an ethereal flavour difficult to describe but easily felt by every student, about Shakespeare which none of the others has any pretensions to. Indeed one scarcely realises fully his sovereign position till one has read some of the other great Elizabethan dramatists, such as Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Fletcher.

Among the greater contemporaries or immediate successors of Shakespeare, George Chapman (1559-1634), already mentioned as the rival poet of the "Sonnets," occupied in his lifetime a prominent place. But his principal claim to remembrance now is his translation of the "Iliad," full of genuine Homeric fire, and still perhaps the best translation of that often-translated poem.1 Passing over Marston, whose chief excellence consisted in passionate declamation, we come to Ben Jonson, as striking and vigorous a personality as his namesake Samuel. Ben was born in London in 1573. He was educated at Westminster School, where he was the celebrated Camden's favourite pupil, and went from it to Cambridge. Unable to find means for his support there, he returned to London, and worked as a bricklayer for about a year. Becoming tired of this uncongenial occupation, he joined the army as a volunteer in the expedition to Flanders, and in a brief campaign there greatly distinguished himself by his bravery. His first play, "Every Man in his Humour," was acted in 1596. Others speedily followed. His best comedies, "Volpone, or the Fox," and "The Alchemist," were produced in 1605 and 1610 respectively; his best tragedy, "Sejanus," in 1603. His plays were not popular, and he did not realise much money by them, but for many years he found a lucrative source of income in the preparation of masques for the Court. Ben died in 1637, after he had by his talents and his self-assertion fought his way, amidst much poverty and many trials, to a literary dictatorship; not so generally recognised, indeed, but as despotic as that held by Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century. He was a strong-minded, vain

1 Keats's noble sonnet "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" shows the impression made by this translation on one possessed of the finest poetic susceptibilities.

John Webster.

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man, prone to quarrel with any one who did him a real or a fancied injury; confident in his own powers, and not too ready to recognise the powers of others. Yet, passing over one or two expressions which may be referred to a not unnatural jealousy, he was warm in his praise of Shakespeare; and, like Samuel Johnson, concealed much genuine kindliness of heart beneath a rough and self-asserting exterior. He is by far the most learned of the dramatists; indeed his plays are overlayed by the curious erudition which he was too fond of displaying. The title of his first play indicates his main fault as a dramatist. All his characters are mastered by some special tendency of the mind or humour. "They do not represent men and women," says Barry Cornwall, "with the medley of vices and virtues common to human nature about them, but each is the personification of some one single humour, and no more. There is no fluctuation, no variety or relief in them. His people speak with a malice prepense. They utter by rote what is set down for them, each one pursuing one leading idea from beginning to end, and taking his cue evidently from the prompting of the poet. They speak nothing spontaneously. The original design of each character is pursued so rigidly that, let what will happen, the one single humour is ever uppermost, always the same in point of force, the same in its mode of demonstration, instead of being operated on by circumstances, increased or weakened, hurried or delayed, or turned aside, as the case may require." Ben Jonson's finest pieces are the songs, many of them exquisite, scattered through his masques.

Literary partnerships were not uncommon among the Elizabethan dramatists. Marston, Chapman, and Ben Jonson wrote a play," Eastward Ho," together; Shakespeare (if the surmises of critics be correct) wrote only part of "Timon" and "Henry VIII.;" but the standing examples of united authorship are Beaumont and Fletcher. Beaumont's share in

the plays which bear the joint name is believed to have been small. He died in 1616, at the age of thirty. Fletcher, born in 1579, died in 1625. Both were of gentle birth. Written

in the reign of James I., their plays form a transition stage to the Restoration drama. They (perhaps we should rather say Fletcher) were the founders of the comedy of intrigue, afterwards fully developed by Wycherley and Congreve. In "studious indecency" they are surpassed by none of the dramatists, which is saying a great deal.

