is, would be changed to the most ar- A VILLAGE POLITICIAN. Although the preceding article expresses opinions, in many respects, very different from those which we ourselves entertain, we have judged it proper to insert it, for the sake of affording an opportunity for a free discussion of this interesting question.-EDIT Our atmosphere is exposed to variations of heat and motion, each having its beneficial operation. The alternation of light and darkness is, no doubt, equally essential to our good, and it is obvious, that, without this law, we should, on this planet, be surrounded by a splendid light, without interval of darkness interfering with the repose of animated nature. I submit to you, whether this appeal, for explanation, deserves a place in your journal, sure, that if it is calculated to obtain no light for me, it will be well employed, torn into slips, for the use of your taper, to give light to. yourself. N. R. PHENOMENON OF LIGHT. MR EDITOR, A PHENOMENON, which seems to constitute one of the laws of light, has often pressed itself upon my notice as curious and wonderful. It is one which is for ever laying itself under our observation; but in my very limited knowledge of philosophy, I know not whether it has been the object of attention, and therefore wish to submit it to your readers in hopes of some remarks upon it. You will find then, that the organ of vision, in its full and natural power, may be very near or close to an intense and large column of light, without any perception of it; as, for instance, in returning up the village to my own house, in a dark night, the strong light which issues from a square open window of a blacksmith's shop, thrown across the street, is not seen so long as I am advancing at an angle with it, unless I cast my eye either into the shop, or on the opposite wall. The column which must obviously travel across, and therefore actually exist in the street, is invisible unless the eye is placed in the column, receiving direct rays upon the retina, or rays reflected upon it by walls, &c. or moveable objects in it. The same law is for ever in operation during our nights. The sun sends his rays from below our horizon to the planetary bodies, from which rays are reflected to our eyes; but their splendour throughout their journey thither lest upon us, passing by unseen. ON THE ENGLISH DRAMATIC WRITERS WHO PRECEDED SHAKESPEARE. No. II. THE celebrated German critic Schlegel, who is a perfect antitheton, if I may so say, to our English commentators on Shakespeare, and whose lectures upon dramatic literature have recently been translated, has given several remarkable instances of his want of knowledge on the subject on which he has displayed so much wisdom. Our commentators knew nothing of Shakespeare, and he knew nothing of any body but Shakespeare, or, in other words, he was totally ignorant of the productions of any of his contemporaries. This circumstance has led him into one or two gross errors, by which he has in some degree committed his taste and judgment. Thus, when noticing the doubtful plays attributed to Shakespeare, he observes of the History of Sir John Oldcastle, that it is not only unquestionably Shakespeare's, but, in my opinion, it deserves to be classed among his best and maturest works," when it is an admitted fact, discovered by one of those whose chief, if not only, merit is to discover facts, that that play was the joint production of Michael Drayton, Anthony Munday, and two other poets of less notoriety. Malone, from an old theatrical register, shewed the precise sum paid to each of them for their joint labours. The point having been so incontrovertibly ascertained, and this being the only dramatic piece extant in which so distinguished a poet as Drayton is known to have had a hand, (though seven unseen plays are assigned to his pen,) it may deserve a few remarks, illustrated by quotations, before I pursue the line I chalked out in my last article, more especially as those quotations will prove, that Shakespeare was indebted to the History of Sir John Oldcastle for one of the most effective scenes in his Henry V. The great purpose I have in view, is to shew how far, and in what way, our great dramatic poet was indebted to his predecessors or contemporaries, who began to write for the stage earlier than himself. I take it also, that it is not too much to assert, that scarcely one English reader in a thousand ever heard or saw a line from the History of Sir John Oldcastle. It was first printed in 1600, and entered upon the books of the Stationers' Company to Thomas Pavier, the same printer who, in the same year, published Shakespeare's Henry V., with which I am about to compare it. There can be no doubt, from internal and external evidence, which it would be tedious to detail, that the History of Sir John Oldcastle was written, and probably represented, before Henry V., and after Henry IV., Parts 1 and 