friends of Propertius than that they may have no relish for the beauties of Tibullus. Yours, &c. T. B.. ART. VII.-Stafford's Niobe. In the present age, when the passion for ancient English literature has become almost epidemic, and old books are as eagerly sought after as old coins, old statues, and old wine, it would be superfluous to apologize for introducing to the notice of your readers a treatise which has survived the ravages of two hundred years. The book to which I allude bears date 1611 on the titlepage of the second edition, (the first I have never seen), and was published in London by Humphrey Lownes. I mention this cir cumstance before I give the author's name, because there are many persons to whom the date and the printer are by far more interesting than the writer himself. Antony Stafford, the author, has divided his work into two parts, with a quaintness which was then pretty common, but of which the present times furnish no example, except in the works of the Methodist Huntington, * has entitled them as follows:-" 1st Part, Stafford's Niobe, or, His Age of Teares; 2nd Part, Stafford's Niobe dissolved into a Nilus, or, His Age drowned in her own Teares." Prefixed to this edition, besides the epistle dedicatory to Robert Earl of Salisbury, are two prefaces, one grave and religious, addressed "to the reader, in generall," the other ludicrous and bantering, inscribed "to the long-eared reader," that is, to some person who had abused his work, and whom, in turn, he abuses with the titles of Sirrah and Midas, and several others equally disrespectful. Of Antony Stafford I know nothing, except that in one place he styles himself by birth a gentleman, and another place he says, "Had not elder nature made mee a younger brother, I should have thought myself a companion for a very proper man." Perhaps he was the son of Wm. Stafford, Gent., who wrote a learned, and eloquent treatise, which was once ascribed to Shakspeare, and proclaimed as a convincing proof of that poet's erudition, tillDr. Farmer dispelled the error. Whoever he was, Antony Staf ford seems to have been learned and pious, to have possessed some degree * The following are some of the titles prefixed to Mr. He's tracts: Bank of Faith; Satan's Lawsuit; Forty Stripes for Satan Way and Fare for Wayfaring Men; Rule and Riddle, &c. &c. degree of eloquence, with an abundant quantity of vanity. His treatise is the production of a right-principled, sincere mind: it is a severe satire on the age, of whose crimes he speaks with honest and zealous indignation. It is composed in a mournful strain, as may be guessed from the title. And here I must take occasion to recommend the work to those who whine about the preternatural wickedness of the present times, and the innocence and simplicity of the golden days of our ancestors. No zealous puritan of the present day, were his ingenuity equal to his zeal, could display more strength and variety of invective against reigning errors and sins than occur in every page of this vehemently written tract. Stafford is very severe on the women, and gives them such a character as, if true, perfectly warranted his angry reproaches. After expressing contempt and even horror for the common-places of courtship, he recommends the following formula of a love-ad. dress which he calls reasonable and religious : 66 Faire queene of dust and dirt, will it please your every-hower-decaying majestie, after some fewe yeares, or moneths, or daies, to have those star-shining eyes of yours eaten out with worms, and the holes become cages for cankers? when your delicate, smooth body shall be enfolded in earth's rugged armes; and your soft, swelling, moist, ruby lippes be kissed by her mouldy mouth; when your pure red and white shall be turned into poore browne and blacke; and that face which hath driven so many into consumptions, shall itself bee consumed to nothing."-Can any thing be more gallant, and more calculated to please; and would not she be a most unreasonable woman who could be offended with an address at once so delicate and so candid? To be serious: is not this cant quite as despicable as the usual cant of courtship; and is it not as absurd to call a beautiful female a mass of putrifying materials, as to denominate her, "divine creature,' 22 66 goddess," " &c. &c.? If Stafford's reasoning be correct, then all the beauties which the benevolence of the Deity has scattered over the universe are to be contemplated with sorrow and disgust, because some are shortlived, and all are perishing. Surely this is not piety-but cant: it is not reason-but raving. Speaking of the licentiousness of the women, he humourously says: Had Job lived in our hours, he never should have needed to have made a covenant with his eyes, least at any time they should looke upon a maid ;' for he should scarce have found anie to looke upon." No wonder that with this opinion of the ladies he recommends celibacy strongly and it appears that he practised what he preached, though he gives a different motive for his conduct from the one above mentioned. For addressing some illiberal critic who had calumniated himself and his work, he says: “I have made a vow never to marry, least I should get such : puppies puppies as you are, and so be constrained to drown the whole litter." He gives a ludicrous description of a country cully. : He descants, with all the eloquent warmth of sincere feeling, on the character of Sir Philip Sydney: he is quite beside himself on this subject he ends his eulogium in this manner :-" Lord, I have sinned against thee and heaven, and I am not worthy to be called thy childe: yet let thy mercy obtaine this boone for me from thee; that when it shall please thee that my name shall be no more, it may end in such a man as was that Sidus Sid. neyorum." He is lavish in his praises of Elizabeth, though not with equal justice, and says that if Solomon had lived in her time, he would himself have come to visit the Queen of the North. I suspect that Milton had seen this book, from a remarkable coincidence in the following passages :-" Throni, dominationes, virtutes, potentates, principatus,”—says Stafford. :— "Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers," says Milton. The Devil says in Stafford." Believe me, Sir, I had rather controule within my dark diocese, than to reinhabite cœlum em. pyrium, and there live in subjection under check." The Devil in Milton proclaims that it is "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." He shews an honest hatred of the