Fears nothing mortal but to be unjust;
Who is not blown up with the flattering puffs
Of spungy sycophants ; who stands unmoved,
Despite the justling of opinion ;
Who can enjoy himself, maugre the throng,
That strive to press his quiet out of him ;

Who sits upon Jove's footstool, as I do,
Adoring, not affecting majesty ;
Whose brow is wreathed with the silver crown
Of clear content: this, Lucio, is a king,
And of this empire every man's possess'd
That's worth his soul.-

GEORGE CHAPMAN.

(Born, 1567. Died, 1634.]

GEORGE CHAPMAN was born at Hitching-hill*, Chapman seems to have been a favourite of in the county of Hertford, and studied at Oxford. his own times ; and in a subsequent age, his verFrom thence he repaired to London, and became sion of Homer excited the raptures of Waller, the friend of Shakspeare, Spenser, Daniel, Mar and was diligently consulted by Pope. The latter lowe, and other contemporary men of genius. speaks of its daring fire, though he owns that it He was patronised by Prince Henry, and Carr is clouded by fustian. Webster, his fellow Earl of Somerset. The death of the one, and dramatist, praises his . full and heightened style,' the disgrace of the other, must have injured his a character which he does not deserve in any prospects ; but he is supposed to have had some favourable sense ; for his diction is chiefly place at court, either under King James or his marked by barbarous ruggedness, false elevation, consort Anne. He lived to an advanced age ; and extravagant metaphor. The drama owes and, according to Wood, was a person of reverend him very little; his Bussy D'Ambois is a piece aspect, religious, and temperate. Inigo Jones, | of frigid atrocity, and in the Widow's Tears, with whom he lived on terms of intimate friend where his heroine Cynthia falls in love with a ship, planned and erected a monument to his sentinel guarding the corpse of her husband, memory over his burial-place, on the south whom she was bitterly lamenting, he has dramaside of St. Giles's church in the fields ; but it tised one of the most puerile and disgusting was unfortunately destroyed with the ancient legends ever fabricated for the disparagement of church.

female constancyt.

FROM THE COMEDY OF ALL FOOLS.

PRIDE.

FROM THE SAMR.

O, the good gods,
How blind is pride ! What eagles are we still
In matters that belong to other men !
What beetles in our own !-

A SON APPEASING HIS FATHER BY SUBMISSION,

AFTER A STOLEN MARRIAGE.

FROM THE SAME.

Speech of Valerio to Rynaldo, in answer to his bitter

invective against the Sex.
I TELL thee love is nature's second sun,
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
And as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,
Are given in vain to men ; so without love
All beauties bred in women are in vain,
All virtues born in men lie buried,
For love informs them as the sun doth colours.
And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers,
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,
Brave resolution, and divine discourse.
O 'tis the paradise ! the heaven of earth!
And didst thou know the comfort of two hearts
In one delicious harmony united,
As to joy one joy, and think both one thought,
Live both one life, and there in double life,

Persons.-Gostanzo, the father; VALERIO, the son; Marc

ANTONIO and RYNALDO, friends ; and GRATIANA, the
bride of VALERIO.

Ryn. Come on, I say ;
Your father with submission will be calm'd !

[t“Chapman, who assisted Ben Jonson and some others in comedy, deserves no great praise for his Bussy D'Ambois. The style in this, and in all his tragedies, is extravagantly hyperbolical ; he is not very dramatic, nor has any power of exciting emotion except in those who sympathise with a tumid pride and self-confidence. Yet he has more thinking than many of the old dramatists. His tragicomedies All Fools and The Gentleman-Usher, are perhaps superior to his tragedies."--HALLAM, Lil. Hisl., vol. iii. p.621.

" Chapman would have made a great Epic Poet, if indeed he has not abundantly shown himself to be one : for his Homer is not so properly a Translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written"-LAMB.]

Thou wouldst abhor thy tongue for blasphemy.

* William Browne, the pastoral poet, calls him “ the learned Shopherd of fair Hitching-hill."

131

i

Come on, down on your knees.

Gost. Notable wag.
Gost. Villain, durst thou

Val. I know I have committed
Presume to gull thy father ? dost thou not A great impiety, not to move you first
Tremble to see my bent and cloudy brows Before the dame, I meant to make my wife.
Ready to thunder on thy graceless head,

Consider what I am, yet young, and green,
And with the bolt of my displeasure cut

Behold what she is; is there not in her
The thread of all my living from thy life,

Ay, in her very eye, a power to conquer
For taking thus a beggar to thy wife?

