CHAPTER XIII

I was sent for the other morning to the assistance of a gentleman, who had been wounded in a duel,--and his wounds by unskilful treatment had been brought to a dangerous crisis.

The uncommonness of the name, which was _Matravis_ suggested to me, that this might possibly be no other than Allan's old enemy. Under this apprehension, I did what I could to dissuade Allan from accompanying me--but he seemed bent upon going, and even pleased himself with the notion, that it might lie within his ability to do the unhappy man some service. So he went with me.

When we came to the house, which was in Soho-Square, we discovered that it was indeed the man--the identical Matravis, who had done all that mischief in times past--but not in a condition to excite any other sensation than pity in a heart more hard than Allan's.

Intense pain had brought on a delirium--we perceived this on first entering the room--for the wretched man was raving to himself--talking idly in mad unconnected sentences,--that yet seemed, at times, to have a reference to _past facts_.

One while he told us his dream. "He had lost his way on a great heath, to which there seemed no end--it was cold, cold, cold--and dark, very dark--an old woman in leading-strings, _blind_, was groping about for a guide"--and then he frightened me,--for he seemed disposed to be _jocular_, and sang a song about "an old woman clothed in grey," and said "he did not believe in a devil."

Presently he bid us "not tell Allan Clare"--Allan was hanging over him at that very moment, sobbing.--I could not resist the impulse, but cried out, "_this_ is Allan Clare--Allan Clare is come to see you, my dear Sir."--The wretched man did not hear me, I believe, for he turned his head away, and began talking of _charnel houses_, and _dead men_, and "whether they knew anything that passed in their coffins."

Matravis died that night.

* * * * *

CURIOUS FRAGMENTS,

_Extracted from a common-place book, which belonged to Robert Burton, the famous Author of The Anatomy of Melancholy_

(1800. FIRST PUBLISHED 1802. TEXT OF 1818)

EXTRACT I

I Democritus Junior have put my finishing pen to a tractate _De Melancholia_, this day December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the Trinity, which hath given me health to prosecute my worthlesse studies thus far, and make supplication, with a _Laus Deo_, if in any case these my poor labours may be found instrumental to weede out black melancholy, carking cares, harte-grief, from the mind of man. _Sed hoc magis volo quam expecto._

I turn now to my book, _i nunc liber, goe forth, my brave Anatomy, child of my brain-sweat_, and yee, _candidi lectores_, lo! here I give him up to you, even do with him what you please, my masters. Some, I suppose will applaud, commend, cry him up (these are my friends) hee is a _flos rarus_, forsooth, a none-such, a Phœnix, (concerning whom see _Plinius_ and _Mandeuille_, though _Fienus de monstris_ doubteth at large of such a bird, whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have been a man _malæ scrupulositatis_, of a weak and cowardlie faith: _Christopherus a Vega_ is with him in this.) Others again will blame, hiss, reprehende in many things, cry down altogether, my collections, for crude, inept, putid, _post cœnam scripta, Coryate could write better upon a full meal_, verbose, inerudite, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities, _dogmata_, sentences of learneder writers which have been before me, when as that first named sort clean otherwise judge of my labours to bee nothing else but a _messe of opinions_, a vortex attracting indiscriminate, gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders, Lombards, so many strange faces, dresses, salutations, languages, all which _Wolfius_ behelde with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, as he describes diffusedly in his book the world's Epitome, which _Sannazar_ so bepraiseth, _e contra_ our Polydore can see nothing in it; they call me singular, a pedant, fantastic, words of reproach in this age, which is all too neoteric and light for my humour.

