Or looking downward, with your eye-lids

close,

And saying, truly, an't may please your honour,

Can get you any favour with great men ; You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute, And now and then stab, as occasion serves.'

and Baldock.

Ab. Have you no doubt, my lord; have

you no fear.

As silent and as careful we will be,
To keep your royal person safe with us,
Free from suspect and fell invasion
Of such as have your Majesty in chase,
Yourself, and those your chosen company,
As danger of this stormy time requires.
Edw. Father! thy face should harbour

no deceit.

O hadst thou ever been a king, thy heart,
Pierced deeply with a sense of my distress,
Could not but take compassion on my state.
Stately and proud in riches and in train
Whilom I was; powerful and full of pomp.
But what is he, whom rule and empiry
Have not in life or death made miserable?
Come, Spenser-come, Baldock-sit down
by me-

Make trial now of that philosophy,
That in our famous nurseries of arts
Thou suck'st from Plato and from Aristotle.
Father! this life contemplative is Heaven!
O that I might this life in quiet lead !
But we, alas! are chased and you, my
friends,

Your lives and my dishonour they pursue.
Yet, gentle Monks, for treason, gold, or fec,
Do you betray us and our company!
Monk. Your Grace may sit secure, if none
but we wot of your abode.
Spen. Not one alive-but shrewdly I sus-
pect

A gloomy fellow in a mead below.
He gave a long look after us, my Lord,
And all the land I know is up in arms,
Arms that pursue our lives with deadly hate.

Bal. We were embarked for Irelandwretched we !

With awkward winds and by sore tempests driven,

To fall on shore, and here to pine in fear Of Mortimer and his confederates.

Edw. Mortimer! who talks of Mortimer? Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer? Lay I this head, laden with meikle care. That bloody man!-good father! on thy lap O might I never ope these eyes again! Never again lift up this drooping head! O never more! lift up this dying heart!

Spen. Look up-my lord-Baldock, this drowsiness

Betides no good; even here we are betrayed!"

The Earl of Leicester and Rice-apHowel enter, and the King is taken prisoner. Our readers will pardon us for asking them to reflect a moment on the exquisite beauty of this scene. All contempt and dislike of the wretched King are gone from our hearts ;we forget that his own vices and follies have driven him to such misery, or if we faintly remember it, the remembrance gives a more melancholy, a more mournful shade to our compasqualities of his human nature expandsion; we see the purer and brighter ing themselves in the cold air of sorrow, once blighted in the sunshine of joy; -it is affecting to hear him at last moralizing on the miseries of rule and empiry, who has so thoughtlessly rendered himself an example of them ;we hope that he may at last be sufferdelightful to his soul;—we share in all ed to enjoy that quiet so new and so his cold trembling starts of fear and terror,- -we gaze with a solemn and forgiving pity on his hoary head, bowed down by agony and sleep on the knees of the holy man ;-we even sympathise with the superstitious dread of his attendants, who consider his sudden slumber as a forewarning of calamity, and we feel chilled, as if we ourselves were struck by the hand of danger, when he awakes in the grasp of his enemies and his murderers.

Edward is now imprisoned in Killingworth Castle, and the Bishop of Winchester enters to receive from him his abdicated crown. What follows is worthy of Shakspeare.

"Leicester! if gentle words might comfort me,

Thy speeches long ago had eased my sorrows; For kind and loving hast thou always been. The griefs of private men are soon allayed, But not of kings. The forest deer being struck,

Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds;

But when th' imperial Lion's flesh is gored, He rends and tears it with his wrathful paw, And highly scorning that the lowly earth Should drink his blood, mounts up into the air.

And so it fares with me, whose dauntless mind

Th' ambitious Mortimer would seek to curb;
And that unnatural Queen, false Isabel,
Who thus hath pent and mewed me in a
prison.

For such outrageous passions cloy my soul,
As with the wings of rancour and disdain
Full oft am I soaring up to high Heaven,
To plain me to the Gods against them both.
But when I call to mind I am a King,
Methinks I should revenge me of the wrongs
That Mortimer and Isabel have done.
But what are kings when regiment is gone?
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day.
My Nobles rule-I bear the name of King!
I wear the Crown, but am controul'd by
them,

?

