From this rude man and beast?-sure I am mortal;
The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal,
And she that bore me mortal; prick my hand
And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and

The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink,
Makes me a-cold: my fear says I am mortal:
Yet I have heard-my mother told it me-
And now I do believe it, if I keep

My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,
Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves,
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires,
Or voices calling me in dead of night
To make me follow, and so tole me on

Through mire and standing pools, to find my ruin.
Else why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners nor smooth humanity, whose heats
Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen,
Thus mildly kneel to me? Sure there's a power
In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast
All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites

That break their confines. Then, strong Chastity,
Be thou my strongest guard; for here I'll dwell
In opposition against fate and hell.

Thee freedom, shepherd, and thy tongue be still The same it ever was, as free from ill,

As he whose conversation never knew

The court or city, be thou ever true.

Peri. When I fall off from my affection,
Or mingle my clean thoughts with ill desires,
First let our great God cease to keep my flocks,
That being left alone without a guard,

The wolf, or winter's rage, summer's great heat,
And want of water, rots, or what to us
Of ill is yet unknown, fall speedily,
And in their general ruin let me go.

Amo. I pray thee, gentle shepherd, wish not so:

I do believe thee, 'tis as hard for me

To think thee false, and harder than for thee
To hold me foul.

Peri. O you are fairer far

Than the chaste blushing morn, or that fair star
That guides the wand'ring seamen through the deep,
Straighter than straightest pine upon the steep
Head of an aged mountain, and more white
Than the new milk we strip before daylight
From the full-freighted bags of our fair flocks.

Your hair more beauteous than those hanging locks
Of young Apollo.

Amo. Shepherd, be not lost,

Y' are sailed too far already from the coast

Of our discourse.

Peri. Did you not tell me once

I should not love alone, I should not lose

Those many passions, vows, and holy oaths,

I've sent to heaven? Did you not give your hand, Even that fair hand, in hostage? Do not then Give back again those sweets to other men

You yourself vowed were mine.

Amo. Shepherd, so far as maiden's modesty May give assurance, I am once more thine,

A Virtuous Well, about whose flowery banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds
By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes
Their stolen children, so to make them free
From dying flesh and dull mortality.
By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn
And given away his freedom, many a troth
Been plight, which neither envy nor old time
Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given
In hope of coming happiness: by this
Fresh fountain many a blushing maid
Hath crowned the head of her long-loved shepherd
With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung
Lays of his love and dear captivity.

The God of the RIVER rises with AMORET in his arms. River God. What pow'rful charms my streams do bring

Back again unto their spring,

With such force, that I their god,
Three times striking with my rod,
Could not keep them in their ranks!
My fishes shoot into the banks;
There's not one that stays and feeds,
All have hid them in the weeds.
Here's a mortal almost dead,
Fall'n into my river-head,
Hallowed so with many a spell,
That till now none ever fell.
'Tis a female, young and clear,
Cast in by some ravisher.

See upon her breast a wound,

On which there is no plaster bound;

Yet she's warm, her pulses beat,
'Tis a sign of life and heat.

If thou be 'st a virgin pure,

I can give a present cure.

Take a drop into thy wound
From my watery locks, more round
Than orient pearl, and far more pure
Than unchaste flesh may endure.
See, she pants, and from her flesh
The warm blood gusheth out afresh.
She is an unpolluted maid;

I must have this bleeding staid.
From my banks I pluck this flow'r
With holy hand, whose virtuous pow'r
Is at once to heal and draw.

The blood returns. I never saw

A fairer mortal. Now doth break
Her deadly slumber: Virgin, speak.

Amo. Who hath restored my sense, given me
new breath,

And brought me back out of the arms of death?
God. I have healed thy wounds.

Amo. Ah me!

God. Fear not him that succoured thee:

I am this fountain's god! Below,

My waters to a river grow,

And 'twixt two banks with osiers set,

That only prosper in the wet,
Through the meadows do they glide,
Wheeling still on ev'ry side,
Sometimes winding round about,
To find the even'st channel out.
And if thou wilt go with me,
Leaving mortal company,

In the cool stream shalt thou lie, Free from harm as well as I;

I will give thee for thy food

No fish that useth in the mud!