Even
age

itself and wisdom ? Call to mind,
Val. Father, if that part I have in your blood, Sweet father, what yourself being young have
If tears, which so abundantly distil

been, Out of my inward eyes ; and for a need

Think what you may be; for I do not think Can drown these outward (lend me thy handker- The world so far spent with you, but you may chief),

Look back on such a beauty, and I hope
And being indeed as many drops of blood, To see you young again, and to live long
Issuing from the creator of my heart,

With

young affections ; wisdom makes a man Be able to beget so much compassion,

Live young for ever : and where is this wisdom
Not on my life, but on this lovely dame,

If not in you ? alas, I know not what
Whom I hold dearer-

Rest in your wisdom to subdue affections ;
Gost. Out upon thee, villain.

But I protest it wrought with me so strongly, Marc. Ant. Nay, good Gostanzo, think you are That I had quite been drown'd in seas of tears, a father.

Had I not taken hold in happy time Gost. I will not hear a word; out, out upon Of this sweet hand; 'my heart had been consumed thee:

T'a heap of ashes with the flames of love, Wed without my advice, my love, my knowledge, Had it not sweetly been assuaged and cool' Ay, and a beggar too, a trull, a blowze?

With the moist kisses of these sugar'd lips. Ryn. You thought not so last day, when you Gost. O puissant wag, what huge large thongs offer'd her

he cuts
A twelvemonth's board for one night's lodging Out of his friend Fortunio’s stretching leather.
with her.

Marc. Ant. He knows he does it but to blind
Gost. Go to, no more of that! peace, good my eyes.
Rynaldo,

Gost. O excellent ! these men will put up any. It is a fault that only she and

thing.
Ryn. Well, sir, go on, I pray.

Val. Had I not had her, I had lost my life :
Gost. Have I, fond wretch,

Which life indeed I would have lost before
With utmost care and labour brought thee up, I had displeased you, had I not received it
Ever instructing thee, omitting never

From such a kind, a wise, and honour'd father. The office of a kind and careful father,

Gost. Notable boy. | To make thee wise and virtuous like thy father ? Val. Yet do I here renounce And hast thou in one act everted all ?

Love, life and all, rather than one hour longer Proclaim'd thyself to all the world a fool ? Endure to have your love eclipsed from me.

Grat. 0, I can hold no longer, if thy words
Val. Father, say not so.

Be used in earnest, my Valerio,
Gost. Nay, she's thy own; here, rise fool, take Thou wound'st my heart, but I know 'tis in jest.

Gost. No, I'll be sworn she has her liripoop too. Live with her still

, I know thou count’st thyself Grat. Didst thou not swear to love me, spite of Happy in soul, only in winning her :

father and all the world? Be happy still, here, take her hand, enjoy her. Would not a son hazard his father's wrath,

That nought should sever us but death itself?

Val. I did ; but if my father
His reputation in the world, his birthright,
To have but such a mess of broth as this?

Will have his son forsworn, upon his soul

The blood of my black perjury shall lie, Marc

. Ant. Be not so violent, I pray you, good For I will seek his favour though I die.

Gostanzo,
Take truce with passion, license

Gost. No, no, live still my son, thou well shalt
your sad
son,

know
To speak in his excuse ?
Gost. What? what excuse ?

I have a father's heart : come, join your hands, Can any orator in this case excuse him?

Still keep thy vows, and live together still, What can he say? what can be said of any?

Till cruel death set foot betwixt you both. Val. Alas, sir, hear me ! all that I can say

Val. O speak you this in earnest ?
In my excuse, is but to show love's warrant.

Gost. Ay, by heaven !
Val. And never to recall it ?
Gost. Not till death.

you know,

To wed a beggar?

her to thee,

THOMAS RANDOLPH.

[Born, 1605. Died, 1034.)

