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court derived from the exhibition of so elegant and rational a drama! The royal taste for dramatic representation seems to have suffered a very rapid transition: for in the year 1520, a goodlie comedie of Plautus was played before king Henry the Eighth at Greenwich. I have before mentioned Skelton's play of MAGNIFICENCE. [The only copy of Skelton's moral comedy of MAGNIFICENCE now remaining, printed by Rastal, without date in a thin folio, has been most obligingly communicated to me by Mr. Garrick; whose valuable collection of old Plays is alone a complete history of our stage. The first leaf and the title are wanting. It contains sixty folio pages in the black letter, and must have taken up a very considerable time in the representation. [See p. 162. supr.] The substance of the allegory is briefly this. MAGNIFICENCE becomes a dupe to his servants and favorites, Fansy, Counterfet Countenance, Crafty Conveyance, Clokyd Colusion, Courtly Abusion, and Foly. At length he is seized and robbed by Adversyte, by whom he is given up as a prisoner to Poverte. He is next delivered to Despare and Mischefe, who offer him a knife and a halter. He snatches the knife, to end his miseries by stabbing himself; when Good Hope and Redresse appear, and persuade him to take the rubarbe of repentance with some gostly gummes, and a

Hollinsh. iii. 850.

dIt is in Mr. Garrick's valuable collection. No date. 4to. Hawkins, in the HISTORY OF MUSIC, has first printed a Song written by Skelton, alluded to in the CROWNE OF LAWRELL, and set to music by William Cornishe, a musician of the chapel royal under Henry the Seventh. B. i. ch. i. vol. iii. p. 3. Lond. 1776. It begins,

Ah, beshrew you, by my fay,
These wanton clarkes are nice alway, &c.
The same diligent and ingenious in-
quirer has happily illustrated a passage
in Skelton's description of RIOT. Ibid.
B. iii. ch. ix. vol. ii. p. 354.

Counter he coulde O Lux upon a potte.
That is, this drunken disorderly fellow

could play the beginning of the hymn, O Lux beata Trinitas, a very popular melody, and on which many fugues and canons were antiently composed, on a quart-pot at the tavern. See also, ibid. B. i. ch. vii. p. 90. ii. 1. p. 130.

By the way, the abovementioned William Cornish has a poem printed at the end of Skelton's Works, called a Treatise between Trouthe and Information, containing some anecdotes of the state of antient music, written while the author was in the Fleet, in the year 1504. LEEDES, for Old musical compositions by MSS. REG. 18 D. ii. 4. See Thoresby's several masters, among them by WILLIAM CORNISH. p. 517. Morley has assigned Cornysh a place in his Catalogue of English musicians.

few drammes of devocyon. He becomes acquainted with Circumspeccyon, and Perseverance, follows their directions, and seeks for happiness in a state of penitence and contrition. There is some humour here and there in the dialogue, but the allusions are commonly low. The poet hardly ever aims at allegorical painting, but the figure of POVERTY is thus drawn, fol. xxiii. a.

A, my bonys ake, my lymmys be sore,

A lasse I haue the cyatyca full euyll in my hyppe,
A lasse where is youth that was wont for to skyppe !
I am lowsy, and vnlykynge, and full of scurffe,

My coloure is tawny-coloured as a turffe :

I am POVERTIE that all men doth hate,

I am baytyd with doggys at euery mannys gate:

I am raggyd and rent, as ye may se,

Full few but they have envy at me.
Nowe must I this carcase lyft up,

He dyned with DELYTE, with POVERTE he must sup. The stage-direction then is, "Hic accedat ad levandum MAGNIFICENCE." It is not impossible, that DESPARE offering the knife and the halter, might give a distant hint to Spenser. The whole piece is strongly marked with Skelton's manner, and contains every species of his capricious versification*. I have been prolix in describing these two dramas, because they place Skelton in a class in which he never has yet been viewed, that of a Dramatic poet. And although many MORALITIES were now written, yet these are the first that bear the name of their author. There is often much real comedy in these ethic interludes, and their exemplifications of Virtue and Vice in the abstract, convey strokes of character and pictures of life and manners. I take this opportunity of remarking, that a

* [Counterfet Countenance says, f. vi. a.
But nowe wyll I

In bastarde ryme of doggrell gyse

Tell you where of my name doth ryse.]

MORALITY-MAKER was a professed occupation at Paris. Pierre Gringoire is called, according to the style of his age, Compo siteur, Historien et Facteur de Mysteres, ou Comedies, in which he was also a performer. His principal piece, written at the command of Louis the Twelfth, in consequence of a quarrel with the pope and the states of Venice, is entitled, Le JEU du Prince de Sots et Mere Sotte, joue aux Halles de Paris. It was printed at Paris in 1511*.-ADDITIONS.]