By Mortimer, and my unconstant Queen,
Who spots my nuptial bed with infamy,
While I am lodged within this cave of care,
Where sorrow at my elbow still attends
To company my heart with sad laments
That bleeds within me for this shame and
change.

But tell me, must I now resign my Crown
To make usurping Mortimer a King.
Win. Your Grace mistakes; it is for
England's good

And princely Edward's right we crave the
Crown.

Edw. No! 'tis for Mortimer, not Edward's head;

But if proud Mortimer do wear this Crown,
Heavens turn it to a blaze of quenchless fire!
Or like the snaky wreath of Tisiphon,
Engirt the temples of his hateful head,
So shall not England's vines be perished,
But Edward's name survive, tho' Edward dies.
Lei. My Lord! why waste you thus the
time away?
They stay your answer; will you yield the

Crown?

Edw. Here, take my Crown! the life of
Edward too!

Two Kings in England cannot reign at once.
-But stay awhile, let me be King till night,
That I may gaze upon this glittering Crown;
So shall my eyes receive their last content,
My head the latest honour due to it,
And jointly both yield up their blessed right.

Continue ever, thou celestial sun!
Let never silent night possess this clime!
Stand still ye watches of the element !
All times and seasons, rest you at a stay,
That Edward may be still fair England's
king!

-But day's bright beam doth vanish fast

away,

And needs I must resign my wicked Crown. -See, monsters, see! I'll wear my Crown again!

What! fear you not the fury of your King? But, hapless Edward, thou art fondly led!

They pass not for thy frowns as late they did, But seek to make a new elected King, Which fills my mind with strange despairing thoughts;

Which thoughts are martyred with endless torments,

And in this torment comfort find I none, But that I find the Crown upon my head, And therefore let me wear yet awhile.

Trusty. My Lord! the Parliament must have present news,

And therefore say will you resign or no? Edw. I'll not resign-but whilst I live be King.

O would I might! but Heaven and Earth conspire

To make me miserable: here, receive my
Crown!

Receive it no, these innocent hands of mine
Shall not be guilty of so foul a crime !
He of you all that most desires my blood,
And will be called the Murtherer of a King,
Take it. What, are you moved? pity you
me?

Then send for unrelenting Mortimer,
And Isabel, whose eyes being turned to steel,
Will sooner sparkle fire than shed a tear.
Yet stay for rather than I will look on
them!

-Here! here!-Now sweet God of Heaven!
Make me despise this transitory pomp,
And sit for ever enthronized in Heaven!
Come, Death! and with thy fingers close
my eyes,

Or, if I live, let me forget myself.
Enter Berkely.

Ber. My Lord!

Edw. Call me not-Lord! Away, out of my sight—ah! pardon me! Grief makes me lunatic," &c.

Alas! poor Edward's fit of philosophy at the monastery was but of short duration! He has thus gone through the agonies of abdication-but direr agonies await him,-pains more intense than can spring from the destruction of mere outward possessions, born in the soul, when pierced even unto its inmost core by the sting of its own shrieking helplessness, and not confined to the soul alone, but sent thrilling through the blood, and heaped and weighed down upon the flesh in every possible form of hideousness, -cold, hunger, thirst, and want of sleep, endured in the darkness of foul and imprisoned solitude.

In the midst of the miseries of the King, Marlow has suddenly brought forward the Queen and her Paramour, in all the glory of their high estate. The effect is electrical. The relentless Mortimer dooms him to death, but commands his creatures, Gurney and Matrevis, first to bear down his body and soul by famine, and nightly

travel from place to place. The Queen approves of these savage orders, and with a callous hypocrisy, which seems almost beyond the capabilities of human wickedness,

"The She-Wolf of France with unrelenting fangs

That tears the bowels of her mangled mate,"
says to the messengers at parting:
"Whether goes this letter, to my Lord the
King?

Commend me humbly to his Majesty,
And tell him that I labour all in vain,
To ease his grief and work his liberty,
And bear him this, as witness of my love."
Meanwhile the King is in the hands
of his tormentors.