Thomas RANDOLPH was the son of a steward to sonifications, and even refines his representations Lord Zouch. He was a king's scholar at West of abstract character into conflicts of speculative minster, and obtained a fellowship at Cambridge. opinion. His wit and learning endeared him to Ben Jonson, For his skill in this philosophical pageantry who owned him, like Cartwright, as his adopted the poet speaks of being indebted to Aristotle, son in the Muses. Unhappily he followed the taste and probably thought of his play what Voltaire of Ben not only at the pen, but at the bottle ; and said of one of his own, “This would please you, if he closed his life in poverty, at the age of twenty you were Greeks." The female critic's reply to nine,-a date lamentably premature, when we Voltaire was very reasonable, “But we are not consider the promises of his genius. His wit and Greeks.” Judging of Randolph however by the humour are very conspicuous in the Puritan plan which he professed to follow, his execution characters, whom he supposes the spectators of is vigorous : his ideal characters are at once his scenes in the Muse's Looking-Glass. Through- | distinct and various, and compact with the exout the rest of that drama (though it is on the pression which he purposes to give them. He whole his best performance) he unfortunately was author of five other dramatic pieces, besides prescribed to himself too hard and confined a

miscellaneous poems*. system of dramatic effect. Professing simply, He died at the house of his friend, W. Stafford, " in single scenes to show,

Esq. of Blatherwyke, in his native county, and How comedy presents each single vice,

was buried in the adjacent church, where an Ridiculous,"

appropriate monument was erected to him by Sir he introduces the vices and contrasted humours Christopher, afterwards Lord Hatton. of human nature in a tissue of unconnected per

INTRODUCTORY SCENE OF “THE MUSES LOOKING-GLASS."

Enter BIRD, a feather-man, and MRS. FLOWERDEW, For they are all grown so obscene of late, wife to a haberdasher of small wares-the one having

That one begets another. brought feathers to the playhouse, the other pins and

Mrs. F. Flat fornication ! looking-glasses—two of the sanctified fraternity of Blackfriars.

I wonder anybody takes delight

To hear them prattle. Mrs. Flowerdew. SEE, brother, how the wicked

Bird. Nay, and I have heard, throng and crowd To works of vanity ! not a nook or corner

That in a-tragedy, I think they call it,

They make no more of killing one another, In all this house of sin, this cave of filthiness,

Than you sell pins.
This den of spiritual thieves, but it is stuffd,

Mrs. F. Or you sell feathers, brother ;
Stuff'd, and stuff'd full, as is a cushion,
With the lewd reprobate.

But are they not hang'd for it ?

Bird. Law grows partial,
Bird. Sister, were there not before inns-
Yes, I will say inns (for my zeal bids me

And findsit but chance-medley: and their comedies

Will abuse you, or me, or anybody ;
Say filthy inns), enough to harbour such
As travell’d to destruction the broad way,

We cannot put our monies to increase
But they build more and more—more shops of Satan? By lawful usury, nor break in quiet,
Mrs. F. Iniquity aboundeth, though pure zeal

Nor put off our false wares, nor keep our wives Teach, preach, huff, puff, and snuff at it; yet still,

Finer than others, but our ghosts must walk Still it aboundeth! Had we seen a church,

Upon their stages. A new-built church, erected north and south,

Mrs. F. Is not this flat conjuring, It had been something worth the wondering at.

To make our ghosts to walk ere we be dead ? Bird. Good works are done.

Bird. That's nothing, Mrs. Flowerdew ! they Mrs. F. I say no works are good;

The knave, the fool, the devil and all, for money. Good works are merely popish and apocryphal. Bird. But the bad abound, surround, yea, and

* 1. Aristippus, or the Jovial Philosopher.—2. The Con.

ceited Pedlar.-3. The Jealous Lovers, a comedy.-4. Amynconfound us.

tas, or the Impossible Dowry, a pastoral. - 5. Hey for No marvel now if playhouses increase,

Honesty, Down with Knavery, a comedy.

will play

monsters

Mrs.F. Impiety! O, that men endued with reason That I may see whether 'tis art or nature Should have no more grace in them !

Which heightens most my blood and appetite. Bird. Be there not other

Nor cease I here : give me the seven orbs, Vocations as thriving, and more honest ?

To charm my ears with their celestial lates, Bailiffs, promoters, jailors, and apparitours, To which the angels that do move those spheres Beadles and martials-men, the needful instruments Shall sing some am'rous ditty. Nor yet here Of the republic; but to make themselves

Fix I my bounds : the sun himself shall fire Such monsters ! for they are monsters-th' are The phenix nest to make me a perfume,

While I do eat the bird, and eternally Base, sinful, shameless, ugly, vile, deformid, Quaff off eternal nectar! These, single, are Pernicious monsters!

