will stretched to breaking-point,* the Aquilina. You are a fool I am sure. simplicity of real sacrifice, the humility the worse senator for all that. Come, Nacky

Antonio. May be so tov, sweet-heart. Neva of exasperated and craving passion, Nacky; let's have a game at romp, Nacky which begs to the end, and against all You won't sit down? Then look you hope, for its fuel and its gratification.t Dow; suppose me a hull, a Basan-bull, the full Like Shakspeare, he has conceived of bulls, or any bull. plus up I get, and with

my brows thus bent-I broo; I say I broo, 1 genuine women, 1--Monimia, above all broo, I broo. You won't sit down, will you Belvidera, who, like Imogen, has given I broo. Now, I'll be a senator again, and herself wholly, and is lost

as in an abyss thy lover, little Nicky, Nacky.. Ah, toad, toad, of adoration for him whom she has toad, toad, spit in my face a little, Nacky , spii

in my face, pry'thee, spit in my face, never su chusen, who can but love, obey, weep, little': spit but a little bit

, -spit, spit, spit, spit suffer, and who dies like a flower when you are bid, I say ; do pry'thee, spit... plucked from the stalk, when her arms Now, now spit. What, you won't spit, will are torn from the neck around which you? Then I'll be a dog.

Aquilina. A dog, my lord ! she has locked them. Like Shakspeare

Antonio. Ay, a dog, and I'll give thee this again, he has found, at least once, the t'other purse to let me be a dog--and to use me grand bitter buffoonery, the harsh sen- like a dog a little. Hurry durry, I will-hers timent of human baseness; and he has waugh waugh, bough, waugh:

'tis. (Gives the prurse.)

Now bough introduced into his most painful trag. Aquilina. Hold, hold, sir. If curs bite, edy, an impure caricature, an old sen- they must be kicked, sir. Do you see, kicked

thus? ator, who unbends from his official

Antonio. Ay, with all my heart. Do, kick, gravity in order to play at his mistress'

kick on, now

am under the table, kick again, house the clown or the valet. How-kick harder-harder yet-bough, waugh, bitter! how true was his conception, waugh, bough.-Odd, I'll have a snap at thy in making the busy man eager to leave shins:--Bough, waugh, waugh, waugh, bough his robes and his ceremonies ! how

.-odd, she kicks bravely." ready the man is to abase himself, At last she takes a whip, thrashes him when, escaped from his part, he comes soundly, and turns him out of the to his real self ! how the ape and the house. He will return, we may be dog crop up in him! The senator sure of that; he has spent a pleasant Antonio comes to his Aquilina, who evening; he rubs his back, but he was insults him ; he is amused; hard words amused. In short, he was but a clown are a relief to compliments; he speaks who had missed his vocation, whom in a shrill voice, runs into a falsetto chance has given an embroidered silk like a zany at a country fair :

gown, and who turns out at so much an Antonio. Nacky, Nacky, Wacky,—how more natural, more at his ease, playing

hour political harlequinades. He feels dost do, Nasky! Hurry, durry: I am come: Punch than aping a statesman. little Nacky. Past eleven o'clock, a late hour; time in all conscience to go to bed, Nacky. These are but gleams : for the most Nacky did I say? Ay, Nacky, Aquilina, lina, part Otway is a poet of his time, dull

I lina, quilina ; Aquilina, Naquilina, Acky, and forced in color; buried, like the Nacky, queen Nacky.- Come, let's tó bed. You fubbs, you pug you. You little puss. rest, in the heavy, gray, clouded at. Purree tuzzj-I am a senator.

mosphere, half English and ha' French, * See the death of Pierre and Jaffier in Venn from France, are snuffed out by the

in which the bright lights brought over ice Preserved (5, last scene). Pierre, stabbed once, bursts into a laugh.