"Enter Matrevis and Gurney, with the King.

Mat. My Lord, be not pensive, we are your friends;

Men are ordained to live in misery, Therefore come,dalliance dangereth our lives. Edward. Friends! whither must unhappy Edward go?

Will hateful Mortimer appoint no rest?
Must I be vexed like the nightly Bird,
Whose sight is loathsome to all winged fowls?
When will the fury of his mind assuage?
When will his heart be satisfied with blood?
If mine will serve, unbowel straight this
breast,

And give my heart to Isabel and him,-
It is the chiefest mark they level at.

Gur. Not so, my Liege! the Queen hath
given this charge,
To keep your grace in safety.
Your passions make your choler to increase.
Edw. This usage makes my misery in-

crease.

But can my air of life continue long,
When all my senses are annoyed with stench?
Within a dungeon England's King is kept,
Where I am starved for want of sustenance.
My daily diet is heart-breaking sobs,
That almost rend the closet of my heart;
Thus lives old Edward, not relieved of any,
And so must die, though pitied by many.
O water! gentle Friends, to cool my thirst,
And clear my body from foul excrements.
Mat. Here's channel-water, as our charge

is given.

Sit down; for we'll be barbers to your Grace. Edw. Traitors, away! what, will you murder me,

Or choke your Sovereign with puddle water? Gur. No: but wash your face and shave your beard,

Lest you be known, and so rescued.
Mat. Why strive you thus? your labour

is in vain.

Edw. The Wren may strive against the Lion's strength,

But all in vain: so vainly do I strive To seek for mercy at a Tyrant's hand. (They wash him with puddle-water, and shave his beard away.

Immortal Powers! that know the painful

not,

Being in a vault up to the knees in water, To which the channels of the castle run; From whence a damp continually ariseth That were enough to poison any ́man, Much more a king brought up so tenderly.

Gur. And so do I, Matrevis; yesternight I open'd but the door to throw him meat, And I was almost stifled with the savour.

Mat. He hath a body able to endure More than we can inflict; and therefore now Let us assail his mind another while.

Gur. Send for him out thence and I'll anger him.

The murder is now arranged, and the dreadful mode of its perpetration; and the assassin is admitted into the miserable dungeon of his victim.

"Edw. Who's there? what light is that?
wherefore comest thou?
Light. To comfort you, and bring you
joyful news.

Edw. Small comfort finds

in thy looks.

poor

Edward

Villain! I know thou com'st to murder me.

Light. To murder you! my most gracious Lord!

Far is it from my heart to do you harm. The Queen sent me to see how you were used, For she relents at this your misery;

And what eyes can refrain from shedding

tears

To see a King in this most piteous state. Edw. Weep'st thou already? list awhile

to me,

And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is,
Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus,
Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale.
This dungeon, where they keep me, is the
sink

Wherein the filth of all the Castle falls.
Light. O villains!

come?

He

We do not fear to say that this drama will stand a comparison_even with Shakspeare's Richard II. There undoubtedly are some glorious emanations and flashings of Shakspeare's soul in Richard that could burst from no other shrine; but not even Shakspeare himself could have drawn a picture of more pitiable suffering than what Marlow has given us in the concluding scenes of his Edward. has not painted the fallen Monarch alone, but he has wearied, wasted, and withered away the body and the soul of the Man, by ceaseless, foul, and agonizing penance. Having first reduced the king to the level of the man, he has then reduced the man to the condition of the brute, and brought his victim through every imaginable agony, down from the glory of the throne to the filth of the dungeon. He seems unable to satiate his own spirit with dreams of hideous degradation; and the darkness, and dampness, and solitude of a cell, is not an imprisonment equal to his imagination of cruelty; but he has thrust the sufferer into noisome stench and be

griming mire, that he may lose the very form of a human creature, and become as it were incorporated with the foulness, and loathsomeness, and And putridity, of the rotten earth. when this tormented skeleton is to breathe no more, his miseries are terminated by a death of unimagined

horror, so that our last dream of the dungeon is filled with the outcries and shrieks of madness.

