And then 'twere all well. What a happiness
Had I been made of had I never seen her;
For nothing makes man's loss grievous to him,
But knowledge of the worth of what he loses ;
For what he never had, he never misses :
She's gone for ever, utterly; there is
As much redemption of a soul from hell,
As a fair woman's body from his palace.
Why should my love last longer than her truth?
What is there good in woman to be loved,
When only that which makes her so has left her?
I cannot love her now, but I must like
Her sin, and my own shame too, and be guilty
Of law's breach with her, and mine own abusing;
All which were monstrous! then my safest course
For health of mind and body, is to turn
My heart, and hate her, most extremely hate her;
I have no other way: those virtuous powers
Which were chaste witnesses of both our troths,
Can witness she breaks first!

SCENE FROM "THE ROARING GIRL."

Persons.-Mr. and Mrs. GALLIPOT.

Mrs. Gallipot, the apothecary's wife, having received a letter from her friend Laxton that he is in want of money, thus bethinks her how to raise it.

ALAS, poor gentleman! troth, I pity him.
How shall I raise this money? thirty pound?
'Tis 30, sure, a 3 before an 0;

I know his 3's too well. My childbed linen,
Shall I pawn that for him? then, if my mark
Be known, I am undone ; it may be thought
My husband's bankrupt: which way shall I turn?
Laxton, betwixt my own fears and thy wants
I'm like a needle 'twixt two adamants.

Enter Mr. GALLIFOT hastily.

Mr. G. What letter 's that? I'll see't. [She tears the letter. Mrs. G. Oh! would thou hadst no eyes to see the downfall

Of me and of thyself-I'm for ever, ever undone ! Mr. G. What ails my Prue? What paper's that thou tear'st!

Mrs. G. Would I could tear

My very heart in pieces! for my soul

Lies on the rack of shame, that tortures me
Beyond a woman's suffering.

Mr. G. What means this?

Mrs. G. Had you no other vengeance to throw down,

But even in height of all my joys——

Mr. G. Dear woman!

Mr. G. Heavens bless me !-Are my barns and houses,

Yonder at Hockley Hole, consumed with fire !I can build more, sweet Prue.

Mrs. G. 'Tis worse! 'tis worse!

Mr. G. My factor broke? or is the Jonas sunk? Mrs. G. Would all we had were swallow'd in

the waves,

Rather than both should be the scorn of slaves!
Mr. G. I'm at my wit's end.
Mrs. G. O, my dear husband!
Where once I thought myself a fixed star,
Placed only in the heaven of thine arms,
I fear now I shall prove a wanderer.
O Laxton! Laxton! is it then my fate
To be by thee o'erthrown?

Mr. G. Defend me, wisdom,

From falling into phrenzy! On my knees,
Sweet Prue, speak-what's that Laxton, who so
Lies on thy bosom ?
[heavy

Mrs. G. I shall sure run mad!

Mr. G. I shall run mad for company then :

speak to me

I'm Gallipot, thy husband. Prue-why, Prue,
Art sick in conscience for some villanous deed
Thou wert about to act ?-didst mean to rob me?
Tush, I forgive thee.-Hast thou on my bed
Thrust my soft pillow under another's head ?—
I'll wink at all faults, Prue-'Las! that's no more
Than what some neighbours near thee have done
before.

Sweet honey-Prue-what's that Laxton ?
Mrs. G. Oh !

Mr. G. Out with him.

Mrs. G. Oh! he-he's born to be my undoer!
This hand, which thou call'st thine, to him was given;
To him was I made sure i'the sight of heaven.
Mr. G. I never heard this-thunder!
Mrs. G. Yes, yes-before

I was to thee contracted, to him I swore.
Since last I saw him twelve months three times old
The moon hath drawn through her light silver bow;
But o'er the seas he went, and it was said-
But rumour lies-that he in France was dead:
But he's alive-oh, he's alive!—he sent
That letter to me, which in rage I rent,
Swearing, with oaths most damnably, to have me,
Or tear me from this bosom.-Oh, heavens save
me!

Mr. G. My heart will break-Shamed and undone for ever!

Mrs. G. So black a day, poor wretch, went o'er thee never.

Mr. G. If thou shouldst wrestle with him at

the law,

Seem'd to flow over me

Mr. G. As thou desirest

To keep me out of Bedlam, tell what troubles thee.Is not thy child at nurse fall'n sick or dead? Mrs. G. Oh, no!

Mrs. G. Umph.

Mr. G. Or give out, that one of my men was ta'en abed with thee.

Mrs. G. Worse and worse still;
You embrace a mischief to prevent an ill.

