Fears nothing mortal but to be unjust;
Who is not blown up with the flattering puffs
Of spungy sycophants; who stands unmoved,
Despite the justling of opinion;
Who can enjoy himself, maugre the throng,
That strive to press his quiet out of him;

GEORGE CHAPMAN was born at Hitching-hill*, in the county of Hertford, and studied at Oxford. From thence he repaired to London, and became the friend of Shakspeare, Spenser, Daniel, Marlowe, and other contemporary men of genius. He was patronised by Prince Henry, and Carr Earl of Somerset. The death the one, and the disgrace of the other, must have injured his prospects; but he is supposed to have had some place at court, either under King James or his consort Anne. He lived to an advanced age; and, according to Wood, was a person of reverend aspect, religious, and temperate. Inigo Jones, with whom he lived on terms of intimate friendship, planned and erected a monument to his memory over his burial-place, on the south side of St. Giles's church in the fields; but it was unfortunately destroyed with the ancient church.

FROM THE COMEDY OF ALL FOOLS.

Speech of Valerio to Rynaldo, in answer to his bitter
invective against the Sex.
I TELL thee love is nature's second sun,
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
And as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,
Are given in vain to men; so without love
All beauties bred in women are in vain,
All virtues born in men lie buried,
For love informs them as the sun doth colours.
And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers,
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,
Brave resolution, and divine discourse.
O'tis the paradise! the heaven of earth!
And didst thou know the comfort of two hearts
In one delicious harmony united,
As to joy one joy, and think both one thought,
Live both one life, and there in double life,

Chapman seems to have been a favourite of his own times; and in a subsequent age, his version of Homer excited the raptures of Waller, and was diligently consulted by Pope. The latter speaks of its daring fire, though he owns that it is clouded by fustian. Webster, his fellow dramatist, praises his 'full and heightened style,' a character which he does not deserve in any favourable sense; for his diction is chiefly marked by barbarous ruggedness, false elevation, and extravagant metaphor. The drama owes him very little; his Bussy D'Ambois is a piece of frigid atrocity, and in the Widow's Tears, where his heroine Cynthia falls in love with a sentinel guarding the corpse of her husband, whom she was bitterly lamenting, he has dramatised one of the most puerile and disgusting legends ever fabricated for the disparagement of female constancy†.

PRIDE.

FROM THE SAME.

O, the good gods, How blind is pride! What eagles are we still In matters that belong to other men ! What beetles in our own!

A SON APPEASING HIS FATHER BY SUBMISSION,
AFTER A STOLEN MARRIAGE.
FROM THE SAME.

Persons.-GOSTANZO, the father; VALERIO, the son; MARCANTONIO and RYNALDO, friends; and GRATIANA, the bride of VALERIO.

Ryn. COME on, say; Your father with submission will be calm'd!

["Chapman, who assisted Ben Jonson and some others in comedy, deserves no great praise for his Bussy D'Ambois. The style in this, and in all his tragedies, is extravagantly hyperbolical; he is not very dramatic, nor has any power of exciting emotion except in those who sympathise with a tumid pride and self-confidence. Yet he has more His tragithinking than many of the old dramatists. comedies All Fools and The Gentleman-Usher, are perhaps superior to his tragedies."-HALLAM, Lit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 621. "Chapman would have made a great Epic Poet, if indeed he has not abundantly shown himself to be one; for his Homer is not so properly a Translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written"--LAMB.]

THOMAS RANDOLPH was the son of a steward to Lord Zouch. He was a king's scholar at Westminster, and obtained a fellowship at Cambridge. His wit and learning endeared him to Ben Jonson, who owned him, like Cartwright, as his adopted son in the Muses. Unhappily he followed the taste of Ben not only at the pen, but at the bottle; and he closed his life in poverty, at the age of twentynine, a date lamentably premature, when we consider the promises of his genius. His wit and humour are very conspicuous in the Puritan characters, whom he supposes the spectators of his scenes in the Muse's Looking-Glass. Throughout the rest of that drama (though it is on the whole his best performance) he unfortunately prescribed to himself too hard and confined a system of dramatic effect. Professing simply, "in single scenes to show, How comedy presents each single vice, Ridiculous"

he introduces the vices and contrasted humours of human nature in a tissue of unconnected per

Enter BIRD, a feather-man, and MRS. FLOWERDEW, wife to a haberdasher of small wares-the one having brought feathers to the playhouse, the other pins and looking-glasses-two of the sanctified fraternity of Black

friars.

