drama, or of the prolific and brilliant services of our most celebrated authors in that department of literature. This formed no part of our plan; and, if attempted, would have increased the bulk of our work to an inconvenient size. With a few exceptions, therefore, we have omitted the names of many distinguished writers for the stage who were the predecessors, contemporaries, or successors of Shakspeare. Our biographical sketches do not embrace the lives of Lyly, Marlow, Middleton, Rowley, Marston, Chapman, Decker, Ford, and Webster; and, for the same reason for which they were excluded, no reference is made to the principal dramatists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Otway, Lee, Wycherly, Vanburgh, Congreve, Farquhar, Cibber, Murphy, Cumberland, Sheridan, and several other eminent authors in the same walk of literature. Those who are desirous of obtaining information on this subject, should consult Sir Walter Scott's " Essay on the Drama," Hallam's "Introduction to the Literature of Europe;" Schlegel's "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature;" Hazlitt's "Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth;" Craik's "Sketches of Literature ;" and numerous essays in "Blackwood's Magazine;" and the "Edinburgh" and "Quarterly" Reviews. From the last-mentioned periodical work, we transcribe a beautiful passage on the style of our old dramatic authors, and the change effected in the intellectual character of the age by the great ornaments of our poetical literature. This extract will be found in a masterly criticism on Dyce's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, published in the number for September, 1848: "Our old dramatists were obliged by their vocation to study a bold, clear, idiomatic style of writing; the works of the more eminent among them are treasures of our language as well as of poetic thought. If, as regards actual life, they present no image of their times which we can trust or take literally-though doubtless their faults of manners and of morals are reflections of the age they lived in-yet we find in them chiefly the poetic mind of that 'golden time' of our literature. In Chaucer, poetry was in its keen, bright, rosy dawn; in Spenser, with Sidney by his side, we see its brilliant morning; Shakspeare and his dramatic contemporaries form its noon-day splendour; and Milton may be regarded as the purple sunset, serene, sublime, magnificent: never was the pomp of the heavens so great, though the ardour and energy of the light had abated, as when that great poetic day was drawing to a close. The next light that rose in the sky was bright and fair, but it was a reflected, and comparatively a cold and lesser radiance. Even Byron would not have denied that the imaginative poetry of Queen Anne's time was to that of Elizabeth and James as moonshine to warm sunlight.* Beaumont and Fletcher were too large a part of the noon-day beaming to be neglected by any lover and servant of the English Muse; they are too extensive, and, in a literary point of view, too pure writers to be passed over by any regular student of our language; and such students will not be ungrateful to Mr. Dyce." EDMUND WALLER. But now, my muse, a softer strain rehearse, Addison. THE following abridgment of Edmund Waller's life is taken from Chambers's interesting notice of his works in the "Cyclopedia of English Literature." A more elaborate biography of this pleasing writer will be found. in Dr. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Aikin's "British Poets," Gorton's "Biographical Dictionary," and "The Encyclopedia Britannica." "Waller was a courtly and amatory poet, inferior to Herrick or Suckling in natural feeling and poetic fancy, but superior to them in correctness, and in general Cowper may be fancifully looked on as a morning star which heralded another sunrise, in the dim evening of which new day we now meditate on the past and hope for the future. powers of versification. The poems of Waller have all the smoothness and polish of modern verse; and hence a high, perhaps too high, rank has been claimed for him as one of the first refiners and improvers of poetical diction. One cause of Waller's refinement was doubtless his early and familiar intercourse with the court and nobility, and the light conversational nature of most of his productions. He wrote for the world of fashion and of taste-consigning The noon of manhood to a myrtle shade. And he wrote in the same strain till he was upwards of fourscore. "His life has more romance than his poetry. Waller was born at Coleshill, in Hertfordshire, in 1605, and in his infancy was left heir to an estate of £3,500 per annum. His mother was a sister of the celebrated John Hampden, but was a royalist in feeling, and used to lecture Cromwell for his share in the death of Charles I. Her son, the poet, was either a roundhead or a royalist, as the time served. He entered Parliament and wrote his first poem when he was eighteen. At twenty-five he married a rich heiress of London, who died the same year, and the poet immediately became a suitor of Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester. To