seven deadly sins playing their pranks about town, and exhorts the people, in seven prophetic epilogues, to repent like the Ninevites in ashes and sackcloth; we are, in short, given to understand that there never existed, nor ever will, a time addicted to more enormous wickedness and debauchery. Be that as it may nations ought to be weighed on another scale. Taking the universal tenor of public and private life during Elizabeth's reign into consideration, and examining into the social condition of this period, we shall not be at a loss to account for its being called, to this time of day, the golden age of Old England. It was not richer than any other in glorious remembrances; but it was the epoch of a new existence and of remembrances quite popular; after long and doubtful struggles the nation then became of age, ripened into manhood, and formed as it were its plan of life; in fine, the whole life was tinctured with that cheerfulness which is the inseparable companion of a well-conditioned mind. This mighty fermentation and enthusiasm of spirits we must lay great stress upon against the reproaches of those moralists, who undoubtedly had good reasons for chiding, and ever will have, as long as men shall be made of flesh. I know but one moral disease of the national body: that lethargy and indifference which proves indolent to the most powerful impulses of the time, and instead of going along with mankind at large, confines itself to the narrow compass of self-sufficiency. On the other hand, there is but one national virtue worth the name, viz activity and industry, improving every proficiency of knowledge, and enlarging by their advances the boundaries of human destiny. From this point of view we shall be able to pass a sound judgment upon the importance of the Elizabethan age. All the mighty engines of modern civilization, the operations of which in the course of the 16th century were divided amongst the other countries of Europe, the recent diffusion of letters, the revival of classical learning, the reformation of church, the thriving of the third estate, the discovery of the new world, and the sea-voyages connected therewith, all of these coincided and worked conjointly in England, and what at first sight might have seemed derogatory to their progresses there, the nation's habitual un

concern and coldness, which in the beginning suffered itself to be behind-hand with its rivals, at last turned out to be really advantageous. The English were not spoiled, as others were, by speedy and unexpected results, but gradually and laboriously got the better of competition abroad and reaction' at home: and a circumstance the most important profited both by the example and failures of their adversaries. English affairs little prospered during the reigns of Henry the Eighth and his next successors; but when at last, in the happy time of Elizabeth, the ecclesiastical differences were composed, or at least palliated, and the external relations of the kingdom established upon a solid footing, the intellectual powers of the nation expanded and ripened spontaneously, without much encouragement or guidance, and arrived, in point of poetic literature, at classic perfection in no time. The year. 1588, when the invincible armada of Spain was destroyed, also combined the greatest geniusses of dramatic literature, and was, perhaps, the date of Shakspeare's first productions. This may be called accidental: indeed, it was the same accident that assembled the three Greek tragedians around the trophies of Salamis. And this comparison we may push still farther. As the Greeks in the pride of their recent victories were carried beyond their wonted limits of war and commerce, likewise the English, in the time of Elizabeth, were seized with a spirit of bold and daring enterprize; they set their lives and goods on "the hazard of the die", and seeking in new worlds, where the boundaries of the earth, as by enchantment, daily expanded, for adventures and gold, lived more true poetry than the most fanciful errant-knights of the days of chivalry had ever dreamt of; it is from those days the fondness of travelling of the English dates, for rather than vegetate in the dull routine of an unimpassioned life, they journeyed over the continent, and whoever wished to be somebody, must have been tossed at least "on a Venetian gondola," and know how to season his discourse at home

With talking of the Alps, and Apennines,
The Pyrenean, and the river Po.

On the other side, this adventurous and roaming disposition of the people enhanced the ease and comfort of home. With

the third estate, in which, as may be imagined, the traditions of old Germany faster and deeper rooted than in the higher classes of society, the ancient worship of nature again arose with its gay and harmless, though pagan, rites, by which the most festival epochs of the year were celebrated, and unfeeling nature inspired with a living soul. What are the joys of our tradespeople and peasantry, their drudgery on working days, and their quaffing and dancing in hot and musty rooms on holydays, to the festive pageants of those times, to that merry hospitality of new-year's night and shrovetide, the greenwooddelights of Mayday, the mirth and practical jokes of sheepshearing and harvest-home, the symbolic customs of midsummernight, and, in short, to that happy succession of labour and joys! What a time for a poet! such a one as Shakspeare! A poet like him, in whom sensualness and ideality blended so wonderfully, as that the word was literally made flesh, could not well have been bred but in an age, when nature itself seemed endued with a soul susceptible of human feeling and sympathy, and, in a word, life was poetry.

