Thomas Otway. BORN A. D. 1651.—died a. D. 1685. THOMAS OTWAY was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Trottin in Sussex on the 3d of March, 1651. After receiving the primary part of his education at Winchester school, he entered Christ-church, Oxford, but from some unassignable cause left the university without taking a degree, and went to London, where he began his career as an actor. Meeting with but little success in that line,' he turned his thoughts to a nobler occupation, and in 1675 produced two tragedies with the titles of Alcibiades,' and 'Don Carlos.' The latter of these appears to have been received with extraordinary applause, if we may judge from a passage in Rochester's 'Session of the Poets,' in which Otway is represented as swearing that Don Carlos had "amply filled his pockets.' As Otway was a man of lively conversation, and no ways given to decency, he became a great favourite with the gay and dissolute noblemen of those days, but he appears to have obtained nothing from their friendship, or rather their familiarity, save an acceleration on the road to ruin. It was not likely that the "Gay coxcombs, cowards, knaves, and prating fools, with whom, as he himself tells us, he fed "on every soil of variety," should do him any lasting service, since intemperance and debauchery, more perhaps than any other crimes, breed in their victims a hardened selfishness which utterly incapacitates them for any real friendship. A cornet's commission was indeed obtained for him in some troops sent into Flanders, but Otway's genius was so little martial that he speedily resigned, and returned to England in extreme indigence. Soon after his return he brought out two translations from French dramas, and in 1678 an original comedy, entitled, Friendship in Fashion,' which, greatly to the credit of the spectators, was hissed off the stage in 1745 on account of its gross obscenities. In 1680 his 'Orphan' was exhibited, and in the same year he wrote a tragedy called The History and Fall of Caius Marius.' In this execrable travestie he has had the audacity to borrow the entire plot, and more than one-half of his scenes, without the alteration of a single letter, from Romeo and Juliet, and to invest the coarse, stupid, plebeian son, of the brutal Caius Marius, with the character and expressions of the gentle, gifted, romantic Romeo. His last, and unquestionably his best dramatic work, was published in 1685. He died on the 14th of April in the same year, some say of absolute starvation-others, with more probability, of a fever. Be this as it may, all agree that his death was hastened by the sorrows and deprivations which poverty brought in its train; of which poverty, it is to be feared, that his own vices were the cause. His contemporaries, and the critics of Queen Anne's time, have In Downer's Roscius Anglicanus it is mentioned that, in 1672, he failed in the character of the King in Mrs Behn's Forced Marriage.' awarded to Otway a much higher rank as a dramatist than his merits can fairly challenge. It is true enough that nothing has been produced since his time at all equal to Venice Preserved,' but if he be compared with his illustrious predecessors of the Elizabethan age, he is lost in the magnitude of his rivals. His comedies cannot be allowed the merit of superiority even over those of the present day. They are compounds of the most brutal obscenity and intolerable stupidity, without a spark of genius to gild their shame, a single trait of virtue to contrast with their vice, or even a thin mantle of refinement to conceal their deformity. They are productions which would have disgraced any age, save that in which the formal gravity of the court of Charles the First, and the austere religion of the puritans, were alike washed away by the poisonous inundation of foreign manners, foreign impiety, and foreign debauchery, which overspread the land on Charles the Second's unhappy restoration. For such an age they were well-suited, or indeed for any age in which obscenity can make a wit, or clever villany a gentleman. His tragedies, however, are productions of a different stamp. Not that the inculcation of virtue by either precept or example is any where much attended to, but his dramatis-personæ are in general respectable, and their language decent, while the talent displayed is of a vastly superior description to any thing he has left us in the comic line. His characters are not often drawn with any singular felicity, the laws of the drama are nowhere strictly regarded, his language is seldom polished or select,-no lofty thought, or playful fancy, or high imagination, beams forth from his page to dazzle or delight, we see none of the learning of a scholar, or the refinement of a man of taste,-yet his tragedies, especially on the first perusal, excite a deep and oftentimes a long-remembered interest. Dryden and Addison have agreed in ascribing this interest to the power which Otway possesses of exciting the passions, but neither of them have explained the method by which this is effected. Perhaps the secret of it may be, that when Otway has succeeded in bringing his heroes into situations of the most overwhelming interest, instead of endowing them with lofty thoughts and lofty language, as Kit Marlowe, Shakspeare, or Beaumont and Fletcher would have done, he has put into their mouths just such ideas and expressions as persons of ordinary mind would naturally and appropriately