PHILIP MASSINGER.

1584-1640.

[THE struggle of Massinger's life is pathetically summed up in the entry of his burial in the parish register of St. Saviour's: March 20, 1639-40-buried Philip Massinger, a stranger.' This entry tells his whole story, its obscurity, humiliations, and sorrows. Dying in his house at Bankside, in the neighbourhood of the theatre which had been so often enriched by his genius, the isolation in which he lived is painfully indicated by this touching memorial. Yet there is little trace of a resentment against fortune in his writings, which are generally marked, on the contrary, by religious feeling, and that gentleness and patience of spirit by which he is said to have been distinguished in his intercourse with his contemporaries. The only passages that have an air of discontent are those in which he rails at kings, and chastises the vices and hollowness of fashionable life and its vulgar imitators; but these topics were the common property of all the dramatists. Massinger was not so profound in his development of the stronger passions as he was true and chaste in the delineation of quiet emotions and ordinary experiences. His vehement tragic bursts sometimes degenerate into rant; but his calmer scenes are always natural and just. 'He wrote,' observes Lamb, 'with that equability of all the passions which made his English style the purest and most free from violent metaphors and harsh constructions of any of the dramatists who were his contemporaries.'

The dates attached to the plays indicate the years in which they were produced upon the stage.]

THE

THE SWEETS OF BEAUTY.

HE blushing rose, and purple flower,
Let grow too long, are soonest blasted;

Dainty fruits, though sweet, will sour,
And rot in ripeness, left untasted.

Yet here is one more sweet than these:
The more you taste the more she'll please.

Beauty that's enclosed with ice,

Is a shadow chaste as rare;

Then how much those sweets entice,

That have issue full as fair!

Earth cannot yield, from all her powers,
One equal for dame Venus' bowers.

THE EMPEROR OF THE EAST. 1631.

DEATH.

HY art thou slow, thou rest of trouble, Death,

WHY

To stop a wretch's breath,

That calls on thee, and offers her sad heart

A prey unto thy dart?

I am nor young nor fair; be, therefore, bold:
Sorrow hath made me old,

Deformed, and wrinkled; all that I can crave,
Is quiet in my grave.

Such as live happy, hold long life a jewel;
But to me thou art cruel,

If thou end not my tedious misery;

And I soon cease to be.

Strike, and strike home, then; pity unto me,
In one short hour's delay, is tyranny.

THE GUARDIAN. 1633.

THE BRIDAL.

Juno to the Bride.

ENTER a maid; but made a bride,

Be bold and freely taste

The marriage banquet, ne'er denied
To such as sit down chaste.

Though he unloose thy virgin zone,
Presumed against thy will,
Those joys reserved to him alone,
Thou art a virgin still.

Hymen to the Bridegroom.

Hail, bridegroom, hail! thy choice thus made,
As thou wouldst have her true,
Thou must give o'er thy wanton trade,
And bid those fires adieu.

That husband who would have his wife
To him continue chaste,
In her embraces spends his life,
And makes abroad no waste.

Hymen and Juno.

Sport then like turtles, and bring forth
Such pledges as may be
Assurance of the father's worth,

And mother's purity.

Juno doth bless the nuptial bed;

Thus Hymen's torches burn.

Live long, and may, when both are dead,
Your ashes fill one urn!

WELCOME TO THE FOREST'S QUEEN.

WELCOME, thrice welcome to this shady green,

Our long-wished Cynthia, the forest's queen,

The trees begin to bud, the glad birds sing
In winter, changed by her into the spring.
We know no night,

Perpetual light

Dawns from your eye.

You being near,

We cannot fear,

Though death stood by.

From you our swords take edge, our heart grows

bold;

From you in fee their lives your liegemen hold.

These groves your kingdom, and our laws your will;
Smile, and we spare; but if you frown, we kill.
Bless then the hour
That gives the power

In which you may,
At bed and board,
Embrace your lord

Both night and day.

Welcome, thrice welcome to this shady green,
Our long-wished Cynthia, the forest's queen!

JOHN FORD.

1586-16-.

[WHILE Massinger was fighting against the ills and mortifications of a precarious pursuit, his contemporary Ford, two years his junior, was persevering in the profession of the law, filling up his leisure hours with dramatic poetry, and making an independence, which at last enabled him to marry (if the pleasant tradition may be trusted), and to spend the last years of his life at ease in his native place. He was descended from a family long settled in the north of Devonshire, was born in Islington in 1586, and is supposed to have died about 1640. In the poem on the Times' Poets, already quoted, he is described in a characteristic couplet:

'Deep in a dump John Ford was alone got,
With folded arms and melancholy hat.'

Whether the melancholy hat' really conveys a faithful image of the character of the man is questionable, for in the roll of worthies enumerated by Heywood in his Hierarchy of Angels, we are told that he was always called by the familiar name of Jack Ford, which argues a more social and genial nature.]

THE DRAMATISTS.

14

FANCIES are but streams

Of vain pleasure;

They, who by their dreams
True joys measure,
Feasting starve, laughing weep,
Playing smart; whilst in sleep

Fools, with shadows smiling,
Wake and find
Hopes like wind,

Idle hopes, beguiling.

Thoughts fly away; Time hath passed them:
Wake now, awake! see and taste them!

WH

BIRDS' SONGS.

WHAT bird so sings, yet so does wail?
'Tis Philomel, the nightingale;

Jugg, jugg, jugg, terue she cries,
And, hating earth, to heaven she flies.

Ha, ha! hark, hark! the cuckoos sing
Cuckoo! to welcome in the Spring.
Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear?
'Tis the lark's silver leer-a-leer.
Chirrup the sparrow flies away;
For he fell to't ere break of day.

Ha, ha! hark, hark! the cuckoos sing
Cuckoo! to welcome in the Spring.†

LIVE WITH ME.

LIVE with me still, and all the measures,

Played to by the spheres, I'll teach thee;

Let's but thus dally, all the pleasures

The moon beholds, her man shall reach thee.

* In this play Ford was joined by Dekker.

† Imitated from a song in Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe.-See ante, p. 50.