one he is come to fetch him home to supper, and now he may carry him home to his grave.

Enter the HosT, OLD FOREST, and SUSAN, his daughter.

Host. You must take comfort, Sir.

For. Is he dead, is he dead, girl?
Sus. Oh dead, Sir, Frank is dead.

For. Alas, alas, my boy! I have not the heart

To look upon his wide and gaping wounds.

Pray tell me, Sir, does this appear to you
Fearful and pitiful-to you that are

A stranger to my dead boy?

Host. How can it otherwise?

For. O me most wretched of all wretched men !

If to a stranger his warm bleeding wounds
Appear so grisly and so lamentable,

How will they seem to me that am his father?
Will they not hale my eye-brows from their rounds,
And with an everlasting blindness strike them?
Sus. Oh, Sir, look here.

For. Dost long to have me blind?

Then I'll behold them, since I know thy mind.
Oh me!

Is this my son that doth so senseless lie,

And swims in blood? my soul shall fly with his
Unto the land of rest. Behold I crave,

Being kill'd with grief, we both may have one grave.
Sus. Alas, my father's dead too! gentle Sir,
Help to retire his spirits, over travail'd

With age and sorrow.

Host. Mr. Forest-
Sus. Father-

What's a clock,

For. What says my girl? good morrow.
That you are up so early? call up Frank;
Tell him he lies too long a bed this morning.
He was wont to call the sun up, and to raise
The early lark, and mount her 'mongst the clouds.
Will he not up? rise, rise, thou sluggish boy.
Sus. Alas, he cannot, father.

For. Cannot, why?

Sus. Do you not see his bloodless colour pale? For. Perhaps he's sickly, that he looks so pale. Sus. Do you not feel his pulse no motion keep, How still he lies?

For. Then is he fast asleep.

Sus. Do you not see his fatal eye-lid close?
For. Speak softly; hinder not his soft repose.
Sus. Oh see you not these purple conduits run?
Know you these wounds?

For. Oh me! my murder'd son!

Y. For. Sister!

Enter young MR. FOREST.

Sus. O brother, brother!

Y. For. Father, how cheer you, Sir? why, you were wont To store for others comfort, that by sorrow

Were any ways distress'd. Have you all wasted,

And spared none to yourself?

0. For. O Son, Son, Son,

See, alas, see where thy brother lies.

He dined with me to-day, was merry, merry,
Aye, that corpse was; he that lies here, see here,
Thy murder'd brother and my son was.

Dost thou not weep for him?

Y. For. I shall find time;

Oh see,

When you have took some comfort, I'll begin
To mourn his death, and scourge the murderer's sin.
O. For. Oh, when saw father such a tragic sight,
And did outlive it? never, son, ah never,

From mortal breast ran such a precious river.

Y. For. Come, father, and dear sister, join with me;
He owed a death, and he hath paid that debt.
Let us all learn our sorrows to forget.

[Act i., Sc. 1.1]

If I were to be consulted as to a Reprint of our Old English Dramatists, I should advise to begin with the collected Plays of Heywood. He was a fellow Actor, and fellow Dramatist, with Shakspeare. He possessed not the imagination of the latter; but in all those qualities which gained for Shakspeare the attribute of gentle, he was not inferior to him. Generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism; and true hearty Anglicism of feelings, shaping that Christianism; shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakspeare, but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to poetry. I love them both equally, but Shakspeare has most of my wonder. Heywood should be known to his countrymen, as he deserves. His plots are almost invariably English. I am sometimes jealous, that Shakspeare laid so few of his scenes at home. I laud Ben Jonson, for that in one instance having framed the first draught of his Every Man in his Humour in Italy, he changed the scene, and Anglicised his characters. The names of them in the First Edition, may not be unamusing.

How say you, Reader? Do not Master Kitely, Mistress Kitely, Master Knowell, Brainworn, etc. read better than these Cisalpines?