Of John Webster, of whose life almost nothing is known, the chief works are "Vittoria Corombona," published in 1612, and the "Duchess of Malfi," published in 1623, two tragedies deeply tinged with terror and sorrow. In the delineation of characters affected by crime, misery, and remorse, he has few equals. John Ford (1586-1640), too, excelled in dealing with the darker emotions of the heart. His chief plays are "Perkin Warbeck," reckoned the best historical drama after Shakespeare, and the "Broken Heart." Philip Massinger (15841640) was also a man of sombre genius, but in his case it was united with considerable humorous power. His finest play, "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," has one very powerfully drawn character, Sir Giles Overreach, an incarnation of selfishness and self-will. James Shirley (1596-1667) was the last of the great race of dramatists, "all of whom," says Lamb, "spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral feelings and notions in common." He was not a great writer, but he was a very prolific one, having written nearly forty plays previous to 1641. In 1642 the theatres were closed, not to be reopened again till about the time of the Restoration, when a totally new species of dramatic art came into vogue.

We have left altogether unnoticed many of the Elizabethan dramatists, and have passed very lightly over most of the others. This is not because they have less literary merit than many other writers dealt with more fully in this book, but because it is nearly impossible to describe their characteristics without lengthy quotations. Excellent introductions to their study will be found in Hazlitt's "Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," an exceedingly brilliant, if occasionally misleading book, and in Charles Lamb's "Specimens," which was one of the first works to call attention to their beauties.

THE SUCCESSORS OF THE ELIZABETHANS.

Baron; Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Bunyan; Walton; Browne; Clarendon; Hobbes; Lovelace, Suckling, Herbert, Herrick; Milton; Donne, Cowley, Denham, Waller.

N this chapter we purpose to deal with the period. between the accession of James I. and the Restoration. The ground we shall have to traverse is one

of the greatest interest to students of English history, full of momentous events and great constitutional changes. In literature, also, it is important. With one illustrious exception, no poet of the first order of merit flourished during this epoch; but that illustrious exception was John Milton, who, by common consent, occupies a place in the brilliant galaxy of English poets second only to that of Shakespeare. In prose writers of great excellence the period was rich. Some of these we can notice only very briefly; others we shall be obliged to omit altogether. Even amid the agitating and perilous times of the Civil War, two or three writers on religious subjects appeared, who, by the fervour of their devotional feeling or the splendour of their imperial eloquence, earned for themselves an imperishable name. Though only fifty-seven years elapsed between the beginning of the reign of James I. and the Restoration, English prose made vast progress during the interval. From a powerful but unwieldy machine, it grew to be a handy, serviceable instrument, still capable, indeed, of great improvement, but infinitely more shapely and methodical than

before. The prose of Cowley and Hobbes might, so far as clearness and sentence-arrangement are concerned, have been written in our own day. Many writers, it is true, and these among the greatest, neglected the mechanical part of style; still it was gradually beginning to be much more studied than hitherto.

To this period belong most of the works of Francis Bacon, who, if we ranked authors strictly according to date of birth, would have been placed among the Elizabethans. He was born in London in 1561, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, LordKeeper of the Great Seal. When a child, his precocious sagacity so attracted Elizabeth that she "delighted much to confer with him, and to prove him with questions; unto which he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above his years, that her Majesty would often term him 'the young LordKeeper.'" At the age of twelve he was sent to Cambridge, where he remained for two years and a half. Even at that early period he is said to have conceived a dislike to the philosophy of Aristotle, as "a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of man." After leaving the University he resided for more than two years in Paris, from which he was recalled by the sudden death of his father in 1579. He was left poor, and after in vain soliciting his uncle Burleigh to obtain for him some sinecure office under Government, devoted some years to the study of the law. At twenty-three he became a member of the House of Commons, where his eloquence and ability soon made his name widely known; but he was unfortunate enough to incur the resentment of Elizabeth by his opposition to her demand for a subsidy, and though he endeavoured to atone for his error in policy by servile apologies, he was never forgiven, and high offices were steadily denied him. His cause was warmly espoused by Lord Essex, whose indiscreet advocacy probably did him more harm than good. He befriended Bacon generously, however, and when, in 1594, he failed to procure for him the vacant office of Attorney-General, he con soled him for his disappointment by the present of an estate of