This good-humour and gayety almost bordering on wantonness, which formed the most conspicuous feature of the nation's temper, was, however, qualified and regulated by a most exquisite soundness of principles and sentiments, hitting in all matters of consequence upon the right ways and the proper means. The reformation for instance, to which an arbitrary act of the most shameless and capricious despotism gave the first impulse, soon became an affair of national importance, and in spite of all penal statutes and cruel persecutions, there is scarcely to be found anywhere the like variety of religious sects and opinions. This also was owing to the perseverance and zeal of the lower orders, who since the wars of the roses had considerably increased in wealth, intellectual culture, and political influence. With them nature and good sense, which had long been banished from the feudal world, again returned. The spare remnants of chivalry, which our romantic commentators of Shakspeare have estimated rather highly, do not, really, tell much in the literature of the Elizabethan age. With the exception of a few, the aristocracy were not its leaders; nay, they did not even

keep pace with it. What has come down to us of the life, manners, and literary productions of the royal court and its attendant nobility, I cannot but regard as very dull and insipid. Let us but read a chapter or two of the work of Mrs. Aikin or of somebody else on the fashion and bon ton at the court of Queen Elizabeth, or open the longwinded Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney or Lyly's Euphues at random, and we shall get sick of this over-refined, flat and silly stuff. Great intellectual movements tending to the rehabilitation of truth and nature, must necessarily originate with those classes of society which are nearer to nature. Thus it also came to pass in the English literature, which grew up from the deepest bottom of national life, and being practised chiefly by players and other low persons, formed, even with the grossnesses of Marlow and the waggeries of Tarleton, a salutary opposition to the Arcadian effeminacy and primness of that over-delicate and nervous aristocracy. I would not be blind to the merits of some of the highest nobility, who encouraged and befriended the popular poetry, but most of them also kept aloof from the very throng and turmoil of spirits which they witnessed from their lofty station of protectorship. Their estimates, too, of poetry were not ours, and the honours of a poet laureate, which a modern worshipper of English literature would confer upon the most excellent dramatists, Shaspeare and his like never enjoyed. Greatly so to their credit. If Shakspeare had chosen to curb his genius into the yoke of courtly masques, and dispute with Daniel for the palm of dedicatory sonnets and stanzas, he would perhaps have obtained that favour. But grown up in the wholesome country air of Stratford, he was young enough, when coming to London, to be alive, with all the freshness of youth, to that spectacle of historic life unrolled before his eyes, yet old enough, too, to estimate things by a measure of his own, and not aspire to a station he might not have maintained. without abandoning his most dignified notions of human art and life. Who would have him be other than he really is? than a pure and perfect type of a lively, striving, and thoughtful age? Who would have him stroll in the easy by-paths of entertainments and panegyric interludes? His ideal turn of

mind spurned proposing any other object than art itself. Of what kind soever the agents and tools of his poetical fabric may be, they do serve this very purpose. His humble position as a player enabled him to see life in the fullest meaning of the word, and make it subservient to his art. His compositions characterize, not depict, his age. By making the meanest as well as the most elevate things the implements of ideality, he ennobles all. The standing butts of his wit, his fashion-monger, his melancholy squire, his lying traveller etc., though taken from life, are but as it were the light chaff, to be blown off with a breath, of a society linked together by the strongest ties and moments of moral considerations, and do not intend to display by themselves, but only to complete the picture of an age abounding with foolery and shallowness as well as with sublimity of thought and gravity of purposes. Accurately and attentively as he has observed the most minute and unprofitable things, his mind always dwells upon the whole: he was the poet of true humanity.

It is from the height of Shakspeare's art, that we ought to judge of his successors and rivals. In matters of polite literature criticism can never be too severe, for anything not absolutely praiseworthy may be apt to corrupt the taste. In Ben Jonson we shall see, as to the relativeness of art and life, the very reverse of Shakspeare. Let us, therefore, enter, upon our examination of him both unprepossessed and with the fullest appreciation of ideal beauty.

The life of our subject was a succession of mischances and disappointments beginning already before his birth. When he came into the world, his father had recently died. Shortly after her first husband's decease his mother married one Thomas Fowler, a master-bricklayer, who, either from want of means or carelessness, evidently neglected young Benjamin. We are informed of his being sent to a private school, and then to Westminster school, at the expense of some friend unknown to us now; by the same benefactor he is supposed to have been befriended at college. But his resources seem to have been scanty, for after a short stay at Cambridge Jonson was compelled by extreme want and distress to return to his mother's