insular fogs. He is a man of his time ; t" Faffier. Oh, that my arms were riveted like the rest, he writes obscene com Thus round thee ever! But my friends, my edies, The Soldier's Fortune, The Athe

oath! This, and no more. (Kisses her.) ist, Friendship in Fashion. He depicts

Belvidera. Another, sure another coarse and vicious cavaliers, rogues on For that roor little one you've ta'en such care principle, as harsh and corrupt as those

of; I'll giv't him truly." -- Venice Preserved, sesand practises the maxims of Hobbes ;

of Wycherley, Beaugard, who vaunts There is jealousy in this last word. t“ Oh, thou art tender all,

* Venice Preserved, 3. 1. Autorius aean Gentle and kind, as sympathizing nature, as a copy of the “celebrated Earl of Shaftes Dove-like, soft and kind.

bury, the lewdness of whose latter years,” saye I'll ever live your most obedient wife, Mr. Thornton in his edition of Otway's Works Yor ever any privilege pretend

3 vols. 1815, was a subject of general noto Beyo..d your will." --Orphan, 4. I. riety.”—Tx.

66

co;"7

the father, an old, corrupt rascal, who is a master-p ece of art, it is also a brags of his morality, and whom his picture of manners; that the nostro son coldly sends to the dogs with a bag fined and accomplished in society along of crowns: Sir Jolly Jumble, a kind of could speak and understand it; that it base Falstaff, a pander by profession, paints a civilization, as Shakspeare's whom the courtesans call “ papa,daddy,

," does; that each of these lines, which who, “if he sits but at the table with appear so stiff, has its inflection and one, he'll be making nasty figures in the artifice; that all passions, and every aapkins: "* Sir Davy Dunce, a disgust- shade of passion, are expressed in them, ing animal," who has such a breath, not, it is true, wild and entire, as in one kiss of him were enough to cure Shakspeare, but pared down and rethe fits of the mother ; 'tis worse than fined by courtly life; that this is a assafoetida. Clean linen, he says, is spectacle as unique as the other ; that unwholesome ..; he is continually nature perfectly polished is as complex eating of garlic, and chewing tobac. and as difficult to understand as nature

Polydore, who, enamored of perfectly intact; that as for the dramhis father's ward, tries to force her in atists we speak of, they were as far *he first scene, envies the brutes, and below the one as below the other; and makes up his mind to imitate them on that, in short, their characters are as the next occasion. I _Otway defiles much like Racine's as the porter of even his heroines. $ Truly this society Mons. de Beauvilliers or the cook of sickens us. They thought to cover all Madame de Sévigné were like Madame their filth with fine correct metaphors, de Sévigné or Mons. de Beauvilliers. ** neatly ended poetical periods, a gar

VI. ment of harmonious phrases and noble expressions. They thought to equal

Let us then leave this drama in the Racine by counterfeiting his style. obscurity which it deserves, and seek They did not know that in this style elsewhere, in studied writings, for a the outward elegance conceals an ad- happier employment of a fuller talent. mirable propriety of thought; that if it Pamphlets and dissertations in verse, * The Soldier's Fortune, 1. 1:

letters, satires, translations and imita

Ibid. " Who'd be that sordid foolish thing called tions; here was the true domain of man,

Dryden and of classical reason; this is To cringe thus, fawn, and flatter for a pleas- the field on which logical faculties and Which beasts enjoy so very much above the art of writing find their best occuhim ?

pation. † Before descending into it, The lusty bull ranges thro' all the field, and observing their work, it will be as And from the herd singling his female out, well to study

more closely the man who Enjoys her, and abandons her at will. It shall be so, I'll yet possess my love,

so wielded them. Wait on, and watch her loose unguarded His was a singularly solid and judihours :

cious mind, an excellent reasoner, acThen, when her roving thoughts have been customed to mature his ideas, armed

abroad, And brought in wanton wishes to her with good long-meditated proofs, strong heart;

in discussion, asserting principles, esl'th' very minute when her virtue nods,

tablishing his subdivisions, citing au. I'll rash upon her in a storm of love, Beat down her guard of honour all before thorities, drawing inferences ; so that, me,

if we read his prefaces without reading Surfeit on joys, till ev’n

desire grew sick; his dramas, we might take him for one Then by long absence liberty regain, of the masters of the dramatic art. He And quite forget the pleasure and the naturally attains a prose style, definite

pain."--The Orphan, 1. 1. It is impossible to see together more moral * Burns said, after his arrival in Edinburgh, foguery and literary correctness.