Mr. G. I'll buy thee of him-stop his mouth Think'st thou 'twill do? [with gold

Mrs. G. Oh me! heavens grant it would! Yet now my senses are set more in tune; He writ, as I remember, in his letter, That he, in riding up and down, had spent, Ere he could find me, thirty pound.-Send that; Stand not on thirty with him.

Mr.G.Forty, Prue-say thou the word,'tis done. We venture lives for wealth, but must do more To keep our wives.-Thirty or forty, Prue? Mrs. G. Thirty, good sweet!

Than one of the Counters does. Men pay more dear
There for their wit than anywhere. A Counter!
Why, 'tis an university.-Who not sees?
As scholars there, so here men take degrees,
And follow the same studies, all alike.
Scholars learn first logic and rhetoric,

So does a prisoner; with fine honied speech,
At his first coming in, he doth persuade, beseech
He may be lodged— *

To lie in a clean chamber.

But when he has no money, then does he try,
By subtle logic and quaint sophistry,

To make the keepers trust him.

Sir Adam. Say they do.

Sir Alex. Then he's a graduate.
Sir Dav. Say they trust him not.

Sir Alex. Then is he held a freshman and a sot, And never shall commence, but being still barr'd, Be expulsed from the master's side to the TwoOr else i'the Holebeg placed. [penny ward,

Sir Ad. When then, I pray, proceeds a prisoner? Sir Alex. When, money being the theme, He can dispute with his hard creditors' hearts, And get out clear, he's then a master of arts. Sir Davy, send your son to Wood-street college; A gentleman can nowhere get more knowledge. Sir Dav. These gallants study hard. Sir Alex. True, to get money.

Sir Dav. Lies by the heels, i'faith! thanksthanks I ha' sent

For a couple of bears shall paw him.

DEVOTION TO LOVE.

FROM THE PLAY OF " BLURT, MASTER-CONSTABLE."

O, HAPPY persecution, I embrace thee
With an unfetter'd soul; so sweet a thing
It is to sigh upon the rack of love,
Where each calamity is groaning witness
Of the poor martyr's faith. I never heard
Of any true affection but 'twas nipt
With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats
The leaves of the spring's sweetest book, the rose.
Love, bred on earth, is often nursed in hell;
By rote it reads woe ere it learn to spell.

When I call back my vows to Violetta,
May I then slip into an òbscure grave,
Whose mould, unpress'd with stony monument
Dwelling in open air, may drink the tears
Of the inconstant clouds to rot me soon!

He that truly loves, Burns out the day in idle fantasies; And when the lamb, bleating, doth bid good night Unto the closing day, then tears begin To keep quick time unto the owl, whose voice Shrieks like the bell-man in the lover's ear. Love's eye the jewel of sleep, oh, seldom wears! The early lark is waken'd from her bed, Being only by love's pains disquieted;

But, singing in the morning's ear, she weeps,
Being deep in love, at lovers' broken sleeps:
But say, a golden slumber chance to tie,
With silken strings, the cover of love's eye,
Then dreams, magician-like, mocking present
Pleasures, whose fading, leaves more discontent.

INDIGNATION AT THE SALE OF A WIFE'S HONOUR.

FROM THE PHOENIX.

Of all deeds yet this strikes the deepest wound Into my apprehension,

Reverend and honourable matrimony,

Mother of lawful sweets, unshamed mornings,
Both pleasant and legitimately fruitful, without thee
All the whole world were soiled bastardy;
Thou art the only and the greatest form
That put'st a difference betwixt our desires
And the disorder'd appetites of beasts.

But, if chaste and honest,
There is another devil that haunts marriage,
(None fondly loves but knows it), jealousy,
That wedlock's yellow sickness,

That whispering separation every minute,
And thus the curse takes his effect or progress.
The most of inen, in their first sudden furies,
Rail at the narrow bounds of marriage,
And call't a prison; then it is most just
That the disease of the prison, jealousy,
Should thus affect 'em-but, oh! here I'm fix'd
To make sale of a wife! monstrous and foul !
An act abhorr'd in nature, cold in soul!

LAW.

FROM THE PHOENIX.

