sometimes materially altered. The moralizations are uniformly different, and the proper names generally changed. The best manuscripts contain one hundred and two stories, out of which there are upwards of forty that are not in the original work, none of which have been ever printed in the Latin of this Gesta,and but few ofthem in an English translation.' Mr. Douce then proceeds to give an analysis of the additional stories in the English Gesta. It has escaped his notice, that the 101st chapter is the story of the fine old romance, "Le Bone Florence of Rome," where, indeed, the Gesta Romanorum, appear to be referred to as the original.

"Pope Symonde thys story wrate

In the cronykyls of Rome ys the date,
Who seekyth there he may ytfynde."

On the ancient English Morris.
dance. The sam
same careful investiga-
tion is bestowed upon this, as upon
every other subject which Mr.
Douce has examined. It is his
opinion that the usual derivation
of Morris from Morisco, is the true
one: this, perhaps, may be best
ascertained by a Spanish antiquary.

The old red-letter is revived in the title page of the work there is a fashion in title pages as well as in every thing else, our Poets have been in black letter for the last ten years, and no doubt our antiquaries will be in red for the next.

entire scenes, and in some instances successive scenes, rather than to string toge ther single passages and detached beauties, which I have always found wearisome in the reading in selections of this nature.

ART. III. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, who lived about the Time of Shaks peare: with Notes. By CHARLES LAMB. 8vo. pp. 484. MUCH has been done by our literary antiquarians towards the history of the English stage, and in the course of a few years it is probable that all which can now be recovered from the wreck of time will be secured. It will remain for philosophical critics to investigate the causes which produced so suddenly a race of dramatic writers, to whose excellence in the higher powers of the drama, no others of any age or country have ever even approached; forerunners they had none, and they left no successors: they came like meteors, and like meteors they past away; but their light remains inextinguishable, and to endure for

ever.

Mr. Lamb's preface will best explain the plan he has pursued, in these very interesting selections.

"More than a third part of the following specimens are from plays which are to be found only in the British Museum and in some scarce private libraries. The rest are from Dodsley's and Hawkins's collections, and the works of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger.

"I have chosen wherever I could to give

"To every extract is prefixed an expla natory head, sufficient to make it intelligible with the help of some trifling omissions. Where a line or more was obscure, as having reference to something that had gone before, which would have asked more time to explain than its consequence in the scene seemed to deserve, I have had no hesitation in leaving the line or passage out. Sometimes where I have met with a superfluous character, which seemed to burthen without throwing any light upon together. I have expunged without ceremony all that which the writers had better never have written, that forms the objection so often repeated to the promiscuous reading of Fletcher, Massinger, and some others.

the scene, I have ventured to dismiss it al

"The kind of extracts which I have sought after have been, not so much passages of wit and humour, though the old plays are rich in such, as scenes of pas sion, sometimes of the deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descriptions, that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic rather than to comic poetry. The plays which I have made choice of have been, with few ex

ceptions, those which treat of human life and manners, rather than masques and Arcadian pastorals, with their train of abstractions, unimpassioned deities, passion ate mortals, Claius, and Medorus, and Amintas, and Amarillis. My leading de sign has been, to illustrate what may be called the moral sense of our ancestors. To shew in what manner they felt, when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in trying situations, in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the strife of contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how their griefs were tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated: how much of Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and

how far in his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all mankind.

"Another object which I had in making these selections was, to bring toge

ther the most admired scenes in Fletcher and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic poets of that age who are entitled to be considered after Shakspeare, and to exhibit them in the same volume with the more impressive scenes of old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Webster, Ford, and others. To shew what we have slighted, while beyond all proportion we have cried up one or two favourite names.

"The specimens are not accompanied with any thing in the shape of biographical notices.t I had nothing of consequence to add to the slight sketches in Dodsley and the Biographia Dramatica, and I was unwilling to swell the volume with mere transcription. The reader will not fail to observe from the frequent in stances of two or more persons joining in the composition of the same play (the noble practice of those times), that of most of the writers contained in these selections it may be strictly said, that they were contemporaries. The whole period, from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the close of the reign of Charles I. comprises a space of little more than half a century, within which time nearly all that we have of excellence in serious dramatic composition was produced, if we except the Samson Agonistes of Milton."

be found in some of the neglected dramatists of this age than either Fletcher, or Massinger, or Jonson were capable of producing. But though better poets they were worse dramatists, their stories are far more imperfectly constructed, imperfect as the construction of the best is, (except a few of Jonson's) and the action is generally so violent, and sometimes so monstrous, that our nature sickens as it were at the shock which it receives, and turns away with loathing. None of these writers are wholly exempt from this fault, but they who have least of it are the most popular, and for this reason it is that Massinger, the feeblest poet of them all, is perused with the most pleasure.

