Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

us very extraordinary, we give a portion of it to the reader. The title of the book is, "Th'ordinary of Crysten men. By Wynken de Worde, 1502.-Here foloweth the ten paynes of the partye of the body that these dampned suffre in hell, (and every of them devysed in foure,) and so they ben forty paynes."

"The first is fyre ryght cruelly brennynge, The second is colde, so much fresynge;

The thyrde, grete cryes of dolour without ceasynge; The fourth smoke, the whiche may not in hell be lefte; The fyfth, odour and stynkyuge moch horryble;

The syxte, vysyon of devylles terryble;

The seventh, hungre tourmentynge cruelly;

The eygth, thyrste, the whiche tormenteth in lyke wyse ;
The nynth, grete shame and confusyon;
The tenth, in all membres afflyccyon."

DOCTOR GOLDSMITH.

GOLDSMITH was always plain in his appearance; but, when a boy, and immediately after suffering severely from the small-pox, he was very ugly. When he was about seven years of age, a fiddler, who reckoned himself a wit, happened to be playing to a company at Mrs. Goldsmith's house. During a pause between

two sets of country dances, little Oliver surprised the party by suddenly jumping up, and dancing round the room. Struck with the grotesque appearance of the ill-favoured child, the fiddler exclaimed,-" Æsop." The company burst into a laugh, when Oliver, turning to them with a smile, repeated the following couplet :

"Heralds proclaim aloud, all saying,

'See Æsop dancing, and his monkey playing." "

SIR THOMAS GRESHAM AND QUEEN ELIZABETH.

THE curiously-decorated house* at the west corner of Chancery Lane, said to have been the oldest building in Fleet Street, was erected in the reign of King Edward VI., for an elegant mansion, at a time when there were no shops in that part of the city, and was long distinguished by the sign of the Harrow. Queen Elizabeth, ⚫on a visit to Sir Thomas Gresham, on the 23rd January, 1570, was complimented by the descent of several cherubs from the top of this

* This house was pulled down to widen the entrance into Chancery Lane, in May, 1799.

VOL. II.

M

1

house, who, from thence, by a contrivance of the students of the temple, flew down, and presented her Majesty with a crown of laurels and gold, together with some verses. The fourth cherub delivered the following:

"Virtue shall witness of her worthiness,

And fame shall registrate her princelie deeds;
The world shall still praie for her happiness,
From whom our peace and quietude proceeds."

Report says, "the Queen's Highness was much pleased therewith."

HOME'S "DOUGLAS."

AMONG the individual tributes paid to the merits of Home, when his tragedy of " Douglas" had acquired for him a high reputation, two are particularly deserving of remembrance. One was from David Hume, who dedicated to him his "Four Dissertations," and complimented him on possessing "the true theatric genius of Shakspeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one, and licentiousness of the other." An over-strained compliment, certainly; yet, saving that unhappiest of all unhappy phrases, the "unhappy barbarism"

of Shakspeare, just and discriminating in the main.*

The other tribute was from Mr. Sheridan, then Manager of the Dublin Theatre, and father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who sent over to Home a gold medal of ten guineas' value, on which was an inscription acknowledging his singular merit, in having enriched the English stage with the tragedy of "Dou glas."

After the extraordinary success which had attended our author on his first adventure, neither public expectation nor his own ambition would, probably, have been satisfied, had he not hastened to repeat his court to the tragic muse; and yet it is a certain, though mortifying, fact, that it would have been well for his fame had he tempted fortune no farther.

* After such a compliment from so acute a critic as David Hume, some indulgence is due to the inferior orders of his countrymen in London, who, on the first representation of "Douglas," at Drury Lane, called out from the galleries, at the conclusion of every round of applause, 'Aye, aye, what d'ye think o' ye're Willie Shakspeare now?"

From 1757 to 1778, he went on producing, on the London stage, one unsuccessful tragedy after another. "Agis," his first piece; "The Siege of Aquilina;" "The Fatal Discovery;" "Alonzo ;" and "Alfred." Garrick wrote prologues to some of them, and epilogues to others, and warmly interested himself in their fate; but none of them had even a temporary success. It must be confessed, indeed, that they are all greatly inferior to his "Douglas ;" and we are left to wonder, without even a speculative means of explaining, how the genius which formed so noble a master-piece could have been so strangely abortive in every succeeding attempt.

IMPROVISATORI.

"THE first time I heard these Improvisatori, I thought it quite impossible to go on so readily as they did, without having agreed things together before hand. It was at Florence, at our Resident's (Mr. Colman's); and when that gentleman asked what I thought of it, I told him, that I could not conceive how they could go on so promptly and so evenly, without some collusion between them. He said, that it amazed

« VorigeDoorgaan »