Our footings are not active like our heart*,

Which treads the nimbler measure.

Org. I am thunderstruck.

The last Change.-Music ceases.

Cal. So; let us breathe awhile. Hath not this motion

Rais'd fresher colours on our cheek?

Near. Sweet princess,

A perfect purity of blood enamels
The beauty of your white.

Cal. We all look cheerfully:

And, cousin, 'tis methinks a rare presumption
In any who prefers our lawful pleasures
Before their own sour censure, to interrupt

The custom of this ceremony bluntly.

Near. None dares, lady.

Cal. Yes, yes; some hollow voice deliver❜d to me How that the king was dead.

Arm. The king is dead," &c. &c.

This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in masquerade. Nor is it, I think, accounted for, though it may be in part redeemed by her solemn address at the altar to the dead body of her husband.

"Cal. Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow
Of my contracted lord! Bear witness all,
I put my mother's wedding-ring upon
His finger; 'twas my father's last bequest:

(Places a ring on the finger of Ithocles).

Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am :
Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords,

* " High as our heart."

See passage from the Malcontent.

I but deceiv'd your eyes with autic gesture,

When one news strait came huddling on another

Of death, and death, and death: still I danc'd forward;

But it struck home and here, and in an instant.

Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries
Can vow a present end to all their sorrows,

Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them.
They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings:
Let me die smiling.

Near. 'Tis a truth too ominous.

Cal. One kiss on these cold lips-my last: crack, crack;

Argos, now Sparta's king, command the voices

Which wait at th' altar, now to sing the song

I fitted for my end."

And then, after the song, she dies.

This is the true false gallop of sentiment: any thing more artificial and mechanical I cannot conceive. The boldness of the attempt, however, the very extravagance, might argue the reliance of the author on the truth of feeling prompting him to hazard it; but the whole scene. is a forced transposition of that already alluded to in Marston's Malcontent. Even the form of the stage directions is the same.

"Enter Mendozo supporting the Duchess; Guerrino; the Ladies that are on the stage rise. Ferrardo ushers in the Duchess; then takes a Lady to tread a measure.

Aurelia. We will dance: music: we will dance.

Enter Prepasso.

Who saw the Duke? the Duke?

Aurelia. Music.

Prepasso. The Duke? is the Duke returned?

Aurelia. Music.

Enter Celso.

The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not.

Aurelia. We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our private retirement; we are not pleased: you have forgot yourselves.

Enter a Page.

Celso. Boy, thy master? where's the Duke?

Page. Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread joyless limbs; he told me he was heavy, would sleep: bid me walk off, for the strength of fantasy oft made him talk in his dreams: I strait obeyed, nor ever saw him since; but

wheresoe'er he is, he's sad.

Aurelia. Music, sound high, as is our heart; sound high. Enter Malevole and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit. Malevole. The Duke? Peace, the Duke is dead.

Aurelia. Music!"

Act IV. Scene 3.

The passage in Ford appears to me an illjudged copy from this. That a woman should call for music, and dance on in spite of the death of her husband whom she hates, without regard to common decency, is but too possible: that she should dance on with the same heroic perseverance in spite of the death of her husband, of her father, and of every one else whom she loves, from regard to common courtesy or appearance, is not surely natural. The passions may silence the voice of humanity, but it is, I think, equally

against probability and decorum to make both the passions and the voice of humanity give way (as in the example of Calantha) to a mere form of outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the strongest and most uncontroulable feelings can only be justified from necessity, for some great purpose, which is not the case in Ford's play; or it must be done for the effect and eclat of the thing, which is not fortitude but affectation. Mr. Lamb in his impressive eulogy on this passage in the Broken Heart has failed (as far as I can judge) in establishing the parallel between this uncalled-for exhibition of stoicism, and the story of the Spartan Boy.

It

may be proper to remark here, that most of the great men of the period I have treated of (except the greatest of all, and one other) were men of classical education. They were learned men in an unlettered age; not self-taught men in a literary and critical age. This circumstance should be taken into the account in a theory of the dramatic genius of that age. Except Shakespear, nearly all of them, indeed, came up from Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately began to write for the stage. No wonder. The first coming up to London in those days must have had a singular effect upon a young man of genius, almost like visiting Babylon or Susa, or a

journey to the other world. The stage (even as it then was), after the recluseness and austerity of a college-life, must have appeared like Armida's enchanted palace, and its gay votaries like

"Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees; while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth

Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."

So our young novices must have felt when they
first saw the magic of the scene, and heard its
syren sounds with rustic wonder, and the scho-
lar's pride and the joy that streamed from their
eyes at that fantastic vision, at that gaudy shadow
of life, of all its business and all its pleasures,
and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic
throng, still has left a long lingering glory be-
hind it; and though now "deaf the praised ear,
and mute the tuneful tongue," lives in their elo-
quent page,
"informed with music, sentiment,
and thought, never to die!"

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