But trout and pike, that love to swim
Where the gravel from the brim
Through the pure streams may be seen:
Orient pearl fit for a queen,
Will I give, thy love to win,
And a shell to keep them in:
Not a fish in all my brook
That shall disobey thy look,

But, when thou wilt, come sliding by,
And from thy white hand take a fly.
And to make thee understand
How I can my waves command,
They shall bubble whilst I sing,
Sweeter than the silver string.

The Song.

Do not fear to put thy feet

Naked in the river, sweet;

Think not leech, or newt, or toad,

Will bite thy foot, when thou hast trod;
Nor let the water rising high,

As thou wad'st in, make thee cry
And sob; but ever live with me,

And not a wave shall trouble thee!

The lyrical pieces scattered throughout Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are generally in the same graceful and fanciful style as the poetry of The Faithful Shepherdess. Some are here subjoined.

[Melancholy.]

[From Nice Valour.]

Hence, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights

Wherein you spend your folly!
There's nought in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see 't,

But only melancholy!

Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,

A look that's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained up, without a sound!
Fountain heads, and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls!
A midnight bell, a parting groan!
These are the sounds we feed upon;
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley:
Nothing's so dainty-sweet as lovely melancholy.
[Song]

[From the False One.]

Look out, bright eyes, and bless the air!
Even in shadows you are fair.
Shut-up beauty is like fire,

That breaks out clearer still and higher.
Though your beauty be confined,

And soft Love a prisoner bound, Yet the beauty of your mind,

Neither check nor chain hath found. Look out nobly, then, and dare

Ev'n the fetters that you wear!

[The Power of Love.]
[From Valentinian.]

Hear ye, ladies that despise

What the mighty Love has done; Fear examples, and be wise:

15

Fair Calisto was a nun:

Leda, sailing on the stream,
To deceive the hopes of man,
Love accounting but a dream,
Doted on a silver swan;
Danae in a brazen tower,
Where no love was, loved a shower.

Hear ye, ladies that are coy,
What the mighty Love can do;
Fear the fierceness of the boy;

The chaste moon he makes to woo Vesta, kindling holy fires,

Circled round about with spies,
Never dreaming loose desires,
Doting at the altar dies;
Ilion in a short hour higher,
He can build, and once more fire.
[To Sleep.]

and masterly dramatic effort. Previous to this, Chapman had translated part of the Iliad; and his lofty fourteen-syllable rhyme, with such lines as the following, would seem to have promised a great tragic poet :

From his bright helm and shield did burn a most unwearied fire,

Like rich Autumnus' golden lamp, whose brightness men admire,

Past all the other host of stars, when with his cheerful face,

Fresh washed in lofty ocean waves, he doth the sky enchase.

The beauty of Chapman's compound Homeric epithets-quoted by Thomas Warton-as silverfooted Thetis, the triple-feathered helm, the fairhaired boy, high-walled Thebes, the strong-winged lance, &c., bear the impress of a poetical imagination, chaste yet luxuriant. But however spirited and lofty as a translator, Chapman proved but a heavy and cumbrous dramatic writer. He continued to supply the theatre with tragedies and comedies up to 1620, or later; yet of the sixteen that have descended to us, not one possesses the creative and vivifying power of dramatic genius. In didactic observation and description he is sometimes happy, and hence he has been praised for possessing more thinking' than most of his contemporaries of the buskined muse. His judgment, however, vanished in action, for his plots are unnatural, and his style was too hard and artificial to admit of any nice delineation of character. His extravagances are also as bad as those of Marlowe, and are seldom relieved by poetic thoughts or fancy. The best

Of thy abashed oracle, that, for fear

Of some ill it includes, would fain lie hid : And rise thou with it in thy greater light. The life of Chapman was a scene of content and prosperity. He was born at Hitching Hill, in Hertfordshire, in 1557; was educated both at Oxford and Cambridge; enjoyed the royal patronage of King James and Prince Henry, and the friendship of Spenser, Jonson, and Shakspeare. He was temperate and pious, and, according to Oldys, 'preserved in his conduct the true dignity of poetry, which he compared to the flower of the sun, that disdains to open its leaves to the eye of a smoking taper.' The at the ripe age of seventy-seven. life of this venerable scholar and poet closed in 1634,

