of land, the law of God having connected indissolubly the cultivation of every rood of earth with the maintenance and watchful

labour of man. But money, stock, riches by credit, transferable and convertible at will, are under no such obligations; and, unhappily, it is from the selfish autocratic possession of such property, that our landholders have learnt their present theory of trading with that which was never meant to be an object of commerce.

To please me, a poem must be either music or sense; if it is neither, I confess I cannot interest myself in it.

The first act of the Virgin Martyr is as fine an act as I remember in any play. The

Very Woman is, I think, one of the most perfect plays we have. There is some good fun in the first scene between Don John, or Antonio, and Cuculo, his master *; and can any thing exceed the skill and sweetness of the scene between him and his mistress, in which he relates his story?+ The Bondman is also

* Act III. sc. 2.

+ Act IV. sc. 3.:

"ANT. Not far from where my father lives, a lady, A neighbour by, bless'd with as great a beauty As nature durst bestow without undoing,

Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then,

And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in.
This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness;
In all the bravery my friends could show me,
In all the faith my innocence could give me,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me,
I sued and served: long did I love this lady,
Long was my travail, long my trade to win her;
With all the duty of my soul, I served her.

ALM. How feelingly he speaks! (Aside.) And she loved you too?

It must be so.

ANT.

I would it had, dear lady;

story had been needless, and this place,

, unknown to me.

a delightful play. Massinger is always entertaining; his plays have the interest of novels.

ALM. Were your bloods equal?

ANT. Yes, and I thought our hearts too.

ALM. Then she must love.

ANT. She did - but never me; she could not love

me,

She would not love, she hated; more, she scorn'd me,
And in so poor and base a way abused me,
For all my services, for all my bounties,
So bold neglects flung on me.

An ill woman!

ALM.
Be like you found some rival in your love, then?
ANT. How perfectly she points me to my story!
(Aside.)

Madam, I did; and one whose pride and anger,
Ill manners, and worse mien, she doted on,
Doted to my undoing, and my ruin.
And, but for honour to your sacred beauty,
And reverence to the noble sex, though she fall,
As she must fall that durst be so unnoble,
I should say something unbeseeming me.
What out of love, and worthy love, I gave her,
Shame to her most unworthy mind! to fools,
To girls, and fiddlers, to her boys she flung,
And in disdain of me.

ALM.

Pray you take me with you.

Of what complexion was she?

ANT.

But that I dare not

But, like most of his contemporaries, except Shakspeare, Massinger often deals in exaggerated passion. Malefort senior, in the Unnatural Combat, however he may have had the moral will to be so wicked, could never have actually done all that he is represented as guilty of, without losing his senses. He would have been in fact mad. Regan and Goneril are the only pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare; the pure unnatural — and you will observe that Shakspeare has left their hideousness unsoftened or diversified by a single line of goodness or common human frailty. Whereas in Ed

Commit so great a sacrilege 'gainst virtue,

She look'd not much unlike—though far, far short, Something, I see, appears

your pardon, madam Her eyes would smile so, but her eyes could cozen; And so she would look sad; but yours is pity,

A noble chorus to my wretched story;

Hers was disdain and cruelty.

ALM.

Pray heaven,

Mine be no worse! he has told me a strange story.

(Aside.)" &c.-ED.

mund, for whom passion, the sense of shame as a bastard, and ambition, offer some plausible excuses, Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits. Edmund is what, under certain circumstances, any man of powerful intellect might be, if some other qualities and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is, inclusively, an Edmund, but different from him as a whole, on account of the controlling agency of other principles which Edmund had not.

Remark the use which Shakspeare always makes of his bold villains as vehicles for expressing opinions and conjectures of a nature too hazardous for a wise man to put forth directly as his own, or from any sustained character.

The parts pointed out in Hieronimo as Ben Jonson's bear no traces of his style; but they are very like Shakspeare's; and it is very remarkable that every one of them re-appears in full form and developement,