2. If it could be established that it was composed or performed before the two parts of Henry IV., it would be still more curious and worthy of observation, because there are passages in it that refer particularly to the youthful pranks of Prince Henry and his notorious companions Falstaff, Poins, and Peto; for instance, in a scene where a priest robs Henry V., who is in disguise: "Pricst. Sirrha, no more adoe; come, come, give me the money you have. Dispatch, I cannot stand all day! King. Well, if thou wilt needs have it, there it is; just the proverbe, one thief robs another. Where the devil are all my old thieves? Fulstaffe, that villain, is so fat, he cannot get on's horse; but methinks Poynes and Peto should be stirring hereabouts." "Priest. How much is there on't of thy word? King. A hundred pound in angels, on my word. The time has been I would have done as much For thee, if thou had past this way." Henry then informs the Priest that. he is one of the King's court, on which the thief observes, "Methinks the king should be good to thieves, because he has been a thief him selfe, although I think now he be turned a true-man. King. Faith, I have heard indeede h'as had an ill name this way in's youth; but how canst thou tell that he has been a thief? Priest. How? because he once robb'd me before I fell to the trade myself, when all that roguery, was in's company there; that foul villainous guts, that led him to that Falstaffe. King, aside. Well, if he did rob thee, then, thou art but even with him now, I'le be sworne." Setting, however, aside this point, (on which I do not insist,) it seems quite evident that the first outline sketch of the famous interview in Shakespeare's Henry V., between the King, Scroop, Cambridge, and Grey, in which the former so finely exposes their treachery just before he embarks for France, is to be found in the following scene in the History of Sir John Oldcastle, as written by Drayton, Munday, and others. Shakespeare has avoided the dramatic impropriety and degradation of making the King a listener at the door; his other improvements, both in language and stage effect, are too obvious to need mention. "Enter Cambridge, Scroop, and Gray, as in a chamber, and set down at table, consulting about their treason, King Harry and Suffolk listning at the door. Cam. In mine opinion, Scroop hath well advised; Poison will be the only aptest mean, And fittest for our purpose to dispatch him. Gray. But yet there may be doubt in their delivery; Harry is wise, therefore Earl of Cambridge, I judge that way not so convenient. Ser. What think you then of this, I am his bedfellow, And unsuspected nightly sleep with him; What if I venture in those silent houres When sleep hath sealed up all mortal eyes, To murther him in bed! How like you that? Cam. Herein consists no safety for your self, And you disclos'd, what shall become of us? It As needs must have his royal company, And so dispatch him in his councel-cham ber. Cam. Tush; yet I hear not any thing to purpose; I wonder that Lord Cobham stays so long, us. The King steps upon them with his Lords. Ser. What, shall we rise thus, and determine nothing? King. That were a shame indeed! no, sit again, And you shall have my counsel in this case: If you can find no way to kill the King, Or by the way, or as he goes aboard, Marry, Lord Gray came very near the To have the king at Counsel, and there murder him, As Cæsar was among his dearest friends.- For which of all my kindnesses to you All. Oh pardon us, dread Lord! Drag them to death, which justly they de serve; True perfect mirrour of nobilitie! Exit. Had we never seen Shakespeare's full-grown and perfect scene, of which the above is undoubtedly the embryo, we should have thought this more excellent than it at present appears. It will not be supposed that I mean to compare the two plays in point of poetical merit, or of judicious management of the story. Sir John Oldcastle, whose private and particular griefs form the great subject of Drayton's production, is not mentioned by Shakespeare, whose work is dedicated to great national events; yet in the firm and dignified loyalty and fate. VOL. IV. defying patience of Sir John Oldeasand strong feeling; the scene near the tle, there is a great deal of fine poetry driven out upon the wide world, end between him and his wife, when where he tells her, Thou wast not wont to have the earth thy Nor the moist dewy grass thy pillow, nor is very affecting, and well wrought up. tends for the authenticity of all the In the same manner Schlegel conplays ascribed to Shakespeare, “because (he observes) in his acknowledged works we find hardly any traces of his apprenticeship, and yet an apprenticeship he certainly had: this every artist must have, and especially him the example of a school already in a period where he has not before formed." In the first place, I deny that "in his acknowledged works we find hardly any