"Music, tobacco, sack, and sleep,
The tide of sorrow backward keep.
If thou art sad at other's fate,
Rivo! drink deep, give care the mate.

On us the end of time is come,
Fond fear of that we cannot shun;
Whilst quickest sense doth freshly last,
Clip time about, hug pleasure fast.

The Sisters ravel out our twine,
He that knows little 's most divine.
Error deludes; who'll beat this hence,
Nought's known but by exterior sense.

Let glory blazon others' deed,

My blood than breath craves better meed.
Let twatling Fame cheat others' rest,
I am no dish for Rumour's feast.

Let honour others' hope abuse,
I'll nothing have, so nought will lose;
I'll strive to be nor great nor small,
To live nor die, fate helpeth all.
When I can breathe no longer, then
Heaven take all; there put amen."

His next play, The Dutch Courtezan, does not possess much excellence, or excite much interest. It was, however, revived by Mrs. Behn, under the title of the Match in Newgate. The only part we can extract is as follows, and is in the ardent, earnest style of Marston.

"Still? my vow is up above me, and like time
Irrevocable. I am sworn all yours,

No beauty shall untwine our arms, no face
In my eyes can or shall seem fair,

And would to God only to me you might
Seem only fair; let others disesteem

Your matchless graces, so might I safer seem;
Envy I covet not, far, far be all ostent,
Vain boasts of beauties: soft joys and the rest,
He that is wise, pants on a private breast;
So could I live, in desert most unknown;
Yourself to me enough were populous,
Your eyes shall be my joys, my wine that still
Shall drown my often cares, your only voice

Shall cast a slumber on my list'ning sense,
You, with soft lip, shall only ope mine eyes,
And suck their lids asunder, only you

Shall make me wish to live, and not fear death,
So, on your cheeks I might yield latest breath;
O he that thus may live, and thus shall die,
May well be envied of a deity."

The Parasitaster, or The Fawne, is an amusing and pleasant comedy. The author declaims in his peculiar vein against the flatteries of the little and the follies of the great.-Hercules, the disguised Duke of Ferrara, makes the following soliloquy on flattery.

Her. I never knew, till now, how old I was;
By him by whom we are, I think a Prince
Whose tender sufferance never felt a gust
Of bolder breathings, but still liv'd gently fann'd
With the soft gales of his own flatterers' lips,
Shall never know his own complexion.

you;

Dear sleep and lust, I thank
but for you,
Mortal till now, I scarce had known myself.
Thou grateful poison, sleep, mischief, flattery,
Thou dreamful slumber (that doth fall on Kings
As soft and soon as their first holy oil,)
Be thou for ever damn'd; I now repent
Severe indictions to some sharp stiles;
Freeness, so't grow not to licentiousness,

Is grateful to just states. Most spotless kingdom,
And men, O happy, born under good stars,
Where what is honest you may freely think,
Speak what you think, and write what you do speak,
Not bound to servile soothings. But since our rank
Hath ever been afflicted with these flies

(That blow corruption on the sweetest virtues,)

I will revenge us all upon you all;

With the same stratagem we still are caught,
Flattery itself; and sure all know the sharpness
Of reprehensive language is even blunted
To full contempt, since vice is now term'd fashion,
And most are grown to ill even with defence,
I vow to waste this most prodigious heat
That falls into my age, like scorching flames
In depth of numb'd December, in flattering all
In all of their extremest viciousness,

Till in their own lov'd race they fall most lame,
And meet full but the close of Vice's shame."

The Malecontent appears, from the title, to have been originally written by Webster, and afterwards augmented by Marston. The latter, however, dedicated it to Ben Jonson, and in the preface treats it as his own. The hand of Marston is manifest in some of the scenes, and the character of the Malecontent, or rather his assumed character, is precisely in Marston's manner. It is, upon the whole, a tolerably good comedy. The comedy of Eastward Hoe, in which he joined Chapman and Jonson, will be discussed in our article on Chapman's joint Plays.

We have selected a few of the more delicate and retired beauties of Marston's dramas, to serve as a desert to the more substantial matters which have preceded.

Of content.

**" Ọ, calm-hush'd, rich content!

Is there a being blessedness without thee?

