That thus shall fix the glory of the world.
I own thy sufferings ought t' unman me thus,
To make me throw my body on the ground,
To bellow like a beast, to gnaw the earth,
To tear my hair, to curse the cruel fates
That force a father thus to drag his bowels.
Tit. O rise, thou violated majesty,

Rise from the earth; or I shall beg those fates
Which you would curse, to bolt me to the centre.
I now submit to all your threatened vengeance:
Come forth, you executioners of justice,

Nay, all you lictors, slaves, and common hangmen ;
Come, strip me bare, unrobe me in his sight,
And lash me till I bleed; whip me like furies;

And when you'll have scourged me till I foam and fall,

For want of spirits, grovelling in the dust,
Then take my head, and give it his revenge:
By all the gods, I greedily resign it.

Bru. No more-farewell-eternally farewell:
If there be gods, they will reserve a room,

A throne for thee in Heaven. One last embrace-
What is it makes my eyes thus swim again?

JOHN CROWNE was patronised by Rochester, in opposition to Dryden, as a dramatic poet. Between 1661 and 1698, he wrote seventeen pieces, two of which-namely, the tragedy of Thyestes, and the comedy of Sir Courtly Nice-evince considerable talent. The former is, indeed, founded on a repulsive classical story. Atreus invites his banished brother, Thyestes, to the court of Argos, and there at a banquet sets before him the mangled limbs and blood of his own son, of which the father unconsciously partakes. The return of Thyestes from his retirement, with the fears and misgivings which follow, are vividly described:

[Extract from Thyestes.]

THYESTES. PHILISTHENES. PENEUS.

Thyestes. O wondrous pleasure to a banished man,
I feel my loved long looked-for native soil!
And oh my weary eyes, that all the day

Had from some mountain travelled toward this place,
Now rest themselves upon the royal towers
Of that great palace where I had my birth.
O sacred towers, sacred in your height,
Mingling with clouds, the villas of the gods,
Whither for sacred pleasures they retire:
Sacred, because you are the work of gods;
Your lofty looks boast your divine descent;
And the proud city which lies at your feet,
And would give place to nothing but to you,
Owns her original is short of yours.
And now a thousand objects more ride fast
On morning beams, and meet my eyes in throngs:
And see, all Argos meets me with loud shouts!
Philisthenes. O joyful sound!

Thy. But with them Atreus too

Phil. What ails my father that he stops, and shakes,

And now retires?

Thy. Return with me, my son,

And old friend Peneus, to the honest beasts,
And faithful desert, and well-seated caves;
Trees shelter man, by whom they often die,
And never seek revenge; no villainy
Lies in the prospect of a humble cave.

Pen. Talk you of villainy, of foes, and fraud?
Thy. I talk of Atreus.

Pen. What are these to him?

Thy. Nearer than I am, for they are himself.

Pen. Gods drive these impious thoughts out of your mind.

Thy. The gods for all our safety put them there. Return, return with me.

Pen. Against our oaths?

I cannot stem the vengeance of the gods.

Thy. Here are no gods; they've left this dire

abode.

Pen. True race of Tantalus! who parent-like Are doomed in midst of plenty to be starved, His hell and yours differ alone in this: When he would catch at joys, they fly from him; When glories catch at you, you fly from them. Thy. A fit comparison; our joys and his Are lying shadows, which to trust is hell.

[Wishes for Obscurity.]

How miserable a thing is a great man!
Take noisy vexing greatness they that please;
Give me obscure and safe and silent ease.
Acquaintance and commérce let me have none
With any powerful thing but Time alone:
My rest let Time be fearful to offend,
And creep by me as by a slumbering friend;
Till, with ease glutted, to my bed I steal,
As men to sleep after a plenteous meal.
Oh, wretched he who, called abroad by power,
To know himself can never find an hour!
Strange to himself, but to all others known,
Lends every one his life, but uses none;
So, ere he tasted life, to death he goes,
And himself loses ere himself he knows.

[Passions.]

We oft by lightning read in darkest nights; And by your passions I read all your natures, Though you at other times can keep them dark.

[Love in Women.]

These are great maxims, sir, it is confessed; Too stately for a woman's narrow breast. Poor love is lost in men's capacious minds; In ours, it fills up all the room it finds.

[Inconstancy of the Multitude.]

I'll not such favour to rebellion shew,
To wear a crown the people do bestow;
Who, when their giddy violence is past,
Shall from the king, the adored, revolt at last;
And then the throne they gave they shall invade,
And scorn the idol which themselves have made.

[Warriors.]

I hate these potent madmen, who keep all
Mankind awake, while they, by their great deeds,
Are drumming hard upon this hollow world,
Only to make a sound to last for ages.

THOMAS SHADWELL-SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE-WILLIAM

WYCHERLEY-MRS APHRA BEHN.

