caused his characters to appear strange and unnatural in our times, just as many of the questions discussed in Plato appear to moderns puerile aud merely verbal. In both cases, however, we must take into consideration the customs, fashions, and opinions of the periods in which these writers lived. To feel Ben Jonson's beauties we must perambulate London with him in the early part of the seventeenth century. Along with Sogliardo, we must take a lesson from Shift, in "the most gentlemanlike use of tobacco, as also in the rare corollary and practice of the Cuban ebolition, euripus, and whiff, which we shall receive or take in here at London, and evaporate at Uxbridge or farther;"-we must see Master Matthew receiving instructions from Bobadil in the trick or two by which he may kill a man at pleasure; we must pay a visit to Lady Haughty and her "ladies collegiates"-call on Subtle "to buy a lucky sign for a shop," or to witness the process of projection—take a drink from Captain Otter's "bull, bear, and horse"-" enact very strange vapours" in the worshipful company of Dan Knockem, Val Cutting, and Captain Whet at Bartholomew fair-and finally saunter through the middle aisle of St Paul's, among the pimps, bullies, and imposters, who resorted thither. In short, other dramatists ridiculed folly in the grand characteristics which it wears in all ages-Ben Jonson in the particular apparel which it assumed in his time.

In addition to faultlessness of construction, and astonishing spirit in delineation of character, Jonson's plays exhibit a never-failing fund of rich humour, and a masculine force of expression, which alone would entitle him to no undistinguished rank. His humour is sometimes coarse, but it is always genuine and mirth-moving. In power of framing ludicrous situations, and painting ludicrous characters, he has no superior, and scarcely a rival. We doubt whether, even in Shakspeare, any thing of the same nature surpasses the grave, matter-of-fact, unimpassioned swagger of Captain Bobadil, or the exposure of his cowardice just when his vaunting has reached its climax. While, however, Jonson stands almost alone in these particulars, there are others in which he sank beneath many of his contemporaries. He wants the "fine madness" of Marlowe-the stately poetry of Chapman-the wandering but exquisite fancy of Fletcher-the measured genius of Beaumont-the impetuous fire of Dekker-the calm beauty and pure style of Massinger, and the exquisite melody and pathos of Ford: though in profound learning, in rich humour, in excellence of plot and general dramatic correctness, he surpasses them all. Jonson, in short, was either unequal to, or he chose not to attempt the expression of intense passion, and he very seldom sought to rise into the higher regions of imagination. Not that we mean to assert with some modern sciolists that he had no soul for poetry-we rather incline to think that the rigorous laws he had laid down for the regulation of his plays, too often curbed his genius. In proof of this, we need only refer to many passages in his masques-to his description of Catiline's last battle, and to the following exquisite defence of poetry with which we close our criticism on his plays :

Indeed, if you will look on Poesy,

As she appears in many, poor and lame,

We do not mention Shakspeare, for he combines all excellencies.

Patched up in remnants and old worn-out rags,
Half-starved for want of her peculiar food,
Sacred Invention: then, I must confirm
Both your conceit and censure of her merits.
But view her in her glorious ornaments,
Attired in all the majesty of art,

Set high in spirit with the precious taste
Of sweet philosophy, and, which is most,
Crowned with the rich traditions of a soul,
That hates to have her dignity profaned
With any relish of an earthly thought,

Oh then, how proud a presence does she bear!
Then is she like herself, fit to be seen

Of none but grave and consecrated eyes!

We have already mentioned that Jonson's pen was frequently employed in the production of masques for the entertainment of the court and nobility. The masques were a species of allegorical drama, which had their origin in the moralities, and differed principally from the regular drama in their shortness,-in their want of plot,-in the gorgeous pageantry with which they were entrapped, and in their representing abstract existences, or the beings of classical mythology, rather than real characters. They embodied and set visibly before the spectator

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,

That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,

Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths.'

Many of Jonson's masques are exquisitely beautiful. His boundless learning enabled him to summon up, and to represent with the aptest propriety, the sublime shadows of heathen mythology, and to bring forth from the wild regions of classic fable their richest treasures. He seems, too, to have allowed his fancy a more unrestrained play in the masques than in any other of his writings; though it were perhaps to be wished that he had spent on the legitimate drama much of the time employed on these elegant trifles.

