The end of his life was a

wars on the royalist side. melancholy one. He and his wife were driven by the great fire of London from their residence in Fleet-street into St. Giles, where, from the loss of all they possessed, and from terror, they both died on the same day, in October, 1666. There is no ground for doubting either the purity of Shirley's motives, or the sincerity of his convictions in embracing the Roman Catholic faith. He received neither place nor pension as a reward for his conversion. On the contrary, he surrendered his living in the church, and was subjected to the suspicion which usually attaches to a sudden change in religious opinion. His dramas contain various allusions to this subject, and afford evidence of his fidelity to the theological belief which he appears to have conscientiously adopted, and to which he consistently adhered.

Charles Lamb, a critic eminently distinguished for his profound appreciation of the beauties of the old dramatists, designates Shirley as the "best of a great race of authors, all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common.' Campbell, in his "Essay on English Poetry," makes the following remarks on the style of this poet:"Shirley was the last of our good old dramatists. His language sparkles with the most exquisite images. Keeping some occasional pruriencies apart, the fault of his age rather than of himself, he speaks the most polished dialect of the stage. I consider his genius as rather brilliant and elegant, than as strong or lofty. His style, to use a line of his own, 'is studded, like a frosty night, with stars;' and a severe critic might say, that the stars often shine when the atmosphere is too frosty. From a general impression of his works, I should not paint his muse with the haughty form and features of inspiration, but with a countenance in its happy moments, arch, lovely, and interesting both in smiles and in tears; crowned with flowers, and not unindebted to ornament, but wearing the drapery and chaplet with a claim to them from natural beauty." This graceful tribute to the literary merits of Shirley has been blamed as too flattering. There can be no

doubt, however, that Shirley's works abound with exquisite passages which exhibit the strength and purity of the English language. Ellis included several choice extracts from his dramatic writings in his "Selections of Early English Poetry."

Shirley's works have been republished with many valuable annotations by various editors; but the most interesting, and best arranged collection of his dramatic productions appeared in 1822, with notes by Gifford, and a sketch of his life by the Rev. Alexander Dyce. Of his admirable edition a full account is given in the fortyninth volume of "The Quarterly Review." The writer of that brilliant article examines, with critical acuteness, the most admired of Shirley's plays, and delineates his merits in a masterly style. We give two extracts as specimens:-"Shirley was the 'last minstrel' of the early Engish stage. In him expired what may be properly called the school of Shakspeare. Like our northern poet's 'last of all the bards,' or, as he was called by one of his contemporaries, the last supporter of the dying scene,' after enjoying some years of fame and popularity, Shirley found himself fallen upon an ungenial time, on days in which his art could obtain but little audience. Before his career was half run, his occupation was proscribed; and at the Restoration, the lineal descent of Fletcher and Massinger, saw a new art to take possession of the stage. He was a stranger among the race of poets who sprang up around him he belonged to another age; some of his plays, as well as those of his great masters, Shakspeare and Fletcher, were indeed revived, but the rhyming heroic tragedy, and the profligate comedy of intrigue, were in the ascendant-and Shirley stood aloof. Conscious, as it were, that he belonged to a departed generation, that he had nothing in common with the popular playwrights of the modern era, he refused to become a pupil in the new, the degenerate school, and thus to form, as he might, the link between the romantic and that which called itself the heroic drama. Hence the civil wars draw a complete line of demarcation between two periods of dramatic art.

