the other a murder in high life, supposed to be acted at the same time in Italy, the scenes alternating between that country and England: the story of the latter is mutatis mutandis no other than that of our own Babes in the Wood, transferred to Italy, from a delicacy no doubt to some of the family of the rich wicked uncle, who might yet be living. The treatment of the two differs as the romance-like narratives in God's Revenge against Murder, in which the actors of the murders (with the trifling exception that they were murderers) are represented as most accomplished and every way amiable young gentlefolks of either sex-as much as that differs from the honest unglossing pages of the homely Newgate Ordinary.

GEORGE PEELE.

:

The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe, with the Trageay of Absalom. -Bethsabe, with her maid, bathing. She sings and David sits above viewing her. There is more of the same stuff, but I suppose the reader has a surfeit; especially as this Canticle of David has never been suspected to contain any pious sense couched underneath it, whatever his son's may. The kingly bower seated in hearing of a hundred streams," is the best of it.

SONG IN GEORGE PEELE'S DRAMATIC PASTORAL "THE ARRAIGNMENT OF PARIS," 1584.

To my esteemed friend, and excellent musician, V[incent] N[ovello], Esq. Dear Sir, I conjure you in the name of all the Sylvan deities, and of the Muses, whom you honour, and they reciprocally love and honour you,-rescue this old and passionate ditty-the very flower of an old forgotten pastoral, which had it been in all parts equal, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher had been but a second name in this sort of writing rescue it from the profane hands of every common composer: and in one of your tranquillest moods, when you have most leisure from those sad thoughts, which sometimes unworthily beset you; yet a mood, in itself not unallied to the better sort of melancholy; laying by for once the lofty organ, with which you shake the Temples: attune, as to the pipe of Paris himself, some milder and more love-according instrument, this pretty courtship between Paris and his (then-not-as-yet-forsaken) Enone. Oblige me, and all more knowing judges of music and of poesy, by the adaptation of fit musical numbers, which it only wants to be the rarest love dialogue in our language.

Your implorer,

C. L.

Tancred and Gismund: acted before the Court by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple, 1591.- Nearly a century after the date of this drama, Dryden produced his admirable version of the same story from Boccaccio. The speech here extracted may be compared with the corresponding passage in the Sigismonda and Guiscardo, with no disadvantage to the elder performance. It is quite as weighty, as pointed, and as passionate.

The Battle of Alcazar: a Tragedy, 1594.-Muly Mahamet, driven from his throne into a desert, robs the lioness to feed his fainting wife Calipolis.

Muly. Hold thee, Calipolis; feed and faint no more, &c.

This address, for its barbaric splendour of conception, extravagant vein of promise, not to mention some idiomatic peculiarities, and the very structure of the verse, savours strongly of Marlowe; but the real author, I believe, is unknown.

HENRY PORTER.

The Two Angry Women of Abingdon: a Comedy, 1599.-This pleasant comedy is contemporary with some of the earliest of Shakspere's, and is no wit inferior to either the Comedy of Errors, or the Taming of the Shrew, for instance. It is full of business, humour, and merry malice. Its night-scenes are peculiarly sprightly and wakeful. The versification unencumbered, and rich with compound epithets. Why do we go on with ever new editions of Ford, and Massinger, and the thrice reprinted Selections of Dodsley? What we want is as many volumes more, as these latter consist of, filled with plays (such as this), of which we know comparatively nothing. Not a third part of the treasures of old English dramatic literature has been exhausted. Are we afraid that the genius of Shakspere would suffer in our estimate by the disclosure? He would indeed be somewhat lessened as a miracle and a prodigy. But he would lose no height by the confession: When a giant is shown to us, does it detract from the curiosity to be told that he has at home a gigantic brood of brethren, less only than himself? Along with him, not from him, sprang up the race of mighty dramatists, who, compared with the Otways and Rowes that followed, were as Miltons to a Young or an Akenside. That he was their elder brother, not their parent, is evident from the fact of the very few direct imitations of him to be found in their writings. Webster, Dekker, Heywood, and the rest of his great contemporaries went on their own ways, and followed their individual impulses, not blindly prescribing to themselves his tract. Marlowe, the true (though imperfect) father of our tragedy, preceded him. The comedy of Fletcher is essentially unlike to that of his. 'Tis out of no detracting spirit that I speak thus, for the plays of Shakspere have been the strongest and the sweetest food of my mind from infancy; but I resent the comparative obscurity in which some of his most valuable co-operators remain, who were his dear intimates, his stage and his chamber-fellows while he lived, and to whom his gentle spirit doubtlessly then awarded the full portion of their genius, as from them toward himself appears to have been no grudging of his acknowledged excellence.