A more popular rival and enemy of Dryden was THOMAS SHADWELL (1640-1692), who also wrote seventeen plays, chiefly comedies, in which he affected to follow Ben Jonson. Shadwell, though only known now as the Mac-Flecknoe of Dryden's satire, possessed no inconsiderable comic power. His pictures of society are too coarse for quotation, but they are often true and well drawn. When the Revolution threw Dryden and other excessive loyalists into the shade, Shadwell was promoted to the office of poetlaureate. SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE (1636-1694) gave a more sprightly air to the comic drama by his Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter, a play which contains the first runnings of that vein of lively humour and witty dialogue which were afterwards displayed by Congreve and Farquhar. Sir George was a gay libertine, and whilst taking leave of a festive party one evening at his house in Ratisbon-where he resided as British plenipotentiary-he fell down the stairs and killed himself. The greatest of the comic dramatists was WILLIAM WYCHERLEY, born in the year 1640, in Shropshire, where his father possessed a handsome property. Though bred to the law, Wycherley did not practise his profession, but lived gaily 'upon town.' Pope says he had 'a true nobleman look,' and he was one of the favourites of the abandoned Duchess of Cleveland. He wrote various comedies-Love in a Wood (1672), the Gentleman Dancing-master (1673), the Country Wife (1675), and the Plain Dealer (1677). In 1704 he published a volume of miscellaneous poems, of which it has been said the style and versification are beneath criticism; the morals are those of Rochester.' In advanced age, Wycherley continued to exhibit the follies and vices of youth. His name, however, stood high as a dramatist, and Pope was proud to receive the notice of the author of the Country Wife. Their published correspondence is well known, and is interesting from the marked superiority maintained in their intercourse by the boy-poet of sixteen over his mentor of sixty-four. The pupil grew too great for his master, and the unnatural friendship was dissolved. At the age of seventy-five, Wycherley married a young girl, in order to defeat the expectations of his nephew, and died ten days afterwards, in December 1715. The subjects of most of Wycherley's plays were borrowed from the Spanish or French stage. He wrought up his dialogues and scenes with great care, and with considerable liveliness and wit, but without sufficient attention to character or probability. Destitute himself of moral feeling or propriety of conduct, his characters are equally objectionable, and his once fashionable plays may be said to be 'quietly inurned' in their own corruption and profligacy. A female Wycherley appeared in MRS APHRA BEHN, celebrated in her day under the name of Astræa:

The stage how loosely does Astræa tread!

Pope.

The comedies of Mrs Behn are grossly indelicate; and of the whole seventeen which she wrote-besides various novels and poems-not one is now read or remembered. The history of Mrs Behn is remarkable. She was daughter of the governor of Surinam, where she resided some time, and became acquainted with Prince Oroonoko, on whose story she founded a novel, that supplied Southerne with materials for a tragedy on the unhappy fate of the African prince. She was employed as a political spy by Charles II.,

and, while residing at Antwerp, she was enabled, by the aid of her lovers and admirers, to give information to the British government as to the intended Dutch attack on Chatham. She died in 1689.

[Scene from Sir George Etherege's Comical Revenge.] [A portion of this comedy is written in rhyme. Although the versification of the French dramatic poets is mostly so, its effect in our own language is far from good, especially in passages of rapid action. In the following scene, the hero and his second arrived at the place of meeting for a duel; but are set upon by hired assassins. Their adversaries opportunely appear, and set upon them.]

Enter BEAUFORT and SIR FREDERICK, and traverse the stage. Enter BRUCE and LOVIS at another door.

Bruce. Your friendship, noble youth, 's too prodigal; For one already lost you venture all: Your present happiness, your future joy; You for the hopeless your great hopes destroy.

Lovis. What can I venture for so brave a friend?

I have no hopes but what on you depend.
Should I your friendship and my honour rate
Below the value of a poor estate?

A heap of dirt. Our family has been

To blame, my blood must here atone the sin.

MISCELLANEOUS PIECES OF THE PERIOD-1649-1689.

WILLIAM CLELAND (circa 1661-1689) wrote a Hudibrastic satire on the Jacobite army, known as The Highland Host, 1678. His best piece, however, is a wild fanciful poem Hallo my Fancy, which we subjoin. Cleland commanded the covenanting forces and fell in the moment of victory in the battle fought at Dunkeld. His poems were not published till 1697, and the following poem is said to have been written by him in the last year he was at college, not then fully eighteen years of age.

[Hallo my Fancy.]

In melancholic fancy,

Out of myself,

In the vulcan dancy,
All the world surveying,
Nowhere staying,

Just like a fairy elf;

Out o'er the tops of highest mountains skipping, Out o'er the hills, the trees and valleys tripping, Out o'er the ocean seas, without an oar or shipping. Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go?

Amidst the misty vapours,

Fain would I know

What doth cause the tapers;

Why the clouds benight us

And affright us,

While we travel here below.

Fain would I know what makes the roaring thunder, And what these lightnings be that rend the clouds asunder,

And what these comets are on which we gaze and wonder.

Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go?

Fain would I know the reason

Why the little ant,

All the summer season,

Layeth up provision,

On condition

To know no winter's want:

And how housewives, that are so good and painful,
Do unto their husbands prove so good and gainful;
And why the lazy drones to them do prove disdainful.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go?

