In some respects not unlike Burton, but very far above him both b. 1605. in eloquence and in strength of thought, is Sir Thomas d. 1682. Browne, the favourite author of not a few among the ad. mirers of our older literature. In point of style, his writings present to us, in the last stage of our Old English period, all the distinctive characteristics of the age in a state of extravagant exaggeration. The quaintness of phrase is more frequent and more deeply ingrained than ever: terms are coined from the Latin mint with a licence that acknowledges no interdict; and the construction of sentences puts on an added cumbrousness. But the thoughtful melancholy of feeling, the singular mixture of scepticism and credulity in belief, and the brilliancy of imaginative illustration, give to his essays, and especially to that which has always been the most popular, a peculiarity of character that makes them exceedingly fascinating. "The Religio Medici," says Johnson, sooner published, than it excited the attention of the public by the novelty of paradoxes, the dignity of sentiment, the quick succession of images, the multitude of abstruse allusions, the subtlety of disquisition, and the strength of language."* was no Readers who delight in startling contrasts could not be more easily gratified, than by turning from Browne to the prose writings b. 1605. of the poet Cowley. His eleven short "Discourses by way d. 1668. of Essays, in Prose and Verse," the latest of all his works, show an equal want of ambition in the choice of topics and in the manner of dealing with them. The titles, describing objects of a From the "Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial:" published in 1648. Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency. Pious spirits, who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of preordination and night of their fore-beings. To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves; which being not only a hope but an evidence in noble believers, it is all one to lie in Saint Innocent's churchyard as in the sands of Egypt; ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six feet as the molës of Adrianus. common-place kind, but possessing interest for every one, fulfil the promise which they hold out, by introducing us to a few obvious though judicious reflections, set off by a train of thoughtfully placid feeling. The style calls for especial attention. Noted in his poems for fantastic affectation of thought generating great obscurity of phrase, Cowley writes prose with undeviating simplicity and perspicuity and the whole cast of his language, not in diction only, but in construction, has a smoothness and ease, and an approach to tasteful regularity, of which hardly an instance, and certainly none of such extent, could be produced from any other book written before the Restoration.* The first minister of state has not so much business in public, as a wise man has in private: if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other has less leisure to be in company: the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and Nature under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as that, which I hear very often, that a man does not know how to pass his time. "Twould have been but ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine-hundred-sixty-ninth year of his life so far it is from us, who have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to have cause to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of work. But this, you'll say, is work only for the learned: others are not capable either of the employments or divertisements that arrive from letters. I know they are not; and therefore cannot much recommend solitude to a man totally illiterate. But, if any man be so unlearned, as to want entertainment of the little intervals of accidental solitude, which frequently occur in almost all conditions, (except the very meanest of the people, who have business enough in the necessary provisions for life,) it is truly a great shame, both to his parents and himself. For a very small portion of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of our time. Either music, or painting, or designing, or chymistry, or history, or gardening, or twenty other things, will do it usefully and pleasantly; and, if he happen to set his affections on Poetry, (which I do not advise him too immoderately,) that will overdo it: no wood will be thick enough to hide him from the importunities of company or business, which would abstract him from his beloved. Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good! And, for their quiet nests and plenteous food, Here Nature does a house for me erect, Who those fond artists does despise, Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, A silver stream shall roll his waters near, All wretched and too solitary he Who loves not his own company! He'll feel the weight of't many a day, Unless he call in Sin or Vanity P CHAPTER VI. THE AGE OF SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE, BACON, AND MILTON. A. D. 1558-A. D. 1660. SECTION FOURTH: THE DRAMATIC POETRY. INTRODUCTION. 1. The Drama a Species of Poetry-Recitation of Narrative Poems and Plays-Effects of Recitation on the Character of the WorksRelations of Prose and Verse to Poetry.-2. The Regular and Irregular Schools of Dramatic Art-The French Rules-The Unities of Time and Place Their Principle-Their Effects.-3. The Unity of Action-Its Principle-Its Relations to the Other Unities-The Union of Tragedy and Comedy.-SHAKSPEARE AND THE OLD ENGLISH DRAMA. 4. Its Four Stages.-5. The First Stage-Shakspeare's Predecessors and Earliest Works - Marlowe-Greene. -6. Shakspeare's Earliest Histories and Comedies-Character of the Early Comedies.-7. The Second StageShakspeare's Later Histories-His Best Comedies.-8. The Third Stage -Shakspeare's Great Tragedies-His Latest Works.-9. Estimate of Shakspeare's Genius.-MINOR DRAMATIC POETS. 10. Shakspeare's Contemporaries-Their Genius-Their Morality.-11. Beaumont and Fletcher.-12. Ben Jonson.-13. Minor Dramatists-Middleton-Webster- . Heywood-Dekker.-14. The Fourth Stage of the Drama-MassingerFord-Shirley-Moral Declension. INTRODUCTION. 1. SHAKSPEARE, the greatest of the great men who have created the imaginative literature of the English language, is so commonly spoken of as a poet, that it can hardly surprise any of us to hear the name of Poetry given to such works as those amongst which his are classed. But we ought to make ourselves familiar with the principle which this way of speaking involves. The Drama, in all its kinds and forms, is properly to be considered as a kind of Poetry. A Tragedy is a poem, just as much as an Epic or an Ode. It is not here possible, either to prove this cardinal doctrine of criticism, or to set it forth with those explanations by which the practical application of it ought to be guarded. It must be enough to assert peremptorily, that Spenser and Milton, our masters of the chivalrous and the religious epos, are not more imperatively subject to the laws of the poetical art, than are Shakspeare, and Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher, and the other founders and builders of our dramatic poetry. The Epic and the Drama are alike representations of human action and suffering, of human thought, and feeling, and desire; and they are representations whose purposes are so nearly akin, that the processes used are, amidst many secondary diversities, subject primarily to the same theoretical laws. Modern habits cause the Narrative poem and the Dramatic to wear a greater appearance of dissimilarity than they wore in older times. We consider the one as designed to be read, the other as designed to be acted. Before the invention of printing, and long afterwards, recitation was the mode of communication used for both. The romance, in which the poet told his tale in his own person, was chanted by the minstrel; just as the morality or miracleplay, in which every word was put into the mouths of the characters, was declaimed by the monks or their assistants. Our recollection of this fact suggests several considerations. It is exceedingly probable that the expectation, which our middle-age poets must have had, of this recitative use of their works, may have been one chief cause of the vigorous animation which atones for so many of their irregularities. It is at all events certain, that a similar feeling acted powerfully on those dramatic poets, whose progress we are now about to study. All of them wrote for the stage: none of them, not even Shakspeare himself, wrote for the closet. Their having this design tended, beyond doubt, to lower the tone both of their taste and of their morality; but as certainly it was the mainspring of their passionate elasticity, the principal source of the life-like energy which they poured into their dramatic images of human life. Another doctrine also should be remembered, both for its own importance and for its bearing on the history of our dramatic literature. Works which we are accustomed to call Poems are almost always written in verse. But the distinction between Verse and Prose, a distinction of form only, is no more than secondary: the primary character of a literary work depends on the purpose for which it is designed, the kind of mental state which it is intended to excite in the hearers or readers. Consequently a work which, having a distinctively poetical purpose, is justly describable as a poem, would not cease to deserve the name, though it were to be couched in prose. It would, however, by being so expressed, lose much of its poetical power. The truth of this last assertion has been clearly perceived in all kinds of poetry except the dramatic. No |