Mrs. Flowerdew. SEE, brother, how the wicked throng and crowd

To works of vanity! not a nook or corner
In all this house of sin, this cave of filthiness,
This den of spiritual thieves, but it is stuff'd,
Stuff'd, and stuff'd full, as is a cushion,
With the lewd reprobate.

Bird. Sister, were there not before innsYes, I will say inns (for my zeal bids me Say filthy inns), enough to harbour such As travell'd to destruction the broad way, But they build more and more-more shops of Satan?

Mrs. F. Iniquity aboundeth, though pure zeal Teach, preach, huff, puff, and snuff at it; yet still, Still it aboundeth! Had we seen a church, A new-built church, erected north and south, It had been something worth the wondering at. Bird. Good works are done.

sonifications, and even refines his representations of abstract character into conflicts of speculative opinion.

For his skill in this philosophical pageantry the poet speaks of being indebted to Aristotle, and probably thought of his play what Voltaire said of one of his own, "This would please you, if you were Greeks." The female critic's reply to Voltaire was very reasonable, "But we are not Greeks." Judging of Randolph however by the plan which he professed to follow, his execution is vigorous: his ideal characters are at once distinct and various, and compact with the expression which he purposes to give them. He was author of five other dramatic pieces, besides miscellaneous poems*.

Mrs. F. I say no works are good;

Good works are merely popish and apocryphal.

Bird. But the bad abound, surround, yea, and confound us.

No marvel now if playhouses increase,

He died at the house of his friend, W. Stafford, Esq. of Blatherwyke, in his native county, and was buried in the adjacent church, where an appropriate monument was erected to him by Sir Christopher, afterwards Lord Hatton.

Mrs. F. Flat fornication!

I wonder anybody takes delight To hear them prattle.

Bird. Nay, and I have heard, That in a tragedy, I think they call it, They make no more of killing one another, Than you sell pins.

Mrs. F. Or you sell feathers, brother; But are they not hang'd for it?

Bird. Law grows partial,

And finds it but chance-medley: and their comedies
Will abuse you, or me, or anybody;

We cannot put our monies to increase
By lawful usury, nor break in quiet,
Nor put off our false wares, nor keep our wives
Finer than others, but our ghosts must walk
Upon their stages.

Mrs. F. Is not this flat conjuring,

To make our ghosts to walk ere we be dead?

Bird. That's nothing, Mrs. Flowerdew! they will play

The knave, the fool, the devil and all, for money.

* 1. Aristippus, or the Jovial Philosopher.-2. The Conceited Pedlar.-3. The Jealous Lovers, a comedy.-4. Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry, a pastoral. -5. Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery, a comedy.

O! Now for an eternity of eating!

-I would have My senses feast together; Nature envied us In giving single pleasures. Let me have My ears, eyes, palate, nose, and touch, at once Enjoy their happiness. Lay me in a bed Made of a summer's cloud; to my embraces Give me a Venus hardly yet fifteen, Fresh, plump, and active-she that Mars enjoy'd Is grown too stale; and then at the same instant My touch is pleased, I would delight my sight With pictures of Diana and her nymphs Naked and bathing, drawn by some Apelles; By them some of our fairest virgins stand,

That the Globe, &c.-The Globe, the Phoenix, the Forthe Blackfriars, the Red Bull, and Bear Garden, were names of several playhouses then in being.

tune.

That I may see whether 'tis art or nature
Which heightens most my blood and appetite.
Nor cease I here: give me the seven orbs,
To charm my ears with their celestial lutes,
To which the angels that do move those spheres
Shall sing some am'rous ditty. Nor yet here
Fix I my bounds: the sun himself shall fire
The phoenix nest to make me a perfume,
While I do eat the bird, and eternally
Quaff off eternal nectar! These, single, are
But torments; but together, O together,
Each is a paradise! Having got such objects
To please the senses, give me senses too
Fit to receive those objects; give me, therefore,
An eagle's eye, a blood-hound's curious smell,
A stag's quick hearing; let my feeling be
As subtle as the spider's, and my taste
Sharp as a squirrel's-then I'll read the Alcoran,
And what delights that promises in future,
I'll practise in the present.

Colax, the flatterer, between the dismal philosopher Anaisthetus and the epicure Acolastus, accommodating his opinions to both.