“ Between the man of rustio life and the polite f* Page (to Monimia). In the morning when world, I observed little difference. ... But you call me to you,

a refined and accomplished woman was a being And by your bed' I stand and tell you altogether new to me, and of which I had stories,

formed but a very inadequate idea."-(Burns I am ashamed to see your swelling breasts ; Works, ed. Cunningham, 1832, 8 vols., i. 207. It makes me blush, they are so very white. Dryden says, in his Essay on.fatire, xiii. Monimia. Oh men, for flatt'ry aud de 30,

stage

to which my genius i ever moet ceit renown'd!"-Tk Orsham, 1. I. inclined me.'

ure,

the

and precise; his ideas are unfolded it, any more than his contemporaries. with breadth and clearness; his style is Across the Channel, at the same epoch, well moulded, exact and simple, free they praised just as much, but without from the affectations and ornaments cringing too low, because praise was with which Pope's was burdened after- decked out ; now disguised or relieved wards; his expression is, like that of by charm of style ; now looking as if Corneille, ample and full; the cause of men took to it as to a fashion. I hus it is simply to be found in the inner delicately tempered, people are able to arguments which unfold and sustain it. digest it. But here, far from the line We can see that he thinks, and that on aristocratic kitchen, it. weighs like al his own behalf; that he combines and undigested mass upon the stomach. ] verifies his thoughts; that besides all have related how Lord Clarendon this, he naturally has a just perception, hearing that his daughter had just mar. and that with his method he has good ried the Duke of York in secret, begged sense. He has the tastes and the weak- the king to have her instantly behead nesses which suit his cast of intellect. ed;* how the Commons, composed He holds in the highest estimation for the most part of Presbyterians, de " the admirable Boileau, whose num- clared themselves and the English peo bers are excellent, whose expressions ple rebels, worthy of the pnnishment are noble, whose thoughts are just, of death, and moreover cast themselves whose language is pure, whose satire is at the king's feet, with contrite air to pointed, and whose sense is close. beg him to pardon the House and the What he borrows from the ancients, he nation. | Dryden is no more delicate repays with usury of his own, in coin than statesmen and legislators. His as good, and almost as universally dedications are as a rule nauseous. He valuable.”* He has the stiffness of the says to the Duchess of Monmouth : logician poets, too strict and argumen- "To receive the blessings and prayers tative, blaming Ariosto "who neither of mankind, you need only be seen todesigned justly, nor observed any unity gether. We are ready to conclude, of action, or compass of time, or moder- that you are a pair of angels sent below ation in the vastness of his draught; to make virtue amiable in your per, his style is luxurious, without majesty sons, or to sit to poets when they would or decency, and his adventures without pleasantly instruct the age, by drawing the compass of nature and possibility.”+ goodness in the most perfect and allur, He understands delicacy no better than ing shape of nature. No part of fancy. Speaking of Horace, he finds Europe can afford a parallel to your that““ his wit is faint and his salt al. noble Lord in masculine beauty, and in most insipid. Juvenal is of a more goodliness of shape.” | Elsewhere he vigorous and masculine wit ; he gives says to the Duke of Monmouth: “You me as much pleasure as I can bear.” I have all the advantages of mind and For the same reason he depreciates the body, and an illustrious birth conspir French style: “Their language is not ing to render you an extraordinary perstrung with sinews, like our English; son. The Achilles and the Rinaldo it has the nimbleness of a grayhound, are present in you, even above their but not the bulk and body of a mastiff. originals ; you only want a Homer cr