Jonson's character has been attacked so repeatedly by some of the commentators on Shakspeare, that it would require far more space than we possess fully to vindicate him, although the attacks have been signalized by a compassionable stupidity and atrocious folly which make confutation easy. He was no doubt a man of arrogant disposition and warm overbearing temper; but these faults were more than counterbalanced by a warmth of heart, an almost child-like tenderness of affection, and an eagerness to acknowledge excellence wherever he saw it, which his detractors could neither appreciate nor understand. No man of his day had more warm or more frequent tributes of affection paid to him both living and dead, and no man returned them, while he had the power, with more zeal or readiness. His bearing might be rugged, but it could not hide the warm heart-the unflinching energy of purpose the love of truth-the profound veneration for virtue and contempt for vice-and in a word, the true nobility of soul which procured for him the reverence of Clarendon and adoration of Falkland.

Jonson's plays have been frequently reprinted. The best edition of his whole works is that published at London, in 1816, by G. and W. Nicol, &c., and edited by Gifford, in nine vols. 8vo.

John Ford.

BORN A.D. 1586.-DIED CIR. A. D. 1639.

The

JOHN FORD, like the great majority of the dramatists of the Elizabethan age, has left behind him no record of his character, or of the events of his life, save the scanty allusions to self which are to be found in the prologues and dedications to his plays. He was descended from a family of high respectability, and was born in Devonshire in the year 1586. Where he received his education is uncertain, but it is improbable that he entered either of the universities, since in 1602, he became a member of the Middle Temple. He began at an early age to relieve the tedium of his law-studies by paying devotion at the shrine of the muses, since in 1606, he published his Fame's Memorial,' a long elegiac poem on the death of the earl of Devonshire, which certainly bears every mark of having been a very juvenile performance. From this period little more is known concerning him, until the year 1629, when he published his Lover's Melancholy.' interval was spent in the discharge of his legal duties,-in writing for the stage in conjunction with Dekker and others, and probably, in composing the four plays, of which, through the carelessness of Warburton's servant, or rather of Warburton himself, we have only the titles remaining. The next record we have of his life relates to the year 1633, in which his genius seems to have been extraordinarily prolific, since in the course of it he gave to the world three of his best plays: Tis pity she's a Whore,' The Broken Heart,''Love's Sacrifice.' In the following year he published a historical drama, founded on the story of Perkin Warbeck; in 1638, the Fancies Chaste and Noble ;' and in 1639, The Lady's Trial.' The publication of this play is the last trace we have of his existence. Whether he died shortly after, or whether, withdrawing from literary publicity to the shades of retirement, his life was protracted to a late period, is alike unknown. At this point he drops suddenly into the fathomless ocean of the past, leaving us to imagine how and when he was gathered to his fathers. In addition to the plays we have mentioned, there are two commonly printed with his works, entitled, “The Sun's Darling,' and 'The Witch of Edmonton,' which he wrote in conjunction with Dekker and Rowley.

6

Unsatisfactory as this sketch must necessarily be, yet the subject of it has left behind him writings bearing marks of such pre-eminent excellence as to entitle him to no mean rank among those choice master-spirits, whose learning and genius have made the dramatic annals of the Elizabethan age more illustrious than those of any similar period in the history of any nation. We do not mean to deny that his plays are guilty of many faults-that he very seldom attends to the unities-that his plots are often ill-constructed, and the denouements frequently placed in the fourth act, while the fifth is left to drag its slow length along as best it may that his characters are often in bad keeping, and often uninteresting or disgusting—that unnatural crime is a favourite subject of his penor that his comic scenes are the most deplorable abortions conceivable, sometimes nauseating from their obscenity, and always wearisome from