traces of his apprenticeship," and I appeal to his Titus Andronicus, to his Two Gentlemen of Verona, to his All's Well that ends Well, and to several others'; and in the next place, I say, and will prove as I proceed, that the German critic must have been extremely ignorant of the dramatic poets who preceded Shakespeare, or he would have known that he had before him "the example of a school already formed," according to which he constructed every play he wrote. Such being the fact, the whole force of his argument is taken away, and we are still left to external evidence and internal probability, without being required, with our eyes shut, to swallow wholesale all the trash which has been palmed upon us by fraudulent printers who wished to derive advantage from Shakespeare's popularity. If we were to take it for granted, on the broad ground stated by Schlegel, that Shakespeare wrote the Tragedy of Locrine, there could be no reason for rejecting any of the dull nonsense which Kirkman afterwards foisted upon the world as the offspring of Shakespeare's muse. It is just as impossible that the same R hand should have penned The Life of Merlin and Othello, as that the globe should cease to revolve; the one is a moral, the other a physical impossibility. It may be said, because it has been said, that, in writing these articles, I am performing an ungracious task,that my object is to detract from the applause to which Shakespeare is entitled. I deny it. Many will think the objection too idle to require a serious answer. If I prove, as I undertake to do, that Greene, Marlow, and Chapman, were admirable writers for the stage, do I at all diminish the glory Shakespeare has acquired? Is the brightness of our sun less, because astronomers, through optic glasses, show us stars distant and glimmering, that, if more nearly approached, would shine with more lustre than they now seem to possess? Is it not true, on the contrary, that the more I advance the merits of Shakespeare's contemporaries, the more. I illustrate his unequalled genius, which so far surpassed them? Those entertain but low and an unworthy notion of this mighty poet who think, that, in order to preserve his superiority, it is necessary to destroy all possibility of rivalship. My admiration of Shakespeare is such, that I will not scruple to say, that, if he be not the greatest poet, in comparison with all the great poets that ever lived, he is nothing and no body, and I will resign him to the damnation of their praise who make this objection. One would really suppose that he was a sort of mystery, which it was a poetical impiety to examine and unriddle, and that he was only fit for the worship of those blind devotees who adore only because they cannot comprehend. Having introduced these preliminary matters, (perhaps a little out of their course in the argument, but tending to the same conclusion,) for the purpose of showing into what errors the very ablest critics have fallen, and having answered an objection started by some who substitute an ignorant zeal for Shakespeare's name for the power and the means of estimating his genius, I will proceed to the point to which I adverted in my former article, viz. to inquire in what way, and at what time, blank verse was first employed in our poetry, and introduced upon our stage. The no velty of the question will, perhaps, make some amends for its dryness. It is not, I believe, generally known, that the late Bishop Percy, a man well qualified, from his extensive knowledge and delicate taste, projected, shortly before his death, a separate volume upon this subject, and he proposed to treat it historically, beginning with the earliest attempts among our English writers to break the jingling fetters of rhyme. The popular notion undoubtedly is, that Milton's Paradise Lost was the first poem in our language in which the aid of rhyme was rejected; but this is a mere vulgar error, even though the author himself may tell us that "it is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to the heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming." His words are to be understood with great latitude, and with reference to an epic, and not merely to a heroic, poem. He specially excepts from his censure "the best English tragedies;" but, independent of authors who wrote blank verse for the stage, not less than between fifteen and twenty men can be named who, long before Milton's day, had thrown off" this troublesome and modern bondage" in heroic poetry. Some of the principal of these it may be fit to notice, for the sake of illustrating this mistaken point, left much in the dark by the decease of the Bishop of Dromore. How far he had proceeded in his design before that event I am not informed. I shall leave the alliterative metre of the uncertain author of Pierce Ploughman's Vision and Creed to the learned dissertation published with the modern splendid reprint, thinking