then exiting villainies of Popery, and makes the Devil's chair of state supported by four popes. He uses the Devil with very little ceremony, and calls him by the following names:-Don Deformity, Mr. Mouldy-face, Monsieur Madcappe, Mr. Blacksmithe, Mr. Fierie Facies, Electour of Erebus, Grimme-visaged Goblin, bellowing Beelzebub, Mr. Divell, Mr. Filthy Face, Dr. Delusion, Olde Hell-hounde, Great Marshall of Mischief, Great Soldan of Sin, &c. The characters of the scholar and the soldier are those which he most admires, though he does not disguise the faults and miseries incident to each. His favourites seem to be Seneca, the Scaligers, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry IV. of France, and Elizabeth of England. He talks of tradesmen with all that indiscriminate abuse, which flows in such torrents from the lips of those extravagant beings who think a just debt the greatest of all posible extortions. This sort of beings will be proud perhaps of the countenance of Stafford in their abuse of the industrious tradesman: "Tradesmen," says Stafford, 66 couzen and cheat in buying and selling contrary to God's law; they give gentlemen fifteen for a hundred: whom finding insufficient to pay, they vow to take it out in dice, of which they will make their bones, when the prison hath rotted their bodies." He He is not a jot wiser when speaking of the shepherd: he whines like a mere Arcadian, "more silly than his sheep ;" and thinks every rustic a perfect model of integrity and innocence, as he ri diculously supposes every tradesmen a mere Shylock. Grave and religious as he is, he is no enemy to a joke: his language is even more quaint than the language of those times, abounding in plays upon words, which give an air of drollery to the most solemn passages. At the end is a severe letter to a Romanist, who had written against his book. He treats his adversary with infinite contempt, insults over him with true horse-play raillery; and concludes by saying, that he should "write no more to please those who make pleasure their God." T. B. ART. VIII.-Greek and English Tragedy. In tragedy, more than in any other species of poetry, the Greeks had a vast superiority over their conquerors, the Romans. Of Roman tragedy, indeed, the very name has scarcely an existence; but the writings of Aschylus, of Sophocles, and Euripides, will be read with admiration, as long as real poetry can charm the taste, or the sufferings of humanity can interest the feel. ings. To degrade these illustrious names from their high dignity, is not the object of the present sketch: but it is possible, I hope, to contemplate their greatness with all due reverence, and yet at, tempt fairly and candidly to weigh in the opposite balance the excellencies of our English tragedy; to inquire, how far the progress of time has improved or corrupted the powers of the human mind, and whether Britain, who yields to no nation in the world in any other contest of arts or arms, must yield to Greece the proud pre-eminence of tragic glory. An investigation of the comparative excellence of Greek and English tragedy is fortunately much simplified by the remarkable similarity of genius which existed between the three great trage, dians of each nation. It will readily be understood, that the kind only, and not the degree of merit, is here considered, when Rowe is opposed to Sophocles, Otway to Euripides, and Shakspeare to Eschylus. Let us first examine separately the respective me. rits of these illustrious rivals; and then, combining the talents of each nation, it will not be difficult to take a general survey, and to adjudge. the palm of victory. And, And, to begin gwтоY αпо пOWтWY,-let Æschylus and Shaks peare first enter the lists. Each of these great poets was born in an age and under circumstances perfectly adapted for the unob structed display of his genius; when the stage was buried in a rude barbarism little superior to a non-existence; when the drama was not restricted by any laws either of authority or of example, and each therefore was a law to himself. Of the two, Shakspeare perhaps derived the less assistance from his predecessors in the art: the rough sketches of Thespis had been somewhat polished by his disciple, Phrynichus, who first introduced female charac ters, and established the proper measure for tragedy; and when Eschylus began to write, he had not much to furnish for the drama, except that " mens divinior," which constitutes its very soul; with which he was so eminently gifted, and in which, we have reason to believe, his predecessors were so miserably deficient. They had amused their audiences with song and dance; but Eschylus first instructed them by representations of nature, by just exhibitions of character, and strong delineations of passion. The English stage, before the time of Shakspeare, was a bewildered chaos, upon which a less daring and less powerful genius must have looked abroad in despair. But confident in his own powers, and aided by a judgment at once correct and vigorous, he boldly undertook the task of organizing the rude mate rials of the scene, and making them subservient to their noblest purpose, the display of nature. It was fortunate for Greece and for England, that such poets were given them at such a season: had the infant age of tragedy been entrused to less able management, there is little doubt, that it would have been destroyed by unskilful usage, or, at least, that its features would have been distorted into deformity. Of these two mighty rivals, the distinguishing characteristic is a daring sublimity of genius, which disdains to be confined by the bounds of earth and nature, delighting in the machinery of preternatural agents, and managing it with a skill and effect at once astonishing and appalling. In the art of exciting terror, no poet, ancient or modern, can be compared with either of them. Eschylus has been accused, and in part with justice, of dealing too much in horror; and it is a charge which Shakspeare might share with him, if it could be believed, that he really wrote that vile compound of absurdity and barbarity, which is attributed to him under the name of Titus Andronicus. This fault of the Gre cian poet, which is to be found principally in his Eumenides, may in some degree be pardoned him on account of his military habits, as well as on account of the sublimity of effect which he has produced from it. In his other plays terror is exhibited in a more unadulterated form, and in a degree infinitely superior to every other |