their stupidity. None of these faults do we mean to deny, though we are quite aware that the numerous class of readers whose taste has been vitiated by the refinements and artifices which have been engrafted on our native English style of thought and writing-those who believe Addison to be the greatest of English prose-writers, and Pope, of English poets will find it difficult to comprehend the co-existence of any excellencies with such palpable defects. Those, however, who have soul enough to prefer the flowers of native genius to the exotics of artificial culture, and who therefore worship our old writers with that enthusiastic reverence which they so richly merit, will discover beauties in Ford, far more delightful than the tame monotony of mere correctness. He is not distinguished by the fire and impetuosity which characterized his predecessor Marlowe, and his associate Dekker; nor by the high and stately beauty of Chapman, and Massinger; nor the romantic fancy of Beaumont and Fletcher; least of all by the versatility and transcendant imagination of Shakspeare: his excellency consists in the music-breathing flow of his verse,-in the powerful working up of some of his scenes, in a vein of the most tender and exquisite pathos,-and in a certain indescribable air of placid melancholy which pervades all his more serious passages, producing an effect on the mind of the reader not unlike that occasioned by the closing twilight of a summer's evening. He very seldom reaches the sublime, but he has an almost unrivalled command over the delicately pathetic and beautiful. It has indeed been thought by some that his forte lies in the dreadful and appalling, but a very slight cxamination of his plays will suffice to show that, in Ford, the horrible is produced by stage-directions to put half-a-dozen of his characters to death, or by entrapping in a chair and bloodily murdering one of the heroes-not as in Shakspeare, by the mere descriptions and images of the poet operating on the imagination of the reader. Ford is unequal to the production of that higher and more intellectual species of the horrible which is exemplified in Clarence's dream, though quite capable of that grosser species which would have consisted in putting Clarence into the water in reality. Touching pathos and inimitable melody of versification are his grand excellencies, and in these no dramatic writer, save Shakspeare, can be styled his equal. Our limits prevent us from extracting a whole scene, but the following brief passage will give the reader who is unacquainted with Ford, some idea of the treasures laid up for him:

Glories

Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams,
And shadows soon decaying; on the stage

Of my mortality, my youth has acted
Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length

By varied pleasures, sweeten'd in the mixture,

But tragical in issue; beauty, pomp,

With every sensuality our giddiness
Doth frame an idol, are unconstant friends
When any troubled passion makes assault
On the unguarded castle of the mind.

The Broken Heart, Act III. Scene 5.

Ford's works have been several times reprinted. Incomparably the best edition is that published in London in 2 vols. 8vo. 1827, edited by Gifford.

Philip Massinger.

BORN A. D. 1584.-DIED A. D. 1640.

THE genius of this writer entitles him to be ranked among those to whom the English drama is chiefly indebted for the place it holds in the national literature. He was born in 1584, at Salisbury, and probably, it has been suggested, in the mansion of the earl of Pembroke, to whose establishment his father was attached in some capacity which enabled him to obtain the confidence and friendship of that enlightened nobleman. Our poet, it is supposed, passed all the earlier part of his youth in the earl's house at Wilton; but he had only attained the age of sixteen when the beneficent patron of both himself and his father died, and they were left to the protection of his son, a nobleman not less generous, or less inclined to patronize merit, but having claims upon his munificence which drew his attention from those of the younger Massinger. It is not known what situation his father held in the earl's household, but there is reason to believe that he was enabled to send his son to college without the assistance of his patron. Philip, who was entered as a commoner at Saint Alban's hall, continued there a space of about four years, when he was obliged to leave the university for want of funds. Of the manner in which he spent his time, while at college, two very opposite accounts are given; but it is easy to see that their apparent contradictions result from the different manner in which the writers of them viewed the same object. While Langbaine describes him as a diligent and talented student, Wood contemptuously announces that he knew neither logic nor philosophy, and that the whole of his time was wasted in idling over poetry and romance. But had he not been more than ordinarily careful in the pursuit of those studies which suited his taste, he would never have drawn down upon himself this severe rebuke; and Langbaine, who was far less devoted to scholastic learning than the historian, considered that he might with great fairness allow the poet credit for industry, and the acquisition of knowledge, though he had no ambition to seek honour in the schools.

Various reasons are alleged to account for his leaving Oxford without a degree, or rather for his not being able to raise a sufficient income for his support while he completed his residence. The death of his father is the most obvious cause of his misfortune; but it is consid ered strange that the earl of Pembroke should have neglected a young man whose talents were sufficiently manifest to give him a claim on his liberality. To explain this mystery, it is alleged, that there is evidence to prove that he had become a convert to catholicism, and that his being obliged to leave the university was, in various ways, the consequence of his conversion.

Without either a profession or a patron,-as destitute of interest as of money, he hastened to London, and immediately sought the theatres as affording the best prospect of furnishing him with employment. In what way he commenced his labours is not precisely known, but he appears to have formed a connexion with some of the wits about town, and to have earned his livelihood by assisting them in the composition