MORALITIES seem to have arrived at their height about the close of the Seventh Henry's reign. This sort of spectacle was now so fashionable, that John Rastall, a learned typographer, brother-in-law to sir Thomas More, extended its province, which had hitherto been confined, either to moral allegory, or to religion blended with buffoonery, and conceived a design of making it the vehicle of science and philosophy. With this view he published, A new INTERLUDE and a mery, of the nature of the iiii Elements, declaringe many proper points of phylosophy naturall and dyvers straunge landys, &c. In the cosmographical part of the play, in which the poet professes to treat of dyvers straunge regyons, and of the new founde landys, the tracts of America recently discovered, and the manners of the natives, are described. The characters are, a Messenger who speaks the prologue, Nature, Humanity, Studious Desire, Sensual Appetite, a Taverner, Experience, and Igno

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The West-Indies were discovered by
Columbus in 1492.

For the sake of connection I will here mention some more of Rastall's pieces. He was a great writer of INTERLUDES. He has written, "Of GENTYLNESS AND NOBYLYTE. A dyaloge between the marchaunt, the knyght, and the plowman, disputynge who is a veray gentylman, and how men shuld come to auctoryte, compiled in maner of an INTERLUDE. With dyvers TOYES and GESTIS addyd therto, to make mery pastyme and disport. J. Rastall me fieri fecit." Printed by himself in quarto, without date.

I have before observed, that the frequent and public exhibition of personifications in the PAGEAUNTS, which antiently accompanied every high festivity, greatly contributed to cherish the spirit of allegorical poetry, and even to enrich the imagination of Spenser. The MORALITIES, which now began to acquire new celebrity, and in which the same groupes of the impersonated vices and virtues appeared, must have concurred in producing this effect. And hence, at the same time, we are led to account for the national relish for allego

PR. "O what a gret welth and." Also, "A new Commodyte in Englysh in maner of an ENTERLUDE ryght elygant and full of craft of rhetoryck: wherein is shewed and dyscrybyd, as well the beute of good propertes of women, as theyr vyces and evyll ondicions, with a morall conclusion and exhortation to vertew. J. Rastall me imprimi fecit." In folio, without date. This is in English verse, and contains twelve leaves. PR. "Melebea," &c. He reduced a dialogue of Lucian into English verse, much after the manner of an interlude, viz. "NECROMANTIA. A Dialogue of Lucyan for his fantasy fayned for a mery pastyme, &c. -J. Rastall me fieri fecit." It is translated from the Latin, and has Latin notes in the margin. It may be doubted, whether Rastall was not the printer only of these pieces. If the printer only, they might come from the festive genius of his brother sir Thomas More. But Rastall appears to have been a scholar. He was educated at Oxford; and took up the employment of printing as a profession at that time esteemed liberal, and not unsuitable to the character of a learned and ingenious man. An English translation of Terence, called TERENS in ENGLISH, with a prologue in stanzas, beginning "The famous renown through the worlde is spronge," is believed, at least from similarity of type, to be by Rastall. In quarto, without date. He published, in 1525, The MERY GESTYS of one callyd EDYTH the lyeng wydow. This is a description, in English rhymes, of the frauds practised by a female sharper in the neighbourhood

of London: the scene of one of her impostures is laid in sir Thomas More's house at Chelsea. The author, one of her dupes, is Walter Smyth. Emprynted at London at the sygne of the Meremayde at Pollis gate next to Chepesyde by J. Rastall. fol. It will be sufficient to have given this short incidental notice of a piece which hardly deserves to be named. Rastall wrote and printed many other pieces, which I do not mention, as unconnected with the history of our poetry. I shall only observe further, in general, that he was eminently skilled in mathematics, cosmography, history, our municipal law, and theology. He died 1536.

And of Shakespeare. There is a passage in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, where the metaphor is exceedingly beautiful; but where the beauty both of the expression and the allusion is lost, unless we recollect the frequency and the nature of these shews in Shakespeare's age. Acr iv. Sc. xi. I must cite the whole of the context, for the sake of the last hemistich,

Sometime we see a cloud that's dra

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rical poetry, which so long prevailed among our ancestors. By means of these spectacles, ideal beings became common and popular objects: and emblematic imagery, which at present is only contemplated by a few retired readers in the obsolete pages of our elder poets, grew familiar to the general eye.

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