What I have filch'd from them. This I could do.
But O for shame that man should so arraign
Their own fee-simple wits for verbal theft!
Yet men there be that have done this and that,
And more by much more than the most of them.1

[Act iii., Sc. 2.]

After this specimen of the pleasanter vein of Heywood, I am tempted to extract some lines from his "Hierarchie of Angels, 1634;" not strictly as a Dramatic Poem, but because the passage contains a string of names, all but that of Watson, his contemporary Dramatists. He is complaining in a mood half serious, half comic, of the disrespect which Poets in his own times meet with from the world, compared with the honours paid them by Antiquity. Then they could afford them three or four sonorous names, and at full length; as to Ovid, the addition of Publius Naso Sulmensis; to Seneca, that of Lucius Annæas Cordubensis; and the like. Now, says he,

Our modern Poets to that pass are driven,

Those names are curtail'd which they first had given;

And, as we wish'd to have their memories drown'd,

We scarcely can afford them half their sound.
Greene, who had in both Academies ta'en
Degree of Master, yet could never gain

To be call'd more than Robin: who, had he
Profest aught save the Muse, served, and been free
After a sev'n years 'prenticeship, might have
(With credit too) gone Robert to his grave.
Marlowe, renown'd for his rare art and wit,
Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit;
Although his Hero and Leander did
Merit addition rather.

Was call'd but Tom.

Famous Kid

Tom Watson; though he wrote

Able to make Apollo's self to dote

Upon his Muse; for all that he could strive,

Yet never could to his full name arrive.

Tom Nash (in his time of no small esteem)

Could not a second syllable redeem.

The full title of this Play is "The Fair Maid of the Exchange, with the Humours of the Cripple of Fenchurch." The above Satire against some Dramatic Plagiarists of the time, is put into the mouth of the Cripple, who is an excellent fellow, and the Hero of the Comedy. Of his humour this extract is a sufficient specimen; but he is described (albeit a tradesman, yet wealthy withal) with heroic qualities of mind and body; the latter of which he evinces by rescuing his Mistress (the Fair Maid) from three robbers by the main force of one crutch lustily applied; and the former by his foregoing the advantages which this action gained him in her good opinion, and bestowing his wit and finesse in procuring for her a husband, in the person of his friend Golding, more worthy of her beauty, than he could conceive his own maimed and halting limbs to be. It would require some boldness in a dramatist now-a-days to exhibit such a Character; and some luck in finding a sufficient Actor, who would be willing to personate the infirmities, together with the virtues, of the Noble Cripple.

Excellent Beaumont, in the foremost rank
Of the rarest wits, was never more than Frank.
Mellifluous SHAKSPEARE, whose inchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but WILL;
And famous Jonson, though his learned pen
Be dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.
Fletcher, and Webster, of that learned pack
None of the meanest, neither was but Jack;
Decker but Tom; nor May, nor Middleton;

And he's now but Jack Ford, that once were John.

Possibly our Poet was a little sore, that this contemptuous curtailment of their Baptismal Names was chiefly exercised upon his Poetical Brethren of the Drama. We hear nothing about Sam Daniel, or Ned Spenser, in his catalogue. The familiarity of common discourse might probably take the greater liberties with the Dramatic Poets, as conceiving of them as more upon a level with the Stage Actors. Or did their greater publicity, and popularity in consequence, fasten these diminutives upon them out of a feeling of love and kindness, as we say Harry the Fifth, rather than Henry, when we would express good-will?—as himself says, in those reviving words put into his mouth by Shakspeare, where he would comfort and confirm his doubting brothers [2nd Part "Henry IV.," Act v., Scene 2, line 48]:—

Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,
But Harry, Harry!

And doubtless Heywood had an indistinct conception of this truth, when, (coming to his own name), with that beautiful retracting which is natural to one that, not satirically given, has wandered a little out of his way into something recriminative, he goes on to say:

Nor speak I this, that any here exprest

Should think themselves less worthy than the rest
Whose names have their full syllables and sound;
Or that Frank, Kit, or Jack, are the least wound
Unto their fame and merit. I for my part

(Think others what they please) accept that heart,
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase ;
And that it takes not from my pains or praise,
If any one to me so bluntly come :

I hold he loves me best that calls me Tom.1

JACK DRUM'S ENTERTAINMENT.2

A COMEDY [PUB

LISHED 1601]. AUTHOR UNKNOWN [PROBABLY BY
MARSTON]

The free humour of a Noble Housekeeper.

Fortune (a Knight). I was not born to be my cradle's drudge. To choke and stifle up my pleasure's breath.

1[For other extracts from Heywood see note to page 100.]
2[Or, the Comedie of Pasquil and Katherine.]

To poison with the venom'd cares of thrift
My private sweet of life: only to scrape
A heap of muck, to fatten and manure
The barren virtues of my progeny,

And make them sprout 'spite of their want of worth;
No, I do wish my girls should wish me live;
Which few do wish that have a greedy sire,
But still expect, and gape with hungry lip,
When he'll give up his gouty stewardship.
Friend. Then I wonder,

You not aspire unto the eminence

And height of pleasing life. To Court, to Court-
There burnish, there spread, there stick in pomp,
Like a bright diamond in a Lady's brow.

