village feasts! Heaven help the villagers who had the misfortune to join the audience! They could escape being reduced to utter imbecility only by falling into a heavy sleep.

The argument, briefly told, is this:—

Aribert the Lombard is prince of Verona. His beautiful daughter, Rhodalind, who is his heiress, is sought in marriage by two renowned warriors, Prince. Oswald, who is a man of great worldly ambition, and Duke Gondibert, whose aims and aspirations are loftier. While engaged in the chase, Gondibert falls into an ambush laid by Oswald; in the duel which ensues, he is wounded, but Oswald is slain. The wounded Gondibert is carried to the house of the philosopher Astragon, which is in itself an allegory, with its garden labelled "Nature's Nursery," and its "Nature's Office, and its Library," "The Monument of Vanished Minds," and its threefold Temple, dedicated to "Days of Praise, of Prayer, and Penitence." Here he is tenderly nursed by Astragon's daughter, Birtha, who seems intended as a type of Nature, and soon learns to love her. He applies to Astragon to sanction his suit, and, in doing so, gives an account of his aim and purpose, which shows that Davenant was not incapable of serious and elevated thought. He desires to bring the world under the rule of a single monarchy, not to gratify a mean ambition, but in order to secure the happiness of the peoples, and inaugurate a reign of peace. This object accomplished he would then abandon himself to the study of Nature in company with Birtha:

"Here all reward of conquest I would find;
Leave shining thrones for Birtha in a shade;
With Nature's quiet wonders fill my mind,
And praise her most because she Birtha made."

VOL. II.

I

There are some fine lines scattered through this ponderous poem, and its general tone is grave and earnest; but apart from its want of interest and the monotony of its versification, the entire absence of human passion and feeling will account for the neglect it has experienced. We give a specimen or two of the poet's happier flights:

"And now the weary world's great medicine, Sleep.
This learned host dispensed to every guest,

Which shuts those wounds where injured lovers weep,
And flies oppressors to relieve the opprest.

It loves the cottage and from Court abstains,

It stills the seaman though the storm be high,

Frees the grieved captive in his closest chains,

Stops Want's loud mouth, and blinds the treacherous spy."

The description of the Virgin Birtha is not without a certain poetical grace:

"Her beauty princes durst not hope to use,

Unless, like poets, for their morning theme;
And her mind's beauty they would rather choose,
Which did the light in beauty's lanthorn seem.
She ne'er saw courts, yet courts could have undone
With untaught looks and an unpractised heart;

Her arts, the most prepared could never shun,
For Nature spread them in the scorn of Art.

She never had in busy cities been,

Ne'er warmed with hopes, nor e'er allayed with fears;
Not seeing punishment, could guess no sin;

And sin not seeing, ne'er had use of tears.

But here her father's precepts gave her skill,
Which with incessant business filled the hours;

In spring she gathered blossoms for the still;
In autumn, berries; and in summer, flowers.

And as kind Nature, with calm diligence,
Her own free virtue silently employs,

Whilst she, unheard, does ripening growth dispense
So were her virtues busy without noise."

The following would make a fit inscription for a

Library :

"Where, when they thought they saw in well-sought books,

Th' assembled souls of all that Men held wise,

It bred such awful reverence in their looks,
As if they saw the buried writers rise."

Sir William Davenant (or D'Avenant, as he preferred to write it) was the son of an Oxford vintner, and born in February 1605. An apocryphal story, told to Pope by Betterton the player, makes him the natural son of Shakespeare, who, it is said, on his journeys between London and Stratford-on-Avon, was accustomed to lodge at the Crown Tavern, kept by the elder Davenant. The poet, we are told, was proud of the supposed relationship. He always professed a great admiration for Shakespeare, and one of the earliest essays of his boyish muse was an Ode to his memory. Receiving his education at the

