. Dramatists have gone to work in this business with so much less of wisdom than of system, that I question, when they say a comedy or tragedy in fire acts, whether they should not rather say in five scenes; whether, in fact, the scenes should not designate the divisions, and the acts the subdivisions; for the scene usually changes to constitute a new act, and when a fresh actor enters we usually call it a new scene. I do not speculate on anyone carrying the identity of place strictly throughout a whole performance, least of all, a tragedy, unless for the purpose of ridiculing some late French critics. As a tragedy must consist of opposite counsels and unforeseen events, if the author should exhibit his whole action in one hall or chamber, he would be laughed to scorn. Comedy is not formed to astonish: she neither expects nor wishes great changes. Let her argue rarely; let her remark lightly; if she reasons

Those

too well, her audience will leave her, and reflect upon it. generally are the most temperate who have large and well-stored cellars. You have everything at home, Andrew, and need not step Those show that they possess much who hold

out of your way. much back.

Marvel. Be not afraid of me: I will not push my characters forward, and make them stare most one upon another when they are best acquainted. The union of wisdom with humour is unexpected enough for me. I would rather see it than the finest piece of arras slit asunder, or the richest screen in Christendom overturned; than the cleverest trick that was ever played among the scenes, or than a marriage that should surprise me like an Abyssinian's with a Laplander.

VII. LORD BACON AND RICHARD HOOKER.

Bacon. Hearing much of your worthiness and wisdom, Master Richard Hooker, I have besought your comfort and consolation in this my too heavy affliction: for we often do stand in need of hearing what we know full well, and our own balsams must be poured into our breasts by another's hand. As the air at our doors is sometimes more expeditious in removing pain and heaviness from the body than the most far-fetched remedies would be, so the voice alone of a neighbourly and friendly visitant may be more effectual in assuaging our sorrows, than whatever is most forcible in rhetoric and most recondite in wisdom. On these occasions we cannot put ourselves in a posture to receive the latter, and still less are we at leisure to look into the corners of our store-room, and to uncurl the leaves of our references. As for Memory, who, you may tell me, would save us the trouble, she is footsore enough in all conscience with me, without going further back. Withdrawn as you live from court and courtly men, and having ears occupied by better reports than such as are flying about me, yet haply so hard a case as mine, befalling a man heretofore not averse from the studies in which you take delight, may have touched you with some concern.

Hooker. I do think, my Lord of Verulam, that, unhappy as you appear, God in sooth has foregone to chasten you, and that the day which in his wisdom he appointed for your trial, was the very day on which the King's Majesty gave unto your ward and custody the great seal of his English realm. And yet perhaps it may be, let me utter it without offence, that your features and stature were from that day forward no longer what they were before. Such an effect