which he has frequently introduced into his pieces possess, as Charles Lamb eloquently expresses it, that intensity of feeling which seems to resolve itself into the very elements they contemplate. His dramas are generally composed in mingled prose and verse; and it is possible that he may have had a share in the production of many other pieces besides those I have enumerated above.

§ 8. As the dramatic form was the predominant type of popular literature at this splendid period, the student must expect to be bewildered by the great though subordinate glory of a multitude of minor lights of the theatrical heaven, whose genius our space will enable us to analyze but in a very rapid and cursory manner. The works of these playwrights, each of whom has, when closely examined, his peculiar traits, have, however, such a strong family resemblance both in their merits and defects, that this cursory appreciation will not lead the reader into any considerable error; one star of the bright constellation may somewhat differ from another in glory, but the general character and composition of their rays are the same. Chapman, Dekker, Middleton, and Marston are all remarkable for their fertility and luxuriance. GEORGE CHAPMAN, who has been previously mentioned as the translator of Homer (p. 85), is, however, more admirable for his lofty, classical spirit, and for the power with which he communicated the rich coloring of romantic poetry to the forms borrowed by his learning from Greek legend and history. THOMAS DEkker, one of the most inexhaustible of the literary workers of his age, though he generally appears as a fellow-laborer with other dramatists, yet in the few pieces attributed to his unassisted pen shows great elegance of language and deep tenderness of sentiment. THOMAS MIDDLETON is admired for a certain wild and fantastic fancy which delights in portraying scenes of witchcraft and supernatural agency. JOHN MARSTON, on the contrary, deserves applause less by a purely dramatic quality of genius than by a lofty and satiric tone of invective in which he lashes the vices and follies of mankind, and in particular the neglect of learning. Nor can he who would make acquaintance with the dramatic wealth of this marvellous age pass without attention the works of Taylor, Tourneur, Rowley, Broome, and Thomas Heywood. Tourneur has some resemblance, in the sombre and gloomy tone of his works, to the terrible genius of Webster, while Broome is remarkable for the immense number of pieces in whose composition he had a greater or less share; an observation which may also be applied to Heywood. This latter poet must not be confounded with his namesake John, who was one of the earliest dramatic authors, and flourished in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Mary (see p. 112). Thomas Heywood exhibits a graceful fancy, and one of his plays, A Woman Killed with Kindness, is among the most touching of the period. Broome was originally Ben Jonson's domestic servant, but afterwards attained considerable success upon the stage.

§ 9. The dramatic era of Elizabeth and James closes with JAMES SHIRLEY (1594-1666), whose comedies, though in many respects bear

ing the same general character as the works of his great predecessors, still seem the earnest of a new period. He excels in the delineation of gay and fashionable society, and his dramas are more laudable for ease, nature, and animation than for profound tracings of human nature, or for vivid portraiture of character. He passed through the whole of the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and the Revolution, and is the link which connects the great dramatic school of Shakspeare with the very different form of the drama which revived at the Restoration in 1660. In proportion as the Puritan party grew in influence and acrimony, in precisely equal degree grew the hostility to the theatre; and at last, when fanaticism was rampant, the theatre was formally and legally suppressed, the play-houses were pulled down by bigoted mobs of citizens and soldiers, and the performance of plays, nay, the simple witnessing of theatrical representations, made a penal offence. This took place September 2, 1642, and the dramatic profession may be regarded as remaining under the frown of government during about fourteen years from that date, when the theatre was revived, but revived, as we shall afterwards see, under a completely different form, and with totally different tendencies, moral as well as literary. Of the nature and causes of this dramatic revolution, not less profound than the great political and social revolution of which it was a symptom and a result, I shall speak in another place.

§ 10. The Elizabethan drama is the most wonderful and majestic outburst of genius that any age has yet seen. It is characterized by marked peculiarities; an intense richness and fertility of imagination, such as was natural in an age when the stores of classical antiquity were suddenly thrown open to the popular mind; and this richness and splendor of fancy are combined with the greatest force and vigor of familiar expression. We have an intimate union of the common and the refined, the boldest flights of fancy and the most scrupulous fidelity to actual reality. The great object of these dramatists being to produce intense impressions upon a miscellaneous audience, they sacrificed everything to strength and nature. The circumstance that most of these writers were actors tended to give their productions the peculiar tone they exhibit: to this we must attribute some of their gravest defects as well as many of their most inimitable beauties their occasional coarseness, exaggeration, and buffoonery, as well as that instinctive knowledge of effect which never abandons them. But besides being actors, they were, almost without exception, men of educated and cultivated minds; and thus their writings never fail to show a peculiar aroma of style and language, which is perceptible even in the least fragment of their dialogue. They were also men, men of strong passions and often of irregular lives; and what they felt strongly, and what they had seen in their wild lives, they boldly transferred to their writings; which thus reflect not only the faithful images of human character and passion under every conceivable condition, not only the strongest as well as the most delicate coloring of fancy and imagination, but the profoundest and simplest precepts derived from the prac

tical experience of life. It should never be forgotten that they all resemble Shakspeare in the general texture of their language and the prevailing principles of their mode of dramatic treatment, and only differ from him in the degree to which they possess separately those high and varied qualities which he alone of all human beings carried to an almost superhuman degree of intensity.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

GEORGE COOKE produced Green's Tu quoque in chiefest dramatic poets of that age." There is much 1599, and was the author of fifty epigrams.

