To keep us from corruption of worse men

We 're young, and yet desire the ways of honour;

That, liberty and common conversation,

The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
Can be, but our imaginations

May make it ours.? And here, being thus together
We are an endless mine to one another;
We're father, friends, acquaintance;
We are, in one another, families;

I am your heir, and you are mine; this place
Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor

Dare take this from us; here, with a little patience,
We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us:
The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas
Swallow their youth; were we at liberty,

A wife might part us lawfully, or business;
Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men
Crave our acquaintance; I might sicken, cousin
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,
Or prayers to the gods: a thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.

(I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton With my captivity; what a misery

It is to live abroad, and everywhere!

'Tis like a beast, methinks! I find the court here,

I'm sure a more content; and all those pleasures, That woo the wills of men to vanity,

I see through now; and am sufficient

To tell the world 'tis but a gaudy shadow

That old Time, as he passes by, takes with him.
What had we been, old in the court of Creon,
Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance
The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite,
Had not the loving gods found this place for us,
We had died as they now, ill old men unwept,
And had their epitaphs,―the people's curses!
Shall I say more?

Arc. I would hear you still.

Thus they "sing their bondage freely;" but just then enters Emilia, who parts all this friendship between them, and turns them to deadliest foes.

The jailor's daughter, who falls in love with Palamon, and goes mad, is a wretched interpolation in the story, and a fantastic copy of Ophelia. But they readily availed themselves of all the dramatic common-places to be found in Shakspeare,-love, madness, processions, sports, imprisonment, &c., and copied him too often in earnest, to have a right o parody him, as they sometimes did, in jest. The story of The Two Noble Kinsmen' is taken from Chaucer's 'Palamon and Aicite;' but the latter part, which in Chaucer is full of dramatic power and interest, degenerates in the play into a mere narrative of the principal events, and possesses little value or effect. It is not improbable that Beaumont and Fletcher's having dramatized this story, put Dryden upon modernizing it.

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I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletcher's dramas (52 in number), but I have mentioned some of the principal, and the excellences and defects of the rest may be judged of from these. The Bloody Brother', A Wife for a Month,' Bonduca,' 'Thierry and Theodoret,' are among the best of their tragedies: among the comedies, 'The Night Walker,' The Little French Lawyer,' and Monsieur Thomas,' come perhaps next to 'The Chances,' The Wild Goose Chase,' and 'Rule a Wife and Have a Wife.'—' Philaster, or, Love Lies a-Bleeding,' is one of the most admirable productions of these authors (the last I shall mention); and the patience of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, the tenderness of Arethusa, and the jealousy of Philaster, are beyond all praise. The passages of extreme romantic beauty and high-wrought passion that I might quote are out of number One only must suffice, the account of the commencement of Euphrasia's love to Philaster:

-"Sitting in my window,

Printing my thought in lawn, I saw a Goa
I thought (but it was you) enter our gates;
My blood flew out, and back again as fast
As I had puffed it forth and suck'd it in
Like breath; then was I called away in haste
To entertain you
Never was a man

Heav'd from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais'd
So high in thoughts as I: you left a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you for ever. I did hear you talk
Far above singing!"

And so it is our poets themselves write, "far above singing.' am loth to part with them, and wander down, as we now must,

"Into a lower world, to theirs obscure
And wild-to breathe in other air

Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits."

Ben Jonson's serious productions are, in my opinion, superior to his comic ones. What he does, is the result of strong sense and painful industry; but sense and industry agree better with the grave and severe, than with the light and gay productions of the muse. "His plays were works," as some one said of them, "while others' works were plays." The observation had less of compliment than of truth in it. He may be said to mine his way into a subject, like a mole, and throws up a prodigious quantity of matter on the surface, so that the richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross and rubbish we have. His fault is, that he sets himself too much to his subject, and cannot let go his hold of an idea, after the insisting on it becomes tiresome or painful to others. But his tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learning, engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks like genius.

Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma."

He was equal, by an effort, to the highest things, and took the same, and even more successful pains to grovel to the lowest. He raised himself up or let himself down to the level of his sub

* Euphrasia as the Page, just before speaking of her life, which Philaster threatens to take from her, says,

"Tis not a life;

'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."

What exquisite beauty and delicacy!

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ject, by ponderous machinery. By dint of application, and a certain strength of nerve, he could do justice to Tacitus and Sallust no less than to mine host of the New Inn. His tragedy of The Fall of Sejanus,' in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic. The principal character gives one the idea of a lofty column of solid granite, nodding to its base from its pernicious height, and dashed in pieces by a breath of air, a word of its creator-feared, not pitied, scorned, unwept, and forgotten. The depth of knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked out the historian's outline, so that the vices and passions, the ambition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisoned atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described in fuller or more glowing colours. I am half afraid to give any extracts, les. they should be tortured into an application to other times and characters than those referred to by the poet, Some of the sounds, indeed, may bear (for what I know) an awkward construction: some of the objects may look double to squint-eyed suspicion. But that is not my fault. It only proves that the characters of prophet and poet are implied in each other; that he who describes human nature well once, describes it for good and all, as it was, is, and, I begin to fear, will ever be. Truth always was, and must always remain, a libel to the tyrant and the slave. Thus Satrius Secundus and Pinnarius Natta, two public informers in those days, are described as

"Two of Sejanus' blood-hounds, whom he breeds
With human flesh, to bay at citizens."

But Rufus, another of the same well-bred gang, debating the point of his own character with two senators whom he has entrapped, boldly asserts, in a more courtly strain,

"To be a spy on traitors

Is honourable vigilance."

This sentiment of the respectability of the employment of a government spy, which had slept in Tacitus for near two thousand years, has not been without its modern patrons. The effects

of such "honourable vigilance" are very finely exposed in the following high-spirited dialogue between Lepidus and Arruntius, two noble Romans, who loved their country, but were not unfashionable enough to confound their country with its oppressors, and the extinguishers of its liberty.

"Arr. What are thy arts (good patriot, teach them me)

That have preserv'd thy hairs to this white dye,

And kept so reverend and so dear a head

Safe on his comely shoulders?

Lep. Arts, Arruntius!

None but the plain and passive fortitude
To suffer and be silent; never stretch

These arms against the torrent; live at home
With my own thoughts and innocence about me,
Not tempting the wolves' jaws: these are my arts.
Arr. I would begin to study 'em, if I thought
They would secure me. May I pray to Jove
In secret, and be safe? ay, or aloud?
With open wishes? so I do not mention
Tiberius or Sejanus! Yes, I must,

If I speak out. 'Tis hard, that. May I think,
And not be rack'd? What danger is't to dream?
Talk in one's sleep, or cough? Who knows the law?
May I shake my head without a comment? Say

It rains, or it holds up, and not be thrown
Upon the Gemonies? These now are things
Whereon men's fortunes, yea, their fate depends;
Nothing hath privilege 'gainst the violent ear.
No place, no day, no hour (we see) is free
(Not our religious and most sacred times)
From some one kind of cruelty; all matter,
Nay, all occasion pleaseth. Madman's rage,
The idleness of drunkards, women's nothing,
Jesters' simplicity, all, all is good

That can be catch'd at."

'Tis a pretty picture; and the duplicates of it, tnough multi plied without end, are seldom out of request.

The following portrait of a prince besieged by flatterers (taken from Tiberius') has unrivalled force and beauty, with historic truth

"If this man

Had but a mind allied unto his words.