"I have seen an unscrew'd spider spin a thought, "What say you to that, Doctor?" "Ah, marry, Mr. Lee, that's superfine indeed. The thought of a winged spider may catch sublime readers of poetry sooner than his web, but it will need a commentary in prose to render it intelligible to the vulgar." * His melancholy death has already been inserted in the Biogr. Dram. from Oldys's notes. This event happened about 1691 or 1692, for his last play, the Massacre of Paris, is printed in 1690, and Mr. Southerne in his poem to Mr. Congreve before his "Old Bachelor" 1693, mentions his death. He was buried at St. Clement Danes, aged about thirty-five years. "There is, or lately was, a brother of Nat. Lee, somewhere in, or near the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire, who has a trunk full of his writings, as I have been informed by old Mr. Samuel Westley, the late parson of Epworth in Lincolnshire." Lee was patronized by Philip Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, to whom he dedicated his tragedy of Cæsar Borgia, 1680, and who shewed him some external honours, which got Lee some envy, and his lordship more censure than either deserved. See the Satire upon the Poets in imitation of the Seventh Satire of Juvenal, printed in the State-Poems, and reprinted by R. Cross in his Collection of Poems, 8vo. "The ingenious Mr. William Thompson had two long letters about Nat. Lee, written by Thomas Southerne, in which is mentioned Lee's breaking somebody's head at Wills' Coffee-house in one of his merry mad fits." 1747, p. 92, in which are the six following lines upon Lord P. and dedicating Lee, because he staid so long at Wilton that the butler feared he would empty the cellar. None of our new nobility will send To the King's Bench or to his Bedlam friend; For butchers' dogs, and for the whole Bank-side; Was thought to have a greater paunch than he. "Queen Anne, when she was Princess, played Semandra in Lee's "Mithridates" (1678, 4to.) with other nobility at Court in the Banqueting-house, Whitehall. She was taught the part by Mr. Joseph Ashbury. "Most of Lee's plays are printed by John Bentley the bookseller, who, in a catalogue at the end of St. Evremond's Gallant Memoirs, and translated by P. Bolson (or Belon) printed 12mo. 1681, has added some of John Crown's to them. Lee's plays are printed together in 2 vols. 8vo. 1713, in 3 vols. 12mo. 1722, the last edition 3 vols. 12mo. 1734." "In Theodosius, or the Force of Love, a tragedy, . 1680, 4to. are several entertainments of singing; the music by the famous Henry Purcell, being the first time he ever composed for the stage. See Mrs. Eliza Heywood's Companion to the Theatre, Vol. II. p. 329, 1747." "See Gildon's Character of Lee, Cibber's Apology and Tom Brown of him, Jacob in his Life, and Dryden, Sir Carr Scrope, and Mr. Duke in their prologues of his plays, and Felton, and Tatlers, &c. and Downes the Prompter of his first appearance on the stage, and Sessions of Poets, and Dr. Trapp's character of him in his Prælectiones Poeticæ, and my Epigram printed in the last volume of Epigrams for Walthoe." ART. XIV. Characters of the Poets and Actors in King Charles II's. Reign. [FROM THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, 1745, vol. xv. p. 99.] "Though misfortunes joined with my own choice, have greatly abated the taste, which I once had for poetry, (alas! 'tis now full sixty years since I bad adieu to the Muses,) yet let me profess (vanity may be a little pardonable in what Will Davenant calls talkative old age) that the wits and poets usually esteemed me a notable young fellow. I am now in my 87th year, and though my memory fails as to things of yes terday, yet I remember the bards and theatres of Charles the Second's Reign, (even the comedy you allude to, at its first appearance,) as well as you can recollect any thing concerning the present poets or theatres. "I remember plain John Dryden (before he paid his court with success to the great) in one uniform cloathing of Norwich drugget. I have eat tarts with him and Madam Reeve t at the Mulberry garden, when our author advanced to a sword and chadreux wig. Posterity is absolutely mistaken as to that great man ; though forced to be a satirist, he was the mildest Marriage A La Mode, by Dryden. † Mrs, Ann Reeve, Pryden's mistress; she acted the part in the Rehearsal, &c. She died a Religious, creature 2 creature breathing, and the readiest to help the young and deserving; though his comedies are horribly full of double entendres, yet it was owing to a false complaisance for a dissolute age. He was in company the modestest man that ever conversed. "Master Elkanah Settle, the city poet, I knew, with his short-cut band, and sattin cap. He run away from Oxford with the players at an act, as Otway did the same year 1674. You'll be glad to know any trifling circumstance concerning Otway. His person was of middle size, about five feet seven inches in height, inclinable to fatness. He had a thoughtful speaking eye, and that was all. He gave himself up early to drinking, and, like the unhappy wits of that age, passed his days between rioting and fasting, ranting jollity and abject penitence, carousing one week with Lord Plth, and then starving a month in low company at an ale-house on Tower-hill. "Poor Nat. Lee (I cannot think of him without tears) had great merit. In the poetic sense he had, at intervals, inspiration itself: but lived an outrageous boisterous life like his brethren. He was a well looking man, and had a very becoming head of hair. A picture of him I never saw. He was so esteemed and 'beloved, that before his misfortune we always called him honest Nat, and afterwards poor Nat. "Shadwell in conversation was a brute. † Many a cup When above seventy years old, he published an Elegy on the Duke of ·Marlborough, 4to. 1722, and died in the Charter-house, 1723. "Thomas Shadwell was born at Stanton-Hall in Norfolk, 1640. His father had eleven children. He was bred up at Bury school, and Caius College in Cambridge. At the age of twenty-three years he went over to Ire land cup of metheglin have I drank with little starched Johnny Crown; we called him so from the stiff unalterable primness of his long cravat. "But land, and at four months end returned. His father was bred to the law, and had a place of profit and distinction in his profession in Ireland, and when Tom returned from Ireland he had chambers in the Middle Temple. His father bestowed the learning and exercises of a gentleman upon him, as music, &c. which himself tells us in his dedication to the 10th Satire of Juvenal to Sir Charles Sedley. See the Preface of Henry Higden's Modern Essay on the 10th Satire of Juvenal with annotations, dedicated to Richard Lord Lumley, with verses prefixed by Dryden, Mrs. Behn, and E. Settle;-in which preface this author laughs at Shadwell's Translation of Juvenal, and at him too. It is printed in 4to. 1689, in fifty-eight pages. yet that Lord had a better opinion of his conversation than his writings, when he said, that if Shadwell had burned all he wrote, and printed all he spoke, he would have shewn more wit and humour than any other poet. But the wit of his conversation was often very immoral, obscene, and profane. By which course having meanness of spirit and servility to render himself ridicu→ lous and contemptible to men of fortune, title, and wit, he got their favour and assistance, under the pretence of being a useful instrument of the Revolution. Lord Lansdowne has a short discourse on these two lines above, against the remark of Wycherley's being a slow writer." Oldys MSS. “I have heard that Dorset, Sedley, and others of those idle wits would write whole scenes for him." Ibid. Shadwell died Nov. 1692, aged about 57 (but qu. the date of his birth above?)" See his Life before his plays, in 3 vols. 12mo. 1720, pub ished by his son John Shadwell, and dedicated to the King. He also wrote the short account of his father's Life before it, and the epitaph at the end in Latin, in which Bishop Sprat prevailed on him to retrench part of the high encomium he had given of plays, unseemly to be read in a church: but here the castrated inscription is restored according to the original as it is said in his life." Ibid. "Upon the death of Mr. Shadwell, see a character of him as a comic writer and useful in his degree, no sublime genius, or master of an elegant style, |