SIR RICHARD FANSHAW'S

Translation of "Querer por Sola Querer"-" To Love for Love's Sake:" a Romantic Drama, written in Spanish by Mendoza, 1649.-[Felisbravo, Prince of Persia, from a picture sent him of the brave Amazonian Queen of Tartary, Zelidaura, becoming enamoured, sets out for that realm; in his way thither disenchants a Queen of Araby; but first, overcome by fatigue, falls asleep in the enchanted grove, where Zelidaura herself coming by, steals the picture from him. The passion of the romance arises from his remorse at being taken so negligent; and her disdain that he should sleep, having the company of her picture. She here plays upon him, who does not yet know her, in the disguise of a Rustic.]

To my taste this is fine, elegant, queen-like raillery; a second part of Love's Labour Lost, to which title this extraordinary play has still better pretensions than even Shakspere's; for after leading three pair of royal lovers through endless mazes of doubts, difficulties; oppositions of dead fathers' wills; a labyrinth of losings and findings; jealousies; enchantments; conflicts with giants, and single-handed against armies; to the exact state in which all the lovers might with the greatest propriety indulge their reciprocal wishes- when, the deuce is in it, you think, but they must all be married now-suddenly the three ladies turn upon their lovers: and, as an exemplification of the moral of the play, "Loving for Loving's sake," and a hyperplatonic, truly Spanish proof of

their affections-demand that the lovers shall consent to their mistresses' taking upon them the vow of a single life! to which the gallants, with becoming refinement, can do no less than consent.-The fact is that it was a court play, in which the characters-males, giants, and all-were played by females, and those of the highest order of Grandeeship. No nobleman might be permitted amongst them; and it was against the forms, that a great court lady of Spain should consent to such an unrefined motion, as that of wedlock, though but in a play.

Appended to the drama, the length of which may be judged from its having taken nine days in the representation, and me three hours in the reading of it -hours well wasted-is a poetical account of a fire, which broke out in the theatre on one of the nights of its acting, when the whole of the dramatis persone were nearly burnt, because the common people out of "base fear," and the nobles out of "pure respect," could not think of laying hands upon such "Great Donnas;" till the young king, breaking the etiquette, by snatching up his queen, and bearing her through the flames upon his back, the grandees (dilatory Æneases), followed his example, and each saved one (Anchisesfashion), till the whole courtly company of comedians were got off in tolerable safety.-Imagine three or four stout London firemen, on such an occasion, standing off in mere respect.

THOMAS SACKVILLE, LORD BUCKHURST, AFTERWARDS EARL OF

DORSET; AND THOMAS NORTON.

Gorboduc; a Tragedy.-The style of this old play is stiff and cumbersome, like the dresses of its times. There may be flesh and blood underneath, but we cannot get at it. Sir Philip Sidney has praised it for its morality. One of its authors might easily furnish that. Norton was an associate to Hopkins, Sternhold, and Robert Wisdom, in the singing psalms. I am willing to believe that Lord Buckhurst supplied the more vital parts. The chief beauty in the extract is of a secret nature. Marcella obscurely intimates that the murdered prince Porrex and she had been lovers.

THOMAS KYD.

The Spanish Tragedy; or Hieronimo is mad again: a Tragedy. - These scenes [of Hieronimo's madness], which are the very salt of the play (which without them is but a caput mortuum, such another piece of flatness as Locrine), Hawkins, in his re-publication of this tragedy, has thrust out of the text into the notes; as omitted in the second Edition, " printed for Ed. Allde, amended of such gross blunders as passed in the first :" and thinks them to have been foisted in by the players.-A late discovery at Dulwich College has ascertained that two sundry payments were made to Ben Jonson by the theatre for furnishing additions to Hieronimo. There is nothing in the undoubted plays of Jonson which would authorize us to suppose that he could have supplied the scenes in question. I should suspect the agency of some potent spirit." Webster might have furnished them. They are full of that wild solemn preternatural cast of grief which bewilders us in the Duchess of Malfy.

"more

On the Genius and Character of Hogarth.

(The Reflector, No. III., art. viii. 1811.).

[In its original issue this masterly criticism bore under its heading, as a sort of subtitle, the words "With some remarks on a passage in the writings of the late Mr. Barry." The signature affixed to the paper was "L."]

ONE of the earliest and noblest enjoyments I had when a boy was in the contemplation of those capital prints by Hogarth, the Harlot's and Rake's Progresses, which, along with some others, hung upon the walls of a great hall, in an old-fashioned house in shire, and seemed the solitary tenants (with myself) of that antiquated and life-deserted apartment.

Recollection of the manner in which those prints used to affect me, has often made me wonder, when I have heard Hogarth described as a mere comic painter, as one whose chief ambition was to raise a laugh. To deny that there are throughout the prints which I have mentioned circumstances introduced of a laughable tendency, would be to run counter to the common notions of mankind; but to suppose that in their ruling character they appeal chiefly to the risible faculty, and not first and foremost to the very heart of man, its best and most serious feelings, would be to mistake no less grossly their aim and purpose. A set of severer Satires (for they are not so much Comedies, which they have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine Satires) less mingled with anything of mere fun, were never written upon paper, or graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in Timon of Athens.