One cometh to me sighing, complaining. He expected universal remedies in my Anatomy; so many cures as there are distemperatures among men. I have not put his affection in my cases. Hear you his case. My fine Sir is a lover, an _inamorato_, Pyramus, a Romeo; he walks seven years disconsolate, moping, because he cannot enjoy his miss, _insanus amor_ is his melancholy, the man is mad; _delirat_, he dotes; all this while his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not to be entreated, churlish, spits at him, yet exceeding fair, gentle eyes, (which is a beauty,) hair lustrous and _smiling_, the trope is none of mine, _Æneas Sylvius_ hath _crines ridentes_--in conclusion she is wedded to his rival, a boore, a _Corydon_, a rustic, _omnino ignarus, he can scarce construe Corderius_, yet haughty, fantastic, _opiniatre_. The lover travels, goes into foreign parts, peregrinates, _amoris ergo_, sees manners, customs, not English, converses with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, hermits, those cattle, pedlars, travelling gentry, _Egyptians_, natural wonders, unicorns (though _Aldobrandus_ will have them to be figments) satyrs, semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, curiosities artificial, _pyramides_, Virgilius his tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing but ivory as _Melancthon_ judges, though _Cornutus_ leaneth to think them bones of dogs, cats, (why not men?) which subtill priests vouch to have been saints, martyrs, _heu Pietas_! By that time he has ended his course, _fugit hora_, seven other years are expired, gone by, time is he should return, he taketh ship for Britaine, much desired of his friends, _favebant venti, Neptune is curteis_, after some weekes at sea he landeth, rides post to town, greets his family, kinsmen, _compotores, those jokers his friends that were wont to tipple with him at alehouses_; these wonder now to see the change, _quantum mutatus, the man is quite another thing_, he is disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders what so bewitched him, he can now both see, hear, smell, handle, converse with his mistress, single by reason of the death of his rival, a widow having children, grown willing, prompt, amorous, shewing no such great dislike to second nuptials, he might have her for asking, no such thing, his mind is changed, he loathes his former meat, had liever eat ratsbane, aconite, his humour is to die a bachelour; marke the conclusion. In this humour of celibate seven other years are consumed in idleness, sloth, world's pleasures, which fatigate, satiate, induce wearinesse, vapours, _tædium vitæ_: When upon a day, behold a wonder, _redit Amor_, the man is as sick as ever, he is commenced lover upon the old stock, walks with his hand thrust in his bosom for negligence, moping he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing and incomposite, eyes sunken, _anhelus, breath wheezy and asthmatical, by reason of overmuch sighing_: society he abhors, solitude is but a hell, what shall he doe? all this while his mistresse is forward, coming, _amantissima, ready to jump at once into his mouth_, her he hateth, feels disgust when she is but mentioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jesabeel, Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone all at once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only not handsome; that which he affecteth so much, that which drives him mad, distracted, phrenetic, beside himself, is no beauty which lives, nothing in _rerum naturâ_, (so he might entertain a hope of a cure) but something which is not, can never be, a certain _fantastic opinion_ or _notional image_ of his mistresse, _that which she was_, and that which hee thought her to be, in former times, how beautiful! torments him, frets him, follows him, makes him that he wishes to die.

This Caprichio, _Sir Humourous_, hee cometh to me to be cured. I counsel marriage with his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his method, together with milk diet, herbs, aloes, and wild parsley, good in such cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, teals, widgeons, becca ficos, which men in Sussex eat. He flies out in a passion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, lunatic, moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face, bidding him be patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages, I think this man must fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in the Moone, &c.

