how true was his conception, in making the busy man eager to leave his robes and his ceremonies! how ready the man is to abase himself, when, escaped from his part, he comes to his real self! how the ape and the dog crop up in him! The senator Antonio comes to his Aquilina, who insults him; he is amused; hard words are a relief to compliments; he speaks in a shrill voice, runs into a falsetto like a zany at a country fair:

"Antonio. Nacky, Nacky, Nacky,-how dost do, Nacky? Hurry, durry. I am come, little Nacky. Past eleven o'clock, a late hour; time in all conscience to go to bed, Nacky.-Nacky did I say? Ay, Nacky, Aquilina, lina, lina, quilina; Aquilina, Naquilina, Acky, Nacky, queen Nacky.-Come, let's to bed.— You fubbs, you pug you-You little puss.-Purree tuzzy-I am a senator.

Never the worse senalet's have a game at

Aquilina. You are a fool I am sure. Antonio. May be so too, sweet-heart. tor for all that. Come, Nacky, Nacky; romp, Nacky!. . . You won't sit down? Then look you now; suppose me a bull, a Basan-bull, the bull of bulls, or any bull. Thus up I get, and with my brows thus bent-I broo; I say broo, I broo, I broo. You won't sit down, will you-I broo.

I

Now, I'll be a senator again, and thy lover, little Nicky, Nacky. Ah, toad, toad, toad, toad, spit in my face a little, Nacky; spit in my face, pry'thee, spit in my face, never so little; spit but a little bit,-spit, spit, spit, spit when you are bid, I say; do pry'thee, spit.-Now, now spit. What, you won't spit, will you? Then I'll be a dog.

Aquilina. A dog, my lord!

Antonio. Ay a dog, and I'll give thee this t'other purse to let me be a dog-and to use me like a dog a little. Hurry durry, I will-here 'tis. (Gives the purse.). . . Now bough waugh waugh, bough, waugh.

Aquilina. Hold, hold, sir. If curs bite, they must be kicked, sir. Do you see, kicked thus?

Antonio. Ay, with all my heart. Do, kick, kick on, now I am under the table, kick again,-kick harder-harder yetbough, waugh, waugh, bough.-Odd, Ill have a snap at thy shins.-Bough, waugh, waugh, waugh, bough―odd, she kicks bravely." 1

At last she takes a whip, thrashes him soundly, and turns him out of the house. He will return, we may be sure of that; he has spent a pleasant evening; he rubs his back, but he was amused. In short, he was but a clown who had missed his vocation, whom chance has given an embroidered silk gown, and who turns out at so much an hour political harlequinades. He feels more natural, more at his ease, playing Punch than aping a statesman.

These are but gleams: for the most part Otway is a, poet of his time, dull and forced in colour; buried, like the rest, in the heavy, grey, clouded atmosphere, half English and half French, in which the bright lights brought over from France, are snuffed out by the insular fogs. He is a man of his time; like the rest, he writes obscene comedies, The Soldier's Fortune, The Atheist, Friendship in Fashion. He depicts coarse and vicious cavaliers, rogues on principle, as harsh and corrupt as those of Wycherley, Beaugard, who vaunts and practises the maxims of Hobbes; the father, an old, corrupt rascal, who brags of his morality, and whom his son coldly sends to the dogs with a bag of crowns: Sir Jolly Jumble, a kind of base

1 Venice Preserved, 3. 1. Antonio is meant as a copy of the "celebrated Earl of Shaftesbury, the lewdness of whose latter years," says Mr. Thornton in his edition of Otway's Works, 3 vols. 1815, 66 subject of general notoriety."-TR.

was a

Falstaff, a pander by profession, whom the courtesans call "papa, daddy," who, "if he sits but at the table with one, he'll be making nasty figures in the napkins:"1 Sir Davy Dunce, a disgusting animal, "who has such a breath, one kiss of him were enough to cure the fits of the mother; 'tis worse than assafoetida. Clean linen, he says, is unwholesome...; he is continually eating of garlic, and chewing tobacco;" 2 Polydore, who, enamoured of his father's ward, tries to force her in the first scene, envies the brutes, and makes up his mind to imitate them on the next occasion. Otway defiles even his heroines. Truly this society sickens us. They thought to cover all their filth with fine correct meta

4

1 The Soldier's Fortune, 1. 1.

3

3 "Who'd be that sordid foolish thing called man,
To cringe thus, fawn, and flatter for a pleasure,
Which beasts enjoy so very much above him?
The lusty bull ranges thro' all the field,
And from the herd singling his female out,
Enjoys her, and abandons her at will.