Oxford Grammar School, he was afterwards sent to Lincoln College, but left without taking a degree. He became page to the Duchess of Richmond, and next was in the service of Sir Philip Sidney's friend, Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. After his father's death, in 1628, he took to writing for the stage. His first composition was a tragedy, Albovine, King of the Lombards" (1629), and this was followed by two plays, "The Cruel Brother" and "The Just Italian," which are condemned by their very titles. titles. In 1634 he wrote a masque, for Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies, entitled "The Temple of Love." The following year witnessed the production of a volume of poetry, containing his Shakespearian Ode and a poem in heroic couplets, entitled "Madagascar," which celebrated the exploits at sea of Prince Rupert. He was so much esteemed at Court for his poetical invention that, in 1637, on the

death of Ben Jonson, he was appointed poet-laureate; and, two years later, was made director of the King and Queen's company of actors at the Cockpit in Drury Lane. His royalist sympathies led to his apprehension and imprisonment when the Civil War broke out; but he effected his escape to France.

When Queen Henrietta despatched to the Earl of Newcastle a supply of military matériel, Davenant returned to England, was made the Earl's Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance, and for his courage and conduct at the siege of Gloucester and in the field, received, in 1643, the honour of knighthood. The successes of the Puritans decided him to seek refuge in France, and while living with Lord Jermyn, in the Louvre, began his "heroic poem of "Gondibert," sending the manuscript to Hobbes ("of Malmesbury") as he wrote it. His restless spirit soon wearying of inaction, he resolved to found a settlement in the loyal colony of Virginia; but the ship in which he had embarked was captured by one of the Parliament's men-of-war, and he was lodged in prison at Cowes Castle, in the Isle of Wight.* There he continued his poetical magnum opus, of which Waller sang in complimentary phrase :

"Here no bold tales of gods or monsters swell,

But human passions such as with us dwell;
Man is thy theme, his virtue or his rage,
Drawn to the life in each elaborate page."

* Aubrey's version of the incident is as follows:-" He laid an ingenious design to carry a certain number of artificers, chiefly weavers, from France to Virginia, and by Mary, the queen mother's means, he got favour from the King of France to go into the prison and pick and choose; so when the poor wretches understood what his design was they cried, uno ore, Tous tissorans' (We are all weavers). Well, he took thirty-six, as I remember, and not more, and shipped them; and as he was on his voyage to Virginia he and his weavers were all taken by the ships then belonging to the Parliament of England. The French slaves, I suppose, they sold, but Sir William was brought prisoner to England. Whether he was at first a prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle of Wight, or at the Tower of London, I have Jorgotten. He was a prisoner at both."

He carried it down to the middle of the third book, and as he intended to have five books answering to the five acts of a play, with cantos answering to scenes, he had consequently finished one-half. He therefore drew up a postscript, in which he says: "I am here arrived at the middle of the third book. But it is high time to strike sail and cast anchor, though I have run but half my course, when at the helm I here am threatened with Death, who, though he can visit us but once, seems troublesome, and even in the innocent may beget such a gravity as diverts the music of verse." Davenant was removed to the Tower, but through the influence, as some say, of two Aldermen of York, whom he had once obliged, or, as others say, of Milton, to whom he afterwards repaid the service in kind, he escaped the punishment of high treason, and though kept in prison for two years, was treated with great indulgence.

On his release the indefatigable wit planned the establishment of a theatre, and in spite of a world of difficulties, succeeded in opening Rutland House, Charterhouse Yard, on the 21st of May, 1656, for what he called "operas," in which he combined (as the elder Disraeli puts it)" the music of Italy and the scenery of France." There he produced, with scenic effects, illustrative music, songs, and choruses, the first part of his "Siege of Rhodes."

After the Restoration he obtained the management of the Duke of York's company of players (which included the famous Betterton), acting first at the theatre in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and aferwards in Dorset Gardens. A clause in his patent sanctioned a great innovation :-" Whereas the women's parts in plays have hitherto been acted by men in the habits of women,