EXTRACT II

* * * * * Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as _Bodinus de Periodis_ saith of such an one, _arrident amici ridet mundus_, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwile the world thinks him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist. * * * * * Philosophy running mad, madness philosophizing, much idle-learned enquiries, what truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all these noises, only huge books are written, and who is the wiser? * * * * * Men sitting in the Doctor's chair, we marvel how they got there, being _homines intellectûs pulverulenti_, as _Trincauellius_ notes; they care not so they may raise a dust to smother the eyes of their oppugners; _homines parvulissimi_ as _Lemnius_, whom _Alcuin_ herein taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs, minims, the least little men, these spend their time, and it is odds but they lose their time and wits too into the bargain, chacing of nimble and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her still they worship, _libant_, they make libations, spilling the wine, as those old Romans in their sacrificials, _Cerealia, May-games_: Truth is the game all these hunt after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures, _humidum radicale exsiccant_, as _Galen_, in his counsels to one oft these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. * * * * and for all this _nunquam metam attingunt_, and how should they? they bowle awry, shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that _Truth absolute_ on this planet of ours is scarcely to be found, but in her stede _Queene Opinion_ predominates, governs, whose shifting and ever mutable _Lampas_, me seemeth, is man's destinie to follow, she præcurseth, she guideth him, before his uncapable eyes she frisketh her tender lights, which entertayne the child-man, untill what time his sight be strong to endure the vision of _Very Truth_, which is in the heavens, the vision beatifical, as _Anianus_ expounds in his argument against certain mad wits which helde God to be corporeous; these were dizzards, fools, _gothamites_. * * * * but and if _Very Truth_ be extant indeede on earth, as some hold she it is which actuates men's deeds, purposes, ye may in vaine look for her in the learned universities, halls, colleges. Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford, amongst great clerks, disputants, subtile Aristotles, men _nodosi ingenii, able to take Lully by the chin_, but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an _Idiota_ or common person, _no great things_, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with _Natura_ her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or _Art_ her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, _Belvideres_, on a sudden the goddesse herself _Truth_ has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her * * * * *

EXTRACT III

This morning, May 2, 1662, having first broken my fast upon eggs and cooling salades, mellows, water-cresses, those herbes, according to _Villanovus_ his prescription, who disallows the use of meat in a morning as gross, fat, hebetant, _feral_, altogether fitter for wild beasts than men, _e contra_ commendeth this herb-diete for gentle, humane, active, conducing to contemplation in most men, I betook myselfe to the nearest fields. (Being in London I commonly dwell in the _suburbes_, as airiest, quietest, _loci musis propriores_, free from noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick, and base workes, workshoppes, also sights, pageants, spectacles of outlandlish birds, fishes, crocodiles, _Indians_, mermaids, adde quarrels, fightings, wranglings of the common sort, _plebs_, the rabble, duelloes with fists, _proper to this island_, at which the stiletto'd and secrete _Italian_ laughs.) Withdrawing myselfe from these buzzing and illiterate vanities, with a _bezo las manos_ to the city, I begin to inhale, draw in, snuff up, as horses _dilatis naribus_ snort the fresh aires, with exceeding great delight, when suddenly there crosses me a procession sad, heavy, dolourous, tristfull, melancholick, able to change mirth into dolour, and overcast a clearer atmosphere than possibly the neighbourhoods of so great a citty can afford. An old man, a poore man, deceased, is borne on men's shoulders to a poore buriall, without solemnities of hearse, mourners, plumes, _mutæ personæ, those personate actors that will weep if yee skew them a piece of silver_; none of those customed civilities of children, kinsfolk, _dependants_, following the coffin; he died a poore man, his friends _assessores opum, those cronies of his that stuck by him so long as he had a penny_, now leave him, forsake him, shun him, desert him; they think it much to follow his putrid and stinking carcase to the grave; his children, if he had any, for commonly the case stands thus, this poore man his son dies before him, he survives, poore, indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c. or if he have any which survive him, _sua negotia agunt_, they mind their own business, forsooth, cannot, will not, find time, leisure, _inclination, extremum munus perficere_, to follow to the pit their old indulgent father, which loved them, stroked them, caressed them, cockering them up, _quantum potuit_, as farre as his means extended, while they were babes, chits, _minims_, hee may rot in his grave, lie stinking in the sun _for them_, have no buriall at all, they care not. _O nefas!_ Chiefly I noted the coffin to have been _without a pall_, nothing but a few planks, of cheapest wood that could be had, _naked_, having none of the ordinary _symptomata_ of a funerall, those _locularii_ which bare the body having on diversely coloured coats, _and none black_: (one of these reported the deceased to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he was now going for interment). All which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man had been rich, a _Crœsus_, a _Crassus, or as rich as Whittington_, what pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall, _ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies_, had been thought too good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funeral orations, &c. some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite, learned, _a Mæcenas_, while as in very deede he was nothing lesse: what weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen, friends, relatives, fortieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for the deceased; hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, striking their breasts, (they care not if he had died a year ago); so many clients, dependants, flatterers, _parasites, cunning Gnathoes_, tramping on foot after the hearse, all their care is, who shall stand fairest with the successour; he mean time (like enough) spurns them from him, spits at them, treads them under his foot, will have nought to do with any such cattle. I think him in the right: _Hæc sunt majora gravitate Heracliti. The follies are enough to give crying Heraclitus a fit of the spleene._