They have set up purity for the a Tasso to make you equal to them standard of their language; and a mas- Youth, beauty, and courage (all which culine vigor is that of ours." | Two or you possess in the height of their perthree such words depict a man; Dry- fection) are the most desirable gifts of den has just shown, unwittingly, the Heaven.”.ş His Grace did not frown measure and quality of his mind. nor bold his nose, and his Grace was

This mind, as we may imagine, is right. || Another author, Mrs. Aphra heavy, and especially só in Aattery.

and

Behn, burned a still more ill-savored | a basis; his mood is too serious, even incense under the nose of Nell Gwynne : reserved, taciturn. As Sir Walter people's nerves were strong in those Scott justly said, “his indelicacy was days, and they breathed freely where like the forced impudence of a bashful others would be suffocated The Earl man.” * He wished to wear the fine of Dorset having written some little exterior of a Sedley or a Rochester, songs and satires, Dryden swears that made himself petulant of set purpose, in Eis way he equalled Shakspeare, and squatted clumsily in the filth in and surpassed all the ancients. And which others simply sported. Nothing these barefaced panegyrics go on im- is more sickening than studied lewd perturbably for a score of pages, the ness, and Dryden studies every thing author alternately passing in review the even pleasantry and politeness. He various virtues of his great man, al- wrote to Dennis, who had praised ways finding that the last is the finest; * him: “They (the commendations) are after which he receives by way of reco no more mine when I receive them ompense a purse of gold. Dryden in than the light of the moon can be taking the money, is not more a flunkey allowed to be her own, who shines than others. The corporation of Hull, but by the reflexion of her brother.” + harangued one day by the Duke of He wrote to his cousin, in a diverting Monmouth, made him a present of six narration, these details of a fat woman broad pieces, which were presented to with whom he had travelled : “ Her Monmouth by Marvell, the member weight made the horses travel very for Hull.t Modern scruples were not heavily; but, to give them a breathing yet born. I can believe that Dryden, time, she would often stop us, with all his prostrations, lacked spirit tell us we were all flesh and blood.” 1 more than honor.

It seems that these were the sort of A second talent, perhaps the first in jokes which would then amuse a lady. carnival time, is the art of saying His letters are made up of heavy offi. broad things, and the Restoration was cial civilities, vigorously hewn complia carnival, about as delicate as a bar. ments, mathematical salutes; his badigee's ball. There are strange songs nage is a dissertation, he props up his and rather shameless prologues in trifes with periods. I have found in Dryden's plays. His Marriage d la his works some beautiful passages, but Móde opens with these verses sung by never agreeable ones; he cannot even a married woman :

argue with taste. The characters in Why should a foolish marriage vow,

his Essay of Dramatic Poesy think Which long ago was made,

themselves still at college, learnedly Oblige us to each other now,

quote Paterculus, and in Latin too, opWhen passion is decay'd? We loved, and we loved as long as we could, and observing that it was only a gen.

posing the definition of the other side, '. But our marriage is dead when the pleasure cre et fine, and so not altogether per. is fled ;

fect.” § In one of his prefaces he 'Twas pleasure first made it an oath." I

says in a professorial tone : The reader may read the rest for him. charged upon me that I make debauchself in Dryden's plays ; it cannot be ed persons my protagonists, or the quoted. Besides, Dryden does not chief persons of the drama; and that succeed well; his mind'is on too solid I make them happy in the conclusion be writes in a letter (xviii. 90): “I

find it is which is to reward virtue, and punish

of my play; against the law of comedy, jot for me to contend any way with your Lordship, who can write better on the meanest sube vice." || Elsewhere he declares: “It ject than I can on the best. You are is not that I would explode the use of dedication of the Fables (şi. 195) he compares thinks them necessary to raise it.' above any incense I can give you." In his metaphors from passion, for Longinus che Duke of Ormond to Joseph, Ulysses, Lucullus, etc. In his fourth poetical epistle (xi. * Scott's Life of Dryden, i. 447. 20) he comparės Lady Castlemaine to Cato. .t Letter 2, to Mr. John Dennis," xviij

Dedication of the Essay of Dramatic 114. Poesy, xv. 286.