Acolastus. THEN let's go drink a while. Anaisthetus. "Tis too much labour. Happy TanThat never drinks! [talus,

Colax. Sir, I commend this temperance. Your Is able to contemn these petty baits, [arm'd soul These slight temptations, which we title pleasures, That are indeed but names. Heaven itself knows No such like thing. The stars nor eat, nor drink, Nor lie with one another, and you imitate Those glorious bodies; by which noble abstinence You gain the name of moderate, chaste, and sober, While this effeminate gets the infamous terms Of glutton, drunkard, and adulterer; Pleasures that are not man's, as man is man, But as his nature sympathies with beasts. You shall be the third Cato-this grave look And rigid eyebrow will become a censorBut I will fit you with an object, Sir, My noble Anaisthetus, that will please you ; It is a looking-glass, wherein at once You may see all the dismal groves and caves, The horrid vaults, dark cells, and barren deserts, With what in hell itself can dismal be!

Anaisth. This is, indeed, a prospect fit for me. [Exit. Acolas. He cannot see a stock or stone, but preHe wishes to be turn'd to one of those. [sently I have another humour-I cannot see A fat voluptuous sow with full delight Wallow in dirt, but I do wish myself Transform'd into that blessed epicure; Or when I view the hot salacious sparrow,

I wish myself that little bird of love.

Colax. It shows you a man of soft moving clay, Not made of flint. Nature has been bountiful

134

To provide pleasures, and shall we be niggards
At plentiful boards? He's a discourteous guest
That will observe a diet at a feast.
When Nature thought the earth alone too little
To find us meat, and therefore stored the air
With winged creatures; not contented yet,
She made the water fruitful to delight us!
Nay, I believe the other element too
Doth nurse some curious dainty for man's food,
If we would use the skill to catch the salamander.
Did she do this to have us eat with temperance ?
Or when she gave so many different odours
Of spices, unguents, and all sorts of flowers,
"" Would she
She cried not, "Stop your noses."
So sweet a choir of wing'd musicians, [give us
To have us deaf? or when she placed us here-
Here in a paradise, where such pleasing prospects,
So many ravishing colours, entice the eye,
Was it to have us wink? When she bestow'd
So powerful faces, such commanding beauties,
On many glorious nymphs, was it to say,
Be chaste and continent? Not to enjoy
All pleasures, and at full, were to make Nature
Guilty of that she ne'er was guilty of—
A vanity in her works.

COLAX TO PHILOTIMIA, OR THE PROUD LADY.

Colax. MADAM Superbia,

You're studying the lady's library,

The looking-glass: 'tis well, so great a beauty
Must have her ornaments; nature adorns
The peacock's tail with stars; 'tis she arrays
The bird of paradise in all her plumes,
She decks the fields with various flowers; 'tis she
Spangled the heavens with all their glorious lights;
She spotted th' ermine's skin, and arm'd the fish
In silver mail: but man she sent forth naked-
Not that he should remain so-but that he,
Endued with reason, should adorn himself
With every one of these. The silk-worm is
Only man's spinster, else we might suspect
That she esteem'd the painted butterfly
Above her master-piece; you are the image
Of that bright goddess, therefore wear the jewels
Of all the East-let the Red Sea be ransack'd
To make you glitter!

THE PRAISE OF WOMAN. FROM HIS MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

He is a parricide to his mother's name,
And with an impious hand murthers her fame,
That wrongs the praise of women; that dares write
Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite

The milk they lent us! Better sex! command
To your defence my more religious hand,

At sword or pen; yours was the nobler birth,
For you of man were made, man but of earth-
The sun of dust; and though your sin did breed
His fall, again you raised him in your seed.
Adam, in 's sleep, again full loss sustain❜d,
That for one rib a better half regain'd,
Who, had he not your blest creation seen
In Paradise an anchorite had been.
Why in this work did the creation rest,
But that Eternal Providence thought you best
Of all his six days' labour? Beasts should do
Homage to man, but man shall wait on you;
You are of comelier sight, of daintier touch,
A tender flesh, and colour bright, and such
As Parians see in marble; skin more fair,
More glorious head, and far more glorious hair;
Eyes full of grace and quickness; purer roses
Blush in your cheeks, a milder white composes
Your stately fronts; your breath, more sweet than
his,

Breathes spice, and nectar drops at every kiss.

#

| pleasantry, the furious orders against them which Laud enjoined him to execute. On the whole he does credit to the literary patronage of James, who made him dean of Christ's Church, and successively bishop of Oxford and Norwich.