"Shirley, as a dramatist, bears evident indications of

being the last of a great, but almost exhausted school. It is the decline, though still the serene and beautiful decline, of a glorious day. The royal race submits with tranquil dignity to its deposition, but the sceptre is passing into other hands. His poetic character is by no means so strongly marked as that of most of his predecessors. The distinctive peculiarities of genius were pre-occupied. Of course the ground where Shakspeare had trod was not merely sacred-it was unattainable; and Jonson-though in his comedy of Manners' he was followed by many of the later writers-in his profound learning, and not less in his full and elaborate delineation of character, stood also alone. Massinger had excelled in vigorous and masculine eloquence, and in a peculiar style of dark moral painting, such as we trace in his Luke and his Sir Giles Overreach. The infinite variety of Beaumont and Fletcher seemed to leave no character unattempted, no passion unexplored, no situation untried. Among the inferior writers, Ford had stretched the passions on the rack, till they almost burst with agony. Webster, the spagnolet of the old drama, had, in the same manner, overwrought the principle of terror, and thus too often marred the impressiveness of that sombre grandeur in which lies his true strength. Middleton had passages of a kind of homely pathos not easily surpassed. Thus, when Shirley came on the stage, he might seem to succeed to a mine, of which the wealth had been completely exhausted-a land, of which every nook and corner had been explored and cultivated to its utmost height of productiveness. Every source from which dramatic invention had drawn its materials might seem dried up. The history of every country had been dramatized-every distinguished personage in ancient or modern times had appeared on the stage-even the novelists of Italy were well nigh run to their dregs: human nature itself might almost appear to have been worked out-every shade and modification of character had been variously combined, every incident placed in every possible light. Yet under all these disadvantages Shirley is an original writer:

though he perpetually works up materials of the same kind as those of his predecessors, yet his forms are new; though we are constantly reminded of the earlier writers, particularly of Fletcher his plays are far from servile copies; the manner of composition is the same, yet his lights and shadows are so infinitely varied, that the impression is entirely different. Even his style is his own: far inferior in force, in variety, in richness to his masters, it has an ease, a grace, sometimes an elegance, essentially his own. As softened and more delicatelypenciled outlines of characters, with which we are familiar, meet us again in the volumes of Shirley-so his poetry is full of the same images; yet passing, as it were, through the clear and pellucid medium of his mind, they appear as if they were the new-born creations of his own fancy."

Schlegel, Hazlitt, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, and other eminent critics, have done justice to the genius of this great poet. In the thirty-eighth volume of "The Edinburgh Review" there is an elaborate dissertation on the old English dramatists. The following passage, in reference to Shirley, and to the general merits of the early poets, is just and discriminating :-" Shirley was a writer of about the same calibre as Ford, but with less pathos. And he was, moreover, the last of that bright line of poets whose glory has run thus far into the future, and must last as long as passion, and profound thought, and fancy, and imagination, and wit, shall continue to be honoured. There may be a change of fashions, and revolutions of power; but the empire of intellect will always remain the same. There is a lofty stability in genius, a splendour in a learned renown, which no clouds can obscure or extinguish. The politician and his victories may pass away, and the discoveries in science be eclipsed; but the search of the poet and the philosopher is for immutable truth and their fame will be, like their object, immortal. We have now done with the ancients. We have endeavoured to trace, as well as we could, their individual likenesses: but they had also a general character which

belonged to their age, a pervading resemblance, in which their own peculiar distinctions were merged and lost. They were true English writers, unlatinized. They were not translators of French idioms, nor borrowers (without acknowledgment) of Roman thoughts. Their minds were not of exotic growth, nor their labours fashioned after a foreign model. Yet they were indebted to story and fable, to science and art-and they had a tincture of learning; but it was mixed with the bloom of fresh inspiration, and subdued to the purposes of original poetry. It was not the staple, the commodity upon which these writers traded; but was blended, gracefully and usefully, with their own homebred diction and original thought."

Shirley published a volume of his miscellaneous poems in 1646, which display talents of the highest class. We have selected two or three of these pieces, and assigned to them their appropriate place among our poetical selections. There could not be a finer dirge than "Death's Final Conquest ;" and no moral reflections are more solemn and impressive than those contained in his lines on Death, which we have elsewhere quoted. "Happy," says one who knew how to appreciate Shirley's intellectual character, "if in that sad hour the sentiment embodied in those exquisite stanzas, soothed and consoled his failing spirit." The mind that dictated the subjoined touching lines, so justly praised by "The Quarterly Review," could not have been insensible to moral excellence and religious feeling :

Hark! how chimes the passing bell!
There's no music to a knell:

All the other sounds we hear
Flatter, and but cheat the ear.
This doth put us still in mind
That our flesh must be resigned,
And, a general silence made,
The world be muffled in a shade.
Orpheus' lute, as poets tell,

Was but a moral of this bell.

In closing our notice of Shirley, it may be necessary to observe, that we have not attempted to give an outline of the origin, history, and progress of the