Letter 29, “ to Mrs. Steward," xviii. 144 + See Andrew Marvell's Works, i. 210.

Essay of Dramatic Poesy, IV. 309. Marriage de la Mock, iv. 345.

Preface to An Evening's Love, iii. aay.

“ It is

:

His great essay upon Satire swarms have suffered in sile. :e, and possessed with useless or long protracted pas- my soul in quiet.”* Insulted by Cois sages, with the inquiries and compari- lier as a corrupter of morals, he en sons of a commentator. He cannot dured this coarse reproof, and nobly get rid of the scholar, the logician, the confessed the faults of his youth: “I rhetorician, and show the plain down- shall say the less of Mr. Collier, be right man.

cause in many things he has taxed mBut his true manliness was often justly; and I have pleaded guilty to apparent; in spite of several falls and all thoughts and expressions of mine many slips, he shows a mind constant- which can be truly argued <bscenity, ly upright, bending rather from con- profaneness, or immorality and re ventionality than from nature, possess tract them. If he be my enemy, le ing enthusiasm and afflatus, occupied him triumph ; if he be my friend, as I with grave thoughts, and subjecting have given him no personal occasion his conduct to his convictions. He to be otherwise, he will be glad of my was converted loyally and by conviction repentance.” † There is some wit in to the Roman Catholic creed, perse. what follows: “He (Collier) is too vered in it after the fall of James II., much given to horseplay in his raillery, lost his post of historiographer and and comes to battle like a dictator poet-laureate, and though poor, bur- from the plough. I will not say, “the dened with a family, and infirm, re- zeal of God's house has eaten him up,' fused to dedicate his Virgil to King but I am sure it has devoured some William. He wrote to his sons: “Dis- part of his good manners and civility:"I sembling, though lawful in some cases, Such a repentance raises a man; when is not my talent : yet, for your sake, i he humbles himself thus, he must be a will struggle with the plain openness great man. He was so in mind and of my nature. . . . In the mean time, I in heart, full of solid arguments and Aatter not myself with any manner of individual opinions, above the petty hopes, but do my duty, and suffer for mannerism of rhetoric and affectations God's sake. . . . You know the profits of style, a master of verse, a slave to (of Virgil) might have been more ; but his idea, with that abundance of thought neither my conscience nor my honor which is the sign of true genius : would suffer me to take them; but I “Thoughts such as they are, come

never repent of my constancy, crowding in so fast upon me, that my șince I am thoroughly persuaded of the only difficulty is to chuse or to reject, justice of the cause for which I suf- to run them into verses, or to give them fer.”* One of his sons having been the other harmony of prose : I have so expelled from school, he wrote to the long studied and practised both, that master, Dr. Busby, his own former they are grown into a habit, and beteacher, with extreme gravity and no- come familiar to me." | With these bleness, asking without humiliation, powers he entered upon his second ca. disagreeing without giving offence, in a reer; the English constitution and sustained and proud style, which is genius opened it to him. calculated to please, seeking again his favor, if not as a debt to the father, at

VII. least as a gift to the son, and conclud

"A man,” says La Bruyère, “bora mg, “ I have done something, so far to

a Frenchman and a Christian finds conquer my own spirit as to ask it.” himself constrained in satire; great He was a good father to his children, subjects are forbidden to him; he as well as liberal, and sometimes even

essays them sometimes, and then turns generous, to the tenant of his little es- aside to small things, which he ele. tate.t He says: “More libels have

vates by the beauty of his genius and been written against me than almost his style.” It was not so in England any man now living. · ... I have sel- Great subjects were given up to vehe. dom answered any scurrilous lampoon, ment discussior ; politics and religion and, being naturally vindictive,

can