* * * * *

EARLY JOURNALISM

I.--G. F. COOKE IN "RICHARD THE THIRD"

(1802)

Some few of us remember to have _seen_, and all of us have heard our fathers tell of Quin, and Garrick, and Barry, and some faint traditional notices are left us of their manner in particular scenes, and their stile of delivering certain emphatic sentences. Hence our curiosity is excited, when a _new Hamlet_ or a _new Richard_ makes his appearance, in the first place, to inquire, how he acted in the _Closet scene_, in the _Tent scene_; how he looked, and how he started, when the _Ghost_ came on, and how he cried

Off with his head. So much for Buckingham.

We do not reprehend this minute spirit of comparison. On the contrary, we consider it as a delightful artifice, by which we connect the recreations of the past with those of the present generation, what pleased our fathers with what pleases us. We love to witness the obstinate attachments, the unconquerable prejudices (as they seem to us), of the old men, our seniors, the whimsical gratification they appear to derive from the very refusal to be gratified; to hear them talk of the good _old_ actors, whose race is for ever extinct.

With these impressions, we attended the first appearance of Mr. Cooke, in the character of _Richard the Third_, last winter. We thought that he "bustled" through the scenes with at least as much spirit and effect as any of his predecessors whom we remember in the part, and was not deficient in the delivery of any of those rememberable speeches and exclamations, which old prescription hath set up as _criteria_ of comparison. Now that the grace of freshness is worn off, and Mr. Cooke is no longer a novitiate candidate for public favour, we propose to enter into the question--whether that popular actor is right or wrong in his conception of the great outlines of the character; those strong essential differences which separate _Richard_ from all the other creations of Shakespeare. We say _of Shakespeare_; for though the Play, which passes for _his_ upon the _Stage_, materially differs from _that_ which _he_ wrote under the same title, being in fact little better than a compilation or a cento of passages extracted from other of his Plays, and applied with gross violations of propriety (as we are ready at any time to point out), besides some miserable additions, which _he_ never could have written; all together producing an inevitable inconsistency of character, sufficient to puzzle and confound the _best Actor; yet_, in this chaos and perplexity, we are of opinion, that it becomes an Actor to shew his taste, by adhering, as much as possible, to the spirit and intention of the original Author, and to consult his _safety_ in _steering_ by the _Light_, which Shakespeare holds out to him, as by a great _Leading Star_. Upon these principles, we presume to censure Mr. Cooke, while we are ready to acknowledge, that this Actor presents us with a very original and very forcible portrait (if not of the _man Richard_, whom Shakespeare drew, yet) of the _monster Richard_, as he exists in the _popular idea_, in _his own exaggerated_ and _witty self-abuse_, in the overstrained representations of the parties who were _sufferers_ by his _ambition_; and, above all, in the impertinent and wretched _scenes_, so absurdly foisted in by some, who have thought themselves capable of adding to what _Shakespeare wrote_.

But of Mr. Cooke's _Richard_:

1st. _His predominant and masterly simulation._

He has a tongue can wheedle with the DEVIL.