How soft thou down'st the couch where thou dost rest!
Nectar to life, thou sweet ambrosian feast."

Of death.

"He's a good fellow, and keeps open house:
A thousand thousand ways lead to his gate,
To his wide-mouthed porch: when niggard life
Hath but one little, little wicket through.
We wring ourselves into this wretched world,
To pule, and weep, exclaim, to curse and rail,
To fret, and ban the fates, and strike the earth,
As I do now."

Of the body after death.

* "As having clasp'd a rose

Within my palm, the rose being ta'en away,
My hand retains a little breath of sweet:
So may man's trunk, his spirit slipp'd away,
Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest."

And, again; spoken by a father of his murdered son.
* "Look on those lips,

Those now lawn pillows, on whose tender softness,
Chaste modest speech, stealing from out his heart,
Had wont to rest itself, as loath to post

From out so fair an inn: look! look! they seem to stir, And breathe defiance to black obloquy."

The break of day.

*** “See, the dapple grey coursers of the morn Beat up the light with their bright silver hoops, And chase it through the sky."

The fool's beatitude.

"Even in that, note a fool's beatitude: He is not capable of passion,

Wanting the power of distinction,

He bears an unturn'd sail with every

wind:

Blow east, blow west, he steers his course alike.
I never saw a fool lean: the chub-fac'd fop
Shines sleek with full cramm'd fat of happiness,
Whilst studious contemplation sucks the juice
From wizards' cheeks: who making curious search
For Nature's secrets, the first innating cause
Laughs them to scorn, as man doth busy apes
When they will zany men.
Had heaven been kind,

Creating me an honest senseless dolt,

A good poor fool, I should want sense to feel
The stings of anguish shoot through every vein;
I should not know what 'twere to lose a father:

I should be dead of sense, to view defame

Blur my bright love; I could not thus run mad,
As one confounded in a maze of mischief,

Stagger'd, stark fell'd with bruising stroke of chance."

The fancy is described to be.

"A function,

Even of the bright immortal part of man.

It is the common pass, the sacred door

Unto the privy chamber of the soul,

That barr'd, nought passeth past the baser court

Of outward sense; by it, th' inamorate

Most lively thinks he sees the absent beauties

Of his lov'd mistress.

By it we shape a new creation,

Of things as yet unborn, by it we feed

Our ravenous memory, our intention feast."

The genius of Marston was more suited to tragedy, with which he commenced his dramatic career, than to comedy, to which he afterwards applied himself. There is a declamatory boldness of tone-a rugged strait forward vehemence of manner-a clearness and precision of thought, which, combined with some (though not a very considerable) degree of imagination, enabled him to depict the more masculine passions with no little success. In the portraiture of love, that passion which manifests itself in such an infinite variety of forms, his mind led him to select the coarsest kind, which he described with a corresponding coarseness of expression. In the delineation of its lighter graces, its more delicate indications, and its more retired sufferings, he is much less successful. The scene, for instance, between Antonio and Mellida, in the prison of the latter, appears to us to be a failure, although, at the same time, it contains two or three touches of true feeling. The character of Sophonisba is somewhat attractive-there is an innocent fearlessness and boldness in the avowal of her feelings towards Massinissa, though a want of delicacy in the expression; and a devoted grandeur of soul in the sacrifice of her life to preserve the honour of her husband; which must find favour with the reader. The execution of the portrait is, however, vastly inferior to the conception of it. The tender and confiding passion of Belinda for Freewill, in the Dutch Courtezan, in spite of appearances being against him, is a beautiful moral picture amidst grossness and deformity. The expedient of Dulcimel, in the Parasitaster, not only to deceive the doting old coxcomb her father, but to make him the unwitting messenger of her wishes, and the contriver of their gratification, is pleasantly managed. The same sort of contrivance is resorted to in Moliere's L'Ecole des Femmes.

The greater part of Marston's male characters, in his comedies, are of the description to which we have before alluded. There is a want of invention in his situations, and of variety in his humour. His mind was too stubborn and unbending to accommodate itself to the various follies of his time, and to assume their shape and bearing. With strong notions of moral rectitude, he had not the slightest toleration for deviations from them, and no other resource for correcting or reforming them than to apply his satirical lash, and then he was happy-for in this his power laid, and he felt that it did.