Chapman's Homer is a wonderful work, considering the time when it was produced, and the continued spirit which is kept up. Chapman had a vast field to traverse, and though he trod it hurriedly and negligently, he preserved the fire and freedom of his great original. Pope and Waller both praised his translation, and perhaps it is now more frequently in the hands of scholars and poetical students than the more polished and musical version of Pope. Chapman's translations consist of the Iliad (which he dedicated to Prince Henry), the Odyssey (dedicated to the royal favourite, Carr, Earl of Somerset), and the Georgics of Hesiod, which he inscribed to Lord Bacon. A version of Hero and Leander, left unfinished by Marlowe, was completed by Chapman, and published in 1606.

THOMAS DEKKER.

I tell thee love is Nature's second sun,
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines:
And as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties both of art and nature,
Are given in vain to men; so, without love,
All beauties bred in women are in vain,
All virtues bred in men lie buried;

For love informs them as the sun doth colours.

In Bussy D'Ambois is the following invocation for a Spirit of Intelligence, which has been highly lauded by Charles Lamb:

I long to know

How my dear mistress fares, and be informed
What hand she now holds on the troubled blood
Of her incensed lord. Methought the spirit,
When he had uttered his perplexed presage,
Threw his changed count'nance headlong into clouds:
His forehead bent, as he would hide his face:
He knocked his chin against his darkened breast,
And struck a churlish silence through his powers.
Terror of darkness! O thou king of flames!
That with thy music-footed horse dost strike
The clear light out of crystal on dark earth;
And hurl'st instinctive fire about the world:
Wake, wake the drowsy and enchanted night
That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle.
Or thou, great prince of shades, where never sun
Sticks his far-darted beams; whose eyes are made
To see in darkness, and see ever best
Where sense is blindest: open now the heart

Henslowe; but Ben and he became bitter enemies; and the former, in his Poetaster, performed in 1601, has satirised Dekker under the character of Crispinus, representing himself as Horace! Jonson's charges against his adversary are 'his arrogancy and impudence in commending his own things, and for his translating.' The origin of the quarrel does not appear, but in an apologetic dialogue added to the Poetaster, Jonson says:

Whether of malice, or of ignorance,

Or itch to have me their adversary, I know not,
Or all these mixed; but sure I am, three years
They did provoke me with their petulant styles
On every stage.

Dekker replied by another drama, Satiromastix, or the Untrussing the Humorous Poet, in which Jonson appears as Horace junior. There is more raillery and abuse in Dekker's answer than wit or poetry, but it was well received by the playgoing public. Jonson had complained that his lines were often maliciously misconstrued and misapplied, complacently remarking:

The error is not mine, but in their eye
That cannot take proportions.

Dekker replies happily to this querulous display of egotism:

Horace to stand within the shot of galling tongues
Proves not your guilt; for could we write on paper
Made of these turning leaves of heaven, the clouds,
Or speak with angels' tongues, yet wise men know
That some would shake the head, though saints should
sing:

Some snakes must hiss, because they're born with stings.

Be not you grieved

If that which you mould fair, upright, and smooth,
Be screwed awry, made crooked, lame, and vile,
By racking comments.

So to be bit it rankles not, for Innocence
May with a feather brush off the foul wrong.
But when your dastard wit will strike at men
In corners, and in riddles fold the vices

Of your best friends, you must not take to heart
If they take off all gilding from their pills,
And only offer you the bitter core.

Dekker's Fortunatus, or the Wishing-cap, and the Honest Whore, are his best. The latter was a great favourite with Hazlitt, who says it unites the simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry.' The poetic diction of Dekker is choice and elegant, but he often wanders into absurdity. Passages like the following would do honour to any dramatist. Of Patience:

Patience! why, 'tis the soul of peace:

Of all the virtues, 'tis nearest kin to heaven:

It makes men look like gods. The best of men That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer, A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit: The first true gentleman that ever breathed. The contrast between female honour and shame : Nothing did make me, when I loved them best, To loathe them more than this: when in the street A fair, young, modest damsel I did meet; She seemed to all a dove when I passed by, And I to all a raven: every eye