It has been the policy of that antient and grey simulator, in all ages, to hide his _horns_ and _claws_. The _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke perpetually obtrudes _his_. We see the effect of his deceit uniformly _successful_, but we do not comprehend _how_ it _succeeds_. We can put ourselves, by a very common fiction, into the place of the individuals upon whom it acts, and say, that, in the like case, we should not have been alike credulous. The hypocrisy is too glaring and visible. It resembles more the shallow cunning of a mind which is its own dupe, than the profound and practised art of so powerful an intellect as _Richard's_. It is too obstreperous and loud, breaking out into _triumphs_ and _plaudits_ at its own success, like an unexercised _noviciate_ in _tricks_. It has none of the silent confidence, and steady self-command of the _experienced politician_; it possesses none of that _fine address_, which was necessary to have betrayed the heart of _Lady Anne_, or even to have imposed upon the duller wits of the _Lord Mayor_ and _Citizens_.

2dly. _His habitual jocularity_, the effect of buoyant spirits, and an elastic mind, rejoicing in its own powers, and in the success of its machinations. This quality of unstrained mirth accompanies _Richard_, and is a prime feature in his character. It never leaves him; in plots, in stratagems, and in the midst of his bloody devices, it is perpetually driving him upon wit, and jests, and personal satire, fanciful allusions, and quaint felicities of phrase. It is one of the chief artifices by which the consummate master of dramatic effect has contrived to soften the horrors of the scene, and to make us contemplate a bloody and vicious character with delight. No where, in any of his plays, is to be found so much of sprightly colloquial dialogue, and soliloquies of genuine humour, as in _Richard_. This character of unlaboured mirth Mr. Cooke seems entirely to pass over, and substitutes in its stead the coarse, taunting humour, and clumsy merriment, of a low-minded assassin.

3dly. _His personal deformity._--When the _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke makes allusions to his own _form_, they seem accompanied with _unmixed distaste_ and _pain_, like some obtrusive and _haunting_ idea--But surely the _Richard_ of Shakespeare mingles in these allusions a perpetual reference to his own powers and capacities, by which he is enabled to surmount these petty objections; and the joy of a defect _conquered_, or _turned_ into an advantage, is one cause of these very allusions, and of the satisfaction, with which his mind recurs to them. These allusions themselves are made in an ironical and good humoured spirit of exaggeration--the most bitter of them are to be found in his self-congratulating soliloquy spoken in the very moment and crisis of joyful exultation on the success of his unheard of courtship.--No _partial excellence_ can satisfy for this absence of a _just general conception_--otherwise we are inclined to admit, that, in the delivery of _single sentences_, in a _new_ and often _felicitous_ light thrown upon _old_ and _hitherto misconstrued_ passages, no actor that we have seen has gone beyond Mr. Cooke. He is always _alive_ to the scene before him; and by the _fire_ and _novelty_ of his manner, he seems likely to infuse some _warm blood_ into the _frozen declamatory stile_, into which our theatres have for some time past been degenerating.

II.--GRAND STATE BED

Ever since an account of the Marquis of Exeter's Grand State Bed appeared in the fashionable world, grandeur in this article of furniture has become quite the rage. Among others the Lord Mayor feeling for the dignity of the city of London, has petitioned the Corporation for one of great splendour to be placed in the Mansion-house, _at the City's expence_.

We have been favoured with a description of this magnificent state bed, the choice of his Lordship. The body is formed by the callipee, or under shell of a large turtle, carved in mahogany, and sufficiently capacious to receive two well-fed people. The callipash, or upper shell, forms the canopy. The posts are four gigantic figures richly gilt: two of them accurate copies of Gog and Magog; the other two represent Sir William Walworth and the last man in armour. Cupids with custards are the supporters. The curtains are of mazarine purple, and curiously wrought with the series of the idle and industrious apprentice from Hogarth, in gold embroidery: but the vallens exceed description; _there_, the various incidents in the life of Whittington are painted. The mice in one of the compartments are done so much to the life, that his Lordship's cat, who is an accurate judge of mice, was deceived. The quilt is of fashionable patchwork figures, the description of which we shall not anticipate, as, we understand, Mr. Birch has obtained a sketch of it for his large Twelfth Cake. The whole is worthy of the taste of the first Magistrate of the first City in the world.

