simplicity. Hazlitt speaks of one of his plays, perhaps the best, with true artistical feeling :-"The rest of the character is answerable to the beginning. The execution is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new and masterly. There is the least colour possible used; the pencil drags; the canvas is almost seen through: but then, what precision of outline, what truth and purity of tone, what firmness of hand, what marking of character! ... . . It is as if there were some fine art to chisel thought, and to embody the inmost movements of the mind in every-day actions and familiar speech."* Dekker acquired some of his satirical propensities, but the tenderness of his heart was also called forth, in the crooked ways and dark places of misfortune. Almost the first record of his life is a memorandum by Henslow of the loan of forty shillings, "to discharge Mr. Dicker out of the Counter in the Poultry." Oldys, in his manuscript notes upon Langbaine, affirms that he was in the King's Bench Prison from 1613 to 1616. His own calamities furnish a commentary to the tenderness of many such passages as the following, in which a father is told of the miseries of his erring daughter:

"I'm glad you are wax, not marble; you are made

Of man's best temper; there are now good hopes

That all these heaps of ice about your heart,

By which a father's love was frozen up,

Are thaw'd in these sweet show'rs fetch'd from your eyes:

We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies.

She is not dead, but lives under worse fate;
I think she's poor." +

a

The praise of industry belongs to Dekker, though its fruits were poverty. He lived to a considerable age, and he laboured to the last at play or pamphlet. But the amount of his productions becomes almost insignificant when compared with the more than "copious industry" of Thomas Heywood. He was scholar, having been educated at Cambridge-at Peterhouse, it is said; but he became an actor as early as 1598, being then a sharer in Henslow's company. In 1633 he claimed for himself the authorship, entirely or in part, of two hundred and twenty dramas. We have expressed an opinion that Heywood might have been the writer of The Yorkshire Tragedy.' Many of his two hundred and twenty dramas were probably such short pieces as that clever performance. Heywood had the power of stirring the affections, of moving pity and terror by true representations of the course of crime and misery in real life. Charles Lamb has summed up the character of his writings in three lines:—" Heywood is a sort of prose Shakspeare. His scenes are to the full as natural and affecting. But we miss the poet, that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above the surface of the nature." Winstanley, not a very trustworthy authority, speaking of Heywood's wonderful fertility, says "He not only acted himself almost every day, but also wrote each day a sheet; and that he might lose no time, many of his plays were composed in the tavern, on the back side of tavern bills; which may be an occasion that so many of them are lost."

⚫ 'Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.'
The Honest Whore,' Second Part, Act I., Scene 1.

Francis Beaumont was a boy at the period to which our slight notice of his great coadjutor Fletcher belongs. At the epoch we are now describing he is within three years of the termination of his short race. The poetical union of Beaumont and Fletcher has given birth to stories, such as Aubrey delights in telling, that their friendship extended even to a community of lodging and clothes, with other matters in common that are held to belong to the perfection of the social system. We neither believe these things entirely, nor do we quite receive the assertion of Dr. Earle, that Beaumont's "main business was to cor rect the overflowings of Mr. Fletcher's wit." Edward Phillips repeats this assertion. They first came before the world in the association of a title-page in 1607. The junior always preceded the elder poet in such announcements of their works; and this was probably determined by the alphabetical arrangement. We have many indications that Beaumont was regarded by his contemporaries as a man of great and original power. It was not with the exaggeration of a brother's love that Sir John Beaumont wrote his affecting epitaph upon the death of Francis:

"Thou shouldst have follow'd me, but death to blame
Miscounted years, and measur'd age by fame."