this proud and peerless fair one Waller dedicated the better portion of his poetry, and the groves of Penshurst echoed to the praises of his Sacharissa. Lady Dorothea, however, was inexorable, and bestowed her hand on the Earl of Sunderland. It is said that, meeting her long afterwards, when she was far advanced in years, the lady asked him when he would again write such verses upon her, 'When you are as young, madam, and as handsome, as you were then,' replied the ungallant poet. The incident affords a key to Waller's character. He was easy, witty, and accomplished, but cold and selfish; destitute alike of high principle and deep feeling. "As a member of Parliament, Waller distinguished himself on the popular side, and was chosen to conduct the prosecution against Judge Crawley for his opinion in favour of levying ship-money. His speech, on delivering the impeachment, was printed, and 20,000 copies of it sold in one day. Shortly afterwards, however, Waller joined in a plot to surprise the city militia, and let in the King's forces, for which he was tried and sentenced to one year's imprisonment, and to pay a fine of £10,000. His conduct on this occasion was mean and abject. At the expiration of his imprisonment, the poet went abroad, and resided, amidst much splendour and hospitality, in France. He returned during the Protectorate; and when Cromwell died, Waller celebrated the event in one of his most vigorous and im pressive poems. The image of the Commonwealth, though reared by no common hands, soon fell to pieces under Richard Cromwell, and Waller was ready with a congratulatory address to Charles II. The royal offering was considered inferior to the panegyric on Cromwell, and the King himself (who admitted the poet to terms of courtly intimacy) is said to have told him of the disparity. Poets, sire,' replied the witty, selfpossessed Waller, 'succeed better in fiction than in truth.' In the first Parliament summoned by Charles, Waller sat for the town of Hastings, and he served for different places in all the Parliaments of that reign. Bishop Burnet says he was the delight of the House of Commons. At the accession of James II. in 1685, the venerable poet, then eighty years of age, was elected representative for a borough in Cornwall. The mad career of James, in seeking to subvert the national church and constitution, was foreseen by this wary and sagacious observer: He will be left,' said he, 'like a whale upon the strand.' "Feeling his long-protracted life drawing to a close, Waller purchased a small property at Coleshill, saying, 'he would be glad to die like the stag, where he was roused.' The wish was not fulfilled: he died at Beaconsfield, on the 21st of October, 1687; and in the churchyard of that place (where also rest the ashes of Edmund Burke) a monument has been erected to his memory." It was not until the latter part of Waller's life that he turned his thoughts to devotion, and composed his "Divine Poems." Dr. Johnson was one of the distinguished men of his day, who held in light estimation sacred verse, and who endeavoured to prove, in his life of Waller, that poetry, when used as a vehicle for religious thoughts, and applied to purposes of devotion, very seldom succeeds in its object. Notwithstanding these opinions, which are defended by this eminent author with considerable ingenuity, he speaks in the most favourable terms of Waller's sacred poems, which, he observes, "deserve particular regard: they were the work of his declining life of those hours in which he looked upon the fame and the folly of the time past, with the sentiments which his great predecessor, Petrarch, bequeathed to posterity, upon his review of that love of poetry which has given him immortality." From the foregoing outline of Waller's life, it is obvious that there was nothing pure or independent in his public character. With talents which, if employed in a good cause, would have conduced to its advancement, he was satisfied to play the degrading part of an unscrupulous pliant courtier-despised by all parties; and none, therefore, placing confidence in his integrity. Lord Clarendon has drawn a portrait of the poet with rigorous severity, but with a strict regard to truth:-"He had been even nursed in Parliament, where he sat when he was very young; and so, when they were resumed again (after a long intermission), he appeared in those assemblies with great advantage; having a graceful way of speaking, and by thinking much on several arguments (which his temper and complexion, that had much of melancholic, inclined him to), he seemed often to speak upon the sudden, when the occasion had only administered the opportunity of saying what he had thoroughly considered, which gave a great lustre to all he said; which yet was rather of delight than weight. There needs no more be said to extol the excellence and power of his wit, and pleasantness of his conversation, than that it was of magnitude enough to cover a world of very great faults; that is, so to cover them, that they were not taken notice of to his reproach; viz., a narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree; an abjectness and want |