employ, and has thereby come home to the bosoms of the great majority of his readers, who would find themselves lost in the vast intellect of a Hamlet. The concluding scene of Don Carlos,' and nearly the whole of the 'Orphan,' are strong instances in proof. Mrs Barry used to say that she could never pronounce the words, "Ah! poor Castalio;" in his character of Monimia in the latter play, without shedding tears. It is on Venice Preserved,' however, that his fame rests; and it is an edifice well-calculated to sustain it. Its grand defect is, that the characters from beginning to end, with the exception of the wearisome scenes between Antonio and Aquilina, speak in the most elevated tone of passion. There is no repose in the picture. From the first scene to the last all is thunder and lightning There are excellencies, however, quite sufficient to counterbalance the defects, and the reader will find, in the exquisite portraits of the deep unutterable affection of Belvidera, and the irresolution and remorse of Jaffier, some remnant of the glories of the Elizabethan age. The opinion which Moreri has pronounced on him will not, we think, be disputed:"Ce n'est pas un poete du premier genie, mais peut-être auroit-il ête plus loin, si ses débauches ne l'eussent pas tué à l'âge de 35 ans."-Otway's works have been printed in 3 vols. duodecimo, in 1722, 1768, and 1812. Edmund Waller. BORN A. D. 1605.—died A. D. 1687. EDMUND WALLER was born on the 3d of March, 1605, at Coleshill in Hertfordshire. His father belonged to an ancient and respectable family, and his mother was an aunt of Oliver Cromwell, and sister of John Hampden, the immortal martyr to the cause of English liberty. By the death of his father, young Waller, at an early age, became possessed of an ample fortune, which enabled him, after passing through the usual routine of education at Eton and Cambridge, to enter parliament in his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth year. His poetical career commenced about the same time, since the poem on the Prince's escape at St Andero-which is generally printed first in his works-must have been written in his eighteenth year. The most remarkable feature in this juvenile performance is, that it shows its author to have obtained almost without effort, or as Dr Johnson has said, to have "inherited" a purity of language, and an exquisite harmony of versification, such as few men acquire even by laborious culture. During the long interval which elapsed in King Charles's reign, without the meeting of any parliament, Waller appears to have spent his time in the company of those "with whom it was most honourable to converse," and in the liberal enjoyment of a handsome fortune. He had married early in life a woman of large property; but her death, soon after their nuptials, leaving his affections once more free, he paid his addresses to the Lady Dorothea Sidney, daughter of the earl of Leicester, to whom, under the unmeaning name of Saccharissa, many of his poems were addressed, though without exciting any sympathetic flame. Finding her inexorable, he took refuge in the arms of some other beauty, perhaps the Amoret or Phillis to whom several of his strains are inscribed, and there is every reason to believe that his marriage was a happy one. He sat in both the parliaments summoned in 1640 (the latter of which was the famous long parliament) and at first joined heart and hand with his illustrious relative Hampden, in resisting the arbitrary measures of the court. So decided a part did he take, that he was chosen by the parliament to manage the prosecution of Judge Crawley, for his opinion in favour of ship-money; and the way in which he performed the task amply justified the confidence they had reposed in his zeal and ability. When, however, the war of words was exchanged for one of blows, Waller suddenly veered round to the royalists, and both publicly and privately aided their cause, though he still sat among the representatives of the people. Not only did he * Moreri does not seem to agree with the writers of the late French dictionary of universal biography, who gravely say, "that the English in general esteem Otway second only to Shakspeare!!" contribute money, and speak in parliament in favour of the king, but he had the boldness to attempt to befriend Charles by some secret conspiracy which, from his being chiefly concerned in it, has received the name of Waller's plot. The real object and extent of this plot appears to be a matter of considerable doubt. Whitelocke and the commissioners appointed by parliament to examine into the matter,' affirm that the design was to surprise the city-militia, to let in the king's troops, and to dissolve the parliament; while Clarendon asserts that Waller's object was merely to induce the citizens to pass declarations against the continuance of the war, and thereby to harass the parliament. The truth probably is, that there were some who blended warlike intentions with the more peaceful purposes of their associates. Be that as it may, the design was discovered, and Waller, with his allies, thrown into prison. With a baseness seldom paralleled, Waller, as soon as he was seized, revealed the whole design; impeached all who had been in any way implicated in it; and, in short, to use Clarendon's words, was so confounded with fear, that he confessed whatever he had heard, thought, or seen; all that he knew of himself, and all that he