we read them, the Essays are not less attractive for the fulness of imagination that fills them with stately pictures, than for the reach of reflective thought that makes them suggest so many valuable truths. But it is a fact worth remembering, that the few Essays which were first published, wanted almost altogether the illustrative enrichment which the whole series now presents. This development of reasoning power before the imagination, although it is the exception, has several parallels; it was a distinctive feature in the mental history of Dryden and of Burke.* Among the Didactic Essays of the time after Bacon, may justly be included the "Table-Talk" of the learned Selden, not for the bulk of the book, but for its mixture of apophthegmatic wisdom and lively wit. Two of his contemporaries have transmitted to us in this shape a much greater number of words, if not a larger quantity of knowledge. Robert Burton's undigested farrago, called "The Anatomy of Melancholy," became famous * FRANCIS BACON. From the "Essays: or Counsels Civil and Moral;" first published in 1597; revised and augmented till 1625. * * * I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind. And therefore God never wrought miracle to convince Atheism; because his ordinary works convince it. It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to Atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to Religion: for, while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no farther; but, when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. * The Scripture saith, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God;" it is not said, "The fool hath thought in his heart:" so as he rather saith it by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it or be persuaded of it. For none deny there is a God, but those for whom it maketh that there were no God. But the great Atheists, indeed, are hypocrites; which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling. They that deny a God, destroy man's nobility: for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body: and, if he be not akin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity and the raising of human nature: for, take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a God or Melior Natura: which courage is manifestly such, as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon Divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith, which human nature in itself could not obtain. Therefore, as Atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty. * * on its being discovered that Sterne had stolen from it largely: and, as irregular in taste as in judgment, as far deficient in good writing as in power of consecutive reasoning, it can never do. more than serving patient readers as a storehouse of odd learning and quaintly original ideas. d. 1682. In some respects not unlike Burton, but very far above him b. 1605. both in eloquence and in strength of thought, is Sir Thomas Browne, the favourite author of not a few among the admirers of our older literature. In point of style, his writings present to us, in the last stage of our Old English period, all the distinctive characteristics of the age in a state of extravagant exaggeration. The quaintness of phrase is more frequent and more deeply ingrained than ever: terms are coined from the Latin mint with a license that acknowledges no interdict; and the construction of sentences puts on an added cumbrousness. But the thoughtful melancholy of feeling, the singular mixture of scepticism and credulity in belief, and the brilliancy of imaginative illustration, give to his essays, and especially to that which has always been the most popular, a peculiarity of character that makes them exceedingly fascinating. "The Religio Medici," says Johnson, "was no sooner published, than it excited the attention of the public by the novelty of paradoxes, the dignity of sentiment, the quick succession of images, the multitude of abstruse allusions, the subtlety of disquisition, and the strength of language." *SIR THOMAS BROWNE. From the "Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial:” published in 1608. Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vainglory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency. Pious spirits, who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of preordination and night of their fore-beings. To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves; which being not only a hope but an evidence in noble believers it is all one to lie in Saint Innocent's churchyard as in the sands of Egypt, ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six feet as the moles of Adrianus. Readers who delight in startling contrasts could not be more easily gratified, than by turning from Browne to the prose writ b. 1605.ings of the poet Cowley. His eleven short "Discourses d. 1668. by way of Essays, in Prose and Verse," the latest of all his works, show an equal want of ambition in the choice of topics and in the manner of dealing with them. The titles, describing objects of a common-place kind, but possessing interest for every one, fulfil the promise which they hold out, by introducing us to a few obvious though judicious reflections, set off by a train of thoughtfully placid feeling. The style calls for especial