that it has, in fact, nothing to do with this question. The endeavours of Harvey, Spenser, Sidney, Fraunce, Campion, and others, to revive the ancient classic measures, I reject for the same reason, and shall not go farther back than the time of the celebrated Lord Surrey, who is indisputably, I believe, the father of heroic blank verse in English. His "Certaine Bookes of Virgile's Eneis turned into English metir" was published in 1457, but the edition was of such rarity, that, until modern republications made it more familiar, it was scarcely known whether and, in his "Pastoral ecclogue upon the death of Sir P. Sidney." Perhaps his name ought to have been inserted earlier in this enumeration, as the poem was written in 1587, though, I believe, not published till eight years afterwards. Chapman, the author of many admirable tragedies and comedies, might also be added to this list, as well as a very inferior poet of the name of Sabre, who likewise wrote some bad English hexameters about 1595. Marlow, before 1593, translated the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia into blank verse, and rendered it line for line according to the title-page of the edition of 1600. I could easily have introduced several other naines, had I not been afraid of becoming tedious by a mere enumeration, without specimens, which would have occupied too large a space: Topics merely antiquarian are the dullest in the world to general readers, and the most tedious to writers, who like the inside of a book better than the outside-the substance and body of a poem better than the title-page and the printer's colophon. it were with or without rhyme. In 1567 Turberville translated six of Ovid's Epistles into blank verse, with much success, and he was followed by Gascoyne, well known to the lovers of old poetry, who, in his satire called "A Steele Glasse," printed in 1576, gave a specimen of his skill in the same species of composition: the lines, generally speaking, are well constructed, and of an easy flow, but they want the force and nerve that ought to belong to such kind of compositions. Perhaps Abraham Fleming, the translator of the Georgics and Bucolies of Virgil, ought to precede Gascoyne in point of date, but his production was quite of a different character, his measure being the old 14 syllable verse of Phaer and Golding, merely with the omission of the conBonant termination. Blenerhasset, who wrote the second part of that celebrated and over-praised book, the Mirror for Magistrates, in 1578, inserted the Legend of Cadwallader, in blank verse, which seems not to have been much liked, placed as it is in the midst of poems which seldom have much more than easy rhyming to recommend them. The Elizabetha Triumphans of Aske, a piece," which, (as petty Waller said of Paradise Lost,) if length be a recommendation, hath that, but assuredly no other," is entirely in blank verse: It was originally published in 1588, and has been reprinted by Nichols, in his Progresses of Queen Elizabeth. In the next year, Peele, a writer of great and deserved celebrity, addressed " a Farewell" to Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris, in blank verse, of the first excellence; from it it is with ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE great difficulty I refrain, for the sake of brevity, from inserting an extract: The same individual also addressed those great commanders on their return, in a dialogue between two shepherds. In 1590, a person of the name of Vallans wrote "A Tale of two Swannes," of which 12 pages are blank verse, and both Lodge and Greene (whose numerous plays I shall hereafter have occasion to mention) have introduced pieces into their novels, not merely in heroical, but lyrical measures, without rhyme. To these may be added, Lodowick Brysket, the intimate friend of Spenser, in his Mourning Muse of Thestylis," * This "Mourning Muse of Thestylis" has, by some, been thought to be Spen The present article has already exceeded the limit I intended. In the next I will connect the question regarding the introduction and employment of blank verse with the Stage, and will show when first, and to what extent, it was employed in theatrical representations. From thence I shall regularly proceed with the English Drama, down to the time of Shakespeare. I. P. C. SCOTTISH PULPIT. No. I. SWITZERLAND, the most romantic country in Europe, never produced a poet; and Scotland, whose inhabitants have perhaps more universally the spirit of religion than any other nation, can boast of scarcely one eminent divine, There must be some cause for this,-something which runs counter to our obvious imaginings, and renders vain the magisterial deci ser's: It is clearly not his, but Brysket's, whose "Pastoral ecclogue" immediately follows it in the first folio of Spenser's Poems. It was entered at Stationers' Hall, in 1587, to Wolfe, as "the Mourn ing Muse of Lod. Brysket." |