pleasant downs, where harmless shepherds are, some tuning their pipes, some singing roundelays to their gazing flocks: If, as I say, thou had'st rather (because it asks thy labour) remain where thou art, than strain thyself to walk forth with the muses, the fault proceeds from thy idleness, not from any want in my industry." The remarkable poem, of which its author thus speaks, is written throughout in the old Alexandrian metre, and contains much of that sweet variety of rural description which he promises in the above passage. Aikin, in his article on this author, professes his astonishment that two editions of his works should have been published within five years of each other, that is, ir 1748 and 1753, adding, that it is highly probable that not one of their purchasers ever completely perused the collection. The same observation might be made on similar grounds in respect to editions of even Milton and Dryden; there can, however, be little doubt but that the restoration of Drayton, and other writers of the same or an earlier period, would be of the most important service to our poetical literature, and afford one of the best signs that could be given of its improvement, or, perhaps, regeneration. The Barrons Wars;' England's Heroical Epistles The Miseries of Queen Margaret;' Nymphidia, the Court of the Fairy;'The Owl;' The Moon-Calf;' are the titles of his smaller works. Besides these, he wrote some legendary pieces, several pastorals, and numerous little poems, to which he gave the name of Ideas, Odes, Elegies, &c. These productions exhibit various degrees of merit. In some parts they are in every respect worthy of the golden age of English literature; they are in but few destitute of some grace, or of that winning plainness of description which, while it fails to dazzle the imagination, pleases it by the distinctness with which it draws its pictures.

6

Drayton exercised his art during a period of forty years, and throughout that period enjoyed the friendship of the most enlightened men of the country. Had he been of a servile disposition there is little doubt but that he might have made himself acceptable to the courtiers of King James, and through them to the monarch; but it may be observed, that the names of neither Buckingham, Somerset, nor Salisbury, occur in his works, and he lived, it may be hoped, wholly free from the vices of the court and its flatterers. His death took place in 1631, and his remains were deposited in Westminster abbey.

Henry Briggs.

BORN A. d. 1556.—died a. d. 1630.

THIS eminent mathematician and calculator was born at Warley-wood, in the parish of Halifax, Yorkshire, in the year 1556. He received the rudiments of education at a school in the neighbourhood of his birthplace, and, in 1579, entered of St John's college, Cambridge. After taking both degrees in arts, he was chosen fellow of his college in 1588. Four years afterwards he was appointed examiner and lecturer in mathematics, and soon after, reader of the physical lecture founded by Linacre.

Upon the establishment of Gresham college in London, he was chosen the first professor of geometry in that institution, in March, 1596.

Soon after this, he constructed a table for finding the latitude—the variation of the magnetic-needle being given. In his lectures at Gresham college, he first proposed the alteration of the scale of logarithms, from the hyperbolic form which Napier had given them, to that in which unity is assumed as the logarithm of the ratio of 10 to 1. The illustrious inventor of logarithms was at first doubtful of the propriety of the change proposed; but after two personal conferences with the Gresham professor, who for that purpose visited Edinburgh, he adopted the views of his English associate. Previous to his interview with Napier, Briggs had contracted an intimacy with Usher, afterwards archbishop of Armagh. The correspondence of the two learned friends turned chiefly upon mathematical science.

In 1619, Briggs was appointed Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford. He resigned his Gresham professorship in consequence, and after his settlement in Merton college, devoted himself almost exclusively to the duties of his chair and mathematical investigations. In 1622, however, he found leisure to publish a small tract on the "North-west passage to the South seas, through the continent of Virginia and Hudson's-bay." Probably he had become a share-holder in the Virginian company, and thus interested himself in a speculation otherwise foreign to his habits of mind. The treatise was reprinted in Purchas's Pilgrims. In 1624 appeared his great and elaborate work the Arithmetica Logarithmica.' Its compilation was a stupendous undertaking for a single individual. It contains the logarithms of 30,000 natural numbers, computed to 14 places of figures, besides the index. He also lived to complete a table of logarithmic sines and tangents, for the 100th part of every degree, to 14 places of figures, besides the index, with a table of natural signs to 15 places, and the tangents and secants for the same to 10 places, all of which were printed at Gouda, in Holland, in 1631, under the care of Adrian Vlacq, and published in 1633, under the title of Trigonometria Britannica.' These two works, besides the evidence they bear to the indefatigable diligence and enthusiasm of their author, exhibit great powers of genius and invention. We meet with several of the most important discoveries in mathematics, for the first time, in them, such as the binomial theorem, the differential method, and the interpolation by differences.