But torments ; but together, 0 together, Mrs. F. I have heard our vicar

Each is a paradise! Having got such objects Call play-houses the colleges of transgression, To please the senses, give me senses too Wherein the seven deadly sins are studied. Fit to receive those objects ; give me, therefore,

Bird. Why then the city will in time be made An eagle's eye, a blood-hound's curious smell, An university of iniquity.

A stag's quick hearing ; let my feeling be We dwell by Black-Friars college, where I wonder As subtle as the spider's, and my taste How that profane nest of pernicious birds

Sharp as a squirrel's--then I'll read the Alcoran, Dare roost themselves there in the midst of us, And what delights that promises in future, So many good and well-disposed persons.

I'll practise in the present.
O impudence !

Mrs. P. It was a zealous prayer
I heard a brother make concerning play-houses.
Bird. For charity, what is't ?

Colax, the flatterer, between the dismal philosopher Mrs. F. That the Globe*

Anaisthetus and the epicure Acolastus, accommodating

his opinions to both.
Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice,
Had been consumed ; the Phenix burnt to ashes; Acolastus. Then let's go drink a while.
The Fortune whipt for a blind whore; Black-Friars

Anaisthetus. 'Tis too much labour. Happy TanHe wonders how it 'scaped demolishing

That never drinks !

(talus, l' th’ time of reformation : lastly, he wish'd The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear Colax. Sir, I commend this temperance. Your And there be soundly baited.

[garden, Is able to contemn these petty baits, [arm'd soul Bird. A good prayer !

These slight temptations, which we title pleasures, Mrs. F. Indeed, it something pricks my con

That are indeed but names. Heaven itself knows science,

No such like thing. The stars nor eat, nor drink, I come to sell 'em pins and looking-glasses. Nor lie with one another, and you imitate Bird. I have their custom, too, for all their Those glorious bodies ; by which noble abstinence feathers;

You gain the name of moderate, chaste, and sober, 'Tis fit that we, which are sincere professors, While this effeminate gets the infamous terms Should gain by infidels.

Of glutton, drunkard, and adulterer ;
Pleasures that are not man's, as man is man,
But as his nature sympathies with beasts.

You shall be the third Cato-this grave look
SPEECH OF ACOLASTUS THE EPICURE. And rigid eyebrow will become a censor-
MUSE'S LOOKING-GLASS.

But I will fit you with an object, Sir,

My noble Anaisthetus, that will please you ; 0! now for an eternity of eating!

It is a looking-glass, wherein at once
I would have

You may see all the dismal groves and caves, My senses feast together ; Nature envied us

The horrid vaults, dark cells, and barren deserts, Io giving single pleasures. Let me have

With what in hell itself can dismal be! i My ears, eyes, palate, nose, and touch, at once

Anaisth. This is, indeed, a prospect fit for me. Enjoy their happiness. Lay me in a bed

[Erit. Made of a summer's cloud ; to my embraces Acolas. He cannot see a stock or stone, but pre| Give me a Venus hardly yet fifteen,

He wishes to be turn’d to one of those. [sently Fresh, plump, and active-she that Mars enjoy'd I have another humour-I cannot see 1 Is grown too stale ; and then at the same instant A fat voluptuous sow with full delight

My touch is pleased, I would delight my sight Wallow in dirt, but I do wish myself
With pictures of Diana and her nymphs

Transform'd into that blessed epicure ;
Naked and bathing, drawn by some Apelles ; Or when I view the hot salacious sparrow,
By them some of our fairest virgins stand,

I wish myself that little bird of love. * That the Globe, &c.-The Globe, the Phænix, the Fortune, the Blackfriars, the Red Bull, and Bear Garden,

Colax. It shows you a man of soft moving clay, were names of several playhouses then in being

Not made of flint. Nature has been bountiful

RICHARDCORBET.

(Born, 1582. Died, 1635.)

The anecdotes of this facetious bishop, quoted pleasantry, the furious orders against them which by Headley from the Aubrey MSS. would fill Laud enjoined him to execute. On the whole he several pages of a jest-book. It is more to his does credit to the literary patronage of James, honour to be told, that though entirely hostile in who made him dean of Christ's Church, and suchis principles to the Puritans, he frequently cessively bishop of Oxford and Norwich. softened, with his humane and characteristic