THE GAME AT CHESS. A COMEDY. BY THOMAS MIDDLETON, 1624

Popish Priest to a great Court Lady, whom he hopes to make a Convert of.

Let me contemplate;

With holy wonder season my access,

And by degrees approach the sanctuary

Of unmatch'd beauty, set in grace and goodness.
Amongst the daughters of men I have not found
A more Catholical aspect. That eye

Doth promise single life, and meek obedience.
Upon those lips (the sweet fresh buds of youth)
The holy dew of prayer lies, like pearl
Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn
Upon the bashful rose. How beauteously
A gentle fast (not rigorously imposed)

Would look upon that cheek; and how delightful
The courteous physic of a tender penance,
(Whose utmost cruelty should not exceed

The first fear of a bride), to beat down frailty!

[Act i., Sc. 1.1]

THE VIRGIN WIDOW. A COMEDY,

1649. THE

ONLY PRODUCTION, IN THAT KIND, OF FRANCIS QUARLES [1592-1644], AUTHOR OF THE EMBLEMS [1635]

Song.

How blest are they that waste their weary hours

In solemn groves and solitary bowers,

[Bullen's ed., vol. vii. For other extracts from Middleton see note to page 144.]

Where neither eye nor ear

Can see or hear

The frantic mirth

And false delights of frolic earth;

Where they may sit, and pant,
And breathe their pursy souls;

Where neither grief consumes, nor griping want
Afflicts, nor sullen care controuls.

Away false joys; ye murther where ye kiss :

There is no heaven to that, no life to this.

[Act iii., Sc. 1.11]

ADRASTA. A TRAGI-COMEDY. BY JOHN JONES, 1635

When we were framed, the Fates consultedly

Did make this law, that all things born should die.

Yet Nature strove,

And did deny

We should be slaves

To Destiny.

At which, they heapt

Such misery;

That Nature's self

Did wish to die:

And thank their goodness, that they would foresee

To end our cares with such a mild decree.

[Quarles, ed. Grosart, 1881, vol. iii., see also Appendix, p. 585.]

2[See also "Facetiæ," page 561.]

TANCRED AND GISMUND. ACTED [IN 1568] BEFORE THE COURT BY THE GENTLEMEN OF THE INNER TEMPLE. [PUBLISHED 1591: WRITTEN BY ROBERT WILMOT AND FOUR OTHERS]

A Messenger brings to Gismund a cup from the King her Father, enclosing the heart of her Lord, whom she had espoused without his sanction.

Mess. Thy father, O Queen, here in this cup hath sent

The thing to joy and comfort thee withal,

Which thou lovedst best: ev'n as thou wast content

To comfort him with his best joy of all.

Gis. I thank my father, and thee, gentle Squire;

For this thy travail: take thou for thy pains
This bracelet, and commend me to the King.1

*

So, now is come the long-expected hour,
The fatal hour I have so looked for.
Now hath my father satisfied his thirst
With guiltless blood, which he so coveted.
What brings this cup? aye me, I thought no less;
It is my Earl's, my County's pierced heart.
Dear heart, too dearly hast thou bought my love
Extremely rated at too high a price.

Ah my dear heart, sweet wast thou in thy life.
But in thy death thou provest passing sweet.
A fitter hearse than this of beaten gold
Could not be lotted to so good a heart.
My father therefore well provided thus
To close and wrap thee up in massy gold
And therewithal to send thee unto me,
To whom of duty thou dost best belong.
My father hath in all his life bewrayed
A princely care and tender love to me
But this surpasseth, in his latter days

To send me this mine own dear heart to me.
Wert not thou mine, dear heart, whilst that my love
Danced and play'd upon thy golden strings?
Art thou not mine, dear heart, now that my love
Is fled to heaven, and got him golden wings?
Thou art mine own, and still mine own shall be,
Therefore my father sendeth thee to me.
Ah pleasant harbourer of my heart's thought!

[The messenger here departs.]