Mr Briggs died on the 26th of January, 1630. He was buried in the choir of the chapel of Merton college. Dr Smith gives him the character of being a man of the highest probity, and the utmost simplicity of character. Gataker bears testimony to the respect with which he was regarded by all the foreign mathematicians of his day. Oughtred calls him "the mirror of the age, for his excellent skill in geometry;" and Dr Barrow, one of his successors in the Gresham chair, has drawn a very flattering portrait of him in his inaugural oration. Besides the works already mentioned, Briggs published Tables for the Improvement of Navigation; Lucubrationes et Annotationes in opera posthuma, J. Neperi; Euclidis Elementorum VI. libri priores; Two Letters to archbishop Usher; and Mathematica ab Antiquis minus cognita. Some other works of his, chiefly consisting of commentaries ou Ramus and Longomontanus remain in manuscript.

Vol. iii. p. 852. 'See Introduction to Hutton's Mathematical Tables.

Thomas Dekker.

FLOR. CIRC. A. D. 1624.

A MELANCHOLY evidence is afforded of the negligence with which literary ability is often treated, in the scanty notices which remain of men who certainly deserved to be remembered, as having contributed to increase, or mould, or colour the great mass of intellectual wealth which exists in the country. This is remarkably the case with several dramatic poets: but little is known, as we have said, of the excellent Massinger himself, and still less is recorded of Dekker, and other writers who lived at a subsequent period. That they did not possess commanding talents is no reason why they should not have been honoured by their contemporaries. They were among the best writers the age produced: they flattered, and, at the same time, formed the popular taste: they furnished the nation with incessantly renewed supplies of mirth or sentiment, and their inventions were applauded with as much apparent delight as those of far greater minds. Surely such men ought not to have sunk into obscure graves, and been forgotten as soon as the dust was cast on their remains. Out of the many with whom they associated, or out of the still greater number whose vacant hours they amused, surely some one should have been found ready to employ a few hours in keeping alive some knowledge of the men whose productions were deemed worthy of observation. All that we could have stated of Dekker would have been, that he lived and wrote in the reign of James the First, but for the quarrel which he had with Ben Jonson. That celebrated dramatist, it is well known, was as ambitious of rule, and as determined to force respect from his cotemporaries, as he was deserving of admiration. The means which he employed to effect his purpose not being such as all men could relish, he was continually involved in disputes, and his mingled spleen and anger at length vented themselves in his play of the Poetaster.' There was not a writer against whom he had any cause of dislike who escaped in this bitter satire; and the rage with which it was witnessed by some, the vexation and confusion which it inspired in others, were as strong a tribute to the power of the poet's sarcasm as he could have desired. He did not escape,

however, unharmed from the storm he had raised; and Dekker was the one who, out of a crowd of sufferers, turned fiercely on the assailant. He had perhaps the most reason to thirst for vengeance. Under the character of Crispinus he had been represented on the stage in the most ludicrous situations that the wit of Jonson could conceive. At one moment he is heard humbly begging a lady, when a very famous singer had refused to exercise his art, "to entreat the ladies to entreat him to sing." At another, as telling a jeweller's wife, who is struck with the beautiful countenances of Ovid and other bards, that they are poets, and that he, as she admires them so, will become a poet to please her. But this does not satisfy the lady, and she continues to ask him if his looks will change, and particularly, his hair when he becomes a poet. Some idea of poor Dekker's personal appearance may be formed from this jest, for having told the jeweller's wife that it was not necessary he