III.--FABLE FOR TWELFTH DAY

Once upon a high and solemn occasion all the great _fasts_ and _festivals_ in the year presented themselves before the throne of _Apollo, God of Days_.--Each brought an offering in his hand, as is the custom all over the _East_, that no man shall appear before the presence of the King empty-handed. _Shrove-Tuesday_ was there with his _pan-cakes_, and _Ash-Wednesday_ with his oblation of _fish_. _Good-Friday_ brought the mystical _bun_. _Christmas-Day_ came bending underneath an intolerable load of _turkeys_ and _mince-pies_, his snow-white temples shaded with _holly_ and the sacred _misletoe_, and _singing_ a _carol_ as he advanced. Next came the _Thirtieth_ of _January_, bearing a _calf's-head_ in a charger; but _Apollo_ no sooner understood the emblematical meaning of the offering, than the stomach of the _God_ turned sick, and with visible indignation and abhorrence he ordered the unfortunate _Day_ out of his presence--the contrite _Day_ returned in a little time, bearing in his hands a _Whig_ (a sort of cake well-tempered and delicious)--the _God_ with smiles accepted the atonement, and the happy _Day_ understood that his peace was made, he promising never to bring such a dish into the presence of a _God_ again. Then came the august _Fourth_ of _June_, crowned with such a crown as British Monarchs commonly wear, leading into the presence the venerable _Nineteenth_ of _May_--_Apollo_ welcomed the royal pair, and placed them nearest to himself, and welcomed their noble progeny, their eldest-born and heir, the accomplished _Twelfth_ of _August_, with all his brave brothers and handsome sisters. Only the merry _First_ of _April_ who is retained in the Court of _Apollo_ as _King's Jester_, made some mirth by his reverent inquiries after the health of the _Eighteenth_ of _January_, who, being a _kept_ mistress, had not been deemed a proper personage to be introduced into such an assembly. _Apollo_, laughing, rebuked the petulance of his wit; so all was mirth and good humour in the palace--only the sorrowful _Epiphany_ stood silent and abashed--he was _poor_, and had come before the King without an oblation. The _God_ of _Days_ perceived his confusion, and turning to the _Muses_ (who are _nine_), and to the _Graces_, his hand-maids (who are _three_ in number), he beckoned to them, and gave to them in charge to prepare a _Cake_ of the richest and preciousest ingredients: they obeyed, tempering with their fine and delicate fingers the spices of the _East_, the bread-flour of the _West_, with the fruits of the _South_, pouring over all the _Ices_ of the _North_. The God himself crowned the whole with _talismanic figures_, which contained this wondrous virtue--that whosoever ate of the _Cake_ should forthwith become _Kings_ and _Queens_. Lastly, by his heralds, he invested the trembling and thankful _Epiphany_ with the privilege of presenting this Cake before the King upon an annual festival for ever. Now this Cake is called _Twelfth Cake_ upon earth, after the _number_ of the virgins who fashioned the same, being nine and three.

IV.--THE LONDONER

(1802. TEXT OF 1818)

_To the Editor of the Reflector_

Mr. Reflector,--I was born under the shadow of St. Dunstan's steeple, just where the conflux of the eastern and western inhabitants of this twofold city meet and justle in friendly opposition at Temple-bar. The same day which gave me to the world, saw London happy in the celebration of her great annual feast. This I cannot help looking upon as a lively omen of the future great good will which I was destined to bear toward the city, resembling in kind that solicitude which every Chief Magistrate is supposed to feel for whatever concerns her interests and well being. Indeed I consider myself in some sort a speculative Lord Mayor of London: for though circumstances unhappily preclude me from the hope of ever arriving at the dignity of a gold chain and Spital Sermon, yet thus much will I say of myself in truth, that Whittington with his Cat (just emblem of vigilance and a furred gown) never went beyond me in affection, which I bear to the citizens.

I was born, as you have heard, in a crowd. This has begot in me an entire affection for that way of life, amounting to an almost insurmountable aversion from solitude and rural scenes. This aversion was never interrupted or suspended, except for a few years in the younger part of my life, during a period in which I had set my affections upon a charming young woman. Every man while the passion is upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows and purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted just familiarity enough with rural objects to understand tolerably well ever after the _poets_, when they declaim in such passionate terms in favor of a country life.