Such a catastrophe is too pitiable; and accordingly Marlow has mitigated its severity by the noble conclusion of the Drama. The young Edward, as yet a beardless boy, seems on a sudden inspired by a divine impulse to avenge his Father's murder; the guilty but remorseless Queen is led to prison, and Mortimer is beheaded;

and thus the soul turns from the melancholy remembrance of degradation and misery to the august spectacle of righteous retribution and princely virtue.* H. M.

* We cannot but consider it a flattering distinction, that our account of the "Tragical History of Dr Faustus" has attracted the notice of the eloquent Critic on “ Manfred" in the Edinburgh Review; and that he has thought it incumbent on him to express his dissent from a supposed opinion of ours, that Lord Byron borrowed the plan and general character of his noble Poem from that singular and extraordinary Dra

ma.

66

Nonc can estimate Lord Byron's originality higher than we do; and we think, that if our readers will take the trouble of referring to our paper on Faustus," they will not agree with ie Edinburgh Reviewer, in supposing that we accused Byron of plagiarism from Marlow. We merely stated, that there was a general resemblance in the subjects, and that, therefore, independently of its great intrinsic merits, Marlow's Tragedy possessed an extraordinary present interest. One passage of great force and energy we quoted as equal, in our opinion, to any thing of a similar strain in "Manfred, ""-a passage in which the miseries of hell are described as consisting in the tormented consciences of the wicked. Though we supposed it not improbable that Lord Byron might have read this passage, we never insinuated that he had imitated, much less borrowed it; but we said that there was in it much of a congenial power, and no small portion of that terrific gloom in which his Lordship's poetry is so often majestically shrouded. That Faustus" is, as a composition, very inferior to Manfred, we perfectly agree with the Reviewer; for the wavering character of the German magician will not bear comparison for a moment with that of the Princely Wanderer of the Alps: and the mixed, rambling, headlong, and reckless manner of Marlow, in that play, must not be put into competition with the sustained dignity of Byron. In the concluding sentences of our paper, where we say that Lord Byron has been surpassed both in variety and depth of pas

ACCOUNT OF THE ATTEMPT OF FRANCIS EARL OF BOTHWELL UPON THE PALACE OF HOLYROODHOUSE, IN 1591.

MR EDITOR,

THE following is a contemporary account of the desperate attempt of Francis Earl of Bothwell, upon the Palace of Holyroodhouse, in the year 1591, for the purpose of seizing the person of James the Sixth; being the contents of an Original Letter, indorsed in an old hand, "Letter of News about the Erl of Bothwell's Plot."

It is the fullest Narrative of the event hitherto published, and, independently of correcting its date, pointedly alludes to some other particulars, which are, perhaps, not susceptible of easy explanation.

J. R. "Upon mononday, ye 3 of Januar, suld bein ane justing befoir the Quenis Grace in ye Linkes. The Chancellare suld bein extraordinare he banketting in ye Abbay. the ane partie yairof, for this zuill hes bein Quhairof ye erll bothwell ande his complices being forsein dar not yam selviş in leith. The day became foul, and swa yat purpose in the first beginning was disapointit. Ye nixt nicht at evin, he entret in ye Abbay be ye duikis stables at fyve houris at evin, and remanet in ye lang stabill quill neir

sion, we did not allude to Marlow alone, but to the great body of the old English Dramatists. And though this opinion may by many be held erroneous, it will not, we are sure, be thought absurd by those well acquainted with the transcendant excellence of those immortal Writers. We beg to advise our readers, that they cannot better prepare their minds for the study of the old English Drama, than by a careful perusal of an Essay in the Edinburgh Review on "Ford's Works,"-in which the spirit and character of the great Writers of the Elizabethan Age are described with all the philosophical eloquence of a Schlegel, united with that grace and vivacity peculiar to the ingenious Essayist. This, we believe, is the Essay which roused the blind and blundering wrath of Coleridge, and which, after speaking with unqualified contempt of the critical disquisitions in the Review, he rather unluckily asserts, was borrowed from a letter of his to the Editor. It appears, however, that only two sentences in that famous letter had any reference to that subject; and they who know how little Mr Coleridge can expand into 150 pages, will imagine how much he was likely to compress into half-a-dozen lines.

* Maitland.