attention. Noted in his poems for fantastic affectation of thought generating great obscurity of phrase, Cowley writes prose with undeviating simplicity and perspicuity: and the whole cast of his language, not in diction only, but in construction, has a smoothness and ease, and an approach to tasteful regularity, of which hardly an instance, and certainly none of such extent, could be produced from any other book written before the Restoration. * *ABRAHAM COWLEY. From the Essay "Of Solitude." The first minister of state has not so much business in public, as a wise man has in private: if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other has less leisure to be in company: the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and Nature under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as that, which I hear very often, that a man does not know how to pass his time. "Twould have been but ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine-hundred-sixty-ninth year of his life: so far it is from us, who have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to have cause to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of work. But this, you'll say, is work only for the learned: others are not capable either of the employments or divertisements that arrive from letters. I know they are not; and therefore cannot much recommend solitude to a man totally illiterate. But, if any man be so unlearned, as to want entertainment of the little intervals of accidental solitude, which frequently occur in almost all conditions, (except the very meanest of the people, who have business enough in the necessary provisions for life,) it is truly a great shame, both to his parents and himself. For a very small portion of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of our time. Either music, or painting, or designing, or chymistry, or history, or gardening, or twenty other things will do it usefully and pleasantly; and, if he happen to set his affections on Poetry, (which I do not advise him too immoderately,) that will overdo it: no wood will be thick enough to hide him from the importunities of company or business, which would abstract him from his beloved. Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good! Where the poetic birds rejoice, And, for their quiet nests and plenteous food, Pay with their grateful voice! Here Nature does a house for me erect, Who those fond artists does despise, Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, Hear the soft winds, above me flying, With all their wanton boughs dispute, And the more tuneful birds to both replying; Nor be myself too mute. A silver stream shall roll his waters near, Gilt with the sunbeams here and there, On whose enamell'd bank I'll walk, And see how prettily they smile, and hear How prettily they talk. All wretched and too solitary he Who loves not his own company! Unless he call in Sin or Vanity CHAPTER VI. THE AGE OF SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE, BACON, AND MILTON. A. D. 1558-A. D. 1660. SECTION FOURTH: THE DRAMATIC POETRY. INTRODUCTION. 1. The Drama a Species of Poetry-Recitation of Narrative Poems and Plays-Effects of Recitation on the Character of the Works-Relations of Prose and Verse to Poetry.-2. The Regular and Irregular Schools of Dramatic Art-The French Rules-The Unities of Time and Place-Their Principle--Their Effects.-3. The Unity of Action-Its Principle-Its Relations to the Other Unities-The Union of Tragedy and Comedy.-SHAKSPEARE AND THE OLD ENGLISH DRAMA. 4. Its Four Stages. 5. The First Stage-Shakspeare's Predecessors and Earliest WorksMarlowe Greene. 6. Shakspeare's Earliest Histories and Comedies-Character of the Early Comedies. 7. The Second Stage-Shakspeare's Later Histories-His best Comedies. 8. The Third Stage-Shakspeare's Great Tragedies-His Latest Works. 9. Estimate of Shakspeare's Genius.-MINOR DRAMATIC POETS. 10. Shakspeare's Contemporaries-Their Genius-Their Morality. 11. Beaumont and Fletcher. 12. Ben Jonson. 13. Minor Dramatists-Middleton-Webster-Heywood-Dekker. 14. The Fourth Stage of the Drama-Massinger-Ford-Shirley-Moral Declension. INTRODUCTION. 1. SHAKSPEARE, the greatest of the great men who have created the imaginative literature of the English language, is so commonly spoken of as a poet, that it can hardly surprise any of us to hear the name of Poetry given to such works as those amongst which his are classed. But we ought to make ourselves familiar with the principle which this way of speaking involves. The Drama, in all its kinds and forms, is properly to be considered as a kind of Poetry. A Tragedy is a poem, just as much as an Epic or an Ode. It is not here possible, either to prove this cardinal doctrine of criticism, or to set it forth with those explanations by which the practical application of it ought to be guarded. It must be enough to assert peremptorily, that Spenser and Milton, our masters of the chivalrous and the religious epos, are not more imperatively subject to the laws of the poetical art, than are Shakspeare, and Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher, and the other founders and builders of our dramatic poetry. The Epic, and the Drama are alike representations of human action and suffering, of human thought, and feeling, and desire; and they are representations whose purposes are |