For my own part, now the fit is past, I have no hesitation in declaring, that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit door of Drury-lane Theatre, just at the hour of six, gives me ten thousand sincerer pleasures, than I could ever receive from all the flocks of silly sheep that ever whitened the plains of Arcadia or Epsom Downs.

This passion for crowds is no where feasted so full as in London. The man must have a rare _recipe_ for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to hypochondria, but in London it vanishes, like all other ills. Often, when I have felt a weariness or distaste at home, have I rushed out into her crowded Strand, and fed my humour, till tears have wetted my cheek for unutterable sympathies with the multitudinous moving picture, which she never fails to present at all hours, like the scenes of a shifting pantomime.

The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from habit do not displease me. The endless succession of shops where _Fancy miscalled Folly_ is supplied with perpetual gauds and toys, excite in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied with its proper food. The obliging customer, and the obliged tradesman--things which live by bowing, and things which exist but for homage--do not affect me with disgust; from habit I perceive nothing but urbanity, where other men, more refined, discover meaness: I love the very smoke of London, because it has been the medium most familiar to my vision. I see grand principles of honor at work in the dirty ring which encompasses two combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal justice in the detection of a pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with which an execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than a hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man in all ages has leaned to order and good government.

Thus an art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a town life, is attained by the same well-natured alchymy, with which the Foresters of Arden, in a beautiful country,

Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Where has spleen her food but in London? Humour, Interest, Curiosity, suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated. Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes!

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,

A LONDONER.

* * * * *

CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS, CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE.

(1808. TEXT OF 1818)

When I selected for publication, in 1808, Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakspeare, the kind of extracts which I was anxious to give were, not so much passages of wit and humour, though the old plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of the deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descriptions, that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic rather than to comic poetry. The plays which I made choice of were, with few exceptions, such as treat of human life and manners, rather than masques and Arcadian pastorals, with their train of abstractions, unimpassioned deities, passionate mortals--Claius, and Medorus, and Amintas, and Amarillis. My leading design was, to illustrate what may be called the moral sense of our ancestors. To shew in what manner they felt, when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in trying circumstances, in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the strife of contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how their griefs were tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated: how much of Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how far in his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all mankind. I was also desirous to bring together some of the most admired scenes of Fletcher and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic poets of that age entitled to be considered after Shakspeare, and, by exhibiting them in the same volume with the more impressive scenes of old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Webster, Ford, and others, to shew what we had slighted, while beyond all proportion we had been crying up one or two favourite names. From the desultory criticisms which accompanied that publication, I have selected a few which I thought would best stand by themselves, as requiring least immediate reference to the play or passage by which they were suggested.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

_Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen._--This tragedy is in King Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and superlatives; "huffing braggart puft lines," such as the play-writers anterior to Shakspeare are full of, and Pistol but coldly imitates.

_Tamburlaine the Great, or the Scythian Shepherd._--The lunes of Tamburlaine are perfect midsummer madness. Nebuchadnazar's are mere modest pretensions compared with the thundering vaunts of this Scythian Shepherd. He comes in, drawn by conquered kings, and reproaches these _pampered jades of Asia_ that they can _draw but twenty miles a day_. Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, I never believed that it was any thing more than a pleasant burlesque of mine ancient's. But I can assure my readers that it is soberly set down in a play, which their ancestors took to be serious.

_Edward the Second._--In a very different style from mighty Tamburlaine is the tragedy of Edward the Second. The reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints, which Shakspeare scarcely improved in his Richard the Second; and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene antient or modern with which I am acquainted.