I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who being asked which book he esteemed most in his library, answered,-"Shakspere" being asked which he esteemed next best, replied,-"Hogarth." His graphic representations are indeed books: they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at, - his prints we read.

In pursuance of this parallel, I have sometimes entertained myself with comparing the Timon of Athens of Shakspere (which I have just mentioned) and Hogarth's Rake's Progress together. The story, the moral, in both is nearly the same. The wild course of riot and extravagance, ending in the one with driving the Prodigal from the society of men into the solitude of the deserts, and in the other with conducting the Rake through his several stages of dissipation into the still more complete desolations of the mad-house, in the play and in the picture are described with almost equal force and nature. The levée of the Rake, which forms the subject of the second plate in the series, is almost a transcript of Timon's levée in the opening scene of that play. We find a dedicating poet, and other similar characters in both.

The concluding scene in the Rake's Progress is perhaps superior to the last scenes of Timon. If we seek for something of kindred excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes of Lear's beginning madness, where the King and the Fool and the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a medley of mirth checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth; where the society of those "strange bed-fellows" which misfortunes have brought Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the destitute state of the monarch, while the lunatic bans of the one, and the disjointed sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of the other, so wonderfully sympathize with that confusion, which they seem to assist in the production of, in the senses of that "child-changed father." Q Q

In the scene in Bedlam, which terminates the Rake's Progress, we find the same assortment of the ludicrous with the terrible. Here is desperate madness, the overturning of originally strong thinking faculties, at which we shudder, as we contemplate the duration and pressure of affliction which it must have asked to destroy such a building;-and here is the gradual hurtless lapse into idiocy, of faculties which at their best of times never having been strong, we look upon the consummation of their decay with no more of pity than is consistent with a smile. The mad tailor, the poor driveller, that has gone out of his wits (and truly he appears to have had no great journey to go to get past their confines) for the love of Charming Betty Careless,-these half-laughable, scarce-pitiable objects take off from the horror which the principal figure would of itself raise, at the same time that they assist the feeling of the scene by contributing to the general notion of its subject.

Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to excess to remark, that in the poor kneeling weeping female, who accompanies her seducer in his sad decay, there is something analogous to Kent or Caius, as he delights rather to be called, in Lear, the noblest pattern of virtue which even Shakspere has conceived, — who follows his royal master in banishment that had pronounced his banishment, and forgetful at once of his wrongs and dignities, taking on himself the disguise of a menial, retains his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty to the carcase, the shadow, the shell and empty husk of Lear.

In the perusal of a book, or of a picture, much of the impression which we receive depends upon the habit of mind which we bring with us to such perusal. The same circumstance may make one person laugh, which shall render another very serious; or in the same person the first impression may be corrected by after thought. The misemployed incongruous characters of the Harlot's Funeral, on a superficial inspection, provoke to laughter; but when we have sacrificed the first emotion to levity, a very different frame of mind succeeds, or the painter has lost half his purpose. I never look at that wonderful assemblage of depraved beings, who, without a grain of reverence or pity in their perverted minds, are performing the sacred exteriors of duty to the relics of their departed partner in folly, but I am as much moved to sympathy from the very want of it in them, as I should be by the finest representation of a virtuous death-bed surrounded by real mourners, pious children, weeping friends,—perhaps more by the very contrast. What reflections does it not awake, of the dreadful heartless state in which the creature (a female, too) must have lived, who in death wants the accompaniment of one genuine tear. That wretch who is removing the lid of the coffin to gaze upon the corpse with a face which indicates a perfect negation of all goodness or womanhood-the hypocrite parson and his demure partner-all the fiendish group-to a thoughtful mind present a moral emblem more affecting than if the poor friendless carcase had been depicted as thrown out to the woods, where wolves had assisted at its obsequies, itself furnishing forth its own funeral banquet.

It is easy to laugh at such incongruities as are met together in this picture, -incongruous objects being of the very essence of laughter,-but surely the laugh is far different in its kind from that thoughtless species to which we are moved by mere farce and grotesque. We laugh when Ferdinand Count Fathom, at the first sight of the white cliffs of Britain, feels his heart yearn with filial fondness towards the land of his progenitors, which he is coming to fleece and plunder,- -we smile at the exquisite irony of the passage,—but if we are not led on by such passages to some more salutary feeling than laughter, we are very negligent perusers of them in book or picture.

It is the fashion with those who cry up the great Historical School in this country, at the head of which Sir Joshua Reynolds is placed, to exclude Hogarth from that school, as an artist of an inferior and vulgar class. Those persons seem to me to confound the painting of subjects in common

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