level speaking, by figurative expressions, or hyperbolical allusions. A few scattered exceptions occur now and then, where the hectic flush of passion forces them from the lips, and they are not the worse for being rare. Thus, in the play called A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS, Wendoll, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with his obligations to her husband, interrupts her hastily, by saying -“Oh speak no more! For more than this I know, and have recorded And further on, Frankford, when doubting his wife's fidelity, says, with less feeling indeed, but with much elegance of fancy, "Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs, So also, when returning to his house at midnight to make the fatal discovery, he exclaims, "Astonishment, Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart, It is the reality of things present to their imaginations, that makes these writers so fine, so bold, and yet so true in what they describe. Nature lies open to them like a book, and was not to them" invisible, or dimly seen" through a veil of words and filmy abstractions. Such poetical ornaments are however to be met with at considerable intervals in this play, and do not disturb the calm serenity and domestic simplicity of the author's style. The conclusion of Wendoll's declaration of love to Mrs. Frankford may serve as an illustration of its general merits, both as to thought and diction. "Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful And at one hazard, all my earthly means. And I am then undone. I care not, I; "Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he'll kill me; I care not; 'twas for you. Say I incur The general name of villain thro' the world, Of traitor to my friend: I care not, I; you I love, and for your love I'll die.” The affecting remonstrance of Frankford to his wife, and her repentant agony at parting with him, are already before the public, in Mr. Lamb's Specimens. The winding up of this play is rather awkwardly managed, and the moral is, according to established usage, equivocal. It required only Frankford's reconciliation to his wife, as well as his forgiveness of her, for the highest breach of matrimonial duty, to have made a Woman Killed with Kindness a complete anticipation of the Stranger. Heywood, however, was in that respect but half a Kotzebue! The view here given of country manners is truly edifying. As in the higher walk of tragedy we see the manners and moral sentiments of kings and nobles of former times, here we have the feuds and amiable qualities of country 'squires and their relatives; and such as were the rulers, such were their subjects. The frequent quarrels and ferocious habits of private life are well exposed in the fatal rencounter between Sir Francis Acton and Sir Charles Mountford about a hawking match, in the ruin and rancorous persecution of the latter in consequence, and in the hard, unfeeling, coldblooded treatment he receives in his distress from his own relations, and from a fellow of the name of Shafton. After reading the sketch of this last character, who is introduced as a mere ordinary personage, the representative of a class, without any preface or apology, no one can doubt the credibility of that of Sir Giles Over-reach, who is professedly held up (I should think almost unjustly) as a prodigy of grasping and hardened selfishness. The influence of philosophy and prevalence of abstract reasoning, if it has done nothing for our poetry, has done, I should hope, something for our manners. The callous decla ration of one of these unconscionable churls, "This is no world in which to pity men," might have been taken as a motto for the good old times in general, and with a very few reservations, if Heywood has not grossly libelled them.-Heywood's plots have little of artifice or regularity of design to recommend them. He writes on carelessly, as it happens, and trusts to Nature, and a certain happy tranquillity of spirit, for gaining the favour of the audience. He is said, besides attending to his duties as an actor, to have composed regularly a sheet a day. This may account in some measure for the unembar- · rassed facility of his style. His own account makes the number of his writings for the stage, or those in which he had a main hand, upwards of 200. In fact, I do not wonder at any quantity that an author is said to have written; for the more a man writes, the more he can write. The same remarks will apply, with certain modifications, to other remaining works of this writer, the Royal King and Loyal Subject, a Challenge for Beauty, and the English Traveller. The barb of misfortune is sheathed in the mildness of the writer's temperament, and the story jogs on very comfortably, without effort or resistance, to the euthanasia of the catastrophe. In two of these, the person principally aggrieved survives, and feels himself none the worse for it. The most splendid passage in Heywood's comedies is the account of Shipwreck by Drink, in the English Traveller, which was the foundation of Cowley's Latin poem, Naufragium Joculare. The names of Middleton and Rowley, with which I shall conclude this Lecture, generally appear together as two writers who frequently combined their talents in the production of jointpieces. Middleton (judging from their separate works) was "the more potent spirit" of the two; but they were neither of them equal to some others. Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman never Vexed, which is written, in many parts, with a pleasing simplicity and naiveté equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton's style was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contemporaries. In his Women Beware Women, there |