That followed her, went with a bashful glance: At me each bold and jeering countenance Darted forth scorn: to her, as if she had been Some tower unvanquished, would they all vail : 'Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail; She, crowned with reverend praises, passed by them; I, though with face masked, could not 'scape the hem; For, as if heaven had set strange marks on such, Because they should be pointing-stocks to man, Drest up in civilest shape, a courtesan, Let her walk saint-like, noteless, and unknown, Yet she's betrayed by some trick of her own. The picture of a lady seen by her lover:

My Infelice's face, her brow, her eye,

:

The dimple on her cheek and such sweet skill
Hath from the cunning workman's pencil flown,
These lips look fresh and lively as her own;
Seeming to move and speak. Alas! now I see
The reason why fond women love to buy
Adulterate complexion: here 'tis read;
False colours last after the true be dead.
Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks,
Of all the graces dancing in her eyes,
Of all the music set upon her tongue,
Of all that was past woman's excellence,
In her white bosom; look, a painted board
Circumscribes all! Earth can no bliss afford;
Nothing of her but this! This cannot speak;
It has no lap for me to rest upon;

No lip worth tasting. Here the worms will feed,
As in her coffin. Hence, then, idle art,
True love 's best pictured in a true love's heart.
Here art thou drawn, sweet maid, till this be dead,
So that thou livest twice, twice art buried.
Thou figure of my friend, lie there!

[Picture of Court-life.]

[From Old Fortunatus.]

For still in all the regions I have seen,

I scorned to crowd among the muddy throng

Of the rank multitude, whose thickened breath

Like to condensed fogs-do choke that beauty,
Which else would dwell in every kingdom's cheek.
No; I still boldly stept into their courts:
For there to live 'tis rare, O 'tis divine.
There shall you see faces angelical;

There shall you see troops of chaste goddesses,
Whose starlike eyes have power-might they still

shine

To make night day, and day more crystalline.
Near these you shall behold great heroes,
White-headed councillors, and jovial spirits,
Standing like fiery cherubim to guard
The monarch, who in godlike glory sits
In midst of these, as if this deity
Had with a look created a new world,
The standers-by being the fair workmanship.

And. Oh how my soul is rapt to a third heaven!
I'll travel sure, and live with none but kings.
Amp. But tell me, father, have you in all courts
Beheld such glory, so majestical,

In all perfection, no way blemished?

Fort. In some courts shall you see Ambition
Sit, piecing Dædalus's old waxen wings;
But being clapt on, and they about to fly,
Even when their hopes are busied in the clouds,
They melt against the sun of Majesty,
And down they tumble to destruction.
By travel, boys, I have seen all these things.
Fantastic Compliment stalks up and down,
Trickt in outlandish feathers; all his words,
His looks, his oaths, are all ridiculous,
All apish, childish, and Italianate.

Dekker is supposed to have died about the year 1638. His life seems to have been spent in irregularity and poverty. According to Oldys, he was three years in the King's Bench prison. In one of his own beautiful lines, he says:

We ne'er are angels till our passions die. But the old dramatists lived in a world of passion, of revelry, want, and despair.

JOHN WEBSTER.

JOHN WEBSTER, the 'noble-minded,' as Hazlitt designates him, lived and died about the same time as Dekker, with whom he wrote in the conjunct authorship then so common. His original dramas are the Duchess of Malfi; Guise, or the Massacre of France; the Devil's Law-case; Appius and Virginia; and the White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona. Webster, it has been said, was clerk of St Andrew's Church, Holborn; but Mr Dyce, his editor and biographer, searched the registers of the parish for his name without success. The White Devil and the Duchess of Malfi have divided the opinion of critics as to their relative merits. They are both powerful dramas, though filled with 'supernumerary horrors.' The former was not successful on the stage, and the author published it with a dedication, in which he states, that most of the people that come to the playhouse resemble those ignorant asses who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books.' He was accused, like Jonson, of being a slow writer, but he consoles himself with the example of Euripides, and confesses that he did not write with a goose quill winged with two feathers. In this slighted play there are some exquisite touches of pathos and natural feeling. The grief of a group of mourners over a dead body is thus described:

I found them winding of Marcello's corse,
And there is such a solemn melody
'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies,

Such as old grandames watching by the dead
Were wont to outwear the nights with; that, believe me,
I had no eyes to guide me forth the room,
They were so o'ercharged with water.