suspected of others." We have not space to enter into the details of his infamy, but the reader will find them fully recorded in Clarendon. While his bolder associates, Tomkins and Chaloner, were hung before their own doors, Waller, "though confessedly the most guilty, with incredible dissimulation, affected such a remorse of conscience, that his trial was put off out of Christian compassion, till he might recover his understanding." The time thus gained was spent with so much assiduity in bribing and flattering the members of the house, that although condemned on his trial, he obtained a reprieve, and after a year's imprisonment, was permitted, on payment of a fine of £10,000, "to recollect himself in another country." He chose France as the place of his exile, and in the gay society of Paris he found ample amends for the stern religion of the puritans, and ample opportunities of dissipating his fortune, already dilapidated by the bribery and fine which had been necessary to save his life. At length, being reduced to sell his wife's jewels, he asked and obtained from the protector permission to return home. Cromwell, who took great delight in Waller's wit, received him with much cordiality, and was amply repaid by the famous panegyric, which has always been esteemed the best of our poet's productions. On the Restoration, Waller's pliant muse found a new theme, in a congratulation to Charles the Second, but it cannot be affirmed that he was equally successful. Charles is said to have noticed this inferiority, and to have mentioned it to Waller, who, with infinite readiness, replied, "Poets, please your majesty, always succeed better in fiction than in truth,"an answer witty enough to have excused any sin less infamous than a base prostitution of genius. Like his friend Hobbes, he seems to have worshipped power in whatever hands he found it, and, like him, he met with no reward. He sat in most of the parliaments called during the reign of Charles the Second, and although respected and trusted by no party, his wit and agreeable talents made him a favourite with all. Though arrived at extreme old age, he still retained all the vivacity of youth, and appears to have been regarded as one of the greatest orna Vide Rushworth, part iii. vol. 2. Hist. of the Rebellion, Book vii. have robbed the English drama of so bright au ornament. His Theodosius and Rival Queens still keep possession of the stage. Any one who wishes to see Lee in his best dress, should read the latter of these two plays. Some of the scenes are certainly magnificent, for fortunately they are of such a nature that even Lee's vehement passion does not seem misplaced. His plays are eleven in number :- Nero'-' The Rival Queens''Sophonisba Theodosius; or, The Force of Love'-Ulysses''Cæsar Borgia'-' Constantine'-' Gloriana'-' Lucius Junius Brutus' - Mithridates'—' Massacre of Paris.' Besides these, he assisted Dryden in writing 'Edipus,' and the Duke of Guise.' His dramatic works were printed in 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1713; 3 vols. 12mo. London, 1722, and 1733; 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1734. Thomas Sydenham. BORN A. D. 1624.-DIED A. D. 1689. THOMAS SYDENHAM, M.D., was born at Wynford Eagle, in Dorsetshire, where his father was a man of fortune, in 1624. When eighteen years of age he was sent to Oxford, and became a commoner of Magdalen-Hall, where he remained but a short time, the university being made a garrison by Charles I. soon after the battle of Edgehill. Being opposed to the king, Sydenham now entered the parliamentary army, where it is said that he remained a few years, and rose to the rank of captain. He then went to London, being yet undetermined as to what profession he should pursue. In his choice of the profession of medicine, he was influenced by Dr Coxe, a London physician, who discovered in him the indications of those talents which afterwards rendered him so illustrious. The university was now in the hands of the parliament, and young Sydenham returned to Magdalen-Hall in 1646, where he employed himself diligently in the study of his profession. He did not take any degree in arts, but, in 1648, he became Bachelor in medicine. The interest of a relation obtained him a fellowship in All Souls college, from which some of the royalists had been ejected; and after continuing for some time to study there, he took his degree of Doctor of medicine in the university of Cambridge. He then went to the continent, and after studying for a short time at Montpelier, returned to England and commenced practice in Westminster. On the 25th June, 1663, he became a member of the college of physicians in London. Respecting his life after this period, very little can be said. He attained considerable reputation and extensive practice in London, but his reputation during his life was by no means equal to his deserts. The causes of this are not well known; probably the part he had taken in the revolution rendered him unpopular with the royalists; probably his modesty, which was great, prevented him from making those exertions which often raise men of inferior talents to wealth and honour. He practised in London during the time of the great plague: about the middle of the period when this pestilence raged, he left town with his family, but returned very soon, and was extensively employed. With great modesty, he says of his success in practice at that time, "it could not be |