THOMAS NABBES wrote in the reign of Charles I. A third-rate poet, but original. None of his dramatic pieces are extant, the chief of which were |

CHAPTER IX.

THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL POETS. A. D. 1600-1700. § 1. Characteristics of the so-called metaphysical poets. § 2. WITHER and QUARLES. §3. HERBERT and CRASHAW. § 4. HERRICK, SUCKLING, and LOVELACE. § 5. BROWNE and HABINGTON. § 6. WALLER. § 7. Davenant and DENHAM. § 8. COWLEY.

§ 1. THE seventeenth century is one of the most momentous in English history. A large portion of it is occupied by an immense fermentation, political and religious, through which were worked out many of those institutions to which the country owes its grandeur and its happiness. The Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, and the Restoration, fill up the space extending from 1630 to 1660, while its termination was signalized by another revolution, which, though peaceful and bloodless, was destined to exert a perhaps even more beneficial influence on the future fortunes of the country. In its literary aspect this agitated epoch, though not marked by that marvellous outburst of creative power which dazzles us in the reigns of Elizabeth and her successor, yet has left deep traces on the turn of thought and expression of the English people; and confining ourselves to the department of poetry, and excluding the solitary example in Milton of a poet of the first class, who will form the subject of a separate study, we may say that this period introduced a class of excellent writers in whom the intellect and the fancy play a greater part than sentiment or passion. Ingenuity predominates over feeling; and while Milton owed much to many of these poets, whom I have ventured, in accordance with Johnson, to style the metaphysical class, nevertheless we must allow that they had much to do with generating the so-called correct and artificial manner which distinguishes the classical writers of the age of William, Anne, and the first George. I propose to pass in rapid review, and generally according to chronological order, the most striking names of this department, extending from about 1600 to 1700.

§ 2. GEORGE WITHER (1588-1667) and FRANCIS QUARLES (15921644) are a pair of poets whose writings have a considerable degree of resemblance in manner and subject, and whose lives were similar in misfortune. Wither took an active part in the Civil War, attained command under the administration of Cromwell, and had to undergo severe persecution and long imprisonment. His most important work is a collection of poems, of a ́ partially pastoral character, entitled the Shepherd's Hunting, in which the reader will find frequent rural descriptions of exquisite fancifulness and beauty, together with a sweet and pure tone of moral reflection. The vice of Wither, as it was generally of the literature of his age, was a passion for ingenious turns

and unexpected conceits, which bear the same relation to really beautiful thoughts that plays upon words do to true wit. He is also often singularly deficient in taste, and frequently deforms graceful images by the juxtaposition of what is merely quaint, and is sometimes even ignoble. Many of his detached lyrics are extremely beautiful, and the verse is generally flowing and melodious; but in reading his best passages we are always nervously apprehensive of coming at any moment upon something which will jar upon our sympathy. He wrote, among many other works, a curious series of Emblems, in which his puritanical enthusiasm revels in a system of moral and theological analogies at least as far-fetched as poetical. Quarles, though a Royalist as ardent as Wither was a devoted Republican, exhibits many points of intellectual resemblance to Wither; to whom, however, he was far inferior in poetical sentiment. One of his most popular works is a collection of Divine Emblems, in which moral and religious precepts are inculcated in short poems of a most quaint character, and illustrated by engravings filled with what may be called allegory run mad. For example, the text, "Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" is accompanied by a cut representing a diminutive human figure, typifying the soul, peeping through the ribs of a skeleton as from behind the bars of a dungeon. This taste for extravagant yet prosaic allegory was borrowed from the laborious ingenuity of the Dutch and Flemish moralists and divines; and Otto Van Veen, the teacher of Rubens, is answerable for some of the most extravagant pictorial absurdities of this nature. Quarles, however, in spite of his quaintness, is not destitute of the feeling of a true poet; and many of his pieces breathe an intense spirit of religious fervor. In spite of their antagonism in politics, Quarles and Wither bear a strong resemblance: the one may be designated as the most roundhead of the Cavaliers, the other as the most cavalier of the Roundheads.

§ 3. If Quarles and Wither represent ingenuity carried to extravagance, GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1632) and RICHARD CRASHAW (circa 1620-1650) exhibit the highest exaltation of religious sentiment, and are both worthy of admiration, not only as Christian poets, but as good men and pious priests. George Herbert was born in 1593, and at first rendered himself remarkable by the graces and accomplishments of the courtly scholar; but afterwards entering the Church, exhibited, as parish priest of Bemerton in Wiltshire, all the virtues which can adorn the country parson - a character he has beautifully described in a prose treatise under that title. He died in 1632, and was known among his contemporaries as "holy George Herbert." He was certainly one of the most perfect characters which the Anglican Church has nourished in her bosom. His poems, principally religious, are generally short lyrics, combining pious aspiration with frequent and beautiful pictures of nature. He decorates the altar with the sweetest and most fragrant flowers of fancy and of wit. Herbert's poems are not devoid of that strange and perverted ingenuity with which I have reproached Quarles and Wither; but the tender unction which reigns throughout his lyrics