should change his looks on becoming a poet, she says, "Well, we shall see your cunning; yet if you can change your hair I pray do" This ridicule of Dekker is continued through two whole scenes, and he must be a strong-minded man indeed who could see himself so depicted without feeling galled. The cure which he sought for his wounds was retaliation, and in a short time, the public had the amusement of seeing Jonson himself represented in a scarcely less ridiculous form. Dekker gave the title of Satiromastic, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet,' to his parody on the Poetaster,' and there are portions of this production which would not have disgraced the most famous of wits. The rude taste of the times allowed great licence to writers of every description, and it is not to be expected, that a satirist could refrain from exercising the liberty given him; there is, consequently, a strong tinge of coarseness in many of the jests employed by our author in his attacks; but where they are not really offensive to delicacy, their broadness often provokes a laugh at the expense of the veteran bard. The following will give some notion of the nature of these sarcasms. Jonson had assumed the name of Horace, and Dekker, remembering the ridicule cast on his own person, thus alludes to the circumstance: "You staring Leviathan! look on the sweet visage of Horace: look, parboiled face look-he has not his face puncht full of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming pan !" To the reader of the present day, however, the best strokes of satire which occur in this curious production, will give much less pleasure than the lines in which Dekker, with a magnanimity that speaks volumes for his character, pauses in the attack to pay a tribute of honour to his enemy's genius, and lament that he had not rather striven to gain men's love, which they would have willingly given him, than provoke their resentment by ungenerous satires.

The success of this piece was considerable, and its author thenceforth enjoyed sufficient popularity to reward him for the pain he endured under Jonson's castigation. He was acquainted with all the literary characters of the day; wrote several plays in conjunction with the most reputed wits about town; and published pamphlets on the chief topics of cotemporary interest, which are regarded as furnishing some of the most useful materials in being for the literary history of his age.

Thomas Middleton.

FLOR. CIR. A. D. 1624.

Or Thomas Middleton, the sole author of about sixteen or eighteen regular dramas, besides being concerned in different plays jointly with Rowley, Dekker, Webster, Massinger, Fletcher, and Jonson, nothing more is known than that he lived in intimacy with all his great contemporary dramatists, and was regarded by them with admiration and respect. "It is difficult," says a writer in the Retrospective Review,' "to assign Middleton any precise station among the remarkable men who were his contemporaries. Indeed, nothing is more unsafe than to guage the comparative merits of authors by the depth of one's own personal admiration; especially where, as in dramatic writing, the in

dividual claims to excellence are so various, as to make it almost impossible to institute any very close comparison among them. Besides, one critic may prefer tragedy, another comedy, another pastoral; a fourth may value only the truth of character; while a fifth may be careless of it, and esteem little else beyond the vigour of the diction, or the melodious flow of the verse. Dekker, Webster, Middleton, Ford, were all men of excelling talent. The first had the best idea of character; the second was the most profound; the third had most imagination; and the last equalled the others in pathos, and surpassed them in the delineation of the passion of love. Yet these particular points were not all by which these writers caught the attention of critics, and retained the admiration of their readers. They had other qualities, differing in shade and varying in colour, which it would be difficult to contrast with any useful effect. Dekker was sometimes as profound as Webster, and Middleton as passionate as Ford. Again, the verse of Ford is, generally speaking, musical; while that of Webster is often harsh, but it is more pregnant with meaning, shadowy, spectral, and fuller of a dark and earthy imagination. So it is that Middleton, although he has drawn no sketches, perhaps, so good as Matheo or Friscobaldo, lets fall nevertheless, occasionally, shrewd observations, and displays a wealth of language, which would illuminate and do honour to the better drawn characters of Dekker. In short, one was often rich in qualities, of which another possessed little or nothing; while he, on his part, could retort upon his rival a claim to other excellencies, to which the first did not affect to have even a pretension. It seems, therefore, almost idle to determine the rank and 'classes' to which these old writers should respectively belong. We can no more accomplish this, than we can determine upon the positive beauty of colours, or fix the standard of metals, whose durability or scarcity is utterly unknown. Independently of all these reasons. it is invidious, and not very grateful in us, who profess ourselves idolaters, to anatomize the remains of our gods, or to impale the reputations of these old fathers of poetry (sacrificing them face to face with each other), upon the hard and unrelenting spikes of modern criticism. They had faults which we have not-and excellencies which we do not possess. They were a fresh, shrewd, vigorous people-full of fire, and imagination, and deep feeling. They were not swathed and swaddled in the bands by which we cramp the thoughts, and paralyze the efforts of our infant poets; but they were rioters in their fancy,-bold, unfettered writers, whom no critics, monthly or quarterly, watched over for the benefit of the time to come. Accordingly, they dared to think,-they wrote what they thought, and their thoughts were generally strenuous, and often soaring, and sometimes even rich in wisdom."

George Chapman.

BORN A. D. 1557.-died A. D. 1634.

GEORGE CHAPMAN was born in Kent in the year 1557. At the age of seventeen he entered of Trinity college, Oxford, and applied himself principally to the study of the Greek and Latin languages, in