It is remarkable that the finest specimen in this collection should be from a play, which was the butt of ridicule for half a century; Hieronimo, the Spanish tragedy:and what is still more remarkable is, that these scenes, which are of the highest excellence, have been thrust out of the text by Hawkins in his republication of the tragedy, as omitted in the second edition, "printed for Edward Allde, amended of such gross blunders as passed in the first," so the judicious editor has degraded them into the notes, as having been foisted in by the players. Foisted in they cerbeen discovered that two sundry tainly have been, for it has lately payments were made to Ben Jonson for furnishing additions to Hieronimo. There is nothing, says Mr. Lamb, in the undoubted plays of Jonson, which would authorize us to suppose that he could have supplied the scenes in question: I should suspect the agency of some "more potent spirit." Webster might have furnished them. They are full of that wild, solemn, preternatural cast of grief which be

Mr. Lamb is right in his opinion, that more impressive scenes are to + The few notes which are interspersed will be found to be chiefly critical.

Masters ungrateful servants rear from nought,

And then they hate them that did bring
them up.

The Painter enters.
Pain. God bless you, sir.
Hier. Wherefore? why, thou scornful

villain?

How dost thou take it? art thou not sometime mad?

Is there no tricks that come before thine eyes?

Pain. O lord, yes, sir.

Hier. Art a painter? canst paint me a tear, a wound?

A groan, or a sigh? canst paint me such a tree as this?

Pain. Sir, I am sure you have heard of my painting: My name's Bazardo.

Hier. Bazardo! 'fore God an excellent fellow. Look you, sir. Do you see? I'd have you paint me in my gallery, in your oil colours matted, and draw me five years younger than I am: do you see, sir? let five years go, let them go,-my wife Isabella standing by me, with a speaking look to my son Horatio, which should intend to this, or some such like purpose; God bless thee, my sweet son; and my hand leaning upon Hier. O ambitious beggar, wouldst his head thus, sir, do you see? may it

How, where, or by what means should I

be blest?

Isa. What wouldst thou have, good fellow?

Pain. Justice, madam.

thou have that

That lives not in the world?

Why, all the undelved mines cannot buy
An ounce of justice: 'tis a jewel so in-

estimable.

I tell thee, God hath engross'd all justice in his hands,

And there is none but what comes from
him.

Pain. O then I see that God must right
me for my murder'd son.
Hier. How, was thy son murder'd ?
Pain. Ay, sir, no man did hold a son
so dear.

Hier. What, not as thine? that's a lie,
As massy as the earth; I had a son,
Whose least unvalued hair did weigh
A thousand of thy sons, and he was mur-
der'd.

Pain. Alas, sir, I had no more but he.
Hier. Nor I, nor I; but this same one
of mine

be done?

Pain. Very well, sir.

Hier. Nay, I pray mark me, sir: Then, sir, would I have you paint me this tree, this very tree:

Canst paint a doleful cry?

Pain. Seemingly, sir.

Hier. Nay, it should cry; but all is

one.

Well, sir, paint me a youth run thro' and' thro' with villains' swords, hang ing upon this tree.

Canst thou draw a murd❜rer?

Pain. I'll warrant you, sir; I have the pattern of the most notorious villains, that ever lived in all Spain.

Hier. O, let them be worse, worse:

stretch thine art, And let their beards be of Judas's own colour,

And let their eye-brows jut over: in any case observe that ;

Are turn'd to pity and compassionate grief.

I came to rate you, but my brawls, you

Melt into tears, and I must weep by thee.

Here's Mr. Frankford now.

Mr Frankford enters.

Fran. Good-morrow, brother; morrow gentlemen: God, that hath laid this cross upon our heads,