Ships, ships, I will descry you

Amidst the main;

I will come and try you

What you are protecting,

And projecting,

What's your end and aim.

One goes abroad for merchandise and trading,

Another stays to keep his country from invading,

A third is coming home with rich and wealth of lading. Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go?

When I look before me,

There I do behold

There's none that sees or knows me;
All the world's a-gadding,

Running madding;

None doth his station hold.

He that is below envieth him that riseth,
And he that is above, him that's below despiseth,
So every man his plot and counter-plot deviseth.
Hallo my fancy, whither wilt thou go?

Alas, poor Scholar! Whither wilt thou go?

or

Strange Alterations which at this time be,
There's many did think they never should see.

[From a collection of poems entitled Iter Boreale, by R. Wild, D.D. 1668.]

In a melancholy study,

None but myself,

Methought my Muse grew muddy;
After seven years' reading,
And costly breeding,

I felt, but could find no pelf:
Into learned rags

I've rent my plush and satin,
And now am fit to beg

In Hebrew, Greek, and Latin;
Instead of Aristotle,

Would I had got a patten:

Alas, poor scholar! whither wilt thou go?
Cambridge, now I must leave thee,
And follow Fate,

College hopes do deceive me;
I oft expected

To have been elected,

But desert is reprobate.
Masters of colleges

Have no common graces,
And they that have fellowships
Have but common places;
And those that scholars are,

They must have handsome faces:

Alas, poor scholar! whither wilt thou go?

I have bowed, I have bended,
And all in hope

One day to be befriended:

I have preached, I have printed
Whate'er I hinted,

To please our English pope:
I worshipped towards the east,

But the sun doth now forsake me;

I find that I am falling;

The northern winds do shake me: Would I had been upright,

For bowing now will break me:

Alas, poor scholar! whither wilt thou go?

At great preferment I aimed,
Witness my silk;

But now my hopes are maimed:
I looked lately

To live most stately,

And have a dairy of bell-ropes' milk;

A grain of rye or wheat
Is manchet which we eat;
Pearly drops of dew we drink,

In acorn cups filled to the brink.
The brains of nightingales,
With unctuous fat of snails,
Between two cockles stewed,

Is meat that's easily chewed; Tails of worms, and marrow of mice, Do make a dish that's wondrous nice.

The grasshopper, gnat, and fly,
Serve us for our minstrelsy;
Grace said, we dance a while,
And so the time beguile;

And if the moon doth hide her head,
The glow-worm lights us home to bed.

On tops of dewy grass
So nimbly do we pass,

The young and tender stalk

Ne'er bends when we do walk; Yet in the morning may be seen Where we the night before have been.

PROSE WRITERS.

The productions of this period, possessing much of the nervous force and originality of the preceding era, make a nearer approach to that elegance which has since been attained in English composition. The chief writers in philosophical and political dissertation are Milton and Cowley, Sidney, Temple, Thomas Burnet, and Locke; in history, the Earl of Clarendon and Bishop Burnet; in divinity, Taylor, Barrow, Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, South, Calamy, Baxter, and Barclay; in miscellaneous literature, Fuller, Walton, L'Estrange, Dryden, and Tom Brown. Bunyan, author of the Pilgrim's Progress, stands in a class by himself. Physical science, or a knowledge of nature, was at the same time cultivated with great success by the

Come, follow, follow me,

You, fairy elves that be;

Which circle on the green, Come, follow Mab, your queen. Hand in hand let's dance around, For this place is fairy ground.

When mortals are at rest,
And snoring in their nest;
Unheard and unespied,

Through keyholes we do glide; Over tables, stools, and shelves, We trip it with our fairy elves.

And if the house be foul
With platter, dish, or bowl,
Up stairs we nimbly creep,
And find the sluts asleep:
There we pinch their arms and thighs;
None escapes, nor none espies.

But if the house be swept,
And from uncleanness kept,
We praise the household maid,
And duly she is paid;
For we use, before we go,
To drop a tester in her shoe.

Upon a mushroom's head
Our table-cloth we spread;

Newton, and others, whose writings, however, were chiefly in Latin. An association of men devoted to the study of nature was formed in 1662, under the appellation of the Royal Society-a proof that this branch of knowledge was beginning to attract a due share of attention.

MILTON.

His

MILTON began, at the commencement of the Civil War, to write against the established church, and continued through the whole of the ensuing troublous period to devote his pen to the service of his party, even to the defence of that boldest of their measures, the execution of the king. stern and inflexible principles, both in regard to religion and to civil government, are displayed in these treatises. The first, Of Prelatical Episcopacy, was published in 1641: this was followed in 1642 by The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty; and in 1644 appeared the noblest of his prose works, his Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. The same year produced his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce. Next year he followed up these heretical but ably written works with Expositions upon the Four Chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage. Another celebrated work of Milton is a reply which he published to the Ikon Basiliké, under the title

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