He was buried by the side of Chaucer and Spenser, in the hallowed earth where it was wished that Shakspere should have been laid :

When Shakspere's company performed at Wilton, in December, 1003, it is more than probable that there was a young man present at those performances perhaps familiar with Shakspere himself, whose course of life might have been determined by the impulses of those festive hours. Philip Massinger, who in 1603 was nineteen years of age, was the son of a gentleman filling a service of trust in the household of the Earls of Pembroke. At this period Philip was a commoner of St. Albar Hall, Oxford. "Being sufficiently famed for several specimens of wit, he betook himself to making plays." This is Anthony Wood's account of the dedication of Massinger to a pursuit which brought him little but hopeless poverty. Amongst Henslow's papers was found an undated letter, addressed to him by Nathaniel Field, with postscripts signed by Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger. Malone conjectures that the letter was written between 1612 and 1615, Henslow having died in January, 1616. The letter, which is a melancholy illustration of the oft-told tale of the misfortunes of genius, was first given in the additions to Malone's Historical Account of the English Stage: '

"You understand our unfortunate extremity, and I do not think you so void of Christianity but that you would throw so much money into the Thames as we request now of you, rather than endanger so many innocent lives. You know there is xl. more at least to be received of you for the

play. We desire you to lend us vl. of that; which shall be allowed to you; without which we cannot be bailed, nor I play any more till this be dispatched. It will lose you xxl. ere the end of the next week, besides the hinderance of the next new play. Pray, Sir, consider our cases with humanity, and now give us cause to acknowledge you our true friend in time of need. We have entreated Mr. Davison to deliver this note, as well to witness your love as our promises, and always acknowledgment to be ever

"Your most thankful and loving friends,

"NAT. FIELD.

"The money shall be abated out of the money remains for the play of Mr. Fletcher and ours. "ROBERT DABORNE.

"I have ever found you a true loving friend to me, and in so small a suit, it being honest, I hope you will not fail us. "PHILIP MASSINGER."

By an indorsement on the letter it is shown that Henslow made the advance which these unfortunate men required. But how was it that Massinger, who was brought up under the patronage of a family distinguished for their encouragement of genius, was doomed to struggle for many years with abject penury, and when he died in 1640 was left alone in the world, to have his name inscribed in the burial register of St. Saviour's as Philip Massinger, a stranger"? Gifford conjectures that he became a Roman Catholic early in te, and thus gave offence to the noble family with whom his father had been so intimately connected. In 1623 Massinger published his Bondman,' dedicating it to the second of the Herberts, Philip Earl of Montgomery. The dedication shows that he had been an alien from the house in the service of which his father lived and died: "However I could never arrive at the happiness to be made known to your Lordship, yet a desire, born with me, to make a tender of all duties and service to the noble family of the Herberts, descended to me as an inheritance from my dead father, Arthur Massinger. Many years he happily spent in the service of your honourable house, and died a servant to it." There is something unintelligible in all this; though we may well believe with Gifford that "whatever might be the unfortunate circumstance which

"*

deprived the author of the patronage and protection of the elder branch of the Herberts, he did not imagine it to be of a disgraceful nature; or he would not, in the face of the public, have appealed to his connexions with the family.' It is difficult to trace the course of Massinger's poetical life. The Virgin Martyr,' in which he was assisted by Dekker, was the first printed of his plays; and that did not appear till 1622. But there can be little doubt that it belongs to an earlier period; for in 1620 a fee was paid to the Master of the Revels on the occasion of New reforming The Virgin Martyr." The Bondman' was printed within a year after it was produced upon the stage; and from that period till the time of his death several of his plays were published, but at very irregular intervals. It would appear that during the early portion of his career Massinger was chiefly associated with other writers. To the later period belong his great works, such as The Duke of Milan,' The City Madam,' and the New Way to pay Old Debts.' Taken altogether, Massinger was perhaps the worthiest successor of Shakspere; and this indeed is praise enough.

Nat Field, the writer of the letter to Henslow, was a player, as we learn by that letter. The same document shows that he was a player in the service of Henslow. But he is mentioned in the first folio edition of Shakspere's plays, as one of the principal actors in them. The best evidence of the genius of Field is his association with Massinger in the noble play of The Fatal Dowry.' He probably was not connected with Shakspere's company during Shakspere's life; but he is named in a patent to the actors at the Blackfriars and Globe in 1620. Robert Daborne, who was associated with Field and Massinger in their "extremity," was either at this period, or subsequently, in holy orders.

Thomas Middleton was a contemporary of Shakspere. We find him early associated with other writers, and in 1602 was published his comedy of "Blurt Master-Constable." Edward Phillips describes him as "a copious writer for the English stage, contemporary with Jonson and Fletcher, though not of equal Introduction to the Works of Massinger.