It shall be so, I'll yet possess my love,

Wait on, and watch her loose unguarded hours:

Then, when her roving thoughts have been abroad,

And brought in wanton wishes to her heart;

I' th' very minute when her virtue nods,

I'll rush upon her in a storm of love,

Beat down her guard of honour all before me,

Surfeit on joys, till ev'n desire grew sick;

Then by long absence liberty regain,

2 Ibid.

And quite forget the pleasure and the pain."-The Orphan, 1. 1. It is impossible to see together more moral roguery and literary cor. rectness.

4 66 "Page (to Monimia). In the morning when you call me to you, And by your bed I stand and tell you stories,

I am ashamed to see your swelling breasts;

It makes me blush, they are so very white.

Monimia. Oh men, for flatt'ry and deceit renown'd !"

-The Orphan, 1. 1.

phors, neatly ended poetical periods, a garment of harmonious phrases and noble expressions. They thought to equal Racine by counterfeiting his style. They did not know that in this style the outward elegance conceals an admirable propriety of thought; that if it is a masterpiece of art, it is also a picture of manners; that the most refined and accomplished in society alone could speak and understand it; that it paints a civilisation, as Shakspeare's does; that each of these lines, which appear so stiff, has its inflection and artifice; that all passions, and every shade of passion, are expressed in them, not, it is true, wild and entire, as in Shakspeare, but pared down and refined by courtly life; that this is a spectacle as unique as the other; that nature perfectly polished is as complex and as difficult to understand as nature perfectly intact; that as for the dramatists we speak of, they were as far below the one as below the other; and that, in short, their characters are as much like Racine's as the porter of Mons. de Beauvilliers or the cook of Madame de Sévigné were like Madame de Sévigné or Mons. de Beauvilliers.1

VI.

Let us then leave this drama in the obscurity which it deserves, and seek elsewhere, in studied writings, for a happier employment of a fuller talent.

Pamphlets and dissertations in verse, letters, satires,

1 Burns said, after his arrival in Edinburgh, "Between the man of rustic life and the polite world, I observed little difference. But a refined and accomplished woman was a being altogether new to me, and of which I had formed but a very inadequate idea."—(Burns' Works, ed. Cunningham, 1832, 8 vols, i. 207.)

translations and imitations; here was the true domain of Dryden and of classical reason; this the field on which logical faculties and the art of writing find their best occupation.1 Before descending into it, and observing their work, it will be as well to study more closely the man who so wielded them.

His was a singularly solid and judicious mind, an excellent reasoner, accustomed to mature his ideas, armed with good long-meditated proofs, strong in discussion, asserting principles, establishing his subdivisions, citing authorities, drawing inferences; so that, if we read his prefaces without reading his dramas, we might take him for one of the masters of the dramatic art. He naturally attains a prose style, definite and precise; his ideas are unfolded with breadth and clearness; his style is well moulded, exact and simple, free from the affectations and ornaments with which Pope's was burdened afterwards; his expression is, like that of Corneille, ample and full; the cause of it is simply to be found in the inner arguments which unfold and sustain it. We can see that he thinks, and that on his own behalf; that he combines and verifies his thoughts; that besides all this, he naturally has a just perception, and that with his method he has good sense. He has the tastes and the weaknesses which suit his cast of intellect. He holds in the highest estimation "the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are excellent, whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose language is pure, whose satire is pointed, and whose sense is close. What he borrows from the ancients, he repays with usury of his own, in coin as good, and almost as uni

1 Dryden says, in his Essay on Satire, xiii. 30, "the stage to which my genius never much inclined me."