THOU angel sent amongst us, sober Law,
Made with meek eyes, persuading action;
No loud immodest tongue-voiced like a virgin,
And as chaste from sale,

Save only to be heard, but not to rail-
How has abuse deform'd thee to all eyes!
Yet why so rashly for one villain's fault
Do I arraign whole man? Admired Law!
Thy upper parts must needs be wholly pure
And incorruptible-th'are grave and wise;
'Tis but the dross beneath them, and the clouds
That get between thy glory and their praise,
That make the visible and foul eclipse;
For those that are near to thee are upright,
As noble in their conscience as their birth;
Know that damnation is in every bribe,
And rarely put it from them-rate the presenters,
And scourge 'em with five years' imprisonment
For offering but to tempt 'em :

This is true justice, exercised and used;
Woe to the giver, when the bribe's refused.
'Tis not their will to have law worse than war,
Where still the poorest die first,

To send a man without a sheet to his grave,
Or bury him in his papers;

'Tis not their mind it should be, nor to have
A suit hang longer than a man in chains,
Let him be ne'er so fasten'd.

THE plan of the Mirror for Magistrates, begun by Ferrers and Sackville, was followed up by Churchyard, Phayer, Higgins, Drayton, and many others. The last contributor of any note was Niccols, in 1610, in his Winter Night's Vision. Niccols was the author of the Cuckow,' written

in imitation of Drayton's 'Owl,' and several poems of temporary popularity, and of a drama, entitled The Twynne's Tragedy. He was a Londoner, and having studied (says Wood) at Oxford, obtained some employment worthy of his faculties; but of what kind, we are left to conjecture.

As bird in cage debarr'd the use of wings,
Her captived life as nature's chiefest wrong,
In doleful ditty sadly sits and sings,
And mourns her thralled liberty so long,
Till breath be spent in many a sithful song:
So here captived I many days did spend
In sorrow's plaint, till death my days did end.

Where as a prisoner though I did remain;
Yet did my brother grant this liberty,
To quell the common speech, which did complain
On my distress, and on his tyranny,
That in his parks and forests joining by,
When I did please I to and fro might go,
Which in the end was cause of all my woe.

TO POSTERITY.

FROM ENGLAND'S PARNASSUS. 1600.

DAUGHTER of Time, sincere Posterity,
Always new-born, yet no man knows thy birth,
The arbitress of pure sincerity,

Yet changeable (like Proteus) on the earth,
Sometime in plenty, sometime join'd with dearth :
Always to come, yet always present here,
Whom all run after, none come after near.
Unpartial judge of all, save present state,
Truth's idioma of the things are past,
But still pursuing present things with hate,
And more injurious at the first than last,
Preserving others, while thine own do waste :
True treasurer of all antiquity,

Whom all desire, yet never one could see.

FROM FITZGEFFREY'S LIFE OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. 1596.

Look how the industrious bee in fragrant May, When Flora gilds the earth with golden flowers, Inveloped in her sweet perfumed array,

Doth leave his honey-limed delicious bowers, More richly wrought than prince's stately towers,

Waving his silken wings amid the air,

And to the verdant gardens makes repair.

First falls he on a branch of sugar'd thyme,
Then from the marygold he sucks the sweet,
And then the mint, and then the rose doth
climb,

Then on the budding rosemary doth light,
Till with sweet treasure having charged his feet,
Late in the evening home he turns again,
Thus profit is the guerdon of his pain.

So in the May-tide of his summer age
Valour enmoved the mind of vent'rous Drake
To lay his life with winds and waves in gage,
And bold and hard adventures t' undertake,
Leaving his country for his country's sake;
Loathing the life that cowardice doth stain,
Preferring death, if death might honour
gain.

TILL Mr. Gilchrist and Mr. Gifford stood forward in defence of this poet's memory, it had become an established article of literary faith that his personal character was a compound of spleen, surliness, and ingratitude. The proofs of this have been weighed and found wanting. It is true that he had lofty notions of himself, was proud even to arrogance in his defiance of censure, and in the warmth of his own praises of himself was scarcely surpassed by his. most zealous admirers; but many fine traits of honour and affection are likewise observable in the portrait of character, and the charges of malice and jealousy his that have been heaped on his name for an hundred years, turn out to be without foundation. In the quarrel with Marston and Dekker his culpability is by no means evident. He did not receive benefits from Shakspeare, and did not

sneer at him in the passages that have been taken to prove his ingratitude; and instead of envying that great poet, he gave him his noblest praise; nor did he trample on his contemporaries, but liberally commended them*. With regard to Inigo Jones, with whom he quarrelled, it appears to have been Jonson's intention to have consigned his satires on that eminent man to oblivion; but their enmity, as his editor has shown, began upon the part of the architect, who, when the poet was poor and bed-ridden, meanly resented the fancied affront of Jonson's name being put before his own to a masque, which they had jointly prepared, and used his influence to do

* The names of Shakspeare, Drayton, Donne, Chapman, Fletcher, Beaumont, May. and Browne, which almost exhaust the poetical catalogue of the time, are the separate and distinct subjects of his praise. His unkindness to Daniel seems to be the only exception.