There plant your fortunes in the flow'ring spring,
And get the Sun before you of Respect.
There trench yourself within the people's love,
And glitter in the eye of glorious grace.

What's wealth, without respect and mounted place?
Fort. Worse and worse!-I am not yet distraught,
I long not to be squeez'd with my own weight,
Nor hoist up all my sails to catch the wind
Of the drunk reeling Commons. I labour not
To have an awful presence, nor be feared,
Since who is fear'd still fears to be so feared.
I care not to be like the Horeb calf,
One day adored, and next pasht all in pieces.
Nor do I envy Polyphemian puffs,

Switzers' slopt greatness. I adore the Sun,
Yet love to live within a temperate zone.
Let who will climb ambitious glibbery rounds,
And lean upon the vulgar's rotten love,
I'll not corrival him. The sun will give
As great a shadow to my trunk as his;

And after death, like Chessmen having stood

In play, for Bishops some, for Knights, and Pawns,
We all together shall be tumbled up

Into one bag,

Let hush'd-calm quiet rock my life asleep;

And, being dead, my own ground press my bones;
Whilst some old Beldame, hobbling o'er my grave,
May mumble thus:

"Here lies a Knight whose Money was his slave."

[Act i., lines 95-138.2]

1["You touch the quick of sense, but " omitted.]
2[See The School of Shakspeare, ed. Simpson, 1878, vol. ii.]

CHANGES [OR LOVE IN A MAZE], A COMEDY [LICENSED AND PUBLISHED 1632]. BY JAMES SHIRLEY

Excess of Epithets, enfeebling to Poetry.

Friend. Master Caperwit, before you read, pray tell me, Have your verses any Adjectives?

Caperwit. Adjectives! would you have a poem without
Adjectives? they're the flower, the grace of all our language.
A well-chosen Epithet doth give new soul

To fainting poesy, and makes every verse
A Bride! With Adjectives we bait our lines,
When we do fish for Gentlewomen's loves,
And with their sweetness catch the nibbling ear
Of amorous ladies; with the music of

These ravishing nouns we charm the silken tribe,
And make the Gallant melt with apprehension
Of the rare Word. I will maintain't against
A bundle of Grammarians, in Poetry

The Substantive itself cannot subsist
Without its Adjective.

Friend. But for all that,

Those words would sound more full, methinks, that are not
So larded; and if I might counsel you,

You should compose a Sonnet clean without 'em.

A row of stately Substantives would march

Like Switzers, and bear all the fields before 'em ;
Carry their weight; shew fair, like Deeds Enroll'd ;
Not Writs, that are first made and after fill'd.
Thence first came up the title of Blank Verse ;-

You know, Sir, what Blank signifies ?—when the sense,
First framed, is tied with Adjectives like points,
And could not hold together without wedges:

Hang't, 'tis pedantic, vulgar Poetry.

Let children, when they versify, stick here

And there these piddling words for want of matter.

Poets write Masculine Numbers.

[Act ii., p. 23.1]

[Edition of 1632. For other extracts from Shirley see note to page 393.]

THE GUARDIAN. A COMEDY [WRITTEN AND PERFORMED 1641: PUBLISHED 1650]. BY ABRAHAM COWLEY [1618-1667]1

Doggrell, the Foolish Poet, described.

Cutter. the very emblem of poverty and poor poetry. The feet are worse patched of his rhymes than of his stockings. If one line forgets itself, and run out beyond his elbow, while the next keeps at home (like him), and dares not show his head, he calls that an Ode.

[Act i., Sc. 4.2]

Tabitha. Nay, they mocked and fleered at us, as we sung the Psalm the last Sunday night.

3

Cutt. That was that mungrel Rhymer; by this light he envies his brother poet John Sternhold, because he cannot reach his heights.

[Act i., Sc. 1.] Dogg. (reciting his own verses). Thus pride doth still with beauty dwell,

And like the Baltic ocean swell.

Blade. Why the Baltic, Doggrell?

Dogg. Why the Baltic!-this 'tis not to have read the Poets.

She looks like Niobe on the mountain's top.

Cutt. That Niobe, Doggrell, you have used worse than Phoebus did. Not a dog looks melancholy but he's compared to Niobe. He beat a villainous Tapster t'other day, to make him look like Niobe.*

[Act iv., Sc. 2.]

This was the first Draught of that which he published afterwards under the title of the "Cutter of Coleman Street" [performed 1658, published 1663]; and contains the character of a Foolish Poet, omitted in the latter. I give a few scraps of this character, both because the Edition is scarce, and as furnishing no unsuitable corollary to the critical admonitions in the preceding Extract.-The "Cutter" has always appeared to me the link between the Comedy of Fletcher and of Congreve. In the elegant passion of the Love Scenes it approaches the former; and Puny (the character substituted for the omitted Poet) is the Prototype of the half-witted Wits, the Brisks and Dapper Wits, of the latter.

2[Cowley's Works, ed. Grosart, 1881, vol. i.] [See also Appendix, page 588.]

["Honest" omitted.]