different educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity; their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some are virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the lower characters is different the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking, gape-toothed Wife of Bath, But enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.' We have our forefathers and greatgrandames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of Monks, and Friars, and Canons, and Lady Abbesses, and Nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.

Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Shakspere was the man who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

As the tail cypress towers above the shrubs,' a • Dryden here quotes the well-known line of Virgil, Eclogue 1.— Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.

The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would pro duce it much better done in Shakspere; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem. And in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspere far above him.

As for Jonson, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit and language, and humour also in some measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such a height. Humour was his proper sphere; and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them; there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has not translated in 'Sejanus' and 'Catiline.' But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represented Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as

In the degenerate ages after the Restoration.

Charles I.

• Two of Jonson's most famous tragedies; they are crammed with transla tions from the Latin.

much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspere, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspere the greater wit. Shakspere was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets: Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakspere.

London after the Fire.

Methinks already from this chymic flame,
I see a city of more precious mould:
Rich as the town which gives the Indies name,
With silver pav'd, and all divine with gold.

Already labouring with a mighty fate,

She shakes the rubbish from her mounting brow
And seems to have renew'd her charter's date,

Which Heaven will to the death of Time allow.

More great than human now, and more august,
Now deified she from her fires does rise:
Her widening streets on new foundations trust,
And opening into larger parts she flies.

Before, she like some shepherdess did show,
Who sat to bathe her by a river's side;
Not answering to her fame, but rude and low,
Nor taught the beauteous arts of modern pride.

Now, like a maiden queen she will behold,

From her high turrets, hourly suitors come;
The East with incense, and tho West with gold,
Will stand like suppliants to receive her doom.

The silver Thames, her own domestic flood,
Shall bear her vessels like a sweeping train,
And often wind, as of his mistress proud,
With longing eyes to meet her face again.

Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew.

Perhaps the noblest in our language, though the stanzas are Lot equal.

Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest :
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wandering race,
Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven-majestic pace;
Or, call'd to more superior bliss,

Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:
Whatever happy region is thy place,

Cease thy celestial song a little space;

Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.

Hear, then, a mortal muse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse;

But such as thine own voice did practise here,
When thy first-fruits of poesy were given;
To make thyself a welcome inmate there:
While yet a young probationer,

And candidate of heaven.

If by traduction came thy mind,
Our wonder is the less to find

A soul so charming from a stock so good;
Thy father was transfused into thy blood:
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.
But if thy pre-existing soul

Was form'd at first with myriads more,
It did through all the mighty poets roll,

Who Greek or Latin laurels wore,

And was that Sappho last, which once it was before.
If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind!
Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore:

Niece of Tom' Killigrew, one of the wit of the court of Charles II.

Her father, Dr. Killigrew, was Master of the Savoy.

Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find

Than was the beauteous frame she left behind.

Return to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kind. . .

O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy?
Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordain'd above
For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love! ...

On Milton.

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she join'd the other two.

The Plan of Redemption.

Dar'st thou, poor worm, offend Infinity?
And must the terms of peace be given by thee?
Then thou art Justice in the last appeal;

Thy easy God instructs thee to rebel:
And, like a king remote and weak, must take
What satisfaction thou art pleased to make.

But if there be a power too just and strong,
To wink at crimes, and bear unpunish'd wrong;
Look humbly upward, see his will disclose
The forfeit first, and then the fine impose;
A mulct thy poverty could never pay,

Had not Eternal Wisdom found the way,

And with celestial wealth supply'd thy store:

His justice makes the fine, his mercy quits the score.
See God descending in thy human frame;

Th' offended suffering in th' offender's name:
All thy misdeeds to him imputed see,

And all his righteousness devolv'd on thee.

Religio Lasci