The funeral dirge for Marcello, sung by his mother, possesses, says Charles Lamb, that intenseness of feeling which seems to resolve itself into the elements which it contemplates:'

Call for the robin-red breast and the wren,

Since o'er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Call unto his funeral dole,

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,

To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm, And, when gay tombs are robbed, sustain no harm; But keep the wolf far thence, that 's foe to men, For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

The Duchess of Malfi abounds more in the terrible graces. It turns on the mortal offence which the lady gives to her two proud brothers, Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, and a cardinal, by indulging in a generous though infatuated passion for Antonio, her steward.

"This passion,' Mr Dyce justly remarks, 'a subject most difficult to treat, is managed with infinite delicacy; and, in a situation of great peril for the author, she condescends without being degraded, and declares the affection with which her dependent had inspired her without losing anything of dignity and respect.' The last scenes of the play are conceived in a spirit which every intimate student of our elder dramatic literature must feel to be

peculiar to Webster. The duchess, captured by Bosola, is brought into the presence of her brother in an imperfect light, and is taught to believe that

he wishes to be reconciled to her.

[Scene from the Duchess of Malfi.]

Ferdinand. Where are you?
Duchess. Here, sir.

Ferd. This darkness suits you well.

Duch. I would ask you pardon.

Ferd. You have it;

For I account it the honourablest revenge,

Where I may kill, to pardon. Where are your cubs? Duch. Whom?

Ferd. Call them your children,

For, though our national law distinguish bastards
From true legitimate issue, compassionate nature
Makes them all equal.

Duch. Do you visit me for this?
You violate a sacrament o' th' church,
Will make you howl in hell for 't.

Ferd. It had been well

Could you have lived thus always: for, indeed,
You were too much i' th' light-but no more;

I come to seal my peace with you. Here's a hand

[Gives her a dead man's hand.

To which you have vowed much love: the ring upon't

You gave.

Duch. I affectionately kiss it.

Duch. What witchcraft doth he practise, that he hath left

A dead man's hand here?

[Here is discovered, behind a traverse, the artificial figures of Antonio and his children, appearing as if they were dead.] Bosola. Look you, here's the piece from which 'twas ta'en.

He doth present you this sad spectacle,

That, now you know directly they are dead,
Hereafter you may wisely cease to grieve

For that which cannot be recovered.

Duch. There is not between heaven and earth one wish

I stay for after this.

Afterwards, by a refinement of cruelty, the brother sends a troop of madmen from the hospital to make a concert round the duchess in prison. After they have danced and sung, Bosola enters disguised as an old man.

[Death of the Duchess.]

Duch. Is he mad too?
Bos. I am come to make thy tomb.
Duch. Ha! tomb?
my

Thou speak'st as if I lay upon my deathbed,
Gasping for breath: Dost thou perceive me sick?
Bos. Yes, and the more dangerously, since thy sickness
is insensible.

Duch. Thou art not mad sure: dost know me?
Bos. Yes.

Duch. Who am I?

Bos. Thou art a box of wormseed; at best but a What's this flesh? a

salvatory of green mummy. little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those paper-prisons boys use to keep flies in, more contemptible; since ours is to preserve earthworms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage ? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass; and the heaven o'er our heads like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison.

Duch. Am not I thy duchess?

Bos. Thou art some great woman, sure, for riot begins to sit on thy forehead-clad in gray hairs-twenty years sooner than on a merry milkmaid's. Thou sleepest worse, than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow.

Duch. I am Duchess of Malfi still.

Bos. That makes thy sleeps so broken.
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright;
But, looked to near, have neither heat nor light.
Duch. Thou art very plain.

Bos. My trade is to flatter the dead, not the living.

I am a tomb-maker.

Duch. And thou comest to make my tomb?

Bos. Yes.

Send to him that owed it, and you shall see Whether he can aid you.

Duch. You are very cold:

I fear you are not well after your travel.
Ha! lights! O horrible!

Ferd. Let her have lights enough.