_The Rich Jew of Malta._--Marlowe's Jew does not approach so near to Shakspeare's, as his Edward the Second does to Richard the Second. Barabas is a mere monster brought in with a large painted nose to please the rabble. He kills in sport, poisons whole nunneries, invents infernal machines. He is just such an exhibition as a century or two earlier might have been played before the Londoners "by the royal command," when a general pillage and massacre of the Hebrews had been previously resolved on in the cabinet. It is curious to see a superstition wearing out. The idea of a Jew, which our pious ancestors contemplated with so much horror, has nothing in it now revolting. We have tamed the claws of the beast, and pared its nails, and now we take it to our arms, fondle it, write plays to flatter it; it is visited by princes, affects a taste, patronizes the arts, and is the only liberal and gentlemanlike thing in Christendom.

_Doctor Faustus._--The growing horrors of Faustus's last scene are awfully marked by the hours and half hours as they expire, and bring him nearer and nearer to the exactment of his dire compact. It is indeed an agony and a fearful colluctation. Marlowe is said to have been tainted with atheistical positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. To such a genius the history of Faustus must have been delectable food: to wander in fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to approach the dark gulf near enough to look in, to be busied in speculations which are the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that fell from the tree of knowledge.[2] Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the conjurer, are offsprings of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects. They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it reprehensible to counterfeit impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice upon the stage speaking her own dialect; and, themselves being armed with an unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly, which would be death to others. Milton in the person of Satan has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armoury of the atheist ever furnished; and the precise, strait-laced Richardson has strengthened Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue, which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester, wanted depth of libertinism enough to have invented.

[2] Error, entering into the world with Sin among us poor Adamites may be said to spring from the tree of knowledge itself, and from the rotten kernels of that fatal apple.--_Howell's Letters._

THOMAS DECKER

_Old Fortunatus._--The humour of a frantic lover, in the scene where Orleans to his friend Galloway defends the passion with which himself, being a prisoner in the English king's court, is enamoured to frenzy of the king's daughter Agripyna, is done to the life. Orleans is as passionate an inamorato as any which Shakspeare ever drew. He is just such another adept in Love's reasons. The sober people of the world are with him

----A swarm of fools Crowding together to be counted wise.

He talks "pure Biron and Romeo," he is almost as poetical as they, quite as philosophical, only a little madder. After all, Love's sectaries are a reason unto themselves. We have gone retrograde to the noble heresy, since the days when Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health and disease; the kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and the destroyer of hopeful wits; the mother of twin births, wisdom and folly, valour and weakness; the servitude above freedom; the gentle mind's religion; the liberal superstition.

_The Honest Whore._--There is in the second part of this play, where Bellafront, a reclaimed harlot, recounts some of the miseries of her profession, a simple picture of honour and shame, contrasted without violence, and expressed without immodesty, which is worth all the _strong lines_ against the harlot's profession, with which both parts of this play are offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregenerate state served but to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him, a little turned, to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. When Cervantes with such proficiency of fondness dwells upon the Don's library, who sees not that he has been a great reader of books of knight-errantry--perhaps was at some time of his life in danger of falling into those very extravagancies which he ridiculed so happily in his hero?

JOHN MARSTON

_Antonio and Mellida._--The situation of Andrugio and Lucio, in the first part of this tragedy, where Andrugio Duke of Genoa banished his country, with the loss of a son supposed drowned, is cast upon the territory of his mortal enemy the Duke of Venice, with no attendants but Lucio an old nobleman, and a page--resembles that of Lear and Kent in that king's distresses. Andrugio, like Lear, manifests a kinglike impatience, a turbulent greatness, an affected resignation. The enemies which he enters lists to combat, "Despair and mighty Grief and sharp Impatience," and the forces which he brings to vanquish them, "cornets of horse," &c. are in the boldest style of allegory. They are such a "race of mourners" as the "infection of sorrows loud" in the intellect might beget on some "pregnant cloud" in the imagination. The prologue to the second part, for its passionate earnestness, and for the tragic note of preparation which it sounds, might have preceded one of those old tales of Thebes or Pelops' line, which Milton has so highly commended, as free from the common error of the poets in his day, of "intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, brought in without discretion corruptly to gratify the people." It is as solemn a preparative as the "warning voice which he who saw the Apocalypse heard cry."

_What you Will.--O I shall ne'er forget how he went cloath'd._ Act I.